great celebration Letters and Verses which were taken from me by the Count of Giline when in my absence he had spoiled my Castle where amongst the rest of my houshold-stuffe he had discerned the aforesaid Books Writings and Hymns all which together with his Galenical paultry Physitian he was not able to endure to survive this destruction I lament as the one onely cause that they could in no wise see the light Whereupon thou didst wish them all Prosperity and health in the Lord saying I will from your earnest desire commit all things that have been rehearsed unto the Press All which things after that my intimate friend upon urgency had declared unto me I contained in few words and did shew them unto him the which being seen he counselled me to divulge in Print subjoyning if any one shall desire more things so he be fit for them I shall never be wanting but will serve every one more fully according to the thing begun or brought forth in him Follow me I walk thorow the whole World AN ACROSTICK Upon the Great PHILOSOPHER John Baptista Van Helmont INcomparable Work beyond the reach Of humane praise which justly doth impeach Huge Heaps and Volumns of largeful-cram'd sheets Nicely compos'd where subtile Learning meets Born up by lofty-winged Fame which can Ascend no higher now since LEARNED VAN Pres'd into th' Croud but as attached must Take Sanctuary in despised dust Inevitable dis-esteem and shame Surprizing them whilst onely HELMONT'S NAME Takes hold of meriting Transcendency Advancing by the hand of Truth whereby Virtue unvails the blinded eye of Vice Ambition Cruelty and Avarice Notorious Crimes which with prevailing force Have long continued on the World a Curse Ent'ring by Ignorance and Sloth whence all Lame and imperfect Sciences did crall Mustring like Weeds a multiplying Birth Ore-running the whole surface of the Earth None knowing how those Errors to unmask Till Painful HELMONT undertook this Task JOHN HEYMAN AN INDEX OF THE TREATISES Set forth by John Baptista Van Helmont 1. Prophesie concerning the Author expressed in a Poem 2. The Authors Promises pag. 1 Column 1. 2 Column 2. 5 Column 3. 6 3. The Authors Confession 8 4. The Authors Studies 11 5. The searching out of Sciences 15 6. The Causes and Beginnings of Natural things 27 7. Archeus Faber or the Master Workman 35 8. Logick is unprofitable 37 9. The ignorant Natural Phylosophy of Aristotle and Galen 41 10. The Elements 47 11. The Earth 50 12. The Water 53 13. The Air. 57 14. The Essay of a Meteor 63 15. The Gas of the Water 70 16. The Blas of Meteors 78 17. A Vacuum of Nature 81 18. An irregular Meteor 87 19. The Earth-quake 92 20. The Fiction of Elementary Complexions and Mixtures 104 21. The Image of the Ferment begets the Masse with child of a seed p. 111 22. The Stars do necessitate not incline nor signifie of the Life Body or Fortunes of him that is born 118 23. The Birth or Original of Forms 128 24. Magnum Oportet or a thing of great necessity or concernment 148 25. Nature is ignorant of contraries 160 26. The Blas of Man 175 27. Endemicks 188 28. The Spirit of Life 192 29. Heat doth not digest efficiently but excitingly onely 198 30. The threefold Digestion of the Schools 203 31. A sixfold Digestion of humane nourishment 205 32. Pylorus the Governour 222 33. A History of Tartar 229 34. A History of Tartar of Wine 232 35. The rash invention of Tartar in Diseases 235 36. Nourishments are guiltlesse of Tartar 240 37. Tartar is not in drink 249 38. An erring Watchman or wandring Keeper 254 39. The Image of the Mind 262 40. A mad or foolish Idea 272 41. The seat of the Soul 283 42. From the seat of the Soul unto Diseases 289 43. The authority of the Duumvirate 296 44. The compleating or perfecting of the Mind 310 45. The Scab and Ulcers of the Schools 316 46. An unknown action of Government 324 47. The Duumvirate 337 48. A Treatise of the Soul 341 49. The Distinction of the Mind from the sensitive Soul 344 50. Of the Immortality of the Soul 346 51. The knitting of the sensitive Soul and Mind 351 52. The Asthma and Cough 356 53. The humour Latex neglected 373 54. A Cauterie 380 55. The Disease that was antiently reckoned that of delightful Livers 386 56. A mad or raging Pleura 392 57. That the three first Principles of the Chymists nor the Essences of the same are of the Army of Diseases 401 58. Of Flatu's or windinesses in the Body 416 59. The Toyes of a Catarrh or Rheum 429 60. A Reason or Consideration of Diet. 450 61. A Modern Pharmacopolium and Dispensatory 456 62. The Power of Medicines 469 63. A Preface 483 64. A Disease is an unknown Guest 486 65. The Dropsie is unknown 507 66. A childish Vindication of the Humourists 522 67. The Author Answers 524 A Treatise of Diseases 68. A discernable Introduction 528 69. The subject of inhering of Diseases is in the point of Life 531 70. A proceeding to the knowledge of Diseases 534 71. Of the Idea's of Diseases 539 72. Of Archeal Diseases 547 73. The Original of a diseasie Image 552 74. The passage unto the Buttery of the Bowels is stopped up 555 75. The Seat of Diseases in the sensitive Soul is confirmed 559 76. The Squaldron and Division of Diseases 565 566 77. Things Received that are Injected 568 78. Some more Imperfect Works 574 79. In Words Herbs and Stones there is great Virtue 575 80. Butler 585 81. Of Material things Injected 597 82. The manner of entring of things Darted into the Body 604 83. Of things Conceived 606 84. A Magnetical or Attractive Power 614 85. Of Sympathetical Medium's or Means 616 86. Of things Inspired 617 87. Things Suscepted or Undergon 619 88. Things Retained 620 89. A Preface 631 90. Of Time 633 91. Life is Long Art is Short 645 92. The entrance of Death into humane nature the grace of Virgins 648 93. A Position 652 94. The Position is Demonstrated 661 95. Of the Fountains of the Spaw The first Paradox 687 96. A second Paradox 691 97. A third 693 98. A fourth 696 99. A fifth 699 100. A sixth 702 101. A numerocritical Paradox of Supplies 704 102. The Understanding of Adam 711 103. The Image of God 714 104. The Property of External Things 724 105. The Radical Moisture 726 106. The Vital Air. 731 107. A manifold Life in Man 735 108. A Flux unto Generation 736 109. A Lunar Tribute 740 110. Life 744 111. Short Life 747 112. Eternal Life 750 113. The Occasions of Death 752 114. Of the Magnetick curing of Wounds 756 115 The Tabernacle in the Sun 794 116. The nourishing of an Infant for Long Life 797 117. The Secrets of Paracelsus p. 799 118. The Mountain of the Lord. 806 119. The Tree of Life 807 Unheard of little Works of Medicine 1. Of the Disease of the
it be the same and co-like then that one onely snivel is not the superfluity of both bowels therefore as the Keeper being well affected doth scarce produce any snivel and that likewise according to opportunity so being provoked it brings forth snivel according to its own indignation and the property of the bowel receiving To wit a fury being snatched to it it brings forth a Salt biting sharp and stinking thing or quality in its snivel exceeding a mean in quality and quantity For from hence are their gnawings of the vvind-pipe and from thence Consumptions and bloudy spittings c. For although an Imposthume full of matter may bring forth divers difficulties of breathing and straightnesses of the Breast yet scarce Consumption-Coughs Therefore I have thought these to spring from the hurting of the rough Artery or vvind-pipe But that the Keeper doth not touch at the Essence of the Brain I conjecture from a strong young man to me known who morning and evening hath daily undergone miserable spittings by reaching for some years he being in the mean time strong enough in his Brain Sinews and Muscles But where one of the faculties is notably hurt but the other not at all they must needs be both divers in property and Essences wherefore also the Keeper of the vvind-pipe and Head do far differ Therefore the Air after that it is brought down thorow the Lungs into the Breast and thrusts downwards the very transverse partition which is named the Diaphragma or Midriffe into a circular form then therefore the Diaphragma pierceth the pores thereof and straineth the drunk-in