of Rosins flowres and herbs have arisen and likewise those which are prepared of Minium or Red Lead Cerusse or Colcotar Hitherto also doth the Salt of â—artar tend being rectified by the Spirit of Wine until it obtains an astringent taste For it is the Balsam Samech or of Tartar of Paracelsus even as out of Arsenick for Ulcers whereof moreover there is its Balsam of smoak because that Arsenick is by skilful men accounted the fume of Metals Not indeed that it is not simple born and subsisting by it self but from a Similitude for that metallick smoaks do imitate an Arsenical malignity And so I close up the Doctrine of external Diseases CHAP. XLII An unknown action of Government 1. The Maxim is opposed That of Contraries the Remedies are contrary 2. The foundation of that Maxim 3. The Maxim concerning the re-acting of the Patient or of its defence in time of fight is examined 4. Arguments on the opposite part 5. The same by moving strengths by things generative and irregular 6. There is no re-acting of weight 7. Arebounding action neglected by the Antients 8. Bright burning Iron acteth and doth not re-act 9. The swiftness of a mover is not the action but the measuring of the action 10. Altering Agents do not properly re-suffer 11. Another Maxim is noted of falshood 12. From whence the falseness thereof hath issued 13. What Agents of a different inclination and irregular are 14. He proceeds to prove what he hath undertaken to prove 15. Wherein the opinion of Aristotle may be preserved 16. An explaining of action in the slowness of the fire 17. Actions on an object separated from the thing supposed 18. A Fermental and radial or beaming action 19. That these kinde of actions are not to be referred unto the fault of vapours 20. The Blas of Government hath been hitherto unknown 21. The falshood of a Maxim 22. The fire suffers nothing by a burnable object 23. To determine or limit an action and to re-act do differ 24. New actions 25. The dimness or giddiness of the Schools 26. Their staggering 27. Likewise some neglects of the same 28. The unknown action of Government is not that which they call an action by consent 29. The Errour whence it is 30. Why Anatomy hath arisen into so great curiosity 31. How much may be required from Anatomy 32. A neglect of the chiefest part of natural Philosophy 33. The Schools deluded by thinking 34. Many things happen in us by the action of Government without conveighing Pipes or Channels 35. Blindness hath brought blinde persons unto blinde vapours the action of Government being unknown 36. Things admitted by the Author 37. The action of Government is abstracted from a co-binding mean 38. A natural action in incorporeal Spirits 39. Which is a jugling action 40. Luxury takes away the Remedy of the Horse-hoof 41. An Example of Government 42. The government of the Womb is wholly over the whole Body 43. Government acteth into its own marks the middle spaces being untouched 44. The faculties of the actions of the Womb. 45. The furies of the Womb. 46. The manner of making in the birth of a Disease from the action of Government 47. Why the fore-head is not bearded 48. That Capital Diseases do not arise through Fumes out of the Stomach FRom the first time wherein the Schools placed contraries in Nature they presently universally established that nothing acted without strifes war and discords Even so that also chidings hatreds emulations have been reckoned the Foundations or Principles of Nature no lesse than self-love And moreover also they being credulous of hatred by the perswasion of Astronomers have introduced the same things into the courses or dances of the Stars Likewise they have determined that in the whole sublunary frame or stage nothing is done or generated but by a Relation of the Superiority of an Agent unto a Patient So indeed that the Patient is with violence compelled tamed altered destroyed and is wholly translated into the Nature of the Agent onely by the relation of a stronger on a weaker But when the Schools saw that Agents did by degrees languish away either through space of time or wearinesse of acting they likewise decreed from thence that that indeed did not so much happen through a tiring out of the seeds and powers but by a re-acting of the patient Therefore they confirmed it that every patient or sufferer doth likewise of necessity re-act and for that cause likewise every agent or acter doth re-suffer neither also that it is any other way weakened Whence by consequence I guessed with my self that sometimes the seeds of things shall at sometime be naturally wholly undoubtedly extinguished unless they are miraculously preserved Notwithstanding I do even contemplate that there is on both sides a perpetual rudenesse and continued sloath of a diligent search in the doctrines of the Schools And that one onely thing hath repelled from me the former fear For truly after that I with-drew contraries out of Nature I could not afterwards in sound judgment find out any re-acting in the patient as neither could I admit of hostilities in nature elswhere than among soulified or living creatures For contrariety is in those things alone wherein there is an actual defence in the will of the patient against the injuries brought on it and felt from the Agent Wherefore there is never a re-acting of the patient on the agent unlesse where there is a contrariety conceived in the soul But that this is thus ordinary and ordained in nature I will forthwith demonstrate For first of all the Universe should remain still even as it now subsisteth by the infinite power of the Word if it should be so commanded I say things should be infinite in their own successions and duration but they should not be infinite by an actual virtue of the unity of a creature And that thing because it is of faith it wants no proof Therefore there is no infinite of sublunary things by their own power Hence it follows that at length every particular Agent doth by degrees also of its own free accord at some time decay and having finished its offices dies by a dissolution of its strength circumscribed in space of place and in the power of continuance strength unlesse perhaps the appointed day of its proper and limited period or conclusion be shifted off by a preventing of the term or the impediments of the object But of natural Agents some are those which have a motive force which I have called a motive Blas but the Agents themselves I call moving strengths But other moving Agents I call an alterative Blas to wit those which do operate by the seminal force of a ferment And such Agents do for the most part generate their like Lastly in the third place some Agents are irregular or of a different inclination I will speak of those three in order Indeed acting strengths do act on their objects First by a prevailing weight
learn the wit of Aristotle ready in founding Maxims that as oft as he found any thing agreeable to his own conceipts he would presently draw it into Rules under an universal head by binding or tying up the Roots of weaker authority that were taken from one to another Which Maxims indeed of his the following age wondered at to wit being prone to sloath and therefore easily worshipping him and those Maxims Also oftentimes he brought learning by demonstration into Nature by a forced Interpretation as that he would have natural causes wholly to obey numbers lines and letters of the Alphabet by a rashness altogether ridiculous By way of example he taking notice that fire did sooner burn about dry Wood than moyst he thereupon straightway meditating on a general Maxim would That the act of active things should onely be on a matter disposed which thing notwithstanding is enclosed with many ignorances For first as soon as he saw the fire an external Agent to agree with combustible matter he shewed hence also that every other Agent in Nature ought to act by the meanes of fire not knowing the fire not to act by meanes of a seminal Agent and to be a peculiar Creature Therefore with the like ignorance he judged every efficient cause like the fire to be of necessity external He was also deceived in this that he determined every natural Agent to require a disposed matter when as otherwise the Agent in Nature doth dispose of the matter that is subject unto it For neither doth any counsel of a natural Agent act for any other end than that it may dispose the matter subjected to it unto aims known to it self at least appointed for generation Indeed out of one onely juyce of Earth and one onely Garden four hundred Plants do grow and fructifie For if the Agent doth finde a friendly disposition in the matter 't is well indeed but if not he easily prepares the same for himself What if hereafter I shall plainly shew that all tangible bodies do immediately proceed out of the one onely Element of Water by what necessity I pray you shall the Agent require a fore-existing disposition of the matter or if the disposed matter do fore-exist who shall be that disposer or fore-runner of the Agent By it self sufficient to the disposing of every matter wherein it is But if thou sayest the Ferment At leastwise thou oughtest again to have known that both causes differ not in Nature from the thing produced unless in ripeness nor is the Agent to be distinguished from the Ferment The which if the Schooles seasoned with the Discipline of a better juyce did know they would also know Aristotle to have revolted from his own Rules which being at first true he erected into the premises of Scientifical demonstrations He had even become mad about the wondrous generatings of stones in us And although before the Elements of Euclide sprang up he was more ignorant of the Mathematicks yet Aristotle being far more skilful in this than in Nature endeavoured to subdue Nature under the Rules of that Science For he knew the Circle to be the most capable of figures in a plain Therefore he suddenly forced it into a general Maxim that also Ulcers and wounds that are round were more hard to be cured then any others that were alike in extension But truly a piercing wound by a broad Dagger is more difficult than a round one in the flesh But in Ulcers the Fistula of the fundament or weeping Fistula are more laboursome in healing than any Ulcer of the shanks or leggs extended into a Circuite Indeed he thought being deceived with the aptness of Rules the incarnating of a wound to promote it self onely by an external working Plaister and that outsideness not onely to be in relation to the superficies of our Body but in a figural respect of the distance of the lips of the wound in order to its Centre I will relate a Story A Trooper infects his Wife with the Pox or foule Disease but this through extream want of a remedy enlarged it self into an eating sore or Ulcer One at least I saw wasting the fleshy membrane or coate from the Ear into the neck shoulder and elbow behinde thorow the shoulder blades the whole side of the ribs and breast Which membrane as it is fatter in Women so it contains a deeper depth She said she had many other and lesse sores thorow the bottom of the belly into the legs and she shewed a humane body almost without a skin The Woman was carried by my authority into the Hospital of Vilvord the Nuns refusing but might prevailing also sometimes for a while commands the Nuns The chief Chyrurgion Tow being steeped in Aqua fortis with incredible pain toucheth the quick muscles and smites the house with a miserable howling But passing by I asked why he had done that He saith it is an ulcerated Cacner and wholly so and by how much the sooner she died by so much the happier she would be The complaining Nun hearing that said she was not bound by the rules of her house to entertain the Cancer Leprosie or Pox c. Forthwith therefore before the twilight they bring forth the Woman to the Suburbs and laid her on the Dunghill But a poor Country man pitying the unknown Woman makes her a little Cottage of boughes against the Rain but he applieth some Colewort leaves to the abounding or running filthy matter and to drive away the unkindeness of the Air. He tells the chance to me I gives her the Corallate of Paracelsus prepared by the white of an Egge and in twenty six dayes she was wholly well For the great Ulcers with a hastened force were covered with skin some exceeding small chaps from the beginning keeping a longer continuance A little after a certain Kinsman dying bequeaths to this most poor Woman a House and Land Her Husband perished behinde the hedges She marries the second time being now rich in a Herde a flock and in Lands For I having admired in her Husband and the Chyrurgion robbers or murderers in the Monks lightness in the Countryman the Samaritane and in the Woman Job I knew the God of Job to be the same and the continual almighty Ruler of the Universe From whom although man hath privily stolen the Titles of Majesty Highness Excellency Clemency and Lordliness he hath reserved at least one onely perpetual one to himself which is that of Eternity In respect whereof man is a Mushrome of one night on the morrow rotten Therefore let the Schooles know that the Rules of the Mathematicks or Learning by demonstration do ill square to Nature For man doth not measure Nature but she him For neither shall a Heathen man that is ignorant of the wayes shew more the wayes than a blinde man colours not seen before Therefore besides the ignorance of Nature in its Root and thingliness or what it is the Schooles have not known the causes number requirance
of a Disease to owe an unseparable respect unto the hurting and things hurting of Functions So indeed that these Essences of Diseases should be included therein Because they have thought that the whole hinge of healing was rowled about contraries when as otherwise it is wholly by accident if in Diseases Functions are hurt otherwise whoever was he who denied a Disease not really to be present in the silence of a quartane Ague the falling sickness madness and Gout When notwithstanding no hurting of Functions is seen who is he which doth not now and then observe in a person recovering greater hindrances of actions and weaknesses than in the flaming beginning of Diseases It hath therefore alwaies seemed a blockish thing to me for a thing to be essentially defined by later and separable effects And seeing a Disease is primarily made by the Archeus which maketh an assault yet by an erring one certainly the action hereof shall be much nearer into the faculties themselves than into the actions of the same especially because as long as the faculties are as yet in one that is in recovery as it were vanquished and sore shaken there are indeed impediments of the faculties present likewise a hurting and suppression of actions yet no Disease surviving And seeing that I have elsewhere sufficiently demonstrated that both causes in natural things do not differ in supposition from the very thing it self constituted Therefore if a disease should be the cause of the hurting of an action as the constitutive difference of the same it should also of necessity be that a disease it self is not any thing diverse from an action being hurt which thing is already manifest to be false It should also be false that the cause and the disease should by the one onely title of the hurter of an action be undistinctly comprehended or the Schooles do badly decree that the hurter of action is the cause of a disease it self But the hurting of the action should be the disease and the action hurt the symptome it self for that is also a devise too childish For First A Disease should be a meer being of Reason mentally arising from a disposition of the tearms of the Cause unto the Effect To wit of the Hurter and the thing Hurt And then an Error is discerned in the definition of a Disease delivered by the Schooles To wit That a Disease is a Disposition primarily hurting an Action Because it is that which should define the Cause and not the Disease it self or the Effect of the Cause Thirdly If a Remedy ought to remove that it self which hurteth the Action that shall either have a singular Monarchy whereby it may call forth and shake off the Hurter it self or the Remedy shall joyn it self to Nature her self and that so most unitingly that their forces being conjoyned and they being now as it were one united thing doth set it self in an opposite term against the Hurter it self But the first of these is not true Because the Remedy should be as forreign unto Nature as is otherwise the Disease it self by reason of a particular direction and arbitriment of motions despised by our Archeus For if it ought to help it should have a power superiour to man's Nature in such a manner that it should obey neither the Lawes of things causing Diseases nor bringing Death And so it should expel the Cause which bringeth the Disease as well from a dead Carcass as from a languishing person Neither likewise hath the later place Because if the Remedy should be united to nature radically and by an unitive mixture it should have a priviledge above the condition of nourishment A hurting therefore of Action it self doth not fall into the definition of a Disease Especially because a Remedy doth not respect so much the occasional Cause as the internal efficient Cause of a Disease it self Whence that Maxime is verified That Natures themselves are the Curesses of Diseases as the Effectresses thereof They indeed do on both sides confound the Disease with the Symptom to the destruction of those that are to be cured seeing curing is seated oftentimes in the removal of the occasional Cause but never in the removing of Symptomes And because the removal of the occasional cause is thought to be an eduction or drawing out of matter nothing but solutives and diminishers of contents have flourished hitherto whereas otherwise a removal of the occasional cause doth more respect a correction or pacifying of the immediate efficient than a pulling away of the occasional matter Because after correction even without a removal of the occasional matter a cessation and unhoped for rest yea and also a cure do for the most part by and by happen The which in a sympathetical cure doth frequently come to hand and manifestly appeareth The Schools therefore have been deceived by artificial things and because they have thought that all generation is begun from the privative point of corruption They have not known that that which now flows in the material seminal Beginning of all things whatsoever hath already for that very cause it s own real Being although an unripe one and that it is hereby this something in it self and distinct from any other thing and that it doth by a natural generation attain only a maturity and illustration in its top or perfection by reason of a new formal light of acting Neither indeed doth the seed therefore differ from its constituted Being by the efficient internal cause and matter but only by an individual alterity or interchangeable course of the perfection of a formal light even as elsewhere concerning the birth of Forms For the Seed which at first had need of an exciter this formal light being obtained is afterwards for the moving of it self The Schools also do now and then consider a Disease even as if it were a neutral product proceeding or issuing forth through an activity of the cause and a reluctancy of our nature But I know that as well the formal Agent as the Patient in a Disease are strangers unto us in that act To wit I know that the Falling-sicknesse is no lesse really in us at the time of its silence than when it shall be in its full fit I know also that a Disease is a real substantive Being but not a relative Being not a naked disposition of the Agent and thing striving unto the Patient as of extreams unto a mean or middle thing Neither lastly that it is a conformity of proportion or disproportion between extreams Although this respect of forming a relation between the Beings of Reason be nearer than the effect produced I know further that every natural Agent is born to produce its like except that which acteth by a Blas but the power or faculty as well that locally motive as alterative because it wanted a name it seemed good to me to have it called Blas in the Beginnings of the Physicks or natural Phylosophy So the Heaven generates Meteors not
