I longer detained in a gentle lukewarmth And this shewed very much of black blood but the other not any thing A diversity of kind therefore in a dead liquour presently putrifying and putrifiable is a suitable sign of corruption And the which therefore neither hath a vital or seminal Beginning a sign as neither an Argument of its primitive composition For we are Originally composed of a vital seed and are resolued into a putrified and cadaverous watery Liquor The which also oft-times happens in part in living bodies What if the Blood of pale becomes red shall that therefore be ascribed to Phlegm Shall red Apples be more sanguine than pale ones Blackish plumms be more melancholy than whitish ones For Colours do not denote feigned Humours or Elements But they imitate the properties of the middle life and appointments of the seeds Thus is it Colours and Thicknesses in the matter are works of the seminal Archeus But not the confused testimonies of Humours being put or applyed together Have thou recourse unto the Book of the Vnheard-of Doctrine of Fevers That I have lookt into the Bloods of two-hundred Countrey healthy persons in one only morning which were remarkable in the aspect of colours and diversities of grounds For some of them resembled a blackish and constrained jelly being oft-times also throughly mixed with a greenish liquor and sometimes only lightly besprinkled therewith Also another Blood was watery throughout its whole Another was snivelly another was red in the bottom another rather in the top-part thereof a water swimmed upon another being cleer pale somewhat yellow the which elsewhere lay hid as shut up in the middle of the Blood Another Blood was poyntingly speckled and another of red became pale throughout its whole another was inclinable into a Pomegranate and another into a black Colour Even as lastly another was somewhat green throughout it pavements I take pity on the deceiveable inspection of Blood issuing out of the body and the accustomed Judgements from blood let out of the veins the fictions of Humours and the readie credulities of the sick For a divining beholder of the blood is presently busie to fore-tell from the conjecture of an Humour the name and properties of the peccant and super-abounding Humour and also the manners complexion inclination of the man the particular kind greatness and event of the lurking disease and moreover the kind of death yea and the dependency of fortunes But whichsoever of the Humours shall offend in the Table of the inspection of Blood flowing forth that is presently banished with a diminishment of the head and unless it shall forthwith after obey it is to be put to flight by an an infamous stool Because the Physitian hath the peculiar Guardians of their own Humours ready at hand which may bring them forth all severally bound and putrified For thus they mock the ignorant and in the mean time thus also the frequency of Visits is confirmed Because they have known from a fore-judging of what sort the white of an egg will be which by receiving of their solutive Medicine shall return putrified For even the most phlegmatick person amongst them if he hath used Rhubarb will void a yellow excrement and less tinged if he shall take Scammoneated Medicines but not a slimie or snivelly liquor such as is voided from the receiving of the Magistrals of Coloquintida for all the compositions of the shops are supported with Scammony or Coloquintida or both as it were with two Pillars Oft-times also whom this man judgeth to be Cholery another calls Sanguine but if they shall see one whom they esteem to be Phlegmatick to be once angry others also will presently contend that he is in a raging heat through Choler And Scammony being drunk one derides another if they be called apart because he hath drawn Choler so plentifully from a sanguine man and he secretly insinuates by that very thing that the greater reward is due unto him as being skilful in his art For in the truth of the matter fraud fruit connexed with deceit do flourish as oft as vain complexions and Humours being neglected and the betokening and aspect of the blood let out being disregarded it is fore-known from the poysonous property of the solutive Medicine received what kind of dreg every one is to cast forth Indeed a solutive Medicine with them is an asistant to the function of the Liver Because it frames the Humours which they will have it to do and shews them in a bravery brought forth at pleasure and that according to the fore-knowledge of an Imposture And they boast as it were from a three-legged stool that they have fore-told to the sick the colours and properties of the offending Humours to be brought forth and that those sick having gone to stool have answered in the divination unto their foreknown Sooth-saings Surely a wretched Doctrine it is and ignorance to be expiated by punishment because that person is most miserable who having taken a consumptive medicine hath suffered his blood to be exhausted under the mask of putrefaction But at leastwise it is a wonder that the Schools have passed by the excrementitious filths of the Ears For they are those which being yellow and bitter might afford a fresher remembrance and firmer belief of yellow and bitter Choler than the water which swimmes on the venal Blood There is now therefore in the Brain a little bag of Choler But these filths appear not for the nourishment of the brain but when the blood is consumed but the Gaul cannot remain in its former Being or Essence when the Blood is spent whereof it had been an entire part An aid therefore for Choler was fetcht from an excrement formally transchanged especially because it alone exhales through the ears in the shape of a smoaky vapour For by how much the deeper an Ear-picker is sent into the ear the less of those filths is shaved of They are therefore ridiculous and weak arguments as many as beget an hope for Humours The colours also of an excrement cast forth are the effects of a purgative medicine being drunk but not testimonies of the abounding or conformity of an elected and rejected humour These things are described at large concerning the Doctrine of Fevers in the Chapter of Solutives Sufficient for me is the testimony from the mouth of the Schools that among all loosening medicines Aloes is only unhurtful They are not innocent therefore who profess this and in the mean time cease not daily to make use of other hurtful Medicines not because they find those things which they teach to be hurtful to be healthful to the sick but because they find them to be profitable to themselves What do we and shall we do will some say for unless we now and then open a vein and provoke the Belly we stay at home and are made the scorn of the vulgar and the Fable of Stages For a little Book is fore-read in the Schools concerning
truth of Healing doth not descend but in the fullnesse of time appointed by God For neither shall Light which is freely given shine at our pleasure For he who made all things as he would makes the same things when he will and perfects them in whom he will For I have waxed old now for forty years and more in the rout of Physitians and at length I being an old Man have known that the Speculations of the Schools ought by me to be subverted that all things in the Age that is soon to come may fall into dung as they being destitute of the Lime of truth do not co-here together There hath been so great a certainty with me of that Gift being obtained and so reverend an Authority thereof that I perceived that the Giver would together with his Gift be also the interpreter thereof and that in this respect I should exclude every doubt whatsoever and such a knowledge is far more sure than that which is formed by demonstration because there is not a Faculty in Words to make this certainty common to others I know also that all who are to read my Beginnings of Medicine will not carry back an equal Fruit from thence because God is still to remain the dispenser of his own Gift I have spoken these things that ye may also know that my unworthiness will overspread the Gift with darkness that he may compass the race of Nature who can for I have hoped that when he shall now increase the number and fierceness of Diseases he will inspire the Gift of Healing into the little ones and despised of this World And since that in the aforepast Age he sent Paracelsus a rich forerunner in the resolutive knowledge of Bodies and tâ—stre of Remedies it might be that he would now over-add the knowledg of an Adeptist which that other wanted Furthermore if it liketh thee without wickedness to enquire into the reason of the pleasure of that Divine Decree for which the Adeptical gift of Healing hath not descended unto Christians I suppose that the Schools do resist it as they stubbâ—rnly insist on the Principles of Heathens And then also because Medicine is wholly excercised for Gain presently after its Beginning the which alone of Arts is to be mercifully exspended from compassion But not as though Men were to live merrily and pompously or to grow rich by the Miseries of the miserable Sick Wherefore gain hath prevented a necessary Dsposition in Men and the falshood of Paganish Doctrin hath diverted the Adeptical or obtained Gift of Healing The searching out whereof hath therefore seemâ—d to me to consist in compassion towards the Sick by un-learning of false Theoremes and by putting on deep humility of Spirit The which as it is not then blown up with the Letter nor pressed down through inordinacy So in a humble beholding knowledge of ones own nothingness the Mind empties it self of all Science or Knowledge introduced by the inducements of Reason Then afterwards then I say the Most High scarce suffers the Mind to be empty but he replenisheth the same with a fruitful Beam of his own Light I have already perhaps found some who because I say that the obtainment of Medicine descendeth down from above will have Medicine to be perfectly learned after the manner of other Arts The Intellect or Vnderstanding they say is a natural Power but every natural Power is born to work a proper Effect but the proper Effect of the Intellect it self is Understandingness Therefore Man naturally understandeth all intelligible things as the proper Object of the intellect Moreover the Faculty of healing is intelligible and therefore it descends not from above I answer The Soul and the Understanding thereof are not the immediate Works of Nature because they are those which arise from a supernatural Fountain And so although the intellect as to its beginning be a natural Faculty of the Soul yet it is not altogether to be reckoned among natural Faculties It is of Faith that God hath created the Physitian and so that the Art of healing be-speaks something bâ—yond the common rule of created things so as that the obtainment thereof doth not happen after the manner of other Arts For Nebuchadnezzar will testifie a taking away and a restoring of the understanding Likewise do not ye become as the Horse and Mule which have no understanding the which had been spoken in vain if understanding were equally given by Nature Moreover the Understanding given whereof they here declare exerciseth not its own natural or intellectual Act but as by discoursing it drawes some Notions from Observations which it received from the perceivance of the Senses when as it is altogether ignorant of the Causes from a former But unto the Science of Medicine a certain clearness of Light is required which exceeds that knowledge by the Senses yea and by the consequences of Causes to their Effects according to suppositions brought on them by reason for the most part deceitful ones For it is of Faith that the intellâ—ct together with the totalness of humane Nature and so from thence howsoever cleer it be doth not perceive Propositions firstly or chiefly true which exceed sense unless with the afflux or concurrence of a supernatural Light Suppose thou I often read a place in a Book attentively and although I understood the Words yet I once only draw in the sense thereof unlooked for with an admiration of forepast readings But such Knowledge I call that of Grace For so the Understanding how clear soever it be doth not alwayes assent to the truth because neither doth it naturally perceive this truth for from hence are there Factions in Sciences and Religion So in the gift of Medicine there is something more noble and superiour than that which is formed in the imagining Faculty from a fore-existing knowledge of the Senses the which is true solid good exceeding the authority of consequences yea which can neither be properly taught or demonstrated Yet I would not be understood that the obtainment of healing is such an infused Science as in times past enlightned Bezaleel and Aholiab and much less such a one as on the day of Pentecost rained down with a large showre on the Apostles so that they forthwith spake in diverse Dialects Neither also is the obtainment of healing therefore of things plainly sublunary For the Eternal Wisdom hath created its Physitian after a singular manner before other created things and so some more famous thing seemeth to be required for him than for other Professions the which therefore neither hath he commanded to be honoured After another manner truly all our understanding in Nature ariseth only by way of discourse of the Observations of that which is supposed of consequence and of a diligent enquiry and all that from the effect Wherefore all such Knowledge is encompassed with uncertainty Therefore between an ordinary manner of understanding and infused science of the first degrees there are certain
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
thirst after But now I being constrained by the Reasons and Letters of many moderate wise Men out of divers Kingdoms and States here and there who perswaded me that I was devoutly engaged by the pledge of Health to commit all the Writings of my deceased Father unto the Press and to annex thereunto when and after what manner he closed his Day Also in what State or Condition he left the aforesaid Writings And moreover to supply those things which were lacking for the vindicating the Life of Man-kind from many Errors Torments and Destruction It is That which hath extorted from me to leave all other things and thorowly to review the aforesaid Writings which being finished I gave up my self to hearken to their Calls I suspended my former purpose discoursing in plain and most simple Words the following Narrative in my Mother Tongue according to the tenour of the fore-going Dedication of my Father the which I also imitate by following him in the very same intent thereof The Death of my Father happened on the Thirtieth Day of the Tenth Month December of the Year one thousand six hundred forty four at the sixth hour in the Evening when as he had as yet a full use of Reason and had first required and obtained all his sacred Solemnities and Rights His Life it self was his Disease which remained with him seven Weeks beginning with him after this manner He at sometime returned home in hast on foot at Noon in a cold and stinking Mist which was a cause unto him that when he endeavoured to write a small Epistle of about fifteen lines or did indulge himself with too large a discourse his breathing so failed him that he was constrained to rise up and to draw his breath thorow the nearest Window whereby a Pleurisie was provoked in him at two several times from the which notwithstanding he restored himself perfectly whole yea the day before his Death he being raised upright as yet wrote to a certain Friend of his in Paris there being among other these following words Praise and Glory be to God for evermore who is pleased to call me out of the World and as I conjecture my Life will not last above four and twenty hours space For truly I do to day sustain the first assault of a Fever by reason of the weakness of Life and defect thereof whereby I must finish it The which accordingly followed after that he had bestowed a special Benediction or Blessing on me the which I esteem for a great Legacy I do not here more largely extend the property of his Disease by reason of the straitness of time seeing that I am besides to make mention of him in my Compendium from all things unto the one thing the which I endeavour God willing it to publish in a short time A few days preceding his Death he said unto me Take all my Writtings as well those crude and uncorrected as those that are thorowly expurged and joyn them together I now commit them to thy care accomplish and digest all things according to thy own judgement It hath so pleased the Lord Almighty who attempts all things powerfully and directs all things sweetly Therefore attentive Reader I intreat thee that thou do not at the first sight wrongfully judge me because I have taken care to have the more Crude Writings Printed as being mixed with the more Digested ones those not being Restored or Corrected Know thou that the desire of promoting this great and laborious Work hath been the cause thereof at length thou maiest experience that the desirous Reader was to be by all means satisfied no less in this than in the aforesaid Writings and then thou wilt judge that I have well and faithfully performed all things seeking nothing for my own gain the which shall more clearly appear by this my Preface I call God to witness that my Desire unto whom it is known doth extend unto the help of my Neighbour Wherefore read thou and read again this Writing and it shall not repent thee for ever for I tell thee in the height of truth that I have published these things from pity alone as taking good notice that men by reason of their own Imaginations are so little careful of or affected with the safety of an Eternal and Temporal Life Stop your antient in and out-steps enter ye into the Royal path Eternal dismiss ye those innumerable by-paths which I my self have with exceeding labour and difficulty thorowly beaten in seeking whereby I might come unto the knowledge of the Truth endeavourm in the mean time to find out the ordination of all created things and their harmony and that by all the more internal and external means which I was able to imagine I then bent all my Senses whereby I might make my self known unto Wise men so called hoping at length to find some Wise Man not learned according to the common manner in all places where I should passe thorow which I might call Nations of whatsoever profession or condition they were I spake to them according to their desire that I might joyn in friendship with them by discourse and according to my abilities I imparted unto them the whole cause by this and other means I touched at many clear fundamental Knowledges and Arts all which I heare advisedly pass by And when I understood all and every of them to be onely the esteemed workmanship of a great Man I discerned that by how much the more a thing was absurd vain and foolish or frivolous by so much the more it was exalted and respected or honoured the which servitude I perceiving became voluntarily averse thereto as being one who did prosecute plain simplicity I descending ascended unto essential and occult or hidden properties and for my aid the understanding of some Latine Books seemed to be desired to this end I read over diverse times the New Testament in the Latine Idiome and the Germane that by that means I might in a few days not onely understand the Latine stile but also that in the aforesaid Testament I might find the perfect and long wished for simple one onely and Eternal Truth and Life which the one thing to wit God doth onely and alone earnestly require and is averse to all duallity or plurality So also whatsoever God hath created he created all of it in that one and by that one thing otherwise he had not kept an order And by how much the more I knew this amiable free and one only thing in all things and did enjoy it I addressed my self to a quiet study I was outwardly cloathed with simple or homely raiment and for the more inward contracting of my mind as also for curing thereof I acted many things known to God alone as also for the preservation of my health and increasing of my strongth I lived soberly for many Years together I also abstained from fleshes like as also from Fishes Wine and Ale or Beer and that so far that I
dry Jurisdictions yet are they less durable than others which are less hot because their Light which is in them is more divided and that as well in-Bruits as in Men Men of moist Coasts or Climates are homely and big neither can they undergo so much heat as Men which live in high dry and hot Countries as also the thing it self doth moreover testifie Yea thou shalt find that even dead Carcases which are slain by a violent Death even as Histories do declare and we are able besides dayly to experience when a slaughter hath been made or shall be made of men who had gone out of cold and watery Coasts to wage War against those of the more hot Provinces that the Slain on both sides might be discerned a long time after because they of the more cold Regions did sooner putrifie these waxed dry and remained surviving these did longer endure entire in the Heat because their Balsam is more durable than that of the other even as they contain more or less of a moist Matter or do partake more or less of a Night Light and they which are the more destitute of that those do more rejoyce in a day Light Now even as the Sun is a perfect and the greater day Light so the Moon being the nearest Planet unto us is a perfect Night Light which are perpetual in their Essence and likewise do render those Bodies perpetual and durable which are born and renewed by their help Furthermore as there is one only Sun and one only Moon their created Bodies no otherwise than those like unto them may be compared thereunto they being one only and also perfect as Gold which the Phylosophers have called Sol and Silver Lune and the other five Metals likewise according to the thing brought forth after the rest of the Planets wherein they have rightly done and have delivered the Truth because those one only Bodies are perfect the Fire cannot hurt them they remain stable therein Gold lives in the Fire therefore the Phylosoyhers have marked that with the name of Salamander the which now is falsly accounted for a living Creature A temporary and fraile Fire possesseth its Fire only in part as was said but the Sun is a perpetual Fire and Life and can live only in that which is like it self the which also must needs be a stable Body And as there is a temporary body in all things except in these two aforesaid which are like them and do wholly participate of them in what respect bodies ought to be returned into their first Essence by the same reason likewise the Light ought to be returned unto its Original for a frail or mortal thing cannot reach unto a perpetual thing Furthermore the stable Darkness must needs be present before the Light wherein the Light is raised up but if this Darkness be perpetual the Light also may perpetually dwell in it first according to the Spirit and then according to the Soul which Spirit seeing it is Eternal doth illuminate Eternal Darkness and the Darkness grows together or increaseth into Light and is made Silver which is twofold constituting a Body in the Flesh and Bones of Gold which is threefold Now as the Sun is a great day Light so it overcomes the Moon and silver is altogether converted into Gold by that the other five Earthly Planets may be transchanged and brought thorow unto a perfection like unto that of them because they also are Nocturnal Lights Further we must know that there are many innumerable Minerals mutually differing like as do the Stars from each other all which do expect their Perfection and some of these can more easily and swiftly attain unto their last Perfection than others Gold and Silver how smally soever they may be divided they may be re-united without loss because all their least Parts are entire and perpetual Notwithstanding they may be rendred Mortal because they have not as yet co-met or con-joyned into one but this Death cannot begin of and from themselves neither by reason of the Gold nor of the Silver because they are stable Bodies Now some Lovers might ask after what sort or by what means that might happen I reply After the same manner or means whereby it happeneth in all created things whereby also it happened in Eve through an increasing of the Darkness which draws its Original out of the principles of their Bodies as was shewn yea the Darkness may so grow up that it may convert the whole Spirit into Darkness but it that Lune or the Spirit of Sol doth call the Soul or Heat unto its aid before it be subjected and overcome the Spirit shall be strengthened not as it was before its Corruption but by this strife and victory it shall be so strong and the Spirit thereof shall be so greatly multiplyed that it is able to render ten of the imperfect Brethren stable but this Spirit hath not by this contention attained unto a liberty even entire and an Eternal Union but it ought so often to repeat this conflict which shall always more and more increase according to the increase of the Spirit and Darkness until it shall come unto the utmost and can suffer no more and the watery Body or Darkness shall be plainly consumed and then it is a pure everlasting united and double Light which will illustrate all things without dammage and diminishment and will be able to perfect all its Brethren into the likeness of it self it s own Virtue being retained and when this thing doth happen in Sol the Light of Lune is changed and supped up into Sol so that it is equally made an Eternal United and Trine Sol that which is the last in Eternity out of Man And hence it may be demonstrated that the Evangelist John in the third Chapter of his Revelation doth use the same Similitude saying I exhort thee to buy of me Gold tried in the Fire that thou mayest be made rich and to be cloathed with white Garments and that the confusion or shame of thy nakedness may not appear and anoint thou thine eyes with a Collyrium or Eye-Salve that thou mayest see I whom I love do reprove and chastize Be ye therefore zealous and repent Behold I stand at the door and knock If any one shall hear my voice and shall open unto me the Gate I will enter in unto him and will sup with him and he with me He that shall overcome I will give unto him to sit with me in my Throne as also I have overcome and have sit with my Father in his Throne He that hath an eare let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the Churches Wise Men We rejoyce that we understand from thee and do know the shining and quickning Light likewise the effluxing acting fermental contagious and mortal Darkness whereby we understand how Eve hath touched and eaten of the Fruits of Darkness and that she became darksom and contagious from thence through her effluxing Darkness she
