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things and from the service of the acquainted Senses For it is manifest what the mind it self may be while it hath withdrawn it self from conceipts which are wont or might stain it or at leastwise hinder it from comming unto the nakednesse and purity of it self wherein it may be able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
Medicines to drink and so they plainly prostrated his strength But it opportunely happened that his remaining strength and youth overcame the Disease he appeared to have received his lost strength whereby he was confirmed that Professours and Licensed Persons were true Physitians reckoning from their relation that he had deserved or was in danger of Death and that he owed his Life unto their Torments hence they took of him a double reward but not according to their deserts The young Man renewing his former pious steps was the second time oppressed with the very same malady and he hoped by their endeavour again to escape the same cruelty but alass his spirit failed him and from sound Reason and a knowledge of the Truth he cryed out unto this his Brother It hath befallen me as to all others and it shall so long continue untill Physitians so called do in very deed feel and see this present time to be for Eternity but now they forget the time past believing that they possess the present time they deny the time to come seeing they cannot see that and so they take no care for a longer Life for they have never been destitute thereof even as of any other frail or mortal good whereof there is made a repairing but they possessing one only Life and loosing that all shall be ended It is a vain thing to employ ones self in Studies when no necessity is urgent upon us The Servant who ought readily to serve us is beaten which doth perpetually provoke this Man whom he shall name his Master by all his qualities he shall be ignorant of his thraldom although all Men except a few are bound up by his Servitude the which for the most part deprives of Life both now and hereafter I despair of a temporary Life for they who are said to bring help do want the knowledge thereof and they are first constrained to obtain it by brawlings and discords which will arise among them through hatred and envy wherewith those called Doctors or Teachers have never laboured seeing they are but few who by running up and down day and night do excel in Wealth whereby they scrape together an abundance of Money as well among the Healthy and Sick as those that are dead and so they might continue in concord the which shall remain so long until the last times appear which thou shalt discern by that when thou shalt see the number of Junior and Licensed Doctors of Medicine so to increase that they shall scarce have employment The Seniours shall be offended with the Juniours and Young Beginners because their dayly revenues shall be diminished and because they shall find forreign or accidentary Juniours being constrained to learn more sure Principles for to get their living to cure some Sick whose like being under their care did undergo Death which thing the Seniours shall envy wishingly desiring that all the Sick-folks might die unto whom the Juniors should be called Lastly they shall reproach them publickly before all the People saying These wicked young Men do cure by Enchantments they should of necessity be forbidden to practise By these and the like means they shall labour to subvert them and and they shall offend God that it may add courage unto other godly and industrious Juniours to perfect that which they shall propose to the Seniours in these Words When we have invited you to suffer us publickly to cure some Sick of an Hospital appointing a Prize or Wager for the benefit of the Poor ye also to be solicitous or diligent on the other hand and that they who had not answered the effect should pay the reward thereof ye have refused that thing ye seek not the Poor but Give Ye ye resemble Beggars in that thing who disdain their fellow Beggars and are unwilling that their number should increase for they have a confidence in some rich Mens houses and places where a larger bounty befel them for their deceitful Words and Tricks that so they may leave their Arts and these Houses to their Children for a Dowry which very thing also ye cherish in your Mind but it shall have a bad success because through this publick discord which shall spring from Covetousnesse that dayly Deceit shall be made known to the World and they shall receive only true Doctors who may be discerned by their good Fruits and who shall imitate the steps of the Samaritan These Words being finished he felt his Life to fail therefore lifting up his eyes towards Heaven he with sorrow subjoyned Oh most merciful Lord abbreviate thou the term of Mans Salvation and change thou the frail Doctrine of the Doctors their Flesh into the natural or peculiar Love of the Spirit that the Innocent may finish their Life to thy Glory I pray thee oh my Saviour do not thou impute my Death to the Doctors hereafter for an Offence for truly they know not what they do commit but vouchsafe thou to open their eyes that they may assent to the truth and that the People may publish those things of them as in times past of holy Paul Which saying being ended he wholly committed himself to the Divine Will and breathed forth his last Breath in the armes of this his Brother who did alwayes ponder these Words aforesaid This Man in his turn uttered these following Words We are all of us being Brethren in Christ engaged to patronize the truth the which is not better perfected than by opposing and defending Hence we will prosecute two things one is that the strength of our Enemies may be made known unto us the other is that we may add more strength to our own and so that we may be the more confirmed in our purpose After that they had heard all these Words they compelled him to undergoe this charge with the threatning of a Fine for so much as he had taken this voluntary Office on himself And he alleaged I being the second of the Seniours am desirous to be instructed by any one in this difficult matter I being a Servant of truth do after some sort yield to the two former Propositions but unto the third I can in no wise assent to wit to subvert the aforesaid Books by interdictions and brands of Censures for if we should endeavour that we should act altogether rashly we thinking to extinguish them in one place should also again raise them up in a thousand other places Men are no longer so ignorant and unwary as in times past when as all Examples or Patterns of religious obedience were published by favour which thing is chiefly manifest in Printers and Booksellers they making gain here and there and it cannot be forbidden and hindered Doth not the thing it self bespeak that we need not go far That Author himself set forth a Discourse inscribed Of the Magnetick or Attractive cure of Wounds which was stoln from him and about five hundred of them printed in Letters by his Enemies whereupon they divulged three divers
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
not be refused For in very deed and according to a just computation I stand in need of two dayes to wit that of Saturn with that of Sol whereby I may with my self begin and perfect every Enterprize or that I may dispose of all things in order which in the following day of Lune and so afterwards in the whole Week following I shall distinctly signifie Whereto the wise Men answered Oh Mercurius we are instructed with a full Command from our Lord by whose authority we condescend to thy Petition as being supported with Equity thou shalt perform all things according to thy own sentence that the wise Sirs being not learned after the common manner and moderate or courteous Men may find no fault in thee when they shall hear thee in the said day or subject thee to examination and even as thou hast bound thy self to be kept in custody for thy own and that an ample limitted term of dayes until thy promises are accomplished we will alwayes remain with thee for an enquiry into thy Conceptions the which thou shalt frame in this two precedent dayes space Thou rejoycedst in their Company for whosoever he was that beheld them gathered by their habit and gestures that they were godly for truly their Countenance did carry a divine gladness before it and thou didst say unto them Seeing that the day cometh for the winning whereof my obediences are not in the least to be contested know ye oh my wise Men that I prefixed no time for the recollecting of my Memory nor any the like thing because I have no need thereof but considering that to day is the first day of the Week but to morrow the last day the Lords day the seventh day wherein he had finished all things and wherein he had rested It hath seemed meet unto me to distribute and contain my Knowledge according to the rate of the Dayes of the week I beginning the future day of Lune one the sixth day of the week after the custom of Mortals for before God all things are eternal and present so that unto us as unto Mortals the first day may be accounted the last and I beginning from Saturns day to number backwards have need of two and forty dayes for the fulfilling of the whole week that which would stir up a weariness in many through the largeness of time In the mean time I will briefly rehearse all things I Mercurius being from my tender years brought up by my Father in the select School of Hermes and there after some sort seasoned my Spirit being unquiet was not content therewith as desiringly desiring thorowly to know the whole sacred Art or Tree of Life and to enjoy it Neither would I set my hands to Work unless I could certainly understand this from the beginning to the end Moreover I concluded in my mind that through an approvement of the truth I might be brought thither at the last without the help of outward Instruction I distributed with my self all Creatures first those External and Corporeal as I may so say and then those Internal Spiritual and Corporifying ones which Parts I did again refer or reduce towards and into one I was not able to subdivide and know those Creatures called Corporeal ones without the adjoyning of the Spiritual Corporifying ones I beheld those with an unwonted Countenance even as according to my Judgment I had consequently placed all in every one his own order as being free from the anticipated or fore-possessed false and obstinate Opinions of the Heathens who have never frequented Universities as by this my unpolished Style doth sufficiently appear Nevertheless well observe ye I utter no Saying in vain but that it doth signifie something and pertain to the whole My Spirit could perceive no delight or desire of study in Temporary and Fraile or Mortal things I did alwayes thirst and breath after Perfect and Eternal ones I was taken up into admiration within my self from momentary necessary created things and from hence on God who created Heaven and Earth at once the which the Prophane Phylosophers cannot apprehend and they who desire to come hitherto they must worship God by a firme Faith with an humble Hope and in true Love then shall they obtain a perfect Knowledge of himself and of all other Creatures before their Beginning in their Being or Essence and after their transchanging the which I will more largely and manifestly make out so far as may be done by Words for the Temporal and Eternal Health and Preservation of the Soul and Body according to the measure of every ones Capacity which all have not alike nor had they And that they might be the further holpen towards Salvation God out of his Goodness raised up Moses of the Prophets who might be useful to them in a Type which after the Dutch Language is also as much as to say Books and by his Writings to wit in his first Book of Creations which containeth all of whatsoever can be desired the which I in part as the whole had sometimes learned by heart according to Jerom's Translation the rather because it comprehends all things which man in his Own-ness Selfishness and My-ness and the like Appropriations cannot understand For whatsoever God hath created he hath created free and at liberty by One and in One and he that arrogates that thing to himself makes that very thing it self his own seperates himself from God and doth in himself enter into the way that leadeth towards utter Darkness And as God is an Incomprehensible Eternal Piercing and a Filling Fire Light and Glory wanting Beginning and Ending such is he in the Men his Saints Hy-lichten according to the Dutch is as much as to say He shineth in a co-united Love and Glory and in the Godly Sa-lichten according to the Dutch expresseth He ought to shine he will be so according to more and less or a greater and less measure but in evil Men who are Eternal in the Dark and separated he is also an Eternal burning Fire even as it is said Therefore even as God is the Eternal Good in the Dutch Idiome it expresseth God so also all whatsoever was created he created Good The first Man was constituted into Light and Good as being created of God yet not united in Eternal Rest and Glory but as being created after the Image of God in a freedom of Will the which is now becomeâ— Property in us through the seducement and transgression of the Prohibition and Admonition of God in the touching and eating of Death or of the Fruit of the forbidden Tree which Hevah or Eve the Mother of all Living touched and ate Those called the wise Men did speak unto thee Run thou not out so far before we perceive whether thou hast known thy self and that thou hast told us what thy self art Mercurius I am a Man created by the Almighty God after his own Image and Likeness possessing my Body of the Clay of the Earth which
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
