the great and new Paradox which I have undertaken to demonstrate in this Treatise Wherefore in the entrance obstacles that are obvious and devious are to be removed And first of all they object the Text The Earth shall bring forth unto Thee Thistles and Thornes In the sweat of thy Face thou shalt eat thy Bread I will multiply thy Miseries and thy Conceptions In pain thou shalt bring forth thy Sons thy Husband shall rule over Thee Thou shalt die the Death And by consequence ye shall be afflicted with the Calamities of Diseases and old Age. All which things issued forth on Posterity from the curse of the Sin of Disobedience even unto the destruction of the World upon no account to be redeemed and by no act of sanctity to be expiated Because God had appointed a Law to Adam that he should not eat of the Fruit of the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil the transgression whereof hath defluxed as into original Sin So also it stirred it up into the perpetuity of a Curse from our first Parents equally on all their Posterity These things have been thus diligently taught hitherto Whereunto under the peace and censure of the Church I will humbly sub joyn my own Conceptions First therefore I negatively affirme the contrary because the Words of the Text do not precisely containe any Curses except on the Serpent and Earth but not at all on Man Whom if he with whom there is no successive alteration or change had cursed he had truly and alwayes cursed like the Evil Spirit For it is a foolish thing to believe that God should now curse Man whom presently after Sin and without the intervening of contrition or act of repentance he forthwith blessed with much Fruitfulness gave him the whole Earth and placed all living Creatures under his Feet Yea in the midst of the Curse uttered or brought upon the Serpent he replenished the femal Sex with his blessing saying The Woman shall bruise thy Head I will put Enmities between Tree and the Woman and between thy Seed and her Seed The which seeing it is not understood of the Seed of Man it promiseth the Messias the Saviour of the World to come of the Seed of the Woman So far is it that he had there cursed Man In the second place I deny that a Law was given and by consequence also a contradiction or opposing of a Law For it follows wheresoever there is not a Law Transgression nor Disobedience doth not interpose and by consequence a Curse doth not there befall But I prove that there was not a Law by the very Words of the Text And he commanded him saying Of every Tree of the Garden eat Thou but of the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil Thou mayest not eat The Word he commanded Seemes to include a Precept and so also a Law Yet that one only Word obtains no more the force of a Law or Precept for the affirmative of every Tree of Paradise eat Thou than for the negative Thou mayest not eat For it included not a Sin although he had not eat of every Tree of Paradise And therefore it did no more contain a Law for the forbidding of one Tree than for a Liberty of all the other Trees Therefore the Text contained a fatherly Liberty for the affirmative and likewise for the Grant as also a fatherly Admonition of Caution for the Negative no otherwise than as if a Country-man being expert of the way shall say to a Traveller If thou shalt go that way thou wilt Perish and die the Death So the Admonition of the Creator thou mayest not eat and in whatsoever day thou shalt eat thou shalt die the Death do shew not a Law but a Persuasion and Wish But the transgression and Act of the despised Admonition doth indeed contain a Sin but not of Disobedience and Disobedience as much differs from a despised Admonition as a Law doth from an Admonishment it self The Prohibition therefore thou mayest not eat sounds as an Admonition to wit least he should eat his own and posterities Death by an unextinguishable Guilt because that Death was placed in the Apple but not in the opposition of eating And therefore that Death from the eating of the Apple was natural being admonished of but not a Curse threatned by a Law For the threatnings of Death which was unknown to Adam could not terrifie the same Adam And therefore threatnings had been void but not an admonition For Adam had not as yet seen a dead Carcase and the which before he saw living Creatures was ignorant of their Names And much less could he know what Death should be And least of all by far could Eve know what it should be to die in Paradise Therefore with our first Parents Death was as yet a non-Being and unknown but of a non-Being and of that which is unknown no Conception answereth and there is no fear at all Therefore neither hath God foretold Death for the threats of Terrour or a Law but from his meer goodness That when they had eaten of the disswaded Apple they might know that God had not made Death but themselves for themselves Neither doth the Text in Chap. 3. hinder these things Because thou hast eaten of the Tree whereof I had commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat c For the Words do manifestly declare the goodness of the foregoing Admonition but not a Law For the Word I had commanded is the same which before in the second Chapter and he commanded him saying signifies an Admonition only and not a Law Otherwise under an equal original Sin they had been obliged from eating of every Tree of Paradise which none of a sound mind will ever affirme For the great Sin was in a suspition of deciet falshood and fallacy of God and that they gave more credit to the Serpent than unto God and that they despised a fatherly and kinde Admonition But there was not Disobedience because a Law was not given It was indeed an Act against Gratitude Love towards God and a due and rational Obligation Therefore God cursed them not because they by eating had contracted the Penalties of Diseases Death and Miseries on themselves for a Punishment But God speaketh not of Diseases after the Fall Because it was sufficient once to have foretold Death to come while he admonished them that they should not eat In the next place the crafty Serpent assaulted not the Woman as being the weaker but because the Admonition was given unto Adam from the Mouth of God but signified unto the Woman onely from the relation of the Man And therefore God first requires an account of Adam First of all it doth not containe a cursing of the Man that the Earth should be cursed in its Work and should bring forth Cockle and that he should in the sweat of his face eat his Bread all his Life But they containe a remembrance of the loving Admonition that went before the
of name of the Philosopher despised the contradicters of his own and indeed false beginnings no otherwise than as Necromancers do require to be credited without demonstration Let eternal prayse and glory be to my Lord in all Benediction who hath formed us not after the Image of the most impure VVorld but after the figure of his own divine Image therefore hath he adopted us for the Sons of Election and co-heirs of his glory through grace Surely the condition of that similitude were to be grieved at and too much to be pitied which had hitherto subjected us under the Law of all calamities from our Creation even till now and that before sin we should onely be the engravement of so abjected a thing as if the VVorld had been framed for it self but not for us as the ultimate end but we for the VVorld whose Images indeed onely we should be to wit we ought to be made stony that we may represent Stones and Rocks And so we should all of right be altogether stony leprous c. For indeed seeing we are by Creation that which we are and a Stone should be made in us that we may represent Rocks Now death and a Disease were in us before that we departed out of the right way or fell Let Heresies depart For neither do we all suffer the falling evill neither do they who labour with it have it that sometimes we may represent Thunder or the Earth-quake or an unknown Lorinde of the Air its unconstancy But now if there were at least the least truth hereof verily he who suffers dammages according to Justice ought also to perceive the profits of the Microcosme even so that especially we ought to fly Seeing it is more rational for us sooner to shew our selves Birds than great Stones or storms of the Air or water Therefore let allegorical and moral senses depart out of nature Nature throughly handles Beings as they do in very deed and act subsist in a substantial entity and do flow forth from the root of a seed even unto the conclusion of the Tragedy neither doth it admit of any other interpretation than by being made and being in essence from ordained causes I observe also that Paracelsus Tartar being invented and introduced into Diseases hath not yet stood secure enough for truly he immingles Tartar also in the first Beginnings of our constitution and so neither doth he require the Seeds of things themselves out of Tartar but he will have Tartar to be radically intimately and most thorowly immirgled with the Seeds whereby he may finde out the Seminary of Hereditary Diseases Of which mixture he being at length forgetful calleth it ridiculous He saith that a VVoman having conceived by the Seed of man it doth separate snatch lay up Tartar into it self and that the Seed being as it were anatomized doth constitute it self the flattering Heir of that Tartar On the contrary that the Spirit of Wine is never so refined by possible circulations