where Glass is the cause of hardness Salt affords matter and Water causes unition and condensation CHAP. 9. Of the specification of the Universal Spirit to Bodies THe Soul of the World and its Action and Vertue is represented in all things in which it is this bindes and conjoyns the superiour things with the inferiour for as many Idea's as the Heaven contains so many seminal causes it obtains whence by the Mediation of the Spirit it forms so many species in the matter When therefore it falls out that any one of these species degenerate it may by the Soul within it and the mediation of the universal Spirit be reformed and reduced to its former state for the Spirit is alwayes at hand and ready for all motions In the mean while we must not imagine that the intellectual Idea is attracted but rather that the Soul is indued with such a vertue and allured by the material forms which cannot seem absurd to any one for it prepares every one his meat and nutriment because it is transmutable into all things by which it is sollicited and willingly remains and resides therein Zoroaster calls the Agreement and Harmony of the Forms with the Soul of the World Allurements Whence it appears That all things and kindes draw their powers and faculties from the Soul of the World not all totally but such as respect the seed or propagation and the like whereby they germinate or encrease An example hereof we have in Man who feeding onely on Man's meat acquires not the Nature of Birds Fishes or the like which he eats Many other Animals also feed upon the same victuals and yet every one attracts that which is proper to his species so that it is worthy our admiration that out of the same Meat Man can attract what is proper to Man and a Bird what is proper to a Bird. And this is not because there are many and diverse Aliments in one and the same dish but because of the species nourished which attracts and changes the nutriment proper to and convenient for it self by mediation whereof it generates its like by vertue of this Soul and seed which is in it according to its quality But we must not think That in the Machine of the Worid the Spirit Soul and Body are things separated for these three are alwayes united and conjoyned as is apparent and by this union the whole Spirit and corporal substance become vital The universal Soul then feigns and imagines divers forms which the Spirit receiving into the bowels of the Elements makes corporeal and produces Hence Animals generate onely Animals Plants Plants and Minerals Minerals though not all alike for Minerals as I said before generate not their like after the same manner as Plants because their Spirit is cohibited by too gross matter which Spirit if it could be conveniently extracted and conjoyned with Mineral matterâ— would generate its like because by its exquisite penetration into imperfect Bodies through the subtiliation of Art and artificious Graduation of Fire it brings with it proper and Mineral seeds onely not animal because repugnant to its Nature yet I will not say That it wants the action of other faculties but that it doth not demonstrate them but according to the species whereto it is accommodated for else every thing would produce its unlike a Tree would generate a Man a Plant a Bull a Metal an Herb which I speak onely in respect of the diverse specifications of things For if we consider the most general Genus it produces in all things its like because being Mercury it assumes the Nature of all things wherewith it is mixed But humane Art cannot effect that that is solely granted to Nature which alone can procreate a species Art may dilate and multiply it if it begin its operation at the root of the species as prudent Philosophers do who extracting the Spirit from Minerals specificated decently purified and reduced to perfection render it apt to perfect imperfect things And an expert and industrious Artist perpending these things aright may easily institute admirable Adaptations Finis Libri primi A TREATISE OF The Philosophers true Salt and Secret And Of the universal Soul or Spirit of the World BOOK II. CHAP. 1. That the Spirit of the World assumes a Body and how it is incorporated WE have I hope sufficiently explicated in the former Book that all things were not only produced but also made corporeal by the universal Spirit We now come to declare what kinde of Body this Spirit assumes and how it self both is and makes all things corporeal for that must needs be corporeal which makes all other things such seeing nothing can give what it self hath not Let us therefore see with what and how it is vested with a Body not that we will here dispute of the incorporation of celestial and supernatural beings but onely of Physical and Sublunary Generations and of the body of the Earth which is the sole vessel and true matrix where the prime and most general Incorporator of things is it self incorporated I say then That no body can be made without a precedent Mover that may diduce potency to act that which exists not in save potency may be produced into light and according to Natures intent reach its final term which is to make that a body which it would produce Now this mover can be no other then fire or heat which moves it self first in the Air for all Generations begin there because fire is the most active Element and consequently most subtile and light whence it is more prompt for motion Fire therefore whose propriety is through its levity to ascend and make unknown things visible doth requisitely receive the beginning of its motion and action from inferiour Bodies that is from the centre of the Earth where as we said before the old Demogorgon and Progenitor of all things inhabits sitting there in his Throne and midst of his Empire that thence he may govern command preserve and divide the essence of Life to all the parts of that great Spherical Body expanded about him and that he may more easily and from equal distance receive from every Member what he wants The root of Fire is implanted in the fruitful bowels of this old Parent which thence emits a vaporous breath which Hermes calls the humid Nature for vapour is the prime and next action of fire with which it is so conjoyned that it cannot be imagined without it But some may say If vapour comes from fire how can it be moist seeing fire is hot and dry whence acquires it this contrary quality And here we finde nothing absurd if we do but consider That fire cannot live and subsist without moisture which is its aliment support and subject without which fire cannot be conceived for being by Nature active and its action indefatigable it must needs have something to act upon and never be destitute of this thing Fire then and co-essential moisture are like
through his Studies to his crown'd haven with which desire I conclude â—2 Decemb. 1656. R. T. To the Reader THis little Treatise Secrets doth unfold More rich more precious then the Indian Gold Here is the path which who doth rightly tread To health wealth it will him safely lead Salt seasoning all things Light illuminating The universal Spirit vivificating O happy Souls who first these understood Here 's true Philosophy so pure and good And free'd from errors that none need to doubt If they were in them this would bring them out By Transmutation may be brought to pass The courser Metals be they Copper Brass Iron Lead Tin to purer this is high But 't is not all that 's done by Chymistry For the Elixir which renews our youth And age retards if Spagyricks say truth Is thereby got if these things may be done Lets Saturn Venus turn to Sun Moon Th' effeminate French our Author hath turn'd well To manly English and the Latin Spell Is made so easie that none need to fear To understand th' Aenigma's writing there The busie Merchants for their hoped gain To both the Indies Turky France and Spain Nay all the world for Gold and Drugs do rome Now here now there but better stay at home For health and wealth is here if they 'll but look They 'll finde them both discover'd in this Book 25 Xbris 1656. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To his ingenious Friend Mr. ROBERT TURNER on this his laborious and difficult Translation EXpect not Sir that I should amply treat Of this Discourse that cost you pains and sweat Nor hope for yet from my more duller pen Your Sal should be describ'd to Englishmen The sublime secrets of your Chymick-skill May prosper better from your learned quill My fancy 's raw my brain is not endu'd With Art enough to talk of humours crude Nor yet of th' Epilepsie or the Gout Consumption Asthma's or the rabble-rout Of Physick-Terms I study other things Ergo I 'll leave these unto Chymist-Kings These high-born Fancies do appear to me Like great Sir Urquhart's Genealogy Nor dare I without Sendivogius Torch Approximate you neerer then the Porch Lest I presumptuous should be gaz'd upon By those that have their wedding-Garments on But as man oft feels heat and sees no fire So I unskil'd this learned Work admire The learn'd Physitians who yeers consume In finding out a Medicine for the Rheume And when they think themselves to be at rest They dare not write on it probatum est May learn by this could they but finde the cause To cure diseases by the Chymists Laws Nor need th' ingenious Operator doubt Of perfecting what ere he goes about The lofty Secrets in this Book laid down Once understood will save him many a Crown There is a Secret higher yet in this For here is taught what anima mundi is For which the Learned oft have beat their brains And gained nought but labour for their pains If men would learn this quicker way share In Chymick-skill deal in learn'd Turner's Ware Jo. Gadbury Philomath To the learned R. T. on the following Tract WHat rare Discovery what light is this Shines to us by thy Metamorphosis That doth derive an Art to simple man From God and Nature by which Art he can Of all diseases know the perfect ground And render imperfections whole and sound Thanks therefore learned Friend for this our gain Who reap the Harvest of thy polish'd Brain The Great Elixir sure enjoy you must That thus can raise a subject from the dust Of dark oblivion and then transmute His for vesture to an English sute Thus thou hast chang'd the language ne'retheless The sense remains though in another dress This thou hast gain'd hereby the world will see Thou art a friend to dame Philosophy And for the labor thou hast undergone To cloath this Infant in our Albion Succeeding times shall praise what thou hast writ And future Readers own to thee their wit Mean time if Zoilus say thy pen did halt Conclude his brain 's not season'd with our Salt Your humble Servant Owen Crane The Contents BOOK I. Chap. 1 THat the world lives and is full of life Page 1 Chap. 2 The World hath a Spirit Soul and Body Page 16 Chap. 3 All things are made by the Spirit of the World of the first matter Page 19 Chap. 4 How the Sun is called Father of the mundane Spirit and first matter Page 23 Chap. 5 How the Moon is the Mother c. Page 32 Chap. 6 That the root of the Spirit of the World must be sought in the Air. Page 37 Chap. 7 How the Earth nourishes this universal Spirit Page 41 Chap. 8 The Spirit of the World is the cause of perfection in all Page 44 Chap. 9 The specification of the universal Spirit to bodys Page 49 BOOK 2. Chap. 1 THat the spirit of the world assumes a Body and how it is incorporated Page 54 Chap. 2 Of the conversion of the Spirit into Earth and how its vertue remains integrally in this Earth Page 67 Chap. 3 Of the separation of Fire from Water c. Page 102 Chap. 4 Of the Spirits ascent into heaven and descent c. Page 160 A TREATISE OF The Philosophers true Salt and Secret And Of the universal Soul or Spirit of the World BOOK I. CHAP. 1. That the World lives and is full of life PUrposing to comment something on the Spirit of the World I shall first demonstrate That the Universe is full of Life and Soul and here besides That Nature makes nothing Spirituous but it also indues it with Life and That the World consists in continual and restless alterations of forms which cannot be without vital motion We may also take notice That the same Nature like a careful as well as a fruitful Mother embraces and nourisheth the whole World by distributing to each member a sufficient portion of Life so that nothing occurs in the whole Universe which she desires not to inform being never idle but alwayes intent upon her action which is Vivification This vast Body then is indued with motion yea continually agitated therewith and this motion cannot be wrought without some vital Spirit for whatsoever wants Life is immoveable But here I mean not of violent motion from place to place but of that which in reference to a form is privation to perfection imperfection The vegetation of Plants and concretion of Stones are effected by the motion of this universal Spirit agitating this great Mass and the mediation of a certain radical and nutritive Spirit whose origine or principle like some primary procreating cause resides in the Centre of the Earth and thence as from the heart exerts all vital functions and extends it self through the whole Body And this root or principle is included in the bosome of the ancient Demogorgon that universal Parent whom old Poets those diligent Searchers of Natures Secrets have ingeniously described clothed in a green