anon on the side vain presumption hath in times past crept in that hereafter it may not any way trouble me He will send his dew upon the Corn if happily it shall please him to increase what I have sowen for the use of my Neighbour In the mean time I wish Oh ye faithfull in Christ that I be judged an unworthy evil ignorant and rash man so my Neighbour shall not feel dammage in healing thereby For he shall not esteem me unprofitable and ignorant in vain yea if these things shall not become guilt unto me I attribute it to his bottomless clemency which turns all things into good to those that love him for his great goodness sake unto whom I humbly offer return and lay down my vain prayses from the weakness of my confession and submission CHAP. II. The Authours Studies 1. The Birth and Life of the Authour 2. The Authour hath laughed at the masked Industries of Professors 3. The nakedness of the Authour 4. He hath prosecuted more solid Sciences at leasure 5. He did vilifie Astrology 6. He despised a Canonship 7. What furtherance there is of Studies among the Jesuites at Lovaine 8. Stoicisme displeased him 9. Stoicisme is to be despised from a Command 10. The Authour is snatcht into Medicine as it were by chance 11. The defect of Herbarists 12. Medicine onely flowes down from above and therefore it cannot be delivered by Rules 13. Those that are instructed in an infused knowledge are not to be taught by Authours 14. The juggle of a certain Professour of Medicine 15. Why he left off the Study of the Law 16. How great the Authours barrenness and nakedness was by studies 17. What he hath done for the beginning of Studies 18. Practise hath discovered the nakedness of Physitians 19. A Prayer for the Errours of the Schooles 20. Raphael is promised in a Dream IN the year 1580 the most miserable one to all Belgium or the Low Countries my Father died I being the youngest and of least esteem of my Brethren and Sisters For I was brought up in Studies But in the year 1594. I had finished the course of Philosophy which year was to me the seventeenth Therefore since I had onely a Mother I seemed at Lovaine to be made the sole disposer of my Right and Will Wherefore I saw none admitted to Examinations but in a Gown and masked with a Hood as though the Garment did promise Learning I began to know that Professors for sometime past did expose young men that were to take their degrees in Arts to a mock I did admire at the certain kinde of dotage in Professors and so in the whole World as also the simplicity of the rash belief of young men I drew my self into an account or reasoning that at leastwise I might know by my own judgement how much I was a Phylosopher I examined whether I had gotten truth or knowledge I found for certainty that I was brown up with the Letter and as it were the forbidden Apple being eaten to be plainly naked save that I had learned artificially to wrangle Then first I came to know within my self that I knew nothing and that I knew that which was of no worth For the Sphere in natural Phylosophy did seem to promise something of knowledge to which therefore I had joyned the Astrolobe the use of the Ring or Circle and the speculations of the Planets Also I was diligent in the Art of Logick and the Science Mathematical for delights sake as often as the reading of other things had brought a wearisomness on me Whereto I joyned the Elements or first Principles of Euclide and this Learning I had made fociable to my Genius or natural wit because it contained truth but by chance the art of knowing the Circle of Cornesius Gemma as of another Memphysick came to my hand Which seeing it onely commended Nicholas Copernicus I left not on till I had made the same familiar unto me Whence I learned the vain excentricities or things not having one and the same Center another circular motion of the Heavens and so I presumed that whatsoever I had goâ—â—â— concerning the Heavens with great pains was not worthy of the time bestowed about it Therefore the Study of Astronomy was of little or no account with me because it promised little of certainty or truth but very many vain things Therefore having finished my Course when as I knew nothing that was found nothing that was true I refused the Title of Master of Arts being unwilling that Professors should play the fool with me that they should declare me Master of the seven Arts who was not yet a Scholar Therefore I seeking truth and knowledge but not their appearance withdrew my self from the Schooles A wealthy Cannonship was promised me so that I would make my self free to Theology or Divinity But S. Bernard affrighted me from it because I should eat the sins of the people But I begged of the Lord Jesus that he would vouchsafe to call me thither where I might most please him For it was the year wherein the Jesultes had begun to teach Philosophy at Lovaine the King Nobles and University being against it and that thing together with them was forbidden by Clement the Eighth But their Scholars aspring to their Degree they had assembled them to the School houses but others and the more rich they did allure with the pleasant Study of Geography and one of the Professors Martine del Rio who first being the Judge of Turma in Spain and afterwards wearied in the Senate of Brabant being allured to the Society and had resorted thither also did expound the disquisitions or diligent examinations of Magick Both the Readings I greedily received And at length instead of a Harvest I gathered onely empty stubbles and most poor patcheries void of judgement In the mean time least an houre should vanish away without fruit I rub'd over L. Annaus Seneca who greatly pleased me and especially Epictetus Therefore I seemed in moral Philosophy to have found the juyce of truth and then presently I thought this was that for which Pythagoras might require the strict Silences of so many years an excellent indgement and therefore notable obedience At length a few years being changed I saw a Capuchin to be a Christian Stoick Indeed Study for Eternity smiled on me but for so great austereness my more tender health was a hinderance I prayed the Prince of life divers times that he would give strength whereby I might contemplate of the naked truth and immediately love it Thomas of Kempis increased this desire in me and afterwards Taulerus And when I presumed and certainly believed that through Stoicisme I did profit in Christian perfection at length after some â—ay and weariness in that exercise I fell into a Dream I seemed to be made an empty Bubble whose Diameter reached from the Earth even to Heaven for above hovered a flesh-eater but below in the place of the Earth was
the art and knowledge unutterably Therefore although the seed doth contain the Image of the Begetter an Archeus proper to it self with all things requisite to generation yet unless the essential Being of a form did depend originally wholly exemplarily perfectively issuingly and immediately on God nature could never work any thing to attain a form because it should plainly want an active power if it should be deprived of that relative respect Therefore in the first place the Heaven or Stars in no manner of understanding by motion light influence concurrence co-operation or coupling do efficiently and immediately produce the essential forms of things which indeed are onely alone to us for signes seasons dayes and years and whose offices none may compell into new services Jeremy according to the wayes of the Gentiles do ye not learn and be not afraid of the Signes of Heaven which the Nations fear If not of the Signes much lesse of the Stars because they have not the reason of causes but as they are for seasons dayes and years Neither can a Christian without wickedness give them other offices For there is according to Gregory a power conferred on the Earth of budding from it self even as also I esteem it wickedness to attribute the power of increasing and multiplying to living Creatures as to the Heaven But the Schooles do easily go back from the Heaven to dispositive accidents But I on the contrary state it for a position That accidents neither by themselves nor as they are the Instruments of forms do produce the forms of substances Neither that they do produce any other form of one substance Seeing the form of the thing generating is locally without the seed 2. The Earth also although it hath received a power of budding and the seeds of fructifying without the intervening of the seed of Heaven or any other cause yet it is not the productive or effective cause of forms 3. I suppose therefore that God is the true perfect and actually all the essence of all things 4. But the essence which things have belongs to the Being or the Creature it self but is not God 5. For although a Being hath its essence from God dependently for a Pledge Gift League or Talent yet it is proper to the them by Creation 6. But it agreeth to a Being with its essence that it doth and operateth something for the propagation of it self according to the blessing increase and multiply Hence indeed it hath the place of a second cause 7. Therefore God concurreth to the generation of a Being as the Universal Independent totall essential and efficiently efficient cause but a created Being concurreth as the dependent partial particular and dispositively efficient cause But what the Creature can contribute to the producing of a form Mark That since Beings have nothing from themselves for generating but do possess all things from a borrowing and freely they do confess for that very cause that God worketh all things mediately and immediately but that a living Creature doth not generate a living Creature but the seed well disposed to a living Creature Therefore it doth not generate the form thereof But the seed is as it were the disposing Master-Workman as to the form of a living Creature but not as the maker of the form indeed it borroweth the Archeus from the thing generating not the form yea nor the light of life wherein the form shineth Therefore in the beginning of generation the Archeus is not as yet lightsome but it is an Air into which the form life or sensitive soul of the generater hath a little twinckled untill it had sufficiently imprinted some shadowie Seal of its brightness Which Air being greedy of the splendor felt in the generater once and shadowily conceived in it self intends by every way possible for it to organize the body or fit it with Instruments for the receiving of that light and of the actions depending on that light which way therefore it breathing in desire enfiames it self more and more this thing in a metaphoricall figure is for nature through a desire of self-love to pray seek and knock and runs most perfectly that it may receive that light form or life which at length it obtains not else-where than from him who is the way the truth and vitall light or light of life Whither therefore when the Archeus hath come nor in the mean time can proceed any further and is stayed at length it receives forms from the hand of the Father of Lights after that it hath fully performed its offices Christian Philosophy dictates these things thus which in living Creatures and Plants is made easie to be understood But in Stones Mineralls and Metalls and so in fruits of the water that are without life the same things are fuitably to be interpreted For although this Family doth not propagate by virtue of a seed neither doth send forth its posterity out of it self a Being is not therefore wanting in it which may thorowly bring it unto the appointed bounds of maturity For indeed since nothing doth any where dispose or move it self unless it be a seed it must needes be that whatsoever is generated that hath a disposer within who sits in a soft watery salt clayie c. Air Not indeed that it floweth here or wandereth thorow that masse even as it doth in bruit Beasts or that therefore it dwelleth in a perpetual juyce but the Air is incorporated throughout the whole Body nor varying from the disposition of the fruit produced yea in the number or rank of Mineralls that disposer is almost vitall and sensitive Because Chymicall Adeptists do with one voyce deliver that if the seed of the Stone which maketh Gold being once kept warm in their Egg be afterwards in the least cooled or chilled its conception and progress to a stone would be afterwards desperate which thing seeing it is like to Birds Eggs it also therefore cannot subsist without a sensitive life Truly it is to be wondered at that the Schooles do acknowledge all second matter to flow from a certain universal matter yet that they do not admit immediately to derive every life or all forms from the primitive life and first act of all things To wit to derive all the perfection of things from the universal and super-essential essence of perfection yea rather that they at this day do deride Plato with his principle of the Gods and Avicenna with his Cholcodea Panto-Morphe or goddess of Cholchis that gives a form to all things who nevertheless have far neerer saluted the truth in this thing than Christians who maintain that the very lives substantial forms and essential thinglinesses of things are produced by the aspiration or influence of the Heavens by the endeavour of accidents and the favour of material dispositions I set forth the blindness of the most rare men made under or in a time of light For they think the fire to be a substance and the light to be an accident