as is the Falling-sicknesse the Gout Madnesse c. Truly in all these things there is a manifest Errour of the Schooles which teach That whole Nature is governed by a Ruler or a created Understanding not erring knowing all ends and for the sake of these acting after a most excellent manner For truly it is not to be doubted but that a Wound might be healed or closed without the Tumor Pain corrupt Pus and Inflammation of its Lips But that a Thorn may be drawn out of the Finger with greater brevity than that the Finger should therefore arise into a corrupt mattery Aposteme For the fat or grease of an Hare being annointed on it doth extract the Thorne in one Night Meanes are not wanting to the Archeus whereby he might perform that very thing safely and quickly even as he doth in some of his own accord but that our Archeus is subject to any kind of Passions as if he did conceive childish indignations from the least hurting of the Body No wonder therefore that the sublunary being of Nature by no means subjecting it self to Justice doth yeeld to or fall under its own inordinate Passions When as also the whole man whereof the intellectuall mind is President doth exceed the path of right Reason in many things At length that is remarkable that in the works of Art the efficient Cause is alwaies without and the Schools being deceived through the errour thereof have not known that in natural and substantial generations the Agent is internal For therefore they have banished the efficient Cause as external in the catalogue of natural Causes Yea it hath been unknown that both the Causes of natural things being connexed as I have demonstrated in its place doth not differ from its Effect but in the priority of flowing which thing hath deceived as many as have similitudinously contemplated of Nature by artificial things For neither have they been elsewhere more blinded than while they have introduced that incongruity of their own speculation into Diseases For they have not onely made artificial things like unto seminal speculatively but also in endeavouring to cure they have through a great confusion of falshoods bespattered the whole practice of healing with contrarieties For they have thought that to produce and to generate are altogether the same while in the mean time a generater bespeaks that he brings forth something from his own substance but he produceth who onely couples active things with passive although he contribute nothing of his own He maketh or doeth also who acteth any thing how he listeth Furthermore I also oft-times admire that while the Schools do constitute the benefit of healing in the removal of Causes after what sort they could place distemperatures within the rank of Diseases seeing the hot and most known of diseases doth both suddenly and of its own accord slide into cold and we are able presently to remove the intemperance of heat at pleasure without helping of the Fevers And then seeing they have never received the vital Cause which is the impulsive one in Diseases for the efficient Cause of Diseases they have determined of removing nothing but the occasional Cause For the Archeus although he be the true and immediate Cause as well according to the matter the which he brings vitiated and that out of his own bosome as also according to a seminal and efficient Idea yet the Archeus doth not shew the removal of himself But the Schools do act contrarily while they attempt their Cures by blood-letting purgatives and next by every means fortifying Life But upon what ground they do that they themselves shall see Moreover in Diseases Nature is standing sitting and laying Nature standing doth her self cure her own Diseases from a voluntary goodness as wholsome Fevers And likewise a Quartane which is cured by the proper guidance of Nature but not by the helps of the Schools And Nature standing can also presently walk the which belongs onely to Health But Nature sitting although she be able of her own accord to stand and at length to walk yet she is constrained to arise before she stands and therefore she ariseth with the more difficulty But if she attempt to arise by inordinate remedies she is prostrated from her seat and lays on the ground and being not a little shaken thereby is pained and sometimes dies of her fall Yea also while many that they may not be sick or ill at ease do make use of counsels or advices which do for the most part hasten old age and death and oft-times also deprive them of life But Nature laying along can never rise of her self as the Leprosie falling Evil Asthma Stone Dropsie c. Yea neither is it sufficient for her to arise for if the nerves or sinews are not confirmed they do easily relapse Furthermore Hippocrates will have a Physitian to be onely the Minister or Servant of Nature but Natures themselves to be their own onely Physitiannesses and that thing he thus commanded in his age When as otherwise a Physitian is the Patron and Master of Nature being prostrated which kinde of Physitian if the old man had not as yet acknowledged surely much less the succeeding heathenish Schools even unto this day Last of all dead carcasses are dissected which is done to excuse their excuses in sins for after a thousand years Anatomy the Moderns do scarce either the better know Diseases or the more successfully expel them They rejoyce indeed that they have found an imminent mark of any corruption in a part which covers their unfaithfull Aids or Succours with the Buckler of impossibility So indeed the world is deceived with a lofty brow For neither was that corruption there before the space of two days although the place might be pained long before So far is it from excusing the Physitian which is seasonably sent for that it rather lays open the fault of the same who to wit had seasonably or in due time dispersed the accused excrement For nothing of the parts containing is destroyed in live Bodies but it is first deprived of the commerce of Life And besides neither can it long be deprived of the Balsame of Life nor a mortisied part wait many houres in the lukewarmth of the Body which doth not likewise speedily putrifie stink and draw the whole Body into its own conspiracy Therefore from thence it is manifest that the corruption which is obvious in the Dissected dead Carcass was made but a few hours before and began but a few dayes before Death For corrupt mattery Imposthumes which are stirred up by malignant assemblies in the Lungs do indeed contain the Seeds of Diseases but the mortifying of Internal parts doth not many paces precede the day of Death One onely thing is at leastwise to be admired that the Schooles indeed have acknowledged a Spermatical or seedy nourishment whereby we are immediately nourished because it is that which they divide into four secondary humours yet that they have not
readily burnt But let us suppose dead flesh to be first made lukewarm and to be in the same degree of heat no otherwise than if it did live yet it is not therefore easily scorched or burnt nor after the same manner wherein live-flesh is Therefore the aforesaid evasion hath no place Wherefore seeing that from the agent of a single degree of heat divers operations do happen in the same subject of flesh being distinct only in life Therefore it must needs be that the life is the only cause of that diversity which is to say that the life is the proper agent of Sennsation in Sesitive Creatures and that the life is such a cause which besides hath a power of making burnings or scorchings in live bodies and in the matter of Medicine yea also of resisting or not Wherefore I find Life to be the first or chief and immediate Efficient of Sense and pain For truly the force of fire being received and introduced into a dead Carcase is not to be felt yea neither properly is it a Scorching or burning one such as is in live bodies but rather a roasting and parching one For in live bodies the liquor of flesh is through an indignation of the Sensitive Soul most speedily converted into a sharp liquor and substantially transchanged the which in dead bodies is not subject unto a vital transmutation And so by boyling and frying it parcheth and roasteth fleshes between the Fibers For flesh that is dead suffers by degrees the which other bodies not sensitive do suffer after a single manner from the fire But in live bodies even boyling water presently produceth bladders and then the solid part is swiftly contâ—acted and burns Therefore that action of scorching or burning in live and and sensitive bodies is made efficiently by the Life it self but by the fire effectively by way of an active occasional and external mean To wit the life it self feeling the rigour of the fire sharpens its own liquor and transchangeth it into a bladdering one and afterwards into an Escharrotick liquor And as much indeed as is snatched by the fire so much afterwards is by a disposition that is left corrupted because it is dead But because of sensible things known by Sense touching is the chief Judge therefore a demonstration hath scarce place and the history and root of pain by its causes hath hitherto remained neglected Therefore I will repeat some things which in so great a Paradox I wrote before in a more contracted speech Wherefore for the searching into the proper agent in pain I have considered that Frogwort Smallage Scarwort c. do not embladder in a dead Carcase yet they embladder live flesh I judged therefore that in the very sensitive soul the difference of this act consisted and not primasily in the Scarwort Because it is that which embladders only so far as by a biting more sharp than is meet it thus molests the Sensitive spirits the which that they may mitigate blunt or extinguish the perceived sharpness the soul rageth in them and therefore resolveth the proper vital substance of the members into a corrosive liquor even as elsewhere concerning the Plague wherefore the sensitive Soul it self as it is the immediate sensitive substance so it is the efficiently effective cause of the bladder But the Scarwort which operates nothing in a dead Carcase is the effective occasional external and excitative cause By reason whereof the Schools being astonished have taught that Medicines are wholly sluggish and as it were dead unless they are first prepared by our heat as it were by a Cook and being stirred up are sharpned thereby The which thing surely wants not its own perplexities For they have determined of that very thing as Medicines being assumed or applied should not forthwith display their faculties on us like fire but as they should have need of a certain space of time wherein they might produce their own effects by foregoing dispositions notwithstanding if a space be required that an altetation may made which is the effect of the medicine Surely that not any thing proves the action of a Medicine otherwise necessary to be from our heat that the Medicine may obtain the gift of its own nativity or a liberty of acting the which it obtained safe full and free to it self by Creation But as I have said it operates after another manner yea oft-times a far other thing in live bodies than otherwise in dead or unsensitive ones And so the effects of Medicines are not wrought unless they are first duly applied and afterwards by a more exact appropriation they do imprint their power on us to wit that from thence a disposition may arise which the sensitive soul stirs up by its own judgement and afterwards also unfolds and perfects For the Schools have erred in Medicinal affairs because they have beheld external and occasional causes for principal and vital ones Therefore they have neglected to connex in live bodies and in cures themselves things effected unto their proper efficients by the due journeys of degrees Wherefore be it a foolish thing that Pepper Vinegar c. ought to borrow their activities and gifts received for acting from our heat As if one only heat should be the primary cause of so many-form effects Because in very deed that a thing may act on us it hath no need of another forreign thing out of it self for this purpose but as primarily so it without delay presently uncloaths its faculties by the moments of dispositions if it be duly applyed even as I have demonstrated at large as well concerning the action of Government as in the Treatise that heat doth not digest in sensitive Creatutes But because the sensitive Soul which the Schools shamefully confound with heat applyeth the received faculties and from thence frameth a certain new action proper to it self and wholly vital Therefore the faculties which the Sensitive soul receiveth from the medicine are the effective and occasional causes only and it might if it would pass by and neglect the same The which is manifest in the more strong persons who digest laxative medicines even violent ones without trouble and drink being in vain as if they were foods And likewise in dying persons unto whom indeed there is an application of Medicines but not an appropriation to wit by reason of a neglect and defect of the sensitive power For in the more strong folks an exciting heat is not wanting and yet thâ—re is no effect For otherwise the vertues of a Medicine are presently received and do pâ—oceed by degrees more and more and then those powers being received into the sensitive Soul this sensitive Soul presently behaves it self well or ill toward them If well then it useth its own Objects for the cherishment of their powers or for the vanquishment of that which is hurtful But if amiss now the sensitive life carries it self foolishly furiously angrily vexingly c. And it spreads the seminal Idea's of these
Passions on the assaulting spirit on the blood and on the Organs affected by the Mediâ—ines and effects remain agreeable unto the aforesaid Idea's The which in the Treatise of Diseases and likewise concerning the Plague I have evidently demonstrated And so if a delay interposeth between a Medicine being applied and the effect of the same that never happens by reason of a defect or requirance of an activity of the things but it happens by reason of the necessity of a vital activity issuing and following from the impression made by the Medicine For a poysonous power is not wanting in the stroak of a Serpent although it sometimes doth not operate by reason of an impediment For an Agent that it may act on us stands in need of an application of an appropriated impression and of a sensitive power as it were the receiver of another acting power And that that it may bring forth a Product which in very deed and immediately is a new or vital fruit as a testimony of the sensation or feeling act of the soul For thus many do so accustom themselves to laxative medicines that at length they operate nothing at all not indeed that heat failed in the man or that the laxatives have lost their former faculties but the soul hath contracted a familiarity from the frequent use of them so that it is at length the more mildly wroth with those poysons than at their first turnes For truly in this respect it is true and perpetual that all sensation consisteth rather in a vital action and judgment than in passion whether in the meane time that sensation shall happen in the more external sense or in any passion of the mind or in the next place in the natural or Sympathetical sense of inanimate things At least wise it is maniâ—est that medicines do not want a foregoing heat of ours that they may simply act but the sensitive power which is the principal actresse hath need of acting and sensible objects that it mâ—y feel and in feeling may act And therefore the action of sensible things hath it self on both sides after the manner of an occasional cause in respect of the sensitive soul neither therefore do medicines operate in a dead carcase by reason of a want of the principal and immediate agent which is the life or soul Whence also it is sufficiently manifest how disorderly the faculties of medicines have been hitherto attributed unto the agent or vital and principal efficient and how neglected the principall agent hath stood as well in the healing as in the effecting of diseases Truly if otherwise a medicine ought to be actuated by our heat as such every medicine should equally act always and every where on every humane object that is actuall hot no otherwise then as a certain weight is always uniformly of equal weight with it self But a laxative medicine being administred in the same dose looseneth in one terribly but in another nothing at all Yet it is on both sides sufficiently stirred up by heat Yea the same medicine for the most part rageth on the weaker sort which in the more strong is without an effect But that which I have said concerning Coloquintida Scarwort frogwort c. Is also to be drawn promiscuously unto other agents Yea bright burning iron burnes a dead carcase although not after an equal manner as it doth a live one For in live bodies it primarily hurts the sensitive soul the which therefore being impatient rageth after a wonderfull manner doth by degrees resolve and exasperate its own and vital liquours into a sharp poyson and then contracts the fibers of the flesh and turns them into an escharre yea into the way of a coale But a dead carcase is burnt by bright burning iron no other wise than if wood or any other unsensitive thing should be That is it burnes by a proper action of the fire but not of the life For this prerogative the Schooles have not heeded the which one only prerogative notwithstanding is considerable in the Entrance of healing But they according to their own manner have considered only the proper action of the fire even as also the abstracted powers of medicines Calx Vive as long as it remaineth dry it gnawes not a dead carcase but it presently gnawes live flesh and moves an escharre A dead carcase is by lime wholly resolved into a liquour and is combibed except the bone gristle thereof But it doth not consume live slesh into a liquour but translates it into an escharre In general therefore the sensitive vital power is first affected by a sensible object and from thence it at length frames an effect or a new that is a proper Being According to the passion concieved after the manner of the hurt or injury figured to it self And this effect is proper to the sensitive soul but mediate in respect of the occasion exciting Consequently also seeing pain consisteth subjectively in the injured and provoked part but in the life as in the first feeler being troubled judging and displeased as the primary agent I have accounted the essential diversâ—y of paines to consist immediately in the affect of the motion of the soul To wit that pricking lancing and walking paines are bred from mixt affects which proceeded from wrath and fear or from agony Truly I took diligent notice that there was a contracture almost in every pain So that a hurting occasional matter being offered the hurt part being as it were presently drawn together and co-wrinckled by a cramp manifesteth its own pain For nature is every where so prone to a Cramp that no man is about to do his easement whose cod how loose soever it was is not crisped and co-wrinckled For by reason of the natural aversnesse of the implanted spirit from a payning object pain hath continually a crisping of its own member as it were a companion There is also moreover a stable pain in a part even as in an ulcer wound impostume c. But this rageth from an only and meere in ignation For this doth not so properly contract it self even as in convulsive paines but it melts its own nourishable liquour and changeth it into a sharp salt a poysonsome one and at length through an induced naughtinesse translates it into an embladdering or escharring one There are besides some blunt deep paines modestly gnawing and the more stupide ones and the which are exorbitant through an errour of the digestions having followed rather a foolish wrothfullnesse than the fury of the life Therefore all paine is caused occasionally from a sorrowfull affection of objects But it proceedes immediately from the life it self as it were a testimony of sense Yea pain doth often denote the passions of the sensitive soul for a proper destruction of organs Because that soul laies hold on those parts being badly affected rising up as it were from a proper â—ice of themselves and as if they murmuring it endeavours to correct chastise these parts and
Agent the efficient or Archeus or chief Workman Therefore it is false that by how much the more a thing hath of the form by so much the more it hath of the act of the Entity or Beingness of vertue and operation Because the form is not gotten or possessed by parts or degrees neither therefore are Beings more or lesse capable to receive from the form yea although they were more capable to receive yet the activeness of the Agent is not of the form it self but of the Master-workman or Archeus of whom by and by Therefore the form cannot be divided For whatsoever Aristotle hath attributed to the form or to the last perfection in the Scene or Stage of things that properly directively and executively belongeth to that Agent or seminal chief Workman In the next place seeing that the efficient cause of Aristotle is external as he saith the Smith to be in his view of the Iron I easily knew that he hath set to sale his fictions for true foundations and all his speculation about artificial and external things of Nature to wander The whole efficient cause in Nature is after another manner it is inward and essential And although the Father generating be effective yet in order to causing or doing he is not but the cause efficient of the Seed wholly outward in respect to the Being which of the Seed is framed by generation For in the Seed which fulfills and contains the whole quiddity or thing liness of the immediate efficient that is not the Father himself but the Archeus or chief Workman For that the Father in respect of the thing generated hath the Reason of nought but an external cause and occasionally producing for by accident alone the effect of generation doth follow although the Agent applies himself to generation with his whole intent Therefore the constitutive constituter efficiently causing inwardly perfectively and by it self is the chief seminal Workman it self really distinct from the Father in Being and properties Even as in Vegetables Herbs indeed are the productresses of Seeds but they are but the occasional and remote causes of Herbs arising from that Seed and therefore although they are natural causes yet not sufficient and necessary ones for neither of every Seed will therefore rise up a Plant. Therefore the seminal Being is in the Seed the immediate efficient cause efficiently the internal as also essential of the Herbe proceeding from thence But the Plant that goeth before that Seed is the remote cause the natural occasion indeed of the Seed which by it self and immediately frameth the Plant and effects it with the assistance of that which stirs it up For otherwise if the Herbe causing should be the efficient of the Herbe produced the working or begetting cause could not be burnt up but the Plant produced should also perish Therefore the Seed is the efficient inward immediate cause of the herbe produced Wherefore after a diligent searching into all things I have not found any dependance of a natural body but onely on two causes on the matter and the efficient to wit inward ones whereto for the most part some outward exciter or stirrer up is joyned Because that these two are abundantly sufficient to themselves and to other things and do contain the whole composure order motion birth sealing notions or tokens of knowing properties and lastly whatsoever is required to the constituting and propagating or increasing of a thing For the seminal efficient cause containeth the Types or Patterns of things to be done by it self the figure motions houre respects inclinations fitnesses equalizings proportions alienation defect and whatsoever falls in under the succession of dayes as well in the business of generation as of government Lastly Since the efficient containeth all ends in it self as it were the instructions of things to be done by it self therefore the finall external cause of the Schooles which onely hath place in artificial things is altogether vain in Nature At leastwise it is not to be considered in a distinct thingliness from the efficient it self For that which in the minde of the Artificer is the Being of Reason can never obtain the weight of a cause real and natural Because in the efficient natural cause it s own knowledge of ends and dispositions is infused naturally by God Indeed all things in Nature do desire some generating juyce for their matter and lastly a seminal efficient disposing directing principle the inward one of generation For of these two and not more have all corporeal things need of But the three principles of bodies so greatly boasted of by Paracelsus although they should be found in all things that are to be framed yet it would not therefore follow that those have the force of principiating because those three seeing they are the fruits of Seeds they do partake as it were of a specifical diversity which they should necessarily be ignorant of if they should be true principles that is if they should be present before the framing of the particular kinde Nor also could one thing passe into another which notwithstanding is a thing natural or proper to the three first principles of Paracelsus Moreover since matter and also the efficient cause do suffice to every thing produced it followes that every natural definition is not to be fetched from the general kinde and difference things for the most part unknown to mortal men but from the conjoyning of both causes because both together do finish the whole effence of the thing And then it also followes that the thing it self produced or the effect is nothing but both causes joyned or knit together Which thing truly is to be understood of things without life to things having life life is otherwise to be added over and above or the Soul of the Liver For so a Horse is the Son of his four-footed parents created by virtue of the word into a living horse-like soul Sublunary things are commonly divided into Elements and things elementated but I divide them into Elements and seminal things produced These again into Vegetables Animals and Minerals So as every one of them may shut up a peculiar Monarchie secret from the other two Therefore Minerals and Vegetables if by any condition they may seem to live since they live onely by power and not by a living form in light enlivened they may also fitly be defined by their matter alone and internal efficient For every effect is produced either from the outward Agent and it is a thing brought forth by Art or from an outward awakener and nourisher which is the occasional and outward cause which notwithstanding hath an efficient and seminal causewithin and remains the efficient even until the last period or finishing of the thing brought forth yet the occasional cause is not the true but mediate Agent But the subject which the Schooles have called the Patient or sufferer I call the co-agent or co-worker But in respect of both limits or in the disposure of the