of Excrements Again How do Oysters Sea-Spunges and other Aquatical Creatures live which rather merit the name of Plant-animals then of Fishes These do not so much live by any particular Life proper to themselves as by that Universal one general and common to all which is more vigorous in subtile Bodies as more neer to it then in grosser ones which are more remote from it The World then created wholly good by him that is Goodness it self is not corporal solely but participates of spirituality and intelligence for it is full of all manner of forms and as I said before hath neither part nor member but that 's vital and therefore wise-men have called it a Masculine and Feminine or Hermaphroditical Animal one part holding a certain Matrimonial Alligation with another And hence by a certain Translation arises the diversity of Sexes in Plants and Animals which in imitation of the World copulate together and generate a third like themselves for the World produces an infinity of little Worlds for every Body in the World that is generated is a Microcosm having distinct parts vertues and qualities belonging to a little World So that every thing hath an inclination to generate a thing like it self by the right ordering of Action and Passion which could not be if all things were not full of Life for what Generation can proceed from a dead subject seeing it is neither probable nor possible that that can communicate Life to another that wants Life it self We see indeed sometimes many things are generated without the congress of Male and Female yea without the production of either whereinto the Universal Spirit infuses Life by means of Fomentation as many by Artifice who exclude Eggs and Chickins without the sitting of a Hen and others who by preparing certain matters and putrefying them produce wonderful Animals as the Basilisk of a Cocks Egg or of the menstruous matter of a red Hen Scorpions of the Herb Bees of Neats bowels a kinde of Ducks of the Leaves of a certain Tree falling into the Sea a with many things of the like Nature that merit admiration rather then credit because they are made out of the ordinary course of Nature certain matters in certain seasons and places attracting Life from the Universal Spirit wherewith the World so abounds that all its actions are vital insomuch that nothing dies perishes or ceases from action and consequently from Life but immediately some other living thing results out of it and upon this account no Body perishes or is totally annihilated for if it should all the parts of the World would by little and little vanish one after another before our eyes especially considering how many mutations and Ages have gone before us insomuch that he that perpends might admire that there are any reliques left in Nature at this time which a French Poet and no little conversant in this secret Philosophy hints at to his Friend thus Vostre aspect inegal qui mea fortune change Est comme le soliel contraire en ses effects Qui amollit la cire indurcit la fange Et fait des corps nouveaux de ceux qu'il a defaicts Your aspect in my fortunes changes sways As Phoebus in his effects whose bright rays Waxes do mollifie but harden Clayes And from corruption do sound bodies raise a Our Author seems here to embrace the vulgar Opinion of the Generation of the Northern Ducks which the Scots call Claikis Claiks or Claik-geese and the English Bernacles which many other Writers say are generated of the Nuts of a certain Maritimous Tree falling into the prolifical Sea or of some Shells adhering to putrid pieces of Ships which thing the learned Lobellius makes mention of in Advers Stirp pag. 456. where first he seems to assent to afterwards to doubt of and last to conclude That Fabius Columna had justly refuted this Opinion Lobellius in the second part of his Work pag. 259. describes the figure of this Duck or Goose as also of the Tree and Shells Olaus Magnus also mentions this kinde of Ducks Lib. 19. Hist. Sextent cap. 9. But Carolus Clusius seems to have explained the generation of them more rationally Canctario Exoticorum pag. 368. where he sayes That the Hollanders sayling towards Waygatz saw some of these Ducks sitting upon their Eggs. Fabius Columna repeats his words but Ulysses Aldronaldus Lib. 19. Antithog cap. 23. towards the end embraceth the middle sentence saying He had rather erre with the multitude then contradict so many famous writers and therefore he sayes These Ducks may be generated of corruption and afterwards multiply by copulation and incubation like Mice and other Animals The generation of Palmer-worms from Plants may also be well referred to this place which whether they be generated naturally or artificially feed onely upon the Herb whereof they are generated or to which they are related as also the Generation of Caterpillars and then of Butterflies which afterwards multiply their species by copulation I saw at Rome in Henricus Corvinus an eximious Apothechary and Botanist his Shop a Butterflie which they said was made of the corruption of Cypress-Leaves so elegant and great that its Wings equalized my little Finger in length and were all over as it were eyed whereof as of the Palmer-Worm you may read Fabius Columna his Observations Part 2. Stirp minus Cog. pag. 85. CHAP. 2. That the World because it lives hath a Spirit a Soul and a Body THe Body of the World lies open to our senses but its Spirit lies hid and in the Spirit its Soul which cannot be united to its Body but by the mediation of its Spirit for the Body is gross and the Soul subtil far removed from all corporal qualities For the unition then of these two we must finde some third participating of both Natures which must be as it were a corporeal Spirit because the extreams cannot be conjoyned without an intervenient Ligament that hath affinity with both The Heaven we see is high the Earth low the one pure the other corrupt How then shall we exalt this impure corruption and conjoyn it with that active purity without a mean God we know is infinitely pure and clean Man exreamly impure and defiled with sins Now these could never have been conjoyned and reconciled but by the mediation of Christ Jesus God-Man that true attractive Glue of both Natures In like manner this Spirit corporeal or Body spiritual we speak of is the active Glue of Body and Soul which Soul sits in the Spirit of the World as a spark from and of God's infinite Intelligence for these effective elevations renovations mutations variations and multiplications of forms must necessarily arise from intelligence and not from matter which participates of no reason and therefore cannot cause such formations and specifications The World then is nourished by this Spirit and agitated by this Soul which is infus'd into it by mediation of this Spirit which Virgil following divine
we see such things encrease and extol themselves the Spirit which gives them Life doth so much delight in Air as the place where it had its origine Hermes also saith That the Air carries it in its belly Whereunto Aristotle subscribes saying That moist things proceed from the Air and Terrene things from the moist ones for Air being next the Earth humectates it on every side and the humour thereof being condensed by innate heat is turned into a certain kinde of Earth which contains Mercury and Sulphur in due proportions CHAP. 7. How the Earth nourishes this Universal Spirit THough this Spirit be infused into and dwells in superiour as well as inferiour Bodies yet it may be best known and discerned in Bodies most evident and neer to our view of which the Earth is neerest and most vegetable in it therefore is this Spirit generated and manifested more copiously for the Earth is a certain mark whereto all the Influences Rayes and Vertues of the superiour Bodies tend It is moreover the Fundament and Basis of the other Elements containing in it self the seeds and seminal vertues of all things for which cause it is rightly called the common Mother of all Animals Vegetables and Minerals It is therefore impregnated by the Heavens and produces all things out of its womb and though this Spirit were expelled washed away or separated from it by what way you please yet the Earth thus void of Spirit if left a while in the Air would again be impregnated by the Celestial vertues and influences so as to produce some Chystalline stones and lucent sparks and by this means the Spirit which was taken for separated would again regerminate in the Earth Impregnation then made by the action of the Heavens and of the first qualities doth continually render her generative for out of her womb come all things sublunary She produces all things endued with life preserves nourishes and at last resolves them into their own Nature When she is agitated by these actions she causes a twofold expiration one without her another within her which expirations egrede from this Terrene Spirit when moved and calefied by the Celestial heat The expiration elevated without or above the Earth if it be humid causes and produces dew and frost if dry winde thunder and other dry Aereal impressions but the expiration included in the Earth if it be humid generates liquable Metals and Minerals if dry stones and the like that are not liquable All things vegetable proceed from and are nourished by this Spirit whereof the Earth is Nurse for which cause the ancient Poets call the Earth the common Mother and Nurse of all Creatures CHAP. 8. That the Spirit of the World is the cause of perfection in all THe Universal Spirit is the general Genus and common to every Genus for if we cast our eyes into the inferiour or elementary World we see it divided into three subalternals to wit animal vegetable and mineral kindes and yet the same in all onely operating diversly according to the diversity of its forms And hence the infinite variety of Creatures arises for else there would be only one species in the Universe but if we perpend the superiour and Celestial World we shall also finde That the Spirit is one equal in all and differing in nothing but purity and subtilty for the Celestial Spirits are procreated of its pure igneous substance and differ from Terrene ones in corporal grosness and the Celestial Globes and Luminaries are made of its middle and Aereal substance it constitutes therefore all things because it hath in it both the faculties of superior and inferior Bodies and because it is of an exquisite temper for this Body is in all the beginning and end of perfection and if it were destituted of its faculties it could never perfect any thing and here we understand simple and natural perfection and although it be perfect onely according to the intent of Nature containing in it self the rule line action and power of perfection yet it acquires vertues and faculties above the sphere of natural things and can deduce things from potency to act This Spirit alters and penetrates all things though never so gross mollifies hard things hardens soft things and augments nourishes and conserves all things This Spirit also being in all Bodies the Author of Generation and Corruption hath necessarily a threefold operation for by its driness it must enliven and by its coldness congeal and by its moisture congregate and unite for which it hath a threefold name imposed on it desumed from the three kindes of Earth for they call it vitrifying salsuginous and Mercurial because of Salt Glass and Mercury all things are made though Paracelsus reckons these principles otherwise to wit Salt Sulphur and Mercury adding Glass as a fourth As if he should say All things are made of these three first principles and reduced at last to the fourth as though neither Nature nor Art could produce any thing beyond Glass But I shall prove my own sentence by Examples and Reason The Bones of Animals are consolidated and hardened by vitrification the Flesh and Nerves concreted by Salt and united and congregated into one mass by the Mercurial humour In Vegetables also the shells of Almonds Pine-Nuts Wall-Nuts and the like as also of Oysters and Snails in Land and Sea may be made by vitrification and the taste demonstrates That these Bodies are saltish for nothing wants Salt but what is insipid yea those things are very saltish whereof Glass is made as Fem Kali and the like Some may here object That it is not Glass but Salt that causes the induration of Bones Shells and the like which I have mentioned Whereunto I answer That Experience and Reason speak the contrary for Salt is resolved and melted by the least moisture of Air or Water but the Bones and Shells before mentioned resist liquefaction as they are more or less hardened by this Glass-making faculty for the ultimate confirmation of which my assertion I may adduce precious Stones Adamant and Chrystal which are nothing but Glass elaborated to perfection in the Furnace of Nature And now that all things are condensed by Mercury is so manifest that it needs no other Testimony but common Experience Minerals have enough of Salt Sulphur and Mercury in them Stones and such effoded things as acquire not extention and fusion by the Hammer and Fire have some Salt in them but this is superated by the adustion of corruptive Sulphur which comes upon their induration and vitrification Metals and all ductile things are concreted and condensed by Salt and Mercury and so much hardened by vitrification that they bid some resistence to the Hammer which is indeed more or less according to their implication with more or less impurity and adust Earth which comes upon the coagulation of their Mercury And thus we may affirm that all things are made of the ternal number of Glass Salt and Mercury or Water
into act And whence can any one imagine this action to proceed unless from the central Fire issuing out of Demogorgon's brest Which Fire attracted and fomented by the Solar Rayes will redouble its force vertue and efficacy Does not then this germination derive its original from Natures Fire which elevating and multiplying its vapour excites the innate heat of the Acorn which is of its own side resolved into a vapour by the mediation of Air and this raised vapour is nourished and augmented by the first vapour which never ceases to act on the matter of the Acorn till it have brought it to the period of that perfection to which Nature destined it which is to make it an Oak which when it hath acquired its perfect magnitude begins not indeed to die but to decline and gradually to return to its first form even to the Earth where the same vapour is not idle or deficient for of the putritude of this Tree certain Animals called Horse-lice with abundance of Worms are thereby generated yea when the Oak is turned into perfect Earth it causes a new vegetation But if any should say That the Acorn is augmented and multiplied to this magnitude he erres for it is manifest That in this germination the Acorn remains whole without diminution yea separates it self from the Tree when it is germinated The Oak then grows not from the augmentation and multiplication of the Acorn neither is it from addition and abstraction from the adjacent Earth for then so much of the Earth would be exhausted as the Trees magnitude is it must therefore necessarily proceed from some other way matter seeing by these wayes it cannot This Spirit then or Vapour which is ordained for no other end is that which is incorporated and produces this individual from which the creation augmentation and preservation of all things proceed and not from the Mass of the Earth which is nothing but the Excrement of the spirituous and primaeve matter as it appears by the digestion of the stomach which rejects Excrements in the same weight and quantity almost that it assumed Meat in when nevertheless it hath extracted its proper nutriment from it which is onely the Spirit included in that Mass which by its siccity makes it self a Body and by its humidity dilates and augments it self CHAP. 2. Of the conversion of this Spirit into Earth and how its vertue remans integrally in this Earth THe former Reasons seem sufficiently to evince That the Spirit of the World assumes a Body now we should declare how it is corporified and though in this search the labour will be great and effect small yet shall I endeavour to make this thing comprehensible especially for their sakes who in their nativities have had favourable Stars and are thereby rendred Admirers of these rarer Effects and Searchers of these occulter Secrets for in that many learned and curious Men have erred in the inquisition and detection of this Body arises from hence That some have believed this knowledge far to exceed Man's capacity and onely attainable by Angels or Devils Others have thought That it being called The Spirit of the World no Man should feign to himself any but an Universal Body because an Universal Spirit must also have an Universal Body And others have thought That it could not be perceived but by conversion of more perfect Bodies into their first Sperm and Spirit by exact and industrious subtiliation not minding nor considering That Nature admits of no regress and That Bodies by how much they are more perfect by so much they are further distant from their principles and first corporeity Some are of opinion That a Quintessence might be extracted from Bodies perswading themselves