is before to please and to please is before to displease and nothing can displease or wish for a successive change but as a pleasure being gotten and known something more perfect possibly also better is shewen For in the more crude seeds which nave conceived their first ferments by Odours the Odour goes before the complacency or good pleasure but this doth generate a desire of it self and of a thing remaining But in things possible desire causeth the same appetite of remaining but not of perishing by the changing of its Being But if indeed by reason of the hidden impediments of death a permanency is not granted there is made a dissolution in Bodies but thence a weariness but from weariness there is a proceeding to a remove or change through the ruling virtue by degrees declining from whence at length destruction is not intended but following after through necessities It belonged to the Schooles to have known that to be doth alwayes go before a wearisomness unto a non-being because this wearisomness is not of the intent of nature but rather an imaginary Metaphor or translation succeeding upon the defects of things At least that this wearisomness ought to precede the desire to a non-being And much more a desire to a new Being and unknown to it self Seeing a new Being is not granted before the death of the present Being In brief because also the wearinesses of the displacency of the appetite do but dreamingly agree to a non-being And at length because from dreaming principles so absurd nothing is to be exspected besides errours full of confusion Therefore successive change in nature is not from the desire of the matter but from the power of the efficient Vulcan Wherein the Odour and Savour of the middle life do generate a seminall Image the beginning of transmutation For neither are the Schooles as yet constant enough to themselves in that appetite of the matter yea the Schooles do not seem to have taught the speculative principles of nature for the service of the truth For truly when they descend to the things themselves they do no more blame the appetite of the matter for the corruption of a thing but they blame the Air as the effecter of all corruptions whatsoever But I know that many things are dried under Air which otherwise under the Earth or water do putrifie presently For truly Glasse the last of things putrefiable doth in the Air main as it were for ever But being buried after some years it admits of a putrifying through continuance is covered or enrowled with a Crust its Salt being dissolved it decayes and its constitutive Sand remaineth The Air is a Case in whose porosities some things do dispose themselves into successive alterations some things under the water and many things also under the Earth according to the dispositions of the seeds For truly those things which do spinkle from themselves an Odour do loose the same by the flowing and snatching wind or the Vessel being close shut they do retain the same within For if the former the pores of Bodies being afterwards empty they do receive Air which being there enclosed doth putrifie through continuance with the odourable thing whence the residue of the Odour doth receive a ferment doth draw a warerish filthiness from the said putrefaction by continuance and becomes rank or muckie But if the latter comes to passe then the Air there detained doth cause the composed Body to putrifie by continuance and brings it to corruption unless the odourable Body hath the properties of a Balsam because a new ferment thinks of a successive change Volatile or exhalable and swift flying things do easily decay because for the most part they have a diversity of kindes through want whereof distilled things are scarce corrupted one whereof doth ferment or leaven another from their true Element they are even choaked and do putrifie through continuance or do conceive an air as before Therefore the ferment changeth the thing as it alters its Odour according to the essence of the matter imprinting of the Vessel of the place or of the thing adjoyned which things I prove by this Handicraft-operation For truly I do preserve the broaths of fleshes of Fruits even as also any boyled things otherwise soon subject to corrupt for years from corruption so that I shall poure a balsamicall ferment into the Air and that ferment being continued I shall restrain it With me therefore corruption is thus as I have said Forms are never corrupted they die indeed onely the minde of man departeth safe but all other forms do perish But matter neither departeth nor dieth but is corrupted And so corruption is onely of the matter Therefore corruption is a certain disposition of the matter left behinde by the ruling Vulcan decaying For as the Body saileth its Ruler or Pilots being in good health it being safe doth not hearken unto strange ferments Neither is corruption therefore to be numbred among privative things if it consist of positive causes Wherefore another Beginning of Aristotle in nature falls to the ground For truly the Archeus is not of his own accord taken away dispersed changed or estranged unless by a new one troubling him under another ferment Therefore strange ferments are chief over all corruptions and by the interchangeable courses of ferments all corruption begins doth by little and little ascend unto a degree and pitch and at length having obtained its period is terminated For there are some things in whom the proper lust of their seeds is wanton and calls them away from the tenour of constancy to undergo the transmutations of successive changes not indeed by reason of a desire to another form but because the implanted Balsam of nature is easily blown away and perisheth as are fleshes and Fishes But others do change their Wedlock not without a putrifying being first stirred up and do put on the careful governments of new seeds As are Woods Stones and Glasse which is most constant in fire Among which they do interpose in a middle degree for whom the touchings of the place do cover their Superficies with a hoary putrefaction or mouldiness From whence Odours being dispersed they do disjoyn the Wedlocks of the antient seeds and meditate of a new Generation by dissolving It is a mark naturall or proper to the Air uncessantly to seperate the waters from the waters and there are many things which do not endure such a successive alteration without a spot or corruption hence therefore they do most immediately slide into a sudden disorder Therefore corruption as it includes an extinguishing of the naturall Balsam so the constancy of a thing desires its continuance for in such things whose Balsam doth voluntarily flow forth or expire it being joyned to fixed things they are seasoned therewith it sticks fast is restrained by the bolts of dryness or at leastwise is nourished by a predominating ferment that is no stranger to the disposition of a Balsam For so sweet things
themselves by the same right concoct for themselves and are thereby nourished For truly in this humour every part lives in its own Orbe and every part hath a singular Cook-room in it self for it self But besides even till a certain age and measure inbred in the Seeds of things the nourishment departs into increase Then it stayeth and is no more mixed with its first constituters And therefore this nourishment is opposed onely for the retarding of the dryness of old age even unto the closure of life This indeed is the distribution of the digestions and Regions of the Body among the Antients and modern Schooles which hath never seemed to me to be sufficient but full of ignorance because it is that which besides rude observations hath brought no light unto the art of healing CHAP. XXVIII A six-fold digestion of humane nourishment 1. The miserable boastings of the Galenists 2. Whence the first dissolution of the meat is 3. A sharpness being obtained is presently changed into a salt Salt 4. The use of the gut Duodenum neglected in the Schools 5. Sharpness or soureness out of the stomach doth hurt us 6. The variety and incompatibility or mutual unsufferableness of the Ferments 7. An example of that ready exchanging 8. Nothing like a Ferment doth meet us elsewhere 9. The volatileness of sharpness doth remain in a salt product 10. The latitude in Ferments 11. Whence it is known that the first Ferment is a forreigner to the Stomach 12. Why Sawces do stand in sharpness 13. Sharpness is not the Ferment it self but the Instrument of the same 14. Too much sharpness of the Stomach is from its vice 15. A receding from the Schools in the examination of the Gaul 16. That Choler is not made of meats 17. That the Gaul is not an excrement but a bowel 18. The membrane of the wombe is a bowel even as also that of the Stomach 19. Why the Gaul and Liver are connexed 20. What may be the stomach of the Liver 21. VVhy it goes before the Ferment of the Gaul and is the second digestion 22. VVhy the venal bloud in the Mesentery doth as yet want threds neither therefore doth it wax clotty 23. The wombe of the Vrine and the wombe of Duelech or the Stone in man are distinct 24. The stomach of the Gaul and its Region 25. The rotten opinion of the Schools concerning the rise of the Gaul and its use 26. Nature had been more careful for the Gaul its enemy than for Phlegme its friend 27. The separation of the Vrine differs from the separation of wheyiness out of milk 28. The second and third digestions are begun at once although the third be more slowly perfected 29. What the stomach of the Gaul is 30. The Gaul doth import more than to be chief over an excrement 31. Birds want a Kidney and Vrine but not a Gaul 32. Fishes also do prove greater necessities of a Gaul than of filths or excrements 33. That the Schools are deceived in the use of the Gaul 44. The Liquor of the Gaul with its membrane being a noble bowel doth now and then banish its superfluity into the gut Duodenum 35. How excrements do obtain the heat of the Gaul yet are not therefore choler or gaul 36. The proper savour of the dung doth exclude the gaul and fiction of choler 37. Gauls seem what they are not 38. Whence the vein hath it that even after the death of a man it doth preserve the venal bloud from coagulating 39. The extream rashness of the Schooles 40. The solving of an Objection 41. It is proved by many Arguments that the veins of the stomach do not attract any thing to themselves out of the Chyle 42. The Authour is dissented from the Schools in respect of the bounds of the first Region in the Body 43. The true shop of the bloud is not properly in the passage of the Liver 44. The action of a Ferment doth act onely by inbreathing neither doth it want a corporeal touching 45. The absurd consequences upon the positions of the Schools concerning touching and continual nourishing warmth 46. The Ferments of the Gaul and Liver do perform their offices by in-breathing 47. Why Flatus's or windy blasts do not pierce an Entrail 48. The Errour of Paracelsus about the pores of the Bladder 49. The first digestion doth not yet formally transchange meats 50. Where the absolute transmutation of meats is compleated 51. It is false that nourishment is not to be granted without an excrement 52. It is false that the stomach doth first boil for it self and secondarily for the whole Body 53. The Gaul hath the nature of a Balsam 54. A miserable objection 55. The Gaul taken for a Balsam in the holy Scriptures 56. Against the Gaul of the Jaundise 57. Two Idiotisms in Paracelsus 58. How the Salt of the Sea is separated from Salt-peter 59. Out of water there is Vinegar 60. The fourth digestion and Region of the Body 61. Why the heart is eared 62. The fifth digestion 63. That the vapour in the venal bloud is not yet a Skyie Spirit 64. The nourishing of the flesh and the bowels is distinguished 65. That the Animal Spirit doth not differ in the Species from the vital 66. The fourth and fifth digestions do want excrements 67. What the sixth digestion is 68. The Diseases in the sixth digestion are neglected by the Schools because not understood 69. In the designing of the Kitchin and Shop there are some errours of the Schools 70. Why an Artery doth for the most part accompany a vein 71. Paracelsus is noted 72. The errour of Fernelius concerning Butter 73. The rashness of Paracelsus concerning Milk 74. A censure or judgement of Milk 75. The best manner of drawing forth Goats bloud 76. An undoubted curing of the Pleurisie without cutting of a vein 77. Why Asses milk is to be preferred before other Milks 78. The education of a Child for a long and healthy life 79. Some things worthy to be noted concerning the Vrine 80. Why dropsical persons are more thirsty than those that have a hectick Fever 81. The proper place of the Ferment of the Dung is even as in a Wolf 82. The proper nest of Worms and the History of the same 83. The difference of Ascarides from VVorms 84. That a Clyster is injected in vain for nourishment sake I Have observed notable abuses committed throughout the whole description of Functions or of the use of parts Although Galen doth not more gloriously triumph in any place than in the Treatise of Pulses and in the use of parts the which notwithstanding the modern Anatomists do shew that he never thorowly considered wherefore it is altogether probable that without the knowledge and searching out of the truth these Treatises described by Galen from elsewhere and prostituted for his own are as yet to this day worshipped in the Schools Wherefore I have premised the digestions which Antiquity hath hitherto known and hath confirmed
in us its antient and unchanged principles of coagulating a diseasie Tartar or if it shall not lay aside the properties of Tartar while it was made an Herb while Chyle Cream Bloud and at length Milk why doth it not shew it self an open enemy For neither doth Phylosophy permit that it should be both a Tartar and also a Cabbage or at length living arterial bloud and Tartar also Wherefore if Tartar hath lost its own essence and departed into a strange one it could not have retained its own and much lesse rather have passed in us from a privation unto a habit than in Herbs than in Bruits At length if there be real Tartar in things surely that should be persevering through all the transmutations of a Body nor suffering any thing by the powers of sublunary things which should suffer nothing at all by so many transmutations succeeding each other unless being taken by us alone But this is absurd to endow any thing with the excrements of perpetuity which should not be familiar to their pure Being yea either a field that is dunged Rape roots springing a fourth time therein should bring forth fruits laden with no Tartar at all or it is absurd that at the third or fourth turn Tartar should even manifest it self before it be hidden Moreover if every growing or increasing thing should have a proper and unseparable Tartar in it that in us onely but not in the Milk and Bloud of bruit Beasts Tartar by an appointment should be made it should needs be that Tartar began from the beginning of the Creation and not from the reproof of sin But if Tartar should not be in other Creatures but onely in us now its original should be supernatural and no Disease should be natural but every Disease should arise from a Miracle and our digestion should be viler and life shorter than that of the vilest little Beast whereof to wit there is a digestion unto a true transmutation and in respect of them all Tartars of meats do remain miraculously changed in its first matter This I say Phylosophy destroyes which teacheth that a transmutation is never made without the death and decease of the former Being and the destruction of the terme from whence to wit least one onely thing should consist to be in two terms or bounds at once For that the juyce of an Herb may be made venal bloud the essence of the arterial bloud of the Herb must needs first perish with the properties