as that it doth not as yet contain its own Tartar in it As if Tartar were the chief Root of the Universe or an immediate Companion thereunto But I know if any forreign thing be materially in the Seed generation doth never follow Next that the Seed of Adam being materially prepared in Paradise had not generated a more perfect off-spring than that which afterwards after the fall was made in him Cain and Abel do especially prove that thing At length if Tartar should so intimately grow in Seeds that after many years from generation it should cause hereditary Diseases by materially separating it self from the whole surely that Tartar should not so soon be separable by the Magnet or attraction of a VVoman seeing if any thing be separated from the seed it is a Gas diametrically opposite unto Tartar For if the womb should separate any thing from the seed that should happen by drawing but such is the condition of drawing things that they draw for themselves and unto themselves and then cease but if the womb shall extract for separation sake there shall now be no fear of an hereditary evill because the womb hath a power of serving that which is hurtfull Lastly although Diseases shall come by degrees into the place of exercise yet they were never materially thorowly mixed with the Seed after the manner of Tartar that not Tartar not a gowty Chalk fore-existed in the Seed but that Diseases derived from the Parents do lay hid in manner of a Character in the middle life of the Archeus whose Seal doth at length under its own maturity of dayes break forth and frameth a Body fit for it self and so is made the Archeus of a Disease together with every requisite property of the Seeds For a Disease also is a natural constitution proceeding from the Seed consisting of an Archeus as the efficient cause It hath otherwise rustically been thought in the Schools that Diseasie Bodies do materially conflux unto the Generation of hereditary defects It also contains an Idiotism to exclude a Disease out of the number of natural Agents and corporal Beings seeing the matter also which they say is diseasifying is now and then obvious to the finger if it be thorowly viewed by the eyes If therefore a Disease be now reckoned among the Beings of Nature why should it not be established by a necessity of its own seed It is rude Phylosophy that Tartar had been from the beginning in the seed and that after thirty whole years it should begin the first principles of a Cream and should meditate of an Increase and as it were a particular Republique for it self and that wholly without the direction of the seed God made not death nor therefore hath he connexed Tartar unto seeds as the matter of Diseases For if so stupid errours should happen unto the seminal Archeus the Ruler of Nature hath already forsaken the Rains of the same and mankinde shall shortly go to ruine Also that saying of Paracelsus is absurd that not so much as the Spirit of Wine doth want its own Tartar For although it should be circulated for the space of an Age yet it shall never in very deed separate any Tartar For Paracelsus who never saw or found that Tartar of the Spirit of VVine will therefore be credited in his own good belief no otherwise than as elsewhere where he thinketh that water as oft as it hath ceased to be seen doth wholly depart into nothing and that something is created anew For it doth not follow a Salt is made out of the Spirit of vvine it receives a coagulation in the Salt of Tartar therefore the Spirit of vvine doth contain Tartar Because although every coagulated thing should be Tartar which it is not yet those Bodies do not contain those things which at length are made of them To wit Milk is made of Grasse of Milk Arterial Bloud and from hence the seed of man yet Grasse doth not contain a man in it self as neither
from East to West For very many Waters do alwayes descend by Rivers from the North which do never run back unto the North. So the River Danubius with many others doth slide thorow the Hellespont or Greek Sea into the Archi-pelago or chief Sea the Waters descend neither doth any thing return from the Mediterranean Sea Whatsoever doth once descend into the Mediterranean is never spread into the Ocean For the River Nilus alwayes descending in a right line from the Mountains of the Moon is wholly plunged into the Zebunutican Sea with its dresses neither doth the Mediterranean Sea in the mean time increase nor become the salter Which thing notwithstanding should be altogether needful so to be if in manner of a naked vapour the waters powred into it should exhale out of the Sea But the Eternal wisdom hath in most places made the Mediterranean Sea deeper than the Ocean that the Virgin-Sand might drink up the Waters together with its Salts like a sieve For mans necessities which do seem to have dictated a Law to God out of his goodness did require Springs and Rivers falling down from the highest tops Lastly the waters being turned forth of the Quellem by Fountains do by a continuation draw after them the following waters and therefore also in the bottom do they drink up the Sea-waters by supping Therefore properties are added to places by Divine Providence by reason of necessities The flowing of the North Sea about Kent of England doth prevent or go before the flowing of the West Sea almost for half an houre Whence I conjecture the Earth and Sea to ascend in the Northern Climate or Coast For the whole Northern Earth is named Scandia from Scandendo or climbing And the North Sea should not be frozen to ice if it were salt If it be sweet it points out that the Salt of the Ocean cannot by ascendding be co-mingled with it but that the Northern waters do uncessantly rush into a steep place For it is likely to be true that as well in the first mixture of the deep as in the floud of the generall overflowing all Waters were once again co-mixt and that the co-mingling of these was therefore called Sea Which waters therefore in the beginning were once salt and straight way afterwards were sweeter it is certain that those waters have continually flowen downwards because they are sweet at this day and so Scandia is far higher in Scituation than Aegypt But let us imagine onely earth of ten foot to have framed a banke to the Sea in the shoares on every side and let us keep an equall roundness at least Nilus which is carried head-long in a straight line from the South into the Mediterranean Sea for a thousand Leagues space if besides the roundness of the Sphere which is not any where steep it also hath it self in manner of a plain with relation to its Center it should have onely ten foot fall at the highest from its rise even into the Sea Which is to call Nilus a quiet pool but not a steep running River For when a Ditch was devised at Gaudave Bruges there was found a declining height of 18 foot the dimension being taken by night over the flame of a Candle and that by the withdrawn roundness of the Sphere If therefore by a slow rowling or running there is 18 foot of fall or descent in eight Leagues Nilus flowing alike slowly shall have need of 2230 foot in height at least in its beginning But if it shall flow after the manner of Nilus it shall of necessity have need of four times as much at the least or of nine thousand foot But if Nilus doth measure this height of the Earth by 15 degrees from the Southern Tropick or turning point unto the Mediterranean Sea where the figure of the Globe is as yet Sphericall or round the which altitude therefore is it not lawful to conjecture to be from the Mountains of the Moon even to the South An unwearied fall of the waters from the North promiseth a notable elevation of the Earth so it is But thence it is not granted to collect that all the waters that being supposed do forsake the North because the Lawes of Scituations are silent where the water falls down on every side about the Center of the World And so hath been the necessity of the Universe and the rule of properties For I feign a subiunary place without a palpable body but a flint of an Egge-like form to fall down from Heaven and him to rest in his Center yet shall his length be inclined towards some part of Heaven What if this be towards the Poles it will express to us the figure of the World For it hath not therefore lost its auntient weight yet should it not fall towards Heaven because that is against the nature of every weight neither should it fall crooked-wise seeing that so it should fall into an infinite and should have no bound of motion which is alike absurd Therefore that Stone with its weightiness should be stayed in that place wherein it was laid But since that thing happens not under the Moon it must needes be that besides the weight of things there be some property in place at the sight whereof it be remooved and may make the respects of upper and lower Therefore if that thing above and beneath is not but in respect of Bodies and perhaps onely of sublunary ones those kindes of respects do wholly subsist from the intent of the Creator which is the original cause of all rest and motion Wherefore if his intent hath been to make the figure of the Universe Egg-like because that was the more commodious habitation of Mortalls for the needful nourishments of the heat of the Sun and hath alwayes made that which is far the best in all things he hath also limited an Oyall or Egg-like figure to the waters and the same respect to their Center Or that the Ovall figure should keep almost the same intention to the Center as a round figure hath What if Fountains do ascend to the tops of Mountains the Water of the Pole might also hold the reason of an ovall Scituation no otherwise than of a round one otherwise if the Heaven as the adequate or suitable Husband of the Earth be plainly Spherical or round 1. It would follow that the Sun makes a greater Circle under the Aequinoctials than under the Tropicks 2. The Sun to be so much the swifter moved under the Aequinoctiall than under the Tropick 3. The motion of the Sun to be daily inordinate and unequall to it self 4. Houre-glasses which do measure the motion of the Sun in order to slowness and the pins of Sun-Dialls which measure motion in order to the scituation of the Orbe or Circle of the Sun should not answer to each other 5. If those Instruments should agree under the Aequinoctial lines they should varie at leastwise under the Sol-stices or Sun-steads Also the Heaven which is
