principiating Ferment laid up in the bosoms of the Elements continues unchangeable and constant nor subject to successive change or death Therefore it is a power implanted in places by the Lord the Creator and there placed for ends ordained to himself in the succession of dayes While as othewise the Seed in things and its fermental or leavening force is a thing which the Scene of its Tragedy being out of date doth end in an individual conclusion For a thing although it successively causeth off-spring from it self that comes to passe not but by the virtue of the Ferment once drawn which therefore ceaseth not in its own Places uncessantly to send forth voluntary or more prosperous fruits by the Seed of the former Parents These things are easie to be known in Mineralls sprung of their own accord but in Plants and living Creatures generating by a successive fruitfulness of the Seed it is not alike easie as neither in things soulified counterfetting indeed a confused Sex by putrifaction but straightway causing off-spring also by a mutual joyning But there is every where the same Reason of the Ferment and so that the Ferment is on both sides the same Principle For in the Seed it is placed by the Parent and undergoes an identity or sameliness with the same or it is imprinted in the matter elsewhere from external causes and at leastwise it on either side holds the place of a true inward efficient Because the framer of things hath ordained proper and stable places for some Ferments in the Cup or bosome of the Elements as it were the Store-house of the Seeds therefore the first figures of efficient causes But in other things he hath dispersed them thorow individual things and kindes as if they were places for elsewhere he would have these beginnings stedfast in regard of the Nature of bodies in which they are in but in another place that they might passe from hand to hand into the continuances of things But in this he would have them to differ that the stable Ferments of places should be as it were the chief universal simple and inchoative or beginning Beginnings of Seeds or the efficients of natural Causes which indeed should beget with Childe the Element of Water in it self in the Air or in the Earth But that the sliding Ferments of frail Bodies and those Ferments drawn from the Parents should onely concern the matter prepared and should sit immediately in the bosom of the Seeds and therefore also that they should contain the inward necessity of death Likewise the other universal beginning of Bodies which is the water is the onely material cause of things as the water hath the Nature of a beginning it self in the manner purity simpleness and progress of beginning even as also in the bound of dissolution unto which all Bodies through the reducing of the last matter do return Which thing I will straightway in its place typically demonstrate A Beginning therefore differs from a cause onely speculatively as that is an actual initiating Being and thus far causing But a Cause may be a terme of relation to the thing caused or the Effect happily neerer to a speculative Being Or distinguish those as it listeth thee I at leastwise understand Causes to begin and beginnings to cause by the same name whether it be in the bosom of the Elements or in the very Family of material Seeds Therefore in the History of Natural things I consider the matter for the most part begotten with Childe by the Seed running down from its first life unto the last bound of that conjoyned thing but not the first matter of Aristotle or that impossible non-Being But I consider the reall beginnings of the efficient cause conceived as the first Gifts Roots Treasures and begetting Ferments Or if the Reader had rather confound the efficient Cause with the Ferment of things and the matter of Bodies with the Element of water I willingly cease to be distinct onely that it be known how those things have themselves in the light of Nature Thus at least I have discoursed of beginnings and causes of Bodies as I judge and have found by experience also I promise much light to those who shall have once made this speculation their own Therefore first of all they shall certainly finde the Maxime of Aristotle false to wit that the thing generating cannot be a part of the thing generated Seeing that the effective Principle of generation is alway the inward Agent the inward doer or accomplisher and the thing generating Which appeareth clearly enough in those things which bring forth living Creatures by their onely Mother putrifaction Wherein there is no outward univocall or simple thing generating but the seminal lump it self or the generative Seed doth keep in it self all things which it hath need of for the managing of generation But truly neither is it sufficient to have shewen a couple of Causes but rather it hath holpen more plainly to have brought forth the efficient or chief Builder of the Fabrick Wherefore I do suppose in this place what things I will demonstrate elsewhere to wit that in the whole order of natural things nothing of new doth arise which may not take its beginning out of the Seed and nothing to be made which may not be made out of the necessity of the Seed But the Tragedy that hath done its office in the bound of the end is nothing out the period or conclusion of the Seeds overcome with pains or ended unless happily they may be compelled by violence to depart Wherefore I except the fire because as being given not for generation but for destruction Chiefly because there is a peculiar not a seminal beginning of it Indeed it is a thing among all created things singular and unlike as sometime in its place Last of all I except the influences of the Heavens which by reason of their most general appointment have no seminal power in themselves Because they are too far distinct from the lot or interest of things to be generated and therefore influences are chosen to be for signes times or seasons dayes and years by the Creator nor ordained for any thing else but not for the seminal causes of things Moreover of efficient and seminal Causes in Nature some are efficiently effecting but others effectively effecting Indeed of the former order are the Seeds themselves and the Spirits the dispensers of these and those causes are of the race of essences through their much activity worthily divided from the material cause But the effective efficients are the very places of entertainment and the neerest Organs or Instruments of the Seeds such as are external Ferments the disposers of the matter into the interchangeableness of the passing over of one thing into another Also hither have the dispositive powers of circumstances regard likewise the cherishing exciting and promoting ones because the Seed being given yet not any things promiscuously do thence proceed Besides our young beginner shall
heat For if a little heat causeth a small digestion and amean heat a mean one Verily at a powerful and troublesome digestion a great heat ought also to be present Which thing notwithstanding although I have divers times the more curiously searched into I have not found to be true Then at length it is to be noted That the digestion of bread in a Man Dog Horse Fish Bird differ in the whole general kind no otherwise than as a manifold venal bloud and filths sprung from thence Wherefore from one only particular kind of digesting heat those kinds of varieties of digestions cannot proceed Therefore let the Schools erect and defend so many general kinds of heats and colds before they do require for themselves to be believed I therefore do draw so great a difference of venal blood from formal properties and specifical ferments never from heat For truly I perfectly know that whatsoever things have divers essential efficients have also divers effects and attributes to wit So that products divers in the general kind do necessarily require their own efficient causes diverse in the general kind For otherwise any thing should produce any thing indifferently to wit even as one and the same thing doth arise from the same nigh causes For how frivolous a thing is it to have adjudged the vital powers and the formal and specifical parents of transmutations unto luke-warmths For if the digestion of heat were needful a more prosperous and plentiful digestion should continually follow a greater heat For by how much every cause is more powerful in nature by so much it doth also more powerfully perfect its own proper effect By consequence the stomack of one sick of a Fever in a burning Fever should more powerfully digest than that of a healthy person But surely in the stomack of him that hath a Fever nothing is rightly digested For Eggs Fishes Fleshes and Broths are presently made cadeverous or stinking within and therefore they do cause adust or burnt belchings the which if sowre belchings do soon follow after Hippocrates hath reckoned to be good as well from the sign as from the cause Yet there is in one that hath a Fever a heat also sometimes that heat is temperate to wit while it is not troublesome neither doth stir up thirst yet the digestion is void Impure bodies by how much the more powerfully thou nourishest them by so much the more thou hurtest them which in a Feverish man is manifest wherein we must presently use a most slender food easie of digestion And we must abstain from the more strongmeats to wit those consummated or accomplished in growth from meat Broths because the ferment being absent they do easily putrifie contract an adust savour and turn as it were into a dead Carcass No otherwise than as raw flesh being bound on the Wrist Breast Soals of the feet or Neck so far is it that it should be resolved into Chyle that straight-way after some hours it putrifies and stinks although it be salt The same thing is in an impure Feverish body where heat is present but a digesting ferment is wanting For if heat be the cause of digestion otherwise digestion is wanting in a Feaver but heat is present but we must more apply our selves to digestion than to cooling refreshment especially if no very troublesome heat be present Therefore we should rather study the increase of heat than cooling And so the Scope of the Physitian should be changed while it should be devised concerning the increase of heat in a Fever for digestion nourishing and increase of strength Neither also shall sharp and hungry Medicines of Sulphur Vitriol Salt Niter Citron and the like help but the heat should be stirred up and increased by sharp things He speaketh something like madness who saith That the Snow makes cold as it is white So it is a ridiculous thing to affirm That the specificall ferment of the stomack doth digest by reason of vitall heat existing in it Surely it is to be lamented that the credulity and sloath of those to whom the care of the life is committed have changed burying-places into a meer Sumen or fatting juice despairing of the searching out of natural properties whence notwithstanding they have their Sur-name Paracelsus also being deluded by a digestive heat and ignorant of the Ferment of the stomack admires that some things which are most hard are changed into Chyle in a few hours and that a bone is consumed in the luke-warmth of the stomack of a Dog who aspiring to the Monarchy of healing failed thereof after that he named this a power to be admired at was ignorant of and knew not the ferments For being unconstant to himself he wrote elsewhere That this digestive property doth agree no lesse to the mouth being shut than to the stomack and so also from hence That Anchorets have spent their long life happily without swallowed meat But surely that Idiotisme is to be left to his own boldness while in the mean time whatsoever hath perhaps remained within the hollownesses of the Teeth is straight-way made like a dead carcasse with a horrible stink but is not digested For I remember that a white and thick glasse being cast out of my Furnace was swallowed by my Hens they being deluded through the heat of Milk but the fracture of glasse is always sharp-pointed but after a few dayes some Hens being killed the glasse was found to be pointingly diminished on every side and to have lost its sharp tops and to have been made roundish or globish But the other surviving Hens and Guests had presently after a few dayes consumed the rest of the Glasse although they had also devoured the small Pellets of Glasse taken out of the Hens formerly slain Thou shalt take notice in the mean time that glasse doth resist waters which resolve any Mettals Indeed the ferment in many Birds is so powerful that unlesse they are now and then fed with Tiles or Bricks Chalk or white earth they are ill at ease through the multitude of sharpness But on the contrary that the stomack of one that hath a Fever is wholly of an adust savour he rejecteth meats of three dayes continuance being oft-times as yet distinguished by the sight or sometimes turned into a yellow or rusty liquour to wit through the straining scope of the ferment I learned the necessity of this ferment of the stomack while being a Boy I nourished Sparrows I oft-times thrust out my tongue which the Sparrow laid hold of by biting and endeavoured to swallow to himself and then I perceived a great sharpness to be in the throat of the Sparrow whence from that time I knew why they are so devouring and digesting And then I saw that the sharp distilled Liquor of Sulphur had seasoned my Glove and that it did presently resolve it into a juice in the part which it had moistned which thing confirmed to me a young Beginner that meats are transchanged
its drying something that is not fixed doth of necessity puff out Moreover let the Retorts be senced with a crust or parger which may neither cleave asunder nor contract chaps or fall down of its own accord or be too much glassified Let also the neck of the Retort which hangs out be most exactly connexed unto the large receiving vessel that not so much as the least thing may expire But let the Receiver be placed in moist sand likewise let the boughty part thereof be covered in a Sack being filled half full with moist sand Which Sack let it be divers times renewed being tinged in the coldest water But let half of the Retort be filled with poudered Vitriol But distill it by degrees and at length let it be urged with coal as much as is possible for the furnace of wind which is blown by its own iron grate But when the furnace of wind shall cease to dismiss the spirit into the receiving vessel let the porch be opened on the side by which way the Reverbery of the flame of the wood may pierce under the Retort and let it so continue for five or six nights with the highest fire possible to nature The Retort perhaps in so great a storm of the fire will seem to thee to melt but nevertheless it will endure constant throughout because the outward coat of male or fence of earth with-holds and sucks the glass and so it is englassened as much as shall be sufficient for the work At length remember thou to sequester the receiving vessel from the neck of the Retort the fire being as yet most ardent otherwise thou shalt see in a more cold station the spirits to return into the Lee or Dreg which spewed them our Then lastly take the Colcotar or Lee remaining of the distillation which thou hast reserved from true Cyprus Hungarian or at leastwise Goslarian Vitriol Let that residing dreg being co-mixed with Sulphur be again burnt unto the every way confuming of the Sulphur But afterwards thou shalt bedew and moisten this feces with the aforesaid spirit For that spirit as it is presently imbibed in the glassen dish or gourd so being fetcht again from thence it returns nothing but a watery and unprofitable phlegm the spirit having remained imbibed in the Colcotar And repeatingly renew thou that operation six or seven times until at length the spirit that is poured thereon wax red which will swim upon the Colcotar which is a sign that we must cease from the plenteousness of imbibing And so let this rich Colcotar being well dryed be put into a Retort and let this rich Colcotar be distilled even unto its utmost spirits now waxing yellow and casting the smelling odour of grateful honey Yet remember thou to draw away the receiving vessel from the Retort being as yet of a bright burning heat and that this spirit must be kept by the mouth of a more strong bottle being close stopped with wax Whereinto lastly if thou shalt cast water the vessel it self presently breaks asunder Therefore by the only spirit of the former distillation this second spirit is bridled or restrained whereof scarce one pound is poured over from bottle into bottle but there is made a loss of one ounce at least And likewise unless the Receiver be seasonably taken away from the Retort as I have said thou shalt see the Furnance being cooled that most potent spirit to have returned into Colcotas from whence it was struck out by fire Moreover the Lee of Colcotar which is left of the second distillation is as yet wholly Coppery and waxeth green after many fashions From whence 1. That is manifest which I taught before Namely that the fire of Venus is not to be drawn out and had but by an every way destruction and separation of the mettal 2. That this therefore must be done by a far more hidden way 3. That the Vitriol which is rich in Copper is less fit for distillation than otherwise the common Vitriol is 4. That the Vitriol of Copper poures forth the spirit of the Vinegar of a mineral salt but not the volatile Liquor of Copper 5. And therefore that the sulphur of Copper is rightly called the sulphur of the Philosophers being fit for long life Being sweet I say in tast but not tart or sharp 6. That the spirit of Vitriol which is above perfectly taught cures some Chronical Diseases 7. And that therefore the spirits of Vitriol hitherto sold and in use are nothing but a mineral Vinegar being also adulterated in it self 8. That the residing Colcotar is most rich in a Medicinal Virtue 9. That the preparation of Vitriol prescribed by Isaac Holland and other Moderns hath not sent the Arrows unto the true mark 10. That our spirit above described and thus rectified as it is volatile and salt proceedes even into the fourth Digestion and reolves diseasie Excrements that are met withall in its journey And by consequence also takes away the occasional cause of many Chronical or lingring Diseases I have therefore already delivered the like Form or manner of distilling the spirit of Sea-salt of Salt-peter and the like Yet thou shalt remember that Vitriol hath in it self the earth of Colcotar wherefore the other salts do desire dryed Potters earth and that being exactly admixed with them But besides I have already delivered the manner of preserving from the Disease of the Stone by Aroph and likewise by Ale boyled with the seed of Daucus or the yellow wild Carrot I might therefore desist and repose my Quill and leave the matter to others more successefull than my self by wishing that every one may henceforward add what things he shall find out to be farre better For since Duelech besiegeth onely mankind and is produced from Excrements themselves after an irregular manner but doth not arise after the manner accustomed to other infirmities Therefore it seems to be singularly bred for a revenge of sin even before other Diseases and to be permitted by God in Children being as yet Innocent for the averting of a greater evil For although some Bruits do generate small stones in themselves yet those stones are not bred in them from the Causes of Duelech nor appointed for a punishment or tribulations unto them but rather produced for the profit of man But if therefore Duelech doth relate to the fault of sin but since sin hath drawn its rise from a Wood or Tree it hath seemed also to me that preservation of health in the disease of the stone is not onely to be expected from the seed of Daucus and some such like Herb but from some certain Wood Wherefore it is indeed true that a Wood against the stone of the Kidneys hath been of late brought unto us out of the Indies but I have not ever therefore perswaded my self that divine Goodnesse had so long denyed unto the Europeans that it might succour even the poor man that had the stone untill that through many expences a Remedy