of its own Archeus and for this cause also all Tartar to perish in every transmutation of things VVhat if Stones in Cherries Peachies Medlers Peares c. be the created Tartars of those fruits surely they ought rather to have been brought on the Stage of Tartars and into the causes of diseases than the very Tartar of Wine it self which is resolved in boyling water Also the Medicinal Schools should be wicked and pernicious who do give the shells of those Fruits to drink to their sick folks in manner of a Powder in as much as whatsoever should melt through our digestions should contain Tartar and therefore should necessarily increase our Stones And moreover Tartar being granted for the cause of Diseases of necessity a Kernel had before sin been in a Cherry without a shell and so every created thing after sin had been forthwith changed even unto the Sciences and Idea's of Seeds and had put off its former disposition and figure and should presently increase from the curse and not from the virtue of the blessing Increase and multiply Therefore are the shels of those Fruits vainly adorned with so great a grace are sealed by providence and do keep every where a specifical sameliness if they are the off-springs and Reliques of excrements or Tartars if they are not the appointed works of Seeds but the accidental structures of Tartar So also thorow the stalk of a Cherry surely a small thred a Liquor should passe the future Tartar of so great a hardening which had never grown together in the stalk or body of its Cherry but onely about the Kernel And moreover the appointment of Nature is rather and more prime about the skin and shell of the Cherry than about its Winy juyce And so nature should intend an excrement before the thing it self But in us onely by the co-touching of the teeth Tartar should straightway wax hard Also Tartar should exceed in a notable knowledge because it being taken doth not yet wander thorow the Plant nor also while it being chewed by a bruit Beast is it wasted or grinded but being in the possession of man alone should be formed into Tartar but elsewhere it will not or knowes not how to be coagulated Truly if in Fruits Tartar doth not follow its own appointments but first onely in man I can scarce believe that this Command was enjoyned it by God while it enters into us in manner of meat But rather if any thing of meats doth degenerate within from the banishment of that which was accustomed in nature let that be our vice not the vice of things great with child of Tartar But if Tartar should lay hid in things the errour should be in the Archeus from the ignorance of the Lawes of his own nature Let that be an absurdity to wit to deny that through digestion the thing digested and transchanged from the former visage and inclination of its seed can be changed into the nature of the digester For indeed by one onely and homogeneal juyce four hundred herbs and as many diverse trees are sumptuously nourished not indeed that from that similar juice that is separated for wood which containeth more of Rozin and a stronger cream and as many separations of the same juice of the earth are made as there are diversities in the aforesaid plants far be it That is unworthy of the Archeus who hath fully known the office of his own life and hath obtained means for the perfecting those things which are to be done by himself in the matter subjected to him For not any thing is separated from the seeds for a root stalk leaf flesh bone or brain The diversity of members is not drawn from the truth of a simple liquor for the Archeus wanteth not a little and unperceivable diversity thereof in seeds on whose power every interchangeable course doth depend and of which fore-existing disposition indeed the Archeus himself is the principal and one onely workman to wit from the same Vulcan the diversities of things do issue forth no lesse than the properties of diversities for else the Archeus should not be a transchanger but onely a ripener and cook For was not wood a juice in its beginning and so a meer herby liquor waxed hard by a seminal virtue but not by a fore-existing hardnesse in the matter That also of Paracelsus is absurd that although material dispositions the causes of heterogeneal members do not actually exist at least wise there is a spiritual humane Idea in
undigestions as they do contain strange or forreign things But they do not therefore materially contain Duelech in them altbough they do occasionally destroy digestion do imprint a rockie middle life whence the enfeebled vegetative faculty of man puts on that wild inclination But that makes nothing for the Author of Tartars For truly it is a far different thing to be made stony occasionally from a stonifying virtue of the middle life of things imprintingly and sealingly introduced into the Archeus and to be made to have the stone from Tartar melted and resolved in waters which at length in the period of dayes may re-assume its former coagulation in the drinker For this latter to be in Nature I deny but the former I affirm to be among ordinary effects But as concerning Strumaes or Kings-Evil-swellings in the Neck and swelling pimples in the face many think that they proceed from mineral waters being drunk also Paracelsus from the use of waters of an evil juyce or disposition But I could wish according to the mans own Doctrine that he may shew by the fire those evil juyces in waters whose property it is to be coagulated onely in our last digestion nor elsewhere than about the neck or throat-bone But I know that he never found in waters such a Tartar Therefore he may be condemned by his own Law wherein he gives a caution that none is to be believed but so far as he is able to demonstrate that thing by the fire I confess indeed that there is in the water a middle life whose property it is to stir up the Archeus and to infect it in the exchanging of good nourishment but not of a forreign Tartar existing in it materially into a Rockie hardness But unto Strumaes a matter is required which by the property of its own Archeus may be bred to stop up our jawes and as it were to strangle us and that without the tast of astriction or an earthly sharpness or harshness for otherwise this tast sticking fast in the bosom of the matter being ripened by the first digestion dieth and which being transchanged into nourishment and retaining the antient virtues of the middle life performs its power more about the throat than elsewhere which power being left to it by an heredicary right in nourishments and from hence in the venal bloud doth convert the nearest nourishment of solid Bodies into a Rockie excrement which goes unto the throat by a strangling faculty of the directer And I narrowly examining that thing in Germany have found Mushromes to be strong in the aforesaid poyson of strangling and that those do often grow out of the Root of a Fountain the Fir-tree and Pine-trees in steep Rocks toward the North where black Agarick an Heir of the same crime is often in the Trunk or Stem I have learned therefore that the whole Leffas or Planty juyce of the Earth is there defiled with a Mushromy disposition Therefore I have believed that hard swellings of the Neck are bred by the use of Herbs and waters which have drunk in this sort of Leffas Furthermore that an Archeal power of the middle life in things doth beget Strumaes but not a reviving ill juycy Tartar of the water the thing it self doth speak For otherwise a Struma should bewray it self no lesse in the bottom of the Belly and Liver nor more slowly than in the throat For River or ill juicy waters do not respect the throat nor should promise so great hardness Not surely should the hard swelling of the neck or throat dissolve by an astrictive and earthy Remedy whereby I have many times seen very great Strumaes or hard swellings of the Neck to have vanished away in one onely month and the strangling suddenly brought on people by a poysonous Mushrome to be cured which Remedy is on this wise Take of Sea-Sponge burnt up into a Coal 3 ounces of the bone of the Fish Sepia burnt long Pepper Ginger Pellitory of Spain Gauls Sal gemmae calcined Egg-shels of each 1 ounce mix them with the stilled water of the aforesaid Spongei and let it be dried up by degrees Take of this Powder half a dram with half an ounce of Sugar the Moon decreasing that it being melted by degrees may be swallowed Or make a Lincture or Lohoch It shall also disperse Botium or the swelling pimpâ—â— in the face Others for want of the Sponge did take the hairy excrescency growing on wild Rose-Trees very like to the outward Rhine of the Chesnut rough and briery or hairy the powder of which alone they did use succesfully Likewise I have used an unction in Strumaes and Schirrus's Of Oyl of Bay not adulterated by Hogs-grease 8 ounces of Olibanum Mastich Gum Arabick Rosin of the Fir-tree of each 3 ounces distil them then distil them again with Pot-Ashes If therefore the hard swelling of the Neck or a hard Scirrhus elsewhere should grow together from a forreign Tartar it should rather wax hard by hot Remedies neither should it be so easily dissolved Therefore the Struma is a defect of the Archeus the transchanger and not through the coagulation of Tartar even as concerning Duelech or the stone in man I have more clearly and abundantly demonstrated For the Archeus transchangeth every masse subjected unto him unless being overcome by a more powerful middle life he shall give place Therefore the Strama is of good venal bloud on which a strangling power of the middle life is felt And Botium or the swelling pimple of the face a remedy being taken perisheth which is not for dissolving a Rockie matter if it were of Tartar brought over thither otherwise it is altogether impossible that Tartar if there should be any should conceive a breathing hole of our life be made lively be co-sitted to the members and be admitted inwards unto the last digestion conceive a ferment of the Arterial bloud but to be discussed or blown away by an unsensible transpiration as also Schirrhus's bred of vital venal bloud the aforesaid Remedy being administred But besides the contention is not about the Asses shadow for truly it is not all one to have denied Tartar to be materially in meats and drinks and likewise to remain throughout the shops of the digestions and therefore at length to be coagulated in miserable men and it is far remote from thence to admit of a thing in us to be transchanged out of a good Cream Chyle or venal bloud into an evil one by virtue of the middle life transplanting the directions of the Archeus For as there is one order of generation so also is there every where another of fore-caution and healing Therefore there is no foundation truth appearance or necessity of tartarizing For which way doth it conduce to devise Tartar to be the stubborn Prince of coagulations which oweth his Birth to a fiction For truly the dispositions coagulations and resolutions of things do depend on their own Seeds Duelech is made no lesse of the purest
the Brain But the Schools elsewhere when they noted that from yesterdayes gluttony giddinesses of the Head have arisen in the morning they had rather to have the matter of Diseases to be conveighed into the Brain in a right line out of the stomach in the likeness of vapours through unnamed Trunks and the throat And so black Choler according to Hippocrates to be brought sometimes into the body of the Brain and to bring forth the falling-Evil or else into the Soul it self and then to cause the passion of hypochondrial madness And that by uncertain passages conveighers and unto certain scopes or objects But seeing one onely melancholy humour should be unfit for so great evils it was doubted in the Schools afterwards not indeed in a Quaternary of humours now antiently established in the malice of humours as yet not searched out but undiscerned For least they should be pressed with the straightnosses and samelinesses of passages not satisfying so great a variety they fled unto fumes and vapours that the various fumes of one black Choler should pierce into the bosom of the Brain and stir up diverse cruelties And they have safely covered these toyes from credulous young beginners they being secure that they were never to be compelled unto a designing and beholding of those fumes In the mean time the Schools are worthy of compassion that in so great a sluggishness of narrowly searching into the truth hitherto they are compelled unto so miserable straights but surely the sick are more worthy of pity who have suffered such helpers hired for much money unto the dest uction of their life Because such Patients be more inferiour and miserable than such Agents Therefore the Schools have neglected the matter of so diverse poysons besieging the Head and life But they being heedless have passed over the application of that matter unto the life to wit that a diseasie occasional cause should stir up a diseasie Agent and the immediate and whole mentioning of this History no lesse than the consideration thereof Likewise also they have therefore dis-esteemed the manner of making a Disease and of deriving the poysonous activity unto the vital object To wit because they have been wholly ignorant of the sink from whence those poysons should be derived and have passed it by as a thing altogether unheard of Because they have neglected the proper action of the Family-government of man without the knowledge of which notwithstanding nothing of those things which do befall us within can be known For onely the action of the Agent on the Patient hath been known in the Schools the which indeed they would have to be made with a certain circumventing or invasion with a strife and reacting of the Patient and with a weakening and re-suffering of the Agent But there is a certain action far different from the former whereof Predecessours have never made mention which I call the Action of Government which indeed is not onely made without suspition of re-acting but also without a bodily co-touching and therefore it hath its supposed object at a distance and separated It is called magnetical and sympathetical or attractive and co-passionate being derided by the modern Schools when it consisteth between objects at a distance in place but when it is circumscribed in our Body as a difference from a Magnetisme or an attractive virtue I call it the action of a meer