subdivision is many times re-shaken sub-divided by the colds through which it hath passed This Gas at least should never of its own accord return into its auntient water nor should descend unto the most cold places through which it escaped by climbing upward unless the uppermost Blas of the Stars should force its descent And so the Region of the still air is not void of successive changes but that the Rain doth not there moysten the ground nor the rage of windes serve for the commotion of the waters For since the Gas which it keepes in it self is now reduced to so great a fineness of it self and all its Atomes being as it were roasted with heats in the outward superficies of the Sulphur surely they cannot return into rain unless by a sweet winde they descend to the middle Region where they do re-take the beginnings of coagulating under the luke-warm blowing of the air For a certain alteration opposite to that place from which the Gas departed ought to reduce the Gas into water For a sweet luke-warmth in the still air maketh the Atomes of Gas being covered in their own Sulphur to divide which Sulphur a skin being as it were broken thorow or like a Glasse that is brought suddenly from luke-warmth into the cold is broken and so the Mercury of the water doth dissolve its Salt at the dissolution whereof the Sulphur it self may be melted into its former water And that kinde of inversion or turning in and out of the body of the water and that torture through the exact searching of the cold is necessary that all the power of the Ferment may be wholly taken away out of the Clouds For else much corruption and the much stink of mists would soon destroy mortalls As in Silver being melted the exceeding small atomes of Gold do slide to the bottom So do the atomes of the Gas settle and by sliding they do increase or wax bigger which otherwise being infirm by reason of the coldness of the Air are again lifted up unless a gentle or favourable luke-warmth in the coldest place did now and then hinder it For so indeed rains shoures storms so Hail Snow mist and Frost are through an alteration by accident having arisen as well from a motive as an alterative Blas in the most cold places And so Gas and Blas have divided the whole Common-wealth of a Meteor into Colonies In like manner I have learned by the examples cited that the Sun doth not heat by accident but by it self and immediately And that heat is as intimate and proper to it as its light is to it The Air hath therefore its grounds or soils no lesse than the Earth which the Adeptists do call Peroledes Therefore the invisible Gas is entertained in the various Beds or Pavements of the Air if the Water hath its depths of its Gulfs it s own Gates are in the Peroledes which skilfull men have called the Floud-gates and folding doores of Heaven For neither is Gas falling down into the place of Clouds carried out of the depth of Heaven without its directer Blas Yea it falls not down but thorow ordained Pavements and folding-doores For all the folding-doores do not promiscuously lay open to the Planets but all the Planets in particular are by their own Blas the Key-keepers of their own Perolede Which thing I submit to be examined by Astrologers that are the shewers or disclosers of Meteors and I promise that they shall finde out a rich substance For so windes do sometimes hasten perpendicularly downwards and smite the Earth but otherwise they go side-wayes out of their folding-doores they beat down Houses and Trees as also bring miserable destruction on all sorts of Shipping But the more luke-warm Air doth foreshew the Winde to come out of the depth of the Air and the Gas to bring with it the Blas of Heaven downwards Whence Gas is straight-way again resolved into a Vapour and afterwards into rain Indeed Clouds do then appear which not long before were not beheld at any corner of the World Because the invisible Gas slides downward out of the depth of the upper Air the which growes together into vapours and from thence into drops For that is the appointment of the Air that it may continually seperate the waters from the waters But seeing that one part of water is extended at least to a hundred fold of its dimension while it is made a vapour and so much the finer by how much the Gas thereof is sub-divided into the more lesse parts and since there is that order and that law of universe that all things may be carried on for the necessity of man and the preserving of the World Indeed in this respect do heavy things tend upward light things are drawn downward Hence it hath seemed to me that the Blas of the Stars is disturbed into rain and is carried into clearnesses and other seasons as oft as the pluralities of Gas it self in the still Perolede of the air do seem to threaten almost choakings and the too-much com-pressions in the air Yet I am not so carefull concerning the occasionall causes of a Meteor it is sufficient that I have known an exhalation arising from beneath to wit a vapour and Gas to be the materiall cause of every Meteor It sufficeth to have known Blas to be the effective cause by the authority of the holy Scriptures The Stars shall be to you for times or seasons dayes and years This therefore is the unrestable appointment of the water that by proceeding continually upwards and downwards it should answer no otherwise than as the windes by an inordinate and irregular motion do answer to their Blas of the Stars And so the water which existed from the beginning of the Universe is the same and not diminished and shall be so unto the end thereof But I meditate of the Peroledes or Soils of the Air to be as it were the Bottles of the Stars by which they do unfold their Blas even through their determined or limited places for the uses and interchangeable courses of times or seasons And chiefly because the upper and almost still Perolede doth contain the cause why there are windes fruits dewes and especially things pertaining to Provinces For seeing that the winde is a flowing Air and so hath an unstableness in it we must needes finde the locall cause of stability in the more quiet Perolede Therefore the folding-doores are shut or laying open in the Perolede according to the Blas of the Stars which they obey Nor is it a wonder that there are limits or invisible bounds in the air of so great power and capable to restrain a heap for the visible World doth scarce contain another Common-wealth of things and the least one of powers For who will deny that under a Rock or great Stone of Scotland scarce 12 foot broad and deep 30 there is not some division of a Perolede that in the mean time I may be
fortune come suddenly unlooked for Famagusta had been destroyed Therefore let the Reader know that the Eastern Marriners were wont on the day that they do observe such Windes to take a great Knife wherewith they make the Sign of the Cross in the Air and do utter these words In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and God was the Word and suddenly all the Whirle-winde and tempest seperates it self and ceaseth For I have seen this experiment twice And on the second time while I returned out of Cyprus into Italy For neither do I finde any thing of Superstition therein but that the Knife must have a black handle And so I can determine of nothing certainly Thus far he A wonder at least That this divelish tempest should cease and the Devill spare the whole City perhaps for the sin of one sinner Moreover about Blas this is as yet considerable If in the great heat of Summer thou holdest a burning Candle about the hole of a Window there is no foot-step for the most part of mooved Air to be perceived but throughout the whole winter however small the hole be a troublesome Winde breatheth and that continually But since there is not a greater quantity of air let us now take the air for its Magnall or sheath being constrained by reason of cold than of that which is rarefied by reason of heat there seemes not to be a stronger reason of this than of that to stir up the Winde Therefore there is a twofold Motive locall Blas in the Air one indeed which stirs up the Windes and so includes a violence or swiftness from a native power or motion But the other which followes as for an alterative Blas for co-thickning or rarefying in the air But since this is almost universall by reason of Summer and Winter it also sends forth a certain slow flowing of the Air. And although cold may equally condense the Magnall and the Air be in this respect unmoved by reason of an alterative