106. A paradox is prooved against the Schooles 107. Sensible agents act on the sense only occasionally whether they are medicines or not fire excepted 108. An application of virtues by what meanes it may be made 109. Sensation consists in the vitall judgment and so also in that of the Soul 110. Some consequences for the demonstrations of things before passed 111. From whence the faculties of medicines have been estranged in the Schooles 112. How differently the fire can act 113. The unconsiderate rashnesse of the Schooles 114. Some sequels drawn from the foregoing particulars 115. The differences of paines 116. A convulsion is the companion of paine 117. The paine of the disease of the stone 118. The blockish opinion of the Schooles concerning the convulsion or Cramp 119. It s falshood is manifested 120. Errours meeting us 121. Some negligencies of Galen 122. Galen looseth the name of a Physitian from the censure of his own mouth 123. Galen hath taught only childish devises 124. Arguments on the contrary 125. The errour of the Schooles concerning the Convulsion is concluded 126. Ridiculous similitudes made use of by the Schooles 127. Some remarkable things 128. After what manner the Convulsion is made 129. A twofold motion of the muscles is proved 130. The Convulsion is not properly an affect of the head 131. Example of parts convulsed 132. A sight of a colicall contraction in a child 133. An Artery from whence it waxeth hard 134. Divers contractures 135. That the causes of the Cramp have layen hid 136. The neglects of the Schooles 137. The degrees of paines THe pain of the Stone in the kidneys being one of the chief and most troublesome of paines is very great and cruel For the Schooles are at rest in accusing the cause of so great a pain to be a fretting or grating made by the Sand or Stone But I have perswaded my self that there was nothing at all of satisfaction from that answer And therefore I have made a further search Because some one very small Stone sliding out of the kidney doth at the first turnes cause more cruel pain than any the more big one afterwards the which notwithstanding is undoubtedly more than by its freting to wrest or wring to excoriate or pluck of the skin of and extend the urine-pipe For truly in persons grown to ripe years the spermatick parts of the first constitution do no longer dayly grow and so neither is their Ureter enlarged afterwards by the descending of the stones In the next place the slender sand hath been oftentimes very troublesome through its paine and hath cast down the howling man on his bed before it proceeded out of the kidney and the which therefore was never as yet injurious by its rubbing on it or grating of it neither also is it sufficient to have spoken of fretting or grating for the proper and total cause of so bitter a paine For the Ureter throughout its whole passage hath not the commerce of a sinew implanted in it the which therefore ought even to want sense or feeling and by consequence also pain For truly the Schooles define pain to be a sorrowfull sensation made by a hurtfull thing rushing on the part If therefore the slender and un-savoury sand be voide of all tartnesse and fretting or grating or the smal clot is not guiltlesse because neither without pain certainly to have toucht upon the causes and race of sense and pain together wit hs it circumstances shall not be disagreeable to the treatise of the disease of the Stone First therefore and in the entrance of sense the Touching of pain comes to be considered For therefore the Schooles teach that the Braine is the first and principal organ of all the senses and of all motions and by consequence also of pain and unsensibility To wit the which should discerne the objects of the senses by the animal spirits being on every side dismissed from it self into all the propagations or Sprouts of the sinewes and therefore as into the patrons of all sensations so also as into the interposing messengers and discerners thereof They presume to themselves that they have spoken some great matter in this thing I will speak more distinctly And moreover I shall say nothing or at least wise I will declare a matter which is of no worth For indeed the Schooles confesse that the Braine doth in it self feel nothing or scarce any thing and that therein it is like the first universal Mover which the moderns alio Catholiques do with Aristotle command that he ought to be unmoveable if he ought to move all other things as if the unutterable first mover cannot move himself or that he ought to be unmoved and wholly unmoveable yea that he acts and perfecteth by his own touch of local motion all things in a moment who in very deed moveth not any thing but by an absolute and most abstracted beck of Omnipotency and let this be an absurdity of the Schooles by good men accounted for blasphemy by a Parenthesis here noted by the way Notwithstanding the Brain is not the primary or adequate Organ of sense and motion seeing that in it self it is unmoved and deprived of sense For the Schooles beholding that a turning joynt of the back being displaced for that very cause whatsoever was subjected to the Nerves and Sinewes beneath that turning joynt was also without sense and motion therefore they straightway determined the Brain it self and the marrow of the Thorne of the Back the Vicaresse hereof to be the adequate or fuitable Organ or Instrument of sense and motion But other Writers being willing to give a nearer attention since they acknowledged and confessed the substance of the Brain to be deprived of touching nor to be voluntarily moved but that the twofold membrane or filme endowed with the name of Menynx was of a most acute touching although unmoved They decreed that every sinew how slender soever was over-covered with such a double membrane and did borrow it from both the Menynx's of the Brain that this very membrane of the sinewes was to wit consequently formed under the one onely endeavour of Formation and labour of the seed of Fabrication Even so that also these would have it That every Nerve should draw its own feeling from the little filme that covered it which did not any way answer from its substance unto the marrowie substance of the Brain Perhaps they took notice that in the stomach and womb so great and so excellent vertue were inmates in the naked membranes thereof and therefore that neither was it a wonder that something very like unto those had happened unto the filmes of the Brain from a prerogative of the same Right I have altogether proceeded something otherwise for the searching out of sense and pain and the Organ objects and causes of motion and feeling I considered first that while a wound is as yet fresh it scarce paineth but anon while the lips of the Wound do
and receives an image or Idea of indignation the which is clearly expressed in a woman great with Child fearing or desiring any thing while she conveighs the seal of the thing desired on her young and whatsoever of the Archeus is defiled by that forreign Idea this ought to have been rooted out by the fit so that that is the cause of wearisomness in Fevers because the spirit being marked with a forreign likeness or hateful image as unapt for the performance of the wonted Offices of its government totally vanisheth For so those that profoundly contemplate are tired with much weariness For the Archeus if he hath an image brought into him is unfit for governing of the body For therefore persons void of care the more healthy more strong ones and those of a longer life do slowly wax grey The endeavour therefore of a Physitian is not to direct unto the effect or unto the alterations naturally received in the Archeus For as I have said in Diseases all things depend on the occasional cause implanted into the field of Life because Diseases have not in them an essential root of permanency and stability as other Beings have which consist and subsist by their own seeds Because in very deed all do immediatly consist in the life therefore in a dead Carcase there is no disease and therefore all the destruction and cessation of these depends on the removal of the occasional cause The Scope therefore of healing cannot turn it self unto the cooling of heat or to the' stupefying of alterative motions as neither unto the expectation of Concomitant accidents and produced effects For the Physitian shall labour in vain shall loose his labour time and occasions as long as he shall not be intent on the withdrawing of the occasional cause yea by how much the more he shall do that by so much the more delightfully and acceptably there will be help In all Fevers there is one only inflaming or indignation of the Archeus whence also they agree in the Essence and name of a Fever being distinguished only by their occasional cause Indeed the Matter and Inne distinguisheth Fevers yea it is of no great moment with a good Physitian to have curiously searched into the diversities of Fevers according to the properties of the matter and places since it is neither granted him to have prevented them neither can it be said to a remedy Go thou unto such a vein or unto that place For it is sufficient to have known what things I have already before in general concluded And let the whole study of a Physitian be to have found out remedies with whom all Fevers are of the same value and weight as I shall presently declare CHAP. XIV A perfect Curing of all Fevers 1. The property of the occasional cause 2. Why it becomes not putrified 3. Vomitory and laxative Medicines cure only by accident 4. The Schools why they have not had meet remedies 5. None cured of Fevers by the Physitians 6. The Authors excuse 7. Of what sort the Remedy of a Fever is 8. The successfulness and unadvisedness of Paracelsus are noted 9. The Description of an Vniversal Remedy 10. A Remedy purging Fevers and the sick but not the healthy is described 11. The most rare property of the Liquor Alkahest 12. Particular Remedies of Fevers THerefore it is now manifest and be it sufficient that the occasional matter of a Fever is to be vanquished and that that matter if it be not food corrupted as in a Diary at least that it is an excrement not indeed a putrified one unless in malignat Fevers wherein putrefaction is as yet in its making but a strange forreign one not vital being deteined against nature and so brought into anothers harvest And by this title altogether hostile to the Archeus For if it were putrified it should not be tough neither should it adhere as stubborn for by putrefaction the stedfast Fibers decay and so neither should it afford daily Fevers but it should presently make to putrifie and mortifie the vessel containing it together with it self whence death would be necessitated The occasional matter of Fevers therefore is detained besides the desires of nature in undue places wherein there is not any sink of the body therefore vomitory and laxative remedies if ever they have performed any profitable thing another prone neighbouring matter is thrust out together with it for otherwise the occasional matter of Fevers doth ordinarily reside in the hollow of the stomack or bowels because they are sinks and places appropriated for expulsion unless perhaps in a Diary Fever the disease called Choler the Flux bloody Flux and other Fevers of these pipes stirred up from a matter adhering unto them For I speak especially of the primary or chief Fevers First of all the Schools could not seek meet remedies for Fevers they being seasoned with First of all the Schools could not seek meet remedies for Fevers they being seasoned with bad and false Principles But they not seeking after remedies neither also could they find them Therefore Physitians being hitherto destitute of a true remedy have endeavoured to cure Fevers going into a Circle But if any have been cured under them that hath been by accident Let them give God thanks who hath bestowed strength on the sick whereby they have tesisted the Fever and their succours Physitians therefore instead of curing Fevers have neglected them by exhaustings of the strength and blood Far be envy from what is spoken for not boasting or the vain desire of a little glory I call God the Judge to witness but mans necessity and the compassion of Mortals hath constrained me to write and make manifest these things I have bestowed my Talent let him believe me and follow me that will It shall no longer lay upon me if Mortals being rash of belief perish by Fevers Indeed the occasional cause of Fevers is cut off by one only hook That remedy is sudoriferous or a causer of sweat which cuts extenuates dissolves melts shaves off and also cleanseth away the occasional cause in whatsoever place it at length shall exist And it is a Universal Medicine of Fevers Diaphoretical or transpirative indeed causing the aforesaid effects unsensibly and without sweat For indeed Paracelsus although he had Arcanum's or Secret Medicines whereby at one only draught he alike successively cured the Quartane Ague and all Fevers yet the knowledge of their causes was not granted unto him He being contented to have introduced into us all the particular Creatures of the Microcosm and so under a rashness of belief to have applied the Species Numbers and Properties of all Simples and Stars unto the Medicinal Art and that not indeed by similitudes but he would have them to be so precisely known by a simple identity under the penalty of convicted Idiotism Therefore I distinguish not a Fever if there be the greatest goodness of a remedy For that remedy is the Diaphoretick Precipitate of Paracelsus
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
Beere belcheth forth its Gas an easie sudden death and choaking doth break forth Wherefore I have greatly grieved and pittied mans condition that by so gross negligence of the Schooles the more profound Remedies of fumes are almost suppressed whereby not onely those who faint are refreshed but also whereby the healings of most Diseases are performed Which thing concerning odours or smells at sometime explained in the matter of Medicine every one shall with me more easily disclose Surely almost all Medicines are neglected which do restore the strength and they have applied themselves onely to the diminishments of bodies by the with-drawings of bloud and solutive scammoneated potions and by Cauteries Baths Clysters Sweats and Cantharides For a Gas is more fully implanted and odours do keep a more immediate co-touching with the vitall Spirits than Liquors if they are not partakers of a poysonous infection at leastwise of the dulled properties of second qualities and the which qualities or especially that sublime one of the first digestion they do lay aside as it were Soils covered with Clay if they are not as yet received with a great averseness of the Archeus or they being rebellious and stubborn do with anguish resist the digestive powers Notwithstanding the Scripture might be opposed against me which saith concerning man Thou art Earth and into Earth thou shalt go How therefore shall flesh bone c. be materially of water alone But I will say this from the force of the same Argument If man be Earth how therefore do the Schooles affirm that man materially is not one onely Element but foure Elements therefore from that Text those things which I have spoken above are confirmed To wit that the Earth is not in the holy Scriptures a primary Element but every thing co-agulated of water is called Earth because by its consistence it is more likened to Earth than to Water and so the veriest Earth it self the prop of nature is of water no lesse than Man Wood Ashes a Stone c. CHAP. XIX The Image of the Ferment begets the Masse or lump with childe of a Seed 1. There is no seminall successive change without a Ferment 2. Handicraft operation is brought into a Circle by Ale or Beere 3. The Ferment makes volatile that which otherwise is changed into a Coal 4. It is proved by handicraft-operation in the venall Bloud 5. The Bloud attains its own various ferments in the Kitchins of the members 6. The unconstancie of Paracelsus is taken notice of 7. The Beginnings of Paracelsus are made by the fire but they are not in Bodies 8. There are double ferments from whence are the seeds of things 9. The Birth of Insects 10. 