Herophilus I here make no mention of Moses and many that were before him guilty of errour yea and he hath often carped at Quintius his Master whom notwithstanding though an Emperick he witnesseth that he hath followed in most things But what shall be for a dammage to them that have trodden in the beaten way but were ignorant of the safe path of healing For who hath understanding which he hath not freely received I confess indeed that the 〈◊〉 of the Schooles have not come through the fault of imprudency if giâ—â— do alwayes depend on the free will of the giver and those do not spring up before the due and ripe fulness of dayes But to have been unwilling to acknowledge errours once laid before them this then at leastwise becomes guilt Certainly Hipocrates had knowledge to cure the devouring Plague and with him that knowledge slept the most High so willing it Are those that come after therefore to be blamed for it is not of him that willeth nor runneth but alone of God that sheweth mercy like as it is a fault of the despiser not to have rested quietly in the truth set before him and to have lifted up his hand unto him CHAP. I. The Authours Confession 1. The muttering or murmuring of the Authour 2. The Physitians in Ireland are preferred before the Italians 3. The Romanes without Physitians lived the better 4. A Dream sheweth to the Authour his Soul 5. The manner of the minde in understanding 6. What is the Vicarship of the minde 7. What is the appearance of the Soul 8. The minde hath required from the Authour a disposed or fit intention in writing of this Book 9. The privy escape of selfishness in the Authour 10. The answer of the minde 11. A Confession of vanity that is apt to happen 12. That which the Authour saw after Repentance 13. Another Vision intellectual 14. The Authours Repentance WHen I had thorowly read over this my Labour and had as it were in one point comprehended in my abstracted Intellect or Understanding the Content of this Book I said with a sigh Oh the cares of men Oh what emptiness there is in things which way is it meet to pursue the Errours of the Schooles or what profit shall the Christian World perceive whether we have known Diseases to proceed from conceived Beings or at length from heats or to overflow with feigned humours for O wretched man hast thou not laboured in vain For to what end is so great brightness of speculation have not all these things the fewel of presumption For I remember that a Nobleman of Ireland gave Land to his Houshold Physitian not indeed who had returned instructed from Universities but he healed the sick For he hath a Book left him by his Auncestors filled with Remedies And so the Heire of the Book is alwayes Heire of that Land that Book deciphers the Signes of Diseases and the proper Remedies of that Countrey And the fick Irish are more happily cured and are far more strong than the Italians who have their paultry Physitians in all Villages living by the bloud of miserable men Therefore I said to my self What vain errour hath intieed thee that thou lastly hast meditated of a thing that will be of great moment if the Universities shall scoffe at thy debates and tread them under foot And although thou hast not written so much as for thy small glories sake yet all things are vain in the hands of men Thou hast thought indeed if thou shouldest do otherwise that thou hadst buried thy Talent granted unto thee Truly lived not the Romanes for five hundred years without Physitians and in a far more happy health than afterwards when they had vanquished the Greeks from whence they privily received Physitians Would Age if the pricks of Speculation together with the Thistles and Thorns of 〈◊〉 were burnt and the Tares being left behinde that we should feed upon Whear alone Cerminly I know not whether through the tiresomeness of reading or indeed by sleep creeping on me these injuries of the truth unworthy an answer did terrifie my minde At leastwise a great repose straightway invaded me and I fell into an intellectual Dream and memorable enough For I saw my Soul small enough in a humane shape yet free from the distinction of Sek Straightway I doubted having wondred at the sight not knowning what selfishness there was in me which should see my Soul distinct from it self and should understand my understanding out of it selfe and then a certain light entred into my Soul in comparison whereof the visible light of this World seemed to contain dreggish darkness For neither was that light seperate from the Soul it self and therefore it had not any thing like it self in sublunary things Then presently I perceived that we which are now together with the flesh are withdrawn by the same from the true and clear understanding and that the Soul understands in peace and rest not in doubting and by the leading of enforced reason for the most part bringing into it self blinde likenesses of that which is true intricate fallacies and unlucky perswasions of the truth neither rejoycing in running out to things like should it level Similitudes and the proportions of these purging them from the lees by relations or things referring neither should it let it self downward to faculties beneath stooping down into an Analysis or Solution and a Synthesis or composing neither should it weigh all things as being driven about with divers blasts of uncertainties passions and confusions of infirmities But I have taken notice that the former majesty or greatness of the minde being fallen another birth did arise wherein the sensitive Soul did exercise the Vicarship of the minde the which seeing it wanted through a confused knowledge the stirring up of conclusions and Disciplines it now supplies the place of true understanding and proudly attributes to it self all selfishness For hence have I learned that iâ— happens that we do not perceive that we do understand any thing so long as the chief Agent of this wreâ—ched and frail understanding hath not turned its force even to the bounds of sense Wherefore also neither do we remember that we do understand unless the same action be propagated or planted into us by a sensitive order or Government For neither therefore do we mark that we do know but when there is made a certain mutual passing over of faculties and as it were the Corners of actions through divers Agents playing their parts are wrapt together about the middle Therefore in this duplicity of understanding appointed unto me the threatning of the Lord who is to judge our righteousnesses is turned against my Soul Because I had purposed to search into all things which are under the Sun and because the thrice glorious God hath given to every one of the Sons of men their peculiar occupation that they may exercise themselves Therefore the Soul determined to examine it self in the Image
set before it According to that saying For who knowes the things that are of man but the Spirit of a man that is in him afterwards then the Soul opened the Eye-brow of the right Eye For it was not indeed in the likeness of a mans Eye distinguished by Coats the Apple and diversity of humours but the Eye was the onely round clear even as the Seat of Venis seemeth to be afar off which Eye although it was most exceeding beautiful in brightness yet through its unaccustomedness it struck me to the heart But it shone as well inwardly towards the bottom of the Soul as without thorow the whole Soul and it sent forth a beam into the splendor of that understanding afore hidden which had framed a selfishness severed from it self But it desired an account from the animosity or sturdiness of the sensitive Soul to wit whether in the composing of this Book it had alwayes with a resigned will nakedly offered up all things into the most pleasing goodness and well liking of God or indeed it at any time had presumed of it self like those that are busied all their life time in thinking of the Title of a Sepulchre Or what posterity should think of it But the selfishness as it were the light of a disoussing Intellect refusing to suffer endeavoured to sink it self within the body by privily I lifting of the diligent examination of contemplative truth But in the same kinde of visions wherein the understanding apprehendeth the selfishness this standeth as besides the Body Where ore it not being able to hide it self from the ray of the Soul which did shine thorow it after a wholly unaccustomed manner it sought a crafty evasion as though for the bashfulness of the thing and newness of the place it required a truce till the next day after the morrow hoping that perhaps by one dayes delay the understanding might be unmindeful of its Enterprise But the Soul said Every day hath its burden and desires its own account there is no need of delay to the confession of truth also the morrow will give no aid Thus therefore withdrawing and delay are taken away Then therefore the selfishness confessed I confess and willingly abhorre that the general frailty of men disposed to Custom hath forthwith defiled me I believing that honour did deservedly and worthily nourish all Arts according to the saying of the Heathens which being said the selfishness it self perceived its deformity And thereupon even the intellect being the more smitten with grief as it were sighed knowing my want yea and too much miserable want of understanding in the body the which as yet notwithstanding with the applause of men and having enjoyed a little unconstant glory it would carry out For by a special priviledge all honour and glory belongs to God I knew therefore that I had denounced War against God and had brought in an estrangedness on the whole Universe by a vain endeavour Because the universal order of things is that all things be primarily in their ultimate end and totally for the honour of God Therefore that my labour might not be wholly reprobate as yet far off from goodness it was altogether needful seriously to purge by Sacrifice this my blot Wherefore hither did repentance look and was expected from above with an importunate suit Which coming to me another Eye at length opened it self For then I saw that the searching into all things which are under the Sun was a good gift descending from the Father of Lights into the Sons of men for a diligent Study and a certain serious amending of forepast ignorance otherwise the danger of a vain complacency or well-liking would sometimes vex by the By. Wherefore I humbly begged of the Lord for the good pleasure of his own piety with the every way displeasure of my own vanity that he would spare me and vouchsafe to mortifie the selfishness alwayes reflex or returned upon me In the mean time I decreed with a resolute minde to bury this Book in the fire which very thing I had also performed and was now ready to execute had not another intellectual Vision offered it self unto me for I saw before me a most exceeding beautiful Tree spread forth as it were thorow the whole Horizon whose greatness and largeness notably amazed me It was bespangled with flowers innumerable odoriferous and of a most pleasing and lightsome Colour every one whereof had a bud behinde them a pledge of Fruit. Therefore I cropt of one of so many ten thousands for my self and behold the smell colour and whole grace of the Flowre straightway perished At the same instant an understanding of the Vision was given to me To wit all the gifts of God to be like Flowers and more glorious than Salomon in his Throne indeed of great expectations if they shall remain in the Tree But if man doth appropriate the gift to himself or dareth to crop it off from its original although the Flowre doth vanish from him yet the cropper remaineth the debtor of the promised Fruit. Therefore I decreed hereafter to leave the gift of God in its own Tree nor to arrogate any thing to my self by cropping it off and I willingly confess my aforepast ungratefulness towards the Tree Because whatsoever I have of his hath been freely bestowed and granted me for a time conditionally But from the bottom of my Soul do I detest my vain and foolish ignorance because I thought that gift falling with a strange beam into me in the first place to reflect upon my self For as from mud or dung there ascends a stinking sent or smoak so from Learning a pride of Learning Indeed I delighted rather in the Being of Reason than in the sound truth thinking it would happen after an honourable death that none shall make himself great by desert Indeed that honour would be an applause of many through the judgement of those that erre Therefore I abhorre I refuse from this day and renounce the prayses whatsoever they be that any one at any time shall give me Now at length I perceive what spots the love of a little vain glory may have I have denounced open Warre against the same knowing yea feeling by the afore-past Vision that although it be easie not to take praise while it is not given yet how hard it is not to delight in the same while it is offered Because I have experienced how horrid a thing it may be in the Age to come to have attributed part of the whole glory due to God to ones self upon any trifling account Therefore I did desire that this Book might issue out for the common good the name being suppressed that I might testifie that I do hereafter despise the common Air or Applause But the Decree of the Powers hindereth Every Soul is subject to the Powers Let God the Fountain of all good light help me that I may proceed to scorn my self in good earnest while as sometimes behinde and
the addicted or ready following Soul by operating and covers the Scull with Dogs hairs than it is able to produce within us a true knowledge of the truth Forasmuch as I have found that the Soul wishing to know by the hunting of Reason for the most part embraceth lying meanes and false satisfactions instead of the truth for a reward of its labour For thus the minde being deceived beholds a lie a false paint deceit and in summe a thinking instead of truth as long as it as yet doubts nothing of the juggles of Reason For in this respect it hath happened that there are so many juggling deceits and false Doctrines as well in Religion as in the Art of Medicine so that I cannot thorowly view any one corner of the Schooles from whence truth is not overthrown by the aims of Reason Therefore I have seen and learned Reason to be a naked thing because Reason for every event did bring forth nothing but a thinking or truth by which meanes it did bury the intellectual understanding Because that the minde cannot at once embrace and follow two lights which are so diverse But the World is every where miserably misled and deluded by thinkings And first indeed because every one thinks Reason to be the Image of God and our best Treasure c. I pray you let a Reason be asked about a doubtful question of ten witty men apart and mark how much they differ from each other every one is deluded by his own reason and how stoutly every one fights for his own thought For truly seeing my minde did spoil reason of its Garment I observed that the World is chiefly deceived by its own thinking because it calls â—e inquisition of the knowledge of things by their causes the seeking out or invention of reason But therein I have first of all discovered the false paint and most wretched condition and most poor nakedness of Reason because it blusheth to appear unless under the covering of a false Etymologle or pretended true reasoning or derivation of words and a begged Cloak For truly Reason is by no meanes a cause part or essence of the thing caused much lesse doth the rational faculty in man reach unto things For a thing is that in it self which it is without the reflexion of it on any discourse and invention of humane reason Therefore the outmost Garment of reason is a Mask Indeed the cause is the beginning and original of the thing caused But reason is no such thing In the next place I have observed that the Schooles gave Reason place in the middle of the essence of the minde and that from thence they did denominate the Soul to be rational as it were by an essential property As though reason should be given to it for a Lamp or Candle in the innermost essence thereof When as otherwise in very deed in the minde or the most immediate Image of God there is no room for reason Because the Soul being seperated from the body doth not use the discourse of reason Yea when the Soul being as yet the in mate of the body doth intellectually understand any thing it plainly refuseth all use of reason Because that when it makes use of reason it plainly resembles the savore of a corporeal Soyl. Seeing the rational power is in the lower part of the Soul as being bound with bodily Fetters Finally presently after the uncloathing of Reason it offered it self as alike frivolous a covering from the thinking of reason To wit that whatsoever is akin to truth this reason judgeth rationable and agreeable to Reason When as notwithstanding Reason and Truth are unlike or disagreeing in their Roots For Truth is a real true Being but reason is a mental problematical or intricate Being onely appearing for hence the being of reason a non-being hath arisen from its Mother Though For the rational faculty and reason derived from thence doth oft-times embrace false things for true and true things for falses Whence at length I seriously considered that reason did not agree with the conformity of a thing proposed by discourse and the knowledge of a conclusion found by us Because reason properly is not the judgement of the outward man or of his imagination whereby it rubs together truth appearing unto it self according to the shapes or figures of Sciences which are supposed to be inbred in man from whence it wandering the Imagination doth then first frame a knowledge agreeable to it self But Reason that Steward reputed in the minde of so great worth is nothing else but a disposition of the aforesaid conformity found by discourse with the shapes or Idea's co-bred in the Imagination which conformity in the next place as it is in it self confused obscure moveable So of necessity it ought to be unstable from the nature of the Subject of its inherence For so also the most refined Reason may be in it self deceitful neither must it be of necessity that it should compel contain or conclude any certainty within it Mathematical Science excepted because this doth plainly consist in the measurings of co-measurable things For therefore more Heretiques are converted by the Examples of a Christian life than by the Discourses of Disputations Next the aptness of that Disposition unto the Species or Shapes co-bred in the Imagination is reckoned to be rationality or reasonableness But reasoning or Logisme from whence is a Syllogisme is an act whereby the conformity of the same disposition is made to approach unto the Species co-begotten in the Imagination or as my opinion carries it finally raised up or awakened there As soon as by putting of the shooes of reason I found most things to be in nature which the understanding judgeth necessary the which Reason refuseth as impossible I knew from thenceforth that reason did not dwell in the possession of a true understanding but without the same Because that in the understanding truth is immediately because truth being understood is nothing else but a suiting of the intellect to the things themselves Indeed the understanding knowes things as they are and therefore likewise the understanding is made true concerning the things themselves by the things themselves for as much as the Being of things from themselves is alwayes true and their Essence is truth it selfe And therefore the understanding which is carried about them or brought over them is alwayes directly true But seeing the imagination or the reason thereof is a certain crâ—aked manner of understanding proceeding by Reasons and Discourses but not by a transformation of adequation or suiting therefore that rational manner is an abusive and deceitful understanding But good right one and true have themselves alwayes after one and the same manner in the intellect because they stand alwayes in one point of suicableness in the intellect but evill crooked athwart false and manifold are made after many manners by reason in the imaginative part Therefore I have certainly known that reason is not to be had
every Vegetable could send forth its seed before the Creation of the Stars surely it became man to rejoyce in no lesse priviledge to wit to have his subsistence moving and his bearing from above from the inbred Seed but not from the Stars in the book of long life those things are at large cleared up which are here desired concerning the Archeus or Master Workman of life CHAP. VI. Logick is unprofitable 1. The Authours Protestation 2. The Omen or Presage of this Book 3. What meanes he used in the composing of Philosophy 4. The Authour writes as it were from a command 5. The distribution of Logick by its parts 6. The ridiculous penurie of differences for a definition 7. The misery of division 8. The method of dividing deserves not the name of Philosophy 9. The vain boasting of discourse 10. Logick brings forth onely an opinion 11. Why nineteen Syllogismes do not bring forth knowledge 12. The boasting Syllogistical Pomp is examined 13. Why every conclusion is annexed to a doubt 14. Why the conclusion of Syllogismes is not of necessity 15. In true Premises false conclusions and on the contrary 16. That the knowledge of demonstration is not to be generated in a Learner 17. Why a Syllogisme doth not bring forth knowledge 18. True Sciences cannot be demonstrated 19. The knowledge of Principles is not in reason 20. What may be found out by Logick 21. The Schooles of Logick oppose themselves to the holy Scriptures 22. By Logick is onely re-taken what was before known 23. A double and almost an unprofitable end of Logick 24. No knowledge but it is from above 25. To sell Logick for Philosophy contains a juggle or deceit I Shall be called a presumptuous brawler it displeaseth any of those that went before me to understand like the Boar that utterly destroyes the Vineyard But I know that it would go ill with me if my Soul should stand subjected to the judgements of men For I began from my Manhood to look a squint upon ambition or that vainest of things depending on the unstable will or judgement of men My Eye alwayes directly beheld the calling which my Mother being against it I had made mine But now I know that I am compelled to teach the truth therefore the doctrine of this Book although it self shall cease with the number of dayes yet that that shall remain even to the end of the World What if I shall shew the ignorance sluggishness impieties and cruelties of Physitians about things that are to be had in the greatest esteem and whose losse is irrepairable and lastly most dangerous to Souls and it shall be answered me with despight scoffing and taunting truly from this very time I rejoyce in my self and am contented with the living hope of that recompence For it was needful that in the composing of new Philosophy I should break down almost all things that have been delivered by those that went before and many things ought to be set in good order and restored which every one will not receive with a like acceptance Neither am I ignorant that it is alway the lot of those that deserve well to undergoe the sharp and for the most part ignorant censurer But if I teach things that are profitable it is a Command not to bury ones Talent received in the Earth I might say with Jerome in his Prologue of Isaiah Let them read first and afterwards despise least they seem to condemn things unknown not from judgement but from the presumption of hatred But I nothing esteem whether I shall be read and reproved or not It is enough that I have sufficiently yielded to the command For neither was there any animosity or heat of ambition in me of being made known who willingly do confess that I have no good thing that is to be imitated Yea the Book had been put to the Press without a name if it could have been done without offence I began from my youth to accustom my self to practise upon the Itch Physitians Chyrurgeons and Apothecaries speaking against me that the rest of the common people might despise me as an Alchymist and a Philosophe a few onely favouring me and from whose favour I have hitherto withdrawn my self what I could Surely I have spent much time and labour and have withdrawn much more profitable leasure from my self that I might satisfie the command of this study Let the praise be to the first truth to which alone belongs the recompence of well doers In whose glasse I have seen and held it confirmed that the judgements of men do for the most part directly differ from the judgments of God That the common applause is foolish full of Errours infamous and alwayes hurtful but that the Universal Judge knowes no Errour Therefore I will begin with things pertaining to discourse Logick consisteth of three parts of definition division and discussing by Argument First of all they teach that a definition consists in the Genus or general kinde and in the constitutive difference of the thing defined But seeing that scarce any other constitutive difference of the Species or particular kinde is known besides rational and irrational which is a specifical difference and neerest to individuals and that one of these two is hitherto Negative truly the first of these I shall sometime prove to be frivolous wherefore one foot being taken away from that which hath three feet the Logitian must needes fall that hath trusted in such a seat Especially because division also is so miserable a member of Logick that it may be deservedly doubted whether through a ridiculous barrenness it hath remained almost neglected by the Schooles themselves For the former is as well the knowledge of the whole and entire thing as of its parts And as concerning Essence it belongs to an universal one to be one in many and therefore it is more knowable For he that hath known one thing and that which is profitable he hath known more things and particular things but not on the contrary Because one thing and profitable is in the understanding but plurality or dividing is in the sense For by how much the more any thing is divided into parts by so much the more it approacheth to things infinite and therefore it is the lesse to be known sliding unto irregularity and the more subject to change and opposition But since Logick treateth of Universals and that it may be said 1. Of the latter that we erre less in Vniversals than in particulars Surely Logick leading us by division unto singulars it is so far from leading to the knowledge of those things according to Aristotle that it rather thrusteth us down into errours Truly if we more fully consider of the member of division it is able to perfect no part of Philosophy it is a certain naked method of dividing so rude and raw that scarce one supposition maxim property mood and progress thereof can be taught or dictated to young men Therefore Logick being