Air thorow it self which thing Odours drawn by some nostrils and at length returned by belching do teach For so the fume of Coals doth provoke vomit and doth sooner affect the Stomach than the heart yea the Sent of a dead Carcafe is felt about the Stomach long after So also a VVoman great with young bearing 〈◊〉 a dead child the very dead Carcase smells in her breath For that smell passing thorow her Womb and Midriffe teacheth that breathing is serviceable not onely for the cooling refreshment of the heart but for the whole Body So also from a pining fume others have shewen that their Stomach was tinged with yellowness by reason of smoaks So also the Stomach abhorreth the smells of loosening Medicines received although those very purging Medicines are cloaked with Sugar and Spice because it perceiveth the same Odours by its own smelling Therefore if an Odour doth proceed in a straight line unto the Stomach the Air also doth The Plague it self being introduced by an inspired breathing is forged for the most part about the Stomach therefore vomitings Head-ach drowsiness c. do accuse and shew the Stomach to be affected CHAP. XXXV The Image of the Minde 1. The fear of the Lord is the Beginning and Charity is the end of Wisdom 2. Man was made after the Image of God 3. Three Ranks of Atheists 4. The Authours wish 5. The Intellectual Vnderstanding of the minde 6. The intimate Integrity of the minde suffereth by frail things without the passion of extinguishing 7. The action of the minde is scarce felt or perceived in us 8. The first Atheists are scoffers at the divine Image 9. The second Atheists have newly arose 10. The Atheistical ignorance of this is manifested 11. The variety of vital Lights 12. The minde how it differs from an Angel 13. An intellectual Vision of the Authour 14. Every wish or desire without God is vain 15. The Authours misery 16. The Vision of the minde being separated from the Body 17. That the minde is figured 18. The minde is an immortal Substance figured with the figure of God 19. A common errour about the Image of God 20. The errour of those who think the Image of God to be placed in a ternary of Powers 21. Against the opinion of Taulerus 22. The Image of God in man hitherto not evidently shewen because it is incomprehensible 23. The minde is damned by accident 24. After death there is no more memory or remembrance 25. The will was accidentally over-added to the minde after its Creation 26. In Heaven the will is void 27. A will appeares in Heaven not indeed a power but a substantial intellectual Essence 28. If the minde be the Image of God this was known to Plato 29. The definition of the minde 30. That Reason is not the Image of God 31. The Authours Opinion 32. These two thinglinesses or Essences do lay hid in the Soul through the corruption of Nature 33. This love is onely raised up by an extasie not otherwise in the miseries of this nature 34. A precision or abreviating of the Vnderstanding 35. An Objection is solved 36. That a triplicity or ternary in the minde is unfolded in every Susteme or Constitution of the World 37. A Similitude for the Image of God is far another thing than that of a ternary 38. A repeated description of the minde 39. How the minde doth behold itself 40. The constitutive Birth of the Phantasie 41. The minde doth understand far otherwise 42. The Prerogative of the minde 43. An explaining of living love 44. The differences of Vnderstandings in mortal men 45. Why that desire doth not cease in heaven 46. A description of desire 47. How sin is in the desire of the mind 48. The love of the mind is a substance even in mortal men 49. How great darknesse hath veiled the minde by the corruption of nature 50. The Image of God quite marred or trodden under foot in the damned THe beginning of Wisdome is the fear of the Lord but the fear of the Lord begins from the meditation of eternal death and life But most of the Moderns with 〈…〉 Stoicks suppose the end of wisdome to be the knowing of ones own self I call the ultimate end of wisdome and the reward of the whole course of life Charity or dear love which accompanieth us after other things have forsaken us Wherefore also the knowledge of ones own self according to me is onely a mean unto the fear of the Lord. And the knowledge of life doth presuppose the knowledge of the soul because the life and soul are as it were Sunonymals And indeed it is believed by faith that man was created into a living creature of nothing after the image or likenesse of God and that his mind is never to perish or die But that other souls when they cease to live do depart into nothing The weights of which difference elsewhere concerning the birth of Forms But hitherto it is not sufficiently manifest wherein that likenesse with God our Arch-type or chief or first Example doth consist I will speak what I perceive under an humble subjection to the Church There is no knowledge more burthensome than that whereby the soul comprehends it self although none be more profitable Because the whole faith doth stablish its foundation upon the unobliterable or undefaceable substance of the soul I have found
not for Man a fatherliness of his Mind but in God alone and therefore his original Generation and Propagation was reserved in the Power of God the Creator And especially while as its knowledge of it self is wanting to the Mind which is immortal and infinite in Duration whereby it may represent it self to it self to wit that it may decypher a sealed similitude of it self in the Seed Therefore indeed neither can the immortal Mind ever bring the Seed of Man unto that which it self shall never have in it self to wit out of it self to decypher the Image of God For Man is so made the Image of God that he is the cloathing of the Deity the Sheath of the Kingdom of God that is The Temple of the holy Spirit Man therefore being essentially created into the Image of God after that he rashly presumed to generate the Image of God out of himself not indeed by a certain Monster but by something which was shadowily like himself with the Whoredom or Ravishment of Eve he indeed generated not the Image of God like unto that which God would have therefore unimitable as being Divine but in the vital air of the Seed he generated Dispositions careful at some time to obtain a sensitive discursive and motive Soul from the Father of Lights the Fountain of all Paternity yet Mortal and to Perish into which nevertheless he of his own goodness inspires ordinarily the substantial Spirit of a Mind shewing forth his own Image And so that Man in this respect endeavoured to generate his own Image not but after the manner of Bruit-Beasts by the copulation of Seeds which at length should obtaine by request a soulified Light from the Creator and the which they call a sensitive Soul For from thence hath proceeded another Generation conceived after a beast-like manner mortal and uncapable of eternal Life after the manner of Beasts a bringing forth with Pains and subject to Diseases and Death and so much the more sorrowful or full of misery by how much that very Propagation in our first Parents dared to invert the intent of God Therefore the unutterable goodness forewarned them That they should not tast of that Tree And otherwise he foretold That the same Day they should die the Death and should feel all the Root of Calamities which accompanies Death Deservedly therefore hath the Lord deprived both our Parents of the benefit and seat of Immortality To wit Death succeeded from a conjugal and bruital Copulation Neither remained the Spirit of the Lord with Man after that he began to be Flesh Furthermore because that defilement of Eve shall thenceforth be continued in the propagating of Posterity even unto the end of the World From hence the Sin of the despised fatherly Admonition and natural Deviation from the right way is now among other Sins for an impurity through an inverted carnal and well nigh bruital Generation and is truly called Original Sin that is Man being sowed in the Pleasure of the Concupiscence of the Flesh shall therefore alwayes reap a necessary Death in the Flesh of Sin But The knowledge of Good and Evil which God