working motion to the co-working the action doth re-bound Therefore things that are produced without life do not receive their forms through the makeable disposition of the working terme or limit but onely they do obtain the ends or maturities of their appointments and digestions For while from the causes of Minerals or Mettalls a stone doth re-bound or from the Seed of a Plant while a Plant is made no new Being is made which was not by way of power in the Seed but it onely obtains the perfecting of the appointed ripeness And therefore power is given to the Earth of producing Herbes but not to the water of producing Fishes Because it is not so in things that have a living Soul as in Plants For as their Monarchies are plainly unlike so also their manners of generation and generating For therefore the natural gift of increasing Seeds durable throughout Ages is read to have been given to the Earth not so in living Creatures although these in the mean time ought to propagate Therefore the Seeds of things that are not soulified are indeed propagated no otherwise than as light taken from light Yet in the partaking of which enlightning the Creator is of necessity the chief Efficient But the Creator alone createth every where a new light whether it be formal or also vitall of the individual that is brought forth for neither was that light before not so much as in part although from the potential disposure or fit or inclinable disposition the Seeds of things not soulified may in some sort be reckoned to obtain a Form so are things that have life yet the formal virtue is not so neerly planted in these as in Plants For Souls and lives as they know not degrees so also not parts And although the Seed of a living Creature may have a disposition unto life yet it hath not life neither can it have it or effect it of it self for the Reasons drawn from the Rise or Birth of Forms Wherefore I shall teach by and by that there are not four Elements nor that there is a uniting of the three remainders yea nor of two that bodies which are believed to be mixt may be thereby made but that to the framing of these two natural causes at least do abundantly suffice the matter indeed is the veriest substance it self of the effect but the efficient its inward and seminal Agent and even as in living Creatures I acknowledge two onely Sexes so also are there two bodies at least the beginnings of any things whatsoever and not more even as there are onely two great lights For the three beginnings of bodies which the Chymists do call Salt Sulphur and Mercury or Salt Liquor and Balsam I will shew in their place that they cannot obtain the Dignities of beginnings which cannot be found in all things and which themselves are originally sprung from the Element of water and do fail being dissolved again into water as at sometime I shall make to appear for it behoveth the nature of beginnings to be stable if they ought to bear the name and property of a Principle Therefore there are two chief or first beginnings of Bodies and corporeal Causes and no more to wit the Element of Water or the beginning of which and the Ferment or Leaven or seminal beginning by which that is to be disposed of whence straightway the Seed is produced in the matter which the Seed being gotten is by that very thing made the life or the middle matter of that Being running thorow even into the finishing of the thing or last matter But the Ferment is a formall created Being which is neither a substance nor an accident but a neutrall thing framed from the beginning of the World in the places of its own Monarchie in the manner of light fire the Magnall or sheath of the Air Forms c. that it may prepare stir up and go before the Seeds This is indeed a Ferment in general But what things I here suppose I will at length evidently shew every thing in its place I will not treat of Fables and things that are not in being but of Principles and Causes in order to their ends actions and generations I consider Ferments existing truly and in act and individually by their kindes distinct Therefore Ferments are gifts and Roots stablished by the Creator the Lord for the finishing of Ages sufficient and durable by continual increase which of water can stir up and make Seeds proper to themselves Surely wherein he hath given to the Earth the virtue of budding from it self he hath given so many Ferments as expectations of fruits that also without the Seed of the foregoing Plant they may out of Water generate their own Liquors and Fruits Therefore Ferments do bring forth their own Seeds not others that is every ones according to their own Nature and property which the Poet saith For Nature is subject to the Soil Neither doth every Land bring forth all things For there is in places a certain order divinely placed a certain Reason and unchangeable Root of producing some appointed effects or fruits nor indeed onely of Vegetables but also of Minerals and Insects or creatures that retain their life in a divided portion For the soils and properties of Lands do differ and that by reason of some cause of the same birth and age with that Land Indeed this I attribute to the formall Ferment created in that place Whence consequently divers fruits do bud and of their own accord break forth in divers places whose Seeds being removed to another place we see for the most part to come forth more weakly as counterfeit young But that which I have said of the Ferment or Leaven placed in the Earth that very thing thou shalt likewise finde in the Air and Water for neither do they want Roots Gifts fermental Reasons or respects which being stable do bring forth fruits dedicated to places and Provinces and that thing not onely the perseverance of fruits doth convince of but also the voluntarily and abundant shedding abroad of unforbidden Seeds Therefore the Ferment holds the Nature of a true Principle divers in this from the efficient cause that the efficient cause is considered as an immediate active Principle in the thing which is the Seed and as it were the moving Principle to generation or the constitutive beginning of the thing but the Ferment is often before the Seed and doth generate this from it self And the Ferment is the original beginning of things a Power placed in the Earth or places but not in seminal things constituted But the Ferment which growes up in the things constituted or framed together with the properties of Seeds hath it self in manner of the efficient cause unto the Seed of things but the seminal Ferment is not that which is one of the two original Principles but the product of the same and the effect of the individual Seed and therefore frail and perishing Whereas otherwise the
equall therefore also the heat should be alwayes alike but seeing the property of Light by it self is not but to enlighten but by accident by reason of its conjunction to make hot or make cold and the dayes are now and then cold and Clowdy unto us under the Summer Solstice Hence surely I ought to have borrowed other causes from the Blas of the Heaven There is a certain action indeed hitherto unknown to the Schooles which in the proper limit of government I have taught which operates on the objects subjected unto it almost like to abstracted spirits And even as the Soul moveth and altereth its own Organs or Instruments Thou mayest call it for me an influence so that a connexion of the Stars be moreover understood of stirring up the Gas beneath according to the lawes of directions given and fixed by the Almighty for otherwise seeing that a beam of Light may be hindered by a covering every Blas also of the Stars on us should cease if they should act on us onely by light and motion yea and in an over-clowdy Heaven no action on the waters or on the things sowen in the Earth should be beheld For diseased persons do perceive a proportionable resembling motion of the Moon and for this cause do they foretell Tempests to come because there are in the very seeds of things the co-bred and allied Lights of Heaven Which do suit themselves to the motion of the nearest or Neighbour-lights and so to the most universall Blas of the Stars For therefore hot-Houses being shut the same effects are felt con-centred or harmonious not indeed because they light on us from without but we carry a heaven within in our vitall beginnings and the Almighty hath sealed things soulified with that Pledge or Signet Notwithstanding that con-centring and conformity do signifie a connexion of suitableness with the more large superiour Heaven And moreover I may easily believe if Insects do utter the foreshewing signes of seasons that we also at the time of health might foreknow all things unless corruption had bespattered our whole nature in the ground and had left us naturally so much the more stupid and miserable than those small Beasts for sin hath withdrawn the Celestial familiarities of talk from us in diseased persons onely it hath left its marks of antient foretelling whereby we may know that the marks of things to come are left us from nothing but the misery of corrupted nature which else in her purity had made us true diviners of the Heaven no lesse than Adam knew the natures of living Creatures And although the Stars do foretell the effects depending on free and contingent causes yet I would not be understood that a gift is given to the Stars of bringing in the causality of future things for it is sufficient that in this thing they perform the office of a Preacher as it were meanes depending on the fore-knowledge of God for as the fore-knowledge of God doth not take away from man a liberty of willing or judging and his tie with the fore-knowledge doth not take away the infallibility of events nevertheless it least of all contains an unavoidableness much lesse doth the fore-telling of the Firmament induce any necessity of contingency or accidentall event on the wills part although it doth altogether happen in respect of events coupled to their free causes Truly I have oft admired at those that refuse a denouncing of the Stars in free causes as though they did therefore necessitate and did take away a liberty of willing when as in the mean time they do admit that divine fore-knowledge doth not cause any thing against free will but that it can denounce Seeing the reason of necessity in the fore-knowledge of mans glorification is far greater in the power of God than in the fore-shewing of the Stars it being of its own nature tyed to change by reason of the repentance and unstable or frail nature of sinners For it hath happened that sometimes the Stars have foreshewen onely threatnings whereby the antient mortalls through the terrour of punishment do return into the way as did the Ninivites In which case although the Stars do loose much of their certainty and strength yet they do not forsake a certainty of necessity as oft as the Signes do shew forth the fore-tellings of Events Wherefore I reckon with my self that the figures of things successive throughout Ages are decyphered in the Heavens as it were in Tables which figures they name the lawes of destiny and that not indeed by an Hebrew Alphabet as some of the Rabbins Dream but that Provinces Kingdoms and men have their Stars on which the Stage of things accidentally happening to their Subject appointed for every one of them in the revolutions of dayes is decyphered wherefore neither is it a wonder if evill Spirits shall know how to foretel many of these things And so much the lesse if to every one of us are designed good Spirits our keepers Even as the Mountain Garganus Kingdoms and Common-wealths have Spirits for their own Rulers and Defenders For so the fore-shewings not onely of the rising and period of Kingdoms are therein painted forth but also the races and ends of all men are historically figured out by their peculiar Star which are also typically decyphered Which knowledge indeed although it being known to Spirits naturally forbidden to man I do oftentimes read it by its true name the divining of the Heaven yet I finde it granted onely to the Servants or Prophets of God according to his good pleasure For your old men shall dream Dreams and your young men shall have Visions and shall prophesie for this which containeth all things hath the power of a voice it openeth future contingencies shewed by their Stars onely to whom and when it will On some in the mean time he bestoweth a figurative knowledge of the Stars even as to the wise men of the East but to others he giveth Dreams as to Joseph and the same wise men and that the same may be truly interpreted as to Joseph and to Daniel a man of desires Also there are some at this day as mad men and drunkards fore-telling things to come and not knowing what to whom in what manner or by what meanes or why they do presage For so according to Josephus Jesus a certain man foretold the destruction of the holy City with a continuall cry and for that cause he was beaten But the Apostles spaâ—â— from the Comforter with the Tongues of all Nations which were then under the Sun but by the Hebrews and Pagans they were accounted to be drunk with new Wine Although there was no new Wine then to be found in Palestina For they prophesying glorified the Lord Jesus for neither is it read that any was then preached unto or converted Therefore they were accounted to be drunk with new Wine but not with Wine because drunkenness by new Wine among the Gentiles did stir up those that kept
not in very deed of themselves cause substantial forms but it is the virtue of substantial forms whose Instruments onely accidents themselves are or as he elsewhere saith That accidents are the properties of substantial forms whatsoever they do work that that is done by virtue of the forms But surely by the leave of so great a man it is not in the things of nature even as it is in humane affaires where the Judge or Priest doth work by the name or authority of an office and not as John For such kinde of respects nature is ignorant of and those she hath even hitherto willingly wanted For every thing in her possession acteth that which it doth act without the relation of authorizing To wit an accident doth act as much and such as it is in it self but not as by the commission of that whereof it is the Instrument because nature is ignorant of under-appointments and every fallacy of right or authority For a thing operateth as much as and what it can without a Commission For what doth it belong to the effect of producing of forms that accidents do act in as much as they are the Instruments of the substantial form or in any other respect if in the mean time essential forms are in very deed and actually constituted by accidents themselves But surely an Instrument although it may generate something in Mathematical Science yet in no true understanding is it a generater in nature because it is external to the thing generated and singularly to its form nor indeed containing the essential Idea or first shape of the form much lesse the Archeus thereof For truly Accidents as they proceed from the generater for the intent of generating ought to contain a thingliness and seminall properties requisite to generation whereof accidents as they are such are deprived Because at the most they are onely dispositive meanes of the matter to receive a form but not to procreate it therefore it seemes according to D. Thomas that accidents as they are the Instruments of the form should be as it were the Instrumentall pipes by which the form of the generater should breath a form into the thing generated if the matter hereof be first well disposed by other accidents But then the immediate generation of the form should not agree or belong to accidents as indeed accidents are never under the understanding of an Instrument substantiall producers But Scotus insisting on the same delusions drawn from the producing of fire declareth that accidents do no manner of way generate substantial forms but that one substantial form doth in very deed actually produce another out of it self This saying at leastwise taketh from the Heaven and Sun the generation of forms Secondly it maketh every seed actually animated to be endowed with a substantial life and form with the doating Thomas Fienus Physitian at Lovaine A third there is which holds that accidents by their own proper virtue and without the concourse of a substantial form do immediately produce a substantial form For this man as I have said being most exceedingly over-blinded by the presence of the fire and light like Bats is constrained to confess that the solemn command of that great blessing increase and multiply is given onely to accidents For others like Africa do alwayes bring forth new Monsters out of the presumption of humane knowledge So that although the foregoing opinions were absurd yet these men do here set up as yet more superlative absurdities For indeed if nature doth require as the Naturalists do suppose a certain seminal succession and continuance of one flowing from another as a principle or beginning con-substantial and conjoyned with the thing begun how therefore could accidents being any way taken procreate or contain a substantial form they confess that every form is the inward perfection of the thing the essence substance and originall of the accident of its composed Body yet they will have it to be born produced and as it were created of nothing by accidents as it were dependances of the essential form its Predecessor But seeing that all natural things do produce their like in the special kinde therefore it followes that they will have the essential form to be of the same Species with accidental forms yea that accidents have have snatched that Prerogative from substances that accidents should produce accidents and moreover the essential forms of substances But that substantial forms as it were growing dull through rest should keep holy-day and had committed the whole weight of their business to accidents their Vicars that they might falsifye their own proper maxim and that of Aristotle That every Agent is naturally born to produce its like Seeing accidents should not in producing be onely accidentall but also substantial forms and the which they teach also to be substances Therefore the maxim of the Schooles seemeth to me to contain a falshood and something of Atheisme That every Agent which disposeth to a sorm doth also give that form because if a substance differs in its predicament from accidents their principles ought not lesse to differ For the active motive dispositive and essential principle of generation is the very efficfent cause and the Archeus Faber or Master-workman Therefore the glorious God doth at length create the forms of substances therefore whose principles are in the general kinde and predicament divers the effects of those things do equally differ even as the same like causes are like to the like things caused But it followes from what hath been already said That heat produceth heat not fire and much lesse by far the form of a Chick in the next place not any other thing besides heat because seeing the efficient cause is internall and of the essence of the thing caused which thing I will afterwards prove against Aristotle therefore one and the same thing cannot be constituted by high causes different in the particular kinde And much lesse by things differing in the whole predicament For neither is a thing granted to be without its essential properties as neither an Agent without an Instrument and mean By what mean theresore or at length by what property out of it self shall heat be an agent in the producing of a form or any substance and by what co-touching shall heat touch a form that it may produce this form in another general object from the participation of its own Being For truly according to the Schooles seasoned with heathenish errour every form of substances is a substance From whence Christians ought to infer That the Heaven as neither accidents dispositive to a form can frame any substance out of nothing because the creating of a substance is proper to the Creator alone Therefore B. Augustine rightly thought if God contains all particular kindes or Species yea and their individuals in his eternall understanding how should he not make all things would he not be the artificer of some things of effecting which his laudable minde should have