government wherein the Agent disposeth of his proper patient or object of his own Sphere as of an Client of a hereditary right according to an ordination of Laws inbred in him subjected by a Symbole or mark of resemblance Indeed let the Agent be the Tutor here and the Patient be in his minority And there is a co-like action of the Stars in the Universe as well on each other as on sublunary bodies The which seeing without controversie it is there influential yet in sublunary things it hath been undeservedly suspected and so hitherto barren and neglected But our present action of government is not the action which the Schools have acknowledged to be a consent of parts or by a conspiracy of offices and necessities For truly government doth not require a consent It is therefore first of all a deceiptful name and therefore it either contains a mask or besides a deceit or juggle a Fable that is it containeth nothing For in very deed they will have this consent to be stirred up required wrested back by Fumes Channels Conduits or threddy fibers which as they are not in nature nor are there required So also they have nothing common with the action of government For the Schools do no where admit of the action of an Agent unless it be applied to the Patient by a mean in a continued channel as it were by a Chain They deny I say a continuation of virtue extended by the sameliness of a mean unless it be brought or conveighed unto its proper suffering object by a certain Trunk And especially in the Body of man they decree nothing to be done without a communication of passages And this hath been that continued yet ridiculous necessity of revulsions and derivations amongst them Truly by this inducement Anatomy hath been garnished for the Body of man as if it were the undoubted betokener and healer of all Diseases For hitherto they have taken so great pains therein that the Schools having forgotten their own Galen do measure him to be a true Physitian who shall point out most in the filths of dead Carcases and who shall certainly finde by his own knife those things which are published by Predecessors in this respect even unto superstition And the errour of so superfluous a curiosity and pride of unsound Doctrine praysed by the ignorance of the Schools is to be judged to have been brought in by the spirits of giddiness and the Authour of dark dimness for unto whom it is acceptable under what Title soever we loose our time unfruitfully For it was sufficient for Anatomy to have known the scituation co-knitting and uses of the parts but not to have exercised a butchery on dead Carkases all ones life-time to finde out the passages or conduits of the least vein For truly they have regard unto a vain and sordid boasting wherein the most pretious race of our life is unfruitfully consumed For in truth the knowing and Phylosophical preparation of Simples require almost the whole life of the whole man to themselves For indeed seeing one muscle ought to be moved another being in the mean time quiet the chief Judge or Arbitrator of things hath appointed interchangeable courses of Organs so that the command of our will should be declared in the muscles by deputed sinews onely but that by the muscles and bones it should be put in execution From hence the Schools have thought that therefore all our actions are made by nothing but a co-chained thred of Organs or Instruments through the far-of sequestred and divided Families of the members neither have they
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
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
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
manifest how most nearly a single Life doth come unto the Primitive state of Innocency and so that also from thence we may learn that the intention of the Creator was in a single Life For now and then that word of Truth comes into my mind which requireth the state of little Children in those that are to be saved under the penalty of infernal punishment and that we must despair of Salvation unless we are made or become like unto them In whom notwithstanding I find a suddain speedy undiscreet and frequent anger stripes kickings lyes disobediences murmurings reproaches a ready deceit and lying in play an unsatiable Throat impudence disturbances disdaines unconstancy and a stupid innocency lastly no acts of devotion attention or contribution But yet those are not the things in little ones which are required for those that are to be saved under pain of an Eternal loss In the next place neither do little Children want their pride of Life and despising of others and especially their hatred of the poor also a frequent desire of revenge cruelty an itch of getting or attaining the concupiscence of the Eyes and are wholly and perpetually addicted to and drowned in self-love But neither are those the things required in them that are to besaved under Gods indignation But they want the concupiscence of the Flesh alone This indeed is the Mark which with so loud sounds it required for those that are to be saved Because it is that which was of a primitive intention in Creation And therefore from an opposite sense I argue That the chief fault of the Fall of the Apple being eaten was convenant about the infringement of that chast bashfulness that is that Original sin was scituated in the breaking of Virginity in the act of Concupiscence and propagation of feed But not in the very act of disobedience and despised Admonition and distrust of the truth of the divine Word For B. Hildegard also in the Third Book of her Life seemeth to have testified the same thing The Author saith She freed the Matron Sibylla of the City of Lausaâ—ium beyond the Alpes who required her help by a Messenger from a daily Issue of Blood by the subscribed Letters being sent unto her Thou shalt put these words between thy Breast and 〈◊〉 in the 〈◊〉 of him who rightly disposeth all things In the Blood of Adam arose Death In the Blooâ— of Christ Death is extinguished In the same Blood of Christ I command thee Oh Blood that thou contain or stop thy Flux And the Matron was cured by these written Words the which others have many times experienced Therefore Death was extinguished by the effusion of the Blood of Christ and the particiâ—â—â—â—on thereof in being born again that is by the offering up of Chastity to God the Father for those that are to be renewed in his Blood And moreover if we do well mind it is acknowledged that God hath loved women before Men in their Sex by reason of an inbred bashfulness Unto which Sex therefore he hath freely given Devotion as a gift of Nature whereby â—ere should be some kind of natural faculty and virtue proper to that Sex a Medium unto Salvation For the first Apostoless before the coming of the Comforter by one onely Sermon converted Samaria the head of the Israelitish Kingdom otherwise most stubborn Only the Women from Galilee being constantly although disgracefully serviceable adered to Christ at his Death and under all ignomiâ—â—y he being left by his disciples the witesses of so many Miracles and that at the first blast of adversity For the poor Women rejoyced in their reproaches so they might but follow Christ carrying his Cross upon his back Magdalen also first preached the Gospel of his Resurrection unto her own who did not believe and confirmed them in Faith who doubted and deserved to be the first beholder of Christ after his Death because she sought the same with the fervor of the greatest Devotion God I say hath heaped very many Diseases Adversities and Subjections on this Sex that it should be by so much the more like and nearer to his Son But the World despiseth Women and preferreth Men But in most things the Judgements of God are opposite unto the Judgements of the World so that also the World despiseth the Poor of whom Christ calleth himself the Father but not of the Rich. Then in the next place Christ calls himself in many places The Son of Man But seeing he had not a Man unto his Father therefore by an Antonomâ—sia he calls the Woman the Virgin Man by an absolute dignity of Name and worthy of or beseeming the Femal Sex as if for that reason the name Man ought thenceforth after sin to be proportioned and stands for the Woman in the more famous signification Shewing at leastwise that in thing the Mother-Virgin was after the sin of Adam the one onely Man such as the Divinity had espoused unto it self in the Creation of the Universe for the replenishing of the places laid waste by the Evil Spirit And that what Eve ceased to be through an infringing of Chastity that Mary the most glorious Virgin was to wit The one only Mother of those that are to be saved in the Regeneration of Purity But neither 〈◊〉 I undertaken a laudatory Oration in behalf of that Sex Only it is sufficient to have shewn that God hath loved the Femal Sex by reason of its love of Chastity For a Virgin thinâ—â— on the things of her God The Apostle also Commands Widows which are truly Widows to be honoured And in the old Law those were reckoned impure as many as even conjugally had known their Wives if they were not seriously washed and were to be driven from the Temple unless they were first duly rinsed He also violently fell by a sudden Death because such an impure Man although from a good zeal put his hand to the tottering Cart wherein the Ark of the Covenant the Image of the God-bearing-Virgin was carried Indeed on both sides the Truth being agreeable to it self doth detest and attest the filthyness of impure Adamical generation For the Impurity which had conceived a contagion from any natural Issue whatsoever of Menstrues or Seed and that by its touching alone is reckoned to be equal to that which should by degrees creep on a person from a co-touching of dead Carcasses and to be expiated by the same ceremonious right That the Text might agreeably denote that Death began from the Concupiscence of the Flesh lying hid in the fruit of the Apple Therefore also the one only healing Medicine of so great an impurity contracted by touching consisted in washing under the likeness whereof Faith and Hope which in Baptisme were poured into us are strengthened For as soon as Adam had known by Fratricide that the first-born of Mortals whom he had begotten in the Concupiscence of the Flesh had slain his guiltless and righteous Brother and fore-seeing the wicked Errors of
far more hard than those and in its Mine more separated from the mouth should refuse the inbred foot-step of dryness and a conceived hardness and then that it shall give up its name for a Clientship unto those Remedies And therefore whatsoever thing resisting the second and third qualities shall not obey a Medicine that being as it were untamed with the Elke and as it were Monstrous being harder than a Club and Fatal is Assigned to the Catalogue of uncurable Diseases From whence we may understand that the whole Method of curing the Stones doth stand committed not unto a perfect but onely unto a dissembled healing For truly they have earnestly laboured hitherto in nothing but in excluding the Stone already made but they have in no wise gone to prevent it in the making as neither hath any thing been consulted of for the rooting out of the impression or ready inclination to the Stone Therefore the curing of the relapses of the threatning stones hath remained imperfect As if by reason of that other Diseases cryed Triumph because that Providence being sufficient for all ends should seem to have dealt more liberally with them but that for the one Treacherous Lurker the Stone as having Hostilely and Traiterously entred it had refused Remedies But now I will give you the Decrees of Juniours by their Ranks or Orders And first indeed it shall not be for a Vice to have declined from their appointed Rules when as even hitherto we observe their Aids to be for the most part uncertain and do experience nothing but a feeble help and seeing our purpose is concerning the Life and safety of our Neighbours For if other Arts do profit dayly there is no reason as if the Virtue of our Mind were barren in us why the Rules of Predecessours should deter us from a further search into the truth and should thrust us into despair For by the onely Decree of Aristotle That we must not dispute against him that denies Principles Phylosophy being brought into obscurity hath so remained For if we following the Flock of those that went before us not because we must go so but because it hath been so gone must not command likewise neither must we be servants to the most free gifts of judgement The Fire therefore which is the finder out of Arts doth perfectly teach those of Hermes School by Mechanical and manifest workmanships That the Original of the Stone doth not consist of the matter and efficient cause assigned For neither for that reason is it a wonder that the causes being not sufficiently known improvident and unlike counsels have been hitherto described for this grief As to what therefore concerns its material Cause that is a certain Stonifying juice for for want of a true word of expression it is so called by me so intimately besprinkled on very many Liquours that it may seem to be well nigh Natural unto the same neither is it otherwise subject unto a Divorce than for that Cause of Calaâ—â—ties that it may render us perpetually mindful of our thousand-fold frailty Therefore it is not a muckie Snivel not Phlegm In the next place we do not think that any Excrement or Putrifyable thing of ours hath suggested a matter for the Stone but it is an Excrement of things a Traytor we have called it Tartar perfecting its Tragedy within by a Hostile Coagulation the which when it is not rightly separated in the Sheaths Dedicated unto the separation of an Excrement surely it creeps inwards as being mixt with the Natural and Vital Juices But it being at length called back unto examination because it is plainly unfit and uneffectual for Assimilation and the information of the Soul it either goes forth together with the Urine as it were repenting of its conceived Treason or if it shall the more subtilly marry the Vital nourishment it more inwardly or fully enters and presently after the time of its Digestion brings forth the dissociable affects of its own Family in us and Monstrous Conditions and Ensigns plainly Tyrannical whereunto Nature being at length trodden under foot is compelled to hearken All which things