the disposing of instruments and the effect or thing produced 6. That heat is not an agent in seminal generation 7. Why Aristotle hath not known the truth of Nature 8. His Books of natural Philosophy contain onely tristes 9. How young men are to be instructed in the place or room of Schoole-Philosophy 10. Into what great Apolloes young men might climbe 11. The Prerogatives of the fire 12. What a young man so instructed might judge 13. Privations do not succeed in the flowing of Seeds to generation 14. There is no form of a dead Carcase 15. That generation and corruption do not receive each other 16. The Vulcan of life vanisheth without the corrupting of it self 17. Death is not the corruption of life 18. The distinction of privation and corruption 19. Of forms there is no corruption 20. The ignorance of Galen 21. His ridiculous Volumes concerning the decrees of Hipocrates and Plato 22. His books of preserving of health are foolish THE Schooles have so sworn constancy and their end to their Aristotle that even to this day they by putting one name for another do call him the Philosopher whom notwithstanding I certainly finde to be altogether ignorant of Nature and it grieveth me not to write down some causes which have enforced me hereunto and that for no other end than that hereafter as well Professors as young beginners may not through an aptness to believe and a custome of assenting be made to wander out of the way nor may suffer themselves hence-forward to be led by a blinde man into the ditch For otherwise I tell no mans tale nor am I more displeased with Aristotle than with a non ens or a non-being Therefore first of all Aristotle defineth Nature It is the Principle or beginning of motion as also of rest in Bodies in whom it is in by it self and not by accident Wherein I finde more errours and ignorances of the definer than words First therefore the word it is in sheweth that he speaketh of a Body really existing but not of his impossible matter 2. He denotes that such Bodies are not of the number or supposed things of Nature For truly it belongeth not to Bodies to be in Bodies by it self and not by accident 3. He takes away any accidents from the Catalogue of Nature as if they were without besides and above Nature because accidents are in by accident 4. He sets down that Bodies which have motion or rest by accident are likewise without Nature 5. That the Being of things is in Nature in Nature it self before the day or motion or rest of the same Because it must needs be that something first be before that it move be moved or doth rest And so the Principle of Being goes before the beginning of moving or resting notwithstanding Nature cannot be before its existence For if the beginning of motion or rest should be latter or an effect as to their Being Nature should be an effect as to its being a natural thing 6. What if God after Creation had enjoyned neither motion nor rest rest indeed according to Aristotle presupposeth the bound of motion there had now been a Creature and not Nature For God in the beginning created the Heaven and the Earth Now Nature was not understood by Aristotle to wit there was sometimes a Creature and it actually existed before or on this side Nature here defined 7. Bodies in which the beginning of motion is external and by accident suppose thou when 〈◊〉 heat of the Sun moves the Seed to increase or a Woman with Childe by accident transforms the imperfect Infant by her own Imagination should not be under Nature as neither that accidental beginning 8. To rest is not not to be moved but to cease from motion and so not to be moved is more general than rest Therefore Nature absolutely taken should be onely after the existence of Nature 9. If the beginning of motion in a moveable thing be Nature and the efficient cause be properly called the beginning of motion as he saith heat not elementary to be therefore it must needs be that the efficient cause is inward which is against Aristotle or that Nature in as much as it is the beginning of motion is not in Bodies most neerly or inwardly by it self 10. Every outward efficient cause is the beginning of motion in a thing by accident But every efficient cause according to Aristotle is external therefore no efficient cause external is natural which is contrary to his second Book of Physicks 11. Whatsoever things are moved by the Mathematicks and also a Mill moved by the Winde or a stream should not be moved by Nature But I believe that Nature is the Command of God whereby a thing is that which it is and doth that which it is commanded to do or act This is a Christian definition taken out of the holy Scriptures 12. But Aristotle contrary to his own Precepts of a definition takes the difference which he thinketh to be constitutive for the general kinde of the thing defined in Nature to wit the formall beginning of motion and rest But for the constitutive difference he takes the matter or Body wherein the said beginning of motion is But Christians are held to believe Nature to be every Creature to wit a Body and accidents no lesse than the beginning of motion it self 13. Death also although it be the beginning by it self of rest in a dead Carcase yet Christians do believe it not to be created by the Lord and so neither to be Nature and although it may light naturally on it yet that happens not by reason of the death but of its natural Causes But Aristotle in another place a like stumblingly touching on Nature saith Every power of the Soul seemeth to be a partaker of some other certain Body for neither dares he positively and simply to affirm it than those which are called Elements For even as Souls do differ so also the Nature of that Body doth differ the Seed contains the cause of fruitfulness to wit heat which is not fiery but a spirit or breath in the froathy body of the Seed and the Nature which is in that Spirit answereth in proportion to the Element of the Stars This Precept praised by the Schooles containeth almost as many Errours as Syllables And at length this Writer of natural instruction being exceeding doubtful knowes not what he may call or ought to call Nature For first he saith it to be a Corporeal power of the Soul and therefore he banisheth the understanding out of the powers of the Soul 2. He saith the power of the Soul which he afterwards calleth heat is a partaker of another Body than those that are called Elements As if it were a partaker onely of a Body above an Elementated one and heavenly 3. It is absolutely false and an ignorant thing that any power of the Soul is a partaker of the body although it be tied to the body For every
as it were the sheath of the Earth nigh the Poles is deeper than under the compass of the Sun for if Lucifer or the Day-star being willing to place his seat over the North may be understood to have been guilty of pride Truly if he were not higher in the same place that should not be imputed as a signe of arrogancy especially since in the places where the holy Scriptures were written the Pole-star hath alwayes seemed very neere to the Horizon neither doth the Heaven there promise any thing of height as to sight But in our Horizon I have seen the whole Body of the Sun to have given a shadow on the pin of the Diall a little after the ninth houre in the fourth moneth called June but in the morning I have seen the whole Body of the Sun above the Horizon about the fourth houre for it did not as vet cast a shadow by reason of the thickness of the Air and Vapours Therefore the shorâ—est night is onely of seven houres at the most but in the Winter Solstice the Sun ariseth â—5 minutes before the eighth but sets 27 minutes before the fourth Therefore the shorest day is at least 7 houres and 42 minutes But it dâ—rogates or takes away from the roundness of the Sphere to have more of light than darkness At length modern or late made Navigations have seen the Sun under the North for a moneths space before that the perfect roundness of the Heaven had suffered that thing CHAP. XI The Air. 1. The Dreams of the Schooles concerning the maystness of Air. 2. A foolish or unsavory objection 3. They preâ—uppose impossibilities 4. The Air is never made Water through a condensing of its parts 5. They beg the Principle 6. A ridicuâ—ous thing of the Schooles concerning the â—â—tive heat of the Air. 7. The old Wives fiction of an Antiperâ—stâ—siâ—â—â— compassing about of the contrary 8. The deep stupiditâ—â—â— of the Schooles are discovered 9. Arguments 10. Another alike stâ—pidity 11. That the Air is colder than Snow 12. An Exhortation of the Authour unto young beginners A Mathematicall demonstration that the Air and Water are primigeâ—iall or first-born Elements and ever unchangeable by cold or heat into each other THE Schooles with their Aristotle do hitherto endow the Air with eight degrees that is to be most moyst but to be hot unto four degrees or to a mean but they give the greatest coldness to the water with a slack or mean moystness And so they command the Air to be twice as moystas the water for that because the Air by its pressing together and conjoyning doth generate the water But I pray you what other thing is that than to have sold Dreams for truth For if the Air be co-thickned the moysture thereof shall be also more thick greater and more palpable in water than it was before in Air seeing that condensing cannot make a new essential form nor is it a principle of generations what other thing is that than impertinently to trifle At least the water should not be but Air co-thickned in the moysture to ten fold or rather to an hundred fold and more active and therefore and straightway it should moysten more and stronger than the Air by a hundred fold So far as it that therefore the water should be lesse moyst than the Air. But if a naked condensing doth dispose the Air to a new form seeing the same disposition of the inward efficient is the necessary cause of that thing generated it must needs be that the same doth remain in the thing produced and so if the Air co-thickned be water there shall now be but two Elements to wit Water and Earth Whiles the water shall be as moyst as while it was being at first Air to wit wherein the condensing alone came which is a co-uniting of parts but not a formall transchanging of a thing into a thing For truly the form every way re-bounding from the moysture of the Air being condensed into an hundred fold it shall be even moyster and shall more moysten by an hundred fold than the auntient Air. But surely the water doth not moysten by reason of thickness for otherwise the Earth should hitherto more moysten because moysture onely doth moysten and not thickness For else Quick-silver should more moysten the wooll or hand than water For whatsoever doth more moysten that it self is also more moyst and on the other hand whatsoever in an Elementary nature is moyster that likewise doth more moysten Nature laughs to require belief of things known by reason of sense from a Dream and even till now to teach the shameful devises of Airstotle for truth But the Schooles will say we must thus teach it for a Maxim That by reason whereof every thing is such that thing it self is more such as though that for the honour of a Maxim we must belie God! But the water is not moyst but for the Air therefore the Air ought to be moyster than the water But they shall sweat more than enough before they will prove the subsumption or second Proposition but the Air is neither moyst nor hot in it self and whatsoever of moysture there is in it that is a stranged contained in it never touching at the nature of Air although vapours may be contained in the porinesses or hollow places of the Air. For what doth it belong to the nature of Glasse if it shall inclose water within it For I shall teach by and by that it is impossible for Air and water to be changed into each other And so by absurdities the Schooles do wholly suppose impossible speculations For it also contains an absurd and impossible thing that Air condensed should be made water and be the perpetual matter of Fountains For there hath been Air pressed together by some in an Iron Pipe of one ell almost the breadth of fifteen fingers which afterwards in its driving our hath like a hand-gun discharged with Gunpowder sent a Bullet thorow a Board or Plank Which thing verily could not be done if the air by pressing together might by force be brought into water Especially because that experiment did no lesse succeed in the deepest cold of winter than in the heat of Summer What if therefore the Air being pressed together by force in a Pipe and cold season be not changed into water by what authority shall the Schooles confirm their fictions touching the co-thickning of the Air for the springing up or over-flowing and the continuance of Fountains For Cold hath not the Beginnings Causes and properties of generating in nature Yea no moysture at all is found in the aforesaid Pipe and moreover wet Leather in the end of a Hand-Pistoll drieth presently It is also a ridiculous thing to prove the Air to be moyst by the original of Fountains and likewise to prove the rise of Fountains from the supposed moysture of the Air. Both Arguments of the Schooles is from the scarcity of truth and a childish begging
of the Principle And that they may adorn the four Elements with qualities they attribute to every one one the highest quality but another a slack one and the Schooles command nature to obey their fictions Therefore they say that the Air is slackly bot because they will have it neer to the seigned Element of fire that is or because it borroweth that slack quality of its Neighbour and it changeth its proper and native disposure at the pleasure of its Neighbour and that impertinently while the speech is of native properties Or because it hath that quality of its own disposition and although slack therefore notwithstanding it shall also have such a Neighbour which thing is alike impertinent and naught And that they may prove the moderate heat of the Air they carry on the like foolish invention of an Antiporistasis or a compassing about of the contrary To wit that the Air in its uppermost part is hot by reason of a nearness of the fire and so they seign not an essential heat but a begged and improper one by accident and that nigh the Earth it is likewise hot from the reflexion of the Sun-beams Which heat is for a little space a stranger by accident and therefore a seigned property of the Air. But they will have the middle Region of the Air to be wonderful cold by reason of an Antiperistasis To wit because both parts of the hot air doth compass it about Whose like they say doth happen to deep wells they being cold in Summer and luke-warm all the Winter But I wonder at the deep or profound benummednesses of the Schooles and the drowsie distemper of the auntients 1. Because from this their whole Structure it appeareth that the air is generally cold but not meanly hot 2. For truly the fire is not an Element in nature and much lesse is it under the hollow of the Moon neither therefore can it make hot the uppermost part of the Air except by a Dream 3. For if the Air be hot by it self and of its Elementary property then is it alwayes and every where hot even in deep Wells 4. But if it be hot through any other thing proper of familiar unto it which makes it hot then besides that it should have something besides it self mixt with it from whence the Elementary simplicity of its own Body should cease it should also alwayes and every where actually be hot or lastly should be hot by reason of something applied to it acting by accident Which thing is impertinent as often as the thing to be proved is taken as concerning essential things Therefore if the Air be not by it self hot it must needes be cold by it self Since those two do subsequently exclude each other in nature 5. If the fire be never cold or moyst and the water be never dry so the Air can never be lesser than intensively or most moyst and slackly hot if the Schooles speak truth 6. They would have that to be the middle Region of the Air which is scarce distant half a mile from us being unmindeful of their own Doctrine To wit that the Diameter of the Air exceedes the Diameter of the Water ten fold but that this is greater than the Diameter of the Earth two fold which fiction being granted the Semi-diameter of the Air should be deeper than 570000 miles Therefore half a mile should be as nothing in respect of the middle Air. Oh ye Schooles I pray you awake For if the Air should of its own accord and of its own nature be hot by what cause at length should it be cold in its middle part For is it because its Neighbour on both sides is hot But then the Air would not propose to it self wrathfulness but rather joy from the agreeableness of its neere nature For why doth the Air put off its natural property because it did on both sides touch the luke-warm Air agreeable to it self For how shall luke-warm powred on luke-warm wax cold because it doth finde luke-warmness on both sides Or if cold be placed between two Colds shall it therefore wax hot in its middle I cannot sufficiently wonder at the unpolished rudeness of the Schooles who deliver the Doctrine of Antiperistasis which desireth so great credulity not judgement For although that fiction should please us while the Air is hot about the Earth but certainly it could by no meanes in the Winter seasons For truly neither then indeed is that middle Region of the Air adorned with a native heat 9. It is a wonder I say that such absurd falsehood and Doctrine hath not yet breathed out of the Alps. And so hence it is manifest that the Peripateticks do even from a study of obstinacy teach known falsehoods least they should not swear in the words of Aristotle or that no judgement at all is left them that they may ingeniously perform their office and that they may think they have done enough if they follow the herds of those that went before them Therefore Antiperistasis is a dream of his who when he knew not the least thing in nature yet would seem to have known all things and to be worshipped for a Standard-defender by the Schooles his followers But because Aristotle fleeth to the heat of Wells in Winter for the demonstration of an Antiperistasis that shall straightway fall to the ground through the instrument whereby we measure the just temperature of the encompassing Air Wherein we see by handicraft-demonstration that the Air in deep Wells and Cellers is stable in the same point of heat whether it shall please us to measure it in Winter or lastly in the greatest heats of Summer 10. But it being granted that there were not an equall temperature in Wells but yet surely it would be a foolish thing for the Air otherwise naturally moderately hot sometimes to be cold sometimes again to be hot as it were through despight by reason of the applied alteration of the encompassing air 11. The holy Scriptures declare the Snow to be colder than the water because Snow is water in which the utmost power of cold is imprinted and the Air to exceed the Snow in coldness hence it is read He that spreads abroad the Snow and the Wooll that the Wheat may be kept safe under the Snow from the cruelty of the cold Air as it were under a woolly Covering For we see by handicraft operation that a member almost frozen together waxeth hot again under the Snow and is preserved from putrifaction or blasting because else the Air would straightway proceed wholly to congeal it or if it be suddenly brought to the fire it dieth by reason of the hasty action of another extream Therefore this is to have gone thorow meanes if it be to go from the cold air thorow Snow water and then into a slack luke-warmness Therefore Snow is lesse cold than air 12. But why to the moystness of the water do they implore its thickness for moystening which is a ridiculous
should go to ruine no otherwise than as doth very often happen in the burrowes of Mines Where those that dig Mettalls are stifled not through want of air abounding nor also alwayes through a choaking poyson but especially for that the air in the Burrowes being filled by the Gas of the Minerall is not renewed And so from hence it also happens that the Lights and Lamps are presently of their own accord extinguished together with the diggers Wherefore they do beat the Burrowes very much and do draw out the air that is filled up with the exhalation with divers Engines and powre on them and inspire into them new air But the air doth refuse too much exhalation no otherwise than as the water doth of the air and any other thing violently coupled with it in the same Mine Let there be a brassen Bottle in whose bottom let the water be A the air B the neck C the hole of the Bottle D by which with a Sypho or Pipe the air may be strongly snuffed up But then let the neck be rowled about that it may violently withhold the air under it I say therefore that while the neck is again swiftly rowled about that it gives utterance to the air For it shall not onely snuffe up the air B that is pressed together but also together with it A shall wholly fly upwards with a great force The air therefore doth sustain an unvoluntary co-pressing of its emptiness therefore it also brings up the water A with it which surely sheweth that a vacuum is more pleasing than the pressing together of the air because it is that which approacheth to the unvoluntary penetration of a body Now therefore of a vacuum an impossible thing with Aristotle is made a thing ordinarily required of nature Notwithstanding those porosities of the air however they may be actually void of all matter nevertheless they have in them a Being a Creature that is some reall thing not a fiction nor a naked place onely but that which is plainly a middle thing between a matter and an incorporeall Spirit and neither of the two I say of the number of those things which in the beginning of the Chapter concerning forms I have denied to be a substance or accident It is the Magnall or sheath of the air the which seeing it hath not in created things its like therefore it refuseth to be made manifest by that which is like unto it The Magnall indeed is not Light but a certain form assisting the air and as it were its companion and as it were conjoyning to it by a certain Wedlock An assistant I say not conjoyned to its essence and therefore an associate in its pores To wit by this the Blas of the Stars is immediately and without hinderance extended on every side and by a momentany motion but not by a thousand generations of a thousand kindes finished as it were at one onely moment as oft as the light or heavenly influences do strike inferiour bodies These very things are the fables of the Schooles to wit least they should be compelled to grant one accident to passe over from subject into subject they had rather that a thousand generations of a thousand particular kindes of light should be made in an instant while the Sun doth at so far a distance shake his beams at us For that which the Schooles do in this respect determine to be as an unpossible thing I will teach to be the ordinary course of nature in the entrance of Magnum oportet Now therefore the natures of Gas and Blas are sufficiently manifest and which way Blas may descend unto us The Doctrines of the Schooles concerning the windes are to be added First of all the Schooles of Aristotle do teach that the winde is a dry exhalation but not an air lifted up from the Earth by the vertue of heat the which when it is hindered by a Cloud from climbing upwards it as furious runneth down side-wayes and effecteth the strength or force of so great an heap or attempt As if it had lost its antient lightness through the first repulse of the Clouds and that therefore being mad it runs down sidewayes as if there were a continuall co-weaving of the Clouds nor should there in any wise be granted any entrance and any passage to the climbing exhalation being once repulsed by so small a Cloud as though a Bottle filled with air and pressed down under the water but ascending should finde a hand against it and therefore should run down sidewayes thorow the water and as if it had lost its former endeavour upwards for the future so as having forgotten to climbe upwards although it should not finde a continuall Cloud it should wish thenceforward rather to be carried sidewayes For neither have they considered that the side motion of the windes ought to be broken or weakened and also of necessity to be more feeble than its motion upwards and so that the winde is more able to beat down high Towers than to remove or scatter the vaporous Cloud about it Surely in all things I wonder at the subscribed sluggishness of the Schooles through a custom of assenting For Aristotle writes that the Salt of the Sea which notwithstanding he thought to be co-eternall with the World hath its originall from an exhalation he understood not an exhalation in the least because it is that which is volatile or swift of flight and the Salt of the Sea a fixed body for neither can Sea water otherwise sweet fix the volatility or swiftness of an exhalation any more than Sal Armoniac it self also all Metcors and especially windes yea the Earthquake and Comets whereof that of the year 1618 was a thousand times bigger than the Earth likewise small Stones Rocks great Stones he hath dedicated to exhalations alone A suitable Store-house whence so great exhalations should proceed hath been wanting to his Dreams And nevertheless the Schooles subscribe to those trifles nor do they awake out of their drowsie sleep but while Aristotle doth expresly spurn against the faith But Galen thinketh the winder or blast to be vapours lifted up out of the water and Lakes by the force of heat but now and then that it is an air resolved out of a mixt body But both of them he salth to be cold being likened to decrepite age to inbred heat failing and to cold effects surely he stumbling in all and every thing hath hugely spread his childish Dreams for truth For in the time of Galen the art of distilling was not yet made known who never saw Rose-water as neither Argentvive or Quick-silver For he had badly read Diascorides together with Pliny he writing that Quick-silver by reason of its great weight cannot be detained in Leather not in wooden Boxes but is to be kept onely in Cases of Mettall As if one onely ounce thereof should weigh more than an ounce of Lead Wherefore Galen must needs have been deeply and heartily ignorant of the