'T is not sufficient to have said that Insects are born of putrefaction or corruption 11. A twofold manner of generation 12. How seedes are made 13. In what manner an odour or smell causeth a ferment and seed 14. A Scorpion from Basil 15. The ferment in voluntary seedes reacheth to the Horizon or bound of life 16. The ferment of Diseases and healings 17. Almost all Medicines do act by way of an odour onely 18. Therefore seedes are strong onely in a specificall odour 19. An odour and light do pierce the spirits 20. Odours do cause or incite and cure the Plague and divers Diseases 21. Art having forgotten its perfume is translated into a servile rage or madness 22. Vnappeaseable pains are presently appeased by the odour of an outward application 23. The ferment is the Parent of transmutations 24. Of what quality the ferment of the stomach is 25. Why very many do abhorre Cheese 26. A sharp fermentall thing differeth from soure things 27. From whence belching is 28. The labour of Wisdom 29. All things which are believed to be mixt are onely of Water and a ferment 30. The ferment of the Equinoctiall Line 31. The progress of seedes and ferments unto proPagation 32. The originall and progress of Vegetables 33. Ferments do sometimes operate more powerfully than Fire 34. Paracelsus is noted AS no knowledge in the Schooles is scantier than the knowledge of a Ferment so no knowledge is more profitable The name of a Ferment or Leaven being unknown hitherto unless in making of bread when as notwithstanding there is made no successive change or transmutation by the dreamed appetite of matter but onely by the endeavour of the ferment alone In times past leaven and all things leavened were forbidden and the Mystery hidden in the Letter was then of right interpreted according to the Letter For as leavens or ferments were altogether the way-leaders and necessary unto every transmutation of a thing so they did denote corruption unconstancy and impurity and therefore a flight from leaven was enjoyned I will first of all explain a thing surely so paradoxall in naturall Philosophy by an example The purest of Ales or Beeres which is deservedly the nourishing juyce or meat melting or finished right of the Grain requireth so much Grain by how much there is capacity and largeness in the Vessel or Hogs-head And so indeed that the Bran being taken away all the Meal doth melt into the Ale or Beer and the Water onely supplies the place of the Bran. That Ale or Beer by a very little ferment or leaven being administred doth boyl up by fermenting in Cellars it waxeth clear by degrees and the dreg falls down to the bottom at length something doth fermentally wax soure by which tartness it consumeth all its dreg And then it looseth more and more daily its sharp or pricking soureness At length it is deprived of the taste virtues and body of the meal And last of all it of its own accord returns into water That Ale or Beere being distilled layeth aside very much residence in the bottom like a Syrupe which at length by proceeding is changed into a Coal But if that same Ale or Beere by the degrees of the ferment shall passe over into water it leaveth no more dregs in the bottom while it is distilling than otherwise the water from whence it was boyled did contain because the natall sediment of the waters is not subject to the ferment of the Grain since it is not the object thereof but the Client of or dependant on another Monarchy Therefore the Grains do return unto their first matter whereof they are which is water and that by the virtue of the ferment onely In the next place every one of us doth daily frame to himself 7 or 10 ounces of bloud but at leastwise in our standing age as much bloud must needes be consumed as is a-new generated For else a man might straightway fear a hugeness or excessive greatness And then the bloud is by degrees changed into a vitall muscilage or flimy juyce the true immediate nourishment of the members of which it is wont to be said we are nourished by those things whereof we consist But they will have this nourishment to be sprinkled on all the particular members in
with us that we being diligently taught by the Schooles do even still believe that the whole governance and successive change of sublunary things do depend on a certain that is an unnamed unknown conjectural and uncertain motion of the Heavens on the scituation light and aspect of the Stars Not considering on the contrary that the gift of multiplying or generation was powred forth before the Stars were born and therefore that the blessing of generation and of successive changes following thereupon would be after a sort frustrate if the whole government of the inferiour things were from the Heaven and that also should be true That a man and the Sun doth generate a man For the first man that was formed was made of the mud or dust and was endowed with a Soul by the in-breathing of the divine Blast But I have already sufficiently proved above that the Heavens are neither to confer manners nor knowledge nor fortunes Now I will prove moreover that indeed they can neither give Life nor Form For truly these opinions of the Schooles have in times past so infatuated or befooled them that it hath stood believed that the immortall minde it self is naturally produced by the seed of man and the influence of the Stars and although the Church hath forbidden that thing yet the Schooles being even till now seasoned with the errours of the Heathen do teach that besides the minde of man all forms essences beginnings of all things and consequently that our life inclinations perfection of properties properties and fortunes do proceed from the motion and light of the Stars and perhaps moreover from their influence But I believe far otherwise for I profess that he who by the onely word of his good pleasure made the Universe of nothing is All in All and at this day also the way originall life and perfection of all things So that although second causes are and do operate as it were partiall causes directions of motions and all dispositions necessary to generation Insomuch that therefore the Almighty will in nothing more give his honour to any Creature yet he alwayes remaineth as the totall cause continuing the perpetuall parent of things the framer of nature and its governour by creating therefore I profess that as in the beginning nothing was made without him so also that at this day the creation of every form is a thing made of nothing by the very same Creator which thing I not onely speak in behalf of the matter once formerly created but also of any kinde of forms because as the form is as it were a certain light of the thing and the top of that light So none can cause or beget the forms of things but the Father of Lights who giveth all things to all nor is not far off from every created thing Neither may I believe that the Heavens do frame naturall forms of nothing or that they give the seeds or souls of things which they in no way have because Faith and also Religion do teach me that God is also at this day the immediate principle of things every where present working all the perfection of all things And therefore whatsoever is any where essentially that that thing doth owe to God its whole as much as it is can do knoweth or hath For Creation hath respect and sheweth a disposition unto a thing existing in perfection but the perfection of a thing is the proper internall essentiall form of every thing therefore its immediate beginning cannot be from any other than Creation And therefore is immediately from the one onely unutterable Creator of things The Schooles therefore thinking the contrary were deceived when they saw the light by it self to make fire thorow a Glasse I say they thought the light to be an accident but the fire to be a substance and in their thoughts of both they stumbled And therefore they waxing blinde at the natural light of the Sun flee together unto it as it were the Creator of the substance of fire doubting in retiring whether the Heaven should as yet frame the form of the fire or whether there were any other artificial light equivalent in this work For such a sluggishness of the Schooles doth alwayes remain that having gotten an example erroneous and supposionall they straightway slide to a generality least by diligently searching through particular kindes or Species they should be wearied and finde something which should constrain them to depart from the possession of a supposed knowledge I say they could not understand but that they should believe the light of the Sun to be a Creator and also of all essential forms But they stumble and fall in the place of exercise and being unconstant do run away For when they thought that one essential form of the fire was generated immediately by heat putrefaction and rubbing and now to be taken from another light without respect to the Heaven and its co-working they sand a recantation they fought against the Heavens and their own former opinion and will have the Creation of forms to be fetched back from these the which notwithstanding they do sometimes freely and credulously yield unto them as being uncertain to what Authour the birth of forms may be due wherefore when they saw fire to be taken or drawn from fire and so that in a combustible object there was fire potentially Straightway also by the same right that all seeds did contain a potential form and so far indeed that at length an actual form is brought and procreated out of a potential disposition which they call the power of the matter but surely ridiculous For at first they thought that the same thing did happen to the generations of all seeds which they had already experienced in the light and fire Therefore they afterwards began toughly to maintain that every substantial form but I do grant an essential form to any things whatsoever yet a substantiall one to none but to man by reason of his immortal minde or act was produced without a mean out of the power of the matter That is that it was created by the onely dispositions of the matter which is to say by accidents And as this knowledge of those forms was brought forth from the brain as it were Minerva the Daughter of Jupiter it was also doubtfull unconstant without sense as to the subject of its inherency and soon rent a sunder into divers Sects And indeed first of all S. Thomas reacheth that accidents do in truth indeed generate a substance but that is onely in respect of the substantial form whose Instruments they are In the first place here S. Thomas hath forsaken his Aristotle and will have the efficient cause to be internall sliding out of the bosom of the form and dependent on it in this respect the generating efficient cause thereof 2. He declareth these intricacies one substantial form doth not cause another of it self but its accidents do in truth do that Likewise Accidents do
being little careful of Fables do suffer them to try both opinions In the mean time they may be ashamed to have discourses of the causes of diseases problematically only and to have left them disputable In the mean time I certainly know that the Gowt whether it slide on the heirs through the Seeds of the Parents or in the next place be contracted by a proper error of living is of one and the same kind with every property following it Neither that that doth relate any thing whether a hot Gowt doth molest and pain one greatly or next be reckoned more sluggish and mild through cold because those are Ensigns of degrees whereby the matter is ennobled or made remarkable but do not vary its essence Then also I know and have learned first of all that at least an Hereditary Gowt is not derived from a Catarrhe if it hath layn hid in the Seed and that which is framed hereof for the space of thirty years For truly seeing nothing that is external can be contained in the Seed but for that very cause it looseth the fruitfulness of causing off-spring be sure that nothing of a Rheumy substance remains in the Seed and that there is not place for any Hostile matter there Therefore it is confirmed that nothing doth remain in the Seed besides a Character or Seal of things to be acted in the body constituted and that that Seal is not indeed of so great a concernment as to display the fruitfulness of a Seed If an Hereditary disease ought from thence to rise again in the Son or Nephew Again neither can that Seal in the Seed defile the Young with a monstrous deformity although other Characters of Seeds by reason of their disposition do figure the Seed wherefore although the Seal of the Gowt be in very deed in the Seed yet it sleepeth is silent and layeth hid in the course of figuring and so long as till at length an opportunity of matter and maturity being obtained it unfoldeth it self Therefore the Character or impression of the Gowt is in the Seed as it were the first life with a determination of silence that it may sleep even till the first Fit as it were a swallow all the Winter Therefore the formative virtue in the Seed doth not yet feel its own defect by reason of the fault of a material Indisposition for truly the Character in the Seed is not born to generate iâ—s Gowt before its own maturity which ripeness of the Character is now and then not unfolded but in the Nephew Truly although there are strict wed-locks of the Seed of man with the Seed of the Gowt that they do promise as it were an undissoluable unity for the future yet it is certain that Diseases do not adhere to the root of the particular kind unless in whom they are as being created by a condition as the Falling-evil in the Elke and Swallow but only unto individual Beginnings whereto they are fast tyed as it were by accident Therefore if there be nothing of a Rheumy matter actually in the Seed of the Gowt therefore neither also in the Gowt which is to arise from thence Seeing proper effects ought alwayes to bear a respect to their own causes In the next place if any Hereditary Gowt doth want a Catarrhe therefore also any other Seeing of one thing in the particular kind there are alwayes the same specifical constitutive Beginnings Furthermore if that blemishing Gowty Character be so notably homebred to the Seed so intimately social to it sleeping with so patient a suspense and not to be washed off by so many Circuits of years and storms of Tempests I have judged it to be altogether of necessity for the same to be coupled to the vital Spirit Whence first of all it is manifest that the supposed withdrawings of bloud and feigned Humors for attempting the prevention of the Gowt are vain because that Character of the Gowt is not co-mixed with the venal bloud but well with the Governour of the Solide parts for indeed the venal bloud is many times changed and the whole Fardle of nourishment before the access of an Hereditary Gowt to come From thence likewise it follows that if the Character of the Gowt being either transferred with the Seed of the Parents on the young or being gotten by the inordinate storms of life be the connexed and efficient cause of the Gowt and so that that be a true formal Gowt it is a fabulous thing whatsoever hath been devised concerning Rheums and Drops For that absurdity being granted that a Catarrhe rayning down did cause the access of the Gowt likewise whatsoever Weapon hath been retorted on this Disease all that hath been directed unto the effects the product latter thing or fruit but nothing unto the cutting off the cause But seeing the true causes in the Gowt have been unknown to the Schools and will stand unknown as long as the doatages of Humors shall prevail it must needs be that unprosperous and cruel Medicines have been hitherto applied by anoynting for an unseen mark for the Gowt is not in the Finger but only the Apple or Fruit of the root and therefore although thou shalt cut off the Finger thou shalt not therefore cure the Gowt For from hence two things do follow The first is that the Gowt doth immediately consist in the Spirit of life neither therefore that the fruit of the Gowt is the Gowt or the root thereof The other is that the Gowt doth not flow down materially or as they will have it in manner of a Humor as being a Bridge for the Rheum unto the joynts Wherefore if I shall explain the Progress of the Gowt in its being made I think that by liberal wits and those not yet defiled by any prejudice I shall be affented unto For in the beginning after that the seminal Gowty Character is constituted be it now all one whether it shall be made to increase from the seed of the Parents or next be gotten by excess of living it must needs be that it hath prescribed limits of its continuance as well in rising up as in continuing according to the law of its destiny and the successive change of things obeying When therefore the beginning of this Gowty motion is at hand the vital spirit being an obedient client to the corruptive Character puts on a fermental sharpness altogether hostile to it self and foreign unto us In the next place even as all sharpness as well in the venal bloud as in the flesh is demonstrated to contein the beginning and token of putrefaction hence it comes to pass that nature well perceiving or being thorowly sensible of that sharpness in the Spirit which it conceived from the Seed or Gowty Character doth presently stir up an every dayes Fever before the comming of the Gowt presently also a pain is well perceived in the proper place or Womb to wit where two Bones do touch each other first a small light pain