placed in the disswaded Apple did contain the Concupiscence of the Flesh that is an occult forbidden Conjunction diametrically opposite unto the State of Innocency which State was not a State of Stupidity because he was he unto whom before the Corruption of Nature the Essences of all living Creatures whatsoever were now made known according to which they were to be named from their Property and at their first sight to be essentially distinguished And moreover S. Hildegard unto the Moguntians or those of Mentz saith Adam was formed by the Finger of God which is the holy Spirit in whose Voice every sound before he sinned was the sweetnesse of all Harmony and of the whole musical Art So that if he had remained in the State wherein he was formed the weaknesse of mortal Man could not have been able to bear the virtue and shrilness of his Voice But when the Deceiver of him had heard that Man from the inspiration of God had begun to sing so shrilly and that hereby to repeat the sweetness of the Songs of the heavenly Country he counterfeited behold how far now Man hath departed from thence with his hoarse Voice the Engines of Craft seeing his wrath against him was in vain he was so affrighted that he was not a very little tormented thereby And he alwayes afterwards busily endeavoured by the manifold Devises of his wickednesse to invent and search out that he may not only cease to interrupt or expel divine praises from the Heart of Man but also from the mouth of the Church These things she It is a devoted Opinion of mystical Men That Birds do sing Praises unto God I under a humble correction do think otherwise For if that should be true they should sing all the year neither should they cease assoon as the lust of generating is fulfilled which argument is serviceable unto our Position For truly seeing the Males only do sing but not the Females That from a common Nature Adam was the more leacherous and incontinent and from his Sex more lustful than Eve whose Chastity therefore being beloved of God seemeth proper to that Sex Man therefore through eating of the Apple attained a knowledge that he had lost his radical innocency and that instead thereof he had made an empty exchange of the sordid Concupiscence of the Flesh For neither before the eating of the Apple was he so dull or stupified that he knew not or did not perceive himself naked but with the effect of shame and brutal Concupiscence he then first declared that he was naked For the sacred Text is every where so chaste that the most High would not name the Concupiscence of the Flesh it self at least-wise by a proper name yea nor also accuse of it while he forewarned of the eating of the Apple for a necessity of Death that that brutal Concupiscence might not be made known unto Man even so much as by name And therefore neither would he have Concupiscence to be named in Genesis by reason of the prompt perfidiousness of that People but he called it innocency lost from a gotten shame the which he would afterwards have to be weighed in the Church by its own circumstances And so that therefore he presently translated Adam after his Creation from the Earth into Paradise and for that Cause also he formed the Woman in Paradise least she whom he had made and appointed to remaine a Virgin should behold the copulation of Bruit-beasts in the Earth For in the Beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth and every Creature contained therein But he made and formed those things materially by the passive and commanding Word Let it be done to wit he spake that Word and all things were created But in six dayes space after he made the Forms of things created and all things were orderly made into the
copulation of the Sexes for he was truly Immortal and the first who therefore arose from the Dead by his own Power unless the amorous or loving Embassage for which he had come had made him electively to be born in the form of a Servant Therefore now the Question hath seemed to me to be decided which hath driven many that were in anguish about the unspotted Conception of the God-bearing-Virgin into many brawlings Furthermore not onely Regeneration by Baptisme is enjoyned but also unless we shall eat of the super-substantial Bread we are to have no Life in us Which benefit of a vital Purity is the supream pledge given for the Life of the World or for the frail Adamical miserable and mortal Life Because that Heavenly Bread which descends from heaven which is the Wine budding forth Virgins and the same in supposition from its own free property takes away the spot contracted from Adam and the broken Virginity of Eve Because the Merits of the Passion being participated of in that Pledge are communicated of from the unspotted Virginity of the Body of our Lord. The Communion therefore of that most Chast Body uniteth us unto his Mystical Body and makes us partakers of his Incomprehensible and Amorous Incarnation as we participatively put on his Virginity in which we ought to be saved by being born again For Christ was born that he might be crucified for us Therefore his Death was that it might give us Life and that for the whole Species of men in general But in the individual as oft as of the Bread the Body of the Lord is made as if Christ is re-born again not indeed that he is crucified again But that he may give the intended scope of his Incarnation unto that individual Body which there eats the re-born Lamb that is the Merits of his Passion Indeed there are two principal Ends of the holy sacred Eucharist To wit that the Virgin nature of Christ and the Merits of his Passion may be unitively communicated unto us Truly Children that are Baptized shall rise again indeed in a glorified Body Yet by so much the lesse lightsome by how much they were remote from the Union of the Beatifical Body And although there do not now appear the visible signes of so great an effect such as I have above related concerning Baptisme yet they are in very deed communicated unto their immortal mind Because it is that which shall therefore at some time reduce their Body into the form of a Spirit For otherwise Regeneration doth not grow anew in the Resurrection which hath not fore-existed in the Life-time by being born again Neither is Faith of feigned Non-Beings but of things chiefly true although not alwaies visible because they do primarily operate on the Immortal mind which is invisible Wherefore although the mark of resemblance of Union with God by the Eucharist be altogether unsearchable and the fruits thereof are unto us invisible Yet a Mystical aâ—â— real New-birth is reckoned to be in the speech to Nicodemus it being as yet earthly and as it were natural By which title indeed I have transferred this free endowment of Purity among natural Considerations to wit that under the Doctrine concerning Long Life I may speak also of Immortal Life as it is understood by true Christians and actually derived into a true use For I contemplate of the Regeneration of those that are to be saved and of the participation of Life in the Communion of the Eucharist to happen and be reckoned among earthly things because there is shewn something like unto it elâ—â—where in Earthly things Verily almost even as in the Projection of the Stone which make â—â—â—old For I have divers times handled that stone with my hands and have seen a real transmutation of â—aleable Argent-vive or Quicksilver with my eyes which in proportion did exceed the powder which made the gold in some thousand degrees Indeed it was of the colour such as is in Saffron being weighty in its powder and shining like bruised Glass when it should be the less exactly beaten But there was once given unto me the fourth part of one grain I call also a grain the six hundredth part of an ounce This powder therefore I involved in Wax scraped off of a ceâ—â—ain Letter least in casting it into the Crucible it should be dispersed through the smoakinesses of the coaâ—s which pellet of wax I afterwards cast into the three-corner'd Vessel of a Crucible upon a pound of Quicksilver hot and newly bought and presently the whole Quicksilver with some little noise stood still from flowing and resided like a Lump