and violent windy Blas yet seeing in the opposite Coast of the Sphere the Magnall or sheath in the Air is generally made thin onely by reason of heat the Air in the Northern Coast must needes partly go back be knit together and so occupie the lesse room and partly be gently driven forward by the rarefying and rarefied Magnall of the Air that co-toucheth with it from the other half of the Orbe And this is the cause of the Question proposed to wit of the slow and uncessant flowing in the Winter Air which we do experience through a Chap be it never so small also the Winde ceasing But not so in the Summer-time For the Magnall being once made thin through heat the air stands unmooved amongst us CHAP. XV. A Vacuum or emptiness of Nature 1. The true definition of the Winde 2. The undistinct sincerity of former ages 3. Whither the Authours invention tendeth 4. An examining of the Air by an Engine like to a Hand-Gun 5. A Vacuum or emptiness in the Air is proved 6. A Vacuum is easier believed than a piercing of bodies 7. A Handicraft Demonstration by fire in behalf of a Vacuum and five remarkable things of it 8. A Handicraft operation concerning a sulphurated Torch or Candle 9. Subsequent Collections from both the Handicraft Operations 10. Pores of the Air are demonstrated 11. Opposite suspitions are taken away 12. Inward heat and inward fire being shut up together in a Glasse how they act diversly into the Air. 13. That it acts more strongly by the pressing together of its smoak than by the enlarging of heat 14. Of what sort the sense or feeling of the Air is 15. A new end of the Air. 16. That the fire lives not by the air but onely is choaked through penurie 17. Vacuities or emptinesses in the air are needfull 18. That every thing hath hated pressing together made by its guest by the lawes of self-love 19. A Vacuum being an impossible thing with Aristotle hath now become a requisite thing in nature 20. That there is given in the Vacuum of the air a middle thing between a body and an accident and so a neutrality 21. What the great Magnall may be 22. How the Blas of the Stars is communicated without Species or particular kindes 23. The tristes of the Aristotelicks concerning the Winde 24. A ridiculous multitude and plenty of exhalations according to Aristotle 25. The Opinion of Galen touching the Windes is hissed out 26. The Opinion of Galen concerning Quicksilver badly from Diascorides and worse copied out 27. The nature of rarefied air for the confirming of a Vacuum 28. While the air is commonly thought to be made thin it is indeed pressed together by reason of the extension of of its Magnall or Sheath 29. The body of the air hath its just extension under cold 30. Why in a hotter Climate the favours of the Heaven are the greater 31. The Magnall is proved to be increased and diminished but not the air to be properly rarefied or condensed IN the beginning of the Blas of a Meteor I have defined the Winde by a true definition that is by its constitutive Causes Seeing that a thing without or besides the containing of its Causes is nothing and every thing produced doth naturally shew an originall and essentiall respect unto its own producer which is inward to it Therefore a naturall Winde is a flowing Air mooved by the Blas of the Stars And that for distinction from a prodigious or monstrous Winde raised up by the malice of evill spirits Hypocrates calls the Winde a Blast and saying that all Diseases are from blasts he reckoueth up his To Enormon or forcible blast among the chief or first causes of Diseases For such was the plainness and candour or simplicity of former times wherein because they being more blessed there was not yet such knowledge nor cruelty nor frequency of Diseases For all things were not granted to Hypocrates For it hath well pleased the Almighty since Hypocrates to have also created his Physitians He made known indeed to Hypocrates that there is in us a Spirit stirring up all things by its Blas which Spirit he afterwards by a microcosmicall analogie or the proportion of a little World compared to the blasts of the World and restrained into the order of a blast whether they were partakers of life or indeed did contain the causes of death and destruction Lastly he left it undecided whether they being stirred up from the Heaven they should shew the suitable proportions of the Heavenly Circle or at length were stirred up by a sublunary law For the race or descent of the vitall Spirits had not yet been plainly made known For none had hitherto learned by experience that the matter of Gas was water and so it had not been as yet known that the windes of the World did wholly differ from the vitall Spirit From the knowledge of the windes handed forth by me in the
ceaseth from a sumptomatical motion toward the Pleura as long as shee remains enfeebled And therefore the Pleurisie not increasing for a while nature as it were repenting of the rumor and storm thinks of a ripening of the corrupt Pus that is to be framed of the out-hunted blood All which things would more successfully follow the blood being retained wherein the life that is the strength dwells because the life is nature which is the alone Physitianess of Diseases and she failing the Physitian takes away his shoulders Therefore the Schools have not hitherto taken heed unto the impulsive cause which pours forth the blood out of the veins into undue places beyond bound and measure and which furiously plucks away the Pleura from the Ribs and prepares a wound and hollowness Which causes being co-knit together are iddeed before the effect yet do they so persevere in the same effect that they are materially and efficiently the very effects themselves Unto which effect indeed slow and impotent is the race of false and salt Phlegm out of the head and the dreamed rheumy defluxions through channels or continuations of passages not existing But Paracilsus meditating of this pulling away of the Pleura and being willing to square a cause thereunto hath brought in other follies that he may defend his own mad laws of a little world in us For he feigneth anew and Ogertine salt else never named by him however variously he itcheth in himself concerning salts in Ulcers and Apostemes even to the fetching off of the skin And first of all he teacheth that this Ogertine salt is of the property of Arsenical Sulphurs in the mean time he is silent concerning its mines veins property history etymology and reason of its etymology because it was dreamed by him But at leastwise he had acted nothing more cleerly herein seeing he dawbs no less with the same elay than that wherewith the Schools are defiled For truly none hath hitherto declared why the Pleura departs from the Ribs whereunto it is adjoyned by a continued thred of fibers to wit whether it be pulled away of its own free accord or indeed by another tearer they are content as satisfied in the doubt if they shall say it is rent from the Ribs by the weight of a down-rouling Catarrh in the resolving nevertheless of which doubt as of the root the whole cure and prevention of a Pleurisie doth consist For the root of every Disease is worthy of the dumb silence of the Schools to wit I shall shew in a peculiar treatise that the very essence of any kind of Diseases whatsoever hath been hitherto unknown in the Schools it hath seemed to suffice them if they have applyed their doctrine unto without unto artificials unto the latter sumptoms unto the consequent fruits or products as though the stage of causes and essential roots were ridiculous and in vain Paracelsus also if he reckoned to confirm any solid thing toward a Disease of so great moment and to add his doctrine thereto if he determined not to derive his Ogertine salt it self from a power unto act out of the blood at leastwise that unwonted unnamed and unknown salt ought to have brought a necessity of its invention and of its generation that at least some place might be afforded for prevention For this the pretended title of the Monarch of secrets doth require But all things have remained neglected because the chiefdome of healing hath stood founded upon empty stubble I promise therefore that whatsoever hath been built thereon shall fall to the ground For whether a fire the searcher out of truth be built or next whether the voluntary corruption of dayes shall consume the stubble at leastwise I know that at length that building will fall to the ground But I in a Pleurisie consider the first inward moover or spur and afterwards the tearer of the Pleura And both those being one and the same efficient cause of it I call the Pleurisie it self But the venal blood flowing thither and that which is poured out thither and the aposteme sprung from thence I consider as the product to which end I will bring common experience for an example Let a Thorn be thrust into any part of the Body the which pain instantly succeedeth from the pain there is presently a Pulse from the Pulse an afflux of vendl blood whence ariseth a swelling a fever an Aposteme c. the Thorn therefore mooves the other things after it Therefore the Metaphorical Thorn of the Pleurisie and by speaking properly the Pleurisie it self is a forreign sharpness conceived in the Archeus the which if it chaseth or layes aside into the blood of the hollow vein surely that is expelled unto the vein Azugos yea or into the very flesh near the Ribs from whence ariseth an Aposteme as the product of the Pleurisie In the next place as an