shall appear even by one onely and that not a Forreign Example For it is easie to be seen that every one of us being also very well constituted or in a very good frame of Body do send forth a Healthy Yellow Coloured clear Urine void of Sediment and Muckiness the which if it doth also happen to be the longer kept even in a clear Glass yet the space of some hours afterwards being passed we from thenceforth call it a Stony Urine because on every side above and beneath throughout the whole Jurisdiction of the Urine the Urinal is infected with a thin sand adhering to its sides oh what more plainly than the Tartar of Wine hath given the name of a Coagulable otherwise a Forreign excrement in us notwithstanding neither was there therefore any presence of a more grosse visible Lee nor were there any Testimonies of heat present especially while that Sand became Conspicuous For truly the Urin had already long before waxed cold before it had consulted of Coagulating But yet there is on both sides the like Reason Essence Cause and Property of the Stone arisen in us with that which of the same Identity and material subject is Coagulated abroad in the Urine about the Urinal I will add further that some detain their Urine for honesties sake for some hours without any appearance of Sands the which Urine notwithstanding being received in a Glass hath without all doubt separated its Stone in an equal time From hence therefore at least-wise it follows that the sliminess of matter is not for the material Cause of the Stone truly it consists in the Race or off-spring of a more hidden and therefore of a deeper search in Nature than that we should think its Natural Generation to be enclosed in sliminesses and the first qualities alone For whatsoever things are made in Nature we must reckon them to be made from a necessity and Flux of a Seed The Seeds therefore of Stones do lay hidden in the Juices until at length the Flux of the Seed being ripened the last Ordination or end of the same breaks forth into Act. Therefore we have taught above that the Stone owes it Family unto nought but a Stonifiable Juice after the Similitude of Fountains in the greater world And therefore they Err who contend that a Juice doth arise in the most clear and transparent Waters being furnished with a Stonifying Power as not seeing so being ignorant that a Stone doth arise in Phlegmatick Clayinesses and Muckinesses For truly that is not to savour any thing beyond Sense nor beyond Rusticks Wherefore an Analysis or solution by the fire is to be undertaken the which indeed as it proposeth a disclosure of Bodies so a certain Conjuncture of the same before our Eyes and promiseth a Man more certainty in his Study than the vain Dreamed Doctrine which from
was presently cold they thought that those in-blown Spirits were the beginning Center and primitive sunny point and that of heat not regarding that the Spirits themselves are of themselves cold and that their heat doth perish in an instant as soon as they are snatcht away from the beam and aid of the heart A very great wonder it is that it hath been hitherto unknown and undetermined unto what heats the whole Tragedy of things vital and not vital is ascribed Whether of the two may prevail over the other in the original and support of heat For seeing neither the heart nor vital spirit of the same are from their own nature and substance originally hot for this cause it hath not been so much as once thought from whence our heat comes or from what original it is in every one of us For seeing the knowledge of ones self is the chief of Sciences as well in Moral as Natural things the Schools ought never to have been ashamed to have enquired into the Fountain of Heat and Life in things How great darkness hath from thence remained in Healing and in preserving of the Life God hath known This controversie therefore I have discussed with my self from my youth after this manner First I knew that fire even as in the Chapter of Forms was not an Accident nor a Substance and much less an Element The which I have elsewhere demonstrated with a full sail of Phylosophy And then that the Sun was hot from a proper endowment and that the fire of the Kitchin was likewise given although for the workman and a death subjected to the hands of Artificers But when as both of them forsake us that we have a Flint and a Steel from whence we make a fire To wit we strike fire out of two cold or dead things So also the waters of hot Baths under the earth are enflamed by Salt and Sulphur which are volatile things and that the arterial blood is partly Salt and partly fat and Sulphurous Then in the next place that there ought to be a smiting of Pulses together not indeed for a cooling refreshment as the Schools do otherwise dream but indeed that as butter is made of Milk by charming or shaking of it together So a vital Sulphur of the arterial Blood The which afterwards by a smiting of the same endeavour conceives a Light in the volatile Spirit and a formal or vital Light is propagated as it were Light being taken from Light To wit the salt Spirits and Sulphur of the arterial Blood do by the Pulse rub themselves together in the Sheath of the Heart and a formal Light together with Heat is kindled in the vital Spirit from the Light I say of the most inward and implanted sunny Spirit in which is the Tabernacle of the specifical Sun even unto the Worlds end In this Sun of Man the Aimighty hath placed his Tabernacle and his delights his Kingdom together with all his free gifts But the Light which is conceived by smiting together is not indeed made a new as from a Flint and Iron but it is propagated by the obtainment of matter from the sunny specifical and humane Light or is kindled and enlarged by it It is there indeed universal and vital consisting in the points of a tempered Light and it is in Nature indeed specifical in respect of its production and limited for the Life of Man but it is every way made individual by him who hath placed his vital Tabernacle in the Sun of the Species Out of which Tabernacle he thereby enlightneth every Man that cometh into this World Because the Lord Jesus is after an incomprehensible manner the Light Life Beginning Way Truth and the All of all Things For as the Life cannot subsist for a moment without the lightsome Spirit by which it is enlightned and soulified in the habitation of the Sun So neither can the Soul nor Life in any wise subsist for one only moment without the Grace of the same eternal Light But I have conceived of the quality and intension of Heat resulting from the Light as a whole humane Body weighing perhaps 200 Pounds is hot with an actual warmth and the which without that Light of Life should presently be cold and be a dead Carcass There is therefore so much Heat in the Heart as is sufficient for diffusing warmth through so many Pounds of Water otherwise cold The Life therefore of Species as it consisteth in a simple and ununited Light containes a mystery of divine providence For a fiery Light however by reason of distance it be mitigated and reduced into a nourishing luke-warmth Yet naturally it cannot stop as that it cannot conspire for the top of a connexed Light and so contend for its own ruine or destruction Therefore the Father and dispenser of Lights hath provided who sitting in the Tabernacle of the Sun hath constrained or tied up Lights by Species or particular kindes and bolts Here it is sufficient to have shewn that they are the Reliques and plainly the Blasphemies of Paganish Errour to have said A Man and the Sun doth generate a Man Seeing Life belongs not to the Sun but the Fewels Excitements of sublunary Actions alone as also the necessary supplies readily serviceable to the Life CHAP. CXIV The nourishing of an Infant for Long Life IT is already manifest that Life is not from the Stars but that from a seminary Faculty of the Parents Life is short Diseasie Healthy and Growing For it is limited according to the Disposition of the Seed and Truncks of the Body no less also according to the goodness of Nourishments and Climates Among the Impediments of Long Life is an infirm Constitution of the Young and a bad nourishing of the Infant The Young therefore being generated and brought forth the quantity and quality of the Nourishment is to be regarded seeing its little Body ought to be nourished and to wax great and so to be setled or confirmed And it is now chiefly known that the nourishable Juice in a Child is adopted into the Inheritance of the radical Moisture For Nature hath appointed Milk in the Dugs for the Meat and Drink of the little Infant which Nourishment hath rendred it self common unto him with Bruit-beasts It might be thought by some that it would be injurious unto God if we should think of any other Nourishment as if he had not alwayes chosen out of Means that which should be most exceeding good But surely shall not the God of Nature be a Step-father and Nature her self a Step-mother because he made not Bread not Wine but Grain and Grapes only Nature is governed by the Finger of God It is thus Milk therefore as an ordinary Nourishment hath afforded a sufficiency for living but not that it should be serviceable for long Life For Nature no longer meditated of long Life after that she knew her Author had cut short the Life nor would have every one to be long lived But he
be grieved at that nothing of these remedies is handed forth to Mortals which is not most miserably adulterated At leastwise I will declare for those that are ingenious That the spirit of the salt of Tartar if it shall dissolve Unicorns-horn Silver Quick-silver the stones of Crabs or some one of those Simples it cures not only a Fever but also many diseases sufficiently But not that I hope that Silver Quick-silver or others of like sort are to pass thorow into the veins It is sufficient for me that that spirit of the Alcali salt being by these bodies reduced into a volatile and coagulable salt and reduced in the shop of the stomack unto the rule of the meats passeth thorow it into the Meseraick veins at least being carried that way by the Urine and by passing thorow them licketh and resolveth the filths there grown through a forreign power assumed to themselves Surely I could willingly communicate many and more easie remedies of like sort if the drowsiness and sluggishness of Physitians had not affrighted my pen who gape only after gain and expose the life of mortal men under the trustiness and desire of lucre of the Apothecary and his wife But as to a Quartane Ague I am wont to drive that away by an Emplaster composed of a few resolving and cleansing Simples neither hath it ever deceived me except that in fat or gross persons the obediences thereof are the slower An Impertinency The Authour desires to see that Humourist who had equalized Air unto Water in weighing that he might connex the Galenists their equal temperature ad pondus or according to weight to wit how much air is to be taken for a pound of water that they may be equalized in weight Another The Air is neither light nor heavy because it is without weight and therefore neither can it be weighed nor equalized Therefore the Doctrine of Galen is destitute of the greatest and chiefest hope of complexions because it hath a liberty of lying boastings A PASSIVE DECEIVING AND IGNORANCE OF THE SCHOOLES THE HUMOURISTS The which if they shall henceforth defend shall cover with a stubborn malice God also being wroth will discover the same in the now imminent age for the profit of the Christian World and the Confusion of the obstinat The PREFACE to the READER I Had written in an unwonted Style concerning Fevers and when the little Book returned unto me I scarce understood the same by reason of its gross and innumerable faults yet presently afterwards however plainly vitious it was for that Cause within a few weeks it began to be desired Whence I judged if a faulty Book had been worthy the Press and much desired that by a stronger right it earnestly required another Edition not only that it might come forth amended which would bewray the blemishes and ignorances committed against me and so by a singular Doctrine would as nearly and intimately as might be weigh the life of Mortals whereunto none as yet hitherto had attempted to answer but more peculiarly that the Unheard-of Doctrine thereof chiefly true although unexpected might the more strongly be confirmed Therefore I was constrained to over-add the Commission of my own Coyn whereby it might on every side be firmly defended from the Humourists the Pages of the Schools of Galen and my Haters and might not suffer the truth delivered to be troden under foot wherefore I have added Reasons whereby I have shewn the vanity and falsehood of the device of Humours whereby Physitians from a destructive foundation have circumvented the whole world have fatted the places of burial have destroyed Families have made Widdows and Orphans by many ten thousands and so have brought themselves into the merriments of Kitchins and Comedies Paracelsus indeed attempted to hiss out the Fallacies of Humours and he hath at this day his Followers almost every where amongst the most learned men yet never any before me that I know of hath professly attempted to untie this Knot Therefore if any one hath heretofore threatned to bend his Quill against my Book of Fevers because he took it injurionsly that I have not only overthrown the two Universal Bulwarks of Medicine but especially that I have demonstrated That no laxative Medicine hath ever hitherto drawn out electively this Humour before that yea that all and every of Purging Medicines were an hostile poyson to the Life Perhaps he will now lay aside his Pen when he shall see the same Opinion to be more strongly confirmed To wit That the existence of both Cholers and of Phlegm is impossible in nature that the trifling Complexions and Diseases diligently taught and believed to arise from thence are supported by false Principles And by consequence that the method of Healing instituted according to the distemperatures of Humours is deceitful meer dreams old wives Fables and trifling toyes For I ought to treat roundly sincerely and candidly as oft as I have determined to write of God Truth the Life and publick Good of Mortals I implore him for my witness as also my Judge herein Who is the Way the Truth and veriest Life it self of mortal men I have therefore willingly exposed this diligent search of Truth and attained victory under his Protection and Bedewing Fare ye well my mortal Companions I wish ill to all your prosperous affairs Because I persectly teach the Truth A PASSIVE DECEIVING AND IGNORANCE OF THE SCHOOLES THE HUMOURISTS CHAP. I. That the four Humours of the Galenists are feigned 1. IT is answered by going to meet those who shall be willing to begin to write against the book of Fevers 2. The received opinion of the Schools is supposed 3. That it is false whatsoever hath been hitherto diligently taught concerning the Elements degrees mixtures discords and diseases hitherto 4. That heat it no where but from light motion life and an altering Blas 5. The limitations of moisturds and drynesses 6. The relation of a disease unto health of what sort it is 7. The remedies of diseases from whence 8. The unconstancy of Paracelsus even as also of Galen 9. That a return from a privation is not granted according to the Schools the which notwithstanding do every where dash against this rule 10. They fail in proving a quaternary of humours 11. The two pillars of humours are broken 12. Many things among simples have only two diversities 13. A miserable reasoning from a similitude for the number of humours 14. The Schooles stumble in the light 15. The maske of a sophistical argument is discovered 16. The similitude from herbs is opposed to the similitude from milk 17. In like manner the urine ought to be put for a fifth humour 18. The perplexity of the Schools 19. A conuincing argument against humours 20. An argument from a position supposed 21. From a sufficient enumeration of shops 22. From an imposibility 23. From an absurdity 24. Reasons sixteen in number 25. Against the positition concerning phlegm 26. From inâ—plicite blasphemy 27. From