But the heat of that Argent-vive was as much as might forbid melted Lead from re-coagulating The Fire being straightway after encreased under the Bellows the Mettal was â—elted the which the Vessel of fusion being broken I found to weigh eight ounces of the most pure gold Therefore a computation being made a grain of that powder doth convert nineteen thousand two hundred grains of impure and volatile Mettal which is obliterable by the fire into true gold For that powder by uniting the aforesaid Quicksilver unto it self preserved the same at one instant from an eternal rust putrefaction death and torture of the fire howsoever most violent it was and made it as an Immortal thing against any vigour and industry of Art and Fire and transchanged it into the Virgin purity of Gold At least-wise one onely fire of coals is required herein So indeed if so be a just heat of the faithful shall be present a very little of this mystical and divine super-celestial Bread doth regenerate restore and renew a huge number of the Elect Which indeed was the one onely scope of so great a Sacrament And therefore it is said With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with yoâ— Let the Divine pardon me who being to write of the Life of the World if by a similitude I have drawn a demonstration from earthly things in the perswasion of the Lord to Nicodemus to confirm the real and Celestial Regeneration of Purity and Restauration of mans Relapse because it is by an Argument drawn from Earthly things But that person who is so regenerated and preserved against the Fire and Death the Lord will raise up the same in the last day who gave his Life to the righteous eater for the Adamical Life of the World For so a uniting of the amorous Incarnation of the Lord makes us partakers of his integrity so far as by Regeneration we participatively attain unto the Virginity of Christ in which we ought to be saved This indeed is the most proper Circum-locution or expression of the sense of those Words The Wine which buds forth Virgins And without this Remedy some shall rise again being not changed in their former and ponderous Body of Adam the wished for necessity of death being onely taken away from them I return unto the Priviledges of that purity that it may be
to be after some sort like them the which transchangeth almost an infinite quantity of impure Mettal into the best Gold and by uniting it to it self doth defend it from cankering rust rottenness and Death and makes it to be as it were Immortal against all the torture of the Fire and Art and translates it into the virgin-Purity of Gold only it requires Heat The Soul therefore and Body are thus regenerated by Baptisme and the communion of the unspotted Body of the Lord so that a just heat of Devotion of the Faithful shall be present Let the Divine pardon me if I as being beyond my Last have spoken of Life eternal by way of a Parenthesis For I willingly confess that a regenerated Body is not belonging to my Employment I treat only of prolonging the Life of the World This only I have said that Baptisme doth bring with it a real Effect of Purity perceivable by Sense and that the holy-sacred Communion of the Eucharist hath something like it in earthly things whereby we may the more easily believe Regeneration CHAP. CXI The Occasions of Death I Have compared the Fire and Light unto Life because it bears something before it which seemeth to be vital For vital Forms are either the Lives or Lights of things Therefore there shall likewise be as many occasions of Death as there are withdrawings of Light First therefore the Light is blown out and likewise the Flame perisheth by pressing together which they call through defect of Air. But I have demonstrated that that happens through want of a new Magnal but not that the Fire is nourished by Air So also by the constriction of a strange Smoak So indeed in Vaults and Burrows Lamps are extinguished but the Light is blown out by the Wind or another Flame For oftentimes Candles are extinguished by a filthy or deformed Flame being stirred up by the Powder of Rosin or Gun-powder Lastly Fires die through want of Nourishment Death in like manner doth many wayes rush on us For either a live Body is suddenly dashed together or sore shaken by weight Also a speedy pouring forth of Blood from a large Wound pours forth the Life and blows out the Light of Life So an inordinate Prodigality of corrupt Matter Water or Wind being abundantly made likewise Baths Hunger loosening Medicines introduce an untimely Death Also by the pressing together of the Breath in Burrows of the Asthma of a Cord of drowning of Smoak and by the Symptoms of the Womb likewise by the Resolutions and Palseys of the Sinews subjected to breathing In like manner by Burnings Destructions Coalifyings Gangrenes and Congelations of Cold. Also by Poysons Alculies gnawing Things Escharrers Putrifiers or Things that trample upon us by a fermental Contagion Likewise by retained Excrements Obstructions and the denied Commerces of Parts Likewise through Defect of some certain Digestion an Atrophia and Consumptions of a Part or of the whole Body Also by over-pourings of the Blood within the Skull Breast bottom of the Belly by corrupt mattery Impostumes Pleurisies affects of the Lungs c. Likewise by displacings of the turning Joynts Contractures of the Parts apppointed for expurging of Filths At length by reason of a Feeble Decrepit and woren-out Death of the Seeds and Powers And also by reason of the more grievous Passions of the Mind and Enchantments Death therefore doth so many manner of wayes steal away Mortals whose Life notwithstanding is alwayes simple and single For therefore there is a diverse and differing Consideration of Life and Death for a Sword takes away Life Yet there is far different Speculation of preserving Life than of healing of Diseases by the removals and hinderances of the Cause For truly Causes are partly external as a Wound the Plague Scorching c. the healing whereof therefore doth not depend on the removal of their Causes For neither therefore is the Fire which had burned any one to be extinguished from the Hearth that he may be cured even as neither is the Sword to be broken that the Wound may be healed up But for the preservation of Long Life the contemplations and removals of external Causes do no less occur or come to hand than those of a vital Fewel For indeed although no Infirmities should molest yet Death should not for that Cause cease dayly to strew a way for its entrance For although health hath respect to Life as its Foundation yet Life doth not include health For a Blind Lame Gowty Person c. doth no less live than a Healthy or Sound Person What if Life ends through a Disease that is forreign and by accident unto the Life as a Sword contains Death but not but by Application Otherwise Death doth by it self respect Life but diseasifying Causes become Mortal only by accident or by their Application unto the Spirit of Life For from hence it is that the Impediments of Long Life are seriously to be heeded and diverted if we expect length of Life From the Beginning therefore the meditation of Life consisteth not without but in the Life it self To wit after what manner Life may be preserved in the Body For the sensitive Soul now forthwith after Sin as I have said drew the whole property of Life unto it self and became the bond of Life with the Body But seeing that very Soul is in it self Mortal it must needs be first of all that all the vital Powers co-aeval or of a like Age with the Life should be slideable and mortal From hence at length Death For a long continuance of Life therefore first a curing of Diseases is required as well of those which touch at the Life of the whole Body as those which have regard unto the Dammages or preservation of a Part and Functions and which in this respect do lay in wait for the Life For truly seeing there is a single conspiracy of the Members certain principal Powers cannot chuse but at length go to decay also the subordinate ones being only diminished Wherein I disagree from Paracelsus because he thought that every Disease was of necessity to be taken away by a Medicine for long Life Because that good Man was no less ignorant of a Medicine for Long Life and the use thereof than of the very Essence and Properties of Long Life And therefore his Arcanums do very much conduce into a healthy or sound Life or unto a removal of Impurities yet they do not any thing directly and primarily tend to long Life as unto their ultimate end Because that as the Life So the Tree of Life chiefly concerns the preservation and renewing or making young again of the vital Faculties implanted in the Arts. In this therefore the Arcanums or Secrets which are for the taking away of Superfluities differ from the Tree of Life That those indeed do cure Diseases even those which our parent Nature doth by her self never Cure To wit the Leprosie Stone Palsy Consumption of the Lungs Dropsie c. but