Aposteme which is bred from a Thorn fastened in the finger a not but rashly cured by cutting of a vein but it promiseth a cure by reason of the plucking out of the Thorn only so it happens in the Pleurisie For as sharpness in the stomack is an acceptable and ordinary savour so out of the stomack all sharpness is besides nature and hostile which hath been hitherto unknown in the Schools For so from a sharpness are wringings of the bowels there is a strangury in the Urine a corroding in Ulcers in the skin a scab in the joynts the Gowt c. And the which if thou wilt experience to thy hand mingle some drops at least of sharpish Wine with the Urine that hath been newly pissed out without pain and cast it in with a Syringe Thou shalt experience against thy will that I teach the Truth In the humor Latex also of which afterwards in its own place it raiseth up a bastard Pleurisie the which they altogether through the same carelessness of narrowly searching as in other Diseases do call a windy one but if the Archeus hath laid up a gentle sharpness into the lap of the venal blood unhappily applied to it it as despised is presently hunted out and cast out of the veins and brings forth an Aposteme in whatsoever place that shall happen but if that doth happen to be the deeper or lavisher in the veins a certain pestilent affect ariseth The which I prove for the venal bloud or flesh do never wax soure or sharp without an actual obtaining of putrefaction the which I have els-where on purpose proved by the fleshes of Beasts which do most swiftly Putrifie under the Dogstar therefore yielding soure Broath for the bloud waxing soure is contrary to the nature of the Veins and to the disposition of the whole flesh as long as it liveth presently coagulated For the venal bloud in a dead-Carcasse is preserved by the Vein a good while from coagulating out of which if it shall fall it waxeth presently clotty which is more largely declared els-where Hence it follows that of an
something concerning the first Intent of God in Man At length in the last place the Sophistical Atheists do oppose themselves by the Text of Genesis That God overthrew the World by a Deluge Because the Sons of God had chosen and taken Wives of the Daughters of Men which were fair and because these had generated Gyants being strong and famous Men in their Age And that thing is there reckoned for much Wickedness the which notwithstanding literally is seen to be none in the Words of the Text after that Matrimony was now established and lawful Yea especially because Concubine-ship was a good while after dissembled in the Law the which by reason of that Impurity especially they named the Mosaical Law but not the Law of God For truly the Text doth not mention the Sin of David but in the Death of Uriah the Adultery of Bathsheba and the proud numbring of the People Wherefore they are wont to refer this Text of Genesis unto the religious Sons of God and the free Daughters of Men. But it hath seemed a vain thing to me to have fled unto a single Life and monastick Vows and Evangelical Counsels while as a plurality of men was required from the Command Increase ye and be ye Multiplyed and Replenish the Earth which Words indeed did excuse Concubine-ship Then in the next place seeing Virgins are far more prone unto a single Life Bashfulness likewise unto Chastity and Monastick Vows than Men The Floud had rather happened from the Sex being inverted or turned on the opposite Part and it hath been Written because the Daughters of God had taken the Sons of Men for their Husbands And moreover neither can there be any thought or project of keeping Chastity probably taught which had then separated the Sons of God from Virgins nor any Apostasie in those Ages which had provoked the Indignation of God unto Floud Yet if that be so the which I can in no wise through a Dream perswade my self of at least-wise it is from thence proved in behalf of my Position that Chastity alone doth distinguish the Sons of God from the Daughters of Men and that therefore the deflowring of Virginity hath procreated Original Sin But seeing that before the Floud there was no promise of a single Life or Chastity and that a Monastick or Monkish Life came not as yet into their Mind so long as Multiplying stood in a Command and Blessing I have conjectured under a humble censure of the Church that the Sons of God were the Posterity and begotten of a Man and a Woman having the true Image of God but that the Daughters of Men were Daughters procreated by the Sons of Adam and Nymphs the Satanical-birth whereof God alwayes very much abhorred But there was an incredible Multitude of these in the Desart one whereof was sent unto B. Anthony Also in the Dayes of Constantine a live Satyr was carried about to be shewn and afterwards was shewn being seasoned with Salt So once there were also diverse Monsters drawn out from the Ocean which spake were instructed in divers Arts and therefore rational they also lived among our Country-men Indeed rational living Creatures were conceived as well in the Waters as in Wildernesses from a detestable Copulation Seeing therefore the first Monsters had begotten Off-springs by the Sons of Adam of the Female Sex they distinguished the Sons of Adam by the name of the Sons of God and these kind of Monsters they name the Daughters of men And these Nymphs Heathenism thence-forward after the Floud named Dryades Nereides Naides c. The which seeing they were fair to look upon and men had taken them to be their Wives God from so great a Filthiness and destruction of the humane kind which the Text cals much Wickednesse in every Season or Age abhorring them determined to wash away the World with a Deluge From that Copulation of Monsters and Nymphs they generated strong Gyants and those famous men of their Age and the which therefore Heathenism long worshipped as Gods and Heroes For otherwise there seem to be frivolous reasons of the Floud according to the Letter To wit because men were married with women and these had generated Gyants that were strong and famous men of their Age. Therefore the Text ought to contain the Indignation of God and a suitable Cause of the Floud The monstrousness is not only in the Figure and Forming of their Body even as in the beginning of Degenerations but their Deformity being by degrees withdrawn and diminished the monstrousness stood in the sensitive Soul the which an immortal Mind did not accompany however outwardly they were Animals using Reason At least-wise it is manifest from the aforesaid Text that the true Posterity of Adam were not Gyants but of the Stature of Christ the Lord and framed by the same Statuary But the Copulation of diverse Species hath alwayes been execrable in the sight of the Lord least Man should follow it by imitation The Law therefore forbad that many Seeds should not be sown in the same Field nor that Webs of Linnen and Wollen should be combined To wit it being mindful of that most Ample and much Wickedness for which God ought to destroy the World But the co-mixture of those Men before the Floud with Nymphs was so usual and ordinary and likewise the copulation of Faunes with Maids that a few only being excepted and saved into the Ark the whole Stock of Adam was defiled and therefore passed by in silent Therefore God decreed to destroy every living Creature that he might likewise extinguish the guilty rational Monster For besides a few which the Ark shut up there was not he who had not contracted a consanguinity with that devilish Progeny For the B. Prophetess Hildegard writeth for she is the Prophetess of this Book which was canonized in the Synod of Trevirum or Triers unto the Clergy of Triers For very many People arose from the Sons of Adam who had a forgetfulnesse of God so that they would not know themselves to be Men From whence they by shamefully Sinning lived according to the manners of Beasts except the Sons of God who separated themselves from those same Men and their Loves of whom Noah was born These things she who acknowledgeth the Sons of God in both Sexes and clearly approveth of my Interpretation of this Text. For Satan had tried by this Mean to overthrow Mankinde and to hinder the immortal Soul that there might not be He from whence the Son of God should be born Therefore there was need of the Floud not only for the Correction of Sins but for the Salvation of the whole humane kind For otherwise Cham had not been saved by the Ark for he was now wholly perverse from Atheism Wherefore I interpret the Text yet under the humble Censure of the Church to wit that the Sons of God who did bear the Image of God in their immortal Soul and in their Body Took the Daughters of Men which