he would have necessities to be subservient to his own Maxims but he erected not Maxims conformable to necessities which fictions therefore are commanded to work ruine as many of them as are handed forth at the pleasure of so great ignorance Therefore that Maxim hitherto remains adored by the Schooles and common people as it were the top of healing which by contrarieties that is by brawlings strifes Wars fighting and Crises or judicial periods do mark out the beaten path of healing For it hath so been credited so wrote and feigned hitherto and that so without controversie that nothing is thought to be alike plausible and fit for subscribing and doth through its own facility of understanding deceive by delighting and captivating every unwary person But the knowledge of the Causes and Roots of healing do grow from a far more hidden stock than that the vulgar by a rusticall perceivance can crop the flowers of the same Neither hath Galen considered that one contrary ought so often to be predicated of according to Aristotle as oft as another because both of them stood under the same generall kinde and did rejoyce in an equall priviledge wherefore neither hath he at any time diligently searched what that generall kinde should be under which positive coldness or cold might stand contrary to so manifold a putrified heat as he seigned particular kindes of Fevers To wit where he might finde cold contrary to a Malignant putrified and hectick or habituall heat And resisting heat in so many excesses of spaces Or what might be that singular and individuall action of cold of so diverse Degrees and Species whereby as many heats being brought under the yoak they should be compelled to a due proportion which thing surely so long as it hath been neglected by the Galenists also a just remedy for every Fever hath remained unknown and Remedies have been administred being prescribed by guess and chance For through Galenical scantinesses they on both sides prostrate their lies conspiring for the death of mortalls Paracelsus indeed scoffed at Galen with an Helvetian taunt although as being constrained he now and then runs back to the same method being unmindfull of his own continuall chiding For oft-times he would have contraries to be coagulated in things resolved and resolving yea many times he uncompelled runs back to hissed-out elementary distemperatures at length through a heat of contradicting he constituted the healing of all diseases in the likeness as well of nature as of the causes making Diseases with the remedy it self being indeed every where full of indistinction But I under a Phylosophicall liberty being addicted to no Master do perceive that if by the taking away of the causes all co-knitting of affects is thereby cut off that every healing of Diseases ought also to be defined by the same law of Causes So that a correcting withdrawing and extinguishing of the immediate efficient cause which doe suitably enclose within themselves a privation of the effect following from thence should contain the chiefest substance in healing But not the likenesses as neither the contrarieties of Remedies In the first place the products of Diseases suppose the Stone as they retain in themselves their own Agent co-agulated in them So also they are very often cured by taking away of the effect onely Because sometimes the co-knitting of the inward cause or of the immediate efficient is taken away together with their matter Add to these things that onely a solution of the co-knitting of the efficient cause to the matter and so a strained or loosened fitting and quenching and appeasing of a privative disturbance in the Archeus which do sometimes include in them a meer privation do oft-times compleat the History of healing without any contrariety or likeness of the Remedy to occasionall causes which very thing Paracelsus ought to have remembred if he had once looked back unto his own Arcanums or secrets For he had soon taken notice that any one of those Arcanums do of right chase away almost all Diseases without any respect to likeness or contrariety but through the besprinkling of a vitall tincture alone by a secret gift that is by an over-flowing of goodness For indeed whatsoever is made or born in nature is made from the necessity of efficient seeds But seeds themselves do in no wise operate for the scope of likeness or contrariety as otherwise is commonly thought but onely because they are so commanded to operate by the Lord of things who alone hath given knowledges bounds or ends to seeds known to himself alone from a former cause Else seeds do wander and whither they know not And indeed they direct themselves as though they were strong in knowledge but they tend by the meanes granted unto them unto ends unknown to themselves For we do improperly call them the intentions of Medicines or scopes of nature not that they have prefixed an aim to themselves from the beginning as if they were potent in a minde and fore-knowledge but because by a created gift they are born to flow down voluntarily and naturally by their own direction unto such limits as are known to God For Christian Philosophy doth thus dictate this thing but the Heathenish Schoole is ignorant of it Therefore even in the light I do admire at the boldness of the Schooles which have not acknowledged the seminall Beings of nature in Diseases and have placed qualities in the room of Beings subsisting by themselves and that Diseasie ones nevertheless they would have them to be esteemed after the manner of will or judgement of feelings and animosity as they should possess Antipathies and contrarieties by their own proper force Truly I have thus accustomed my self to play the Philosopher as I coveted to mere out things themselves by a radicall foundation according to the Whet-stone of sacred truth as near as might be lawfull for humane wits Therefore that I may shew the positions of Contrariety to contain meer incongruities in nature it is first of all to be observed that they have suffered the frivolous invention of Aristotle to prostitute a matter wholly deprived of every accident for the subject of generation as well in a sound nature as in a corrupt one to wit in the grief of a isease for he thus prosperously beginneth from a twofold and every way privation of accidents and forms for the original Beginning of things Therefore that every accident as well inbred as suddenly hapning doth also consequently depend and issue out of the bosome of forms So indeed that from the Forme and its first Essay all activity in the Archeus as well of matter as accidents doth necessarily depend in the mean time the Schools were thorow taught by this Aristotle they support it even to this day That nothing can be contrary to Substances as well those material as formall I do not see therefore whence accidents shall beg their own contrariety to themselves especially those which are the naked immediate and meer instruments
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
looked back on them crooked-wise or by the by they being as it were shaken into the Head of a man of another World Sixteenthly I learned also that life understanding sleep c. are the works of a certain clear or shining light not requiring Pipes or Channels Seeing the shining light pierceth the vital light Therefore also the Soul doth retract diffuse and withdraw it self by a motion proper unto it and altogether diversly in sleep watching contemplation an extasie swooning madness doatage raging madness by its own disturbances voluntary confusions yea and the violent impressions of some Simples Because the minde doth embrace an entire Monarchy in spiritual things divided in many general and particular kindes no lesse than Bodies themselves shall differ among themselves so also shall lights Seventeenthly At length that the understanding being raised by invention and judgment with a reflexion on places on circumstances on things past said before premised and so on things absent as absent is made by an ultimate or the last endeavour in the Brain through the afflux or issuing of a beam out of the Midriffs as such an understanding doth presuppose memory But that those things which are concerning future or abstracted things without respect of circumstances as if they were present are wholly forged in the Midriffs And for this cause mad men do behold and prattle of all things as if they were present as though they did talk of present things Eighteenthly Therefore poysons which have a power of displacing the imagination do not primarily affect the Brain but the Midriffs onely Which thing the History of a Lawyer who had drunk Henbane-seed elsewhere by me rehearsed doth sufficiently prove For whatsoever the Stomach doth conceive that very thing is plainly transchanged and doth wholly passe into another Essence before that the least quantity doth from thence reach to the Brain and whatsoever thereof doth come thither is already venal bloud which hath put off all the qualities of its former condition in the entry of the first shops or at length it slides cut of the Stomach and together with the drosses is thrust out of doors And so no Simples after what manner soever they are taken are materially applied to the Brain Therefore it is false whatsoever the Schools do set to sale concerning pills for the Head Pills of light c. For truly neither do Pills allure any thing out of the Head neither doth the Head afford any thing which it hath not besides snivel which it sends unto its own Basin and not to any other place But if any Medicines or things do strike the Head alter it and profit it that wholly happens in regard of the Midriffs from which there is an unshaken action of Government into the Head even as hath been already sufficiently proved before Indeed they have rightly taught that giddinesses of the Head and Coma's or sleeping evils are stirred up by reason of a consent of the lower parts but neither is their Grain without Chaffe For the Schools have introduced grosse Smoakie and sharp vapours And then and that for the most part in such distempers they will have the Brain to be affected with the first or chief Contagion And therefore it s a blockish thing to have applied Remedies to the Head to the mark I say and without the Archer To wit because they have not known the true internal efficient cause and its connexions nor the accustomed manner of making Diseases and because they have plainly neglected the action of Government and the Conspiracies of light Nineteenthly Also lastly hence I have understood that the immortal and untireable Soul while it did of due right govern its own Body before sin it understood all things intimately optically or clearly and that without labour tediousnesses and wearisomness Because it did understand all things that were in its power in its own Center and unity without the help of Organs or Instruments But now being detained in a strange Inn it being as it were wholly hindered hath committed the diversities of Functions unto the sensitive Soul its Hand-maid In this place I presume to give a Reason of the thoughts of others who cannot sufficiently promise or grieve for my own For I have proposed to phylosophize concerning the more hidden Spring of Cogitations and of the most abstracted ones concerning the vices and exorbitances of floating and uncertain Cogitations yea we must pierce deeper when as we must take aim at the powers of vitiated Cogitations themselves and must come unto the fountainous and occasional causes of these vices Surely it is a matter hard obscure and unpassable wherein the speculations of the Schools the succours of Bodies do fail before the threshold yea and of Diseases whose causes and effects do fall under sense or are proved by the dissections of dead Carcases wherein I say the Patient or suffering imagination doth indeed enlarge it self but the Agent or active one is hidden In other diligent searches that which is vitiated is known by a knowledge of the whole but in those of the minde the cause and manner of a violated understanding should as yet be far more easily conceived than of a sound one because that a sound faculty doth more ascend unto the likeness of God but a defectuous one doth more incline it self unto the meditations of corrupted Nature And therefore that which is sound or entire in the faculties of the minde is not demonstrated by a former cause but that which is deficient doth after some sort make it self known by a rupture of the co-knitting of causes Also madness is alwayes of a most difficult learning because it contains in it a denying together with a privation wherefore in the case proposed I have judged of the same in another way whether perhaps by searching into the manner of making in any one kinde of madnesses I might finde an utterance for the other Therefore I have proposed that madness which ariseth from a strong and continued contemplation feat and passion Forthwith afterwards I concluded that the quality of the poysonous matter was to be known and the dispositions of Instruments which should concur when as any Simple being taken or something inwardly generated had stirred up madness But the knowledge of one sort of madness being attained it shall be the easier to measure afterwards the diversities of the same by descending into the ampleness of the manners or measures strength approaching application and variety of particular kinds For therefore I first of all reckoned to search into the Seat of the Sensitive soul to wit the exorbitances whereof do cause madnesses For truly I have considered that in what seat the animal form should abide in the same also the immortal mind should co-inhabite as being tied unto it which should refuse a duallity difference and diversities of mansions For neither was it meet for that mind to be tied to the body without a mean when as the Seed of man no lesse then of a
findeth out measures as well according to extent in length breadth depth c. as in the division of weights to wit it hath appointed Axles or Diametrical distances and far removings so that all the consideration from thence is artisicial and therefore also changeable in the samelinesse and unity of one body And therefore weights as such do never act or re-act on each other naturally or by a co-mixture of their own properties although they seem to act something artificially For so the light suffers nothing although the continuation of light be hindered by a suffering wall For otherwise if the lesse weight should in very deed re-act on that which out-weigheth it the weight it self should be rather lessened in the thing weighing for a continuance and actually and not only with respect to the ballance so that a pound thenceforth should not any longer weigh a pound as before And seeing nothing is changed or taken away from the weights on either side it is manifest that there are onely artificial relations of moving strengths but not a true re-action of the lighter weight For as long as a pound doth weigh a pound nothing is attained or hath suffered in that pound by another opposite weight but on both sides one is external forreign by accident to the other and limitable by a relative foundation that it may be readily serviceable to humane considerations And whatsoever thus acteth in our power or seemeth to re-act acteth in very deed nothing But as to that which pertaineth unto other moving strengths If an impressive force of strength doth act indeed by it self but in the mean time be limited by space of place duration or be weakned by impediments or lastly if it act measuringly by reason of figure and hardnesse at leastwise there is never in these any re-acting of the patient or re-suffering of the Agent For example If any one smite on an Anvil with his fist and thereby receives a wound or bruise there is not in that stroak any re-acting of the Anvil or operation of hardnesse or of a corner in the Iron For although the hardnesse doth resist repulsing the smiting fist and the bounds of resistance or repulse may seem necessarily to include some kind of force of re-acting yet it is an improper speech proceeding from the popular errour of the Antients For that is not the reaction of the Anvil but it is the very action of the fist it self which I call a resulting or rebounding one For if the Anvil should truly re-act by hardnesse seeing there is no reason why the Anvil should impart act on the fist and should expect a stroak that it might act for it ought by its whole hardnesse and weight together to act also on a quiet hand and from that very deed done plainly to fret or tear it Neither should the action of the Anvil be limited by the strength of the stroak if there should be a re-acting of the Anvil it self For truly the same thing should happen to the fist whether it had smitten it strongly or in the next place modestly or if at length the opposite fist should rest on it onely because that in either act there was the same hardnesse of the Anvil Wherefore that hardnesse of the Iron acteth or re-acteth nothing by a proper power of acting For there should be a force in the Anvil which in re-acting should be seated throughout its hardnesse and in any stroak should act alike equally and according to its full power but not according to the measuring of the striking fist which is altogether a stranger to the Anvil Therefore in truth the fist doth act simply on the Anvil and the Anvil suffers simply although it took no offence thereby but the fist suffers by accident if it do the more strongly strike the Agent of which suffering is notwithstanding not the Anvil but the fist it self Because there is one only and single action of the stroak and hurt which I therefore call a rebounding one And so the fist suffers and is hurt by it self from its own self but by accident from the strength of the stroak and occasionally from the hardness or figure of the Iron which three things are to be noted in one only stroak For truly that which by accident and occasionally acteth externally only doth not in very deed act by an action of its own and therefore neither is there any re-action as neither action of the Anvil But the smiting and hardness are the occasional means of the wound one whereof to wit hardnesse is a proper occasional and internal thing the other to wit the smiting is accidental by accident In the next place there is another action of a moving strength which hath deceived many with the title of re-acting as while a hand layeth hold of bright burning Iron for the hand in laying hold doth in very deed act and that by it self and the apprehended Iron it self doth suffer in the laying hold but this doth likewise act by a new action indeed but by a far different action in burning the hand for neither is that the scorching of the Iron as being comprehended although that touching be an immediate occasion and cause without which it is not done but it is the proper action of the Iron as being burning bright for so touching and scorching are Beings wholly distinct and separable in the root and so also both their actions differ in their objects though in time of acting they do now and then co-unite Therefore the searing is not a re-acting of the Iron as being laid hold of or it is not the re-acting of comprehension Although in both the sorts of action the acting hand becomes a sufferer because two actions wholly unlike do concur to wit one of the hand laying hold and the other of the Iron burning Again swiftnesse while a Ram or Engine is sore smitten against a wall is not the proper activity of the Agent but it is a measuring of strength imprintingly moving and so is external and by accident Now as in respect of Agents by an altering Blas those do undergo not any thing of re-acting from their own objects because they generate by an absolute dispositive power of their objects which power seeing it is conferred on Nature by God it also acteth without a re-acting For example If the whole Globe of the earth and water should be of meal all that heap would at length be leavened by a leaven of bread being once put into it which verily could not be done if there were but the least re-action of the fermentable body For the small quantity of ferment or leaven should be presently choaked by the more big heap of the Object even as also the seminal spirits do dispose the subjected lump by reason of a faculty conferred on them and in-bred in them and do by a famous prerogative alter it and that without the re-acting of the subjected heap Neither doth that hinder because the stomach cocting
the Brain But the Schools elsewhere when they noted that from yesterdayes gluttony giddinesses of the Head have arisen in the morning they had rather to have the matter of Diseases to be conveighed into the Brain in a right line out of the stomach in the likeness of vapours through unnamed Trunks and the throat And so black Choler according to Hippocrates to be brought sometimes into the body of the Brain and to bring forth the falling-Evil or else into the Soul it self and then to cause the passion of hypochondrial madness And that by uncertain passages conveighers and unto certain scopes or objects But seeing one onely melancholy humour should be unfit for so great evils it was doubted in the Schools afterwards not indeed in a Quaternary of humours now antiently established in the malice of humours as yet not searched out but undiscerned For least they should be pressed with the straightnosses and samelinesses of passages not satisfying so great a variety they fled unto fumes and vapours that the various fumes of one black Choler should pierce into the bosom of the Brain and stir up diverse cruelties And they have safely covered these toyes from credulous young beginners they being secure that they were never to be compelled unto a designing and beholding of those fumes In the mean time the Schools are worthy of compassion that in so great a sluggishness of narrowly searching into the truth hitherto they are compelled unto so miserable straights but surely the sick are more worthy of pity who have suffered such helpers hired for much money unto the dest uction of their life Because such Patients be more inferiour and miserable than such Agents Therefore the Schools have neglected the matter of so diverse poysons besieging the Head and life But they being heedless have passed over the application of that matter unto the life to wit that a diseasie occasional cause should stir up a diseasie Agent and the immediate and whole mentioning of this History no lesse than the consideration thereof Likewise also they have therefore dis-esteemed the manner of making a Disease and of deriving the poysonous activity unto the vital object To wit because they have been wholly ignorant of the sink from whence those poysons should be derived and have passed it by as a thing altogether unheard of Because they have neglected the proper action of the Family-government of man without the knowledge of which notwithstanding nothing of those things which do befall us within can be known For onely the action of the Agent on the Patient hath been known in the Schools the which indeed they would have to be made with a certain circumventing or invasion with a strife and reacting of the Patient and with a weakening and re-suffering of the Agent But there is a certain action far different from the former whereof Predecessours have never made mention which I call the Action of Government which indeed is not onely made without suspition of re-acting but also without a bodily co-touching and therefore it hath its supposed object at a distance and separated It is called magnetical and sympathetical or attractive and co-passionate being derided by the modern Schools when it consisteth between objects at a distance in place but when it is circumscribed in our Body as a difference from a Magnetisme or an attractive virtue I call it the action of a meer government wherein the Agent disposeth of his proper patient or object of his own Sphere as of an Client of a hereditary right according to an ordination of Laws inbred in him subjected by a Symbole or mark of resemblance Indeed let the Agent be the Tutor here and the Patient be in his minority And there is a co-like action of the Stars in the Universe as well on each other as on sublunary bodies The which seeing without controversie it is there influential yet in sublunary things it hath been undeservedly suspected and so hitherto barren and neglected But our present action of government is not the action which the Schools have acknowledged to be a consent of parts or by a conspiracy of offices and necessities For truly government doth not require a consent It is therefore first of all a deceiptful name and therefore it either contains a mask or besides a deceit or juggle a Fable that is it containeth nothing For in very deed they will have this consent to be stirred up required wrested back by Fumes Channels Conduits or threddy fibers which as they are not in nature nor are there required So also they have nothing common with the action of government For the Schools do no where admit of the action of an Agent unless it be applied to the Patient by a mean in a continued channel as it were by a Chain They deny I say a continuation of virtue extended by the sameliness of a mean unless it be brought or conveighed unto its proper suffering object by a certain Trunk And especially in the Body of man they decree nothing to be done without a communication of passages And this hath been that continued yet ridiculous necessity of revulsions and derivations amongst them Truly by this inducement Anatomy hath been garnished for the Body of man as if it were the undoubted betokener and healer of all Diseases For hitherto they have taken so great pains therein that the Schools having forgotten their own Galen do measure him to be a true Physitian who shall point out most in the filths of dead Carcases and who shall certainly finde by his own knife those things which are published by Predecessors in this respect even unto superstition And the errour of so superfluous a curiosity and pride of unsound Doctrine praysed by the ignorance of the Schools is to be judged to have been brought in by the spirits of giddiness and the Authour of dark dimness for unto whom it is acceptable under what Title soever we loose our time unfruitfully For it was sufficient for Anatomy to have known the scituation co-knitting and uses of the parts but not to have exercised a butchery on dead Carkases all ones life-time to finde out the passages or conduits of the least vein For truly they have regard unto a vain and sordid boasting wherein the most pretious race of our life is unfruitfully consumed For in truth the knowing and Phylosophical preparation of Simples require almost the whole life of the whole man to themselves For indeed seeing one muscle ought to be moved another being in the mean time quiet the chief Judge or Arbitrator of things hath appointed interchangeable courses of Organs so that the command of our will should be declared in the muscles by deputed sinews onely but that by the muscles and bones it should be put in execution From hence the Schools have thought that therefore all our actions are made by nothing but a co-chained thred of Organs or Instruments through the far-of sequestred and divided Families of the members neither have they