of all in the book of long Life I have demonstrated at large that the entrance of Death into humane nature had its own causes in nature by means for bidden without the intent of the thrice Glorious Creatour that death being once crept in and admitted although that was not from the Creators intention yet that it was afterwards continued and un-intreatable from a necessity of nature and thereupon not only to have been permitted and consented to by the Creatour but also that the style of Nature being changed it was admitted yea and also as it were commanded under a better state being introduced in regenerating through the Divine Grace of Baptisme In which Treatise I have demonstated a necessity of the Sensitive Soul which else under immortality had been in vain whence indeed a Law in the Members was introduced contradicting the Laws of the immortal mind And a Total and unexusable corruption of the whole central nature was received Which new unheard of Doctrine to former ages I presuppose is therefore from thence to be fetched or required if so be that the knowledge of our Mind be desired For as it is now thus stranged from its own self from its own Beginning because it now seems to hearken unto the commands of the Sensitive Soul which notwithstanding in its own essence Substance and reality is unchangeable so indeed unto those who make a beginning or do repent as it addeth the knowledge of the means whereby it fell and became wholly degenerate so also it presupposeth the same Doctrine to be as it were the foundation of the knowing of it self In the next place concerning the Birth of forms I have likewise shewn how far this fraile sensitive and mortal Soul in us may differ from the immortal Mind the which surely that it is made to do no less than after an infinite manner is undoubtedly true seeing the mind indeed is a Substance not mortal but the sensitive Soul is neither a Substance as neither an accident But a neither Mortal Creature and perishing into nothing and of the nature of Lights Which Doctrine is in part that of the Gospel which speaketh concerning the Eternal Life and Death of Souls or that which reckoneth the Soul of man to be the Image of God and not hereafter to Die for the distinguishing of it from the Soul of a Beast which indeed together with the Life it self is returned into nothing no otherwise than as the light of a Candle But as to the other part the present Doctrine is plainly Paradoxal in as much as the Sensitive Soul is banished out of the predicament of a Substance or an accident For first of all I have demonstrated that the Sensitive and Beast-like Soul as well in bruits as that which is in us is not infinite and immortal yet it must needs be so seeing none doubteth but that every natural thing that is born is also Subject unto Corruption by the Law of Nature But we are obliged by Faith to believe that the mind of man is immortal hereafter And so that the mind of man is an abiding substance or a Spirit subsisting and Living in it self after Seperation from the body should not be to be pressed or demonstrated to a Christian whose understanding is subdued into the obedience of Faith but that a most prevalent Atheism had lately arose in the midst of us and in Hypocrites of the Church which by an every way renouncing of the Faith doth shake it self off from the Principles whereby such insolent rashness might be appeased And especially of them who deny all divine Power otherwise neither is it my part to Treate of the immortality of the mind it being written and demonstrated by Augustine and piously copied out word for word by Lessius and by him re-delivered because they are those who have sufficiently proved the same But not yet against those which deny all Divine Power Therefore I might desist by treading the same under foot to re-meditate of it if it had been sufficiently demonstrated by them against the first sort of Atheists and unless I had put a difference of the mind in nature from every Soul of living Creatures unless I say the integrity or entireness of the same should have repect unto the knowledge of nature and that integrity should require a designed difference of man from any other Created things whatsoever and that â—ingly and Principally only according to its cheif and lively part without which man is nothing but a stinking dead Carcase more vile then a Flint and sooner destroyed and broken than any Glass Otherwise Christianity standing the immortality of the Mind standeth and the Substance of that Substander oâ—â—emainer even as also likewise the Mortality of other Souls or their reducement into nothing which is annihilation of a Proper Name And from thence is the true and properly said difference of the same CHAP. XLVI Of the Immortality of our Soul 1. Atheism and that worse than Idolatry 2. Religious Atheists are the worst of all 3. The Life of new Religious persons which prefer themselves before others hath introduced Atheism anew under the Doctrine of the Pâ—lagiam 4. Hypocrites abuse the Scriptures 5. The Argument of perfect Atheists 6. That modern Atheism was foreseen in times past 7. The foolishness of their Argument 8 Of what the Faith of Atheists is 9. Some Arguments against Atheists from things granted 10. Every thing understood is a Lyer while it is equalized with things understood by Faith 11. It is further demonstrated by the authority of Scripture 12. The Bread which comes down from Heaven Prophesied of 13. The remainder out of blessed Augustine 14. The mind cannot be generated by the disposition of Bodies 15. A neutrality of Beings unknown to the Schools THe Jewes of old presently after the Cessation of miracles were straightway hurried unto Idolatry a mad worshiping of Idols But the modern Age being more wicked then they of the Circumcision slideth voluntarily by degrees into Atheism For Lay-men being exsecrably involued in daily Sins do not only neglect God the invisible Fountaine of all good But also some that are bound or engaged to the Church eating up in the midst of us the Sins of the people do â—coffe at God and protest that they are indebted nothing unto him Because they believe nothing Accounting the Faith it self to be a meer politick apparitions Imagination and so that all Religions are indifferent Because they are those which they believe he introduced only to restrain people under a civil Law of living and that the are therefore almost every where different and alike just they being divulged by the Statute Law of Princes or right of customes received For else it might be a free thing to believe and do any thing if the commerces of men should not perish thereby For there are those who do believe and foolishly utter these things because Priests and Religious men themselves do privily profess unto