the mean time they do now and then assoon as may be reach the Air but sometimes they run head-long down by long journeys and Pipes of Earth and rockie Stones before they yeild themselves to the Light yet there was the same reason necessity and end of their Institution on both sides to wit the will of him who created all things for our uses But it remains to crave leave that Aristotelical spirits may indulge my liberty if I shall judge it a dream impossible to Nature that Fountaines should be bred from a co-thickning of Air For indeed that also is chiefly true That Air was never nor is it to be in any Age Water even as neither was Water to assume the Form of Air. For they are first-born Elements and the constant Wombs of things stable from the Creation of the World and so remaining unto the end thereof But whatsoever hath through the ranks of Generations subscribed it self unto successive change whether it may seem to be Earthly Stony or Liquory it derives all that from the mass of three Principles dedicated unto the Tragedy of Generation but not from the first Elements which rejoyce not but in a stable continuance and the which do again lay up their deserved Youngs into their antient â—â—ceptacles until the seeds are ripe for the Generation of a new Off-spring which Seeds the same Principles of Bodies being in the mean time thorowly changed by Digestions do again cloath and re-assume For from an invisible and incorporeal seed entertained in the Wombs of the Elements and putting on the Principles of Bodies all Generation in the Universe which is called voluntary is made Others have called that thing a Flux from a Non-being unto a Being which things that they may become more perspicuous it is to be noted that unto the production of every thing two onely Sexes if not one promiscuous one at least have concurred Therefore also by the same Law of a worldly harmony there are Originally two onely Elements in the Universe to wit the Air and the Water which are sufficiently insinuated from the sacred Text by the Spirit swimming upon the Abysse or great Deep of Waters in the first beginnings of the World The Earth therefore and the Fire or Heaven if they are Elements they are called secondary ones proceeding from the former For whatsoever of Earths rocky Stones Gemms Sands c. doth exist or flowes forth into a stinking Vapour or is at first changed into Ashes a Calx or Lime or at leastwise through the Society of some Addittament into a Salt the off-spring of Waters presently afterwards they all the volatile Summe exceeding or over comming the fixed Summe are made aiery and vapoury Efluxes rushing-into water with a hastened Violence And so that whatsoever is earthy hard solid and compacted seeing all that is reducible unto a more simple thin pure and former remaining substance pardon the Novelty most resplendent Prince it must needs be that it hath no Efficacy of an Element at all but that they are more latter things than Air and Water In like manner we say of the Heaven that the Heavens shall be changed shall wax Old and Perish and so that the Heaven and the Earth shall at length Perish the like message of which Destruction thou shalt not find concerning the Air and Water In the next place the Water or Air could never in any Age be reduced into any other former Body by Art or Nature This therefore is the Face this the Ordination this in the next place is the Office Combination Fate and End of the Elements to wit that the unchanged Essence of two most simple Bodies and their unmixed substance may afford a vital Womb or Prop unto Seeds and Fruits until at length the number of things to be generated being accomplished the heap of Principles together with the Seeds do constitute strange Families and Colonies their Bride-bed being separated in a more blessed Seat For the very many Dreams wherewith the World hath suffered it self to be hitherto circumvented the handicraft Operation of the Fire doth deride with loud Laughter Who indeed will deny but that the Water is easily changed into a Vapour But that Vapour or Exhaltation is so far from being Air that the Powder of Marble or a Flint may sooner be Water as we have shewn For a Vapour is in very deed materially and formally nothing else but a heap of the Atoms of Water lifted up on high The which our School shews forth more clearly than the Light at Noon The Air therefore whether it be received in hot or cold Glasses and pressed together therein shall never afford Water but according to how much of a Vapour that is of an extenuated Water it shall contain within it But the Water is seperated into very small conspicuous Drops against the Sun thorow the Glass at the Beginning of Distillation as long as the sides are cold to wit while through the vigour of Heat it flies away extenuated into a Vapour And that thing indeed happens no otherwise than by a proper Magnal which in things mixt and so also in the Water it self is the Skie thinner than the Air and dis-joynable from the same and sustaining its compression and enlargment contending for a middle thing or Nature between a Body and not a Body receiving the Impressions of the External Stars of its native Soyle being altogether intimate in all things by reason of which alone and not of Air we draw our Breath a proper Magnal I say and a spiritual Being in the Water doth indeed lift the Water on high it being lightned by Heat procuring a divulsion or renting asunder of the Magnal which same rent Magnal detains a quantity of Water proportioned unto it self which is rent upwards as well in the Glasses as in the Clouds and doth preserve them from falling until through the compression perhaps of succeeding Atoms as it comes to pass in distillation the former do grow together into drops and do enclose the former Magnal or vital Being within themselves Or the same Magnal of the Water being rarified through Heat and being straightway after condensed through help of External Cold doth constrain and restrain those same its own Atoms of small Drops within the Limits of its command I return unto thee Stagyrian Aristotle If Air be co-thickned into Water seeing thou teachest Air more to excell in Moisture than Water I pray thee why shall Cold which is natural to the Air change the Nature of the Air into a matter which is too moist of its own Nature In the next place now Cold and no longer Heat shall possess the vital Principle of Generation Wherefore although a Vapour be Air generated of Water formally transchanged and of the same again alike water doth grow together Now thou differest from thy own self who admittest of so frequent and easie a return from a privation unto a habit At length take thou also this handicraft Experiment Air may
it is certain That the Heaven hath received no other Law since Transgression because the Earth alone hath undertaken all the Curse on it self For from hence I have sufficiently demonstrated elsewhere That the Heaven is free from our sins neither that it playes the part of a revenger of iniquities But if some places are subject unto Death and certain Diseases that is not to be attributed unto the circulation or whirling of the Heavens blind influxes of the Stars But it is altogether proper unto the dispositions of the Earth For although Eastern Provinces may seem the more fruitful or happy that is not to be attributed to the Heaven Seeing that in a circle every part subjected under the same circle is alike Oriental or Easterly Otherwise a Circle should not want a Beginning End and Extremity of parts Therefore there is an inbred goodness in the soil and the fertility of the ground is holpen by the continual cherishment of the Stars and a perpetual familiarity of visitation Truly under the circle of the Sun Climates have an ordinary and equal heat and so that as many fruits as by ripening do ascend unto a degree of perfection by reason of heat are there more happy the which otherwise through want of heat are not alike perfect But the heat of the Sun hath respect unto Fruits but not to Long Life which is of no less length of continuance in Cold Mountanous and Northern places than else where under the Hot or Torrid Zone Surely the favours of the Soyl do not depend on the Stars as neither the prolongations of Life The Stars are daily wheeled about and do daily almost equally affect the Climates of the Earth which are under them but they do every Year receive their Winter and Summer according to the access and recess of the Sun In the mean time the Tracts of the more adjoyning Lands do far vary from each other They are therefore the particular gifts of the Soyl but not of the Heaven which therefore keep a stable goodness as it were Provincial to the same Tracts of Land In the holy Scriptures indeed The Land of Promise floweth with Milk and Honey being fruitful in Wine Corn Pulse and rich fruits of the Tree And likewise scarce requiring dunging and the toyles of Labour And then I see other Coasts of the World to owe and pay the Tribute of the Land of Promise For from both the Poles continual Rains do steep the Earth that the promised Soyl may without the trouble of Rains take unto it self its due Water and that Aegypt may repay the favours of the Soyl of Heaven with a double usury of fruits For Seas and Rivers strivingly hasten unto those places with a speedy course Yea and from beyond the Tropick of Capricorne Nilus brings down his melted Snows through Aegypt unto the Mediterranean Sea as it were a Yearly Tribute of Nature that may water the more fruitful Countries if not with Rain at leastwise with Dew and the blackish cloudy Waters of Nile and that the Vapours being lifted up from the Sea throughout the Soyl it may most plentifully repay a plentiful Dew round about And so that the whole World seemeth readily to serve those more fruitful Regions Under the Aequinoctial Line it Rains many times every Day because the Tributary Waters do not reach thither But they are supped up in the Countries which God in times past appointed unto his own People but now unto Barbarians by reason of Transgressions fore-monished of by the Prophets He therefore blessed the Land of Promise for the People of Israel from the beginning but for Reasons foreknown to himself from Eternity and the which he fixed