Fall Again neither do these Words sound of a Curse that the Woman should be thenceforth obedient and subject to her Husband although therein the intent of the Creator doth clearly appear to wit that he had appointed the Woman to be the head top and ultimate Creature above the Man But now by reason of a double Sin that she ought to be subject to her Husband But that signifies rather a deserved Punishment than a Curse Even as a Superiour is not cursed who is laid aside for an Errour committed But whereas it is said In Pain shalt thou bring forth thy Sons the Text expresly confirmeth the mistery of the Paradoxal Position For from thence it manifestly appears 1. That Eve was not created nor appointed as that she had brought forth in Pain Wherefore this Message is not decleared unto her for a Curse But there is set before her eies how much Calamity she had caused unto her self that she should hereafter conceive and bring forth after the manner of Bruits in Pain For it is not to be doubted but that Bruit-beasts are not guilty of Sin yet do they bring forth in Pain Not indeed that they have sinned in Adam as their Father or that they are partakers of his Sin because they had brought forth in Pain whether Adam had sinned or not Neither also is it agreeable with divine goodness that Bruit-beasts should bear an undeserved Punishment while as they from a Faculty of Nature and from an appointment of Creation do bring forth in pain 2. If Bruits bring forth in Pain a likenesse of Conception and bringing forth in Bruits and in Woman after the Fall is denoted which Likeness seeing it was not before the Fall therefore this Text strengthens the Position 3. If Eve had not eaten the Apple and consequently from the Apple the concupiscence of the Flesh from the tickling of a corrupt Seed verily she had brought forth without Pain Where the Text promiseth a Virginity in conceiving and bringing forth and so a perpetual Virginity appointed in propagating To wit that she had conceived and brought forth her Womb being shut For what other thing is this than that which others think to be the Curse of Eve is in very deed only a commemoration of the good lost through the copulation of Man of Seed and of the concupiscence of the Flesh in the Flesh of Sin after the manner of Bruits henceforeward The hope I say was lost of conceiving by the holy Spirit after that she had conceived by the will of Man as every Mother in Sins doth For otherwise if Death had been of the punishment of a broken Law and not from the concupiscence of the Flesh there should be every day as many new Deaths as there are Transgressions or God should not make so much account of his Commands of the Decalogue as of the Admonition of the caution or avoiding from the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil For he would not have those Laws to be alike seriously observed which he would not have to be chastised with an equal Punishment Therefore it being as yet supposed that there had been a Law concerning the denyed eating of the Apple even as there is a Law of forbidden Worshipping of Idols Adultery c. But these Laws are not punished with a continued unpurgeable Impurity on Posterity in such a manner as the opposition of that eating is From hence therefore it most easily appeareth that original Sin was not so much from the force of disobeying a command as from the effect of a defiled divine Generation being changed into a beast-like one For else there is not an equality of distributive Justice nor therefore a conformity in the goodness of God whether we have respect unto the ingratitude of our first Parents or next unto the disobedience against a Law Because the first disobedience should pay a punishment derived on all even on the innocent Posterity rather than any tenths or hundreths afterwards and than innumerable and far more great or haynous Sins Indeed I think that there is the same rule of Justice with the same Lawgiver of every command preceptively and defensively given and pronounced that the breaking thereof ought alwayes to draw after it an equal Fault neither therefore to be punished in all the Posterity and those that are innocent and then that none of Mortals nor any one of them had been sufficient for the original punishments of their Ancestours and a hundred-fold of Deaths to wit if Death had taken its original effectively and immediately from the opposing of a Law or the unchangeable God had not appointed his future Commands to be alike observed as at first if Death should not have its root in Nature the application of which root had been onely from man Therefore If Death should be immediately from God alone from the curse of Sin Now God had made Death and so by Faith we should believe a Falshood In the next place if Death had proceeded from a Curse and had been from a supernatural Root So also neither should our Death find natural Causes in us or our Death should not be of the same kinde with the Death of Adam Yea which is far more absurd our Death should not proceed from the same primitive Beginning from which the Death of our first Parents began And by consequence our Death should not be the effect of original Sin And so unless Death do happen from elsewhere than from the punishment of a Law and the curse of Sin that is unless the Adamical or Beast-like Generation of the Flesh from the Concupiscence of the Flesh and its Copulation doth naturally containe Death in it like unto Beasts in very deed Innocent Children should pay an undeserved Punishment Again if Death should be immediately caused from a Curse or from Sin should not the Text unfitly say On the same Day thou shalt die the Death while as it should not say Presently in the same Moment thou shalt die For a Curse doth not want twenty four hours that it may operate as neither likewise doth Sin require an interval for the Guilt and deserved Punishment of the same which was expresly seen while an impure Man endeavouring to vindicate the reeling Cart wherein the Arke of the Covenant was carried from a fall payed the Punishment of his boldness by sudden Death But seeing Death consisted in the procreation of forbidden Seeds and of the Concupiscence of the Flesh it presupposeth the eating of the Apple and its Digestion And therefore those Words On the same Day thou shalt die the Death or shalt be made Mortal also thou shalt suffer punishment by Death doubled in thee and thy Posterity do strengthen the proposed Truth of our Position But there is no original Sin accounted of from the first afterwards or unremissibly derived on all Posterity but that which from the eating of the Apple thenceforth defiled the whole Nature because it tranferred the Propagation of mankinde on the Flesh
of Sin of which God saith My Spirit shall not remain with Man because he is Flesh But that Sin if it hath not been sufficiently searched into by Predecessours I will add freely what I conceive For indeed in this History of Genesis do concurr together 1. The Sin of Distrust or suspicion of an Evil Faith of Deceit Fallacie or Falshood in God For Eve saith to the Divel Least perhaps we die And so she doubted that the Death admonished of would of necessity come unto them And likewise the Sin of a despised Admonition and that they more trusted unto the Serpent than to God neither was there disobedience where there was not yet a Law 2. An act of eating of the Apple not so much forbidden as admonished of bewarying of it 3. An effect of the Apple being eaten For in the midst of Paradise there was a Tree whose Property is said to be of Life Least he eat and live for ever and there was another Tree whose Property was that of the knowledge of Good and Evil unto whom there was not another like but the other Trees except these two served onely for nourishment The property therefore and effect of this latter Tree was to stir up an itching concupiscence of the Flesh or madness of Luxurie But it is called The Tree of the knowledge of Good Lost and of Evil obtained For they knew not that they were naked and they were without shame that is without the Concupiscence of the Flesh like Children because they wanted Seed 4. A carnal Copulation concurreth From thence at length a certain beastlike frail Mortal Generation contrary to the intent of God who was unwilling that Man should conceive in Sins in Sins hath my Mother conceived me not indeed that all Mothers afterwards should eat of that Apple but because presently after the Apple was eaten all Conception should not be made but by the will of Blood Flesh and Man And so that from thence should all Flesh of Sin necessarily proceed Therefore while the immediate Cause of corrupt Nature and Death is ascribed unto the Sin of disobedience Or while the immediate Cause of corrupt Flesh is attributed unto the Sin of suspected deceit in God they are faults in arguing of not the Cause as of the Cause For in speaking properly the very Corruption and Degeneration of the Flesh of our whole Nature hath not issued from the Curse as neither immediately from Sin accompanying it but from these only occasionally and as it were from the Cause without which it was not but our Nature is rendred wholly corrupted and uncapable of Eternal Glory by reason of the causalities of concupiscence and brutal Generation effectively and immediately causing a withdrawing of virgin Chastity and all hope of generating from the holy Spirit afterwards and from Eve as a Virgin And therefore original Sin is defluxing altogether on all Posterity because after the Virginity of Eve was taken away the race of men is not possible to be generated but by the will of Man Flesh and Blood the which otherwise God had determined to be generated by the holy Spirit It is therefore an undistinction of Causes and its unapt application of Effects unto their proper Causes which hath not heretofore heeded 1. Why that Apple was with so loud a voice forewarned of that they should not eat of it 2. That they have esteemed that to be a Curse which was not 3. That they have ascribed original Sin unto one Disobedience as the most near and containing immediate Cause 4. That they have thrown an unexcusable Death on the Curse and Punishment of a broken Law For although a grievous Sin hath concurred with an original declining of the Generation intended by God together with an impurity of the Flesh the corruption of Nature by carnal copulation Yet the corruption of Nature the degeneration of Generation as neither Death have proceeded from the original Sins of our Parents their distrust c. as from an immediate Cause but from the effect of the Apple being eaten as a new Product of necessity Naturally depending thereon that is Death hath proceeded from its own second natural Causes existing in the Apple Even as a total Corruption of Nature hath issued from thence because both are supported by one and the same Root of necessity But the Causes of these natural Causes were by accident co-bound unto the Sins of Distrust c. in the Unison of eating For the very guilt of the Sin of suspition of an evil Faith or bad trusting of Deciet and a Fallacy of God remained expiable by our first Parents after the manner of Sin to wit by Contrition and Acts of Repentance after the manner of other Sins But not that therefore whole Nature ought to be depraved that a Death and Misery of every Body ought to enter and perpetuate it self on all Posterity even although they should have guiltless Souls For God doth sometimes punish the Sins of Parents upon one or a second Generation But it is no where read that he hath chastised the Sin of the Grand-father on all his Posterity afterwards who had acted evilly for five thousand Years before For that pain of Punishment exceedeth the love of God towards Man whom he so greatly blessed presently after Sin It exceeds I say the Rules of Justice if the Punishment of him that is guiltless in that Sin be refered unto his Ballance And moreover I think that if God out of his goodness had not admonished our first Parent of Death If he should eat of the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil But if the Devil from his proper and inbred Enmity had translated the Apple from that Tree under any other Tree and that both the Sexes of Men had eaten of the Apple that the Concupiscence of the Flesh and Copulation had equally succeeded and so although that had happened without any Sin yet that the Generation following from thence from the necessity and property of the Apple being eaten had suspended the intent of the Creator who would not that the Sons of God and Posterity of Eve should be conceived from the holy Spirit after her Virginity was corrupted And so Death a Disease and the very Corruption of Nature and Beast-like original Inversion thereof had been and yet not from Sin Because the Apple contained a natural efficient Cause of Luxury For how unaptly do these agree together Death proceedeth from the Sin of an infringed or broken Law and so from a supernatural Curse And those Words of the Text uttered after the eating of the Apple and before the banishment out of Paradise Least he stretch forth his Hand unto the Tree of Life do eat of it and live for ever For against the Curse of God no Creature is able to resist From hence therefore it becomes evident that the Apple contained the natural Cause of a defiled Generation and of their own Death and that the Tree of Life did likewise contain naturally a conserving
proper unto no nourishment which was unto that Apple so that it not only begat Seed in our first Parents a few hours after but also Dispositions to obtain by request a sensitive Soul from the Creator And that which otherwise happens in the Young in set Terms of Dayes and is perfected by certain degrees of Digestions that was presently compleated in the very vital Archeus of our first Parents And the Text doth insinuate that peculiar thing to be in the Apple because In the same day wherein he should eate of the Apple he should die the Death Because the Apple although it should anticipate or forestal the term of Dayes yet it should require a certaine term of Motion that after it should be turned into vital Blood it should also be endowed with a sensitive Soul For they who in the very point of Creation were formed into a Man and a Woman and not into Children in a short space also grew old or decayed on the same day into the maturity of Seeds and every necessity of Death and properties of second Causes For in a straight way all this falls perpendicularly or point blank on the post of the foundation of my Position on which the giddy or unconstant businesse of our Mortality is whirled about even unto this Day But at least-wise seeing Eve was made of the Rib of the Man that very thing doth insinuate a mark of Chastity and forbidden Copulation of the Flesh Because it is that which besides Whoredom contained Incest which thing was not hid from Adam Of which notwithstanding the Almighty after the fall of sin seemed to dispense withal granting Matrimony Therefore through occasion hereof it remaines diligently to search into whether the Act of Lust were compleated in Paradise Many will have Paradise to be free from filthiness because the Text saith Chap. 4. But Adam knew Eve his Wife who conceived and brought forth Cain saying I have possessed a Man by God But let these men pardon me For the contrary appeareth from the very Text. First of all The Text cited doth convince of nothing but that the ravishment of true Virginity because it is bloody doth not admit of Conception as a Companion And therefore Cain was not Conceived at the first turn but out of Paradise For otherwise 1. On the same day ye shall dye the death according to the truth of the Position denoteth that in the same place the filthiness was committed 2. The Woman is not called the Wife of Adam before the Fall as she is immediately after But the name of a Wife is not given not indeed unto Matrimony confirmed but onely unto it being finished 3. It was said onely to the Man Thou mayest not eat of this Tree Therefore it is read concerning the banishment of the Man to be made in the singular number Not indeed but that both Sexes sinned but because the Man had singularly deserved to be banished for his Whoredom 4. Therefore it is said Lest he stretch forth his hand unto the Tree of Life do eat of it and live for ever But it is not said least the Husband and Wife do eat 5. Adam at the first sight of the Beasts knew their Essences and Properties and also put right Names upon them But the Woman being seen he at first called her Wo-man because she was taken from Man But after the Fall he called her Hevah or The Mother of all living Because he at the first sight of her as yet knew not neither as yet had she that property from the Man and she learned it because she put it not on and stirred it not up but by sin For why had he changed the Essential Name of the Woman if she had not also changed her whole Nature 6. And next He with-drew her unto the Shrubs rather to commit his filthiness than for a cover of his shame For truly he might have covered his shame with Fig-leaves and have neglected his hiding through the Shrubs if he had not also had the signes of chastity corrupted 7. For truly if my Position be true That Death was caused onely through the Luxury of the Flesh His banishment followed not but after the act of filthiness 8. For he who but presently before knew not that he was naked After what manner did he presently know his Wife to be the Mother of all living unless he had committed something And Lastly The Text which saith unto the Serpent I will put enmities between the Seed of the Woman and thy Seed doth clearly denote that the Woman that before wanted Seed and altogether all the tickling thereof had now Seed However it is at least-wise I cannot but remarkeably admire the excellency of the Text which hath no where made even any deaf mention of the Concupiscence of the flesh but it every where covers the fowlness of the Flesh with the greatest silence by the obtained knowledge of the shame and involves an induced necessity of Death and a necessary requirance of Regeneration in the highest Mystery Determining that at length the fullness of dayes being compleated evil shall be spread out of the North over all the Inhabitants of the Earth The which I will by and by manifest Finally Nature being now degenerate it hath pleased the Almighty to raise up the Fall of Adam by Regeneration or a being born again And although he hath not restored unto us the antient clearness of Understanding and exquisite speculative knowledge of the Mind yet hath he raised up our dignity far higher For truly the Understanding being reduced by Grace into the obedience of Faith proceedeth in a humble resignation unto the victorious reward of Love whereby we are supported and constrained And the least abiding of that Love is far more glorious than the whole unoccupied life of Adam in Paradise For before the Fall Faith was unknown the race of Virtues especially also the superexcellency of Divine Love and they lived onely in the happiness of the purity of Innocency And therefore God by the permission of his fore-knowledge and ordination hath bound the unequality of blessednesse issuing or springing up from the new Birth with a certain excellency of Riches Because the Tribulations of his Life are not worthy to be compared unto the great or vast things which the goodness of God hath prepared for us that are renewed For I had rather know those things which God hath revealed by his onely begotten Son the Saviour of the World than to have known the faculties of Living Creatures and Herbs with a clear Understanding It being abundantly sufficient for me to have an Humanity in God whereby he hath adopted us for the Sons of God and made us far more like himself than Adam was in his greatest felicity CHAP. XCIII The Position is Demonstrated 1. A first Prooof of the Position 2. A second 3. The Divine manner of generating cannot be conceived by man 4. A conjecture from a like thing 5. A Repetition of Demonstrations 6.