That the more subtile and volatile part is that Spirit they seek so erring from the scope at which they aim as if they would seek the East in the West for they make Bodies spiritual where they should make Spirits corporeal But seeing this Spirit is manifestly converted into a Terrene Body and without contradiction or doubt generates all bodies it must therefore be extracted by them because otherwise they forsake the direct tract of Nature and seeing it is made a Terrene Body it may be perfected by Fire into something which the Quintessentials call their Heaven But corporification begins from the Earth for the first work of Mercury is to make Earth Why then do they begin with making of Fire which would proceed as if a Man should build a House and begin at the Roof But such as would reduce Bodies to their first being pretend and have more specious Reasons then those that would redact them to a Quintessence save that they go in a crooked way that leads them contrary to their meanings for besides that Nature never goes backwards they minde not that they should follow the way of completion and not of destruction or reversion to their origines and nativity for besides the impossibility of this course these wayes are so long and difficult that an ordinary term of Life cannot reach their end Moreover they can never attain the true and natural first Being this way but onely a phantastical Body far different from that wherewith Nature effects her productive operations which is solely the legitimate Sperm of all Bodies And if we consider now That all Bodies are made by Terrification we must needs grant That there is some prejacent subject most apt for the making of Earth But I said That in the beginning Fire was the first Operator in the World which elevates a spirituous Vapour then cocts dries and incorporates it for a Body cannot be made without coagulation which necessarily follows the driness of Fire And in what other place can this immassation desiccation and coagulation be made save in the Earth whence all Bodies proceed The prejacent matter then must needs be there occluded for if it be not there then all Bodies are made of nothing which is repugnant to Natures course which would have every thing to have its principle and out of nothing nothing but nothing to proceed This matter or principle then is bound to the Body of the Earth where it is nourished ingrossed and incorporated and therefore such as would extract the Quintessence out of perfect simple or imperfect Metals should do better to open the Matrix of the Mother and take the Sperm out there then to kill and destroy her Infants or adult Off-spring while they go about to reduce them to the state wherein they were in time of conception But if they should open this Matrix what would they there finde for nothing appears to sight or sense And many believing this way most profitable have been deceived whilst they thought in the bellies of Mynes to finde some seed of Gold which missing of they despair of their purpose because they never met with a middle disposition betwixt hardness and softness in Metals If therefore the eye can discern nothing here how then is
shall elsewhere speak Now this Salt or dry Earth thus coagulated and setled in the Water drinks up all its humidity and is by the continuation of heats action spontaneously dried preserving all this while its innate moisture by which it is never deserted and from which it hath its dissolutive vertue After the accession of this moist and dry temperament it is apt for production as the action of Fire shall impel it from potency to effect and as the Body of this great Earth hath the specifical and productive vertue of individuals so hath that same we call Salt not that it can produce Herbs Metals or Animals as the other doth but that it conserves in its brest the original Seed of all things as Experience by the operations of Fire manifests hereby giving colours sapours vegetations and induration to all these kindes and also proper Fire which the Sun hath introduced into it whereby it enlivens and nourishes all things which I have sometimes observed in the prosecution of a Philosophical operation whilst I saw in this matter without other mixtion all colours distinctly one after another in order and according to the internals that the Masters of this Art determine as they should be in the matter and confection of the Philosophers Stone together with that sudden fusion which follows upon the attainment of the highest redness like that of wilde Poppy but it would not produce that admirable effect in changing of Metals but it exerted such miraculous vertues by causing universal and natural sweats in Man's Body that I am afraid to publish them lest I be branded with the title of a Scharlatane Medicaster though C. V. my Soveraign good Prince as an irreprehensible Eye-Witness may easily vindicate me from that injury for when the fame of those admirable cures came to his Ears he was pleased like a gracious Jupiter to visit the Habitation of his poor Philemon induced thereto I suppose by the generosity of his minde and the relation of a good Man who was so afflicted with divers Dolours and extenuated with the diuturnity of his grievous Diseases that nothing but hopes on Divine Providence or the solace of his imminent Death could move in him resentment The true relation I say of this Man so much affected C. V. that he diligently took the information of many men whom I had by this remedy restored to sanity and if the covetousness or envy of the Man who undertook the cure of the reverend Cardinal and my Lord's Brother P. M. had not prohibited the use of this Medicament I perswade my self by God's Grace and Benediction it would have conduced to the sanity of many that still lie languishing for want of cures If therefore this Salt have all the qualities of the Earth in it who will deny it to be Earth or say That it may not be called the Universal Spirit made into Earth as Hermes describes it But I aver That this conversion cannot be effected save by the Artifice of easie practise but difficult perquisition for it is without falsity an act exceeding Man's cogitations to render that matter visible to the eyes and tangible to hands which so many learned and famous Writers in all ages have thought invisible and incomprehensible of which they have affirmed That those that labour in this profound Theory may be able to discourse well and plausibly of its excellency but should never finde and know it in effect And I profess amongst all the curious men wherewith I have conversed familiarly this forty yeers from which time I have had some knowledge of this matter I can scarce finde six that know ought of it When then I have sufficiently declared how this Salt may be turned into Earth which is the operation of operations it rests that I shew That after conversion its vertue remains entire But before I enter this Discourse I shall as it is requisite relate with what vertue this Salt or Spirit is of it self indued that we may search and finde the same in it when it is converted into Earth I say therefore for confirmation of my purpose That it is without doubt and needs no proof that the continual motion of the Heavens is for some end for though Physically we may say That the end for which a thing is moved is to acquire another place yet is motion made for other causes and the intent of this motion is not to go from place to place onely but so to move as to obtain the effect of another End for there are two Ends the one is by Philosophers called the End for which a thing is made as the End of Plato's Generation is for Plato's Soul and Beatitude is the End for which Plato studies Vertue The other End is that to which things tend Thus the End whereto conjunction of Male or Female tends is Generation but the End for which Generation is made is a Man or an Animal Thus the End for which Plato went out of Greece into Egypt was to learn Wisdom but the End to which he tended was Egypt The End therefore of the Heavens motion is not onely to acquire new places but to influence upon inferiour Bodies for if any one should imagine that these influences are of no use or that they are cast into a place where nothing can receive them he is in an error too gross to be refuted This Celestial Influx is perpetual and continual because the motion by which it descends is orbicular beginning in and returning to it self And this is the Reason why the things whereon it influences and which it produces are of the same Nature and quality as without ceasing to receive the power and multiplication of these Vertues which fail not And seeing this Influence is not extended above the Heavens where nothing is it must needs be carried toward some inferiour thing that it may act upon for nothing is passive but what hath a Body and what other natural Body is there in the World but Earth Is not this the Body of Bodies and that solely that can subsist alone having in it self all the qualities requisite to a Body as Longitude Latitude Profundity and Superficies Is not it the Subject and Mark that Nature hath set whereat to aim all her Darts where can she better accomplish her works then on the Earth The Earth therefore is onely that inferiour Body that receives Celestial Influences whose faculties and powers penetrate calefie purge separate enliven augment confer and restore We need not now dispute whether the Heavens and Celestial Bodies influence upon the Earth for experience and sense takes away this doubt This therefore being left as sufficiently known we shall onely declare how they make their influences vertuous I said before That they tend directly downwards and not upwards and the Earth being the Centre of this Spherical Body they must needs fall upon her and fasten their Points there for the Earth is that Point of the vast World where all the
lives of these influences concentricate And seeing the Earth is a Body so solid that it gives solidity to all others it is requisite that that which penetrates it be very subtile The Heavens therefore being of most subtile matter produce alike effects for the operations ordinarily follow the qualities of the Body that operates And this penetration would profit nothing but like a Torrent running over a Field because of its swift motion scarce wet the surface unless it be by somewhat stayed But seeing it tends infallibly to the Centre and there is stopped because there is no lower place whereto it may descend there it is compelled to subsist and collect it self Hence some have said That the Centre of the Earth is most precious because in it all the influences are united which meeting there have an infinite potency not onely because they continually flow thither but because they proceed from Bodies infinite incorruptible and indeficient in vertue The ancient Poets who involved their Conceits in Fables divide the Earth into three parts assigning the Heaven to Jupiter as first-born of Saturn though some attribute the primogeniture's right to Neptune and the election of the superiour Kingdom to Jupiter for certain Sophistical Reasons impertinent to my purpose Neptune they make the Lord of the Sea and that by lot To Pluto as the youngest Son they assign the Earth for Heritage who is yet thought the richest of the three Brethren because in his Dominion all the Treasures of the World are contained yea he seems to make his two Brothers Tributaries in those things they possess as best This Son they call The King of Hell and to him they give the Elysian Fields as a delightful place where the blessed Souls shall follow his Court after death Divines also assert That Hell and the torture of Souls is in this place adduced by this Argument That seeing the Nature of the Stars is fiery and all their influences concur there must needs be incredible burnings there Again That place is infernal because none is more inferiour But that Souls should be here tormented and that the heat of this place should be so vehement as they say is a Solaecism in Reason and a Contradiction to Philosophical Axioms for besides that Souls possesse no place according to their own confessions and that being devested of the earthy part and corporeal prison they would naturally elevate themselves and ascend by vertue of their spiritual levity which participates more of a fiery then any other quality they cannot but with violence be detained in this subterraneous place seeing they are light nor yet being simple suffer under the action of Fire which cannot act on its like Why therefore they should assert That they descend to this place to be tormented I see no reason unless that the burthen of their sins wherewith they are implicated should detrude and depress them compelling and forcing them to the Centre of the Earth or else that sin hath got them under its Dominion and hath incorporated it self therewith by some unknown kinde of composition and so make them passible and subject not to the simple and natural action of Fire but to some other violent created one destined by God to that effect and perhaps the vertue of the Fire we speak of is by divine Power doubled for this action which may be proved by Holy Writ But I will not rashly cherish any particular Opinion or separate my self from the Orthodox Faith in the defence whereof I will not onely spend my Life but Industry by God's assistance yet I say in my Transient that I may further recede from my intended Discourse That they conclude strangely that say Vehement burnings arise in this place because the influences of the Stars concur there whereunto I would yet yield if they can evince That the heat of the Stars burns and consumes like our Culinary Fire and doth not enliven conserve and nourish for if it were such as they imagine not onely the Earth but the whole Universe had been long since burnt to ashes Those influences indeed in old Demogorgon's bowels calefie but not with a mortal and destructive but with a vital heat which there implants an uniform Vertue which by mediation of heat dilates it self through the whole Body of the Earth being the first moving cause of Generations But we must not here conceive That it is onely the external heat that comes from the Sun which calefies the Earth and causes Generation for in Winter-time when the Sun is furthest distant the Earth hath abundance of heat in it as experience shews in Fountains Cisterns and profound Cells so that in the coldest Winter-Season Metals are cocted and indurated yea it is credible that they are then most of all ingrossed because the heat of the Centre is kept in and retained because of the frigidity of the ambient Air. The Suns approach and more perpendicular Aspect is not the sole cause of vegetation in the Spring for if so then doubtless as its Ascent were more sublime Vegetations would augment more proportionably to the encrease of the heat of the Rayes but the contrary is observed But because every like attracts its like and the recess of the one causes the recess of the other The Sun by the magnetical Vertue of its Rayes attracts and revokes the heat of the Central Sun detruded by the rigid cold of the ambient into the interiour parts of the Earth which returning to the surface thereof affects all things with a vegetative faculty It is not therefore the external heat of the Celestial Sun but rather the innate heat of the Central Sun that calefies the profundity of the Earth for heat is twofold the one acts by reverberation which is external the other by influx and penetration which is internal whereof I now speak whose Nature is to enliven augment and conserve by the sustentation of radical moisture contained in this Fire which I made mention of in the precedent Chapter But that now we may prove this Central Fire not to be so intense as to torment and burn let us consider how the Stars do not by their influences cause heat solely but work other effects for Saturn is cold and dry Jupiter hot and moist the Sun hot and dry Mars hot and dry Venus cold and moist the Moon moist and cold and Mercury all in all participating of all qualities alike Whence we may gather That all the influences are temperate equally consisting of heat cold moisture and siccity which thus meeting in moderation cannot make the place where they meet immoderate The Vapour then or Spirit that comes from the Centre participates of these four and hence all the qualities of simples have their origine whereof some calefie because in them heat is predominant others dry because siccity superabounds others moisten or refrigerate according to the degree of their moisture or cold but on the other side Stars project many other qualities besides these into the