stable into Nature Yea he not onely appointed the Tribute of the whole World unto these Lands but unto most of them he added Reasons Idea's Seeds and Gifts whereof the more intemperate Climate are destitute Nor all that for any other ends than because it so well pleased him for his hidden Judgements But these things do not make for the consideration of long Life for in Is-land Men are found to be of a Longer Continuance of Life than in Palestina Phaenicia Aegypt c. Oftentimes also in Mountainous and rough Hills Older Men are met withal than in a pleasant Champion To wit that we may know that the Prince of Life hath granted a long continuance of Life unto so miserable places and to a singular tract of Land which he hath denied unto whatsoever the most pleasant and wealthy Countries Nature therefore is subject unto the Soyl even for a stability of Life For we measure a Diseasie and short Life from Endemicks Doth happily an Endemical Being breath out of the Lands wherein Life is prolonged No surely And it is sufficient that a place doth want malignity that a continuance of Life may be attained so far as is from the nature of the Place Lastly Fountains are either without Savour or Mineral they not being those which may have positively a long continuance of Life But as being those which unsensibly mow down the daily Superfluities or growths of oily Dregs and in this respect Life is not untimely taken away by and by Neither also doth much and a sweet temperature of Air prevail hereunto For truly in the rough Hills of the Forrest of Arden of Scotland and Spain in our Champion a longer Life doth for the most part occur than in Aquitane For Hieres is a Valley nigh Apulia environed with Mountaines being fruitful in the sweetest Fruits where the most sweet Station of the Spring is almost continued Yet having Inhabitants of a shorter Life being deformed with a pale Countenance so that it hath crept into a Proverb of those that were Sick and Recovering Thou seemest to us to be a Stranger come from Hieres For the pleasantnesse of Fruits takes up the suspition of a Mineral Endemick Also not onely Mountainous Colds do extend the Life but Old Age is frequent among the Aethiopians Let therefore those places be fit for Long Life which being not polluted by any Endemicks have moreover not unwholsome Waters nor the which are infamous for a stormy Wind. CHAP. CIV The Radical Moisture THe Schooles with one Voice promote the Radical Moysture of Life For they declame That from it and in it we live and that that onely being consumed we die For they who together with Aristotle attribute all things to heat as to an active Principle do not say That the Radical moisture is the Beginning as neither the Inn of Life unless they derive the Primateship on Heat in the moisture But the moisture hath more pleased others From whence they being sore afraid through the sloath of a diligent search least they should erre they will have our Life to depend on and be prolonged as well by moisture as by heat without distinction And so they denominate it not indeed heat but composedly Radical heat or the first-born moisture That indeed the first-born or original
out of the veines be not putrified truly now Nature is mad and outragious because she rather dissolves the Bloud that she may have that which may putrifie for the continuation of a future Fever But the Schooles of Galen confess that Choler to be putrified and that a putrified humour is poured out through the veines at every fit and brought into the slender extremities of the veines and that is the cause of the trembling of the fit and great cold To wit the putrefaction of which humour when it is the more intense or heightened in the same place that it straightway after causeth so great a heat I have accounted these Doctrines to be dry stubbles unworthy Fables miserable old Wives Fictious and ignorances most pernicious unto mankind But surely Fernelius first discovered this Ignorance of the Schooles Wherefore Rondeletius and the followers of Galen inveigh against Fernelius as a forsaker of and an Apostate from the School of Medicine Fernelius therefore first smelt out the Nest of intermitting Fevers to be about the stomach Duodenum and Crow and indeed he fixed the seat of continual Fevers about the heart but he durst not to decline from the ancient Rule of curing Feuers For he had begun openly to dispute against the foregoing Schooles for the Nest of Fevers but afterwards he hid himself among retired places for he not being able to rid himself of the strawy Bonds of putrified Humours suffered the essence and knowledge of Fevers to be snatched away from him But Paracelsus being affrighted with the Rigour of Fevers perswading himself that he held the knowledge of a Fever by the eares and pleasing himself with his own Allegorical invention of a Microcosme defines a Fever to be a Disease of Sulphur and Niter and elsewhere again to be the Earth-quake of the Microcosme As if Sulphur and Nitre were made far more cold than themselves while they are separated from the mud or Limbus as he saith of the Microcosme and moreover after some hours were of their own accord inflamed with the fire of Aetna For as Galen every where stumbled in the searching into Causes and so therein bewrayed himself not to be a Physitian the Name of whom he saith is the Finder out of the occasion So Paracelsus by a wonderfull Liberty slid into the Similitudes or Allusions of a Microcosme or little World unworthy a Physitian Because that was a hard Law which had violently thrust man into the miserable necessities of all Diseases nakedly that he might resemble the Microcosme or great World I certainly gratifie my Soul that I shew forth the Figure of the living God but nor of the World This good man was deceived because he knew not that fire doth no where kindle unless it be first inflamed neither however he hath feigned that there is a Flint and Steel in us and also a Smiter in the point of rubbing of the Flint Surely there was no need of these things as neither of Gun-pouder for a feverish heat unless we are burnt at the first stroak and cleave asunder in the middle An actuall matter therefore of Sulphur and Salt-peter is wanting in us a connexion of them both is wanting an actual fire is wanting And lastly a Body is wanting which may undergo that kindling at one onely moment Therefore let the Causes and originals of Fevers in the Schooles be Trifles and Fables CHAP. IV. Phlebotomy or Bloud-letting in Fevers is examined 1. One onely reason against humours others elsewhere 2. A universal proposition for Bloud-letting Galen being the Author 3. A Syllogisme against the same Galen 4. A Logistical or rational proof 5. That a Plethora or abounding fulnesse of good bloud is impossible 6. That corrupted bloud doth never subsist in the veines 7. That there cannot be said to be a Plethora in a neutral state of the bloud 8. That cutting of a vein is never betokened by the Positions of the Schooles 9. What a Cachochymia or state of bad juyce in the veines may properly be 10. That co-indications instead of a proper indication and those opposite to a contrary indication or betokening do square amisse 11. A proposition of the Author against cutting of a veine in a Fever 12. The Schooles disgrace their own laxative Medicines by their tryals of the cutting of a veine 13. The ends of co-betokenings 14. A fore-warning of the Author 15. After what manner the letting out of bloud cooleth 16. A miserable History of a Cardinal Infanto 17. We must take special notice against Physitians that are greedy of bloud 18. A guilty mind is a thousand witnesses 19. An argument drawn from thence 20. The essential state of Fevers 21. An explaining of the foregoing argument concerning cooling and the privy shifts of the Schooles 22. That there is not a proceeding from one extream unto another is badly drawn from Science Mathematical into Medicine 23. It is a faulty argument in healing 24. The argument from the position of the Schooles is opposed 25. The false paint of the Schooles from stubborn ignorance 26. The faculties obtain the chiefdom of betokening 27. Hippocrates concerning great Wrestlers or Champions is opposed but being badly understood 28. The differences of emptyings 29. A Fever hurts lesse than the cutting of a veine 30. The obligement of Physitians 31. A general intention in Fevers and the cutting of a veine opposite thereunto 32. Science Mathematical proveth that cutting of a veine doth alwayes hurt 33. The uncertainty of Physitians proves a defect of Principles 34. Cutting of a veine cannot diminish the cause of Fevers 35. An argument from a sufficient enumeration 36. Another from the quality of the bloud 37. Whither the Schooles are driven 38. Vain hope in the changes of bloud let out 39. That the co-indication of Phlebotomy for Revulsion is vain as well in a Fever as in the menstrues 40. Derivation in local Diseases is sometimes profitable but in Fevers impertinent 41. Cutting of a vein is hurtfull in a Pleurisie 42. The Schooles may learn from the Country Folk that their Maximes are false 43. Revulsion a Rule in Fevers 44. What Physitians ought to learn by this Chapter BEfore I proceed unto further Scopes I ought to repeat what things I have elsewhere demonstrated in a large Treatise To wit That there are not two Cholers and phlegme in Nature as the constitutive parts of the venal blood but that the Treatise of Fevers required me to be more brief especially because those very things do of themselves go to ruine in this place where there is no mention made of Humours except putrified ones since an Animal or living Creature that is putrified is no longer an Animal I will therefore examine onely the two universal Succours To wit Bloud-letting and Purging as the two pillars of Medicine and the which being dashed in pieces the whole Edifice falls down of its own accord as it were into Rubbish and these Succours being taken away Physitians may forsake the sick they not