to be sensitive doth not shew the unseperable Essence of an Animal And seeing otherwise the definition of every thing is from the Essence of the thing as they will have it but man according to his Essence was made in a full possession of Immortality and henceforth of an Eternal Duration according to his Soul the Schools could not believe that man by reason of a sensitive Soul alone was essentially an Animal Especially while they believed his Essence to depend on an Eternal Duration and an uncorruptible Soul or Form All which absurdities I acknowledge to have crept into and to have remained in the Schools by reason of the truth of our Position being unknown Even hitherto I have established the Position out of the holy Scriptures Now again the same by the Authorities of Fathers which matter B. Augustine hath seemed to have understood before others saying After what manner had it shamed Man of the Transgression of a Law when as his very Members had not known shame As if he should say His Members were stirred up unto the Concupiscence of the Flesh and acts of his Privie Parts presently after the Eating of the Apple Their Eyes were opened but for this they were not opened that they might know what might be performed by them through the cloathing of Grace when as their Members knew not how to resist their will And dost thou not blush at that Disease or that thou although shamefac'd dost confess that that Lust entred into Paradise And to impute it unto Husbands and Wives before Sin He who was to be without Sin would be born without the Concupiscence of the Flesh not in that Flesh of Sin but in the likeness of sinful Flesh As if he should say whatsoever is born from Copulation although it had been born in Paradise and before Sin would have been and is the Flesh of Sin Seeing that alone which is not born of Copulation is not the Flesh of Sin Whatsoever off-spring is born from Concupiscence or of the Flesh of Sin is obliged unto Orignal Sin unless it be born again in him whom the Virgin conceived without Concupiscence The Flesh of Christ drew a mortality from the mortality of his Mothers Body because she found not the Concupiscence of a Copulatresse For indeed as Original Sin is not derived on the Posterity any other way than by the Concupiscence of the Flesh So it must needs be that in the Apple was included the Concupiscence from whence the humane stock degenerated and was vitiated in generating For truly if off-springs could have been generated any otherwise than by carnal Copulation the Matrimonial act had been unlawful Whereunto this every-way convincing Argument serveth That act before the Apple was eaten was either unlawful and not thought of or it was lawful If it were unlawful now our Position is proved But if lawful therefore whatsoever I have above described out of Augustine is false Seeing therefore they had now actually felt the effect of the eaten Apple or the Concupiscence of the Flesh in their Members in Paradise presently it shamed them because their Members which before they could rule at their pleasure were afterwards moved by a proper incentive of lust At length how greatly Virginity hath alwayes pleased the Bridegroom of the Soul doth clearly enough appear out of divers Histories of the Saints And indeed in Cana of Galilee the Bridegroom having left his Bride followed the Lord Jesus and it is that Disciple whom Jesus therefore so greatly loved The same thing was familiar unto Alexius Aegidius and to very many others especially with poor Women-Virgins For indeed the infinite goodness from the proper motion of its good pleasure from Eternity created Man and fore-loved him with so great a love that he determined to co-knit his own Divinity unto him and to enlighten him with the Light which enlightneth every man that cometh into this World and to Adopt him for the Son of God giving him Power to become the Son of God by the new Birth which new Birth before Sin was not necessary Seeing therefore he requireth People to be re-born of God therefore before Sin they were all born of God which thing Lucifer with his own Spirits seeing through a long-since Pride of his Beauty and since his fall being wholly become Envious supposed that he was wiser than God who had raised up a vile creature unto that height wherefore he aspired to exceed God whom he had not yet seen and to throw him down from his Seat of Majesty Presently afterwards he after that he had paid the punishment of his Sins being more cruelly wroth saw also that Eve being a Virgin was by the onely Goodness of God without all desert and freely now appointed for the aforesaid Instrument of that Adoption and Mother of Men Therefore he endeavoured to hinder the Love of God through the Eating of the Apple Because as seeing that the Lasciviousness and Concupisence of the Flesh implanted in the same was Diametrically opposite unto Gods intention Therefore the Eating of the Apple was not forbidden unto man by a Law but by a fatherly Admonition neither is Original Sin from the Transgressions of a Law from the Eating of the Apple as being forbidden food but by Reason of the effect arising from the Apple and the properties inserted in the Apple After another manner the Transgression or Eating did offend onely in a Voluntary Act but not for Posterity unless Naturally and by the second Causes of a brutal Copulation following from thence otherwise in our first Parents impossible it had inverted the intention of Divine Generation Yea Original Sin fell not so properly on the guiltless Posterity as the effect of Generation the which indeed hath brought forth an Adulterous Beast-like Devilish Generation and plainly uncapable of the Kingdom of God and of Union with and Enjoyment of God By Reason of the Similitude whereof those that were born in Adultery were excluded from the Participation of Heaven But let us feign the opposite thing to wit that our Parents were conscious that there was a Law declared by God the Creator of the Universe touching the forbidden Apple and that upon such an account Death was foretold unto him and all his Posterity and undoubtedly came unto them but at least-wise an irregular Sin being so bold and so ungodly and cruel a Wickedness on all their Posterity could not be forgiven without a great note of Contrition Neither had God how Merciful and Good soever straightway so suddenly made that man fruitful with so great a Blessing and substituted the other living Creatures under his Feet he not being ignorant that neither of them did Grieve Repent Pray but only it shamed them and that they endeavoured as Fools to hide themselves from God and to cover their privy Parts with Leaves Therefore I collect from thence that on the same day not only Mortality entred through Concupiscence But moreover that it presently
Materia Prima or the First Matter Privation Fortune Chance an Infinite and a Vacuum doth as yet with a scanty or fasting mouth consume the Spring of Young Men. What think you I pray if any Phlegmatick thing should of necessity and by it self give a Material being to the Stone and an actual and excessive heat should Coct that matter into a Stone verily we must think that is done because the heat did dry the Phlegm into a Stone But that thing in man is impossible who doth every where and alwayes yea as yet somewhat more in the Reins and Bladder exclude so great a drying by his actual moisture And so much the stronger because in the sudden passage of the Urine thorow the Kidneys it cannot at an instant dry up any Muckiness which is mixt throughout Urine into a Stone and the which Muckiness the succeeding Urine doth not moreover vindicate from Dryth Truly it should grieve us or be tiresome unto us to stay any longer in these things unless we also had been deluded by these Dreams I will therefore re-assume Let us therefore try whether any muckie snivel being dryed by heat doth depart into a hard Stone or indeed into a Tophus or soft Sandy Stone For from the snivel of the Nostrils to wit the most tough of all being dryed a Brickle Tophus but not a hard Stone is at any time yielded Besides the Example lately given concerning a very clear Urine which is wholly freed from a visible sliminess and yet affixing a Stone in manner of little Grains unto the Spondils or turning Joynts forbiddeth to acknowledge such a Material Cause also the single Progeny of Tartars and likewise the like Progeny of Stones in the Macrocosme withstands the same But if indeed we say that heat doth not dry up the muckie snivel while it begetteth the Stone but that it constraineth or Coagulateth it by a property not indeed of drying but of heating or through a Concoction thereof to wit by the command whereof alone the matter being restrained and excited by heat puts on the power of a curd which is internal unto it But that is to have said something on our behalf and is Voluntarily granted us To wit to acknowledge a property subscribed unto Coagulation in the matter whether that matter in the mean time shall be slimy or cleer and transparent Because else Gems should exclaim that they have stood in need of the sliminess of matter whereby they may assume so great strength and lustre yet neither therefore shalt thou avoid the Rocks Because neither therefore hath any actual heat Coagulated a Stone in the Urinal but far after the Urine had lost its luke-warmth In the next place seeing that hateful sense of heat is wanting in the Stone of the Bladder when as notwithstanding that Stone is for the most part harder than that in the Kidneys it by all means follows that the necessary efficient Cause of the Stone is not heat or else that the more powerful heat should preside for framing of the Stone in the Bladder Therefore the Studies of the more Modern Physitians do Decree that heat in the Reins is not the Parent of the Stones but a Symptome but an effect following upon the placing of the hateful guest the Stone in the Bowel For as a thorn heing thrust into the Finger is neither hot nor hardened by heat nor by reason of heat thrust into the Flesh yet heat follows the hurt as a companion So also we must seriously take notice that heat doth happen upon the hurting of the Bowel made by the Stone existing in it and being continually cherished thereby For where Pain is there according to Hyppocrates is a Disease and heat doth also flow thither as a certain latter thingor effect But that which happens in the hurt substance of the Kidneys is not therefore made in like manner in the Bladder which hath it self in manner of a receptable and sink of the Urine which onely slideth by the Kidney without delay But if as well the Reins as Bladder do when the Stone is present both of them according to their own disposition avoid a certain snivelly matter cease thou to wonder that the part being as it were besieged by an Enemy and suppressed in its Vegetative faculty doth continually loose something of its nourishment and like an eye that is beset with dust its Enemy as it were weep forth its alimentary humour For all particular parts in us do well perceive what things are so agreeable and what are extream hateful and execrable and indeed they do every where express no obscure tokens of that perceivance For otherwise the Stone of the Bladder being cut out a continual issuing forth of muckie snivel should not yet cease to wit if that muck should have the Reason of a Cause and not of an Effect of the Stones But as to what belongs to the Cure thereof we must diligently mark that it ought hitherto to be un-compleated by those unto whom the true Causes of the Stone have not been made known to wit if in a removal of the Causes and not otherwise a diseasie Disposition ought to depart Indeed I admit first of all that the Bowels lying upon the Urin-Vessels being unburdened by Clysters will afford by all means a more easie Passage for the Stone to go forth Fomentations also likewise Anointings and Baths I promise to profit very much because our Body as it is one only thing in an agreement of all Parts So according to Hippocrates it is wholly as well within as without conspirable and exspirable Likewise within and without above and beneath day and night Fire and Water have made three Circuits in us and so that they wander hither and thither and that by course For in very deed the more external Aids are not perpendicular but oblique or crooked Ones only In the next place seeing nothing immediately reacheth the Stone but what doth Urin-wise lick the Kidney therefore it is certain that Moistening Slymie and muscilaginous Medicines to wit the Mallow Marsh-mallow Fleawort c. have put off those kinde of corporeal Qualities in the former Shops of Digestions as being plainly unlike to Urinary Qualities In the mean time we grant that they so far succour those that have the Stone as by their more sweet Juice they do asswage and temperate the Sharpness of the Urin or as the Muckinesses of their former Life being driven away they do keep within in the Root something of an abstersive or dissolutive Matter which one only Matter we admit of as being opening which may be of use Even as in the Juice of Lemmons Quinces Cicers Pellitory c. But surely on both sides these are nought but even a feeble and sluggish Power for so great an Enemy At length neither do we sufficiently comprehend the things promised How Oyl of Almonds may be able to enlarge or extend the Urin-pipes whereof scarce one small Drop and that not but through an
Meats Yea which is more The Blood which is avoided in or presently after delivery is not Menstruous through the defect of its condition because it is not superfluous from a fore-going course of the Moon And then also because it is not heaped up fleshy not aluminous or tart not staining linnen Cloathes nor separated from the whole nor banished unto the places of the Womb for expulsion For that bloud which is plentifully voided in time and after delivery and the which being retained a doating Fever doth soon after threaten death is indeed venal blood yet not the Menstrues of the Mother For it is left by the Young who seeing from his quickening he lived in his own Orbe had a kitchin out of himself in the Vessels of the Womb. Wherefore it hath taken to it self another property than that of the Mother and than that of the Menstrues For that guest hath indeed the shape of Menstruous Blood Yet being an adoptive of another Family and become a forreigner to the Mother it is seriously to be expelled surely no otherwise than as the Secundines themselves But being omitted and left behind it is corrupted and brings on death But seeing that in a Woman great with Child there is no Menstrues at all by consequence neither is that Young nourished but with the pure arterial blood of the Mother and afterwards with pure venal blood being also first refined in its kitchins Therefore the Schools are deceived who teach That the small Pox or Measels are due almost to every mortal man by reason of the tribute of Menstruous nourishment For they observed that there was seldom any smitten twice with that Disease and perhaps seldom excused from it Wherefore they searching into the common Cause from whence the Young should be nourished in the beginning have referred the Effect on the Menstrues But in all things they without the knowledge of things have mutually subscribed to each other and have slidden into Fables and Conjectures For first of all they have not considered that it is almost impossible for any one to be made free from that Disease if all are alike indifferently nourished with Menstrues And then because they should be afflicted as it were at one certain and appointed term of the Crisis I confess indeed that the Measels do spring from a Poyson and draw a Poyson with them infect the blood with their ferment and defile others that stand by but especially Children and that the internal essence of Poysons is not demonstrable by a former Cause and therefore we measure the Property of a Poyson by the Effects even as a Tree by his Fruits 1. Therefore The Poyson of the Measels is proper onely to humane kind 2. That Nature is prone to the framing of that Poyson 3. But that it is kindled about the Stomack and so in the Center of the Body 4. That the parts being once besieged with this Poyson do most swiftly repulse that Poyson from themselves towards the superficies of the Body 5. That the shops of that Poyson after that they have once felt the tyranny thereof being afterwards thorowly instructed with a hostile averseness and horror do with great fore-caution prevent or hinder the generation thereof even from the very beginning least they should even at first unwarily fall thereinto Therefore the Poyson is made in Man but not co-bred in him from the Menstrues But of what quality that Poyson may be cannot be described by name because it hath not a proper name out of its effects It is sufficient in this place that