there was need of a greater moment and necessity And so that neither is the Pulse any more to discuss or puffe away the smoakie Vapours of the venal than of the arterial Bloud not of this more than of that but it meerly especially serveth besides the framing enlightning and continuation of the vital Spirit to prepare the arterial bloud in to an exspiration without a dead Head which thing indeed is altogether requisite to nature Not indeed to chase away smoakie vapours bred by heat although no smoakie vapour doth properly exhale out of moyst Bodies but rather to hinder least by the ordinary endeavour of heat vapours which they undistinctly call smoaks should be bred Or by speaking more properly least vapours departing out of the venal Bloud the other part of the venal Bloud being thickned should cause a totall destruction To which end behold that the finger being pained hot and wounded presently an unwonted Pulse doth bewray it self in that place because the Air is hindred from entrance unto the bloud there chased out of the veins and detained in the lips of the wound And there is a fear least the bloud should grow together and harden into corrupt matter But corrupt matter or Pus being made that fear is diminished because it stops in the deed For before the wound a hidden Pulse straightway a violent one ariseth in the same place even before heat or a presupposed smoakiness were present In like manner also as soon as any night doth invade the inward membranes the Artery doth presently after a wonderfull manner wax hard throughout the whole man and brings forth a hard extended shaken Pulse yea and a Pulse like a Saw But by no meanes as the Schooles think that the Arterie is dried that it may foreshew in the heart and open to a Physitian the quality and nature of the part affected which is ridiculous for nature doth every where intentionally employ it self in the ripenings promoting or removing of Causes but never at all in uttering or setting forth the pathological or sumptomaticall Signes the diagnostical or discernable signes or prognostical or foreshewing signes For these are signes by accident and to be noted and observed by the Physitian besides the intent of nature For if in the progress of nature a thing conringent or happening be drawn into our knowledge that is unto it by accident and wholly forreign which the Stars excepted doth work nothing with an incent of foreshewing But whatsoever it doth that is by a Command which is the natural endowed property thereof The Artery therefore doth not produce a hard Pulse for that it self is made more withered and dry because there should never be any hope after the dryness of the membrane of a softer Pulse as neither of a re-moystning of the part once dried up Old Age it self being dry or withered and without juyce is a witness Neither lastly doth the Pipe or Trumpet of the Artery wax hard for a sign but for the cause end and meanes of another intent to wit if the lesson of the Schooles be true that the Arteries do beat to the end that they may draw Air which refresheth or cooleth the heart Surely if they were alwayes mindful of that their own Doctrine as they ought the Arteries should at least by that hardness of extention more fitly breath-in Air Seeing otherwise a soft Artery doth by attracting fall down it creeping and being watery slides on it self and so that its mouth which in the hardness gapeth in the looseness is closed Therefore a hardned Pulse doth betoken a contracted Artery but not one that is dryed up For if the Pulse should be uttered to this end that the defect and quality of the parts should be bewrayed Surely in an Apoplexie there should be a most soft Pulse because the Brain being wholly a marrowie part shall be concluded to be offended which at the same time is alwayes hard and strong So also the breaking of a Bone should make the hardest Pulse of all And corrupt matter being now made the Pulse should be more great and frequent than while it is making Because the fore-going labour hath brought forth a want of Spirit and the present corrupt matter or putrefaction doth want a speedy discussion Likewise in an enflamed tumour or a Phelgmone the contraction of the Pulse should be more fit or due and far more manifest than the dilating thereof which things seeing in the truth of the deed they are not so the Schools must needs have erred in the ends of the Pulses And moreover the Coat of the Artery at the coming of sweat however it was before harder it again waxeth soft to wit seeing there was a greater necessity of expelling smoakiness than of attracting Air. I say the Artery ought to be both spreading and more hard with a frequent pressing together but not to fall down with a great Pulse more slowly after the manner of waters At length in affects of the Lungs the neighbouring cords being on every side filled with so many veins arteries and gristles the Pulse is loose and watery and in the vomiting of corrupt matter with some kinde of intermission The Lungs I say being opportunely importunate in its own expulsions of smoakiness should want a most hard extended and strong Pulse Whether perhaps is the double Coat of the Artery now besmeared with a future sweat Doth it hitherto wax moist with a strange moisture or else is it void of moisture whether it doth retake its hardness after the hour of sweat and shall almost recompence at pleasure it s own driness by a successive or coursary softness For how full of weakness are the medicinal speculations of the Schools For truly in the aforesaid affects of the Lungs a most loose Artery and watery Pulse do plainly shew unto us that breathing is given for the service of the breast For nature is conscious that there would be no need of a provoked Pulse as neither of an extended Artery when as breathing hath undertaken its office first for the breast and consequently or secondarily for the rest of the body by that very thing is shewn us that the use of breathing was chiefly appointed for another end and over another part than for and over that which the Pulse is As oft therefore as there is need of very much aire for the blood dispersed thorow the Veins to volatize that which threatneth to be hardned so oft doth the Artery strain extend and contract it self but is not dryed But that air is attracted not for the nourishment of the Spirits or the expulsing of smoaky vapours But altogether that as that which is in it self the seperater of the waters from the waters it may adde a spur to the Ferment of the last Digestion that after the performance of its offices it may expell the whole nutritious liquor without any residing remainder of it Therefore the in-breathed air is serviceable to this Ferment not for cooling or refreshment
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
principiating material cause from a formal effect So I have sufficiently and over-proved that neither of them is true For it hath hitherto been unknown that all Bodies are materially of water onely Indeed Paracelsus had seen Mettals and Wood to stonifie and to be immediately reduced into a Salt yet he knew not that the hardness of things as also their solidity compactedness and weight is not from the nature of his thorowly taught principles because they are those things which are demonstrated to be non-beings in the nature of principiating as neither from a material virtue elementarily but onely from the appointment of the Seeds Therefore I collect two things one is that Paracelsus is unconstant to himself touching the Coagulum or curd of Bodies and concerning Tartars But the other is that the Maxim of Aristotle falls to the ground That for which every thing is such that thing it self is more such For although hardness do proceed from the Seed and its appointments the Seeds ought not therefore to be harder than the things constituted For the Archeus which disposeth the bones to their hardness is not therefore harder than the bones yea neither are the means directed to the end more hard solid or compacted than the things constituted For Aristotle being readily inclined unto Maxims brought over his experiences from artificial things into nature therefore hath he every where slid in nature because he being wholly ignorant of nature doth miserably quarrel CHAP. XXXIII Tartar is not in drink 1. Some suppositions proved before 2. That Tartarers are not in things constituted 3. Three Monarchies of things whence a threefold stone 4. It far differs from the Tartar of Wine 5. The Stone in man is made from errour but not from the intention of Nature 6. An Argument from the like is not of value 7. Some Arguments taking away Tartar out of drink 8. An opposite Argument 9. The rashness or heedlesness of the Schools 10. Two Histories 11. The boastings of Paracelsus 12. The swellings in the neck or Kings-Evill are not from Tartar 13. Wine is innocent of humane Tartar 14. Whether stony or Rockie waters do contain Tartar 15. Whence there are Strumaes or swellings in mans neck and not in that of Bruits 16. A Remedy against those swellings 17. A Remedy against Scirrus's and swelling pimples in the face 18. A preoccupation or prevention 19. A distinction by a Maxim VVHatsoever Arguments do take away Tartar out of Meats are like premises in this place But seeing waters do immediately wax stony the proposition is to be confirmed by a stronger Engine In the first place I have taught that every Stone is immediately the Son of water but not of Tartar And then that the concretion or growing together of every Body is from the Seed but not from the Law of Tartar Thirdly that the concretion appointed by the Seed is from the integrity of nature and so from the gift of Creation but not from Tartar which according to Paracelsus is nothing but the excrement of a thing But a natural product is of its Mother matter but not of a step-mother and moreover of a seminal or efficient beginning in which all the figures Idea's and knowledges of things to be done are At length the Types or figures of Tartars are not in things by Creation framed for our destruction as neither a Medicine of destruction in the Earth what therefore doth it make to the introducing of the nature of Tartat into Diseases that a stone is the fruit of water if the condition of Tartar be not in a stone Or that Tartar is the fruit of Wine if there be no such thing in other things For what doth it prejudice nature if the phantasie deluding a Stone external or the Stone internal with a name shall call it Tartar And he weakly enough and without proof affirmeth that Stones and every solid Body do mutually agree with Tartar of Wine in every property For truly that his own assertion is free without truth and probability For the Stone in us is generated by another seed mean and progress than Tartar out of Wine or a Stone out of water are To wit there are three Monarchies of Bodies in the Universe the Animal Vegetable and Mineral therefore there is a threefold Stone and that distinct in the whole Monarchy For a Mineral Stone differs from the Case of the Kernel of Medlers Peachies c. and both these again from the Stone of Crabs Bezoar Snall-shels Fish-stones the Stone of Man c. Again those three Stones do also far differ from the Tartar of Wine which is not to be reckoned among Stones seeing it is the concreted Liquor of a Salt For a Mineral is either a Rockie Stone which may be turned into Lime or a small Stone which is not calcined as Gems Marbles Flints But both are now concluded in one onely name of Petra or a Rock But a Vegetable Stone seeing it is burnable as the Jeat or Agath otherwise also Mineral Sulphurous Stones it is rather a knotty Wood than a Rockie Stone But an Animal Stone is rather a stony bone because it is partly burnt than a Rockie Stone Also for distinction of the stone of man from other stones that is by Paracelsus called Duelech Because rockie stones as well the mineral as vegetable ones are fruits natural necessary and of the first intention in creating But Duelech is onely a Disease and like to a monster But in other enliâ—ened Creatures the stone hath obtained a profitable appointment Whence it is made manifest that although waters do beget a Rockie stone yet that they do not therefore follow the essence seed and manner of generation out of the Tartar of Wine For Duelech after sin doth from a diseasie excrement but not from the intention of nature nor from a Rockie or tartarous matter but by accident to wit through the errour of the faculty breed a diseasie seed through the necessity of a connexed agent wherefore I do not admit of Tartar rather in drink than in meat but if it be potentially in Wine that comes to passe by the necessity of a connexed agent and by accident neither can it have place of exercising forces or actuating in us to wit that by a power a potential Tartar may be actuated in us and therefore I do not admit of a tartarous generation in drink appointed by God for our destruction for what if bones are found in the flesh and the seeds of a Mineral Rock are stablished in the waters shall therefore the seed and immediate matter of bones be in Fountains or the seed of a Mineral Rock and its immediate matter be in the flesh or venal bloud If not in the venal bloud then neither therefore in drink and meat For death is not the handy-work of God And God saw that whatsoever things he had made they were good as well in his own intention of goodness as in the essence of the Creature Therefore there is
selfishnesse is exhausted But seeing it doth not at all consist in our own power to be wholly freed and so that it rather puts us in mind of the grace of ravishment or violent prevalency than of the true and naked and pure operations of the mind which I intend to take a View of in this Chapter for a compleating of the Treatise of the Soul Therefore according to my poverty of judgment a man doth not in acting climbe neerer unto a super-eminent uncloathing of his mind alone and an abstracted baring of the light of understanding than by the prayer of silence in the Spirit wherein the delights of God are to be adored Because he then doth issuingly illustrate or make light cleer or famous that mind as the uncloathed image of himself being thus reflexed in the glass of his own Divinity This indeed is that which the most glorious Goodnesse wisheth for But that fruits or exercises may bewray the essence or thinglinesse of the mind I have thought that that is not more powerfully nor elswhere to be had than from spiritual exercises whereby the mind it self rids it self from the coâ—knit conceipts of created things and from the service of the acquainted Senses For it is manifest what the mind it self may be while it hath withdrawn it self from conceipts which are wont or might stain it or at leastwise hinder it from comming unto the nakednesse and purity of it self wherein it may be able to worship the aforesaid Unity or onenesse The Lord Jesus therefore is the Way the Truth and the Life the way I say unto himself the Truth and unto the life of the Father of Lights Therefore the way is directed unto the obtainment of abstracted truth whose wished desire it is that the hidden truth which he hath decyphered in the mind his own image may be certainly known by us and worshipped in the Spirit Where Himself is the Kingdome of God is present with all his free gifts and therefore the manner and mean of worshipping in spirit cannot be more nearly known or perfectly learned than by the way and truth it self and so by the prayer which he hath dictated unto us wherein are first three amorous or loving wishes or desires of love and as many Petitions For those wishes are without all selfishnesse and are naked respects toward God himself and therefore the most pure of all those which can be wished for and thought by love And the first of them is that which the Truth speaketh Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and the righteousvess thereof and other things shall be added unto you But it is not the righteousnesse of God that righteousness may be done by us for no one living shall be justified in his sight but that his Name may be sanctified which is not only due unto him so a just thing but that loving wish justifies us For it presupposeth first of all Christian faith itself and then also his infinite goodness whereby he vouchsafeth to be our Father And indeed in the word Our selfishness is put for the goodness of God the obliging of all of us which otherwise is nowhere seen in the three wishes And thirdly it sheweth forth his vast majesty to be co-measured by his dwelling place of the Heavens which is the work of his own hands And so such like things as those being premised an amorous wish or desire is kindled in us which doth not desire that his Name be only sanctified by his only begotten Son and our Mediatour where Deep calls unto Deep neither also onely that the heavenly Wights and whole Church militant may adore his unutterable Name neither also therefore is it the sense that his Name may he sanctified on earth like as it is inheaven but that it may be sanctified or hallowed in us and by us in all this notwithstanding selfishnesse and nothingnesse being renounced and that there may be a naked and most pure reflexion of the honour and delights of God in that which is to be with us and to be worshipped in the spirit of love And therefore also the other succeeding wish doth not ask the Kingdom of God for it self but the Kingdom of God which is in us that it may come neerer to us Not indeed nakedly and simply for our sakes but because it is of his goodnesse to be with the sons of men in delights Wherefore also it is wished that his own Will may be done in us upon us and by us with a full resignation of our own will Therefore the three wishes do proceed from the soul without a modal restriction or reflexion on us because they do exceed all personality of the creature that God may be worshipped for himself And therefore they do excell all force of prayer petition praising giving of thanks yea and of glorification it self For to give thanks doth denote a benefit and implyeth a receiver but glorification praising or sanctification it self as it brings down my selfishnesse before the sight of God although in the mean time it be due and obligatory it far goes back from the excellency of a most pure and amorous wish or desire wherein the sanctifying of the Name of God in us is desired in which deep calleth unto deep For who am I who may presume in respect of an infinite to sanctifie that Name who indeed am nothing but a worm and a most miserable sinner And therefore the amorous or loving desire of sanctification doth as much excell let thy name be hallowed or sanctified by me as a wretched sinner differs from the Son of the God-bearing Virgin For praises and prayers as well in the Mosaical Law as at this day were made by Hymns Psalmes and Prayers But man before the truth be perfectly learned hath never attained the vigour height and depth of a loving desire of sanctifying the incomprehensible Divinity in us wherein there is more excellency than all creatures together are able to comprehend For that sanctification is wished for not because God is most excellent most great bountiful c. For those things include a selfishnesse of the praiser not to be suffered together with the divine Name Therefore the desire and wish of an amorous soul fervently desiring the sanctifying of the Name of God nakedly and simply is not made indeed by a creature below God but by a melting of the mind desiring in the love of God for the least thing which it contains in it is to offer it self to God with a resignation of its whole and likewise to will act and suffer any thing with a total amorous offering up of the heart soul and strength into the obedience of the Divine Will In which loving or lovely offering all thoughts besides the naked desire of love are unsufferably excluded because it transcends all reflexion For because it is naked it despiseth every garment which reason might administer unto it For that so naked and excellent love ariseth in the seat of
the mind and is felt there where every first conception is made without a likenesse and imagination But as long as it can be expressed by words it is not yet a naked abstracted cogitation of the mind which indeed by B. Dionysius is described to be above all that which can be conceived by reason sense and words Truly it is felt but without discourse and imagination Because by a naked conceiving of amorous truth truth it self is then stricken with enjoys and approacheth yea and presently pierceth by an unexpressible touch of the mind Otherwise as oft as Idea's are formed or conceptions expressible by words they retain a motherly frailty of the sensitive soul a bricklenesse of unconstancy an uncertainty and disturbances subject to passions In the power therefore of understanding and indeed in the native vigour of the mind and the desire of a loving soul a certain God-like Being is bred in us as it were in the Young of a longing woman great with child or the mind it self is purified and so it rectifies the mind and the Image of God it self For that is not by sight and a sensual appetite as in a woman with child neither is it conceived in bodily dens as neither is it marked in a strange Young but it requireth every faculty of the mind soul heart and strength and therefore the Ideal Being being brought forth by an amorous wishing or desire remaineth in in the mind it self which it so disposeth that it may transchange it into a God-like Image by grace flowing to it from God But who am I who do write these things Truly I fear least I may be a Bell calling the Faithful together unto the Temple which it self remains in the top of the Tower abroad But onely I hope if I shall profit in the aforesaid wishes that I shall find my self whereby I shall by humbling my self neglect my self the more Moreover there have lately arisen directers of the conscience transferring on themselves all liberty of the mind to be dispensed especially on the devoted Sex this Sex they called within unto themselves saying that nor only Christ the anointed but also that Jesus the Saviour was with them But these do presently erre in their first entrance for they call their devoted women together unto contemplative exercises to be performed by companies or troops which the truth it self commendeth to be done after another manner the Chamber-door being shut after them And then they require honour reverence and riches to be due unto themselves under obedience and a manifold vow And so the hurtful or envious man scatters his own seeds for tares that he may suppresse those also which were good Seeds And therefore the Prophet Hildegard hath foretold that at length secret luxury shall be co-mingled with them and they shall fall even as Simon Magus by the prayer of the Apostles or of the Bishops and Faithful But besides when any one hath at least once been brought into the vigour of that wish or desire himself being pricked by his own spurs will hasten to return thither and being now as it were made expert in the wayes the passage will be easier for him afterwards In the mean time because every one doth not reach thitherto God hath made divers mansions to be occupied in his own Palace So also he hath ordained divers means to this end through Charity which I willingly omit because they are not the proper objects of our Medicinal Faculty Therefore it is sufficient for me to have proposed the largenesse of the mind in acting and its wandring power of forming Idea's or shapy likenesses as well for the consideration of diseases and of a sound life as for the exercises of virtues CHAP. XLI The Scab and Ulcers of the Schools 1. Why the Author treats concerning the Scab and Leprousie in this place 2. He repeats more clearly the beginnings of his repentance 3. An errour in the causes indication or betokening sign and remedy 4. A question proposed to Physitians and the Schools 5. The credulities in the Author 6. Late Consideration 7. Out of my History fourteen Conclusions 8. That the speculations of the Schools are scabbed 9. A Scab remained in me before the distemperature of the Liver 10. Pustules or Wheals in Scabbednesse are signs and fruits of the Scab but not the Scab 11. Grasse roots in an Apozem are taken notice of 12. The occasional causes of Vlcers 13. The Dreams of the Schools 14. Galen is noted to be ulcerous 15. The unconsiderance of the Schools and Galen 16. Some absurdities 17. Thin Sanies and corrupt Pus are not excrements although filths 18. The corrupter in an Vlcer is the Vlcer 19. Venal bloud is not vitiated in the hollownesse of an Vlcer 20. The vain labour of the Schools 21. The root of Vlcers 22. The hollow of an Vlcer is not the Vlcer it self 23. Considerations of Pus or corrupt snotty matter 24. The differences of Pus and Sanies 25. Galenical ignorances 26. Some absurdities of the received opinion of Galen 27. The occasional cause in the corrupter 28. How ridiculous a Catarrh is for old Vlcers and how foolishly Cauteries are applied thither 29. The ignorance of ferments what it brings forth 30. How there are so many diversities of Vlcers in one onely venal blood 31. Corrosives if they can heal Vlcers the rather notwithstanding their corrosion being appeased 32. The trifles of Paracelsus concerning the Microcosmical birth of wounds 33. Paracelsus is urged with an actual and true Identity of the Microcosm or little world 34. An Idiotism of the same man concerning the nourishing of wounds from without 35. A healing Secret of Vlcers 36. The curing of wounds HItherto I have shewn that the causes of Diseases delivered by Galen and his followers are erroneous and false it should be meet even now to passe over unto the true doctrine of Diseases although even hitherto unknown unlesse some things did detein me and elswhere divert me which of right seem to be premised For after that in a Book set forth I treated concerning the Plague the Queen of Diseases and also that I had spoken in Print concerning the affect of the Stone as it were a Monster bred as well in us as in Urinals or Chamber-pots without us and I had by the way there occasionally treated concerning the Leprosie Apoplexy Palsie Sleepy evil Cramp and of Diseases a-kin to them but nothing at all touching defects of the skin I thought it worth my pains before I do profesly finish this my labour of the essence of Diseases as well in the general as in the particular kind to premise some particular things which I have thought will open the doors unto the entrance of the knowledge of Diseases And first of all I will touch at the diseases of the Skin as those that are the more obvious or easie to be seen Wherefore in the Book of Fevers I have rehearsed indeed the principles of my repentance whereby I
world being from the cradles of Physitians driven into a Catochus and being delighted with a Paganish stupidity hath laughed as it were by a tickling For in the first five ages there were fewer Diseases at Rome and fewer dead Carcasses Diseases also were milder than after it had triumphed for the conquest of Greece The which all the Europeans with whom a Physitian is rare as yet or there is none at all will willingly confirm For the Schools do seriously admire at the vast heap of filth or snivel expelled by Coloquintida and yet that the spittings of Lung-sick persons are nothing diminished and so seeing they did rejoyce that they had found the fore-going cause of a Rheume yet being astonished in the effect of laxative Medicines they would not acknowledge the falseness of phlegmy maxims For Coloquintida Scammony Elaterium c. do dry up the Body more in one day than the drink of China in three moneths What therefore is to be hoped for in China when as loosening Medicines are in vain unto you and the use of these horrid Wherefore the Schooles sticking in the Doctrines of Predecessors have at length determined to search more profoundly into nothing but to cure according to the antient and thread-bare speculations of Art and on both sides the matter hath alwayes failed them in their Practice and they saw it to answer nothing to their own Rules yet under the drowsiness of impossibility they have spread a vail over their so cruel ignorance and they had rather that the miserable sick should remain in suspence with calamities and evacuations than that they would think of any thing beyond the other for the miseries or griefs of their Neighbours But surely so many thousand rashnesses and absurdities had not remained in the Schools in men I say so acute honest witty or quick-sighted and exercised of whom I willingly confess my self to be the least if they had been once but a little willing to depart from the Maxims of Pagans They are beset I say by the enemy of primitive Truth who either through arrogancy or carelessness or cruelty or covetousness or sloathfulness or blockishness or lastly through a bashfulness of repentance keeps them bound to himself Good Jesus when at length wilt thou take away this Devil out of the Schools when at length shall there be a heap and ripeness of those evils that by the Egâ—â— of thy Truth thou mayest take away so great blindness and destruction of morâ—â—is Thou answerest there is not a Remedy for him that opposeth the known of acknowledged Truth Therefore Just God all things that thou approv'st of are most just Thou stedfast Rule of Truth and spring of Godliness But since thy sacred Will to do we have no lust A mock-prey we are made to vulgar doltishness For there are Anatomists who have dissected a live dog and while they came to the wind-pipe they cast in broath besmeared with a strange colour by way of the mouth that they might see whether any of it entered unto the Lungs And some small quantity thereof was found to have tinged the side of the rough Artery Therefore they cryed out that there is an unsensible and ordinary falling down of excrements out of the brain into the Lungs and they established Ecligmaes to be the utmost Remedy of the Consumption seeing they are immediately brought unto the wind-pipe and thereby unto any of its slender trunks That experiment was indeed cruel to the dog but far more cruel and unhappy unto mortal men Because the Schools at the perswasion thereof have delivered from hand to hand and have subscribed unto so pernicious trifles For first of all what could Syrupes or Ecligmaes commit in the little branches of the rough Artery besides the hurt or dammage of obstructions for what end therefore should they naturally and ordinarily hasten be sent or admitted thither Seeing they cannot be there cocted nor changed into a good nourishment nor heal corrupt snotty matter or mucky snivels In the next place if this should ordinarily come to pass the ordinary spittles of healthy persons would cast a smell of putrified broaths or in-licked Syrupes And although the first spittles do sometimes presently after resemble the Ecligmaes yet those do not come from the Lungs but from the neighbouring parts of the jaws Neither therefore do spittles being repeated any longer express the Ecligmaes even as after another manner repeated spittles do reach forth smoakinesses with them Then also he that should lick in some ounces in one evening should of necessity presently after yield not onely to an Asthma but also to choaking For a part of the Ecligmaes had filled a great hollowness of the rough Artery Surely it is a wonder that the Schools being seduced by so wan an experiment of a dog have not taken notice that through the unmindfulness of the dog in so great a howling of torment that coloured broath was snatcht within the wind-pipe Not that therefore that is wont to happen in healthy folk or is observed in rheumatick people as they call them Truly if a man that hath the stone in making water doth even against his will loosen his fundament for pain shall that therefore be proper to the muscle of the bladder that by opening it self it also ordinarily opens the fundament For the parts do now and then by reason of pain badly perform their offices and do mislead other neighbouring ones with them into error The History was rather to be believed wherein it is written that a certain person was choaked by reason of a small feather but another by reason of an hair That they may know that the Lungs are in no wise capable of receiving forreign things without notable hurt and anguish yea and more is that short-winded persons could not endure so much as fragrant perfumes for the reasons rehearsed concerning the Blas of man If therefore helpful perfumes are a burden to the Lungs what shall not Ecligmaes be although it be granted that they may come down unto the Lungs For therefore as often as any thing is swallowed the wind-pipe is seriously shut with the cover Epiglottis which resembles the form of an Ivie-leaf that not even any the least thing do slide down unto the Lungs And I have known some choaked who at least wise on one side had not the Epiglottis strictly enough shut by reason of a Convulsion of the one part or a resolving of the other And therein a new error of the Schools is discovered To wit in that they do affirm lickings or Ecligmaes which are swallowed by degrees to be admitted into the Lungs but not those which are abundantly and hastily swallowed Hath therefore the diffected dog licked in and not supt up the broath of herbs injected for to what purpose have they cast it in to be drunk if they knew that a way would lay open unto the Lungs through an in-licking alone But the supposition standing that the Lungs doth despise all society of