whose hands't shall come this Book to view See that your hearts are simple to the pure No filthinesse true wisdom can endure The milky way must be the paper here And th'Inke Nectar from th' Olympick sphere And then 't may open unto you a path For finding that which long been hiden hath For there 's a way by Simples for to cure Unto Simplicity the nearest sure If not Antiquity at Scriptures note Solomon for ' n example may be brought The Author opes a gate in that Divine Chapter that treats â—'th power of medicine And not a little of Moses Câ—â—â—lism He hinteth at that in of Magnetism So truly doth the Saviour report That to the carkasâ— Eagles do resort In former time thy younger learning years Thou as a tender heart yet void of fears People that had the plagues infection Didst visit and by them wert spew'd upon Some breathing forth their life within thy arms Unto thy grief because thou then their harms Wert not so able to repair untill Thou hadst attain'd a great Adeptist skill For thou by Revelation dost show What Co-us us'd two thousand years ago All which supposed I can freely wink At some mistakes whereby thine eye did blink As to Religion because thou wert Honest upright sincere and sound in heart For if the folly of them thou hadst seen As other things deâ—y'd by thee they 'd been And if in Nature thou art ought mistaken Thy many truths are not to be forsaken For why ye Schools ye cannot neither dare ye Deny but that humanum est errare Until the minds perfection in the Light Which he believ'd yet would not claim it quite And so his candour is to be commended In not assuming what God had not ended Yet know that where one truth is you among In Helmonts breast there lodged ten for one And that not taken up by hear-say trust As ye are wont but stamped by the Iust For Reason Dialectical he saith Must vail the Bonnet unto light in faith Sith Reason savours of an earthly soil Dies with the sense our Parents did beguil And therefore Logick may no longer center Within mens minds as Sciences Inventer And Nat'ralists must needs go to the wall As those of Athâ—â—s in the daies of Paul Since that four El'ments Humors and Complexions Are proved plain to be but childish fictions Which Ethnicans by phansie blind misled Have rashly plac'd in seeds and ferments sted This is some liquor pour'd out of his bottle A deadly draught for those of Aristotle Astrol'gers also will be soon undon Since Herm's and Venus circle with the Sun And since the Planets common Ordination Was to stir up a Blas for seasons station And since the Heavens can no forms bestow To th' Prince of life all creatures do them owe. Ye Theologians look what will befal ye Since man is not defin'd by Rationale But by a Spirit and Intellectual light Now every one may see by his own sight And living waters out 's own Cistern drink Need not â—ew Cisterns that do leak and chink Nor tug with pains to dig for earthly Wells The Spring 's within him as Christ in him dwells Nor run to Temples that are made with hands Himself 's the Temple if he contrite stands And cause a New-birth is requir'd of all Since brutal coupling entred by the fall And so your follow'rs can't be reputed Christians by birth nay but must be transmuted And since the mind of man may be compâ—eated In this lifes time as sin and self 's defeated Since Char'ty not to dwell by many's known In those that with the letter up are blown For as from mud or dung ascends a stink So Pride from Leathing sents up like a sink He did refuse to be a Canon great Least as saith B. he peoples sins should eat What will protracting crafty Lawyers doe Since Christ against them hath denounc'd a woe He would not bâ— a Professor of the Law Enough for man to keep 's own self in awe And what will come of Atheists since 't is true That there 's a Power Eternal who in â—â—e Of fallen Angels did mans Soul ereate In mortal body an immortal state To live in h's hand in weal or woe as they His call of Grace shall or shall not obey What of curst Hypocrites who in deceit Take up Profession for a Cloak and Cheat Better for Sodom and Gomorrah than For such when Christ doth come the world to fan But stop my Genius run not out too far Although thy shackles much unloosed are And vitals subtil while thou tell'st the story Of what concerns mans good and God his glory Least Prince of th' Air like Poets Pegasus Prevail to make thy wit ridiculous By mounting thee too high upon his wing Of fleshly pride and Aeolus thee fling Down from the quiet Region of his skie In the Icarian waters for to die Or whirl thee higher in his stormy hail And sting thy conscience with the Dragons tail For if an inch be given so they tell It is not safe for one to take an ell Wherefore retreat in time of thy accord Least thou incur the anger of the Lord And throw thy self along down at his feet After the Author thou shalt once more greet I b'lieve thou wert a Medel-master made By the Creator of the Root and Blade Of healing virt's the Father of lights I sing Whence every good gift doth descend and spring Thou livedst well and in the Belgick Nation Wert a tall Cedar in thy Generation A good memorial thou hast left behind Of what in daies now coming men shall find Writ in Christ's Bosom and in Natures spread As they are worthy in those books to read Thou diedst in peace in Anno forty four I doubt not but thou liv'st for evermore My friend is also gone yet I survive Lord grant that to thine honour I may live And as my life thou gayâ—st me for a prey When in a gloomy and despairing day I thought I should have died without the fight Of thy Love-tokens and thy face so bright So I intreâ—r upon my prostrare knee That I thy way and Cross may never flee Than turn a new unto Apostasie Or thee dishonour raâ—ker let me die Than to depart again out of thy fear Better wild horses me in pieces tear If the remembrance dwell not in me rife Of thy great goodness pity of my life But as large mercy is to me extended So what is faulty may be fully mended That perfect righteousness may cloath my back And I to sound thy praises will not slack In life or death or suffering by the world Who in transgression up and down are hurl'd And Topheâ—s pit shall surely help to fill If they in time repent not of their ill But as he did for 's en'mies pardon cry So do all Chrictian hearts and so do I. O holy holy holy holy God! Whos 's Name 's exalted in th' Ascendant Jod My self doth tremble and my flesh doth quake While I the King of Saints my Subject make I dread thee Lord I dread thy Sov'raign fame I love thee so I can't express the same My Spirit 's on site and my heart doth flame With a desire to sanctifie thy Name My Soul is melted and my heart is broke In feeling of the force of thy Love-stroke Father I thank thee that thou didst enable Me to convey the dish from Helmontâ— Table And if some crums or drops have fell beside 'T was what a careful servant might be tide It being weighty full of divers fare If none should over-fall or flow 't were rare A Corydon I h'd rather some me deem Than t' use dark-phrases that would not be-seem Rather a Tautologian be dained Than to the meanest leave words unexplained Rather a home-spun Patcher wanting Art Than th' Authors meaning willingly pervert And if his tongue could speak out of the dust Hee 'd justifie this Translate all almost For though his learned Art I don't comprize Yet in the Root our Spirits harmonize The Dish lest somewhat of its crums and drops As it was carried through the Printing Shops Yet what the Press hath nipt off by the way It here returns again by this survey ERRATA IN the Authors Dedication to the Word Pag. 2 lin 6 read except In the Translators premonition P 2 l 35 r and is p 3 l 19 dele other In the Preface to the Reader P 11 l 46 r Eternally p 12 l 28 r the work p 13 l 35 r world In the Poeticall Prophesie P 1 l 4 r spiting P 14 of the Book l 10 r knowingly ibid. l 28 r vain ibid. r give p 17 l 37 r it with p 7 l 32 r Nuns p 34 l 55 r first 〈…〉 p 57 l 25 〈◊〉 as r is p 295 l 2 r 〈◊〉 p 298 l 60 r Watchman p 407 l 28 r whereof they are said to have been the p 477 l 26 r vital p 504 l 31 r it is p 518 l 50 r this is â—oheaped p 535 l 41 r efficacy p 537 l 38 r Plato p 519 l 28 r 〈◊〉 p 575 l 5 r But be sides p 577 l 61 r Lile p 515 l 18 r anothers cherry p 621 l 53 r 〈…〉 710 l 30 r the God p 739. l 28 r Mols p 741 l 22 for any r and. p 825 in the Title of the disease of the Stone r root p 838 l 55 r by p. 1073 l 13 r voice p 1150 l 12 r worms ibid. l 44 after terrible dele and. p 1157 l 1 r the plague Medicine Aesculapius Hippocrates Pandora Latine Er Greek Ro Hebr. Res Errours Eccles 1. 11. On Psal 140. 143. 1. The essentiall Form 2. The Vitall Form 3. The substantial Form 4. The formall substance N Lib. 14. De Civitate Dei Cap. 17. Lib. 4. Contra Jul cap. 10. Lib. of Marriages 12. Flesh of Sin cap. 24. Lib. 5. Cont Jul. cap. 15. Lib. 5. Cont. Jul. cap. 12. * Of his Testament Chap. 26. * The signs of a true Physitian * Bernard