the Menstrues cannot be drawn into a Cause for the Distempers aforesaid At first therefore The Menstrues offends in its matter by reason of its abounding alone And then it undergoes a degree that the first may be wherein that blood is superfluous from the foregoing course of the Moon But a Second degree is as soon as it is separated from the rest of blood But a Third degree is while as designed it hath resided about the Vessels of the Womb. A Fourth is that which hath stuck some good while in the same place and hath entered into the way of death At length the last degree is while as it now hath slidden forth as a dead Carcass and into the Air. Therefore the Schooles offend while as by cutting of a Vein they are busied in succouring of Virgins who in respect of their Menstrues do feel an heart-beating or trembling without distinction For although the Menstrues of the first degree appeaseth heart-beatings or pantings by a revulsive blood-letting yet in the third degree of the Menstrues I have fore-told it to our chief Physitians to be a destructive Remedy Because that the Veines of the Arme or Hams being emptied I have observed the Menstrues to be drawn backwards from the neighbouring places into the Veins And truly those Veins which do not remain emptied but which are filled again by a communion of continuation So also after great heart-beatings and pauses of intermitted pulses or after most sharp paines of the sides following from the Womb to wit by reason of an aluminous Poyson of the third degree Virgins have suddenly died by reason of Phlebotomy by me instituted at unawares In the first degree indeed the abundance of venal blood is taken away But it is the less evil although a part of the barren blood be left surviving Truly I had rather to help Nature in her sequestration and expulsion than by drawing of undistinct blood to have weakened Nature Moreover that is to be noted That although I have distinguished Diseases by the Ranks of Digestions yet I have scarce made mention of the Menstrues Because the Menstrues is neither digested nor is it a superfluity of Digestion and so is of another condition For at first it offends with a good abundance and then with a burdensom superfluity presently after it is deprived of Life and becomes a Poyson yet it cures Swine which are inclining into the Leprosie even as Horses straightway which were contracted or convulsive from unseasonable Drink if they drink up but a small quantity of Menstrues And likewise the poysonsom and true Menstrues of another Woman being administred in a few drops hath presently strangled a Woman labouring with a Flux of the Womb. But the blood which is at length avoided in plenty in Fluxes of the Womb being drunk in a few drops stayeth those Fluxes Furthermore because Woman only the Ape perhaps excepted doth suffer Menstrues and although the Menstrues do accuse of an abundance alone yet that the Cow her Dug being dried suffers not Menstrues otherwise she flowes down with very much Milk denoting that the abounding of venal blood is indeed the material Cause but not therefore the final and the which therefore I have not reduced among natural Causes For that the Almighty alone encloseth all the final Causes of all things within himself who sweetly disposeth of all things according to the unsearchable Abysse of his own Judgements
which they have not For truly the same effects in Specie cannot proceed from things which differ in the whole Genus or general Kind unless by accident or an equivocal Action So indeed the sensitive Spirit by reason of Grief or the Archeus by Poyson doth by accident become fiery besides his own Nature through a proper wrothfulness of Anger For he hath a Blas whereby he departing from a vital Light declineth unto the other extream of Destruction wherein the Beams of his Light do as it were strike Fire out of a Flint from the corruptible Matter where both Lights of the Archeus and corruptible Matter do pierce each other are united and are promoted into a fiery Light because Fire is on both sides the Death of a Thing which from a proper effect of deficiency is capable to be stirred up in things consisting of a certain inflamable Fatness For indeed although there be one only Spirit in the Seed which is plainly uniform and the singular Architect of the Embryo which is durable unto the end of the Tragedy yet that was the vice and destruction of a material Nature that the Spirit being divided through a plurality of Offices may by degrees decline unto the manifold diversities of kindes of Singularities And it is in very deed a Vice as it strews the way unto disorder For otherwise seeing the Spirit ought to serve the necessities of Ends surely it were a noble thing for it to be severed into a number of Offices For necessity hath made the Organs themselves servile unto it the which therefore hath framed for it many and diverse Organs and in this respect it hath drawn it self unto the same Law of necessity To wit it having imitated a monarchical State wherein there is a certain Independent Prince the moderatour of Laws and Government wherefore also it fashioning a certain Sunny issuing Life on the Heart but as it were Independent on any other part hath there placed the Fountain of Radical Life But because a Common-wealth cannot long subsist unless it be nourished therefore after Kings Husband-men and Fisher-men are chief who bring forth unto us Grain Herbs Flocks Fishes Woolls Flaxes Wines Woods Honeys Oyls and Hides Because also before Kings were thought of happy Shepherds and Husband-men had now their Flocks For for that Cause Saturn is feigned to be the Parent of the Starry Gods unto whom the Heathens have delivered a necessity of Nourishment in us as a clear Life of vegetation by a commutative or exchanging Ferment sliding from the Spleen Next they vote for Husband-men who should prepare Grain for making of Bread Woolls also Flax and Hides for Garments Straightway Jupiter being substituted in his Fathers place succeeded by craft and force and therefore also another disposer of Nourishment founding its Mansion in the Liver is adjoyned unto the nourishing Life and doth of necessity suitably answer from its place for a Monarchy In the next place Mars removing the disagreeing Reliques in the former Digestions being as a supply placed in the Gaul is agreeable with the Souldier There hath seemed to be a need only of these three and those sufficient to wit of Sol Saturn and Jupiter as long as all things or parts should agree in Harmony But the life of Mars was afterwards subjoyned not indeed that it might be a Common-wealth and State simply but that all parts may keep Peace and their mutual Offices among each other nor a rout of Impurities growing up that Unity may be ordained Furthermore to increase follows to be present For a thing first is before it grow or increase Yea seeing it cannot be a nourished thing unless it be nourished to be nourished goes before increasing For the Moon being the last of the wandring Stars in respect of things nourished is nearest to the Earth Therefore the immediate and unexcusable necessity thereof hath dedicated this family-administration to the Brain as being sacred to the Judge in the Monarchy For we live from the Heart but Nourishment is from the Spleen and Liver the correction of Digestion from the Gaul but the growing Faculty is from the Brain Therefore to be quickned or refreshed and to increase do differ in their Beginnings like as also in their Organs And that indeed not by accident or by reason of a stubbornness of the Parts hereafter refusing to increase but by reason of each particular natural Endowments of the Bowels For Indeed what I have said is beheld even in the birth of the Embryo For truly because the increasing or growing Faculty flows from the Brain which thing none hath hitherto supposed the head of the Embryo and of the Young it self is far bigger in Proportion than the rest of the Members For if the hand be dislocated or put out of joynt it not only ceaseth to increase but moreover it decreaseth even in Persons of ripe Age. Crump-backed Persons also do stop from growing although their turning Joynts being by degrees writhen awry do burgen or tumifie only outwards or toward the Side Not indeed that Feeling is withdrawn from or diminished in Crump-backed-folks who have no less feeling than any others Wherefore the defect of Growth dependeth not on any Dislocation of the Sinews Veins or Arteries but from the beholding of a Crookedness alone in the Marrow the very right influx of the Brain is a little incarnated Neither is that humoural Flux to wit through the Veins and Arteries for truly in the wreathen Branches of Trees even as also in crooked Legs a defect of growth is not seen but it is a Flux of the Light of the Brain even as concerning the Action of Government elsewhere Flesh growes in an hollow Ulcer and Marrows increase after the manner of the Menstrues although the other parts do cease from growing The Ribs also increase in persons of ripe years together with an enlargment of the Breast the Pores do overgrow in Fractures the Liver through a Disease grows up after a wonderful manner Teeth do oftentimes grow in Old-men And all that because the growing Faculty obeys the Brain Astrologers attribute the growing Faculty to the Moon yet none to the Brain The Bones of Old living Creatures as I have said by a singular Secret contain more Marrow than those of younger Ones Because the Moon makes into the first matter for Transmutation Rest Death and Reducement Therefore the Moon being very powerful in old Animals hinders not the Marrow from increasing Furthermore seeing every thing in Being desires to grow or increase and doth even from the Beginning meditate of the Propagation of it self and seeing Nature is of no other thing more solicitous than of the Sex so that she hath marked Insects which she stirs up from corrupt Excrements with the difference of the Sexes there was also need of Venus or carnal Lust to which end the Schools think the Reins to serve But I disagree because I have observed those that were Stony in both Kidneys to have been more wanton
but it puts it not on but by the Will except in Women with Child Whether therefore we call Sin a nothing or a something at least-wise there is never made a Consent to Evil without a real Procreation of this certain kind of Entity and the assuming and putting on thereof This hath been the Cause of the Fruitfulness of Seeds for the Phantasie or Imagination being much moved by Lust produceth a slender Entity the which if the Soul puts on through the Will as the action of the Mind being imprisoned in the Body doth alwayes tend downwards and outwards it disperseth this same Entity into the Liquor of the Seed which otherwise would not be but barren Which Action is made as it were by an estranging of the Mind to wit the Will through the true Magick of the more outward Man departing into a certain Ecstasie in which there is made a communicating of a certain Light of the Mind upon the Entity descending into the Body of the Seed As oft soever therefore as the Cogitation or Thought drawes the Sense and Will into a consent so often a filthy Skin is bred and put on being a bastardly Ideal Entity by which birth the Will is said to be confirmed Also that Ideal Entity whithersoever it is directed by the Will thither it goes by this meanes the Will moves sometimes the Arm sometimes the Foot c. Furthermore when the said Entity is spread upon the vital Spirit for to love help or hurt any thing it wants only a light Excitement whether made from the asistance of God of the Cabalistick Art or of Satan that indeed the small Portion of the Spirit which hath now put on that Entity departs far off and perform its Office enjoyned it by the Will So the Male layes aside his Seed out of himself which through the Entity which it hath drawn is very fruitful and performes its Office without the Trunck of its own Body Truly Bodies scarce make up a moyity or halfe part of the World But Spirits even by themselves have or possess their moyity and indeed the whole World Therefore in this whole Context or Composure of our Discourse I call Spirits the Patrons of Magnetism not those which are sent down from Heaven and much less is our Speech of infernal ones but of those which are made in Man himself for as Fire is struck out of a Flint so from the Will of Man some small Portion of the inflowing vital Spirit is extracted and that very thing or portion assumes an Ideal Entity as it were its Form and Compleating Which Perfection being obtained the Spirit which before was purer than the Aetheâ—eal Air is subâ—ilized or rarified like Light and assumes a middle Condition between Bodies and not Bodies But it is sent thither whither the Will directs it or at least whither the inbred infallible Knowledge of the Spirits sends the same according to the scopes of things to be done The Ideal Entity therefore being now readily prepared for its journey becomes after some sort a Light and as if it were no longer a Body is tied up to no commands of Places Times or Dimensions neither is that Entity a Devil nor any Effect thereof nor any Conspiracy of his but it is a certain spiritual Action thereof plainly natural and proper unto us He who well receiveth this Wisdom shall easily understand that the Material World is on all sides governed and restrained by the Immaterial and Invisible But that all other created Corporeal Beings are put under the Feet of Men for indeed this is the Cause why also the Mummy Fat Mosse and Blood of Man to wit the Phantasie existing in them in the Unguent overswayes the Blood of a Dog of a Horse c. being conveighed by a Stick into the Box of the Unguent There hath not been yet said enough concerning the Magnetism of the Unguent I will therefore resume what I spake of before namely that the Magnetisms of the Load-stone and of inanimate things are made by a natural Sensation or Feeling which is the Author of all Sympathy is a certain Truth For if the Load-stone directs it self to the Pole it ought of necessity to have known the fame if it be not to commit an Errour in its Direction And how I pray shall it have that Knowledge if it be not sensible where it is Likewise if it self to Iron placed aloof off the Pole being neglected it must needs have first been sensible of the Iron Therefore one single Load-stone hath diverse Senses and Images Neither also-shall it be sufficient that it hath Sense unless we add the Spurs of Friendship and Self-love and so that it is endowed with a certain natural Phantasie and by reason of the Impression whereof all Magnetisms are forged For it is directed by another manner of Phantasie toward the Iron than toward the Polo â—or then its Virtue is dispersed only through a neighbouring Space It s Phantasie is changed when it restraines the abortive Young Catarrhs or Rheumes or the Bowel in a Rupture Also by another Phantasie doth the Load-stone draw any thing out of Glasse throughly boyled or melted by Fire for a very small Fragmen thereof being cast into a Mass or good quantity of Glaâ—s while it is in boyling of Green or Yellow makes it White For although the Load-stone it self be filled with a red Colour and be consumed by the Fire that dissolves the Glass Yet in the mean timâ— while it hath Life it aâ—â—racteth and consumeth the tinged Liquor out of the Fiery Glass and so its attraction is not only to Iron but moreover unto that aiery Part which would with difficulty depart out of the Glass and for this Cause it is of common use with Glass-makeâ—s The Phantasie of Amber drawes Chaffs and Moates by an attraction indeed slow enough but yet with a sufficient perfect Signature of attraction for it being married to our Mummy is also stronger than our attractive Faculty drawes in opposition thereunto and becomes a Zenexton or preservatory Amulâ—t against pestilential Contagions But Amber being mixed with Gumms its imagination being now transplanted draws the Poyson and Bullet out of a Wound indeed its pleasure and desire of drawing being on both sides varied But what Wonder shall it be unless with those who being ignorant of all things do also admire all things that inanimate things are strong in Phantasie When as he who is wholly the Life creates all things and hath therefore promised that nothing is to be expected as dead out of his Hand Also no one thing at all shall come to our view wherein himself also may not clarely appear as present The Spirit of the Lord hath filled the whole Globe of the Earth Yea this Expression That he containeth or comprehendeth all things carries the force of the World Do we not believe that there was much Knowledge in the Apple and that through the eating thereof our first Parents both are it up and together