all forreign things except that of naked Air not joyned to smoaks it also necessarily follows whether any thing be swallowed by licking in or by drinking that the same care of the Epiglottis the keeper is alwayes acted and the same shutting of the wind-pipe observed For truly in the same place no less than the loss of life is concerned Therefore Ecligmaes and Syrupes although they make the parts smooth for the affording of spittings by reaching yet they in the first place hurt the stomack and do not in the least absolutely profit in affects of the Lungs But they say that the spittle by a voluntary sliding also without feeling doth flow into the wind-pipe and that Ecligmaes or Lohochs would in this respect be helpers But neither of these subsist with truth Because however the neck be disposed of the warinesse of nature is alwayes the same that not any thing do at unawares fall down or flow down into the wind-pipe A Player was lately seen his hands being unseen by raising up his feet and body to have drunk a great cup of wine having his head nigh the earth I appeal to Anatomy and submit my hand to the Ferule For there are some who sleeping a great deal of spittle flows out of their mouth who if they sleep laying with their face upward they do of their own accord presently rowle themselves on their side or are awakened nature being affrighted with the fear of eminent danger But if any thing of spittle shall then through carelesness fall down into the wind-pipe the cough henceforth ceaseth not presently to expel it But at length what shall sugar being licked in with fryed stinking Fox-lungs or being seasoned with the juice of Colts-foot profit the Lungs if the Lungs it self abhorring all forreign things admits nothing of the same but through carelesness and straightway with great trouble expels it For shall that be sufficient for the restoring of the hurt faculties Is the root of Catarrhes thus cut off Certainly which way soever I shall turn my self I do not see the Schools to withstand Diseases but by the feigned dreams of Heathens in an Image in their effects and from a latter thing And that by reason of the ignorance of Diseases and Causes For thus the name of Physitian hath deservedly departed into the merriments of Comedians because they do not think or consider what to do what to say or what is to be done by them that they may satisfie that precept Be ye merciful as your Father which is in Heaven is merciful And even as St. Bernard speaks concerning the Clergy who eat up the sins of the People as they live only by Alms-deeds for Physitians do not think whether they do satisfie the command and expectation of charity who eat up the sicknesses and infirmities of the People But I do not see that these plagues of Aegypt had been brought into the utter darkness of the Schools but that they being ill seasoned oft-times found affects whereto they might apparently and without narrow search attribute the Tragedy of Catarrhes Because some one having a pain in his Head hath forthwith felt his neck to pain him a difficult motion a restlesse night presently the pain hath manifested it self in the loynes being from thence propagated unto the thighs and then it hath seemed to descend to the calves of the legs and feet Hence arose the decree that pain seeing it is an accident of inherency doth not wander from one subject into another unless some material thing shall depart in dregs out of the brain by the muscles of the turning joynts through the readinesse of a sliding Rheume and doth square to the received Etymology of a Catarrhe This perswasion of a Catarrhe its mask being discovered by Anatomy ought to be known For truly if the painful matter doth successively drop down out of the brain through the neck surely that shall be brought down thither either through the bosomes of the brain or through the brain and its coats or between both coats or between the hard coat or Dura mater and scull or at length between the scull and skin For the consequence is of force from a sufficient enumeration of parts But not in the first place through the bottles or vessels of the brain because that could not subsist without an Apoplexy and an undoubted Palsey of the whole body if so be that the supposed doctrine of the Schools concerning these Diseases standeth For if it be successively expelled from the former bosomes unto the fourth bosome the matter of the Rheume cannot but shut up that forreign and sharp excrement into the thorny marrow and henceforth breed the Apoplexy and Palsey Secondly that matter of a Catarrhe cannot by sweating thorow the brain be heaped up and slide down between the brain and thin coat so that both coats may keep a continual separation from the very marrow of the thorny sinew because the sliding Rheume should bring forth a renting and solution of that which held together in the marrowy root of the sinews throughout its length Which doth not want very many absurdities In like manner if the Catarrhe should rain down between both the coats first of all both the little membranes should be double which might defend the thorny marrow as with a coat of Mail which thing the eye hath not yet viewed hitherto And that being supposed it could not at least wise disturbe the motion of the muscles or know pain And so there is an error in the Position Because a sinew is indeed a deriving or conveying instrument of the command of the will but not therefore an executive instrument of a voluntary motion Especially because a small Nerve doth now and then scarce exceed the grosseness of a doubled thread and it being externally implanted into the muscle the Rheumy humour could not be cast into it but by a bringing of a Palsey on the part but not cruel pains of the moved muscle In the next place if a Rheume should flow down between the Dura mater and the scull Anatomy teacheth that the egress of the sinews side-wayes thorow the little holes of the turning joynts is so suitable and narrow that a passage for a Catarrhe is in no respect granted from the thorny marrow unto the muscles Lastly if room should be granted for that device at least wise what should be the cause of its succession that the humour having once slidden between the little sinew of the two turning joynts should re-hasten unto other successive Nerves doth perhaps the Rheume being affected with a weariness of one muscle henceforward wish for other Clients of delights For how shall the Catarrhy humour flow down through the small little vein without an astonying or stupifying of the member Shall it enter into the muscle even unto its tail by a strange implanting but shall it again from thence depart unto other muscles which henceforward are of a more steep or inclinable scituation or if a new
it rush it self headlong into danger which should draw a hurtful poyson within the veins Therefore a solutive poyson while as yet it is detained and that in the Stomach it putryfies and defiles whatsoever was a-loof of deposed in the Mesenteries for better uses and draws the refined Blood out of the hollow vein instead of a putryfied treasure and by degrees defiles it with a poysonous contagion and dissolves it with the stinking ferment of a dead carcass For from hence is there a loss of strength by laxative Medicines and a disturbance of the Monarchy of Life without hope of cure thereby But that fury of laxative things endureth not only so long as their presence But also so long as the lamentable poyson doth burden the Stomach and Bowels with its contagion So indeed an artificial Diarrhaea or Flux ariseth which now and then persisteth even until Death and laughs at the promised help and attempted succours of astringent things Unto the second and third I likewise say it hath been sufficiently demonstrated elsewhere that the Elements are neither tempered for Bodies falsly believed to be mixt nor for the temperature sake of the same Bodies and much less for a just one and as to an adequate or suitable weight Therefore the Schooles presuppose falshoods yea and contend by sophistry For although Arcanums do cure a broken bone as well as Comfrey or the Stone for broken bones yet it is on both sides required that the fracture of the bone be reposed I likewise remember that a burstness being well bound up hath been cured beyond expectation because from the breaking of a bone some one had layen long on his Loynes Neither therefore doth it want an Arcanum Unto the fourth and also the fifth it sufficeth that the Arcanum or Secret doth wipe away the occasional Causes to wit nature being holpen supplying the rest Unto the sixth let the Schooles refrain their tongue For an Arcanum cures Diseases which they under blasphemy have maintained to be uncurable Which thing the Hospitals of those that were uncurable do testifie for me if they are compared with the Epitaph of Paracelsus But the seventh reproach breaks forth from ignorant Jaws to wit from the proper testimony of a guilty mind Unto the eight and ninth it is certain that the Exclaimers do grieve while they are beaten for from a sense of grief the Mouth speaketh reproaches But if of thousands of Alchymists scarce one doth arive unto his wished end that is not the vice of the art because the endowment doth not depend on the will of him that willeth and runneth But because it is not yet the fulness of time wherein these secrets shall be more common Be it sufficient for me that the signs do no where appear but among the obtainers of Arcanums that is Adeptists and that none of the Humorists hath ever come thither neither also shall come Therefore there is no place for reproaches against the truth of the science of healing but where there is no order and an everlasting horrour doth inhabit For Owles and monstrous Bats do shun the light of truth because they are fed with a great lie to wit that they have known how to cure Fevers without evacuation When as indeed they know not by both succours as well of a cut vein as of a loosened Belly how to cure Fevers certainly and safely for let them cure a Fever as they affirm Shall they not likewise for that very cause bring rest to the sick And afterwards safely take away that which they say doth remain which was not lawful so fitly to be done as long as they believe life to conflict or skirmish with Death and the Disease with health But they shun the light of truth under the Cloak of a lie thus ignorance dictating and gain thus commanding miserable men do defend themselves For Medicine is not a naked word a vain boasting or vain talk for it leaves a work behind it Wherefore I despise reproaches the boastings and miserable vanities of ambition Go to return with me to the purpose If ye speak truth Oh ye Schooles that ye can cure any kinde of Fevers without evacuation but will not for fear of a worse relapse come down to the contest ye Humorists Let us take out of the Hospitals out of the Camps or from elsewhere 200 or 500 poor People that have Fevers Pleurisies c. Let us divide them in halfes let us cast lots that one halfe of them may fall to my share and the other to yours I will cure them without blood-letting and sensible evacuation but do you do as ye know for neither do I tye you up to the boasting or of Phlebotomy or the abstinence from a solutive Medicine we shall see how many Funerals both of us shall have But let the reward of the contention or wager be 300 Florens deposited on both sides Here your business is decided Oh ye Magistrates unto whom the health of the People is dear It shall be contested for a publique good for the knowledge of truth for your Life and Soul for the health of your Sons Widows Orphans and the health of your whole People And finally for a method of curing disputed in an actual contradictory superadd ye a reward instead of a titular Honour from your Office compel ye those that are unwilling to enter into the combate or those that are Dumb in the place of exercise to yeild let them then shew that which they now boast of by brawling For thus Charters from Princes are to be shewn Let words and brawling cease let us act friendly and by mutual experiences that it may be known hence forward whether of our two methods are true For truly in contradictories not indeed both propositions but one of them only is true But now the Humourists while any commits himself to me for cure do possess him with fear to wit least they give up themselves unto an Authour of new opinions but rather that they go in the paths of Heathens that they may not through a novelty of opinion be accounted to have put their Life in doubt and that they rather trusting in an old abuse do enter into beaten paths Ah I wish those of another Life and of the intelligible World might return that they might testifie unto whom their death is owing Presently they who being now subtile Scoffers do seem to ask counsel for their own life should acknowledge that they do incurr on themselves the destruction and loss of their Life while they had rather commit their Life to plurality or the great number only by reason of the constancie of an old errour and abuse than that they are willing to be bowed unto the Admonitions of the truth As if War were still to be waged only with Darts or Arrows and Slings because that is the most antient kinde of Weapons But nevertheless neither are our Medicines so new that there are only the thousandth of experiences in them the which
have been made consonant with truth by an hundred thousand experiences Therefore as many Physitians as do object such things as these from debility of mind and ignorance of Art are cruel Impostors Enemies of Christians being envious for a little advantage For truly they increase fears in the sick and vex the sick that they may extol themselves and their own Medicines And they say for we are willingly ignorant of those things which are evil Because the new remedies of Chymists for we make use of them sometimes when there shall be need are cruel hurtful burning and dangerous But if thou shalt admit of a Chymist thou shalt be alone with thy Chymist all we will stay at home because they are Idiots and boasters who do not agree with us Be ye mindful in the mean time that eyes do see more than an eye Therefore in a toren ship thou seekest ship-wrack if thou shalt depart from the safe shore They bring the Apostatical rout of Chymistry and likewise the Jews and wicked Men for a confirmation As if in like manner all the dross and froath of Harlots and Knaves do not insinuate themselves under the name of Humorist-Physitians For if Brawlers had been of value with me I had not been constrained to Write For if Charity or the care of your Souls doth vex or grieve you let us go unto the challenged Combate For I promise if ye shall overcome that I willingly hereafter depart from my Evil into your Doctrine wholly In the next place while I prefer refined Medicines before yours and the true principles of healing before Paganish trifles This is not done from an intention of catching or alluring of gain Neither also is it meet that I should be judged by your covetous mind for I have begun to preach the truth of Medicine from a pure intention that Physitians may repent and may learn those things which they know not may enter on a safer way and may cease from badly handling the life of their Neighbour That they may cease I say to destroy Widows Orphans and their own Souls For I know that in the fulness of time for nothing is so hidden which shall not be revealed the Doctrine which I have now divulged by this volume shall be made manifest I wish at least that it may happen the more timely or seasonably for the safety of Souls and preservation of Families but as to that which concerns my self I do not now for many years go to see the sick neither do I invite any one to make use of my endeavour which thing is sufficiently known to our country men Because I am he who get not gain by others miseries But I dismiss no sick Body from me without comfort Let the boastings also of the Schooles cease which do implore authority from the antiquity of possession For truly a prescription or title doth not happen into nature For I grant Paganisme to be older than Christianity I also presuppose that the errours of the Schooles began presently together with Paganisme They are new and unheard of things which I teach because God taking pitty on our kind hath under this fulness of dayes opened a treasure of truth even when it pleased him for all the Nurseries of the Heathenish Schooles that hence forward they may learn to assent unto safer Doctrine for by reason of an old abuse those things are withered rotten and wormy which are demonstrated to be deprived of the juice of truth because it is universally and singularly true that every gift which descends not from the Father of Lights is false and obscure but it is not to be believed that an Adeptist hath enlightned the Medicinal Schooles of the Gentiles whose posterity doth as yet cure with so great blindness of Speculations and is deprived of the Favour Vigour and honour of Medicines Let those boastings also cease as many as do glister with a wording or discursive Doctrine because they are celebrated by the Powers of the World For those Physitians whom the Almighty hath created are not Pipers But in the commpassion of Charity do peculiarly cure the poor and are acknowledged by that token But the Father of the poor beholdeth them with bountiful eyes who hath attended unto the intreaties of his miserable ones for the remembrance of his Christ They with-draw themselves from the flatteries of the People and great men they live of their own right being injurious to none And by this one only sign they are distinguished from paultry Physitians as in well doing they do suffer vilifying from these and do willingly bear it Yea the People to whom they are bountiful do report ill and prate of them Because that is the Lot which the Giver of Lights doth always reserve for his For without hope of gain they procure to be merciful But if money be voluntarily given unto them they receive it indeed but they lay it not up but for the former uses But these are very rare and not easie to be seen in Princes Courts There was in times past witten in the Epitaph of an Emperor He perished through a Rout of Physitians So that Princes are the unhappiest of men unto whom none speaketh Truth but being environed with flatterers they hear nothing but flatteries and are nourished with deceits At leastwise it doth not belong to Princes to have known how to chuse the best Physitian unto whom they may commit their Life but they receive this Physitian being commended or approved by a former Physitian and thus they remain in Courts by a continued race or line And therefore a Prince for the most part is not to be numbred among those that are endowed with long Life For although he hath honoured his Father yet of length of dayes promised unto him he is spoiled by unfaithful Helpers So much in Answer CHAP. LXVI A Treatise of Diseases A Diagnostical or Discernable Introduction 1. A Re-sumption of the whole work 2. Why the Author useth so great austereness in repressing 3. He invokes God while he perceives himself deprived of humane aid 4. The poverty and false 〈…〉 of Logick were discovered 5. The nakednesse of hearkening to the natural Phylosophy of Aristotle 6. An unheard-of method of searching into a Disease 7. Why the Schooles have wanted the knowledge of Diseases 8. A Disease hath flown from departing out of the right way 9. An entrance into the knowledge of Diseases 10. A Scheme of Diseases out of Hippocrates 11. The Schools being fed with Lotus have forsaken their own Hippocrates 12. A pithy contemplation of Diseases IT hath seemed necessary to have begun from Elements Qualities Mixtures Complexions Contrarieties Humors and Catarrhes that I might demonstrate the Schooles never to have heeded the Nature of Diseases and therefore that they have been ignorant of the true Scopes of Medicinal Affaires or the Principles Theorems Manners of making Causes of suiting Allyances Agreements interchangable Courses and properties of Diseases likewise of the Inventions Choyces
Preparations Exaltations Appropriations of Remedies That is not to have known a Scientifical or Knowldegable Curing of the Sick For I have believed that I must proceed by the same Beginnings Because they referred all sicknesses a few perhaps being excepted into Elementary qualities and the inbred discords of Nature into Humours Catarrhes Flatus's Smoaks or Fumes So that the knowledge of the Schooles being withdrawn into a Fume and Vapours doth vanish into Smoak At length through the Errors of Tartar it descends unto Tartarers that they might shew that they being involved in darkness have stumbled in their wayes For it hath behoved me diligently to detect those things if Young beginners must hereafter repent But it hath not been sufficient to have shewn their Errors Unskilfulness Sluggishness and stubborn and constant Ignorance unless I shall restore true Doctrine in the room of Triffles For the abuses of Maxims had remained suspected by me for very many Years the which in the Book of Fevers I have deciphered to the Life before that I came unto a sound Knowledge of the Truth And I had a long while thorowly viewed the truth of the Theorie before that in seeking I had found some right Medicines which were sufficient for those that had made a Beginning Wherefore seeing I was about to speak of Diseases under so great a Paradox and weight of things and sound none among the Antients and Modern Juniors to be my assistant I seriously invoked God and I found him also favourable Therefore I determined before I wrote to call upon Logick that by its Definitions it might demonstrate unto me the Essences of Diseases indeed by their Divisions Species and interchangable courses or mutual respects and at length that by Augmentation it might suggest the Causes Properties Meanes and Remedies of knowing and curing them But at my acclamations made even into its mouth it was deaf stood amazed heard nothing remained dumb and helped not me miserable man in the least Because it was wholly impotent without sense Afterwards therefore I called the Auricular Precepts of the natural Philosophy of the Schools unto my aid To wit their three boasted of Principles four causes fortune chance time infinite vacuum motion yea and monster Whence at length I discovered that their whole natural Philosophy was truly monstrous having feigned false mocking Beginnings not principiating and much less vital in the sight of the King by whom all things live likewise Causes not causing Also adding or obtruding the phantastick Beings of Reason and opinions beset with a thousand absurdities wherein I as yet found not any footstep of Nature entire and much less the defects of the same or the interchangable courses of faculties or vital functions But least of all from such a structure of Principles was the knowledge of Causes Natural Vital of Diseases Remedies and Cures to be fetched Whither notwithstanding I supposed the knowledge of Nature had respect as unto its objected scope For whatsoever I sought for from the Schooles and attempted to handle by their Theorie that thing wholly Nature presently derided in the Practise and it was accounted for a blast of Wind She derided me I say to speak more dictinctly together with the Schooles as ridiculous And at length she together with my self complained of so unvanquished stupidity Then also Logick bewailed with me her impotent nakedness and the vain boasting of the Schooles Because she being that which even hitherto was saluted the Inventer and Searcher of Meanes Causes Tearms and Sciences grieved that she ought to confesse that she was dumb no lesse in Diseases than in the whole compact of Nature and also that she ought to desert her own professors in so great a necessity of miseries 〈…〉 she by one loud laughter had derided also the natural Philosophies of Aristotle and the blockish credulities of the World and of so many Ages if she her self had not been a non-being fiction swollen only with the blast of pride Wherefore seeing Nature doth no where exist or is seen but in Individuals there is need that I who am about to write of Diseases have exactly known the Causes of particular things even as also it is of necessity for a Physitian to have thorowly viewed those Causes individually under the guilt of infernal punishment Therefore it hath seemed to me that the quiddities or essences as well of things entire as of those that are hurt were to be searched into after the manner delivered concerning the searching out of Sciences But seeing the Knowledge thus drank may be unfolded I have confirmed unto the Young Beginner that an essential definition is to be explained by the Causes and properties of these which is nothing else besides a connexion of Causes but not the Genus or general kind and difference of the thing defined But this is an unheard of Method of explaining even as Logick the Inventress or finder out of Sciences hath feigned And also seeing all that faculty is readily serviceable unto a discursive Philosophy for they do vainly run back unto the Genus of the thing defined and the constitutive differences of the Species for the Diseases which have never and no where been known Therefore seeing it hath been hitherto unknown that things themselves are nothing without or besides a connexion of the matter and efficient Cause By consequence also the Schools have wanted a true Definition That is a right knowledge of Diseases If therefore the Essence or thingliness of Diseases and the condition of Diseasie properties do issue out of their own immediate essential Causes of necessity also the knowledge of the aforesaid Diseases and properties is to be drawn out of the same Causes Because the consideration of Causes is before the consideration of Diseases Therefore I have already shewn even unto a tiresomness That the Essences of Natural things are the matter and efficient Cause connexed in acting Therefore also the Essence of every Disease doth by a just definition consist of those two Causes and its knowledge is to be fetched out of the same First of all a Disease is a certain evil in respect of Life and although it arose from sin yet it is not an evil like sin from a Cause of deficiency whereunto a Species Manner and Order is wanting But a Disease is from an efficient seminal Cause positive actual and real with a Seed Manner Species and Order And although in the beholding of Life it be evil yet it hath from its simple Being the nature of Good For that which in its self is good doth produce something by accident at the position whereof the faculties inbred in the parts are occasionally hurt and do perish by an indivisible conjunction Defects therefore there are which from an external Cause do make an assault beyond or besides the faculties of Life concealed in the parts and they are from strange guests received within and endowed with a more powerful or able Archeus And from hence they are the more exceeding in