arguments have believed every efficient Cause to be of necessity external and that therefore it cannot be united with the thing caused and therefore that neither is the thing generating a part of the thing generated when as otherwise in Nature that which mediately generates a Being is alwaies the internal vital Governour and assisting Architect or Master-workman of Generation and so he who for an End directeth all things unto their scopes causeth all things for himself and for himself acteth all things Therefore they being also deceived in Diseases have believed that the diseasifying Cause is external in respect of the body of man or at leastwise in the beholding of the Family-administration of Life For it hath not been known that Generation bespeaks nothing but a flux of the Seed unto perfection maturity of properties an unfolding of things hidden and a consummating of Orders unto their own ends First therefore Aristotle hath deceived the Schools teaching that Corruption and Generation do throughout whole Nature and that alwaies and of necessity by steps succeed each other And therefore he hath made a mental Being a meer negative non-being a naked privation the immediate Principle in Nature between Generation and Corruption Neither could ever the Schools understand that the same Workman which hath made a Plant of a Seed hath not failed in the generating of a Plant hath not as being banished departed as being worn out not died nor lastly that another hath been surrogated in his stead for the coming of a form whereof that Workman remains the immediate executive Instrument for ends foreknown by God or a participation of life but that he himself doth even onely and alwaies remain in the government of Life Hence indeed neither have they understood that the thing generated doth proceed from Causes really and suppositively not distinct from the essence of a thing yea nor indeed with any interchangeable course of causality Because the Schools have hitherto more diligently considered of Operations demonstrable by Sense Science Mathematical I say and artificial things diverse from Nature than the natures of things themselves seated in the Cup or bosome of essentiality For they have never heeded that the Instrument of Art the Artificer himself yea the Measures themselves of things measurable cannot generate any thing seminally in nature or introduce a seminal substantial or essential disposition for the transchanging of products Consequently also neither have they understood a disease as a real and substantial Being but onely in manner of an accident when as otherwise a disease is not a disposition not an accident hurting the actions and much less the hurt of an action it self proceeding from a duel of hurtfull Causes with out ruling Powers But a Disease is a real Being having its Causes the Material and Efficient stirred up by occasional Causes For if a Disease and Nature or our Faculties do stand in a diameter for so they will have them a Disease and a sound or healthy Life cannot be at once in the same immediate Subject therefore a disease cannot be a disposition which doth even bring a detriment unto our powers but such a disposition should be rather a fruit of the disease and a consequent more latter than the disease and the mother and nurse of weaknesses I therefore distinguish this disposition from the occasional causes and products of diseases But the fruits of a disease seeing they have respect unto the term unto which the disease generates those its own products they may also be co-incident or happen together with the Life and therefore some symptomatical fruits are among dispositions which thing the Schools have not yet explained To wit the defects of digestions motions c. And likewise weaknesses are dispositions which proceed indeed from the products of diseases even as by and by in its own place yet they are not diseases because they light into nature whereinto they are introduced by the strange violences of diseasie seeds and thus far are unially entertained in the life neither therefore can they have the nature of a disease because a disease cannot remain together with the life in the same point of identity But a disease retires out of the bosome of life no otherwise than as it separates it self out of health But Life is in it self a certain integrity or sound state of light with which a disease cannot co-habite as neither doth a disease subsist but in the vice of life or in life that is degenerate The which indeed is separated from the vital light it self and therefore also from the central point of life it self For as light which the Soul it self is is not life it self So neither is the light of life it self a disease it self But this sits in the ulcerous degeneration of the vital Archeus and so also vitiates the light hereof and therefore by reason of a mark of resemblance it participates of life and doth sometimes render it conformable to it self and doth wholly vitiate it which thing in the Plague is ordinary and manifest It hath not been known therefore in the Schools unto what predicament they might attribute a disease But I say that a disease consisteth of Matter and an efficient Cause no otherwise than as other Beings of nature do For the essicient Archeus in labouring by his own disjointings of passions and in bringing forth the Idea's of his own disturbances for whatsoever things are made in nature do arise are propagated by Idea's inclosed in seeds for otherwise the progresses of nature should be foolish which want an internal guide or leader procureth to dispose of some portion of his own substance according to the hostile ends which he hath proposed to himself and to the whole Body in that very kind of his estrangedness and at that very moment wherein the matter comes down unto the bound proposed to the efficient Idea a disease is bred Even so that every seminal disease consisteth in a real act which causeth an indisposition of the matter proper to it self that is of the very Archeus which makes the assault and being applied unto us I therefore have learned that every circle of predicaments are in very deed in Diseases after the true manner of other Beings by themselves subsisting in Nature For by this meanes I have found not Diseases in Predicaments but all Predicaments in Diseases For truly in all seminal Diseases I find an occasional matter which like a violent guest making an assault doth violate the Inne and right and disturbes the administration of the Family From thence I find that the Archeus himself is disturbed in all partitular Diseases for from hence also I consider another internal matter of a Disease to wit that part of the Archeus which he hath defiled by his own exorbitancy on which part he hath fashioned the Idea of his perturbation and the seminal efficient Cause of a Disease So indeed a true and real Being doth conserve in it self the respects of all the
most inward Beginning of Life and to be incorporated in us neither therefore that occasional Causes can be the connexed and constitutive Causes of Diseases for truly those Causes do as yet remain after life and yet Diseases cease But we must in no wise indulge Christians who are thorowly instructed by the Scriptures that they have even until now esteemed it for an honour to have delivered their minds bound unto the hurtful stupidities of Heathens They took notice indeed that there was that affinity of some Diseases with us that they were so connexed unto our Body in respect of an occasional matter that they could scarce be divided from a consent of the mind or be seperated from a hurt action as in Wounds instrumentary Diseases those deprived of the strength of Seeds For the Haw upon the Coat Cornea is that which immediately hurteth the sight as also the Stone doth without a medium stop up the passage of the Urine But the obstruction flowing from thence is a relation and Being of Reason the which as it acteth nothing so neither hath it the reason nor consideration of a Disease in Nature Nevertheless the Modern Schooles had rather to commit the Essences of Diseases unto Elementary discords than that they would confess the Bodies of Nature to bespeak nothing else besides a connexion of both constitutive Causes to them unknown For that reason miserable mortals have hitherto groaned under this burden of blindness expecting Cure from those who were fully ignorant of the constitutive Causes of Diseases Wherefore seeing a Disease ought to contain its own efficient Cause and its own matter within it self Hence it easily appears that hunger although like a very sharp Disease it kills in very few dayes yet is not a Disease because it doth not consist of Diseasie Causes whether it be considered as a sorrowful sense of the number of Symptomes or next as it consisteth of real defects Because for as much as the soure ferment of the Stomack even as in the Treatise concerning Digestions wanting an Object whereon it may act yet cannot therefore take rest it attempts by resolving the secondary humour and immediate nourishment of the Stomack for the Archeus is as well in hunger as in fullnesse the cause not onely of a Disease but of Health it self But a want of the matter of Food bespeakes a privation but not a Disease Wherefore we must altogether exactly note that Hunger although it doth cruelly slay as if it were a Disease yet that it is not a Disease in that respect to wit because the Archeus is in no wise diseasie in hunger From whence it ought to be clearly manifest that every Disease doth primarily and essentially respect its efficient Archeus For that cause it was rightly decreed by Hippocrates to the carelesnesse of the Schooles that hot cold moist or dry not indeed as such and concrete or composed are not Diseases or the causes of these but sharp bitter salt brackish c. For peradventure in the age of Hippocrates the occasional cause was not yet distinguished from a true Disease Indeed he knew a twofold excrement to be in us One indeed natural and ordinary and so ours but the other a diseasie one from its mother errour and a hostile propagation and the which we Christians know to have proceeded from the vigour of sin For when the oldman had distinguished this by forreign savours he supposed that if it were not a Disease it self at leastwise it was the adequate or suitable occasion of Diseases not yet then distinguished from a Disease The removal whereof at least should open both the folding doors of Healing But it is matter of amazement that he whom the Schooles do boast to follow as their Captain they have skipped over this his Text through sluggishness as also another Standard-defender of the same Captain wherein he hath declared that every motion unto a Disease Death and Health is efficiently made by the Spirit which maketh an assault And likewise wherein he saith that Natures themselves are the Physitianesses of Diseases and by consequence the makers also of Diseases if that assaulting spirit by its disturbance doth work all things whatsoever are done or made in living Bodies Indeed the Schooles have passed by many such things which did deserve to be accounted like Oracles because they being deluded and bewitched by four feigned Humors being traduced by the deep shipwrack of sleepiness drousiness and sluggishness have neglected the liquors which he himself nameth secondary ones as if a Disease might not be as equally possible in those as in the four feigned primary humours Therefore have they also neglected the Diseases arising from the retents or things retained of Digestions and transplantations because also they have been utterly ignorant of the Digestions and Fermentations themselves even as I have taught in its place Alas How penurious a knowledge hath graced Physitians hitherto whom otherwise if they had been true Physitians the most High had commanded to be honoured For they have considered a Disease to flow forth as an accident produced by its Agent a diseasifying matter wherein therefore that its own efficient is they have in the enterance been ignorant and the patient which they say is the Body of Man First of all They do not distinguish the Agent from the Matter which is most intimate hereunto Secondly Then They deny a Disease to be material because it is that which they suppose to be a meer Quality Thirdly Neither do they distinguish provoking Occasions from the internal Efficient because with Aristotle they suppose every Efficient Cause to be External Fourthly They separate the constitutive Causes from the thing constituted Fifthly They know not the Chain of Efficient Causes with their Products Sixthly They for the most part confound Occasional Causes with their Diseases and Symptomes Seventhly They somtimes look upon a Disease as a Disposition skirmishing between the Orders of Causes and the Body of Man Eighthly They had rather have that very later disposition arisen as they say from the fight of Causes to be a Disease the which to wit should immediately so they say hurt the actions whether in the mean time it be contrary unto a vital action or indeed it be the effect of that contrariety which shall offend the functions But I do not heed the hurtings of Functions for the Essence of a Disease but the operative disturbances extended on the Archeus do I contemplate of in Diseases For he doth often die without a sense of action being hurt who indeed suddainly falls down being in the mean time long diseasie or he that perisheth only by a defect of Nature Wherefore also I reckon it among other impertinencies to have tied up the Essence of Diseases unto the hurtings of the functions seeing that is accidental and latter to Diseases but not alwayes a concomitant Yea truly because a voluntary restoring of the enfeebled faculties doth follow health hence the Schooles have measured the Essence
the disposition of an Excrement Because it s own and that which is native to it 1. This is the cause of an Anasarca or in speaking precisely the Water is not the Dropsie as the Anasarca it self neither is the Wind the Tympany it self but the Water in the Abdomen and the Latex in the Anasarca are the Products of the Dropsie As the Wind is in the Tympany Surely the Dropsie is a Guest received with a more inward society of familiarity and is more intimate unto us the which doth attempt the vital principles and faculties of Life before the Water be bred and so every Disease doth by occasional Causes immediately talk with the vital Beginnings wherein at length it findes its matter and efficient Cause 2. And then I have noted that seeing the Urine of all Dropsical persons in general is little and of a ful colour the Latex was the matter as of the Urine so also of the Dropsie For neither is it formally Urine but the matter hereof before Urine was made thereof by a co-mixture of other things and the receiving of a Urinal ferment 3. But I understand in the Dropsie a threefold matter To wit the first occasional such I have said out-chased venal blood to be And then a second which is the Water it self and the very Latex in the Abdomen which is a certain product And lastly the third matter hath its internal efficient arisen in the internal vital principles of the Archeus of the Reines 4. Like as also drink failing the Reines do notwithstanding as yet allure forth the Urine of Blood although sparingly 5. So also in the Dropsie the Urine is of the Blood not of the Drink not of the Latex The Reines do actually conceive frame and contein the Dropsie But the Abdomen or neather part of the Belly through the action of government of the Reines doth afford an Inne and the Kidney sends the Latex thither as the product of the Tragedy For it is not as the Latex is theevishly snatched away by another Bowel but the Kidney alone doth banish the Latex unto places subjected unto it 6. But the Latex being lesse chief in the accustomednesse of Life in an Oedema and Anasarca than in an Ascites it is also again supped into the Veines and slides unto the Reines that it may undergo the last determination of Life 7. An Ascites is regularly cured if the Kidney shall make much and abundanâ— of Vrine of its own accord or by a Remedy But it committeth a relapse if the Disease be not wholly taken away out of the Kidney 8. The Water between the skin or Anasarca by a retrograde motion draws the Latex into the mouthes of the Veines from thence through the Veines it is sucked into the Kidneys and expurged in manner of Urine The least quantity whereof onely doth exhale by transpiration And therefore they abusively teach that the Latex is Phlegm in an Oedema and that it is recocted into lawful Blood 9. Therefore the Command and Action of Government of the Reins doth extend it self not only into the Kidneys Ureters and Urine Vessells But besides into the hollowness of the Belly between the Peritoneum or wrapping Skin thereof and Muscles of the Abdomen and likewise into the several Divisions of the hollow Vein beneath its self even also into the Feet and Legs 10. The Reins therefore do not suffer the Latex to fall down through its own weight but do truely send it no otherwise than as they do truly again draw the same thorow all the blood of the Veines to wit until the Dropsie be cured by pissings 11. And which is more the Kidney doth alwayes co-operate and principally operate in the framing of a Dropsie It is therefore of necessity primarily affected Because it wanders from the ends of its acting 12. And seeing the Kidney is the chief effecter of the Dropsie although another member may now and then contain the occasional Cause 13. Therefore a Cure which is instituted by a removal of the Water is alwayes subject to a relapse and is for the most part attempted in vain Because a worthy or meet Cure is never instituted from the ultimate or last Agent 14. Therefore the Dropsie Ascites is alwaies an immediate effect of the Reins and so the Cure of the same doth expulsively require a restauration of the Kidneys whether the defect be occasionally stirred up or in the next place consisteth in the Kidney it self 15. Wherefore I do far retire from the Doctrine of the Schooles which the Reins being paspassed by and neglected doth continually behold the Liver and direct its desires of curing thither 16. But the Dropsie is not a wandring abuse or exorbitancy of the Archeus in the Kidney a stopping up thereof by a stone or muckishnesse But a certain sleepy or stupifying poysonous faculty in the venal blood which is expelled or in a like manner entertained through importunity whereof the Kidney doth first of all forget its office casts away the Rains of separating the Latex and straightway after also doth snatch up a fury while through an inordinate motion it banisheth the Latex into the Abdomen 17. Even just as I said before that a Kidney was exclusively shut against the simple Urine even until death 18. Indeed I meditate of a co-like devious or wandering quality of out-chased venal blood in the Dropsie through the occasional Cause whereof the Kidney is made forgetful of its duty and the seasonable removal of which poyson doth free the Kidney from its bond and so the Abdomen from the Water For when the Kidney seeth that an Error was committed by it and being well admonished by a right Medicine it earnestly repents and again suppeth up the Latex being dismissed unto it and drives it forth 19. Therefore the true Dropsie Ascites is in the Reins or to lose the stubborn bolt of the Reins is to lose the Dropsie even as to solue the congealed Blood is to solue the occasional cause thereof That is the immediate cause as well the material as efficient of a true Dropsie is the Archeus of the Reins erring to wit so far as he becomes Exorbitant and is as it were driven into a furie by the occasional Cause he begets an Idea or shape the which the implanted Archeus of the Reins himself being stubborn doth foster and nourish Whereby indeed he doth not or scarce separates the Urine or imploys himself in the care of his Office or of his appointment Yea neither doth he only pass by and neglect his own Offices but also being as it were in a rage dismisseth the Latex unto the Abdomen that he may as it were procure his own Destruction Therefore we must dissolve the vice of stubbornness in the Archeus so that pissing may follow if health be to be expected Paracelsus feigneth that in the Dropsie the venal Blood is by the star of Zedo turned into a muscilage but from hence into water But that its cure doth