Wherefore frem thence it is sufficiently manifest that not every odour is for the transchanging of a thing but that onely whereunto a Ferment cometh from whence the odour becomes wholly great with Child of the seed Bodies therefore are stonified indeed naturally by their own seed but plainly after a monstrous manner they being supposed to be strangers in kind because they are stonified by a forreign seed of the place Standing pooles of water do thus incrust shell fishes which co-toueh with the bottome by reason of the putrified hoary odour of the bottome Insects swimming on the water not so Therefore waters that swiftly run do for the most part want such little Beasts Crabs also are not found but in stony places because other places are destitute of the Ferment of a rocky stone About the Year 1320 between Russia and Tartaria in the Altitude of 64 degrees not far from the Fen of Kitaya a Hoorde or Village of the Baschirdians is read to have been transchanged wholly into rocky stones together with all its Herd of Cattel Waggons and Furniture or Armory And Men Camels Horses Flocks and all the concomitant kind of Waggons and Armory provisions being grown together even at this day are with a horrid Spectacle said to stand as yet stonified under the open Element But if a miracle be absent from thence surely that whole Country is nothing but a continued Rock passable or holie with chinks the which the Wind being silent for many dayes and the Ayr from above pressed down a strong stony putrified hoary odour such a killing odour as is beheld to be in some Burrowes or Mines of the Earth might have breathed forth and killed its walking Inhabitants in one night which at length by reason of the cold of the place restraining putrefaction transchanged those Creatures which but lately before it had killed into a rocky stone No otherwise than as those of Bargamo in the Vanlts and the Glove in the Fountain And therefore the drink of such Springs is exceeding unwholsome Because it disposeth the Archeus into a stony disposition molests with gripings or wringings of the Bowels shortens the Life and therefore kills the Midriffs before that in drinking they are transchanged into a stone In the red Monastery of Zonia nigh Bruxels and in the Vestry of the Temple some Springs breath forth which apply or fastens stones to the Wall contrary to the Proverbe A drop by often falling hollowes stones For the stones that are grown to the Wall do oftentimes shake off by a Crook and Hatchet But the Monks complain that they suffer frettings or wringings in their Bowels unless they daily use Daucus or wild Carrot-seed boyled in their Ales. As the Odour of wild Carrot tames and represseth a stony odour Therefore let young Beginners learn that the rocky stone hath its seeds no lesse than other things in its middle life under the Cloak of a Fermental odour but not in a Tartarous coagulation of the matter CHAP. II. The Causes of Duelech or the stone in man according to the Antients 1. The rashnesse of the Schooles 2. The supposed matter of Duelech and the effects of the same 3. Those causes of the Antients are rejected 4. Thinking hath deceived the Schooles whereby they supposed the effect to be the cause it self 5. The progresse of humane nature is every where alike 6. The errour of the Schooles in the causes of Duelech is proved 7. Some Rashnesses disclemencies and sluggishnesses of the Schooles 8. A faulty Argument of the Schooles in the efficient cause of Duelech it self 9. Arguments drawn from sense 10. That Duelech is made of the Vrin it self but not of the contents thereof distinguished in opposition to the Vrine 11. Consequences upon the ignorance of causes 12. the wearisomenesse or grief of the Author 13. An handicraft operation of the Author rejecting the causes of the Schooles assigned to Duelech 14. A Maxime opposite to the Schooles 15. The vanity of Tartar in the Stone 16. Pray ye and it shall be given unto you THe hoard of Tartars being already long since cast out and re-cleansed elsewhere which through the Captain Paracelsus had invaded Diseases I must now in this place wage War with the Precepts of Galen in the causes of Duelech or the stone in Man For indeed the Schooles having forgotten a quaternary or fourfold number of natural Causes have made mention of two causes onely for the Generation of Duelech And so that likewise they agree with me in the name and number of Causes onely but not in the thing it self For truly they teach that the matter and efficient are the parents of the stone And so their own conscience urging them they deny its Form and End or Causes or do either insufficiently treat of the stone or at length exclude Duelech out of the Race of natural things Yea seeing they will have every efficient cause to be external they leave it to be concluded by their young Beginners that Duelech is naturally constituted and doth depend onely from an external efficient Cause The Schooles therefore call the matter of the stone a certain Muscilage which they call a slimy or snivelly phlegme but they will have the efficient cause of the stone to be Heat as well that external Heat of the Bed c. as that of the Bowels it self being badly affected Wherein at the very entrance they forsake their own Patron who denies the efficient cause in natural things to be internal Duelech therefore shall be caused onely by heat I am of a contrary judgement I have shewed by handicraft Operation that no muscilage as such ever is hath been or can be the matter ex qua or whereof of the Stone But if the muckinesse it self be sometimes laid hold of by the true matter of the stone and be shut up under the same it stonifies indeed from the seed of Duelech together otherwise with the proper matter of Duelech but not by reason of its being a muscilage or as it is tough and slimy For first of all the undistinct observance of the Schooles their experience hath deceived them For they beheld the snivelly urine of those who now carried a stone in their Bladder and they presently thereupon suspending a further diligent search cryed out Victory and bare in hand that they had found the immediate and containing cause of the Stone Truly first the Schooles are miserable but much more miserable are the infirm or sick For if they had once looked behind them they had easily seen that the stone being rightly cut out that and before accustomed balast of muckinesse or snivel doth also presently cease in the urine of that infirm person For from hence the Schooles might have been able certainly to know that if that muckinesse which is voided before while the Stone was present were any kind of cause and matter of the same that should surely be made either from the Bladder it self or from the stone or should
the Salt-peter So the odour of the salt of urine and its volatile spirit presently changes the earthly spirit in the urine that was stirred up by a certain kind of putrefaction into the stone And therefore the urine is not corned or grainified presently after making water but after it hath assumed the beginnings of putrefaction Hitherto tends that question Why children and old men are more stony than themselves being men of a ripe or middle age Is it because they are hotter What if the Schooles do in this place without blushing accuse the coldnesse of Children and old men as having forgotten shame because according to their will the affect of the stone doth coagulate or grow together through heat alone what shall it help to have invoked a more plentifull quantity of phlegme if heat the one onely efficient cause be wanting If I say phlegme which as such doth stonifie be wanting in Nature Neither can they devise the same Temperature or Complexion to be in Children and old Men without the disgrace and confusion of their own received Opinions As neither shall they find a likenesse in the urine of them both For the urines of those of an unripe age are grosser but those of old people watery and washy the urines also of such as have the stone are watery I have in time past seen old men molested with a continual strangury or pissing by drops even until Death unto whom Diuretical that is urine provoking Remedies of Saffron Mace c. And likewise Lenitives or slippery Asswagers of the Mallow Marsh-mallow c. were vain and of no effect and the which Physitians had now pronounced to be besieged with the stone But Cutting testified that they were free from the stone Michael Des Montaignes saith that the Bishop of Paris his Vncle was cut in vain and so they also learned not to divine of the presence of the stone from the urine For these very stranguries Paracelsus devised his own frosty fiction of Tartar which hath not as yet been found in dissected persons Indeed afterwards I knew that as oft as the Gawl was more weak than was meet as in old people it could not change the sour Chyle of the stomach into a salt Salt Wherefore that from a very small and daily quantity of sharpnesse being left the strangury of old folks although the stone be not granted to be present doth continue So new Ales do stir up the strangury in many by reason of the residing and inherent tartness of a more new Ferment By this Title namely through defect of a Gawly ferment the urines of aged people and Children are the lesse tinged From whence these remarkable things do follow 1. That the affect of the stone doth the more easily grow together through a scarcity of the dross or liquid dung in urine 2. That it is a Remedy from the Cause to have comforted the ferment of the Gawl 3. That urines do seem the sharper in the strangury and pissings by drops as they contain something of a sharp matter in them 4. There clearly appears to be a profitable use of the Dross and of the connexion thereof in the urine And then it is asked Why the stone in the Reines is frequent but that of the Bladder more rare I have answered elsewhere That as long as the urine is in the Veines it is not yet perfect For neither doth it as yet cast the smell of urine or hath it the properties of urine as neither is it convenient for the venal Blood to be seasoned with the odour of an Excrement The limitation therefore of the urine is from the Kidney but the odour thereof belongs to a putrefactive Ferment because to an excrement and therefore it volatilizeth the earth of the urine But moreover although the Fermental putrefaction of the urine may render the earth of a strong and putrifying smell yet it stayes not in man as long as it putrifies Therefore the hoary or rank earth hereof hath need of the spirit of the urine that it may become stony For in the Kidney where a fermental putrefaction of the urine ariseth a new and volatile earth doth easily associate it self with the spirit of the urine and is corned especially while as the Dross the preservative from the stone hath not as yet come thither But it becomes a Citron or light-red colour even no lesse from the place than from the aforesaid Dross The Kidney therefore payes the punishment of those things whereof it is the first or chief Author I will elsewhere teach concerning the Womb of Duelech that there goes before the Kidney a disposition unto Duelech which disposition because it is vital and not a meer excrementitious one even as in the Bladder it is also more plentifully coagulated in the Kidney than in the Bladder For this because it is a meer sink is wholly destitute of every Ferment But the Bowels as they are the stomach of the Gawl even as elsewhere concerning Digestions are a vital and cocting Receptacle But the Bladder is a meer Reteiner of the excrement alone It is asked in the next place Why the stone of the Kidneys is for the most part yellow and that of the Bladder somwhat whitish Truly the Kidney hath a Ferment for the making of an excrement and therefore it hath need of a liquid and tinging dross And then also the Kidney hath venal blood as a neighbour unto it and a tinged substance of its own But the Bladder couples of the Glew of its own immediate nourishment unto the hoary earth and to the Spirit the Coagulater in the body of the Urine Consequently from hence it is manifest why Duelech that is bred in the Bladder is the harder It is because a great part of the nourishment of the Bladder departs into a mucky snivel which together with the rocky Beginnings of Coagulation the more hardly and toughly prepares Duelech Even as Lime with Meal renders the morter fat more tough The Reines also being by Duelech their Companion at length hurt even unto their solid fibers do afterwards cast forth white and sufficiently hard stones I have taught elsewhere that the nourishment of the Bladder by reason of the stone or some other importunity is before its full digestion separated from its solid part and is wept from it like a mucky tear and co-mixed with the urines That there is I say an excrement of the last digestion which goes astray and is letted in the Bladder being sometimes indeed an occasioned effect of the stone but not the Cause per se or by it self thereof although it now and then be occasionally and by accident assumed For some Physitians admiring at so great and so continued a plenty of pissed snivel and knowing that it was not purulent or proceeding from corrupt matter seeing they knew not from what an Ulcer so great a plenty of pus or snotty matter could drop at length they being as it were constrained by a sufficient
age but not that there is any conjoyned material cause of a man besides his body it self which is the very product of generation to wit from a material cause and seminal internal efficient which things have hitherto been vailed from the Schools and so they have reputed the internal occasional causes of diseases to be the immediate and conjoyned ones being as yet plainly distinct from the disease produced Wherefore that is also next to be repeated in this place which I have taught in my discourses of Natural Phylosophy to wit that there are six digestions in us For in the three former that there are their own Retents and their own excrements the which seeing every one of them are in themselves and in their own Regions troublesom yea by a co-inâ—olding and extravagancy they have become hateful they degenerate into things transmitted and transchanged and do from thence induce divers diseases occasionally But in the fourth and fifth digestion I have shewn that not any perceiveable excrement is admitted But in the sixth digession which is that of things transchanged that very many voluntary dungs do through the errour of the vegetative faculty offer themselves Moreover that some are transmitted from some other place as also that not a few do degenerate through a violent command of things suscepted or undergone which things have been hitherto unknown by the Schools and therefore also have been neglected and the which therefore have wanted a proper name and the diseasie effects of these have been ridiculously translated and adjudged unto the four feigned humours of the Liver Wherefore although I as the first have expelled the diseasifying causes of Tartar yet least I should seem to make new all things from animosity I will here call these filths the Tartar of the blood although by an improper Etymology because for want of a true name Such excrements therefore whether they are brought into the habit of the body from elsewhere or next made under transchanging by a proper errour of the faculties or lastly through a violent command of external things being there degenerated I name them the Tartar of the blood 〈…〉 that in very deed they are Tartars in the matter and manner of the Tartar of Wine but because of good nourishment being now defiled that which before was fruitful and vital hath afterwards become hostile And these things I have therefore fore-admonished of that ye may know that the Tartar of the blood is the product of the plague and that that is easily made from efficient pestilential causes And moreover it is not yet sufficient to have said that the Tartar of the blood is the product of the Pest but besides I ought to prefix the place thereof For I will by and by teach that the Plague is a poyson of terrour and therefore I have noted that the Seat or primitive Nest thereof is in the Hypochondrial or Midriffs to wit where the first conception of humane terrour is whether it happen from external disturbances or next of its own accord from the motions of things conceived Wherefore there are present in the plague vomiting doatage headach c. the which in its own place I have decyphered in the Commonwealth of the Spleen Therefore if the Schools had put this Tartar of the blood for a conjoyned cause we had as yet notwithstanding been differing from each other as that which with them had been a connexed cause is with me a product of the plague for the Pestinvades us after an irregular manner neither is it s conjoyned matter a certain solid body or visible liquor as neither therefore any putrefaction plainly to be seen but only