Stomatical and Aromatical things being Distilled Furthermore in as much as in fits of the Falling-sickness all Sense not likewise motion faileth Yet that doth not therefore argue that the sensitive Soul is not the Fountain of both For although all the intellectuall powers do fail and onely the Testimonies of a shaking and leaping motion do remain as long as that Eclipse endureth yet all those Powers are denoted or designed as issuing from the Soul into the Body as if they were proper to it But those Powers which it self hath planted in the Archeus implanted in the Organs are under an Ecclipse and are tumulted by the commotion of the Soul yet they subsist obscured because the Life is not taken away neither doth the Pulse therefore cease But in as much as an unvoluntary convulsive motion doth even still remain that is not to be attributed so much to the Soul as to the singular Life of the Muscles The which indeed I have elsewhere shewn as yet to persevere for some time after Death And that a Tetanus and strait Extension doth begin long after Death So that although the Life of the Muscles doth proceed from the sensitive Soul yet it obtains a certain peculiar Efficacy as also Station of place Therefore it is less wonderful or absurd for the Muscles to be therefore tumulted by their own Motion if on this side Death they have felt the common Life to be Eclipsed But in an Apoplexie and Swooning even the motion of the Muscles also doth plainly fail except the motion of those between the Ribs because then the sensitive Soul doth undergo a total darkness Therefore the Soul the directress of Life according to the divers Tragedies of its perturbations doth manifoldly dismiss its Guardians into the Organs placed under it But every Life seeing it is of the disposition of Lights descending from the Father of Lights it exceeds a humane Understanding And so by an unfit word the Father of Lights is called by the Schooles the Intelligible World who doth least of all fall under our Understanding For neither is the most Glorious Father of Lights and his whole Common-wealth wholy unknown unto us according to the Testimony of Truth to Nicodemus but also the Essence Thingliness Direction and Distribution of the vital Powers do exceed our Capacity For how astonishable is the privation of Understanding Memory yea or of Speech only especially Motion Sense Appetite yea and the integrity of Health remaining And how terrible is the fall of these at every onset of the Falling-sickness Swooning or drousie Evil And how much doth it exceed humane Industrie that so diverse Faculties do arise and inhabit in one Stomack Because so diverse Symptomes do bewray the same hurtings of the Faculties For all things do drive us unto the amazement of a Miracle or Wonder And therefore we being admonished by so many stormes on every side of our Ignorance and Fondness do confess that that one only sensitive Soul is the Fountain of Life also Life the Spring of many Powers and Distributress thereof as well in the healthy as in sick Persons Therefore also if we Physitians ought to lay the Ax unto the root of the tree we are intent for the obtaining of Universal Arcanum's or Secrets which may conserve preserve plant and build up the Life in the very Fountain of Life the Author of Death and Diseases no less than of Health For I now have regard to the frail Soul but not to the incorporeal and immortal Mind The which we believe to be Originally inspired alike and alike perfect in all And therefore Conditions Inclinations Domestick or Forreign Mild or Fierce Tractable or Teachable Humble or Proud are instilled into us by the Mortal Soul Wherein as in a Subject or Place locally disposing the Inclinations of varieties are unfolded which otherwise from the Mind or Image of God are naturally banished Therefore sleep was not in man naturally in respect of his mind but was afterwards sent into him by the Creator But before sleep was bred Sense Motion and Appetite were present Because the Mind as it was thenceforth Immortal it was also unweariable and had no need of Sleep or Rest Yet Sleep was sent into Adam before the Fall Not so much for that he stood in need of Sleep especially a few hours after his Creation as chiefly because by Sleep he was not yet made sore afraid of known Death threatned unto him for eating of the Apple Otherwise Sleep produceth from it self sluggish idleness and foolish vain Dreames and causeth the loss of almost half the Life Whence even at this day from the antient Sleep sent into Adam they have yet retained Dreams That the Old Men shall Dream Dreams the Young Men shall Prophesie And Night unto Night shall shew Knowledge For the sleepifying Power which was sent into the Mind before the Fall and the same also being after a sort free from the wedlock of the Mortal Soul would after some sort draw it into its Original Prerogative of Prophesying unless the darkness of the Soul sprung up and put in place did obscure the same But while I declaim the Stomack to be the Inne of the sensitive Soul and for that cause do dedicate the sink of Diseases to the Stomack I have indeed considered Occasional Causes near the same place to sit as well in the hollowness and bought thereof and being as it were strangers onely there to stick and likewise in the tent of the Bowel Duodenum which is the Prison deputed for the Jurisdiction of the Gaul and Pylorus and most troublesome to Anatomists for its composure of Vessels and Glandules as in the Archeal sheathes no less of that which is inbred as of that which is inflowing To wit that through the conspiring distemperature whereof the sensitive Soul is diversly disturbed and all the Vital Faculties the Chambermaids hereof to be co-shaken and so the same being weakened that an Army of Diseases doth arise as well those Radical or Chronical as those soon hastening as I long since have known being thorowly instructed by many Experiences So that I saw Hunger and unextinguishable Thirst to proceed not so properly from the sharpnesse of the matter provoking as from the very fury of the sensitive Soul For otherwise a Thorexis or Draught or Potion of generous Wine should not dissolve Hunger unlesse Hunger being as it were made drunk by appeasing should soundly sleep And therefore Thirst in Feavers doth not afflict but in its own Stations although the same matter yea and a more cruel heat doth presse more in their Vigour than at other times Now even as the Government of the Stomack hath been enlarged on So also it hath been shewn that the sensitive Soul doth there abide as in the first or chief Kitchin of the Meats and that the Life doth there Inhabit For truly the most potent Powers of transchanging and digesting do there exercise their Offices and therefore not onely Kitchinfilths are
most properly all or every Number because all Number flowes from that and therefore every Number is nothing but a connexion of Unites From whence that very Unity is a Figure of the Divinity because from thence all Numbers are made and again into the same are resolved Indeed the Schooles as often as they have conceived any thing by Science Mathematical that thing they have presently wrested into Nature under the generality of Rules For so of Four imagined Elements by confusedly suiting four Qualities Complexions and Humours these Brawlings have been translated even into the Stars and they have determined of all things co-agreeing with their own Fictions By which method indeed they have fitted a continual speculation in Science Mathematical unto lineal points and at length also unto Time B. Augustine confesseth indeed that Time is something but that he was ignorant of the thingliness of Time to wit because he was seasoned with false Positions from Paganisme Wherefore I blush again and again that I am willing to explain the Essence of Time But this man I fear not to be my hater who already beholds truth in the Heavens For first of all I have withdrawn all succession from Time who from great Authorities had already shaken off the Yoak of the Heathenish Schools For truly I meditated at first that the Heavens stood still yet that there was not any other Time while the Sun was at a stand than now Therefore I began to measure out that Duration without the succession of the Motion of the Heaven And by consequence I by degrees learned that all Time was sequestred from Succession and that this Succession did fit or accommodate it self onely unto Motion Then afterwards I began to repute it a mad thing that the Sun should at some time stand still and nevertheless even to this day to sink Time within the Motion of the Heavens For although that detainment of the Sun was Miraculous yet the Duration or term of continuance was not therefore Miraculous And then I beheld that Time was already from the Beginning the Day not as yet existing or before Light was born and a separation thereof from the darkness Therefore the Heaven Earth Abysse of Waters Darkness and the Day it self were before that the circular Path of the Heaven did determine of the Day In the Beginning I say of the Creatures but not in the Beginning of Time Because that Beginning of Things includeth some Dum or While that it may be of Sense Although God appointed from Eternity to create Things Yet while it pleaseth his infinite Goodness to issue into an Operation to without then in the Beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth But that Dum or While was before a Creature because God had no need of a Creature or a created Duration neither had the things that were to be created need of a created Duration as a concurring Principle of an unlike Dignity with the Creatour of an infinite Power For if the Creature did not depend originally totally to wit absolutely and intimately on God as on the Beginning and End of its Duration verily neither should God also be the immediate and total Principle as neither the immediate Life of things that is he should not be their Alpha and Omega Therefore I from thence understood if Nature had at sometime stood rooted in Duration flowing forth without a Mean from Eternity it self that it ought also at this day so to stand by reason of the same rules of necessity For presently after I knew that Duration which they name Time was a real Being And likewise that if Time hath been from the Beginning before a Creature was made verily it could not be reckoned among created things For neither is there mention made of Time being created I also thorowly weighed that as a moveable Body is so in place that the place doth not only outwardly encompass the moveable Body however Aristotle in the mean time so thought but place pierceth the very moveable Body on every Side so that every intimate part of a Body is no less in place than the superficies thereof Yet place is not therefore on the other hand comprehended by the moveable Body So indeed and also much more abstractedly Duration is indeed intimate to things Yet it is not affected shut up or apprehended by things Also place supposeth a certain and determined Position indeed capable of being changed by that which is moveable yet wholly unseparable altogether from all place But Duration it self is so unseparable from things that it doth in no wise ever wander or is changed from these Therefore seeing Duration is above and within the Being of things and unseparable from these Yea more intimate to things than things themselves are unto their own selves Hence therefore have I meditated of a Duration plainly divine to be in Time and so in that respect not to be distinguished from Eternity yet to be distributed unto things according to the Model of every Receiver And so I have sufficiently proved the aforesaid Proposition Wherefore Time hath neither parts neither doth it admit of a division of it self and by consequence it knows not succession neither also doth it approve of Dreams To wit the which may receive into it Poynts actually Infinite being coupled or dis-joyned Yea neither is Time a Duration great or small rather than plain round long deep short or broad Because in very deed it is not within the compass of Predicaments because there is one only Infinite existing in Act to wit God who is all things For if Goodness Life Truth and Essence after an abstracted manner are God himself in created things it likewise cannot be denyed but that in the same things Duration it self represents God I believe therefore that true Time is unmixed without the Spot of a Creature every where and alwayes unchangeable nor to be after any manner successive And that I might the more nearly conceive of this thing I withdrew all Bodies from Time and all coursariness of successive things or the succeeding successive changes of Motions And then first I clearly understood that Time in its own Essence bears or ows no respect unto the Unstabilities Varieties or Measure of Motions For truly Time is that which it is whether Motions and Mutations are made or not because I have not found Duration to be related unto Motion or on the other hand Motion unto Duration unless by accident and by reason of a mental measuring of one thing unto another the which is altogether impertinent For truly Time not having succession cannot be serviceable unto co-measuring But because we being concluded in a sublunary place and being rashly seasoned by the Heathenish Schooles we have been wont in the Duration of Time indefinitely to consider Priorities and Swiftnesses together with their Correlatives because through a frivolous Abuse the limitation of attribution of Motions and moveable Bodies hath been accustomed to be measured according to space Which Relations
is observedly between objects at a distance The Vine which is in its Flower disturbs Wines a far of Thou wilt excuse that the same Perturbation is made by the violence of the Heavens We prove that it is not For if the Heaven should cause the flowrings in the Vine and the Turbulency of Wines in Hogs-heads it would needs be that both those Effects should be wrought every Year at a set and as it were determinate moment which is false For sometimes the Vine sends forth her Flowers and the wine is troubled before the Solstice or sunstead and in the same Region another Year long after but the Sun and the fixed Stars some few minutes excepted return every year unto the same point therefore the Vine should flower and the Wines should be disturbed alwayes at the same time But if thou seekest an Evasion and shalt say That other Planets besides the Sun are the Cause of this thing which have not every Year a like scituation at the time of the Solstice but only that that Motion of the Heavens or superior Orbes is most common all Vines would for the most part the same Year flower every where at once which is false For as there is an Astral Nature subsisting in the ground or soil So also there is the same Particular Nature in the Vine which also it self of it self no otherwise than as the Earth hath a Power given it of budding by it self brings forth the Flower Fruit and Seed and composeth and moveth it self according to the Meeter of the most general Motion of the Heavens Hereunto they affirm that Wines are never disturbed in those Countries wherein no Vine grows therefore the Flower of the Vine and not the Motion of the Heavens troubles the Wines and that many miles off but indeed so much the more powerfully by how much the Wines are nearer to the Vine I gratefully applaud publick Studies and I bear good will to him who first discerned after what manner vulgar Antimony in time of its preparation continually directs it self unto an Influence I am willing to have the same measure I mete to be measured to me again Therefore I shall satisfactorily prove that there is a certain Influential Power familiar unto sublunary things which is not subject unto distances of place and so much the more forcibly in favour of Magnetism if I shall teach that the Load-stone himself doth direct himself of his own free accord unto the Pole but to be in no wise drawn by the Pole for one Load-stone declines unto three another unto six seven and eleven Degrees from the Pole but none that I know of doth in a direct line point upon the Pole therefore if the Load-stone should be drawn it should be pulled either by the Pole or by some neighbouring Star to the Pole but not by the Pole it self because whatsoever attracts 〈…〉 it self by a direct or right and not by an oblique or crooked line Wherefore 〈◊〉 the Load-stone were drawn by the Pole it would also point in a direct line upon the Pole therefore Load-stones at least accord to what I have seen hitherto are not attracted by the Pole or North Star nor also by any other neighbouring Star for that very Star is never at rest but is uncessantly carried in a circular Motion therefore if it should attract the Load-stone it should also render it disquieted by drawing it sometimes some Degrees towards the East and anon as many Degrees toward the West but should sometimes pull it toward the Zenith or Vertical Point either above or beneath us which is false Therefore the Load-stone is not drawn but is carried thitherwards of its own free accord But that otherwise the Load-stone is of it self elevated upwards towards the Zenith there is a certain Instrument invented by William Guilbert the glory of which Invention Lodowick Foâ—seca lately endeavoured to arrogate to himself in the presence of his Catholique Majesty this Instrument I say by a voluntary elevation of the Load-stone in a Brass-Ring hung up shewes not only the latitude but also the altitude or height of the Pole in all Places of the World Thou viewing for a way of escape wilt contend in behalf of the Pole that the Pole indeed attracts the Load-stone but that it puls the same Load-stones not in a direct line towards it self for such is the condition and will of the Attracter but unto a neighbouring place Which is to say The Pole or North Star drawes indeed the Load-stone unto it in a right line yet the Load-stone is not attracted in a right line to the Pole by reason of a certain unknown Impediment which thou callest a certain Disposition thereof existing in the Load-stone which resists the attraction of the Pole and is more powerful and superiour than it although the same influential allurement reach safe and sound unto the Load-stone at so many thousand miles distance Dost thou see how much truth thou hast granted by thy Evasion And how that against thy will thou notwithstanding affirmest that there inhabites in the Load-stone some certain motive Disposition thou callest it certain yet feigned to thee and to all others wholly uncertain which thou rejectest from being in the Load-stone besides and above the attraction of the Pole Which is as much as to say that there is in the Load-stone a directive virtue unto some distinct Place but that it is not drawn by the Pole Thou wilt retort in behalf of a neighbour to the Pole by saying that the Load-stone is drawn and doth not direct it self not that it is drawn by any one point of Heaven or Star but by a certain whole Circle nigh the Pole I answer this Shift is far fetched for that Circle shall have a latitude even of eight Degrees at least to wit from three Degrees to eleven Because I have seen Load-stones of so great a variation Therefore if there were a Power of attracting in the whole Circle the same Load-stone should continually varie and in the same hour declien sometimes to three and anon to eight or eleven Degrees from the Pole which is false Therefore there shall in a Circle of so great latitude be at least diverse lesser rounds every one whereof shall allure its own Load-stone which being granted thou wilt fall again into the same Gulfe to wit that there is a certain disposition in the Load-stone why it can rather be enticed by this than by the other Circle and by consequence thy fictions being stretched according to thy own desire there will nevertheless be a motive Virtue in the Load-stone himself We are not yet satisfied if the Pole should draw the Load-stone this should be done either by reason of the Elementary and Material temper of the Stone or by reason of the Form thereof But a Glass wherein the Magistery of a Load-stone hath been prepared though it be most exactly washed and however cleansed by often rubbings doth also for the future observe its Poles
no Subtilties but those which are sifted about Charity and which regard and preserve the Life of thine own Image For I grieved at the first at so great rashness of belief of Principles and at so great a sluggishness of Mortals about things of so great moment and the pitty of this thing increased with me dayly Hence at length I having obtained a little Light I knew with great grife that the Errours of the Schools ought by me plainly to appear But indeed in the entrance that thing seemed to me to be full of untamed arrogancy that I the least of all should brand all before me with the ignorance of Phylosophical truth but should attribute to my self only the obtainment of healing Therefore I oftentimes begged of the Lord that he would re-take that his own Talent from me and vouchsafe wholly to take it away and to bestow it on another more worthy than my self For I knew that he who had well lay hid had well lived at least-wise morally and in this ulcerous age Therefore I resisted and a good while deferred to propose this ignorance of the Principles of Medicine to its own World until that now being an old Man the last necessity constraining me and being placed in an Agony of Death I promised the Lord that I would sincerely divulge his Talent least I should at sometime be accounted in the strict Judgment of God to have come into the world in vain and to have departed as unprofitable from hence For by a Vision in a Dream I understood that I was more afraid of gainsayings than of Gods Indignation that Nature was crafty as long as she made a pretence for Pride in purely obeying God by reason of deceitful humane respects Also I saw not that my own Arrogancy which was placed rather in fear did make me less freely or generously to perform what was required against Judicious Men that would rise up against me for so many ages past than in purely obeying the most glorious Giver of Truth Yea that I did not commiserate my Neighbour and that I buried my Talent in the Earth in looking back on the uncertain Censures of the World concerning me I knew indeed the doores of Medicine to have been locked and the Bars and Bolts thereof to have been covered with rust for so many ages but I doubted to open them as if I should presume the Office of a Porter to be meerly my own and not to be given to any other Therefore I resolved with my self to do what Charity not arrogancy perswaded to be done as knowing that he is not injurious who beholds a publick good although it may make those blush who have rashly subscribed to the trifles of Heathens unto the dammage of mankind At length therefore I stood as a middle man between the shame and sore fear of the greatness of the thing and many times reposed my Pen And again I seriously begged of the Lord that he would vouchsafe to chose another more worthy than my self Wherefore the Lord being deservedly wroth suffered this Evil and unprofitable Servant to be sifted by Satan For an Order whose Zenith or vertical Point is the house of Powers and whose Nadir or Point under their Feet are other Orders began undeservedly to persecute me by unworthy Wiles I knew presently that the hand of the Lord had touched me And therefore in a full tempest of Persecutions I wrote a Volume whose Title is the Rise or Original of Medicine that is The unheard of Beginnings of natural Phylosophy wherein I have discovered the accustomed Errours of the Schools in healing I have I say afforded and demonstrated new Principles as also hitherto unheard of Speculations of Diseases that the Universities leaving the Vanities of the Heathen may for the future accustom themselves to the Truth For from thence I found a rest in my Soul such as I never found in the times of my Prosperity so that I being full of suspition grieved that so great Storms did not any thing disturb the rest of my Soul or sleep of my Body Wherein O God my Protectour I am not able sufficiently to praise the abundance of thy bounty which suffered not my Soul even in the least to fall out of a full enjoyment of peace under so great straits on every side I fearing this one only thing least as an unprofitable Servant I should be buried with my small Talent Whosoever therefore thou art who interpretest my Zeal to be proud boasting thou mayest do it for me so thou shalt not hurt thy self for I will rejoyce to bear back all confusion for the good of my Neighbour and of Posterity and I shall enjoy my wish whether in the mean time my boldness shall turn unto me for rashness or not For God the Sower will water what he would have to grow And moreover in the Book of Fevers I have declared the Beginnings of my repentance and in what manner I desisted from Galen and Avicen to wit by reason of the discerned falshood of the Pillars of Medicine from whence a singular boldness of confidence thenceforth increased in me being as yet a young man whereby for my Neighbours sake I willingly exposed my self to the infurious Censures of all and the number of dayes by degrees running on the Lord beheld the Candor of my Zeal and granted me now a Man to see that whatsoever is taught in the Schools of Medicine is full of Miseries and Ruine and that it should be a laughing stock to Posterity Good Jesus how greatly was I then amazed at the greatness of thy Clemency which reveals those things unto little ones which were denyed for so manyages to men otherwise most religious and ingenious Moreover although I was from thence more assured that the manifestation of my Talent of truth received lay heavy upon me yet Nature is ready to find out excuses and deceives it self and its own Sorrows by the Props of Reason its Chamber-Maid I presently therefore fie it sâ—ames me of my own unconstancy shook off the undertaken burden again from my shoulders and said who am I oh Lord for the more solid things are defective unto me which I should substitute in the room of those that are to be depressed For what things I before believed were commanded me I again suspected to be suggested by the subtilty of Satan because secret Remedies were wanting unto me to wit the Letters Patents or Signes of my message Wherefore in my youth I had a good while perswaded my self that the very Art of healing was nothing but a meer imposture devised by the idle Greeks being at first framed for the destruction of the Romanes their subduers and afterwards confirmed for the Calamities of Men whereunto humane Credulity by reason of a conceived hope had easily subscribed and so that that Profession of Medicine had brought forth its own authority because for the most part we too readiâ—â— believe those things which we too greedily desire Indeed I knew