Preparations Exaltations Appropriations of Remedies That is not to have known a Scientifical or Knowldegable Curing of the Sick For I have believed that I must proceed by the same Beginnings Because they referred all sicknesses a few perhaps being excepted into Elementary qualities and the inbred discords of Nature into Humours Catarrhes Flatus's Smoaks or Fumes So that the knowledge of the Schooles being withdrawn into a Fume and Vapours doth vanish into Smoak At length through the Errors of Tartar it descends unto Tartarers that they might shew that they being involved in darkness have stumbled in their wayes For it hath behoved me diligently to detect those things if Young beginners must hereafter repent But it hath not been sufficient to have shewn their Errors Unskilfulness Sluggishness and stubborn and constant Ignorance unless I shall restore true Doctrine in the room of Triffles For the abuses of Maxims had remained suspected by me for very many Years the which in the Book of Fevers I have deciphered to the Life before that I came unto a sound Knowledge of the Truth And I had a long while thorowly viewed the truth of the Theorie before that in seeking I had found some right Medicines which were sufficient for those that had made a Beginning Wherefore seeing I was about to speak of Diseases under so great a Paradox and weight of things and sound none among the Antients and Modern Juniors to be my assistant I seriously invoked God and I found him also favourable Therefore I determined before I wrote to call upon Logick that by its Definitions it might demonstrate unto me the Essences of Diseases indeed by their Divisions Species and interchangable courses or mutual respects and at length that by Augmentation it might suggest the Causes Properties Meanes and Remedies of knowing and curing them But at my acclamations made even into its mouth it was deaf stood amazed heard nothing remained dumb and helped not me miserable man in the least Because it was wholly impotent without sense Afterwards therefore I called the Auricular Precepts of the natural Philosophy of the Schools unto my aid To wit their three boasted of Principles four causes fortune chance time infinite vacuum motion yea and monster Whence at length I discovered that their whole natural Philosophy was truly monstrous having feigned false mocking Beginnings not principiating and much less vital in the sight of the King by whom all things live likewise Causes not causing Also adding or obtruding the phantastick Beings of Reason and opinions beset with a thousand absurdities wherein I as yet found not any footstep of Nature entire and much less the defects of the same or the interchangable courses of faculties or vital functions But least of all from such a structure of Principles was the knowledge of Causes Natural Vital of Diseases Remedies and Cures to be fetched Whither notwithstanding I supposed the knowledge of Nature had respect as unto its objected scope For whatsoever I sought for from the Schooles and attempted to handle by their Theorie that thing wholly Nature presently derided in the Practise and it was accounted for a blast of Wind She derided me I say to speak more dictinctly together with the Schooles as ridiculous And at length she together with my self complained of so unvanquished stupidity Then also Logick bewailed with me her impotent nakedness and the vain boasting of the Schooles Because she being that which even hitherto was saluted the Inventer and Searcher of Meanes Causes Tearms and Sciences grieved that she ought to confesse that she was dumb no lesse in Diseases than in the whole compact of Nature and also that she ought to desert her own professors in so great a necessity of miseries 〈…〉 she by one loud laughter had derided also the natural Philosophies of Aristotle and the blockish credulities of the World and of so many Ages if she her self had not been a non-being fiction swollen only with the blast of pride Wherefore seeing Nature doth no where exist or is seen but in Individuals there is need that I who am about to write of Diseases have exactly known the Causes of particular things even as also it is of necessity for a Physitian to have thorowly viewed those Causes individually under the guilt of infernal punishment Therefore it hath seemed to me that the quiddities or essences as well of things entire as of those that are hurt were to be searched into after the manner delivered concerning the searching out of Sciences But seeing the Knowledge thus drank may be unfolded I have confirmed unto the Young Beginner that an essential definition is to be explained by the Causes and properties of these which is nothing else besides a connexion of Causes but not the Genus or general kind and difference of the thing defined But this is an unheard of Method of explaining even as Logick the Inventress or finder out of Sciences hath feigned And also seeing all that faculty is readily serviceable unto a discursive Philosophy for they do vainly run back unto the Genus of the thing defined and the constitutive differences of the Species for the Diseases which have never and no where been known Therefore seeing it hath been hitherto unknown that things themselves are nothing without or besides a connexion of the matter and efficient Cause By consequence also the Schools have wanted a true Definition That is a right knowledge of Diseases If therefore the Essence or thingliness of Diseases and the condition of Diseasie properties do issue out of their own immediate essential Causes of necessity also the knowledge of the aforesaid Diseases and properties is to be drawn out of the same Causes Because the consideration of Causes is before the consideration of Diseases Therefore I have already shewn even unto a tiresomness That the Essences of Natural things are the matter and efficient Cause connexed in acting Therefore also the Essence of every Disease doth by a just definition consist of those two Causes and its knowledge is to be fetched out of the same First of all a Disease is a certain evil in respect of Life and although it arose from sin yet it is not an evil like sin from a Cause of deficiency whereunto a Species Manner and Order is wanting But a Disease is from an efficient seminal Cause positive actual and real with a Seed Manner Species and Order And although in the beholding of Life it be evil yet it hath from its simple Being the nature of Good For that which in its self is good doth produce something by accident at the position whereof the faculties inbred in the parts are occasionally hurt and do perish by an indivisible conjunction Defects therefore there are which from an external Cause do make an assault beyond or besides the faculties of Life concealed in the parts and they are from strange guests received within and endowed with a more powerful or able Archeus And from hence they are the more exceeding in
But a Disease hath proceeded from the confusions and disturbances of an impure Archeus and being radically implanted in him hath so remained thenceforth unseparable to wit as to a formative power of infirm Idea's A Disease therefore growing together from Idea's as from its seminal efficient Beginning cloathes it self with a fit matter borrowed from the Archeus and ariseth into a real Being after the manner of other natural Beings And seeing the Idea is now formed in the Archeus he presently also begins to act these things neither is he idle but defiles a part of the Archeus In which part a ferment as the means of the efficient Cause is forthwith stirred up through an aversion from the integrity of Life and at length by assistance hereof he either defiles the more gross masse of the Body or at least-wise disturbs the family-administration of the digestions The Schooles I well know will deride the doctrin of Ptato because I have assigned seminal Idea's Ideal powers and formal activities unto Diseases for they will rather acknowledge four qualities environed with feigned Humours and do grin that these trifles are trampled on by me as not knowing whereunto the Causes Essences and Medicines of Diseases should be due Being ignorant I say that a more powerful near and more domestical Being hath mustred an army against the life of Man of whom also it was divinely said That a Mans Enemies are those of his House for they do every where notably accuse obstructions occasionally induced by the injuries of filthinesses as Diseases which obstructions do notably argue not so much the obstructer or also the thing obstructed it self as they have alwayes noted with a losty brow the majesty of an action passion and relation sound in the obstructer as if the obstruction it self or a relation it self should be a Disease but that the foundation of that relation should include the reason of a Diseasifying Cause Indeed the whole errour of the Schooles ariseth from the ignorance of a Disease which consisteth immediately in the life it self but not in dregs and filthynesses which are erroneous forreigners and strangers to the Life Good Jesus the wisdom of the Father of Lights with how great confusion of Darkness do humane judgments stumble unless thou govern them For truly while they have consecrated the Stone of the Bladder in the next place all the filths mixtures powers properties effects and liberties of effects activities and interchangeable courses unto the combates and wars of the Elements alone they have signified by the same method that they will not and cannot be wise beyond heats and colds For so they have hitherto taught without shame and judgment that the Stone doth wax dry is dryed and hardned in the midst of the Urine by heat and by the same priviledge of rashness or boldness they have neglected every thing the whole history of Nature and nativity of things and have made themselves miserable because ridiculous in the age to come Wherefore I have often complained with thee good Jesus O thou Prince of Life how difficult it would be for the Schooles who have been constantly nourished from their childhood with so great an harlotry of trifles and juggle of mists to have assumed the true Principles of things Unless thou hold the stern of the Ship and inspire a prosperous wind on the Sailes I guesse that the envious man will be ready to deliver up my Writings for Volusian Unlearned or wast Papers Help O God for the good of thine own Image that Seeds themselves may testifie the Archeus to be present with them who unless he be fructified by the onely conceived Idea of the Generater they do return into a Lump and dis-shaped Monster unto which a vigor is wanting no lesse of figuring than of unfolding of Properties Let Diseases witnesse I say although I am silent that they are Active Beings admitted into Nature by natural Principles Let them confesse according to Trismegistus that things superiour and inferiour are carried by the same Law of proportion and co-like Principles That by the meditation of one Thing Archeus or Principle all things do even to this day subsist and are continued That by the Meditation and Idea of that one they do receive the perfect Act of Superiour or Inferiour Beings What he spake is Truth and that Truth shall vanquish every strong Fortresse and pierce through all Solidities or Difficulties CHAP. LXIX Of the Idea's of Diseases 1. A division of the things to be spoken 2. The Spleen sits in the middle Trunk of the Body 3. The forming of real Images of the Phantasie is confirmed by an Example 4. Why an Idea descendeth from the Mother into the Young 5. Consequences drawn from thence 6. A measuring of the moderatenesse of Wine 7. The piercing of Idea's 8. A Child declines from his native disposition 9. What may be understood by an Agony 10. Most cruel Idea's 11. A most especial care of Educations 12. A difference in the motions of the mind 13. The doctrine of Desires 14. The rise and progress of Desires 15. A diversity of the Sin of Commission and of Omission 16. Why God hath endowed the Femal Sex with a peculiar favour 17. What the gift of a Sexual devotion may operate by it self 18. Why the Author hath treated of Morals 19. The Author repeats Eight Suppositions concerning the Idea's of the Archeus 20. The Author wanders about forreign Idea's 21. The foundations of Physiognomy 22. A Reason why Idea's are so powerful in us 23. What the Abolishment of the Cause of a Disease may be 24. A Diseasifying Cause is invisible 25. The Birth-place of Diseases 26. The Author brings forth that Divine thing of Hippocrates in Diseases unto the Light 27. Why Diseases do imitate the properties and activities of the Life 28. An Example in the Stone 29. There is need of two suppositions for an introduction of the knowledge of Diseases 30. A Conclusion drawn from thence 31. A Mechanical proof in a Bean. 32. The same in a Cancer 33. The progress of a Cancer 34. How the Beings of Creation do differ from the Beings of Prevarication or Transgression 35. The Thinglinesse or Essence of a Cancer 36. Some products of Diseases do lose an occasional causality 37. An erroneous Method of Curing hitherto kept 38. The Schooles their Causes of a Cancer are Erroneous SEeing therefore a matter and efficient Cause is required unto the Essence of a Disease and seeing the Idea is the Efficient Cause it self of a Disease both of them are to be explained And first of all I will describe the thingliness of Idea's their Efficacy and Fabrick that the Action and Nativity of effecting a Disease may clearly appear And first I will declare the Idea's conceived by Man And then I will treat of the Idea's of the Archeus And at length of strange and Forreign Idea's And Lastly I will deliver the matter making a Disease that from a Connexion of both Causes the thingliness
there is a Megrim and strangling or from a painful Aposteme of the foot a glans or kernel in the Groyn They have indeed named them consensual or co-feeling or secondary effects but have never acknowledged them even as they proceed from their own seed Even as hath been more largely demonstrated by me touching their ignorance of a Diseasifying Essence CHAP. LXX Of Archeal Diseases 1. The necessities of Archeal Diseases rushing on us of their own accord 2. The Schooles have on both sides neglected the First Mover in us 3. Aristotle Galen and Paracelsus have become mad about this Tragedy 4. An unfolding of the thing granted 5. A preparing of a Demonstration 6. The clearing up of a Question 7. An explaining of the Idea's of the Archeus 8. An Objection is solved 9. The passions of the Archeus have the Excentricities of another Market 10. The ignorances of the Author 11. The fourfold Troop of Diseases proves the Idea's of the Archeus 12. Hereditary Diseases do presuppose the Idea of a Disease to be connexed with a prolifical or fructifying Idea yet not to be produced from the intention of the Generater 13. The pleasure reflects the Archeus on its self 14. Death began from the Concupiscence of the Flesh 15. Why a Trunk in an arm doth not generate a Trunk 16. Why all the Diseases of Parents are not equally transplanted by an hereditary right 17. Silent Diseases do prove an Archeal Idea 18. The Diseases of an Astral or Starry Conjunction do prove the same thing 19. What Diseases may pertain unto an unequal strength 20. An unequal strength hath caused a beginning of the Fiction of a Catarrhe IT was already sufficiently shewn that the Archeus being even well disposed is estranged by humane Passions and Perturbations and likewise that by the forreign Image of a strange Archeus piercing him and that by the assumed destructive powers of purging Medicines and Poysons he is soon trodden under foot But while no vice of things taken doth presse him nor the stormes of external things do rush on us nor lastly Perturbations do shake it hath not been yet made known by what League Way Manner or by what Perswader and Guider the Archeus may voluntarily decline that he may defile a good thing brought so far into him by so great Labour I say a nourishable and spermatical humour under an unshaken health and what may straightway corrupt that which was prepared for and taken into the society of Life and from thence frame a dross so hostile that the Archeus may lead himself together with his Inne into the dammage of Life Of these things the Schooles have thought out nothing but that which concerns Rheumes easily rowled through their own weight and passable at that their own pleasure They have not I say made mention of the nourishable humour or liquor but onely of distilled mucks or snivels For without consideration they have leaped over this Brook and also the business of Healing hath remained neglected while they have hitherto neglected the very corrupter of these nourishable and spermatick Humours They have indeed rightly judged That nothing is moved by it self They have acknowledged indeed a First Mover and its Intelligences the motive Forms of the Heavens but the proper Movers inhabiting in the Seeds which should by Idea's prepared for them of their own free accord effect their own first movable Blas in us they have not sufficiently considered and much less have they drawn this Philosophy into Diseases and the business of Healing For it hath never been thought after what manner a seminal Being is Governour of Life may intend its own Destruction and stir up unto it self a mortal Blas seeing every thing desireth to be and remain Be gone thou Aristotle with thy whorish appetite of an impossible matter For I have else where given satisfaction unto those trifles even unto thy shame Galen being at the stroke of this Bell ere-while devolved into a Catochus snorted so that indeed he never so much as dreamed of this sound At length Paracelsus who thought the Essences of things and the liquours of these never to perish began the dissolution of Life from the disorder of the three First Things For he scarce believed the Archeus to decay who affirmed The Essences of Herbs being taken in Fodder not to die so much as in the dung of Fields Yea he saith The Archeus is never dissolved by reason of the faintings of Old Age but is stifled onely through corruptions ripened in the power of Nature And so neither doth he think the Archeus then to perish but being obvolved in strange things to be obscured and forcibly to depart as suspended from the office of acting and to return unto his first sacramental Being Surely these things are more worthy of Laughter and Pity than of reprehension For they have hitherto been busied onely about the products of Diseases and occasional things brought inwards For Paracelsus with his followers hath introduced Tartarous Humours into the innermost efficient Cause of every Disease perhaps neither before hurtful ones but when they should be coagulated at the last line of their extension or passage But I have heretofore rejected the Errors of that man and the false paint of falshood being now discovered I have better instructed a credulous posterity Because I know that the Archeus hath his own motive and alterative Blas naturally given unto him and proper unto him by a seminal virtue Because he is he who even from his first conception doth move figure alter encrease c. as well every living Creature as Vegetable at the beck of his proper appointment And so that the Archeus is he that makes the assault according to Hippocrates and without or besides whom nothing is moved felt or altered in soulified Creatures In the next place I know that the Archeus doth regularly move himself according to the Idea either left him by the Generater or another called unto him from elsewhere Whence also I have believed that it belongs to the same Being and faculty whereby through health every motion and alteration are made in an ordained regularity and whereby these same things are irregularly made Therefore a Disease no less than health must needs be naturally derived from the Archeus alone So that if Life and Health be by Images imprinted on the seed by co-like Images also but of over rash or preposterous Idea's Diseases are made But from whence may those Image-guests issue if no external thing doth shake him and no internal thing not so much as with an hereditary blemish doth disturb him For truly I have already treated of the humane Idea's of Affections Inclinations Passions and Perturbations but not yet sufficiently concerning Archeal ones while as the Archeus doth prove exorbitant through his own proper Luxury or immoderate Desire and like Protheus doth voluptuously transform himself For as regular Idea's from whence the Archeus hath all his Blas are implanted on the seed by the lust of