Centre for they give Beings to those sapours colours and odours which we taste see and feel in sublunary things I say therefore That the Stars calefie the Centre of the Earth and that the Universal Spirit dwelling there participates of this heat and because it is natural to heat to separate that separative vertue which divides the pure from the impure the subtile from the gross and the light from the heavy and the sweet from the bitter descends with these influences which purgative separation is the cause why all things naturally reject their Excrements as not being of their substantial parts which is indeed very requisite seeing there is nothing in the World but its Excrements exceed its natural substance nay all that we see and touch is onely the excremental part of things that obumbrates their occult substance as we may observe in our Aliments whose greater Mass turns not into our substance but goes away by the passages destined for such egress Nature onely extracting the invisible and spiritual succe out of them which is apt to be converted into our flesh and substance We may likewise affirm That this Mass of Earth we tread upon is nothing but the Excrement of that first substance which was united in the Chaos Now encompassing the Centre and so including it in a Spherical Equilibrial proportion that it cannot move or fall for seeing it is in the lowest of places it can tend no wayes further unless it should ascend which is repugnant to its Nature But in the mean while I do not say That the Body of the Earth is nothing but an Excrement for though it appear wholly excrementitious yet there lies under its Excrements a pure substance which being wholly spiritual could not become sensible without the administration of some Body as we see in all things produced their Seed and first Matter is invisible but as they are carried in a corporal Mass and excrementitious substance we can see them and no Body can be made without Excrements for which cause this substance is separated from the Body of Earth in Generations by the influence of Celestial heat retaining nothing of the said Earth but as much as may be for a sustentacle for it which from the beginning had no other use but to serve for a Receptacle and Shop or rather a Vessel wherein this spiritual Matter might effect its operations as we shall largely and plainly demonstrate in the sequel Chapter where I shall treat of Separation more largely But Separation were to little purpose if the things separated should remain without action Natures scope in Separation is to enliven and abandon Death which comes from no other cause but superabundance of Excrements suffocating the pure substance but here I mean natural not violent Death but if the Seeds of things should alwayes lie buried in this excrementitious Earth nothing would be produced or receive Life but the Celestial Vertue by its vital influence extracts them and these being full of Vertue dilate and promote themselves into all and each several species as their Nature and Composition require Life then proceeds from Purification which the Stars effect by their influences with which the augmentative and restorative faculties descend for the Stars being in continual motion they are continually occupied with action and consequently with vivification giving Life to Life which cannot be without Conservation and Restauration Conservation they give by sustaining Life indeficiently Restauration by restoring what the Generations of individuals consume and spend And this we may see manifestly in the first Matter incorporated for being impregnated by Celestial Influences it is of it self nourished multiplied and augmented continually And hence it is called a Dragon or Serpent that preys upon it self always regerminating which where-ever it be it takes such root that the place shall never be quite destitute of it though it be washed or burned which is a certain token by which this first Matter may be known These then are the principal Vertues which the Spirit of the World hath and will alwayes receive from the Celestial Influences which produce great and admirable effects in all the Members of the Universe But here some may enquire How that the first matter receiving such pure and potent Influences from Heaven comes to be conspurcated with so many vitious qualities and how it retains them when it hath received them seeing it is alwayes busied in the actions of vivification augmentation conservation and restauration for if it separate not it will die and if it augment conserve and restore not it will diminish perish and debilitate which it never does Whereunto I answer That the Stars have a twofold influence one natural the other accidental the natural was communicated to them in their first Creation and it is that Government of the Universe which Hermes speaks of whereby they keep it in its Being by defending and preserving it by their influences from destruction and annihilation wherewith the Spirit of the Universe is continually enriched which applies them to and manifests them in all things whereto it gives encrease and substance but the accidental Influence of the Stars is that which falls out preternaturally by reason of their different Situations and Aspects and this is alwayes subject to mutation and never remains equal and this hath only power upon the effects of Matter not upon the Matter it self for whatever influence happen though never so malign the Centre of the Earth intermits not its actions but absolves them as before and produces Animals Vegetables and Minerals as well as ever and if mortifications sometimes fall out from the malignity of some Aspect they onely touch the surface or excrementitious mass of Bodies and not the interiour substance and such an accident is often changed so that the influence sometimes operates one thing sometimes the quite contrary which the natural and principal influx never does Whence we may conclude That the first Matter as it is simple of it self receives nothing but those Celestial Vertues which it also retains and keeps in its Terrification But we must now declare how it retains them that we may make good that saying of Hermes That its Vertue remains entire when it is converted into Earth because all the Celestial Vertues descend and meet in the Centre of the Earth which in their course aim at nothing but the information of the Matter which is as it were the Receptacle of the supream Idea's The same Matter being full of Forms is diversified not indeed actually but potentially into innumerable specifications and so it is not properly a Body but as it were a Body or Companion of a Body whereunto it hath an Appetite and by information moves to that end and this motion it hath from the action of Celestial Fire which I before called The first Mover in the Chaos which the old Poets Orpheus and Hesiod describe under the Name of Love And Ronsardus our French Homer or Pindar thus delineates Le suis
amour le grand maistre des dieux Le suis Celuy qui fait mouvoir les Cieux Le suis Celuy qui governe le monde Qui le premier hors de la masse eclos Donnay lumiere feudy le Cahos Dont fut basty cette machine ronde If any Rustick know not who I am Love is my name To whom themselves both Jove and all his train Subjects proclaim I am the hand that moves the heavens and th' reins That Stars direct All that the Earth and Universe contains My nod expect When all a Chaos was I spread my rayes Of light about And then divided that which in few dayes The World brought out Seeing then this Matter by its proper Nature and Appetite tends to incorporation who can rationally say That whilst it assumes a Body it is deprived or swerves from Nature that by its own vertue causes corporation and seeing when it takes a Body it is first turned into Earth who can deny but this Earth is indued with the same vertue for though through commixtion and concurse it partake of some elementary impurities yet in its Centre it is alwayes pure so that after its purification Fire which is otherwise the most active and potent Element hath no power to destroy it because it exceeds this Fire in perfection and subtilty And hence it so suddenly penetrates Bodies enlivening them and augmenting their vertues by restoring and preserving what is natural in them to wit their radical moisture which by its fiery subtily it purges and separates from its Excrements that suffocate it And that I may in a word absolve all this that most excellent Medicine which Siracides saith is extracted out of the Earth and which no wise Man will despise It is moreover that precious Salt whereto the Doctor of Doctors compared his Apostles as to a most exquisite Treasure produced by the Heavens for he might as well have said You are Adamants Rubies Pearls Gold or Silver of the Earth but that he knew That all these things though admirable contained nothing in them comparable to this general Salt whereunto all the rest owe the homage of their perfections This Medicine operates like Fire in consuming the impure which as heterogeneous it disgregates from the homogeneous parts of the pure substance and seeing the Heaven generated this Virgin in the bowels of the Earth why should she not retain her Parents vertues and like an Infant that naturally participates of both Paternal and Maternal Seeds hold both Paternal and Maternal Humour for which cause the Ancients called this progeny Androgynos which is a name common to both Sexes the Poets an Hermaphrodite as being properly neither Male nor Female but both and no less properly may this Virgin be called Uranogaea or Heaven made into Earth for being Earth she hath the Celestial Vertues tied and annexed to her indissolubly whose admirable faculties she manifests in her operations whereof I have given sufficient declaration in the precedent Chapters to all such as armed with any noble spark of ingenuity will endeavor to adventure to break through the thick woods of darkness and ignorance or to such as Virgil saith to whom Heaven has granted access or ingress into the obscure Chaos of the Earth CHAP. 3. Of the Separation of Fire from Water subtile from thick and with what industry it should be effected NAture the most sagacious Agent shews us by her proper operations that in all things we must first consider the end for which we undertake any matter and then finde out means to attain the end A prudent Searcher of Natures secrets then should have perfect knowledge of the principles progress and qualities of matter both internal and external lest in his search he confound his end with his means and forsaking the high-way which Nature hath trodden from the Foundation of the World turn into by-paths and phantastical unknown and unfrequented tracts Hermes knew the right way well for he was indued with the perfect knowledge of the Worlds constitution who desirous by Art to follow the footsteps of Nature prudently imagined That the Earth was the principle of all things and the first Creature that was by Separation created in the belly of the Chaos and thence he made such ingress into the Treasury of Natures Secrets by the Terrification of this first Matter which I said before was nourished in the Matrix of the Earth But as it is not enough for a Builder to have Materials wherewithal to erect an Edifice unless he know the manner of performing and fitting his Materials to the work so Hermes was not content to finde out convenient matter but made diligent search for the manner whereby he might prosecute his work in imitation of the chief Operator in the Creation of the Universe and so form a little World wherein all the vertues of the greater World were included Considering therefore That the thing he purposed to make must be most and that he must begin with gross and inferiour things to obtain this perfection he first begun to divide the contrary Natures by separation of the superfluous and useless parts to avoid the ruine of his work where according to the Adage it may be truely said He took the Bird by its Feet and so going through the right Gate entred into the Closet of Natures Secret without turning for Separation is the beginning of all things and the first operation of the Universal Body segregating the confused Members by the division of the confused Mass or Chaos the order and form of Elements first appeared and took their places for without Separation Day and Night Sun and Moon Winter and Summer had yet been one Metals and Minerals though never so different would have been contained in one Body and all Vegetables would have been but one Seed It was therefore necessary That Nature for the attainment of that Order and Distinction wherewith we see the Universe condecorated should begin with Separation But that we may descend to particulars let us see how this sagacious Agent begins all her operations but for Separation Generation would neither have beginning nor end by separation Aliments augment and conserve every Body And if I should deduce the proof of this Argument thorow every species I should without doubt confound my self in the intricacy of this Chaos and never finde exiture for the infinity of examples I will therefore lay down this for a Foundation That Nature begins all her Actions from Separation But because the knowledge of this is not sufficient unless withal we know what things she separates and whence this separative faculty proceeds we must discuss this matter more exactly that our discourse may proceed regularly and before I meddle with any disposition I think it best to propose some definition of Separation and declare of how many kindes this Separation is Separation then in general is nothing but the division and distinction of things dissimilar from one another as of the Heaven from the