forreign and hostile and so extraordinary affects do arise from co-like Causes For neither have I unfitly taught that that wheyish matter which is carried as being throughly mixed with the blood and is by sweat or otherwise unsensibly dispersed is not urine as neither that it hath the properties of the same nor that it is a whey the imitater of Milk and much lesse that it is Gaul or yellow Choler but a part of the Liquor Latex of which in its own Treatise CHAP. VII Duelech Dissolved 1. The inconsiderate rashnesse of the Schooles is accused 2. An account or reckoning up of Knaves over whom the Magistrate ought to be intentive 3. The Author excuseth himself 4. Every Disease in its own kind is curable 5. How much is to be hoped for from the Shops 6. Or what may there be found for the Disease of the Stone 7. A double Indication or betokening 8. A somewhat deaf intention of the Schooles 9. The vanity of this kind of intention 10. Why the Marsh-mallow Mallow juyce of Citron c. may profit 11. A frivolous objection against Vrine-provoking Remedies 12. The imposibilities of the Schooles 13. The Reasons of the Schooles for an impossible Remedy 14. The Reasons of the Alchymists 15. The testimony of Cardanus 16. The writ or Charter of the Prince of Saltzburge 17. The delusion of the Schooles from a ridiculous enquiring into Remedies 18. Ridiculous privy shifts 19. That the Stone is not confirmed 20. The stones of Animals and Vegetables after what sort they may be profitable unto us 21. The manner of preparing them 22. From whence Ludus took its Name and the preparation thereof 23. Ludus where it is to be found 24. A blockish beasting 25. An errour of Paracelsus 26. The rashnesse of the Schooles 27. Paracelsus prattles no lesse unsavourily concerning the matter of the Stone than the Humourists 28. A declaratory confession of things un-soulified and of the Balsame of Salt 29. The manner of administring a Remedy 30. The Bladder of the Bul-Calâ— being an Embryo 31. Observations about the stone of Crabs 32. An Errour of Paracelsus 33. A wondrous Antipathy 34. A new Catheter I Have spoken of the Womb of the Affect or Disease of the Stone But now I must seriously consider of its Remedies For indeed the common people laugh at the Schooles who are become a Reproach because there hath not been any thing hitherto diligently searched into concerning the true Causes or Curing thereof I have indeed elsewhere rehearsed that the power of the mind being as it were barren or feeble hath acted the original of Medicine that Medicine being also in its ripe Yeares even unto this very day brought into a Circle without any progress because they have been willing rather to abide in forreign Grecian Barbarous and Heathenish Inventions and have held it an Honour to have polished other mens Principles While as in the mean time new Diseases arise also those that were once spent or grown stale do rise again masked and therefore do they appear illegitimate nor any longer answering to the descriptions of the first For indeed Medicine stands without any progress while as our health stands in the greatest need of the increase of healing As a slow and ungenerous kind of Physitians hinders the same because they would be wise only by anothers commentary and deny Art to increase above what they have known And therefore also whatsoever they are ignorant of they by a certain despair drive away into the Catalogue of uncurable Diseases As if the invention of Ancestours had stopt up the way of our industry had shut up the treasures of wisdom and as if all the modern force of the mind were barren and the power of divine wisdome exhausted that there were nothing any longer which may demonstrate unto us a further truth Truly the cup of sloath hath even from the very beginning befooled the world with a Lethargy for therefore every one had rather to assent than diligently to search For so great is the sweetness of gain that every one doth with love admire his own societies or confusions and Miscellanies of Medicines they call them received Magistrals and those Medicines which being in times past the more secret ones have rendred Physitians that were Lovers of labour famous old women by reason of the drowsiness of Physitians have at this day spread abroad into the hands of Apothecraies From whence every Barber Bather Nun Tormenter or Bawd that was chased out of the Stewes of harlots boasts of medicine the number whereof I will here describe For those first come to hand who will heal being indeed not instructed for this purpose but being prompt by nature and daring to do any thing hand forth those things to the sick which they have heard to have profited others without the knowledge and difference of causes and so they drive them head-long into danger For from thence almost all the experiments of the Schools have issued The which also Galen after the example of his Master Quintius hath confirmed For the Schools making experiments by the deaths of men presently call their Graduates most expert Physicians Others being vulgar ones had rather heal only the vulgar and unto these they give their Counsels Some also from favour alone and being entreated Many also by reason of the ambition of honour and that they may seem as wise men have this kind of vice bred in them for such kind of Deceivers will seem to be rich and therefore they perform all services for death or a chanced health freely Of this sort are those first of all who at Rome thrust a Triacle on the Cardinals and Peers as composed of better Simples than God hath created in nature For so we have deceived the people in the City and have seemed to be holy Apothecaries There succeed these such as require rewards indeed but in no wise money lest they should be known to have put off the condition of Noble persons and likewise their promised poverty And therefore they are those who say they earn or merit nothing for themselves but only for a poor Community There are Apostates like to these who confess indeed that they are not Physitians but that they have their secrets from a Queen or an Emperor For these are wont to interpose as middle persons which extol the price of their medicine And then there follow these who wear garments and a purse bored full of holes like a sieve neither in the mean time are they slow to exercise of their own imposture As that they were sometimes very rich but now impoverished in a hogs-head of wine by the Art of Chymistry by Wars and by the constancy of Religion There are also those who at sometime were valiant in a troop of Souldiers but in War for the conflicting for moneys they bestowed all their wealth they shew their scars in a bravery perhaps being received as a due reward Some also have left wives and
children houses and Altars and the pleasant fields of their Countrey for the worship of Religion Many also are poor of their own accord because no body will give them any thing neither are those wanting who feign their Religions change their garment walk in wodden begging shooes they by a lurking hypocrisie counterseit an Hermite into whom God hath inspired the vertues of Simples There are some also who everywhere intermix Astronomy and Palmestry In the next place there are others who wander about the countrey who received their Art in the Mountain of Venus from hence they have known to cure bruit beasts no less than men from diseases Likewise they know also how to foretell things to come and to dig treasures out of the earth And there are some who being destitute of books write on paper the unharmless words of Solomon whereby diseases no otherwise than as Devils are chased away they carry crosses before and behind them lest the Devil should carry away him that writes those powerful words There are some who understand divers Dialects they feign among the Dutch that they can speak the Chaldean Arabick and Dalmatian or Sclavonian tongue and being laden with many Arts they at length brag of Science Mathematical or Histories Many of these have known how to make no less then the stone which makes gold they carry about with them Mines of Mettals that are propagable by a perpetual ferment There are also Saracens and there are baptized Jews for the most part wickeder than those that are not baptized who have learned out of the Cabal divers wayes to morrifie Mercury and likewise diversly to prepare poysons the which they deliver to be prevalent against all diseases and many other They boast that the Hebrew tongue doth contain the foundations of all Sciences and the great Secrets of Common-wealths and that they are great with child of the fore-knowledge of future things They oftentimes cite their Rabbins their book Nebolohu together with the little Key of Solomon from whence they are able to read as well things past as things to come Others also affirm that the medicinal Art is to be inherited only in their own progeny or succession of blood although they are all foolish or wicked persons But if they are not received by men at leastwise among women they boast with a Grace for they are covered with the same hide both Greeks and Jewes although the one doth interchangeably deride the other for they being prompt by nature perfectly learn to Lie of themselves There is also a fugitive sort of the family of Chymists the which while they boast of the more choice remedies set to sale nothing but poysons to Apothecaries for they usurp all liberty of lying among the ignorant lying increasing with them through daily use For they are Idiots being fugitive Apostates from Chymical furnaces But the Schools do with a greater security and by a most free authority of all deceive Mortals for when as I do by the unavoidable decree of truth demonstrate that they are altogether ignorant of the essences causes and remedies of Diseases and do confirm that thing by a great Volumn and Reasons drawn from the cause they in the mean time promote their own Schollars this man because he is a Latinist and hath his father a Chyrurgion or an Apothecary or another because he was made Master of Arts and hath heard some Lectures of Professours another lastly because he in part brags of Enclide or or hath learned to dispute from Aristotle But I pity mankind which is subject to so many inward Calamities and exposed to so many external assailants who when under the unlucky rules of the Schools they have slain any one of those in chief Place do assume the priviledge of calling upon the uncurableness of the disease and have everywhere their patrons and complices And so they alone do without punishment make an assault on the lives of Princes even as I have shewed in the book of Fevers But by so much themore miserably do mortals entrust themselves in their hands because they cover their ignorance among the common people by promotion and an oath For they swear that they will faithfully cure infirmities the which I have shewn that they are altogether ignorant of Yea their Prince Galen hath not shewn them so much as one Medicine which was not borrowed from Empericks however he may triumph in his pastime Theory of Complexions and Degrees as well according to their kinds as places For Quintius the Master of Galen and wholly an Emperick is everywhere called on for help by his Schollar Princes and Magistrates ought to divert this unpunished liberty of killing from their Subjects and they are held from Conscience so to do But I do not think that this hath been neglected through carelesness but that it hath hitherto been dis-regarded by reason of the ignorance of the remedy But I judge this to be the remedy thereof If they appoint every Physician to be so obliged as that he ought to go to see every sick person by whom he shall be required three times at least under the penalty of banishment and deprivement of his office For otherwise the number of Physitians hath sufficiently increased And then that there be no pay due to a Physitian if he shall not heal the sick By this double decree indeed Physitians would become the more watchful and the business would more rightly succeed with the sick and the Prince would preserve his Subjects But those Statutes are to be seriously kept for they are equivalent to the Law of Cornelius concerning privy murderers I now return from whence I have digressed There are also some who while they feign themselves to have read my Book of Fevers object that I boast only of Chymical Remedies and unwonted Arcanum's or Secrets that I might call every sick person unto my self by despising the most safe doctrine of the Antients Far be it Because I neither go to visit the sick not do I heal for hope of gain The which all good men of our whole Countrey are witnesses of Surely I call none to prostitute or set my Medicines to sale unto them I willingly live a retired life being sought unto only by the poor This one thing I openly and freely profess to wit that the conquests of difficult diseases do require other Physitians than Humourists and far different remedies from those which the Apothecary sels Because they do most desirously require the endowed powers of the most perfect bodies that their poysons from their balsames may be separated in us Yea where poysons are not manifest the confusions of the Archeus are overcome impurities are privily expelled the Dimensions of remedies are turned in and out that they may disclose their properties of whose endeavour the Archeus hath need And moreover the impressions of remedies may be turned inward whose Tyranny our nature cannot bear without destruction For in this offence and in this penury many ages have
the most part only of one side and a defect invades as it were with the one only stroak of a dart But the swistness of the unexpected chance produceth a terrour in the brain and marrows that is in the spirit the inhabitant of these and the Author of that act of feeling Therefore by reason of its Terrour the weaker side of the marrow is contracted but surely the Palsey is the Product of the Contracture And in all one side is always weaker than the other Therefore women who as they are for the most part of a timorous mind they by terrour do frequently rush also into a Palsey without an Apoplexie For Terrour or Affrightment hath that Property that it straightway closeth the pores if it shall be sudden And the hairs hath stood an end and the voice hath cleaved to the Jawes Because it is natural for the gate to be shut against an approaching enemy For in a stroak of the Scul the side placed under it is resolved and the opposite side is contracted To wit the Supposite one is resolved because it is more terrified and the Opposite one is drawn together because provoked And indeed the Vulgar are wont to sore-divine an Apoplexie from the shortness of the neck For the shortness of the neck doth not argue the fewer turning joynts to be but a less depth of every one of them But what hath that Common with Phlegm or with a sometimes future stoppage of the fourth bosome of the Brain To wit that one ought to be casualy presaged by the other For the shortness of the neck containeth not a naked sign or prediction of Physiognomy But besides a certain ocasional cause For oft-times after yesterdayes gluttony or drunkenness a giddiness of the head a dizzie dimness of sight vomiting astonishment of the fingers c. do happen the which threaten and presage an Apoplexy not indeed through occasion of a fit Organ as concerning the shortness of the neck but because they have their beginning from an Apopoplexy differing only in degree and intensness If therefore that giddinesse and astonishment after â—urfeiting be from the Midriffes as the occasional matter is as yet nourished by the Archeus in an inferiour degree Therefore wheresoever that Anodynous or stupifying poyson is carried up into a degree it causeth an Apoplexy natively arising from the same seats where through an errour of the sixth digestion that Anodynous poyson is made of the nourishment from whence at length there also is occasionally a Palsey The shortness therefore of the neck affordeth a brevity and readiness of passage from the Midriffes into the head requisite for an Apoplexy that is a more ready aptness of the Organ And also the Schools affirm that in little and threatned Apoplexies instituted rubbings of the utmost parts have sometimes profited and they from thence conjecturing a revulsion of Phlegm and Vapours of out the head do command frictions or rubbings even unto a cruel pilling off of the skin and sharp Clysters To wit they excoriate the skin that Sense or Feelâ—ng may not fail in the same place They being in the mean time forgetful of their own rule that Sense depends wholly on the Brain and that it is in vain to pill the legs that they may revulse Phlegm out of the fourth bosome of the Brain For they know not whither they may pull it back whether they ought to allure it out of the bosome of the Cerebellum into the fundament by Clysters or indeed whether they may by rubbing require the same out of the bosome of the Cerebellum through the skin All being ridiculous because themselves also are ridiculous In the mean time let those that stand by me testifie whether they can detract rather the skin than vapours Yet I certainly know that though any one be wholly flead the Apoplexy or true Palsey is notwithstanding never in anywise to be removed Neither do I see after what manner they can defend their own Theoreme To wit that Phlegm in the fourth bosome of the brain is the containing and adquate cause of both these evils For I confidently deliver that frictions have little profited where that stupefactive and deadly poyson was only in the habit of the body but what will those cruel frictions do if that Anodynous poyson be primarily seated in the Midriffs and after what manner do they prove that by rubbings Phlegm is drawn out of the bosome of the Cerebellum I know therefore that frictions as they were instituted without the discerning and knowledge of causes and distinguishing of places so also that they have been and will be alwayes in vain For it is a ridiculous and cruel thing to have rubbed the skin unto a fleaing thereof and to have assigned the cause to be a stoppage in the middle of the thorny marrow Because how much rubbing soever there shal be if there were any Phlegm in the world and that slidden into the aforesaid bosome of the little Brain it shall never take that phlegm away in one only grain But rather those superstitions being granted it should continually increase the same Because Revulsion if there be any truth in it shall draw the matter rather downwards and dash it into the pipe of the thorny marrow in what part it is alwayes made narrower than it self and so much the rather because there is ordinarly a dispensing of the greater vessels into the inferiour and lesser branches of them Then also because that Phlegm being sequestred from the rest of the blood should be a meer excrement nor therefore discussable without a dead head or residence far harder And therefore rubbing if it do draw and revulse after any kind of manner it shall feel also that ordinary endeavour of nature that that stopping Phlegm should be drawn not from the hinder and lower bosome upwards to the brain by a retrograde motion but unto the more straight and lower trunks of the Nucha or marrow of the back Especially while as in the Palsey the sensitive spirits flow down sparingly or plainly nothing at all the which might otherwise be able to drive that Phlegm forth Rubbing therefore as it exhausts it shall rather encrease a want of the sensitive spirits But the Anodynous poyson of an Apoplexy is generated after the manner of other natural ones to wit a certain excrement occasionally growes in the proper Conduit of the matter But the Archeus perceiving that excrement and abhorting it flees from it and conceiving the deadly Idea of the Excrement impertinently imprints it on himself From whence an Apoplexy is forthwith stirred up as it were with the stroke of a dart But some previous dispositions do for the most part go before the nativity of this stupifying poyson The which therefore if it should happen in the Brain the place should cease from complaint to wit because the Apoplexy is made in an instant wherefore we call it Den Schlag or a stroak indeed because it suddenly comes as at unawares after the
of the necessities of agents and ends Truly on both sides great trifles do involve great cares and great absurdities The which if they put on obstinacy they now nourish madnesse if not also malice The trifles of Humours therefore being invented by the evil spirit were derived into Pagans and hitherto subscribed by the Schools For they were fit for the Devil because they contein confusions in healing fallacies and lyes and therefore they produce dayly deaths they obscure the light of nature they presuppose plausible fictions and are destitute of all examples from their like and by so much the more dry stupid dangerous and rash those fables are by how much they are the more toughly believed for the destruction of Mortals Galen therefore is wholly giddy who affirmes Hony to be totally turned sometimes into blood and sometimes into Choler 1. First a messenger hath been wanting unto this rash asserter which might the more surely certifie him what and how much was made from the totalnesse of Hony And so he is wholly suspected of rashnesse and a fiction 2. Truth is wanting to the affirmer For truly in nature Choler failes and therefore also a Cholerick complexion 3. For he who throughout his great volumes attributes the properties of the members unto Elementary qualities alone constantly writes that a quaternary or fourfold number of Humours are framed onely by the actual heat of one Liver in one onely action of Sanguification When as notwithstanding actual heat cannot but be simple in one onely member at one and the same time Let Galen therefore learn to dream more truly concerning Hony and Sanguification Neither let him depart unto childish principles by believing that four conquering and contrary complexions of Elements do remaine at once in the Liver every one whereof formeth to it self its own Humour out of the single or simple Chyle which is connexible into the one only Subject of blood and falling down from thence at the pleasure of a loosening medicine Let him therefore desist from believing that Humours are made to vary out of one only Hony or Chyle by reason of heat alone and that a simple one seeing that wretched Prince of medicine doth not consider that hereby there is required in a temperate heat of the Liver as many heats at once for so many Humours diverse in making warm from the supposition of their Being Take notice my Companions that we are in no wise constrained unto the fiction of four Humours For those things which are voided forth in the Flux the disease called Choler and dreggishnesses of vomits are not Humours boasted of by the Schooles but they are excrements which the revenging disease frameth and expelleth even as those which laxative medicines do eject are the corruptions of sound or entire blood And that which the revenging disease there acteth That the Laxative medicine here executes indeed with much brevity For neither is the gate of diseases shut by the feigned perswasions of Humours Since that according to Phlosophy Those things are never drawn out of a transchanged Being from whence it is naturally constituted in its making Moreover although I have sufficiently proved elsewhere that there are not four Elements nor the combating congresse of the same for the framing of bodies which are believed to be mixt And that it followes from thence that there is not an unlike action of the Liver in the alway procreation of four Humours Yet whereby the Schools may see with what a prop their whole foundation in healing is supported I will treat from their own meer granted and delivered doctrine For truly if the Elements do not with their Formes remain in the mixt body neither also could their properties remain therein seeing the forms themselves are the immediate subject of inherency of their own properties But if they had rather have the Elements to remaine with their formes in the mixt body Now even the formes of those Elements shall not be substantial acts but only the bonds of the Elements For they shall alway return entire from every sore shaking of the supposed mixt bodies To wit the formes of the Elements shall soundly sleep so long as they shall have rule over the forme of the mixt body Since therefore the Form of a mixt body is of necessity a pure and simple ultimate act it cannot be fourfold yea although the material and remote principler of that matter should be the very actuall Elements and by consequence there is no reason of feigning a Quaternary of Humours in respect of the agent Because the action of sanguification is in no wise Elementary but vital and of the Ferment of the Liver The every way simplicity whereof could not finally respect a quaternion of Humours to arise out of an uniform and most exactly united Chyle So that although there were in a mixt body twenty Elements there should not therefore be as many necessary productions of Humours It is therefore a blockish speculation and of a divelish perswasion which saith that of three Elements never concurring unto the mixture of bodies four Humours in number ought always and ordinarily to proceed and that from thence one only venal blood is regularly constituted To wit that from thence the necessities of curing and of diseases are dictated Perhaps they will object thou admittest that the hurtfull cause is to be driven away thou forbiddest laxative medicines because they are poysonous and indeed do withdraw the blood and vital strength But from a Hungarian horse they have learned the cuttings of a vein from a bird Clysters c. Therefore I may say truly with the Prophet Do not ye become as the horse and mule which have no understanding Do not ye learn of such Masters For the half part of the Continent will subscribe to my desire Because under the Ottoman Abyssine or Aethiopian Empires and the chief part of the Indies the cutting of a vein is unusual Yet the strengths nimblenesses readinesse vâ—gâ—ancy of these nations and constancy of their labours as well to do as to suffer learn ye out of Histories And ye will deservedly lament with me that the Nations which in times past were formidable in war have at this day by degrees under Physitians become ready to dye at every turning of the wind For the North and West which were wont to disperse their warriours into the whole world do henceforth by reason of these follies of the Schools dye as soon as the army is marched far from home Lastly they will object If thou takest away universal succours neither directest thy self unto the withdrawing of Humours by what meanes therefore wilt thou overcome diseases I answer with the aforesaid Nations that Nature is the Physitianesse of diseases therefore that she is to be comforted and not dejected That there is need of a promotion of ends For if excrementitious filths shall adhere unto the first dens or privy places of the Body we must insist on resolving and cleansing medicines nature being safely