notwithstanding of Priofity if they are weighed in the Ballance of Truth they are onely the Atributes of Motions but never of Time or Duration because Priority Slowness c. do bespeak only an unseparable Relation unto the parts of Motions immediately following and slowness compares the swiftness of Motions with each other and therefore Priority Slownesses c. do not so much measure Time or Duration but only in respect of a dayly Motion For truly a humane and undistinct weakness hath through a certain sluggishness and dulness meted out all peculiar Motions with a diary or diurnal Motion Because they do not regard that the Priorities of Motions are not properly the duration of Time it self but rather a universal distance of a general Motion And although Duration it self of Time be and be present in all things yet that this is altogether a Stranger from the succession of Motions From hence therefore Time hath begun to be considered as it were a successive and frail Being by every instant Especially because the Schooles having imitated the blockishnesses of the Vulgar have at length accustomed themselves to confound Time with the Motion of the Heaven It 's no wonder therefore if the great Heroes or Worthies considering the thingliness of Time by such Beginnings have not been able to conceive of the same Because seeing it involveth an actual Infinite which one only thing is Eternal it is from it self of necessity not to be comprehended by that which is Infinite For Time is thought to succeed and to have parts because parts should follow themselves in Motions Seeing Time and Motion are unlike things and so far different from each other as a Mortal and Finite thing is from an Infinite For although Motion be made in Time Motion can be no more co-measured by Man through Time than Man is able to measure Man himself by God who is lives and is moved in God For if God would have the whole course of the Heaven for the future to be so unequally inordinate that no Motion could be made equal unto it should therefore Time also be in it self unequal Or should that cease to be which now is Yea if the Motion of the Heavens should cease as at sometime it shall cease shall Time therefore cease likewise Shall Now it self be no longer Now for what doth that belong unto Time which happeneth in Time For truly it hath its own free Being without Respect Reflexion or Reciprocation unto any other thing Indeed Time is not given unto us for a measure or that in it self it is to be measured but it hath a free Being in him from whence is all Essence For Example God is in every Creature For God is Good as he is all Good but not this or that Good but in as much as he is this or that Good he is not all or every Good and in such a respect he hath a Being in created Things For as God is one only Good in all things so in like manner also all Good is essentially this one true Good Likewise God is every where present in all things and his Continuance or Duration is the Duration of all and every of things In like manner also the light of the Sun is a Being and something in it self because it enlightneth and heates yet without and on this side the Sun it is nothing After the same manner eternal Duration is Time in created things Because without and besides an eternal Duration it is a meer nothing privatively and negatively Wherefore as long as there shall be any created things Time shall never cease to be The Lord hath said Thou art my Son this Day have I begotten Thee Because Eternity is nothing but one only Now but one only To day I have begotten Thee from the Womb before the Day-Star was Christ was born from the Womb in Time and yet before Lucifer or the Day-Star was Because in Time there is no Priority or Succession Before therefore denotes a Priority of the Succession of Motions and an excellency of Dignity but not a Priority of Time Because from the Beginning even unto the finishing of Age it is nothing but one only Now For so The Lamb was sacrificed from the Beginning of the World and his death saves the dead before the Lords Incarnation as the Incarnation which makes blessed hath respect unto Motion Indeed it saves the Ancestours which precede according to the course of Life and in respect of Motions conferred among each other but not by the sight or beholding of Duration That the Lyon may not snatch them nor the infernal Pit devour them For those Prayers are for the deceased long after Death when as notwithstanding Souls do for the most part undergo their Judgment presently after expiration Wherefore such kinde of Prayers should be in Vain and made too late if Time should be successive The Church triumpheth in the Comforter her Guide therefore she hath known that all future things are in the same Now of time as if her Prayers had happened before the party died For the Wise Man affirmeth That God made all things at once but Genesis writing the History of the six dayes Work saith also that as many dayes were spent Which sayings should therefore contradict each other if Succession be granted unto Time All things therefore were created in six dayes space yet one only point of time remaining For so the Devil hath known future things in the succession of Motions as they being present in the one only Now of Time The Stars indeed are for Times that is for the successive changes of Times or varieties of Motions but not for the continuance of our Life the bound whereof is appointed by the Almighty But indeed Priority or Formerliness is most difficulty sequestred from Time For although we abstract Time from Place Motion and a Body Yet by reason of an opposite custom and the novelty of the thing it is very difficult to desist from Priority in Time no otherwise than as any one who is wont to cut Bread with his left hand that thing is troublesome for his right Hand to do although he rightly performeth many other things by his right Hand Yet therefore a difficulty and unwontedness of understanding doth not change any thing in things or oblige the Essence of Time that it may accommodate it self to our Errours For what doth a Priority it self of Motions in Bodies belong to Time Or what doth Priority hurt Time which is due to Motion alone If through ignorance it be translated into Time But because a Priority of Motions in order to Duration bespeakes an immediate respect unto another Motion to wit of dayes and years whereby we measure all other Motions therefore Priority is abusively derived into duration Otherwise surely it ought first to be manifested that that Motion of the day should therefore be Time because it happens in time which being proved then Priority might be referred unto Duration and not otherwise
of eternal Life that is a Superiority over the necessities of Death At length if death had happened from a Law from the Punishment and Curse of Sin it should be false that God had not made Death because in very deed and immediately Death had proceeded from God and not from a natural Cause or that of Nature corrupted And by so much a stronger right where the same Person the Almighty Creator is the Law-giver like as also the Executer Last of all Sin is a mental Being or a Non-Being which cannot produce a real and actual Being And therefore Death at its Beginning had not proceeded from natural Causes even as at this Day Death doth arise in bruit Beasts equally as in us and therefore Death in its Beginning had been different in the whole kind from that at this day And therefore the Text should speak that which is ridiculous God made not Death if by reason of disobedience he had cursed Nature that it should die It is therefore of necessity that the Death of Man in its Beginning began and was made from second Causes altogether natural whereby we die at this day Also at this day Death hath reciprocally invaded through the natural Causes of defiled Nature even as in times past in its Beginning Indeed although Adam became Mortal from eating of the Apple yet his Death happened not but naturally some Ages after and from Old Age as from second Causes Far therefore be a Law an opposing thereof Sin a Curse in the original of Death appearing so many Ages after from second Causes speaking as it were in our presence Therefore every and the total Cause whereby Man hath immediately framed Death for himself is to be seen in the Position For although we are now Mortal yet we die not when we will and when we desire Because Death proceeded not from the Will or from Sin but from the Apple Neither indeed because Death it self was in the Apple as in a mortal Poyson but there was in the Apple the Concupiscence of the Flesh an incentive of Lust a be-drunkening of Luxury for a Beast-like Generation in the Flesh of Sin which Flesh carried with it the natural Causes of Defects and necessities of Death