Earth Sun from Moon and the like as also of the pure from the impure heat from cold dry from moist and the contrary And from this Definition we may draw two sorts of Separation The one of things differing onely simply and not of contraries as of the parts of the World which were separated at first from the Chaos or that we may descend to particulars as of the Wood from the Bark of Leaves from Fruits and Roots from Boughs and this species of Separation may be called simply a Distinction for these parts are not really divided or separated from each other whether we have respect to the principal or to the particular members of the World for though Heaven and Earth seem to be separated from each other in situation by reason of superiority and inferiority yet they are not divided one from another seeing there is a perpetual connexion and affinity betwixt them as appears by many places of this Book Whence also Homer no less Philosopher then Poet said That the Earth was bound to Heaven by a golden Chain But that I may keep to my former example Leaves and Fruits Wood and Bark Boughs and Roots are not separated and divided as contraries but onely distinguished by their proper places and garnishments whilst they have a certain affinity and mutual tie yet so that the one does not occupy the others place but that they agree together and support each other The second species of Separation is the Solution or Distraction of things totally differing contrary or superfluous which have no natural connexion with the substance of things as pure and impure hot and cold gross and subtile and the like not that I would affirm That these things cannot stand together but That their union and mixtion because of their diversity causes Destruction or at least hinders the action of the natural Vertue of the pure substance And this kinde of Separation may be properly called decision or division which Nature uses in all her productions that she may set the proper actions and vertues of every thing at liberty The first species is onely the distinction of parts truely dissimilar in situation and figure but homogeneous in vertue and substance for it is certain That the Wood Bark and all the parts of a Tree participate of one innate Vertue which is particularly proper to the Tree generally common to all its parts but as to subalternate parts there may be some difference for some may receive more or less of the substance or vertue but none contrary for one and the same effect produces not things diametrically opposite out of the same matter a salutary Plant emits no poysonous faculty yet that may be salutary to one Body that 's mortal to another Thus Hellebore nourishes Quails but kills Men. But one Plant cannot exercise contrary Powers upon one and the same subject for Hellebore cannot both nourish and kill Quails nor both intoxicate and nourish Man The proper vertue of the Plant then is in the whole Plant and any part of the Plant may be dissimilar to another in situation and figure but not contrary in vertue and substance for the Leaves and Fruits have of the same substance and vertue though one more then another Here some may object That Brassica produces different effects for according to the vulgar opinion its decoction looses the belly but its pulpe bindes the same Whereto I answer If it be proper for the substance of this Plant to loose it 's impossible that it should also binde for to speak plainly the pulpe that remains after decoction is not of the substance of the Plant as it appears by the concoction of the stomack which receives the substance of Brassica for Aliment but rejects its pulpe as an Excrement that hath no nutritive faculty in it which faculty is wholly in the substance and in each part of the substance for the substance hath this propriety That it admits of no contrary but onely of more or less which we must also understand of its actions and power and not of its essence of which we have an example in man no one part is more the part of a Man then another though it may be greater or more potent in vertue and action the same may be seen in simples or Plants wherein some parts are more or less hot or cold moist or dry as their colours and sapours manifest yet are they not contraries for one part of a Plant cannot kill through cold and another of the same kill through heat but Experience shews us thus much That the summities of Boughs and that Flowers are more subtile in their Operations then the trunks and inferiour parts of the same because it is proper in every substance for the more subtile and pure parts to ascend and the impure to settle and abide next the Excrements which Nature observes for two Reasons first That she may adorn the Plant and by the variety of its digestion make it grateful to look to Secondly That she may administer to Man or other Animals what is needful for the conservation of his essence in a greater or less degree herein resembling a careful and provident Mother who prepares all things necessary and convenient each thing in its degree as industry or possibility can render it for she never exceeds simple perfection and Flowers and Seeds are the most perfect parts in Herbs which she hath elaborated which Art beginning where Nature left may bring to a higher perfection by the same way that Nature kept to wit by Separation as we shall hereafter further explain Nature therefore by this first kinde of Separation does nothing but distinguish things for the ornament of their subject and use of Man other Animals or some part of the World amongst which she hath sown and implanted mutual Love and Reciprocal Affinity so that all things do naturally and out of a kinde of sympathy tend to one anothers succour and service But the second kinde of Separation is different for by it Nature or Art in imitation of Nature divides and segregates contraries that is abstracts from the substance what is not of its essence but rather averse to it dwelling with it though it be not of it as pure with an impure thing subtile with gross substance with its Excrements And this second kinde of Separation is used as the former for two Reasons also one is That the pure substance be preserved from corruption and death the other is that it may more freely exercise its vertues and actions as being free from its gross dregs for when that which is impure possesses and contains that which is substantially pure it never ceases to opp ess it till it hath quite vanquished and suffocated it and by that means made way for mortal corruption which never approaches near simple and pure things but haunts all fowl and impure ones Now every substance is of it self simple and pure and by consequence not subject to corruption and death
or through sloath or avarice neglected And that these things are thus carried is apparent from certain Potions introsumed which have no other effect but onely to make the Belly laxative or purge out not that matter that causes the Disease but some other Excrement that hath nothing to do with the Disease or else through the ill preparation dispensation or impertinent adaptation of simples cause superfluous evacuations to the ruine of Nature too weak before but now more enervated both by reason of vacuity which it abhors above all things and also by reason of violent motion caused by such Purges And thus they rather procure Death then Sanity for Nature can no more endure violent motion then vacuity and she is very impatient of these two her sworn Enemies which attempt so evidently her destruction And for this cause common Medicine seldom cures obstinate Diseases by their Compositions as they commonly prepare them and if amongst many any one be cured this happens not because of Pills Boles and Potions but of the strength of Nature which is able to overcome the impure quantity mixed with these remedies and extract something out of their pure substance commodious for its subsidy or else because the poysonous quality of these excrementitious and corruptive things is rejected and expelled by Nature which is of that power that it carries with it some portion of the peccant humour which is like to it by attraction and sympathy And thus an extraneous Medicament impugning the Body moves Nature which provoked and prepared to resist this her Enemy rejects and violently impugnes what is contrary to her And now if a Medicament should always be convenient and not contrary to Nature it should be purged from its poyson that is from its excrementitious Mass Wherefore a Medick should first chuse such things as are convenient for and hold sympathy with Man's Body and free them from their impurities or at least chuse such as contain in them the general vertue or innate purity which Purification cannot be effected till the impure and noxious be separated and destroyed and the pure restored which lay buried and suffocated under the Excrements But it being none of my Profession to make Medicaments I will not further treat of this business but will return into the way whence I have a little swerved I say therefore Seeing there is no inferiour thing but that 's infected with Poyson immerged in Excrements and buried in Dregs that cause its mortification and hinder the liberty and action of its legitimate substance Nature is constrained by a certain necessity to make use of Separation which is effected by division of the pure from the impure the subtile from the gross and the salutary from the destructive part But because this admirable Agent works her operations in darkness labouring in bodies by a secret digestion she never exceeds simple perfection for hereto onely is her power extended whence corporal Elements being not able to conduce to the highest degree of their proprieties the Bodies wherein they are included Philosophers prudently endeavour to separate their substance from their corruptive Mass and after this Separation in Natures way to wit by Digestion and Sublimation to carry them to the highest degree of purity getting them by Regeneration a new form taking away their former Nature Qualities and Proprieties and changing their impure Bodies into Spirits full of purity their moisture and cold into dryness and heat practising and effecting this not onely in some species or simples but in the great Body of the World also which is our Universal Spirit for unless the Universal Nature of all things be renewed it is impossible to bring it to a state of incorruption Regeneration then is the first Fruits of Separation but as a Grain can of it self generate nothing unless it die and putrefie in the Earth so it is impossible any thing should be renewed or regenerated save by precedent mortification Mortification then is the first step to Separation and the onely tract to that end for as long as Bodies remain in their old Corruption and origine Separation cannot reach them unless putrefaction and mortification lead the way which also our Lord Jesus divinely taught saying Unless that a Man like a Grain of Corn die he cannot acquire life incorruptible not as if he meant that life incorruptible should be acquired by death corporal for then impious and wicked Men by dying would attain Beatitude with the Good and Just but he meant that the old Man should die that is mortifie and separate his old Corruption from him which he attracted from the Seed of his first Parents And this Corruption is properly intemperance and excess introduced by the eating of the forbidden Fruit by which Death entred the World and since which Man ceased not to die because afterwards the Earth and all it produced were infected by the Poyson of the fraudulent Serpent hidden in their Aliments whose enticements led Man to transgression and to the eating of Fruit wherein death was included And this corrupting Serpent is he that I call Satan who creeping and without ceasing going about the Earth mixes his Poyson therewith and with all things it produces to wit Animals Vegetables and Minerals with intent to infect the World with his Poyson and tyrannize over Man Upon this intemperance and excess in diet a privation of Vertue followed for Vice is nothing but a neglect of what is just and justice is a temperate desire and continual progress to good This intemperance then and excess must die in us because it generates all kinde of sin in us and stimulates us to malice and impiety and therefore we are injoyned to live soberly and shun gluttony and drunkenness the true Authors of all carnal lusts and that we fast often to extinguish those internal flames which move our Sences and burn our Blood to Corruption The Anatomists of Man know that Man is twofold the one Celestial and immortal the other Terrestrial and corruptible and the first is as a Sojourner the second as a Prisoner But here arises a great Question How it comes to pass that the heavenly Man can whilst buried in this putrid and corrupt Carkase conserve his essential purity for it is manifest That a Liquor though never so precious and excellent will lose its sapour and odour if it be long contained in a stinking Vessel and Man also though never so sound is subject to infection if he dwell in a pestilent House a heavenly Man is of himself good and sincere but as he is joyned to the Terrestrial to whom impurity and vices naturally adhere he can scarcely remain free from spots The depravation of this essential purity depends without doubt on the eating the forbidden Fruit or to speak more expresly on the intemperance of Aliments condited with pernicious and contagious Corruption for which cause this intemperance corruption must be mortified that the old Destroyer of Man may be restrained that that