and erronous in all and in every thing In abstinent and likewise in dry parched persons as also in bloodless and in Feverish ones there is daily an offence committed in the excess of either Choler as also in the penury of blood Whence it follows that the primary and principal scope of nature is conuersant about the framing of both the aforesaid excrementous Cholers Who therefore from so many absurdities shall not see and discern the falshood of the supposed position I therefore supposed further that the Schooles teach black Choler to be sharp But they prove that because it being rejected by vomit and falling on the earth if it be over-covered with Earth it ferments it The foundation of this blockish argument I have already above oppressed Secondly they reach that black Choler is now and then made of yellow Choler being re-cocted or abundantly cocted as if yellow Choler did at length of its own free accord flow down into black as it were its ultimate end which positions of the Schools many absurdities do accompany For first of all the Schools contradict themselves in this that they determine four Humours and also those to be bred or made by the same motion of digestion to wit if the composition of the blood doth happen from four Humours being conjoyned Secondly they struggle with themselves while they teach that yellow Choler in cocting is terminated into a Leeky and Cankery Choler That is to put on a green Colour and in the mean time to increase in bitterness Therefore black Choler is not sharp from an overcocting of yellow Choler neither doth that arise from this else either the coction of nature is not single in the same body and promoted by the same ruler of digestion or surely that which is rejected being sometimes sharp and black is not black Choler Unlesse that perhaps both may be alike deservedly denied And then where and after what manner shall yellow Choler be overcocted For not in the Liver where the slender little veins do not undergo the delay of cocting to wit they being filled with continual blood and urine passing thorow them Neither in the next place shall black Choler be made of yellow Choler re-cocted in the veins of the mesentry seeing these are continually extended with sucking of the meats and with the passing of drinks thorow them and the recoction of yellow Choler should not only be for an impediment but moreover for a contagion to the fresh Chyle tending unto the shop of Sanguification But if indeed yellow Choler be recocted neither beneath nor above the Liver nor at length in the little branches themselves of the Liver that from thence it may be made black Choler but yellow Choler be brought to the Spleen that in that Bowel a transmutation of yellow Choler into black and of bitter into sharp may happen then at leastwise they ought to have remembred that that being granted now black Choler or a fourth Humour should fail for the Composition the blood and that the blood should be only composed of the other three Which thing utterly overthrows the position of the sanguification of the Schools At length to what end shall the recocting of yellow Choler into black serve If an hostile Element and earthy sayling in the blood should a while after arise from thence Is nature so greatly buisied in preparing of Humours that are forthwith to be banished And the which a little after I shall shew to be Non-beings Meer fictions designed to no end Next by what means shall yellow Choler draw that sharpnesse to it self from bitternesse they being hostile qualities unto all bowels out of stomach If it directly passeth over into an ordinary and natural Humour How shall a fiery Humour through a delay of coction assume the heat of cankered rust especially under the same slow and vital luke-warmth And shall be made a black sharp and Earthy dreg Is therefore perhaps Earth materially bred of a fiery Water being re-cocted In what part of the world also doth a sharp thing proceed from a bitter thing being thickned And from whence have the Schools learned this feigned Metamorphosis Is happily that sharp black and earthy Humour a certain singular Humour one of the four Elementary humours of the three Elements But therefore it is false that they have affirmed the same to be made of re-cocted and burnt Choler Yea moreover it is to be feared least it be to be called a fifth Humour which as yet hath not had another like unto it self and that this shall be no lesse necessary than the other four if they as yet dare to devise four other Humours For truly this is a sharp one unworthy of the family of Choler The which is wholly spoiled of every property hereof to wit which is a sharp grosse black thickned re-cocted cold Earthy and leaden Humour But where have the Schools learned to call Earth a black sharp cold and dry fire that they may begin a fourth and Elementary Humour requisite for the integrity and consistence of the blood Consider Reader with pity whither the enfolded absurdity of a fiction hath driven the Schools that through the penury or scantiness of names and truth they have made two Elements and feigned Humours from thence a cold Earth and also a bitter sharp soure and fiery liquour And that they have called it yellow Choler and also the same presently black sharp bitter and foure Choler Alas they may fear a deadly chance will befall them since they have now proceeded in stumbling for so many ages and in running away so miserable lyed But at leastwise I conjecture that this new branch of black Choler hath not a sure assertion in the constant dulnesse of the Schools the which I at first demonstrated to have been the nourishable blood of the Spleen sometimes becoming degenerate through a sinister event nor to be requisite from the beginning and for the constitution of the blood but that it is said to be produced from degenerate Choler by re-coction in stead of a privy shift to wit that they may after some sort free themselves from so many perplexities of absurdities At least wise they are compelled rather to grant that that black sour liquour being now and then rejected through the vice of the Spleen is an excrementious unprofitable dreg and not an Humour made from the intent of nature However otherwise it is if they say it issues forth from the intent of nature although that be the more rarely beheld and not likewise from yellow Cholet being first re-cocted at least wise it hath attained the underserved name and property for neither do the Schools sufficiently explaine themselves they wandring in an unconstancy of their own recieved opinion of Choler which is of a fiery and Gawly property Now earth shall sometimes be nothing besides fire being thickned if the feigned Humours do fitly square with the Elements attributed unto them Also yellow and black Choler shall be made at once and
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
happily any good thing shall therein offer it self Truly I was a Glutton of Books I had collected all remarkable things into common places so as that few exceeded me in diligence but most in judgement In the seventeenth year of my youth I read Lectures of Chyrurgery before the Students in the Colledge of the Physitians of Lovain being appointed thereunto by the Professors Thomas Fienus Gerardus de Villeers and Stornius Alas I presumed to teach those things which I my self was ignorant of I fitted together Holerius Tagautius Guido Vigo Aegineta and the whole Troop of Arabians the which surely all together understood not the perfection of Chyrurgery Afterwards I desisted having admired at my own rashnesses and inconsideratenesses that I should presume only by the reading of books to teach those things which are not well learned but by sight and the handling of the hands by long use and a sharp judgement For an unconsiderate presumption blew me up because I had been voluntarily by them chosen hereunto and had my Professors both my Auditors and the Censurers of my readings For I trusted to writings as it happens to children reading from Baiardus and Malegigius At length being amazed with my self I certainly found that the event answered not the Doctrine and that Professors gave me not more light in practising than the writings of the Antients In the mean time it often came into my mind what the Schools thunder forth out of Avicen to wit that confidence on the Physitian is of greater weight to the sick than the Physitian is with all his instruments I therefore suspected that it was a feeble succour of the Physitian before which an imaginary aid of confidence should be preferred For if any one being glad or joyful be cured by laughter at leastwise let the medicine be ridiculous where the Physitian shall cure the sick party by laughing and confiding for that is not the medicine which the Almighty hath created from the earth Then also that Maxim of the Schools appeared ridiculous affirming that the capital betokening of curing is drawn from things helpful and hurtful because that Maxim ordinarily presupposeth that uncertain and hurtful medicines are wont for the most part to be sent afore Helpful ones also if any shall be given that they are administred by chance and without knowledge which things surely do define medicine against the will of the Schools to be a conjectural Art and that the knowledges and cures of diseases do begin a posteriori or from the effect from errours from the tryal and conjecture of that which is uncertain yea that that which should afterwards be searched out should be alike uncertain The Poet hath deservedly cursed that medicinal Maxim Careat successibus opto Quisquis ab eventu facta notanda putat I wish that he who e're he be may want successes rare Who from th' event doth straightway think deeds to be noted are I therefore grieved that I had learned that Art and being angry with my self grieved who was Noble that against the will of my Mother and my Kindred on the Fathers side being ignorant thereof I as the first in our Family had dedicated my self to medicine I long bewailed the sin of disobedience and it grieued me of the years and pains bestowed in a choise profession And I ost-times humbly intreated the Lord with a sorrowful heare that he would vouchsafe to lead me unto a calling not whither I was carried of my own free accord but wherein I might well please him most And I made a vow that I would follow and obey him to the utmost of my power whithersoever he should call me Then first as having been fed with the forbidden fruit I acknowledged my own nakednesse Because I found neither truth nor knowledge in my suppositional docttrine supposing it especially to be a cruel thing to heap up moneys by others miseries Also that it was an unseemely thing to translate an art founded in charity and bestowed under the condition of exercising mercy into gain since the Noblenesse of charry is estranged by a stipend which wants a price out of it self because it is greater than all price Wherefore I presently entitled my inheritance on my sister a widow and transferred it by a gift among the living because she could scarce conveniently want it I therefore being a young man altogether unprofitable in all things an unthrifty man and who had rashly applyed my self to studies commended my self to God with an intention of going far from home of forsaking medicine and of never returning into my Country Because I cleerly then beheld my own innermost parts I discovered and divorced the vanities of my former presumption and literal Learning I therefore proceed on as uncertain unto strangers under hope that the Lord would clementiously direct my course unto the end of his own good pleasure But by how much the more I detested medicine and cast it far from me as a juggling deciet indeed by so much the greater occasion of healing invaded me For an Idiot associated himself with me who had known at least the manual instruments of the art of the fire I presently as soon as I beheld the inward part of some bodies by the fire percieved the seperations of many bodies then not yet delivered in books and at this day some being unknown Afterwards an earnest desire of knowing and operating dayly increased in me For not much above two years after I had gotten such houshould-stuffe to my self whereby I was though absent in great esteem among the sick also with Ernestus Bavarus the Electour of Collen and he called me unto himself for help But then it as yet more shamed me of my late and learned ignorance Wherefore I presently resigned up all books and I percieved my self more to profit by the fire in conceptions attained by praying than in any kind of books which sing always the same Cuckows note And then I cleerly knew that I had vitiated the passage of true Phylosophy Obstacles and dificulties of obscurities on every side appeared the which not labour not time not watching lastly nor the lavishments of moneys could from any worthinesse disperse but the one only and meer goodnesse of God alone For neither did carnal lust nor drinking bouts withdraw even one only houre from me but continual paines and watching were the thieves of my time For I willingly cured the poor and those of a mean fortune being more stirred up by humane compassion and a moral affection of bestowing than from a pure and universal charity or dear love reflexed on the Fountain of Life For it happened that a Consul or Senatour being at somtime willingly about to make use of my endeavour I denied to giue it him presentially as being unwilling to forsake many that were poorer least I should be accounted to have neglected many for one Notwithstanding God from the free grace of his own good pleasure turned this pride into good For it shamed me to
word Let seeds be brought forth To wit by a fore deduced imagination as well of plants as of animals Nature therefore in following the power infused into her brings forth every seed by the image of a certain conception There is indeed as well in living creatures as in plants yea and in minerals themselves every one their own imagination after their own improper manner yet on both sides the productresse of the fruitfullnesse of seeds as well for a natural Being as for that of super-incidents and monstrous ones Because the imagination frames an image of the thing conceived which by its gifts given it of God it converts into a Mean which is called a seed To wit without which image every seed is only an empty husk No otherwise than as the blossom of a pippin not having a promised pippin behind it is a vain braggery That image and seminal one even as it bears in it self a perfect similitude of its own image to be conceived so also a free and uncorrupted knowledg of things to be done by it self under the race of generation Yet this is remarkeable in generations that as a woman with Child doth not operate the wonders proposed unlesse she be sore smitten with perturbations and the flint be struck against the steel so the seeds of living creatures cease to be fruitful unlesse a disturbance of â—ust be conjoyned making the soul to descend into the seed that it may enlighten that seed Wherefore herbs languish presently after their product the scope of their imagination or property being compleated But minerals because they are not ordained to stir up a race out of their own bodies by so much also they have the ends of their own imagination far more obscure Since therefore all generation presupposeth an image according to which it executes its own dispositions Hence it cannot come to passe that an imagination of terrour should generate an Idea of love nor that a phantasy of fear from an enemy should produce a phantâ—sie of terrour from the plague Also places infected with the Pest are not undeservedly to be avoided and not only by reason of the air being already viâ—iated and defiled but also that objects may be avoyded which conduce unto the imagination of terrour Now the shoare whither we fâ—â—l appears afar of and after what sort terrour may be the Father of the plague It alâ—o happens that children do most speedily imagine and are disturbed yet their perturbations do not carry seeds in their images or cause the plague unto themselves by terror For it is with these even so as with a young musitian who in his first lessons doth not transmit his cogitation conceived unto his fingers but with difficulty But after that he is skilful in his art and fingers are now accustomed unto the images of tunes and motions they undoubtfully perform the command of the phantasie and perfectly sound out the whole hymn although now and then through an attentive discourse he shall divert his minde from the musick For neither do his fingers cease to proceed unto the end of the well apprehended song CHAP. XI Things requisite for the Idea of an imagined Plague EXperience hath oft-times caused a belief that some one hath prepared the absent Plague in himself and his through terrour alone which truth sheweth that the image of the phantasie doth from the incorporeal essence of its own nakednesse and simplicity of cogitation cloath it self by little and little and put on the Spirit of Life and leaves therein it s own seminal product a Being surely most ready for great and terrible enterprizes But moreover that it is not yet sufficient for the execution of its appointment for it is found that the Image arriving at the Bowels doth neverthelesse oft-times wax feeble Therefore I have declared that in a Woman great with Child the hand is moreover required it being the Instrument of Instruments as an external Instrument and sign of the determined member whereon the Image is to be engraven For the Soul alwayes useth meanes upon which the Image is carried for Being and Operation But I therefore ought to delineaâ—e after what manner the Soul after the example of a Musitian dismisseth the operative Images of its own conceptions unto the hand but in no wise unto the foot and after what sort through custom that presently transmitteth its Images which otherwise besides custom would most troublesomly reach thither Wherefore it is to be noted that if the Woman with Child shall be right-handed and yet shall under the onset of disturbance touch some one of her members with her left-hand nothing will be marked upon her Young thereby Whence it appeareth that that hand which is the common ordinary and daily executress of cogitations is also the Directtress of Images unto places and operations Therefore a man doth not operate alike strongly by imagination as doth a Woman nor any other Woman alike strongly as doth a Woman with Child neither also doth every terrour generate the Plague For the affrightment by a Wolf Snake or mad Dog doth not produce in us the operative Images of a Wolfe or Snake yea nor indeed where the Wolfe is visibly present even as notwithstanding the Plague is bred in us by an Image of terrour A doubt therefore subsisteth whether an affrightful imagination of the Soul from the Plague or the Image thereof be a sufficient and suitable cause of the Plague First of all it is seriously to be heeded that the imagination is sufficient of it self for to operate unlesse other things beside do concur For first of all wholly in ordinary and accustomed works proceeding from a deliberation of the elective Soul the will must needs be present For a Baker shall vainly and that intentively imagine many things about making of Bread unlesse his will shall move his hand not indeed to some member but unto the Dough. I in like manner writing of the Plague without terour in a full will and conceipt of the thinking Soul do meditate many things concerning the Plague Yet I do not therefore contract this Plague to my self No man also unlesse happily he be foolishly desâ—eraâ—e intends a generating of the Pestilence in the consent of his will An unfolded will therefore is required in a daily and natural course of operative actions wherein the will draws forth conceived Images in deliberating for the execution of the work But there is in no wise required a consent of the will for the generation of a Being or the transmutation of one Being into another For truly every transmutation although it be monstrous yet it attempts the priviledges of a true Generation Since there is a re-ideaing in the Archeus from the Victory of the new Image translated upon the seminal one which was first conceived in the Archeus Therefore the consideration of transmutation doth not consider a consent of the will Again neither a naked imagination or production of an Image nor a touch of the hands do
of no sleep with a perpetuak Agony and despairing of life and yet was vexed with her self through la full remembrance or knowledge of her own foolish strugling and Opiates being administred she found her self worse At length between the fear and desiring of death she plainly recovered by the remedy of Hippocrates in six hours space In the mean time I confess and admonish by way of protestation that I have plainly enough manifested the bosom of the remedy of Hippocrates that it may be sufficiently plain only unto the Sons of Art and true Physitians and covered for the future only to sloathful Physitians that are enslaved to gain and to the envious haters of the truth But I have declared 1. The aforesaid histories that plagues beginning may be manifest not to be as yet seasoned with the pestilent poyson and not yet to be accompanyed with a sufficient image of terrour 2. And that the virtue of the remedy of Hippocrates may from thence be made manifest 3. That the first violent motions of confusion terrour and imagination do happen in the midriff about the mouth of the stomach To wit in the Spleen whose emunctory is nigh the mouth of the stomach and so that it is the mark of that Archer For in a healthy young man whom the plague had snatched away in seven hours time a dissection of his body being begun I found a long eschar now made to be as at first the mover of vomit and afterwards the Authour of continual swoonings so also to have given an occasion of sudden death even as in others I have noted a threefold eschar to have been made in the stomach â—n sixteen hours space 4. That the master of Animal subtilty hath with his white wand of sleep chosen the Inn of drowsie sleep and watchings in the same place 5. And that the seat of all madnesse and doatage is in the same place And that thing I have elswhere profesly founded by a long demonstration 6. That purging likewise as also myrrâ—ed Antidotes for the Pest are not safe enough or worthy of confidence 7. And that all reason deliberation animosity resignation consolation argumentation and all the subtilty of man on the contrary do but wash the Aeâ—hiopian in the Pest even as also in the disease Hydrophobia 8. That the endeavour of preservatives is sluggish as oft and as long as the seal of the image framed by terrour remayneth 9. That such an image stirs up from it self continual sorrows and spurns at the phantasie it self and drawes it captive to it self no lesse than the biting of a mad dog brings forth an unwilling fear of water or the sting of a Tarantula the doâ—tage of a tripping dance 10. That the comfort of sweating alone is loose in such terrours 11. That the Idea of fear not being vanquished in the bowel nor the dreg wherein that image sits banished it is in vain whatsoever the magistrals or compositions of the shops do attempt For Hydrophobial persons although now and then between while they speak discreetly fore-feel and fore-tel a madnesse coming upon them yet they cannot but be driven into the madnesse of their own image 12. That swimming is destructive and whatsoever restraineth sweat 13. That Barley broaths pulses syrupes and Juleps are loose and frivolous remedies for so great a malady 14. That it comes from a bastard plague unto a true or Legitimate one yet that the sick do often fail under the beginning thereof before it sends forth its tokens The which traiterous signes do notwithstanding presently after death issue forth 15. That grateful odours the perfumes of spices feathers or shooes do bring no defence or succour for the plague For by way of example if thou seasonest an hogshead of wine putrified through continuance with the odour of spices or with any other odour except that of Sulphur it remaines fermentally putrified and it soon defiles the new wine which thou shalt pour in as the former Wherefore sweet-smelling things do in no wise take away the terrour and the poysonous Idea of terrour from the Archeus being once terrified Because they take not away the maâ—ter of the poyson and much lesse do they kill that poyson or remove the terrour from the Archeus as neither do they refresh the seat thereof or comfort the part affected For Paracelsus commends unto the City of Stertzing that was bountiful unto him myrrhe being by degrees melted under the tongue before any other remedies and boldly promiseth it unto the younger sort for a preservation for 24. houres space which doctrine notwithstanding I have experienced to be false For I have seen young folks with the much use of myrrhe to have been killed by the plague Myrrhe indeed although it may preserved dead cracases from putrefaction instead of a blasam yet the Pest far differs from putrefaction No otherwise than as the eschar of a bright burning iron differs from putrified blood And although corruption succeedeth in a carcass now dead yet the poysonous image of terrour doth not properly putrify as it doth most properly slay the vital Archeus and tranchange him into a poyson with it self For he bids that myrrhe be held in the mouth As if the plague knew not how to to enter but by way of the mouth Therefore far more advisedly to have shut up the mouth in silence Truly the Pest will abhor myrrhe nor will it daâ—e to enter in through the nostrils if myrrhe being detained in the mouth doth dissolve shall perhaps the odour of myrrhe hinder whereby the poysonous image is the lesse poysonsom is not poysonsom Is not hurtful For shall myrrhe in the mouth repulse the plague from the Archeus The same reason is alike frivolous and foolish for Triacle vinegar c. perfumed with odours At length let mortals know that in healing nothing is alike hurtful as a rash belief given without a pledge and truth Truly the accusations of the sick will at sometime thunder against the negligence falshood decietful juggles rashnesses and false wares of Physitians whereby people have been spoyled of their life But I have discerned by the books of Paracelsus that he was a man rash in promising unexpert in the plague unconstant in its remedies ignorant in its causes as also ungrateful toward the bountiful City of Stertzing Let his honourers spare me that I am constrained to speak candidly or plainly for the truth in a matter of so great moment least any one in the plague should put confidence in his succours CHAP. XVIII The image of terrour sifted I Have hitherto produced the unheard of poyson of the Pest To wit that the soul and the vital Archeus thereof are powerful in an imagination proper to themselves But that that power of the a foresaid imagination is to form Idea's not indeed those which may be any longer a Being of Reason or a non-being but that they have altogether actually the true Entity of a subsisting image which imagination surely seeing it is a