Wherefore it is likely to be true if the Serpent had not been able to obtain of Man that by Sinning he should eat of the Apple that he had cast an Apple cropped from thence unto the Root of some lawful Tree that by this means the Enemy of our Life might rejoyce to have introduced Death And that thing is sufficiently gathered from the Text which doth not say If thou shalt eat of that Tree but he saith In whatsoever day thou shalt eat thou shalt die the Death As if he should denounce that that danger of Death to come was fore-ordained For for this purpose the World was created and the Instruments of Generation were given unto Man because the Corruption of Nature the necessity of regeneration in a Saviour and the virgin Purity thereof was foreseen Let therefore those brawlings cease whether Eve ate an Apple or indeed a Fig. For the Text calls an Apple That which is pleasing to the Eye but a Fig doth not so allure by the sight of it And that one only Tree was of that Property whereof then there was not the like nor at this day is there another read to exist among created Things Finally the Words of the Text I will multiply thy Miseries and thy Conceptions so far off is it that they do signifie the Indignation of God and much less his Curse Yea rather they denote his love toward the devoted Sex For truly there is none which knows not that by how much the Life of the devoted Sex shall be the more miserable by so much also that it is nearer to the Son of Man for otherwise tribulations which God sendeth on his Saints and Martyrdom it self should by an equal right be Curses I will add last of all that as the Works of the Flesh are devillish So the Text I will put Enmities between the Seed of the Woman and thy Seed doth fully or plainly confirm this Position For first of all the Woman of whose Seed God there speaketh is the God-bearing Virgin which as a Virgin hath left no other Seed an Enemy to the Serpent but the Sons of Light the Sons of God and those who are renewed by the holy Spirit who have no Enmities with the Eggs of any creeping thing but only with the Sons of the Devil and Darkness forasmuch as they keep the Seeds of Sin Therefore the Text there promiseth a future Regeneration in the God-bearing Virgin calling those that are not renewed the Seed of the Devil because they are Adamical Flesh Therefore those things being heeded which I have already above demonstrated original Sin doth not properly expect a quickning or the moment of hecceity For although the Soul cannot be guilty of Sin before it be Yet seeing original Sin is in the Contagion of the Flesh it self is presently in the supposition of the concrete or composed Body after the manner of its receiver and assoon as there is a sexual mixture of the Seeds according to that saying For behold I was conceived in Iniquities before the coming of the Soul because in Sins my Mother hath conceived me For Sin is in the same point wherein Death consisteth the which indeed is in the very mixture of the Seeds For Death is immediately in the Archeus but not in the Soul which thing the sometimes mortal indisposition it self of the Archeus proveth from whence the conception is made voide which before now was in its whole hope vital And although the impurity of the material thing supposed be before the Flesh thereby generated and therefore also before the Soul yet there is not properly Sin unless the Soul â—all put that on There is therefore a far different infection of original Sin than of any other Sins whatsoever which require a consent of the Soul For other Sins the Soul it self committeth but original Sin defiles the Soul not consenting because the Thingliness or Essence of that original Sin is the very Flesh of Sin For neither therefore is it called the Soul of Sin but the Flesh of Sin because the Soul is defiled by the Flesh But the Devil not from elsewhere than from himself Therefore Man admires mercy but not the Devil Therefore from the good pleasure of the Creator the Apple did carry in it not only the Concupiscence of the Flesh but consequently also the generation of Seed but there was not therefore a Faculty in the Apple of propagating the sensitive Soul The Arbitrator of the World in creating would oblige himself to create every living Soul in every soulified Body when corporeal Dispositions had come unto the bound of enlivening For therefore the Apple presently after it was eaten disposed the Arterial Blood unto a Seed and from thence into a sensitive Soul And that thing was
changed for those only shall rise again changed who shall rise again glorified in the Virgin-Body of Regeneration which change the Apostle understood because that He who is not born again cannot enter into the Kingdom of God And therefore He that shall rise again being not born again by consequence also shall not be changed from his antient Being if he shall rise again from Death neither therefore also shall he have entrance unto Gods Kingdom because by the new Birth the whole Man is made Spirit And therefore he which shall rise again from the new Birth shall rise again in a spiritual Nature Otherwise He that is born of the Flesh and not born again of the Spirit shall hear indeed the Voice of him that is born of the Spirit but shall not know from whence it may come or whither it may go This indeed is the changing of Bodies into Spirit and the change of Bodies in the Resurrection or it is the Glorification of those that are to be saved after the Resurrection But other Sins were expiated indeed through Repentance with the victory and triumph of the Lamb but the loss of that Virginity and primitive Purity doth without Regeneration reserve an Eternal Spot of Impurity and Uncapacity No otherwise than as a virginal conservation and Integrity of the re-born Faithful gives unto Virgins that are born again a Golden or Laurel Crown equalized unto Martyrdom Christ therefore as he is the Father of this Virginity so also the Father of the Age to come But those that are to be saved are his own new Creature and new Regeneratition Who to wit hath given them Power to become the Sons of God unto these who believe in his Name who are born not of Bloods nor of the Will of the Flesh nor by the Will of Man but of God after a most chast manner of the holy Spirit by whom before the brutal Concupiscence of the Flesh arose it was decreed that altogether every Man ought to be born of his Mother being a Virgin Therefore Christ being the Top and Lover of Chastity doth distinguish Men as well in this Age or Life by Chastity as in Heaven and will grace them with an unimitable and eternal Priviledge For a great Company followed the Lamb whithersoever he should go and Sang the Song which no other was able to Sing But these are they who are not defiled with Women For there are Virgins of both Sexes Because there shall not be there Jew or Greek But they are all one in Christ For the Almighty hath chosen his Gelded Ones who have Gelded themselves for the Kingdom of God its sake of whom is the Kingdom of Heaven Therefore married Persons are reckoned to be defiled with Women and Mothers to have conceived their off-springs in Sin and in this thing are far inferiour to Virgins For indeed because the Gospel promiseth unto Mortals not only that the Son of God was Incarnate and suffered for their Salvation But that moreover these two Mysteries least else they should be frustrate are to be applyed unto individual Persons I indeed contemplate thus of this Application that as man through the Sin of lust brake no less the Intent of God than his Admonishment and the humane Nature was therefore afterwards radically Corrupted and that thereupon another and almost brutal Generation thereof followed Therefore the joyful Message hath included as well an Abolishment of Original Sin as of other Sins consecutively issuing from thence Who by dying destroyed our Death not his own because he had none The which is not understood of temporal Death for the righteous Man as yet to this day dyeth just even as before the Passion of the Lord but of Eternal Death Therefore seeing man since the Fall ought to be Born Increase and Multiply no longer from God but from the Bloods of