Distinction and Ornament of which I will say no more because it appertains onely to Nature not to Art the other is made by Decision or Division which I shall now explicate I said before That all things consist of two parts Excrement and Substance Substance is of it self simple and indivisible whether we take it general for the first Universal matter or in particular for any species according to the impression of the Celestial Idea which is infinite This Substance or first Matter in every species of compounded Bodies is one in essence vertue and quality and in one and the same subject one part cannot be of one species and another of another but in Excrements it is otherwise for the better understanding whereof I will lay the following Rule That there are but two means or mediums for the compleating of all Separations to wit Fire and Water and there are but two things separable in Bodies the one whereof is separated by Fire the other by Water In the first place it is indubitable That the Nature of Fire is such as it destroyes and consumes all that is combustible and of Water such as it washes and cleanses all substance from its impurity that commaculates it Fire devours all that 's volatile and of an Airy quality because it is its proper nutriment but Water divides all that 's Terrestrial and gross Betwixt these two extremes then there must be some intermediate disposition which should be kept and conserved containing nothing that 's combustible or impure in it which may be subjected to these two Warriers And it is manifest That Adustion and Dregs are the two Corrupters and Destroyers of all things which Divine Hippocrates was not ignorant of when he said That all Diseases proceed either from the Air or Aliments insinuating that the excess of excrementitious Aliments are apt to receive corruption and Excrements by Fire exceeding natural heat are the inflaming and corrupting causes of each Disease for the Excrements of Aliments fill Bodies with Terrestrial impurities and inflammable Air generates sulphureous and adust matter which easily conceiving hot ardours consumes and dissipates what is radical and vital with it self carrying it away because the greater part of it is volatile the less adustive Dregs then and Adustion are the two Authors of corruption and those that hinder the vigour of substantial actions in all things And if we require any Arguments to prove this the stink of Digestion and Excrements demonstrates it for that same sented in things that are burned speaks little of good to be there The same is also evident in the fumes of Excrements which stinking Bodies emit for those suppose corruption and besides the corruption they generate they also cause these two inconveniences the one is the hindrance of Penetration the other of Fixation which two actions are absolutely necessary for the conservation of life for that which nourishes and supports life must needs be subtile that it may by its subtile parts penetrate Bodies and like a secret Balsam roborate and augment the light of life in the centre of the Body for if it were gross it would rather obstruct suffocate and extinguish then penetrate and pass through such narrow ways and because on the other side it conserves life in its state it should in reason be a stable and no fluxible thing for if it were volatile we might every moment expect death lest it should be introduced by the corruption generated by feculent adustion which continually layes wait for our life Grosness then hinders Ingress and Adustion Stability Hence we may take a good admonition for Medicine to wit that every true Medicament introsumed for the restoring of strength and profligating the cause of instant death should have two properties to wit to pierce to the centre of sanity and preserve the centre by dilating and deducing it through the whole Body which the Ancients with good success revoked to practise and not many yeers ago the too much hated Paracelsus who explained their operations to posterity which were so long kept secret and let him that will affirm the contrary I doubt not to aver That nothing without the operation of Fire can be brought to purity and stability which two parts must be chiefly observed in making Medicaments to which Assertion this valid Reason draws me That no body in its first original and form can be truely Medicinal as immerged in the corruption of its excrementitious Dregs because it cannot attain the place seat of sanity nor yet preserve sanity because it wants subtilty to penetrate and fixedness requisite to the Restauration of what is corrupt and lost and the conservation of what is restored which cannot possibly be attained by the common way of preparation neither in substance nor in infusion the impossibilty hereof in substance appears in that such do not purge without violence which causes rather perilous weakness then salutary Restauration and as to infusions nothing can thereby be extracted out of simples but a little introsity which is innate in all Bodies with a little of their excrementitious Dregs Hence infusion attracts not the internal vertue but onely the external sapour of things which in their centre is quite different from that in their superficial matter for commonly we see all infusions are bitter which we are forced to obdulcorate with Sugar or Honey because most Apothecaries are not so industrious as to extract the natural sweetness wherein the Nature of the things consists from the things they infuse for all bitterness proceeds from Salt which hath sweetness at the bottom which cannot be extracted by simple infusions but by Fire onely and ingenious Artifice this sweetness being the very perfection of the Medicine Hence Arnoldus de villa nova saith That if you know how to dulcorate what is bitter you have the whole mystery Which Brucestus was not ignorant of as appears by his Dialogue entituled Demogorgon But this occult sweetness can never be manifested unless it be quite freed from Terrestrial Excrements and volatile and Aereal Adustion for the earthiness thereof gives it its extraneous sapour arising from the Excrements of Salt from whose variety according to the species and place wherein they are generated the diversity of sapours doth arise for all sapour comes from Salt and by how much there is more Salt by so much is the sapour more intense And on the other side that which is volatile and Aery begets ill and non-natural odours which send out a stinch which we perceive in their burning because of the combustion and inflammation of the unctuous Sulphur and that volatile matter is an Excrement is apparent from the stinking fumes of Bodies that are burning whence smoak proceeds that adhering to the Chimney or other part which afterward retain the odour of the burnt Bodies and the bitterness of the Excrements of Salt And this is yet more manifest by that blackness and obscurity which this fume impresses on all things it
touches which greatly hinders the light and splendor of Nature which always desires purity and freedom from darkness as appears by that intense splendor in perfect Bodies a token of their purity seeing others more immerged in impurity are more obscure as Metals perfect and imperfect precious Stones demonstrate But if we would avoid long peregrinations and according to the oracles advice terminate our curious journeys in our selves by seeking out the causes of our Diseases we should easily finde them derived from those infected fumes that obscure the light of our sanity and thence desume a manifest sign of what is wrought within us for a sound Man because of the internal clarity of his natural disposition hath a cleer and lively coloured aspect but a sick Man from the first onset of his disease is pale and plumbeous his native vigour perishing and decaying and all these mutations proceed from the fumes of sulphureous and excrementitious Adustion and Inflammation which extend themselves thorow all the members and by mediation of the pores infect the whole Body This paleness may also proceed from Nature feeling her self aggravated with a disease and thereupon revoking all the pure and good Blood inwards that mustring up their forces she may better oppose her enemy or sustain his assaults and upon this occasion the external parts are destitute of their clarity and in this conflict the external parts remain as it were dead like Earth tend to obscurity because Earth wherein this battle is begun is naturally black as on the contrary Fire is by Nature clear and white The Earth then on its part being spisse and obscure begets blackness and sulphureous fuliginous and smoaky Adustion begets obscurity wherefore both cause corruption destruction and ruine and besides these two nothing in the world procures universal ruine neither is any inferiour Body exempted from these evils save Gold and precious Stones which Nature hath brought to what perfection she can And so Death is to other Bodies a perpetual enemy seeking how to destroy them but Nature as a careful Mother how to preserve her works who hath armed two potent and nimble Champions to help them and withstand the Adversaries fury one whereof is Fire the expugner of sulphureous Adustion the other Water the expeller and driver of Terrestrial dregs And as Nature is ingenious and subtile in all her operations so is Art indued with equal subtilty and industry And there 's no other way to Separation instituted by Nature from the beginning but these two which Nature her self hath trodden from the non-age of the Universe whose first seeds void of form and confusedly mixed in a Chaos were dissolved in Water and by the Spirit of God the first Mover moving upon them divided and distinguished whence the Separation of light from darkness proceeded as also of distinct forms from confusion of generations from barreness and of death from life and if things in the first commixtion were thus confused as impure with pure Excrements with Substance Earth with Heaven and life with death all were without action power essence and life and the whole confusion useless An Artist therefore considering this and observing That nothing can exert its vertue till the confusion of its purity and impurity be separated he takes Water and Fire for his Helpers and follows Natures copy whose operations he should observe with all curiosity especially in generating Metals which are by so much the perfecter by how much they are more digested in the bowels of the Earth This sentence is then irrefragable That Water and Fire are the sole general and principal means of Separation but the composition of things being various and one thing yielding with more ease then another we must also act variously upon them yet so as not to vary from the plain path that nature has delineated For adustion and unctuous Sulphur making a body inflammable and infective may be extracted one way out of one body and terrestrial feculency another way in others Calcination and Sublimation were invented to purge adustion but Distillation and Dissolution to remove terrestrial feculency and Descension for the conservation of weak and easily inflammable bodies and all these are either effected by fire as Calcination Sublimation and Descension or by water as Distillation and Dissolution But because both the Books of ancient and modern writers speak at large of these things I shall not further labour in their explication because I can adde nothing new nor yet any ornament or facility to them it may suffice if I adde any thing definitively and known to my self in general and that is that Calcination is invented for your overcoming of hard and rebellious things and for continuity and valid and firm composition which hinders division and admits not of easie separation and hence four conveniencies arise the combustion of impure and stinking Sulphur the easie separation of superfluous and extraneous earthiness the fixation of the internal Sulphur and more prompt dissolution For it is natural to fire to consume those adustible parts which are not of the essence of a substance to facilitate the division and rejection of terrestrial excrements to fix radical Sulphur and to multiply salt in bodies which alone doth afterwards admit dissolution by water I say therefore that Calcination agrees onely to bodies that because of their continuity scarcely yield for spirits and volatile things which flye away by fire cannot be calcined unless some fixing thing be added which is repugnant to their nature Seeing there is no other end in Calcination then to extract salts wherein the better part and secret vertue of bodies consist to which that corruptive adustion adheres which in sublimation we suffer ro evaporate and flie away as useless that the remaining substance may be better freed from terrestrial dregs and easier educed by fire to purification and stability It is true also that sublimation requires some intension of fire but that happens then chiefly when the things to be sublimated are more profoundly mixed with the dregs of some other fixed body that they may more pertinaciously hold their terrestrial impurities and this kind of sublimation is most secure save when we work upon subjects that have their dregs naturally more fixed Descension hath a two fold use one is to extract Oyl out of vegetables without combustion the other to cleanse fusibles bodies before they be made volatile and these are the three kindes of separation made by fire now we shall speak a little of the other two Distillation and Dissolution made by water and the former of these is made by inclination and straining that the limpidity of bodies may with water come forth into the water of dissolved vegetables for that same that 's made by an Alembick appertains to the order of sublimations which is effected by elevation and not by ablution And though some account this for an indifferent and but a mean way yet I say it should not be rejected but much
one may be conserved and the other not destroyed and seeing the Spirit and Substance were included in a Body and the Body immerged in corruption it was impossible that corruption should act upon and prevail over the Body and yet the Spirit placed in both should be kept free and incur no danger but rather that with the Body it should yield to deaths Tyranny which alwayes intends Natures destruction and the prostitution of all individuals which thing needs no proof but appears sufficiently manifest from the natural and sometimes the immature end of Animals Vegetables and Minerals which we see every day by their corruption when the Body being dead the Spirit must undergo the same fortune that is the vertue that enlivened it is annihilated but because the prime Opificer would be admirable in all his works of his meer goodness and love to Mankinde who from the beginning he predestinated to be the Instrument of his Glory and to whom he subjected whatever was admirable in the Creation for his Commodity I say he gave certain expedient Remedies whereby he might not onely purifie and perfect the things created but also preserve and arm himself against the assaults of mortal corruption Knowing then that the two parts of Man were one created in another to wit the Spirit in the Body and that the Body would be continually infected by corruption and by sensuality drawn and allured to intemperance which infers the true corruption and weakning of all the members he foresaw that the Spirit inhabiting like a Guest in the Body could not be exempted from its contagious depravation and we ordinarily see That Men given to excess of intemperance and sensuality accustom themselves to ill manners and take liberty in all corruption both of Minde and Spirit neither regarding Love nor Fear to God Honor or Respect to the World nor Piety to themselves nor Charity towards their Neighbours So that it is impossible if they be thus bound to inquinations in death but their Spirits must undergo punishment as they have participated of pleasure Seeing moreover all mankinde by the fall of our first Parent obnoxious to death and thence every Man inevitably to incur total destruction and perdition he mitigated or rather redintegrated this Misery by an admirable Remedy far exceeding our capacity for knowing Man by his Spirit and his Body to participate of Heaven and of Earth the Remedy also he made to partake of Heaven and Earth which is competible solely to our onely Lord Saviour and Redeemer Jesus Christ who descended from Heaven into the Earth and by a mystery incomprehensible by us and common sense was miraculously made Man without the abdication of his God-head because our health could not come from Earth alone corruption reigning there but it was necessary that the Water should come from above where the Fountain of purity is he therefore came down that he might dwell in us and with us and conclude us within the terms of justice and temperance regenerating us to newness of life by the mutation of our Spirit and Body and mortifying in us our corruptions and sins and restoring us to the study of purity of vertue which could not have been effected save by him alone the extream of both Natures for he is God-Man that he might conjoyn superiour with inferiour things which were dis-joyned by the incomparable distance of life and death purity and corruption The Earth doubtlesly received