hundred years I reckoned the Greeks art of healing to be false but the Remedies themselves as being some experiments no less to help without a Method than that the same Remedies with a Method did deceive most On both sides I discerning the deceit and uncertainty of the Rules of Medicine in the diversities of the founders of Complexions I said with a sorrowful heart Good God! how long wilt thou be angry with mortal men who hitherto hast not disclosed one truth in healing to thy Schooles how long wilt thou deny truth to a people confessing thee needful in these dayes more than in times past Is the Sacrifice of Moloch pleasing to thee wilt thou have the lives of the poor Widows and Fatherless Children consecrated to thy self under the most miserable torture of incurable Diseases and despair How is it therefore that thou ceasest not to destroy so many Families through the uncertainty and ignorance of Physitians I fell withall on my face and said Oh Lord pardon me if favour towards my Neighbour hath snatched me away beyond my bounds Pardon pardon Oh Lord my indiscreet Charity for thou art the radicall good of goodness it self Thou hast known my sighes and that I confess that I am know am worth am able to do and have nothing that I am poor naked empty vain give O Lord give knowledge to thy Creature that he may very affectionately know thy Creature himself first other things besides himself for thy Command of Charity all things and more than all things to be ultimately in thee Which thing when I had earnestly prayed from much tiresomness and wearisomness of minde by chance I was led into a Dream and I saw the whole universe in the sight or view of truth as it were some Chaos or confused thing without form which was almost meer nothing And thence I drew the conceiving of one word which did signifie to me what followes Behold thou and what things thou seest are nothing whatsoever thou dost urge is lesse than nothing it self in the sight of the most high He knowes all the ends or bounds of things to be done thou at leastwise mayst apply thy self to thy own safety Yea in that Conception was there an inward Precept that I should be made a Physitian and that at sometime Raphael himself should be given unto me Forthwith therefore and for thirty whole years after and their nights following in order I laboured to my cost and dammage of my life that I might obtain the Natures of Vegetables and Mineralls and the knowings of their properties The mean while I lived not without prayer reading narrow search of things sifting of my Errours and daily experiences written down together At length I knew with Salomon I had for the most part hitherto perplexed my Spirit in vain and vain to be the knowledge of all things which are under the Sun vain are the searchings out of Curiosities And whom the Lord Jesus shall call unto Wisdom He and no other shall come yea he that hath come to the top shall as yet be able to do very little unless the bountiful favour of the Lord shall shine upon him Loe thus haue I waxed ripe of age being become a man and now also an old man unprofitable and unacceptable to God to whom be all Honour CHAP. III. The hunting or searching out of Sciences 1. The minde is not rational if it be the Image of God 2. The opinion of the Schooles concerning Reason 3. A Vision in a Dream concerning Reason 4. A Dialogue or Discourse of the minde with Reason 5. The chief juggle of Reason 6. The minde hath chosen understanding 7. Reason becomes suspected by reason of her juggling deceits 8. The weariness of the minde concerning Reason 9. Reason began from sin 10. What kinde of knowledge there is of the Soul being seperated from the Body 11. The minde hath withdrawn her Garments from Reason in her flight 12. Reason enters into the counsel of the minde from an abuse 13. Reason burdens the minde 14. Reason being reflexed towards it self doth produce many Errours 15. The great Art of Lullius is sifted 16. The manner of seperating Reason from it self 17. An unutterable intellectual Light 18. A feeling of the immortality of the Soul 19. Reason is not the Lamp of which Solomon speaks 20. In what part a Syllogisme dwells 21. Reason generateth a dim knowledge 22. Knowledges of the Premises are from the light of the Candle or Lamp 23. The minde is not deceived but by its own reason 24. Reason burieth the understanding 25. Reason is known in its poorest nakedness 26. The understanding refuseth the use of reason 27. Reason and Truth are unlike in their Roots 28. Reason doth not agree with the knowledge of the conclusion 29. A definition of Reason 30. The most refined Reason is as yet deceitful 31. What Reasoning and Discourse are 32. What intellectual Truth is 33. Imagination is a crooked manner of understanding 34. Bruit Beasts are discursive 35. A rational Creature for man is disgraceful 36. A true definition for a man 37. The Schooles hearken more to Aristotle than to Paul 38. An Animall or living Creature in the definition of a man belongs to corrupted nature 39. What kinde of Skeleton or dry Carcase that of reason is 40. A progress to chase after Sciences 41. Double Images or likenesses in the Soul 42. Where the Progress of the minde is stayed 43. How a truer Progress may be made 44. New understanding or the labour of wisdom 45. The understanding doth strike in or co-agree with things understood and how that may be done 46. Why there is made a transmigration or passing over of the understanding 47. The memory and will are supped up 48. The thingliness or Essence of an intellectual thought 49. How the Image of God lightens or shines all over 50. How the minde beholds the understanding under an assumed form 51. The Errour of the Rabbins concerning this State of the Soul 52. The quality of the understanding while it stands in that light 53. Why and after what manner the understanding transformeth it self 54. After what manner the understanding beholds it self 55. What intelligibility or understandingness may be 56. How the Soul understanding it self shall understand any other things 57. Whence that difficulty of understanding is 58. Why accidents cannot be comprehended by the intellect 59. The Errours of the Schooles about the dividing of the intellect 60. In things pertaining to understanding it is more noble to suffer than to do 61. Aristotle knew not a true understanding 62. The Phantasie or Imagination doth not pierce things neither in like manner do things enter into it 63. Eight Maxims touching the understanding which Aristotle knew nor 64. A dividing of the Predicament of a substance The hunting or searching out of Sciences begins from Know thy Self REason is accounted to be the life of the Soul or the life of our life But I believe that the
Almighty is alone the way the truth the life the light of living Creatures and of all things but this is not reason And therefore that our minde ought to be intellectual but not rational if it ought to shew forth the most immediate Image of God That Paradox is to be cleared up for the searching out of all things knowable and especially of things Adeptical or the attainment of great secrets By my will or according to my assertion all Phylosophy begins and proceeds from the knowledge of ones self whether it be natural or morall I will therefore propose so far as I through my slenderness do attain the understanding and the abstruse or hid or inward knowing of our selves For the undoubted opinion of the Schooles beares in hand that God hath bestowed on man nothing more pretious than Reason by which alone we are distinguished from bruit Beasts but bear a co-resemblance with the Angels So I being also perswaded from my tender years believed But after that discretion had waxed ripe and I had once beheld my Soul I perceived altogether otherwise I confess in the mean time that I had rather be wise in secret than to be willing to seem wise but to be alwayes more desirous to learn than to be one that endeavoureth to teach Notwithstanding I ought to teach some things least I be found to have buried my Talent received in the Earth Wherefore Reason once shewed it self to my Soul in the form of a more thick and dark little Cloud or mist and proposed that it was the Nurse Guide and Tutouresse of the minde so ordained of God for the obtaining of all even of solid good Yea it protested that it was the Sterne of the course of our life the fore-deck and Sterne of the minde and so the inventer of all Sciences For at the first sight my Soul entertained Reason wished to rest in her possession with well pleasing in joy and much rejoycing Because the minde being so diligenty instructed had once so perswaded it self Nevertheless least it should offend through a gentleness of credulity or rash belief it presently assaulted Reason with its own Weapons saying If therefore O Reason thou art ordained for my Service I ought not to follow thee but thou me Because thou art she which affirmest or demonstratest nothing by Discourse but I have first begotten that in thee In what sort therefore dost thou now being a Scholar pretend a tutorship over thy Mistress thou being a Daughter over thy Parent That first Argument arising from my arrogancy taught me that nothing is more nigh to the Soul than pride which lifting up nevertheless arisen from disobedience it hath covered with the Cloak of vertue to wit least it should be led away by credulity But Reason answered not indeed affirmatively but onely that it might breed a fear in the minde and so by scrupulousness might draw it unto its desires For it said there is no safety to the Soul to be attained without Reason to wit that Mortalls would perish under the allurements of the senses unless vices should be restrained by the raines of Reason To whom the wrothful minde saith Away for shame none of these things are from thee or by thee whose knowledge I receive from faith and attainment or performance from Clemency Yea Faith commands that for her we forsake thee For thy flexible juggling deceit hath brought forth a hundred Sections or divisions and clefts in faith even in the more refined men But every Section hath its rational induction or bringing in of Sophistry Because Reason doth on every side bring forth onely a thinking instead of Faith but Faith is of Grace not of thee subtill Reason who dost delude and miserably lead aside the most witty or quick sighted men that trust in thee unto a Hell of miseries Finally my minde considered by Faith that there was one onely Form and Essence of truth and that all understanding was alwayes onely of true things Wherefore in the choyce my minde esteemed it meet to magnifie understanding before Reason And therefore it began to fear least Reason which through a shew of Piety Truth and Religion under a multiplicity of erring did guilfully deceive so many thousands of men as a pleasing flatteress and crafty Seducer should seduce it And therefore my minde suspected that Reason did not onely feign perswasions for the deceiving and flattery of it self as oft as the minde did design it for a Judge and Assistant but also that Reason did plainly yield it self for a Parasite and to the servitude of the desires even of those that are most Religious and did bring with it more of thinking rashness and blockishness than of Knowledge and Truth Because it was that which would easily be bended at a beck by Tongues sometimes to one but sometimes to the other extream and would every where finde out feign and prostrate Reasons according to the pleasures of the desires yea it oft-times proceedeth in discoursing of that which falls without that which is reasonable and it remains indefinitely undistinct and uncertain in ignorances the which notwithstanding it did promise to untie Also now and then Reason hath made Souls mad who trusting too much to its perswasions had enslaved themselves unto it In the next â—lace in others through foolish importunate undiscreet and vain cares it cuts off the thred of life The minde therefore hath drawn a wearisomness from the command of Reason and the rather for that it knew Reason to be a Houshold Servant of its Family but being a Chamber-maid it presently did presume upon the whole government of the Soul And the minde having remembred that divine word that those of his own House are his enemies conceived a loathing over Reason And its turning away on both sides was not yet sufficiently founded yet it got strength in going From the first therefore after that the Soul began no more to contemplate of Reason as a part or power of it self but as it were a strange guest plainly divided and a newter from the essence of the minde And afterwards the Soul knew that thing by faith that it being once separated from the Body it stands no longer in need of Reason and therefore that this is frail and mortal yea and that it hapned to us together with death in the corruption of Nature Indeed the minde knowes that it is after death to inhabit all its knowledge at once full naked not successive not wrung out or extorted by force of premises not conquered by convincement not deceitful disputable or doubtful Neither that it shall make demonstrations after death that it may conclude draw compel derive or reflect whether that thing shall be to conceive or indeed to signifie or give notice Therefore the minde seised on frail Reasons Coat she being also a fugitive from the Soul and hath spoiled her of every Garment even unto nakedness But then it was confirmed to the minde that Reason being left with us came