a Gas separated and degenerated from the substance of the Archeus But whatsoever visible thing offers it self as vitiated in the Plague is not of the matter of the plague it self nor of the matter whereof but it is either the occasional matter of which before or it is the product or off-spring wherein the plague sits as it were in a nest Wherefore the Carbunole Bubo or Escharre are not the original matter of the Pest but the effect and product which the Pest â—ath prepared to it self For the plague is for the most part so cruel and swift that as soon as it is introduced into the Archeus it cannot omit but that it subjecteth some part of the nourishable humour unto its tyranny and dwells therein Wherefore if the putrified humour should be the immediate cause of the plague truly it had been putrified before it had putrified To wit seeing the Pest it self prepares that vitious product for it self which the Schools call humours they being as yet undefined For Fernelius would be a little more quick-sighted than the Schools and therefore he knew that the plague was not bred or did conâ—ist of the putrefaction of four seigned humours as neither of the heat of the air or of the cold thereof but of a certain poyson the foster-Foster-child of hidden causes Again we must take notice that when the 〈◊〉 of the blood or dross of the last digestion being vitiated hath received a pestileâ—â—â—â—ment it hath a priviledge of exhaling through the pores no less than other transchanged excrements without any residence left behind it or remaining dead-head So the Chymists call the dreg which remains after distillation to wit if the humours shall be alimentary but not if the substance it self of the solid parts be scorched into an Escharre or Carbuncle for so the much more hard dungs of the Lues Venerea being as it were equal to bones the counsel of resolving being snatched to them do wholly vanish But although the Tartar of the blood doth also rejoyce in the aforesaid prerogative as oft as it is banished as infamous out of the family-administration of life yet while it is transchanged into a corrupt mattery or thin sanious poyson it gnaws the skin into the shape of an Escharre before that it can sweat thorow the pores in manner of a vapour And that indeed by reason of the imprinted blemish of a strange ferment whereby it degenerated into a formal transmutation But if indeed the Tartar of the blood shall draw the odour of the ferment but is not yet transchanged Glandules Buboes c. are made which are oftentimes ended by a plentiful Flux of sweat without opening of the skin whereas the other aforesaid products cannot obtain that and almost all these are by the Schools banished into Catarrhs The whole Tartar of the blood therefore is indeed bred at home but it is a Bastard which is intruded by force destruction and errour But since the remedies of Nature are subject unto so many Courts of digestions and bodies of so eminent an excellency do possess a violence and strength of acting and likewise have filths admixed with them or difficult bolts truly the art of the fire is never sufficiently esteemed which now and then graduates one Simple to that height that it persecutes with revenge all the excrementitious
so bent their Studies that what was not yet found out by the Greeks and Arabians they may find more successful elsewhere Hence indeed they have been devolved with a steep fall unto the Fictions of Tartar but surely their curiosity is to be had in great esteem although it shall not attain unto its desire For It is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth but of God alone that sheweth Mercy Therefore the Schooles donow leave their title and Market For what shall they do if the conjoyned root of Diseases and method of Curing them be not to be drawn out of the Elements Qualities Contrarieties Humours Stars Windes and Catarths But seeing other Examples of healing have possessed the more Modern followers of Paracelsus it must as yet be diligently searched into whether the Causes of Diseases have been made known to Paracelsus For when he the Lessons of the Ancients being rejected had sufficiently understood that there was nothing of a Foundation or Truth in Complexions and Humours he began by variously doubting to inquire into the most immediate Cause of Diseases and Posterity owes him Praise for it Although he hath not exactly touched at the matter that cannot be accounted a fault if the Most High the Dispenser of Gifts as yet vouchsafed not to open the Truth to Mortals in Paracelsus's days This man therefore had learned of Basilius Valentine that Water Oyle and Salt were to be separated by Distillation from most Bodies He began to call these Three Things not only the first universal beginnings of corporal beings but also he so introduced them within Diseases and the necessities of healing that he referred all Diseases immediately into some of those three things And thus he made his followers almost mad that the first hope of diligently searching into the truth being rejected they consecrated all things to the three first things Which Doctrine hath fixed its roots the faster because the three things are actually separated from most Bodies and so that they were not undemonstrable like humours arisen from feigned beginnings But surely this abuse was discovered while as these three beginnings were wrested aside unto the originals of any Diseases whatsoever For truly because many Bodies being dissolved by the fire gave from them Salt Sulphur and Liquor which they point out to be Mercury it was thought that all Diseases did owe their Birth unto those constitutive beginnings First of all Hermes before the industry of the Greeks sprang up because in his Pymander he had noted every Trine to be perfect consequently also he foresaw that in Chymical things Mettals did consist of two extreams to wit of a Body and a Soul and the which he would have cleave together not but by the baudery of a certain third thing or Spirit Afterwards Basilius Valentine a Monk of Benedict wrote more distinctly he named the Soul of a Mettal the Sulphur or Tincture but the Body the Salt and lastly the Spirit he called the Mercury Which things being thus borrowed of Basilius Theophrastus Paracelsus afterwards transferred by a wonderful diligency of search into all the Principles of Bodies he being one Age younger than Busilius The Doctrine of whom the Authors name being suppressed he snatched on himself and by a liberty of his own introduced it into the speculations of Medicine So indeed that after he had banished every Disease into the Caralogue of Tartars and had not yet satisfied his own scruple at length he adoms his Paramire of the three first beings with much boldness Indeed he forged these three things as it were the beginnings of all Bodies and declameth many things in general touching Diseases but being constrained by necessity when as he would reduce Diseases into the ranks of the three first things being pressed down under the burden he was silent Except in the Family of Ulcers where he had seemed to himself to have found salt at least wise in the other two beginnings he on both sides remained scanty and almost ridiculous For he had commanded that it should every where be believed that the four Elements were nothing but the incorporeal Wombs and asit were the Inns of Bodies but that the first beginnings did so supply the conditions or offices of Bodies that also the Elements of the world have all their substance and subsistance from those three things only Elsewhere also he being unmindful of these hath stuck wholly in the Elements and next he hath ascribed the inclinations and properties of Stars and men to the complexions of these He also hath dedicated unto all the particular Elements their own fruits and degrees of fruits but not all to one Element nor the fruits any longer proceeding from incorporeal Elements as Wombs but that these did borrow their Bodies from the material Elements themselves Lastly by the same liberty and unconstancy of a borrowed matter he hath taught that Bodies do by a resolving decay sometimes into four but sometimes into three Elements only Truly he hath so graced the Art of the Fire by bringing it into Medicine that he breaths after an eternal Name for himself and hopes that the time would come that he should sometimes wax proud with the Title of the Monarch of Secrets He foreseeing that the Doctrine of Basilius was not commonly known therefore the Name of the Author being concealed he made it his own and in this respect hath he enlarged his own Sections Wherefore his Tartar now and then losing its universal dominion in Diseases it being suppressed he makes an invasion as being constrained by the Laws of his three first things Which his three first things as presuming on increase he would at length that they should become the Mothers and Wombs even of all Diseases as well of the mind as of the Being or Body This indeed was only his own and not the Invention of Basilius and the which when he would endeavour to disperse into the ranks of Diseases by Troops he sometimes goes confusedly to work yet doth he again more oft go beyond himself being every where forgetful of his own Doctrine delivered For in his Archidoxals he hath dedicated a little Book to the separation of the Elements which are to be brought out of the flame air water and earth And thus far he hath resisted his own Doctrine concerning the three first things and concerning the Wombs of the Elements because now there should be four beginnings no longer the three first and ultimate into which at length by long labour the three first things as being after the Elements so of right no longer the first should be derived For they being also thus enriched by one number should beget far more Diseases than of late than while that pretended Monarch commanded only three to be the principles as well of Bodies as of Diseases Yea truly he accuseth as guilty only and at length one only Tartar to be the cause of almost all Diseases But elsewhere in some peculiar Treatises he calls the Heaven
the assisting and co-operating Work-man of all Diseases an angry Parent and revenger For he saith that the unknown Star Zedo is the immediate and containing cause of the Dropsie So he affirmeth that to the Consumption Gout Apoplexie c. doth belong their own peculiar yet unnamed Star and unto every Epilepsie or falling Evil it s own proper constellation But in his Paramires he affirms the three first things to be the immediate causes of all Diseases that is all things confused Let him explain and excuse him that will for I have not dedicated my life to the interpreting of others dreams Therefore have I seriously searched into Nature and the particular kindes of Diseases and it hath happened unto me no otherwise than as to all others before me until that the Doctrines of all Authors being cast off I had seriously implored the Divine Grace For then I suddenly knew that unto every Disease hath happened its own matter which may nourish a Vulcan proper to it self within the which although he doth sometimes imitate the courses of the Stars yet that the enforcing cause thereof did not depend on the Stars For all Seeds do possess as it were their own Common-wealth especially their own vital light whereby of their own proper vertue they do shew forth a proportionable resemblance of the Stars Be it a ridiculous thing that the Consumption or Dropsie although they may be stirred up more severely and mildly under diverse starry positions are caused or made by the motion and light of the Stars the which do after another manner generate by a manifest occasion through so clear a collection of filths and the which being removed Health doth also follow without leave of the Stars The exposition of which Doctrine by me thou shalt read in the Book of the Plague and elsewhere But the matters of Diseases with their seminary Vulcans from the first even unto the last I have prosecuted with all their duplicity and interchangeable courses in respect of humane life The Almighty grant that so much as he hath bestowed on me I may nakedly refer unto his Honour and the profit of my Neighbour and that he may bestow another more able than my self on the world For Paracelsus hath framed divers Books concerning long life to have chosen death for himself that he would by a Divine priviledge have comforted his own old Age by his Elixiâ— of propriety but not by Remedies prescribed by him for long life who died in the 47th year of his Age. So great boasting therefore and unconstancy of this Man have hitherto made me a little careful In the mean time many difficulties have long since held me in doubt about the three first things until that I having obtained help from God knew that Woods and Herbs were to be distilled without any Dead head For I did long ago wonder that out of the coal of Honey no ashes and by consequence neither the salt of ashes could be had Which things afterwards I willingly through an universal resolving of a Body beheld For it was sufficient for Paracelsus to have forsaken all things involved under doubting who in a slender draught had drunk down anothers Invention and had not yet converted it into nourishment and making it his own of robbery hath he striving to flie unto a Monarchy slipped out of his Nest before he had sufficient feathers For he snatching unto himself the glory of the Invention hath well pleased himself in dispersingly repeating one and the same thing often although in the mean time he made little progress in things of his own For it is a ridiculous thing and like a Fable that Sulphur should be distilled sublimed reverberated calcined resolved in us and that from hence divers Diseases should be caused only indeed by the boldness of the Man without a Pledge or Surety of greater authority than himself For he knew not nor durst to draw Diseases into an open profession or publishment he being not yet sully committed hereunto by his Inventer It is also a childish dream that salt is distilled sublimed calcined circulated and doth undergo other torments in us or that Mercury doth sustain these strict examinations in us and for every interchangeable course of variations that it doth of it self alone bring forth other Diseases pains and defects and that others again be infolded with its other two fellow beginnings or masked with divers degrees and doses They are also trifles that Mercury by reason of the highest circulation of its subtilty might be the cause of all sudden death which we have known to be constituted by its causes to cure and prevent For first of all eight ounces of venal blood are daily blown away in nourishing without a Dead head pain and defect yea without feeling while they pass thorow and whereby they pass thorow But whatsoever hath once been dedicated unto expulsion in the shew of Water Mercury or Sweat or whatsoever hath been once reckoned unfit for nourishing or the offices of nourishment being now once performed is designed for scattering or blowing away that is never afterwards distilled sublimed calcined or circulated in us For the works of Nature are too serious because they do ultimately respect God For Nature doth not play at Ball that it should again receive excrements into favour being once rent from the commerce of Life It never returns into the same point because it proceeds and never keeps Holy-day In the next place if any watry liquor be a hundred times re-distilled it shall not therefore be the sharper or subtiler but rather by degrees the Seed of its middle life being worn out it passeth more and more unto the simplicity of an Element For rain water which now falleth down from above is not more subtile or fine than that which rained in the beginning of its Creation But if any watry thing should exhale by our luke-warmth and should obtain a sharpness through dreamed returns that should not be the fault of subtilizing of Mercury but of an adjunct Surely I wonder that so great a Chymist hath not known that the venal blood is not circulated nor that it doth bear the circles of subtilizings in us and that it doth not persevere in us above one only course of the Moon and the which tribute of feeble blood a Woman doth therefore pay Because she is she which ought to abound with very much blood as well for an increase of the Young as for the sucking of Milk But that Paracelsus might the better overshadow his own Fiction he supposeth that one of the three first things being separated doth presently assume from a Microcosmical Nature an actuality in that which is casual to any and one Being of those which are infinite a thousand Seeds whereof being collected into one it did contain and therefore that by reason of a monstrous and strange Nativity a hostile thing is for that very cause in us and is made the cause of Diseases And so that there are