penury of distribulation and perceiving the unequality of injustice becomes a complainer and seditious as it were against a step-mother The Idea's of which passion or impatience seeing it is not meet to send else where he being crabbish retorts on himself and brings forth the effects of sorrow in his own Digestions Therefore the very seminal Beginnings themselves of Diseases are drawn out for diverse ends although they glisten in one only immediate subject of inherency because they are received after the manner of the reciever That is they do sustain a dis-formity or disagreement in their mansions through the diversity of the humane Body and parts And moreover the Archeus himself according to the diversity of his motions doth stir up a various houshold-stuff of Symptoms The Spirit saith Hippocrates hath made three motions in us within without and into a circuit and he moveth and transchangeth all things with himself even while he is orderly But in his irregularity whatsoever he shall perform he shall also utter memorable effects of his disorder CHAP. LXXI The birth or original of a Diseasie Image 1. A description of a Disease by a numbring up of things denied 2. What a Disease is 3. The vain thought of Physitians concerning a Disease 4. The Inne of Life belongs to a Disease 5. The force of a Diseasie Idea is proved by Vegetables 6. By the Blas of meteours 7. The Blas of an Archeal Idea in us is proved from the Premises 8. The ordinary seat of Diseases 9. The Images of perturbations are cited 10. From a mental Non-being is made this something 11. A twofold Diseasifying Archeal Idea 12. Idea's brought unto the venal Blood 13. The rule of right in healing 14. Why the Author keeps the names of the Antients 15. A probative or proofe-ful Idea is framed in the Archeus alone I Have already at large described an unheard of Doctrine of a Diseasie Being premised by me That Physitians may learn to look into a Disease from the fountain and may desist from being seduced by Paganish Opinions Wherefore a Disease is not a certain distemperature of elementary qualities or a victorie proceeding from the continual strife of these even as hitherto the Galenists have dreamed neither likewise is a Disease one of the four feigned Humours exceeding its natural temperature or mixture and matched to the four Elements Neither at length is a Disease a certain degenerate matter awakened by an impression of the Elements But every excrementitious matter is either a naked matter preceding a Disease and therefore an occasional Cause of a Disease or it is the product of a Disease resulting from the errour of the parts and so a certain latter effect of a Disease although afterwards it may occasionally stir up another Disease or may nourish or increase another antecedent Cause Nor lastly is a Disease a hurtful quality budding from the poyson or contagion of another and that a hurtful matter Notwithstanding such offences as those do only accuse its presence but not the effect depending only occasionally thereupon A Disease therefore is a certain Being bred after that a certain hurtful strange power hath violated the vital Beginning and hath pierced the faculty hereof and by piercing hath stirred up the Archeus unto Indignation Fury Fear c. To wit the anguish and troubles of which perturbations do by imagining stir up an Idea co-like unto themselves and a due Image Indeed that Image is readily stamped expressed and sealed in the Archeus and being cloathed with him a Disease doth presently enter on the stage being indeed composed of an Archeal Body and an efficient Idea For the Archeus produceth a dammage unto himself the which when he hath once admitted he straightway also afterwards yields flees or is alienated or dethroned or defiled through the importunity thereof and is constrained to undergo a strange government and domestically to sustain a civil War raised up on himself indeed such a strange Image is materially imprinted and arising out of the Archeus A true Diseasie Being I say which is called a Disease For although Physitians are only busied about the dissolution cleansing away and expulsion of the hurtful occasional matter yet our thought is not able to vary the Essence of a Disease To wit that because a Physitian labours in the banishment of the occasional hurtful matter therefore also that a Disease ought to be that which that deceived Physitian doth in a rash order intend to expel For a Disease is effentially that which it is whether the Physitian be absent or present For neither doth a Physitian in the begining more determine or limit a Disease than the Disease doth terminate it self because it is that which doth not accommodate it self unto the thought or esteem of others but doth dayly deride the same Wherefore as health consisteth in a sound Life so doth a Disease in the very Life it self being hurt but Life doth only and immediately subsist in the seat of the Soul but the Soul doth not operate out of it self unless by virtue of its official Organ which is the vital air of the Archeus And therefore it is a wonder that it hath hitherto been unknown that a Disease sits immediately in the same vital inne where the Life enjoys it self of which more largely hereafter for hateful persons will scarce believe that every power of sublunary things is stirred up and contained in Idea's But that thing I have already before sharply touched at by the way yet it shall profit to have it more strongly bound or confirmed For we have known and believe by Faith that a power is given to Herbs of propagating their like But that proprietary faculty is a real Being actually existing which is alwayes and successively manifested in the seed neither is that faculty a certain accidental power or naked quality but it is a seminal virtue whereby the Plant which is the Parent decyphers an Idea in his own seed the container of figure and properties according to which it will stir up delineate the seed it self and make the Plant its Daughter to grow For in seeds a manifest Image is known skilful of things to be acted for a new propagation In like manner the Sea doth not cause but suffer horrid tempests which the Wind doth efficiently stir up and truly the Wind is not moved by it self and of its own free accord But by an invisible influence of the Stars according to that saying The Stars shall be unto you for signs times or seasons dayes and years for so great a storm of the primary Elements or Air and Water breaks forth from a Being which is like unto Light But the Blas of the Elements is not stirred up from the meer Light of the Stars For although the Light of the Stars be incorporeal and immaterial yet it is not a certain simple Light but that which besides the property of a solitary Light which is only of enlightning hath a motive Blas in it self
made manifest which cureth at a far distance A certain Doctor of Divinity related to me that seeing he could not conceive that in Vitriol there did subsist a natural faculty of curing an absent Wound if it were besprinkled on a bloody Towel Therefore also that he reputed that curing to happen through the work of the Devil but on the other hand that he had seen some experiences made by honest Men Therefore in a doubtful matter and case of Conscience that he had made trial of the thing in this manner To wit he sprinkled the Pouder of the best Vitriol on a bloody Towel with an express protestation that he was unwilling to experience any thing or to be hereafter cured if there were even the least co-operation of a contract or of the evil Spirit yet that he saw the Wound to be healed sooner than was wont and the Blood also to be presently allayed And therefore that afterwards he believed that natural Causes although unknown to us did operate in the aforesaid Sympathetical Cure The which nevertheless being not yet sufficiently understood by its Causes is as yet rejected only as for the enticements of Satan by this Argument A natural Agent that it may act ought to be applyed and most nearly to approach unto the Patient But a Sympathetical Remedy ought not to be most nearly applyed unto the Patient Therefore a Sympathetical Remedy is not a natural Agent I Answer if it be understood that a natural Agent ought immediately to touch the Patient whereon it most nearly acteth with an immediateness of Supposition but remotely through the mediation of other Bodies laying between or interposing whereby that immediateness is communicated to an object at a distance The Major Proposition is granted Because it is sufficient that the Agent doth touch the Patient or its proper Object and that at a distance immediately with an immediateness of virtue And therefore then the Minor Proposition is denyed Because a Sympathetical Remedy ought immediately to be present by an immediateness of supposition in that subject into which the action is first received but not in the part affected whereinto it is secondarily and ultimately received by supposed mediating Organs wandring and being extended by an interval For Fire is not in the hand of him that is heated nor is the Sun or the Heaven in the Chamber But Sympathetical Remedies have at this day been made known to be like unto influences in this to wit that not only the Air but a covered Rock and thick or dark Bodies are the capable Subject and Organ of this action no less than of a Starry influence For neither doth any thing hinder in sublunary things whereby God could not or would not have made those in some sort less alike in this thing Seeing that the manners of the Grand-Father do sometimes not shine forth in the Son but in the modern Nephew A sound also doth â—iâ—rce far c. thorow the Bodies suitably or exactly shut Wherefore if thou art amazed â—â— the sphear of activity in Sympathetical things and dost allow of them in Astral or starry Bodies thou mayest either grieve for thy Ignorance of those or for thy credulity of these For truly the principle of an action of Sympathy is a faculty akin to influences acting by an in-beaming into an object appropriated unto it self And God hath known why those things are thus made or do thus come to pass Who hath endowed his created things according to his own Pleasure For he was at liberty to deliver his natural Endowments even to the most abjected thing s neither can a Christian derive those gifts into the Devil without Punishment But neither do I in this place contemplate of Sympathetical Remedies as that I believe the little Stone of Butler to act by a Sympathetical faculty For truly this Stone takes away a distance of the object and gives an application unto the object To wit it is a Remedy familiar unto Mans Archeus and its virtue is graduated unto a thousand fold by the goodness of God And therefore it hath respect unto the peace and quiet of the Archeus in his own Simplicity For let Young Beginners before the Terrours of their Judgement have regard that a Member at the biting of a Snake doth presently hugely swell with great pain by reason of the storm of the imbittered Archeus and that the Angry sting doth by its stroak presently stir up an hard painful and composed Tumour For what if the Leprosie or Plague can speedily defile us with its Contagion what shall hinder whereby our Archeus shall the less willingly receive the Contagion of so most powerful a Remedy if he be defiled by Poysons against his will If at least there ought to be in Nature a like authority of a Remedy and of Poyson of divine goodness and of Maladies Let us consider I pray you that so sudden a Flux of Maladies may in like manner presently go back or return being appeased by an opposite re-flux For I have seen one whose Fingers had promised the Disease Panaritium being devided perhaps unto the largness of his Arm and had miserably tortured him for some restless Nights whereabout the Blood and fresh Skin of a mold being wrapped they by the morrow morning had restored the Finger together with rest in the Night For reason required that the Antidote ought even at the least to be equivolent with the Poyson For the most swift Antidote of Ornietanus in Poyson being taken and that raging even unto Convulsions doth so presently suppress all Anguishes and instant soundings as if there were no Poyson admitted within Because as a Disease is a defect of Nature and the straying Archeus So a Remedy is of meer divine goodness the which also having slidden down into Nature ought as to equalize every defect so also wholly to overcome it Therefore in one respect the Remedy is far more powerful and famous than the fault and therefore also less in quantity and far more swift than delay And that largeness and nobleness of Power doth not so much concern a superiority which with growth or increase is attained by little and little through the obtainments of Maturities as a present and effective majesty of things whereby the medicinal thing it self being unfolded by an endowed virtue doth free and restrain the Archeus from Impediments and Furies and also doth imprint an eminent excellency of a helping faculty for which things sake it was created These things it performeth by the manner and swiftness of its operation But besides as to that which concerneth the Remedies of so great goodness and the efficacy of these First of all it is manifest that that little Stone of Butler however lightly it be tinged in one only spoonful of Oyl if that spoonful of Oyl be poured into a Can of Oyl yea into an Hogshead of Oyl it shall also be made a Remedy no otherwise than as a pestilent Odour doth infect a whole Vessel with its
also conceived it within and doth not that Knowledge presuppose a Phantasie proper to its kinde for so some Simples induce an Alienation of the Mind but some others a Madness or maddish Fury not indeed through a Destruction of the Brain or a dispersing of its Spirits for then at least the Strength and most strong Faculties of the mad or furious Person would not remain but by a strange kind of and furious Phantasie of those Simples being introduced which being victress subdues ours and keeps the same a Servant it self for a time as in Doatage the Phrensie c. Sometimes also perpetually as in lunatick and mad or Bedlam-persons Doth not the Madness of Dogs thus pass over into Man For the maddish Phantasie of Fury is transplanted into the Spittle of their Tongue which as victress soon triumphs over the Blood of that Animal which the Skin being opened it shall never so slenderly touch Then indeed the antient Phantasie of the whole Blood gives place and will it nill it assumes an hydrophobial Phantasie or an estranged Imagination of the fear of Water From whence at length comes a Binsical Death that is from the sole Sickness of the Mind to wit the magical Virtue of the Dog being exalted and excited or stirred up above the non-excited but drowsie Imagination of the Animals Plainly after the same manner is the Phantasie of the Tarantula imprinted by a slender stroak of his Sâ—ing and the Wounded or Stung Persons being presently alienated in their Mind fall a dancing and leap hugely yet the Venom of the Tarantula differs from that of a mad Dog in this that this acts by a Magical Power being stirred up and so by the Magick of a true name But the other by a drowsie Magical Faculty even as the same difference is manifest in Wolâ—s-bane and other destructive Plants which kill with a very small quantity because no living Creature Secures or defends himself against a mad Dog because there is in him a binding magical Power against which Teeth or Horns do not prevaile which cannot be said of the Poyson of the Tarantula In the External Man therefore even as in his fellow Animals the magical Power is as it were laid asleep neither can it be stir'd up only in Man although indeed much more easily in him but in some living Creatures his Consorts Yea neither is it sufficient that Spirits do observe this Law of Concord and single Duel with Spirits but moreover there lurks a certain Spirit in the whole Universe which we call the great Magnal or Sheath which being the Pander of Sympathy or Fellow Feeling and Dyspathy or difficulty of suffering doth exist as a Communicater and Promoter of Actions and by reason whereof Magnetism or Attraction is by a Vehicle or Instrument of conveyance extended to an Object at a distance That thing is proved to our sight For if thou shalt place a slender Straw upon the Cord or String of a Lute hanging with a doubtful extremity or with an equal weight in the Air like a Ballance and shalt strike the like string of another Lute that is aloof off when the Tunes do co-agree in the eighth Note thou shalt see the Chaff to tremble but when the Tunes or Notes agree in a Unisone then otherwise the string of the quiet Lute being impatient of delay quavets or hops a little skips for joy and shakes off the hated Straw by its jumping Shall here also Satan be the Fidler in their esteem Which Straw doth not happen to leap although all the Strings of the other Lutâ— be unanimously strongly and near at hand struck upon Nor also doth the naked Tune constrain the other and quiet string to leap a little for then every Note would effect that but it is only the Spirit which is the common Pander inhabiting in the middle of the Universe which being the faithful executer and assistant of natural Actions derives promotes and also causeth the Sympathy Why are we so sore afraid of the name of Magick Seeing that the whole action is Magical neither hath a thing any Power of Acting which is not produced from the Phantasie of its Form and that indeed Magically But because this Phantasie is of a limited Identity or Sameliness in Bodies devoid of choice therefore the Effect hath ignorantly and indeed rustically stood ascribed not to the Phantasie of that thing but to a natural Property they indeed through an Ignorance of Causes substituting the Effect in the room of the Cause When as after another manner every Agent acts on its proper Object to wit by a fore-feeling of that Object whereby it disperseth its Activity not rashly but on that Object only to wit the Phantasie being stirred after a sense of the Object by dispersing of an ideal Entity and coupling it with the Ray of the passive Entity This indeed hath been the magical Action of natural things yet the Magick and Phantasie that is properly so named is in Creatures enlarged or ennobled with a Power of choice I will go thorow them according to their ranks The formal Properties therefore which issue from the Forms of the three Principles Salt Sulphur and Mercury or Salt Fat and Liquor from whence every Body is composed and again resolved into the same and the Mercury or Liquor is so often diverse as there are Species or particular kinds of things let the same Judgment be of the Salt and Sulphur Those Properties I say flow from the Phantasies of these Forms the which because they are exceeding corporeal and do as yet stick in the Bosom of the Elements therefore they are called formal and occult Properties by reason of the Ignorance of the Forms which otherwise are magical Effects propagated from the Phantasie of the said Forms but they are ignoble and very corporeal ones yet abundantly satisfying the ends which they have respect unto Of this kind are the subductive or loosening Property of the Belly the sleepifying Property c. in things There are also besides these other more noble Properties arising from the Phantasie of the Forms of the mixt Body and those of this sort are in the whole composed Body by reason of its Form as the Magnetism of the Load-stone the Virtue of Tinctures Likewise all specifical and appropriated Things or Medicines which happen by reason of the whole homogeneal Mixture or of the Form of any one entire part but not of some one principle alone such as those are which are seated in the Flesh or Trunck Root Leaves and Fruit and not in any one of the three Principles being separated there-from Likewise Antimony as long as it remaines in its Form obtaineth most excellent Properties the which it never attaineth in its Principles and these are also from a corporeal Bosom and therefore the spiritual Magick is also hidden in these and is thought to be due only to Nature by unfitly distinguishing this in opposition to Magick So the Leaf of the Rose hath another kinde of
temperature of the seeds of their composed Bodies But the spirit of mans urine is neither sharp nor Alcalized but meerly salt even as also that of Horses is And that for this cause because the Volatile sharp matter of the Chyle of the stomach is by vertue of another ferment transchanged into a Volatile salt Even as elsewhere concerning the digestions of Animals I here give thee to observe by the way that in things transchanged there is not an immediate regresse or return unto that from whence they were transchanged no more than from a privation to a habit For that in transchanging the last life of the thing perisheth because the whole disposition of the middle life of the former Being is at once taken away by reason of the extinguishment of its former seed For therefore things transchanged do keep the essence of a new Being with a neglect of their former composed Body Therefore have I found any Remedy whatsoever unprofitable which I otherwise had believed to be very likely a dissolver of the Stone from its former composed Body Yet that is a truth that the spirit of Urine in the fundamental point of its nativity is salt and that by reason of that salt it doth more readily coagulate other Spirits than any sour or sharp spirit doth Milk Neverthelesse the spirit of urine doth not coagulate milk or the venal Blood Because the spirit of the venal blood yea and our vital Spirit is salt after the manner of Urines From hence indeed the spirit of the urine hath it self after the manner of an excrementitious spirit cut off from the blood and so by reason of a co-resemblance it is its Chamber-fellow neither do they act on each other And then also I observed that the spirit of Urine doth not more strongly coagulate those things which were already before coagulated For Bole Clay or the rocky or Chalk-stone do by degrees degenerate by the spirit of urine into a nitrous Salt and are rather dissolved Since therefore the spirit of Urine doth not coagulate Bodies already coagulated such as are Bole Clay c. As neither Bodies coagulable such as are Milk and the venal blood but it coagulates the spirit of Wine or the like thing which is entertained with it in the urine for as was shewn above after the fermenting of urine that urine containes also a spirit of Wine or Aqua vitae I desisted not seriously to enquire after what manner the stone is coagulated in us and in our urine 1. First of all it is an undoubted truth that Duelech is not of a calcinous or limy condition however Paracelsus may be carried on the contrary 1. Because a calcining degree of heat is wanting in us 2. And then because every Alcali is rather that which is destructive to a rocky stone than a Coagulater thereof 3. Because a Calx or Lime presupposeth a Chalky-stone and therefore Duelech should be calcined before it were a stone 4. From the composing parts of Duelech it shall by and by be made manifest that it is not possible for Lime to be in it yea nor that Duelech himself is calcined or doth send forth a Lixivium or Lye Likewise neither is Duelech of the nature of a gowty Chalk because he growes together in the midst of the urine but that Chalk is coagulated from the Sunovia But the Sunovie is a living seedy muscilage which degenerated in the journey of nourishment and from a transparent and Crystaline matter hath passed over into a thick white and slimy matter as of Gouty persons elsewhere from a matter without savour I say it is transplanted into a sharp one though the tartnesse whereof indeed it hath attained a thickness or grossness For then also it is unfit for a total diflation or transpirative dispersing of it self To wit whereby the nourishable Liquor is wholly consumed without any remainder But the Sunovie being once infected with a tartness its watery parts are pufft away but the gross remainder waxeth dry by degrees into the utmost dryth and hardnesse of a Sand-stone But Duelech attaines to the utmost hardness of it self in one onely instant of time The Gouty Chalk therefore differs from Duelech in its whole matter and efficient cause For therefore such a Chalk is hardned out of the water because indeed by drying Neither for that cause doth it imitate the hardness of a rocky stone but onely of a sandy stone I have spoken these things to that end that it may be manifested that Duelech differs from any other coaguted Bodies whatsoever in its different kind of Agent and matter And seeing notwithstanding I as yet knew not the manner or process of the birth of Duelech but I knew in the mean time that Bodies do nor receive the limitation of their hardning but by the actions appointments and properties of their own seeds Lastly Since I knew that whatsoever things do act corporally are altogether sluggish slow and idle as for the coagulation of Duelech therefore I enquired into fermental savours and Odours as the Authors of many seeds Therefore I found the savours and actions of Salts to be indeed famous ones but not any thing reaching the vertue of the salt of Urine And then also I beheld the more weak or feeble Salts which might follow the Race of Sulphurs But Mercury although it alone according to Paracelsus did contain the whole perfection of the thing yet I found it to be slow and feeble For as oft as I distinguished Salts and Sulphurs from their Mercuries I admired at their sluggishnesse and indeed at the dignities of these two Principles Wherefore I stuck in Salts for the searching out of the nativity of Duelech I confess indeed that Mercury being a flowing mettal in its nature and properties is never sufficiently known But that body hath deceived Paracelsus through a similitude of proportion he thinking because his Device had pleased him because he had endowed the watery matter of things with the name of Mercury that therefore the properties of Quick-silver and its natures without a peere being never to be sufficiently searcht into did agree as suitable to all Liquors which may be drawn out of Simples For all the Philosophers of former Ages confess that nothing in the Universe is not so much as by far to be likened to Argent Vive Yet it hath not been hitherto sufficiently unfolded that Argent-Vive or Quick-silver is a Simple actually existing body but not a constitutive part of things And so that there hath been nothing but a meer abusive passing over of a Name For this cause I as yet perswaded my self that seeing a non-Duelech was made of Duelech that ought to be done by the action of an Agent on a disposed matter And although I knew these and many the like things yet I discerned that I therefore knew nothing the more Wherefore I as yet more detested a wording or discursive Philosophy because it was that which stayed me before the Threshold of Nature