this inestimable treasure far exceeding its merit by a medium that cannot be comprehended from which he again ascended into Heaven by the Water of purification and Fire of the Spirit without accidents and corporal passions though he deposed not his Body but retained it incorruptible and glorious having acquired immortality by death who shall again descend from his Fathers right-Hand into the Earth after the Universal conflagration to renew the World and make a Separation betwixt the good destined to life and the evil condemned to death See now how well the Omnipotent Father the Father of all compassions consulted for Mans good to whose Body joyned with his Soul he gave an equal Preserver whom he sent from Heaven that he might be born on Earth and whom by the light of Nature we ought to seek Seeing Man was therefore endued with Reason and Judgement that he might acknowledge and comprehend his great gifts but Man created heavenly for the indagation of this benefit as too forgetful of his birth lays out that noble and divine Light within him in searching out frivolous and transitory vanities and not in the pursuit of solid wisdom and verity Briefly he had rather follow the inclination of his Terrestrial Geniture then Divine and Celestial Wisdom which he neglects as a thing indifferent and casually sent to him from above Wherefore the Root of Mankinde is as it were extinguished before it grow out except some few who have had better Stars and more favourable Aspects in their Nativity they desiring the possession of transitory goods more then the attainment of Divine and precious Gifts which our fecund Mother Nature hath publickly and in all places fixed for the conservation of life hurt rather then helped by their abundance immerged in mortal corruption And it is apparent That those that are of a higher Spirit though they look upon the fulgour and splendor of those Mundane Riches as no way despicable yet they will not rest in this surface but seek to Divine Vertue occluded in the Centre which hath indeed been cause of great errors both in Medicine and Philosophy to such as destitute of true light groape at and in the dark pass by both Recalling then my mind to the clear light by whose guidance we may attain that salutary and best remedy which God ordained particularly for the conservation of mankinde and for the obtaining of Celestial benediction I shall endeavor with all humility and requisite sincerity not as a Divine but as a Disciple of Wisdoms followers to adumbrate my conceptions in a rude style which the lovers of verity may accept gratefully if they finde them rational and pleasing I say then that all understanding communicated to any man from man alone is uncertain and confused because man is ordinarily loaden with ignorance and slow resolutions but that which he receives from the univerial Light is clear and immoveable For to know absolutely is to understand a thing by its first causes and there is no certitude in second causes till we come to their original wherefore we cannot know the Nature of a Species unless we foreknow its Genus neither can we know the Nature of Microcosmes which are almost infinite unless we first find out the Nature of the Macrocosme that gives them being Man likewise cannot be known without the precedent cognition of the world whose effigies he is nor yet the great world unless we know whence and how it was made For how shall one know a man whose principle is nothing but a small deformed mucilage
or how shall a man know him that is born unless he know those that begot him and here I mean not the second but the first Parents to wit heaven and earth and unless a man understand the first creation of these how shall he know them as an Embryo in a womb which is nothing but the congregation of a certain humour which is afterwards formed to the example of its parents and so in progress till it become perfect so the Heaven Earth and all that is therein that is all this great world is like an Embryo in the Chaos whence none can have any light unless he consider the first rudiments and progress of its distinction and formation Let us therefore first go to the Fountain and Spring that we may thence trace the rivulets that flow from it and know them and by examples of forms judge of things formed I say therefore that the prime and absolute creator who is as a point whence all proceed and an inexhaustible fountain whence infinite rivulets issue hath a Nature proper and particular to himself which is to conserve as well as produce the whole world for it is the property of a good Author to produce things and when he hath procreated them to conserve and defend them This first Effect which is Creation is a secret that we are ignorant of we understand it not but by the affinity or likeness it hath to generations But the second is open and manifest to such at least as are illuminated elect and born of the Spirit but not to such as are sons of the flesh lest precious pearls should be trod upon and cast to swine Jesus Christ our Lord hath perfected the former and more excellent and taught us commanding us to imitate him in all good works whereof he hath set us an ensample For Nature walks always in the same tract and never forsakes her ways As therefore the universal Parent or Conserver consulted by his providence the common conservation of all things from the beginning of the world So Nature from the beginning had her intentions and was always occupyed in continual action about productions For as it was necessary that the safety of the Spiritual part of man should descend from above so is it likewise as necessary that the safety of the Body should come from the same Fountain because from below where the seat and habitation of corruption is neither life nor safety can proceed For what end do the Heavens the perpetual Fountain of Restauration and Perfection by the influence of their vertues flow upon the Body of the Earth which the benevolent Stars with their benign Aspects sympathizing with the afflicted society of mankinde do daily graciously prosecute and affect but to generate in her a durable and enlivening Spirit which in the Womb of this fecund mother assumes a Body and manifests and dilates its faculties through all the parts of the world distributing them to each creature according to its exigency and hereupon do the particular powers depend which we must know by their effects in Herbs Beasts Stones and other things which have drawn their proprieties from this general Spirit and do miraculously conserve us and other creatures And as it pleased God to enrich man with the perfection of his own Son according to the extension of the humane Nature and yet he would not have any one contaminated with sins and iniquities to seek remedies and health from man but from himself the true Fountain whence all perfection flows so also Nature the perfect observer of the Divine will and imitator of his works hath not setled the perfect vertue of curation and restauration in Herbs and particular Creatures but would have us seek it precisely in the Centre whence this is communicated to Creatures to wit in the Earth where this enlivening Spirit is generated for if simples are indued with the vertue of curing restoring nourishing and conserving how much more hath the abundant dispensor of it whence all these receive it but that the Earth is the treasury and dispensor of these vertues daily experience gives us suffient reasons for she must needs possess them else she could not give them It is therefore admirable that so many egregious men should spend their time in drawing their waters from simple rivulets far removed from their pure Fountain and running through a muddy current and not go to the Fountains head I do not in the mean time contemn special Medicaments but I would that Generals were more sought after and particulars not neglected for though a General Medicament might salve every Sore yet particulars merit commendation especially in external superficiary Diseases when the Centre of sanity is not afflicted That therefore I may return to my Scope I say again the Earth is the Matrix wherein the Heavens beget that Spirit that Nourisher Restorer and Conserver of Bodies which alone gives solidity and perfect cure and how this so potent and efficacious a Spirit should be found and taken all wise men should direct their cogitations to so useful an inquisition that they might observe the exemplary Steps which Nature paces in perfecting her intentions and hold this for a rule though God infinitely exceeding Nature is not bound to natural reason no more then a Monarch to the Laws himself prescribes which yet his subjects observe without inquiring why he prescribed them And who hath more faithfully and successfully followed this example then Hermes Trismegistus who after the deluge was first as some say that opened to men the mysteries of the perfect knowledge of God and exactly explicated Natures secrets for besides that Angel-like in his Poemandrum he explains Divinity where he manifests the Doctrine of the Creation of the great and small world its beginning progress and duration he also continues his holy Philosophy with the same hand in his Asclepium declaring with a spirit and voice prophetical that the regeneration of man should be wrought by the Mediation of the Son of God indued with humane flesh he also industriously touches the same Scope in his Tabula Smaragdina where he saith that as all things in the world were made out of one subject by mediation of one God so his Magistery which is the chief and general Medicine may be perfected and compleated by adaptation onely which adaptation is nothing else but a Glass where we may see Divine Meditation aenigmatically represented to shew that Nature necessarily follows the steps of her Master He also attests in other Books That the Author of Regeneration should descend from Heaven and become Man and live among Men for their edification He says also in his Tabula which he left as the last Testament and Testimony of the excellency of his thoughts That this general Spirit the Conserver of Bodies shall descend from Heaven to wit from the Sun and Moon which in his Poemandrum he calls The principal Rulers in this Mundane Monarchy to assume a Body in the Earth which he
hath not some kinde of life in it I say that this Duration must be wrought by Conservation to Perpetuity for Perpetuation is the scope of Nature seeing it is the endeavour of every good Opificer to preserve the work of his hands till it be corrupted by the injury of time or the light of its life extinguished by the cold ashes of death to whose feet all things necessarily prostrate themselves by this inevitable law That whatsoever hath beginning must also have an end For if all things should remain in their first extream that is in their beginning without progress to their second extream that is their death all things had yet been left in their Chaos or rather nothing would have consisted in its being and the principles of all subjects were useless and destructive to themselves Nature therefore to eschew these inconveniences observes the said order and progress of things existing in continual action and motion that is conservation and perpetuation And now that which extends life or conserves it cannot subsist against the force of destruction without some fixation and constancy and this conservative essence is in some more fixed then in others whence they are also of a longer and more durable life and more difficultly destroyed and mortified as a Hart and Crow amongst animals an Oak amongst Plants and Gold amongst Minerals and this happens by the more equal and digested commixtion of Elements so that death whose property it is to divide and disjoyn cannot so easily enter these compounds as being firmly united and well digested and by how much Bodies are more firm thus by so much they are less subject to the accidents of mortal corruption But Nature being not able of her self to attain this perfection of union and digestion cannot totally and finally save and preserve Bodies from destruction but the industry of Art though Art of it self be nothing without Nature imitating her in these things exceeds her in the proper course of her own ways for observing that conservation and prolongation of life is attainable by something tending to fixation which must be effected by union and digestion for nothing can be fixed but what is Homogeneous and of one Nature the Artist labours that he may find out the thing that is fixable and deduce it to perfect fixation which he doth by the same ways order and operation that Nature uses to wit by separating extraneous and uniting Homogeneous parts which he absolves by long and ingenious digestion of the things united But because it is impossible for him to separate or extract this from individual and specifical Bodies because of their firmer union and more compact digestion he is glad to seek it in the bowels of the Earth whence all things proceed for to extract it entire and absolutely vertuous from another place were a work of no profit and impossible and to think how it may be made perfect is a labour both long and dubious whence the Poet said well Hic sive nullibi illud est quod querimus Here or nowhere is that we seek And they are doubtlesly deceived who following crooked and by-paths stick in the common signification and rind of Philosophical words and study not to find out the lively marrow of their intentions They should therefore sacrifice first to the infernal Queen for there is the Fountain and Spring of all things Wise men begin their works from the root and not from the branches chusing as Doctor Bacon saith to congeal the thing that Nature begun her first operations about by a proportionate mixtion and union of pure living Mercury with a like quantity of Sulphur into one Mass Oh holy words wherein this good Anglian or rather Angel clearly depinged that one and true matter whereof all Philosophers have writ Volumes under divers figures and Enigmatical Fables not because they would malitiously hide it but keep the priviledge of this knowledge for learned and pious Men who by continual study and laborious experience finde and adorn it But lest I should move some masters to suspect that I alledge this place ignorantly and understand it improperly I would have them know that by that matter which Bacon so ingeniously represents I mean the universal Spirit whereof I treat and likewise that I put a difference between the Father and the Son or the Genitor and him that 's Generated or the Producer and him that is Produced neither need I blush to say that I know the one as well as the other For the Philosopher here would have such enquire after the confection of the Philosophers Stone to seek the principle of Minerals and he paints out the first matter of Metals prepared compounded and specified by Nature But I treat of first matter not yet specified which may be properly called the first matter of this first matter of Metals or the most general Genus so much celebrated by Raymundus Lullius but I used this sentence for example and authorities sake yet so as no absurdity lurks therein for the universal Spirit is the common Parent of Mercury and Sulphur contained and proportionated by Nature in this one Philosophical subject But I would have the curious Artist consider two things first that by subtile imagination he chuse an enlivening Nature apt for the conservation of all Bodies the other that he chuse a thing which of it self can enliven and regenerates Yet I would not have him to chuse two different separated Matters the one Agent and the other Patient but onely one that may at once be of vertue to enliven and to be enlivened As to active Vivification I have said enough but as to the Passive I say That every Principle hath its Original from it self For if it should have it elsewhere it were no Principle and while it gives being to others it must necessarily whilst it generates them draw from it self restauration and perpetual plenitude wherefore it is in continual action and motion towards vivification whereby its destruction is hindred for it will never forsake it self and it hath motion in and from it self which Macrobius also disputed in his Comment upon Scipio's dream discoursing on the soul of man though I think his discourse may be better apted to the Soul or Spirit of the world which is my subject I will therefore borrow this from his Arguments Whatsover is moved of it self is the beginning of motion and lives continually and that that lives continually cannot be enlivened but from it self it is therefore vivificable but the Spirit of the world is such because it hath its seat in the Earth to convert it self into Earth wherein as Hermes rightly all it vertues actions and qualities remain entire it followes also seeing it is vital that it reassumes life restoring it self by its own proper power we find the same also in this universal Mercury which is always nourished and restored in its Myne so that if by any means it be extracted it always grows to the same