shall endure or as long as from the juyce of the grape the wine is not perfected For as meal differs from the leavened paste or dough and the mealie lump from bread so doth wine from the juyce of grapes And as meal if it be boiled doth not bring forth windinesses but being leavened doth of its own accord belch forth windy blasts so meats do not in their own nature contain the flatus which the ferments do draw out A wonder surely it is that the Schooles have perceived nothing have written nothing of these things hitherto but that they have delivered all things by hand to the command of heat Moreover concerning the Gas of new wine and properties of a wild spirit enough elsewhere Neither let those things be unseasonable or unfit which I have elsewhere written concerning ferments concerning digestions touching transgressions under anothers harvest and the diseasie transplantations sprung from thence to have brought them over unto this limit concerning flatus's A most weak stomack therefore affords un-savoury belchings but a less weak one soure ones a vitious stomack burnish bitter and sharp ones But a stronger stomack doth indeed rightly concoct meats that are full of juyce not likewise the Onion Garlick Radishes c. Belchings therefore do witness some weakness and therefore do express the savours of meats But under the fardle of much meat that is full of juyce brackish also burntish belchings do bewray themselves especially if the meats are mortified But brackishness being stirred up by an exasperated ferment doth bring forth a various appetite to meat Furthermore also that flatus's are not bred of windy things mark an example Distilled Vinegar while it dissolveth Crabs stones Crysulcha Silver a wild spirit is belched forth A harsh apple in roasting stirs up very many flatus's not so if it do longer sweeten on the tree by ripening If therefore in the same apple a flatus had materially been it must needs be that the greatest part of the apple which was flatutulent and a meer windiness was through ripening converted into the sweet and homogeneal substance of the apple that is into a non-windinesse That a mixt Body as they say is made of almost a simple element Wherefore the whole apple whether it be ripe or unripe consisteth of the same matter and indeed not of a windy one A sharp apple being roasted in a glass Hermetically shut constraines the vessel by reason of its windy blast to burst asunder But a like apple being closed up in the like glasse with as much water as that it may boyle sends forth no Gas but onely a watery exhalation Aqua fortis being distilled by its self doth wholly pass into the vessel receiving without a wild Gas But if a dissolvable mettal be added unto it it brings forth a Gas so as that if the glass be well stopt with morter although most strong it breaks in pieces when as in the mean time none of the aforesaid mettal departs into a Gas. The Tartar of Wine cannot be distilled so much as with the hundredth distillation of its own oyle unlesse a chink or chap be left in the joynts Otherwise a wild Gas how big soever the vessel be doth suddainly break in pieces But if therefore Tartar should materially contain a flatus it had uttered the same in its first combustion at least in another distillation the which notwithstanding is made a new afterwards in every of its distillations also of its oyle or sulphur onely Because a hidden sharpness of the Wine and also a volatile Alcali is herein whence of the coupling of them both a wild Gas is made For the food not being sufficiently subdued in the stomack putrifies and causeth a Gas For it putrifieth through the corruption of the place which is of the dung of the stomack or by an action besides nature For the least atomes of the meats being well chewed are well turned into chyle but the greater atomes in a more weak stomack although in their circumference and outward appearance they are by digestion resolved into chyle yet in their center seeing they indeed perceive sufficient heat yet do not equally enjoy a ferment they remain undigested are corrupted of a yellowish colour and for the most part do the business for the bowels or if they do retain the ancient sliminess of the food together with a little sharpness they are changed into wormes which are alwayes messengers of weakness but the ferment of the stomack finding some things resisting it and therefore half-cocted and half-putrified presently enflameth doubleth and heighteneth its tartness whence there is a gnawing belching from a brackishness the companion of apetite which lump falling down into the intestine stirs up rotten and stinking flatus's from a fat putrifaction By way of handy-craft operation Take of Sulphur one part let it boyl with a double quantity of oyle of Line presently the Sulphur putrifies and the substance of Birds lungs appears breathing forth the smell of humane dung even as also in distilling the like Gas belcheth forth The lump therefore being badly digested in the stomack descending through the intestine stirreth up sharp flatus's if the tartness shall be heightened whence there are wringings of the guts But if any snivelly thing thereof shall adhere to a bowel the more stubborn gripes or wringings are made and now and then an accompanying Flux And by so much the more cruel by how much the sharpness shall be the more brackish For from a brackish flatus there is a small and fluid Colick but from meats it is far more stubborn and changeth its places and wandereth But if from a brackish adhering and affixed muckiness it most cruelly afflicts and puls together Flatus's or windinesses therefore do proceed not from the matter properly but from an operation of the ferment attempting a new generation besides nature and from the error of the provoked Archeus These things of natural and diseasie flatus's But poysons being drunk why they produce the habit of the body swollen with a flatus Know thou that that comes to pass a little before and after death For neither doth a dead carcase swell by reason of an attainment of a new matter but because the life is chiefly in the bowels therefore the habite of the body is first defiled by the poyson But the corrupting of the flesh is alwayes in a sour or sharp savour for leavened things are by a famous mystery read to have been forbidden to the Jewes therefore a sudden and cruel corruption dashing it self into fleshes doth also beget in them a windie blast and swelling So a dead carcass that is drowned doth presently sink to the bottome so long as until the flesh waxeth sharp under putrifying then indeed it springs up and is swollen with windiness and the life of the muscles which is as yet left after death doth work the flatus For it is wont to be said That a dead Carcass will issue to the top of the Water when
the chest of the Gaul is broken For neither doth this want its own vigor of truth Not indeed that it is literally true that the bladder of the Gaul being broken and that its bursting forth had brought a lightnesse to the dead carcase but the Gaul is the balsome restraining corruptions which are to arise in living creatures from a sharpness wherefore while corruption is present a defect of the Gaul is conjectured A new Alder settles to the bottom but when the juyce contained in it is corrupted the tree springs up from the bottom Furthermore I have said that the lesser hot Seeds were from divine compassion made known to mortals and by the good common People the use of the same brought into the Schools not knowing the cause and circumstance of Flatus's Those seeds therefore do restrain the coruption and also the sharpness of matter and therefore they are refreshments of the Bowels But that ease or comfort learn thou by this Example There was a burst man that was negligent whose Intestine fell out into his Cod it presently riseth unto the bigness of ones head is hardned and at length waxeth black and blew or envious For they in vain attempt with a various warmth of milk and a luke-warm fomentation of Cows-dung and it seemeth to be sixfold less through the hole than is the swelling of the Cod which is to lay aside the hope of its return by reason of hardness And then through the drink of the seeds to wit of annise caraway fennel coriander c. in wine the hardness of the bunch doth presently vanish and it suffers it self to be repulsed inwards The which a clyster and outward fomentation afforded not therefore that defect doth by it self silently speak That the bowels being exorbitant about the stones do presently put on an hardnesse and stirre up flatus's All which things by a comfort to the Archeus of the bowels do presently disperse which else would cause a swift and painful death But I will adde something concerning the natural flatus of the Ileon which is not known by the Schools A noble woman is taken with a little pain of her belly she walks about the chamber had dined the pain streight way ascends as to her right pap invades her shoulder and a little after kills her Her dead carcass being dissected nothing is viewed by the eyes which could be blamed to have brought death on her But they fitly see the Ileon stretched out with a little flatus Wind wind I say the Doctors accuse to be the Executioner The judgment being brought unto me I judged that the pain of the belly was from the womb therefore that it ascended unto the dugs with whom the womb doth ordinarily talk and so to have strangled the woman But the wind in the Ileon I said was not onely guiltless but that in every dead carcass even in him that is slain by a sudden death the Ileon is alwayes naturally stretched out with a little wind because that is natural unseparable and proper For without wind the bowels should fall down the excrements should the more difficultly pass thorow For unless they were driven and liquid from behind they should easily return backwards and as it were without progress should there contract too much delay If therefore some wind be a native inhabitant in the Ileon or slender Gut there is no place for complaint of a flatus in gripes or wringings of the guts and much less for things carminative expelling and dispersing of winds Let wringings therefore be of a brackish muscilage more or less sharp at the resolving whereof if they shall stick fast or expulsion if they shall floate a restoring of health is expected But if in the mean time a sharp flatus be bred or the Ileon do swell with windes more than is meet that doth easily find a way for it self A dismissing of windie blasts doth indeed lighten from pressing together or stretching out but a flatus doth not cause wringings or torments of any great moment but that they do soon produce a way for themselves But if indeed a flatus be prevented from utterance by a more hard excrement from beneath now it is called a volvulus or rowling pain and hath departed from the word of wringings or gripes Therefore it is now sufficiently manifest that flatus's or windy blasts in the body are not made by aire but materially from things cast into the body things ordinary or from poysons corrupting the similar liquor of nourishment And then that they cannot be made elsewhere than in the first Kitchin of the digestions and they are belchings in the second also which is finished in the gut Ileon but by no wise in the following families of digestions unto whom every sharp and brackish thing is a forreigner Except in a poyson being taken Wherefore there is no occasion force or power in flatus's for a disease of these regions But so far as doth belong to a windy blast or exhalation or vapor lifted up from the stomack from the womb or any other place that I will shew in its own place to be frivolous Let these things therefore suffice concerning flatus's CHAP. LVII The Toyes or Dotages of a Catarrhe or Rheume 1. Who is the Heir of Diseases and Nature 2. Some suppositions in the room of premises 3. A conclusion 4. It is proved from experiences 5. An explication of the thing granted 6. The Lungs are the first thing dying 7. Why the Author hath departed from the Schools 8. Things premised of the miseries of old Age. 9. Why loosening Medicines do hurt in these cases 10. The miserable Testimonies of Physitians of their own ignorance Because the Phrygians are wise too late 11. A shameful Maxim which is drawn from things helpful and hurtful 12. The Errors of Physitians 13. The Unconstancy of Paracelsus whence it was 14. The manner of making a Catarrhe is like unto an old Wives Fable 15. The Diseases attributed to Catarrhes 16. How great destruction of mortals ariseth from thence 17. After what sort they make the sick perpetual bondslaves unto them 18. An ordinary privy shift of the Schooles 19. Thirteen Positions 20. Nineteen Conclusions proceeding from those Positions 21. By a sufficient numbring up of parts 22. A Dilemma or convincing Argument 23. Some Absurdities 24. Catarrhs or Rheumes do arise in the Schooles onely from their mother Ignorance 25. Ignorance is the same Fountain of Absurdities in Curing 26. Shame makes the Schooles unstable 27. A denyal of Principles granted in the Schooles 28. Whence heat happens to the Liver 29. A proof from Remedies of none effect 30. The Tooth-ach is again examined 31. The digestion of the Tooth and Nail differs from the digestion of all the parts 32. A Rheum unto the inward parts is shewn to be impossible 33. A Pose is decyphered 34. Absurdities following upon a Rheume of the Stomack 35. A Rheume is fanned into the Lungs 36. What may drop down at the beginning of