to the bottome which is a demonstration of the deed First therefore the pearles of the shops are not true ones but a certain abortion of those sowed within through the middle substance of the Pearle Secondly the powder of Pearles or Corrals dissolved although it may delude the eyes yet it is not truly solved it remayning the powder which it was before Thirdly instead of comforting remedies they substitute nothing but the acide salt of the things dissolving Fourthly that powder being thus solved cannot be made bloud and therefore neither can it enter into the veines Fifthly what if it had entred unto the Liver hollow veine and so by the power of digestion that sharp salt adhering thereunto had at length been wasted into a transmutation What other thing should such Comfortatives performe besides to besmeare the veines within with a forreign powder And at length to load an un-obliterable malady with aâ— forreign guest This is the harvest that is to be exspected from Gems It is an alike doating monstrous thing which they promise concerning the broath of an old Cock being joyned with herbs For first of all there is more of life and strength in the more young birds than in decrepite ones Let the judgment be brought unto Hens And also medicinal broaths are ungratefull and troublesome to the stomack and so they are easily dismissed unto excrements Therefore after this manner under a changed maske they again dissemble their Apozemes under the broath of an old Cock Last of all there is the Antidote Alkermes which although as it consisteth of the Syrupe of the grain that dieth Scarlet I wish it were not adulterated by roses it be laudable neverthelesse inasmuch as it being scorched and roasted is impregnated with the more crude silk untill that it can be powdered the whole power of the dying grain is vitiated which silk being thus roasted is nothing else but the wool of silke wormes depraved or vitiated by burning For the invention of some covetous old man brought up that thing as thinking that nature is exhilarated or rejoyced with things that delight the eyes Far be it for neither Gold gems not pretious stones as such shall refresh the vital spirits and much lesse crude silk roasted and that if it were tinged with a Purple Colour unlesse the vitall spirits shall well perceive restaurations to themselves by the additions of strength But moreover vaine are comforting and cordiall things which are wished for the fewel of Fevers remayning and the blood and strength being diminished For if a Fever prostrateth a strong person and one that is in good health how shall it suffer him to be strengthened being now dejected Especially by things which are forreigners in the whole general kinde nor agreeing with the spirits in the union of co-resemblance How shall a Citizen fortifie himself who hath received an houshold enemy stronger than himself into his possession The wan therefore and vain promises of Physitians concerning fortifiers and strengtheners are full of deceite For he that exhausteth the strength or faculties together with the blood and withdrawes them by evacuating medicines but forbids wine and things that do immediately restore the strength also who continually prosecures after cooling things as enemies to the vitall heat how shall he procure strength by such electuaries CHAP. IX The true cause of Rigour or the shaking fit in Fevers 1. Rigour or extreame cold and trembling is from the spirit making the assault but not efficiently from the diseasifying cause 2. Why he intends Rigours 3. Why he stirs up cold and heat 4. Why he begins with cold 5. The Authour runs not back unto the lawes of the microcosme 6. There are intermittences almost in all agents 7. The manner of making cold 8. The manner and cause of rigour 9. A marke of ignorance in Galen concerning the tossing of a member 10. The burning cause of a Fever 11. That every motion as well an healthy as a sick one is made efficiently by the Archeus 12. How the Authour learned that thing 13. The turbulency of the Archeus disturbs the urine 14. The ordinary office of the Gaule is troubled and makes the Chyle bitter 15. VVherefore also the bitter vomitings thereof diminisheth nothing of a Fever 16. VVhence is burning heat and sweat in a Fever 17. VVhat sweat may betoken 18. Sharpnesse increaseth cold the which an Erisipelas proveth 19. A Gangrene how it may undoubtedly be stopped 20. VVhy the beginning of a continval Fever is from horrour 21. Paracelsus is noted 22. The errours of Galen especially concerning the putrefaction of the blood and spirit 23. The true seat of a diary and hectick Fever 24. The fabulous similitude of Galen for the parching heat of an hectick Fever 25. VVhy lime is enflamed by water 26. A mechanical proof 27. The blockish cause of gaping 28. The true cause and the organ of the same 29. Sleep the drowsie evil giddinesse of the head Apoplexy c. are from the mouth of the stomach 30. Gaping is not in the muscles of the cheekes or jaw HIppocrates first put a name on the Spirit of life to wit that it is that which maketh the assault and the guider of all things which happen in us which prerogative surely none hath at length called into question In the mean time the Schooles that succeeded being as it were giddy with the vice of whirling about have wrested aside the causes of trembling into old wives fictions The Spirit therefore being the Prince of the world in us hath alone obtained a motive beginning in us as well local as alterative to wit conteyning the cause of Rigour or extremity of cold as well in respect of locall motion as of the alterations of cold and succeeding heat For the Archeus intends by trembling rigours to shake of the excrement adhering to the similar part Even so as a spider also shakes her cobwebs and joggs them with rigour that she may shake of a forreigne thing which lighteth into them But the Aroheus taking notice that he can little profit by rigours or shaking extremityes stirs up an alterative Blas All which I have elsewhere taught to consist naturally in Winter and Summer cold I say and heat To wit through the successive interchange whereof all sublunary things do decay in the coursary number of dayes From Winter therefore in the very universe it self the beginning of the year proceedeth through a spring and Summer into Autumne wherein the fruites are at length ripened For whatsoever things are made by nature undergo this beginning increase state and declining So the Archeus himself as all seeds and vital things do imitate the nature of general ones stirs up feverish rigours colds and heats But not the offensive matter of the Fever even as hath already been sufficiently and over-proved at the beginning For so also in disjoynting of the bones the teeth presently shake and rigours spring up And likewise while a woman with child untimely expels the not
neither Choler nor Gaul and much lesse a constitutive part of the blood Because they were neither as yet slidden of the Stomach nor therefore experienced in the Sanguification of the Liver but through a long delay and the smal veins of those of the mesentery Wherefore likewise that neither was there a passage from the Liver unto the Stomack but by the same passages being very remote and impossible to be believed Especially while as the badly withdrawn meats are seen to come forth whole togethe with the yellow and bitter vomiting Furthermore I learned by the example of a Calf and ocular inspection that this yellow rubbish was generated in a Stomach being badly disposed and more regularly in the gut Duodenum in temperate bruit beasts Seeing also that the suckings of Milk recieved do wax yellow in the gut Ileon For a Calf drinking only his mothers Milk sheweth presently after death that the Milk presently clots into a sharpish curd and watery acide liquor both of them being much desired for the making of Cheeses This curdy runnet I say presently after layes aside the whitenesse of Milk in the Stomach becomes brown and in the Duodenum and beginning of the Ileon waxeth yellowish afterwards in its progresse it is more fully yellow but further it is plainly made of a Citron colour but about the blind gut it waxeth greenish Last of all it becomes dungy Let the Schooles therefore shew whether those colours are made from a yellow and Leeky Choler While as in the mean time they are so changed before their coming into the Liver Or whether indeed these colours are made from the property of the Bowels In like manner infants having sucked Milk do presently cackya Citron coloured excrement and thou wouldst call it meer Gaul and the Schools are constrained to confesse that all little infants are at their first beginning more cholerick than men themselves whom notwithstanding their age food of milk smal heat continual sleeping and want of excercise do excuse from the suspition of Choler But if the infant suffers gripes or the sumptomes of sharpnesses by and by after the same dung becomes greenish and so much the more by how much it shall depart the farther from health Whence it is made manifest that the Milk as well in us as in braits is made of a Citron or deep yellow colour by a digestion of its own to wit that all Cream in sliding by the voluntary thred of nature and corruption unto an excrement and by its own motion waxeth yellow through the proper endeavour of the Stomach and intestineâ— And that it is most easily estranged looks yellow green and obtains diverse savours or tasts under the digestive faculty going astray But not that therefore it is or is made Gaul For these excrements are made in the Bowels out of the shop of the Liver and by strange faculties nor in a Fold committed unto the making of blood For truly if the Gaul be a constitutive part of the blood for that very cause it is made also in the place and matter wherein and whereof the blood is generated but not in the intestine For the first change of the milk should be into yellow or green Gaul and that naturally and from thence into blood That yellow Cream therefore doth presently of its own accord profit in the Duodenum and puts on those colours not of feigned Humours but of a natural excrement Wherefore neither is it a wonder that the same thing happens in the Stomach being hard-bound or distressed under any guilt of offence whatsoever To wit that the whole Cream conteined therein is presently translated into a vitious bitter and yellow Chyle the which in the Jaundise presently happens In the mean time in the running of the Chyle downwards thorow the gut Ileon it is sucked into the veins whatsoever the Archeus hath judged to be not only most nearly allyed to nature and meet for the preparing of blood but moreover also the whole Whey ascends towards the Liver together with it But if therefore the Chyle doth fore-timely assume the countenance of an excrement about the hedges of the Stomach as being prevented by the errour of the digestive faculty either an offence of the Pylorus or an errour of the digestive faculty or a vice of the food or Cream or too much delay is signified And therefore that it hath felt the vital ferment of the Gaul to be amiffe or badly applyed For so oft-times it happens unto him that is in good health that good Cream being offered and rightly subdued in the Stomach is a Laxative cup being offered estranged from the scope of nature and through that tyranny is wholly made a bitter and yellow putrefaction in the bowels And the which although it be cadaverous or stinking and being newly produced from the blood yet by reason of its bitternesse and the poyson of the solutive medicine it is not tasted down by dogs as neither by a swine they otherwise lesse abhorring the eating of dungs For they percieve a bitter poyson of the purging medicine to subsist being far different from the goodnesse of Meats blood and flesh Be it therefore a faulty argument The poysonous medicine hath caused a bitter juice from the Meats drink and blood therefore it is Gaul and Choler And likewise the Stomach being ill at ease hath caused a bitter excrement therefore it is Gaul and Choler procreated in the Liver and poured out into the Stomach through indirect trunks It is plainly an undiscreet fiction that Choler is a part intended by nature and that it should be framed by the Liver which from the corrupting of a solutive medicine and vice of the digestive faculty in the disease called Choler the bloody flux c. is commonly bred by proper causes As if the off-spring effects fruits and products of errours were a constitutive part of our blood Therefore that which the Schools name a native part of the blood a compeer with putrifying Chyle and Choler or Gaul That is wholly a meer excrement alienated and degenerate from a natural agent being badly disposed So also the filths of the eares shall be Gaul if yellownesse and bitternesse be sufficient for it to be called Gaul which being granted now that yellow excrement which is rejected by vomit as dung shall be near skin to and of the family of the blood But at leastwise the Schools will have the yellow and bitter excrement which is rejected at the beginnings of a Tertian Ague to denounce gaul infallibly for they prove gaul from a Tertian and this again they prove to be gauly from gaul being cast up First of all they consider not whether such vomiting shall succeed from an aguish fit or next in one that is in good health from an inordinate supper c. That notwithstanding the property or nature of that excrement is not therefore changed otherwise so great an ejection of meer Choler should import a trampling of the Tertian under
legs and elsewhere For there are somethings in the air which are perceived by the smelling of the nostrils in the next place there are other things which are distinguished by dogs only And lastly there are also other things which are voyd of all odour although not void of contagion For truly the serment of a poyson as such may be free from smel Therefore every country produceth and suffereth its own sicknesses For why nature is subject to the soile neither doth every Land bring-forth all things Because diverse vapours are brought forth in the air according to the variety of the soile Which things I more fully sifting with my self have often admired that our life is extended unto so many years since we are environed on every side with so manifold a guard of most potent enemies since we admit the same so deeply within us and are constrained to attract them against our will And that not only by breathing but also by a magnet or attraction which sports aftes its own manner through the habit of the flesh For I who have been often and long present without-fear among the fumes of live coals and the odours of other things have reaâ—ly felt those odours and fumes not only to be derived in a straight line into my breast but also from thence into my stomach and therefore that our belchings do express those smoaky fumes conceived For so the breath blown out of the lungs resembleth the smells of Garlick and Onyons that are eaten although collected thorow the Nostrils but the plague is drawn in on both sides But a voluntary Pest which is begotten not from without but within bewrays it self in the arm-pits and groyn but seldom behind the ears For this Pest for the most part issues forth from drawn-in odours But that which is infamous in spots proceeds from an internal poyson being first smothered within and therefore the worst of all as it is for the most part intended or increased with the fermental putrefaction of suffocation But that which shews forth Carbuncles is either a strong expulsion which casteth farther than into the next â—munctory or which ariseth from the touch of a contagious matter or from an in-breathed poyson of the plague For that Pest which hath invaded from a co-touching although it be more slow than that which otherwise insulteth from an universal cause yet for the most part it is more deadly Because the Archeus implanted in the member is slain by this plague and from thence the part draws a pestilential Gangren for succouring whereof the whole Archeus is the more negligent he meditating of defending the bowels as fleeing betakes himself inwards and that mortal Gangren proceeds to creep Also remedies and their intention are for the most part idle for escharring of the outward parts and that afterwards the Escharre may quickly fall off For in this respect all Emplaisters and attracting things are administred but they are seldom administred as that they overcome the poyson it self But a plague from without as it is chiefly to be feared in the joynts so on the other hand that which is darted from within to without involveth the less danger And indeed that which is bred within doth primarily terrifie the Archeus and therefore it is sudden and very powerful But the poyson of a plague that is caught by touching after it hath insinuated it self into the Archeus because he is that which is the first living and the last dying and the only Ruler of things inwardly to be done being at length confirmed after the manner of poyson it easily infecteth the rest For truly the Archeus himself being once infected presently conceiveth a pestiferous image of terrour and the raines of governing the body being forsaken he communicates it to his Associates In the next place although sweat be profitable in every plague yet less in that which hath privily entred by an external co-touching at least it is in no wise therefore to be neglected Moreover in the plague of a particular individual person by whom the whole people in common are now and then afflicted there a fermental putrefaction doth for the most part begin within which being once suddenly laid hold of the poysonous image of an Archeal terrour is from thence the more easily committed That Pest is the more swift which is drawn inwards from the external putrefaction of an odour because it presently associates unto it two degrees to wit a putrefaction through continuance and a mumial and co-marriageable ferment But there is no need that that hoary putrefaction should be perceiveable by the nostrils with an aversness For if dogs which exceed us in smelling do sent an hoary putrefaction or the foot-step of their Master in the way our Archeus himself doth as yet far more easily smell out-those things which are within and therefore a putrified odour cannot hurt unless it shall find a mumial serment within whereunto it may couple it self Then indeed there is now forthwith a forreign matter nevertheless as yet wanting a contagion Therefore it behoveth that the matter be furnished with full conditions and with a formality of acting For these two are as yet as it were the occasional and provoking causes Again as concerning the Tartar of the blood there hath been enough spoken that it is a product of the Pest and that it waits for this or is made out of hand at the coming of the plague The first term therefore of making the Pest is an hoary putrified Gas the which seeing it cannot infect without a co-resemblance of appropriation it requires another correlative term which is a mumial ferment without which there is not an appropriation to wit the Archeus the receiver of the Pest For truly the poysonous matter of the plague being by contagion derived into us defiles not any one unless the Archeus shall lay hold of it and appropriate it to himself wherein surely the Archeus labours improvidently For from thenceforth the Pest conceiveth a terrour by his own phantasie but not from the sore fear of the man to wit in which phantasie of Archeal terrour the Archeus brings forth a pestilential poyson which is the very Idea of the conceived terrour being cloathed with the proper coat of the Archeus Alas then the Pest is present within and doth soon easily disturb the whole man The image of the Pestilence therefore consisteth of an Archeal air as of the matter containing whereon the poyson of the terrour of the Archeus is imprinted as the immediate efficient cause For neither therefore doth the poyson of the plague always defile any one whatsoever although it shall presently find an odour in us agreeable to it self because the mumial ferment although it be internal yet nevertheless it is only an occasional mean in respect of the contagious application or of the infection applied which appropriation immediately consisteth in a real and actual congress of the image bred by terrour which the Archeus conceiveth from the aforesaid