form whereof it was before and wheresoever it is cast there will be plenty of it always after Not as if it were generated of the Earth but in the Earth through whose parts it creeps extending it self continually by multiplication and vegetation which the Ancients denote by the Serpent which Moses says creeps on the Earth feeds it self on the dust thereof and this caused the Cabalists to call him the prince of Sepulchres because he devours and consumes the Bodies there interred not that dead Bodies or the earth are his aliments but only the seats where he is fed and nourished This is the place where he is moved turned and twines without ceasing whereof Medea admonishes Jason where she says in Epist Heroid Ovidij Pervigil ecce draco squamis crepitantibus horreus Sibilat torto pectore verrit humum Lo here the Dragon with his horrid Scales Doth watch and hiss and plow the very dales Which Rythmes a French Author thus expresses Voy le dragon veillant de fureur sorcene Qui d'escaile crugaten a le corps entourne Dont le gosier sifflant fumee feu deserre Et qui par replis lors va baliant la terre De sa large poitrine en la poudre imprimant Les sineux siallons qu'il trace incessament Behold the scaly swelling Dragon lurking Who always listens with a watchful ear Who knits his brows and never shuts his eyes here But him that sees his cust tongues teeth afrights With horror whose wide throat emits such flames As do infect the Air with blackest fumes Behold his many twinings which he deep Impresses in the earth whilst he doth creep And plough the ground with his broad brest whilst he Returns in the same tract continually I adduce these two Considerations not onely to shew how Mercury must be sought but also to confirme that that which is fixable in it is nothing else but the enlivening essence which fixed in due manner perpetuates and keeps life in all things it enters by its purity expelling Excrements and by its perfection perfecting imperfect things The end of Fixation both natural and artificial is Perpetuation and Conservation which are effected by the Mediation of that Tincture which Mercury acquires by this Fixation for that Tincture is Life and Life is nothing else but that which opens and colours the Body with such a Tincture as shews it to be vital and perishes with its death Nature therefore colours Blood wherein life consists with a red Tincture and when the Blood is clearer and more lively red the Body is more sound fair and vigorous as on the contrary when the Blood is dense black adust with choler or changed into a false colour the Body is pained and sick within and by discoloration gives Testimony thereof without We may observe the same in Vegetables whose lively vigour consists in greenness which being changed we say it is turning or declining towards death The perfection also or imperfection of Metals is discernable by their colours Gold is indued with a magnetical vertue which by the splendent fulgor of its tincture draws man's earth after it in which Nature spends all her forces but leaves the victory to Arts industry which by graduation to the haight which it adds to its natural splendor makes it far more fulgent insomuch that it 's called the Terrestrial Sun An Artist then may exalt the golden colour to the height of obscure redness by which augmentation imperfect Metals in a certain degree may by projection of this artificial Tincture be brought to the height of perfection so that we see this golden colour introduced by Nature into this Metal is onely the way to that redness wherein the completion of perfect Vertue lies for which cause this Metal though far excelling others can communicate no perfection nor conservation to humane Bodies as a thousand Jugglers and Sluggards in Physicks promise by their Sophistical Fusions and Phantastical Confections But if more curious Artists work upon this subject they may make it acquire such a degree of inseparable redness that by the excess of its heat it shall work miracles and yet it shall consume nothing but superfluities and shall conserve and multiply the substance of Bodies though Philosophers say That its heat as much exceeds our common fires as common fires do innate heat in Animals Paracelsus in his Treatise of Tinctures extols that highly which is extracted out of Gold by Spirit of Wine and attributes many singular Vertues to it as also to that that 's made of Antimony and Coral before which he yet seems to prefer the Tincture of Mercury which he says may by perfect Fixation be brought wholly to a Tincture so that it will penetrate Bodies because of its most subtile purity where I think he means not that vulgar but Philosophical Mercury wherein Art perfecting Nature hath wrought these two effects to wit perfect Tincture and compleat Fixation Tincture then in proper locution is the pure substance of things and Body is nothing but an Excrement which is also manifest in that Bodies after the Separation of their Tincture are useless without vertue and corruptible no otherwise then a carcase without life colour or motion Tincture may then be called the scope of Fixation it attaining by its permanency in fire a conservative faculty in those Bodies to which it is applied But the manner of attaining this degree of Fixation in which the Completion of the whole work consists is no other then that fugitive and light things be prudently kept in the Fire that they may be brought into assuefaction with it that they may endure most violent heat And for this cause good Authors commend Patience to their Disciples as proceeding from God but Precipitancy as from the Devil Take this for an infallible Rule That unless Calcination go before nothing can be fixed and that this should be done by conjoyning the fixable Spirit with something of a convenient Nature that may retain it in the Fire of Calcination that by this means it may accustome it to sustain heat by little till it can endure the ultimate augmentation of Fire which infers Fixation And the Reason why we must proceed with such discretion is because if we should too readily precipitate this operation the special Spirituality which is the Mother of this Tincture would flie away and leave the Body without any impression of the tingent Vertue so that a new Spirit must of necessity be given to this dead Head before the desired colour can be introduced which is one of the Secrets of this Chymical Art for it is the Spirit and no other thing that colours by mediation of Fire and this Tincture compleated and exalted in our Mercury should be elevated to the height of perfection that as Hermes speaks it may ascend into Heaven and when it hath sustained all mortal torments receive a new life that is after it hath passed the darksome straits of Putrefaction it may be elevated to
Cloak obduced with rust and covered with thick darkness feeding all kindes of Animals into whose belly the vertues of the Celestial Luminaries continually descend penetrating the very bowels of the Earth and impraegnanting it with all kindes of Creatures where the elementary qualities and powers offer their services to this old Parent as to the Producer and Distributer of all things who continually occupies Iliastus in dispensing of specifical forms and Archeus in exciting vital heat which Iliastus and Archeus are as it were two Instruments whereby he informs conserves and augments all things Here note That by Iliastus we mean a general Steward that affords matter for all generation and by Archeus natural or radical heat which digests this matter and acts upon it This Demogorgon then is he by whom as by his Instrument God produces all things in and under Heaven so that he containing his Iliastus and Archeus does with singular providence unknown to vulgar Philosophers and therefore masked under the supplement of occult causes form and generate then nourish and preserve all things exercising the office of a good Housholder or Steward who hath his Cellar in the bowels of the Earth and thence draws Life and vigour for his Family The Earth therefore which is the Receptacle of Celestial Influences and Vertues contains in it the Fountain of this vital Spirit from whose Rivulets Animals Minerals and Vegetables derive Life which communicates to them sense essence and vegetation as it findes their matter disposed for motion and hence such things as are compounded of a more ducible Mass and fit for such motion become sensitive and vegetable and able to generate things like themselves because they are indued with Life for Plants and the like whose Spirits are not cohibited in too crass and hard matter encrease and multiply grenerating things like themselves by seed and plantation but not like Animals but Minerals whose Life is neither sensitive nor vegetive but onely essential because their composition being too hard and gross too straightly captivates their Spirit that they cannot produce any thing like themselves unless they be first purged from their gross impurity and reduced to the subtilty of their first matter about which Aurelius Augurellus that excellent Poet and Philosopher writes thus Lib. 1. Chrysop Haec inter variant quae nec primordia rerum Extant quaeque frui vitali sorte negantur Ut media quaecunque sedent tellure mâ—tella Quique latent miro grati fulgore lapillâ— Nullo namque genus sobolemve auger putantur Semine sed cunctos aevi torpere per annos Verum haec ipsa etiam secreto vivere quivis Sentiat vitae divino munere fungi Haec oriri eadem si contemplabitur et si Augeri ex sese penitus increscere cernet Vt mox e rariis patefactis nosse licebit Quod si non sobolem educunt non caetera vertunt In semet causa est quod multa spiritus illic Materie abstrusus vitam qui porrigit omnem Explicat aegre ex se vires in vivida promat Has hominum virtus densa sub mole latentes But those that neither Life enjoy nor yet First matter are but in the Earth do sit As Metals rich and Stones that precious be Differ from these for no off-spring we see They generate nor kinde augment but lie Resting themselves yet he that shall espie Their secret acts and with himself compute Their augmentation cannot sure conclude That th' are quite void of life for though they do No off-spring generate nor turn into Themselvs nor other things yet life they have Which is so chained in the closer cave Of their dense solid matter that they can't Exert such actions as a brute or Plant. Yet if mans skill do quit them of these bonds Their vertue 's such as will make them amends For when these Minerals are pure they will by their specifical form though not generate something like themselves yet work such an alteration and perfection in things like themselves that they shall equalize the Philosophical Elixir whose divine vertues wise-men so much admire fools so much contemn because their blinde eyes cannot penetrate to the Centre of this Mystery If therefore Animals Minerals and Vegetables which constitute the greatest part of this visible World be full of Life what Reason have we to think That the whole is more imperfect then part thereof But let us sink further into Sublunaries if the Celestial Bodies give Life to the Inferious they must certainly and necessarily be enlivened by the Universal Spirit for nothing can give that it hath not of which let us hear Augurellus Hoc etenim quic quid diffunditur undique Caeli Aeraque Terras laâ—i marmoris aequoâ— Intus agi reserunt anima qua vivere mundi Cuncta putant ipsumque hac mundum ducere vitam All that 's contain'd under Heavens Canopy Both fire air earth eke the boundless sea Are mov'd they say by a most ample Spirit That th' world enlivens all that it inherit But natural motion is alwayes conjoyned with Life how then can that produce Life and motion in another that hath them not in it self Motion never forsakes that which hath Life and that which either moves or is moved alwayes cannot want Life The Soul of the Universe moving it self spontaneously is the fountain and original of all corporal motion for the most subtile part of this Mundane Soul soaring high and inhabiting the Heavens is continually wheeled about with the Celestial Bodies which it self circumduces with its proper and continual motion and for this Reason the superiour Bodies are more lively and perfect then the inferiours because they are continually moved orbicularly and that which is moved continually must needs be immortal And thus it appears that the whole World is full of Life and that the Life of every species and individual is but a participation of this Universal Life of the World which alone may be properly called an Animal in whose corporal Elements the seeds of all visible and corporal thing are hidden and included for we see many Plants grow without precedent seeds and many Animals produced without copulation of Male with Female The visible seed of Plants lies in their Grains of Animals in their Genitors Metals also have their seed but such as is not visible but by true Philosophers who know how with great industry to extract it from its proper subject And unless there be a certain procreative faculty in the Elements wherein Generation is potentially included many Herbs would scarce germinate on the Earth much less on high Walls where no seed was ever sown nor Herb planted neither would so many kindes of Animals be generated in the Earth or Water without copulation of Sexes as there are which do by copulation afterwards perpetuate their species though themselves were not generated by the commixtion of any Parents as we see in Snakes generated of Mud and Flies and other little Animals