the Sexes by the Will of the Flesh and of Man nor from thence could ever be able to rise again of himself and to re-assume his lost and antient purity nor cease that he might again begin to be otherwise and better therefore the joyful message hath brought an assurance unto us that Baptisme should be unto us for the remission of sins through a new birth of Water and of the holy Spirit That our mind as it were through a new Nativity of its Inne by Regeneration might be partakers of the unspotted Virginity and humanity of our Lord. Which New-birth doth indeed repose the Soul into its former state to wit by taking away the sin or debt and the stinks or noisomenesses thereof but by reason of the continuance of Adamical flesh in which the Immortal Mind liveth the antient possession or inclination unto sin is not taken away nor is there a translation of the corruption drawn from the impure original of the blood of Adam But that this is really so we are perswaded to believe For God doth manifestly daily grant a testimony of that actual Grace and attained Purity to be derived into the Body of those that are Baptized through a true and substantiall Regeneration as well in Body as in Soul For truly for this end and in this respect alone Mahometans are Baptized for a proper reproach because Baptisme from the fact or deed done however unlawfully it be administred and received takes away from them for the future the noisomness inbred in them otherwise to endure for their Life time such as in all the Hebrews or Jewes in many places up and down we do daily observe to be with loathing and weariness The true effect therefore of Regeneration and its co-promised character doth much shine in Baptisme even outwardly also in a defectuous Body And the enemies of the Christian Name do serve us for unvoluntary witnesses unto this thing Yea the perpetuity of the same Effect confirms the unobliterable Character or Impression of Baptisme and the wickedness of it being repeated But the New-birth by Baptisme doth not yet for that Cause take away a necessity of Death For Baptisme forsaketh its own with the fardle of a defiled and Adamical body begotten by the Will of Man And for that Cause also the Soul as subject unto the Vices of the corrupted Body and of a Will long agoe corrupted Wherefore by reason of the frailty of Impure Nature also an easie inclination and frequency of Sinning Baptisme hath been scarce sufficient for those of ripe years otherwise for the more younger sort it is abundantly sufficient Therefore the Sacrament of the Altar is Wine which buddeth forth Virgins Which is as much as to say the end and scope of the Lords Incarnation or of the instituted Sacrament of the Eucharist should bud forth Virgins as demonstrating that the intent of the Creator from the beginning esteemed of and reckoned upon Virginity alone and of how great abhorrency Numb 25. Luxury is in the sight of the Lord. For although Bigamy or a Plurality of Wives and likewise a dismissing of ones Wife and much loosing of
But if it listeth us to enquire into the cause hereof It is certain that Eve after the eating of the forbidden Apple made her self subject to the itch of Lust stirred up and admitted the Man unto copulations and from hence that the conceived humane Nature was corrupted and remaining degenerate thenceforward Through the Cause of which corruption Posterity are deprived of an incomparable purity From whence there is place for conjecture that Eve did by the Member through which she became subject unto many Miseries testifie among posterity a successive fault of her fall and bloody defilement in Nature For the part wherein the Image of God ought to be conceived by the holy Spirit became a sink of filths and testifies the abuse and fault of an unobliterable sin and therefore also suffers Because In sorrow shalt thou bring forth thy Sons in manner of bruit beasts because henceforward thou shalt conceive after the manner of bruits For so that Curse hath entred into Nature and shall there remain And by the same Law also a necessity of Menstrues For before sin the Young going forth the Womb being shut had not caused pain Wherefore it is lawful to argue from the Premises That the incomparable Virgin-Mother of God the Ark of the Covenant never admitted into her any corruption and by consequence was never subject to Menstrues as neither to have suffered womanish discomodities Because she was she who by the good pleasure of God hath the Moon and the Properties of the Moon subjected under her feet Unto Whom next unto God be Honour and Praise CHAP. CIX Life IF I must at length Phylosophize of Long Life I must first look into what Life is and then what the Life of Man what immortal and Adamical Life is afterwards what a Sensitive and Short Life is what a Diseasie what a Healthy Life what the Life of the World and what Eternal Life is To which end it is convenient to repeat some Lessons from my Premises First of all therefore Life is a Light and formal Beginning whereby a thing acts what it is commanded to act But this Light is given by the Creator as being infused at one onely Instant even as Fire is Struck out of a Flint it is enclosed under the Identity and Unity of a Form and is distinguished by general Kindes and Species But it is not a fiery combustive Light a consumer of the radical moisture It is as well Vital in the Fish as in the Lyon and as well in the Poppy as in Pepper Neither also doth heat fail in us by reason of a consumption of the radical moisture Neither on the other hand doth moisture fail through a defect of heat but onely through a diminishment and extinguishment alone of the vital Powers and also of the Light The Fire Light Life Forms Magnal Place c. are neither Creatures not Substances as neither comprehended in the Catalogue of Accidents Neither therefore do I distinguish the Form in vital things from their Life the mind of Man being on both sides excepted To wit there is a certain Life which is mute or dumb and scarce appeareth such as is met with in Minerals The which notwithstanding do declare that they live and perform their Offices by their Marks and remarkable Signs of vital Faculties And then there is another Life which is a little more unfolded or manifest Such as is in the Seeds of things tending to the period of their Species In the next place a Third Life is seen in Plants increasing themselves and bringing forth off-spring by a successive multiplying Next a Fourth Life is manifest in bruit Beasts by Motion Sense and a voluntary Choice with some kind of Discourse of Imagination At length the Last Life is now obscured in the Immortal Mind and Substance and is after some sort unfolded by the sensitive Soul its Vicaresse The Life therefore is not the Balsam not the Mummy not in the next place the Spirit of the Arterial Blood although this Spirit be the Conserver of the Body Because the Life is not a Matter yea nor a Substance but the very expresse Form of the Thing it self Moreover I being about to speak of the Immortal Life of Men I will follow the Text For indeed because the punishment of the broken Precept was Death For Death came not from God but from the condition of a Law I say the Almighty made not Death as neither a Medicine of Destruction in the Earth And that must be understood onely in respect of Men For neither ought the whole Nature and Condition of the Universe to be bespattered for the Sin of Adam so as that Bruits are made subject to Death through the corruption or deviation of our kind For truly even before Sin Bruits ought to dye to wit some whereof the Lord of things had substituted for meat and fodder to others For they ought naturally to dye every annihilable Life and Form whereof were onely one and the same thing Indeed it was of necessity that those Forms should perish whatsoever do obtain their first or chief antecedent and subsequent dispositions from a corporal wedlock of the Seeds The Death therefore of Bruits was not worthy of the word Death which included an extinguishment and annihilating of a Light but not a separation of the same with a preservation of the Light separated Therefore it was the great God his good pleasure that he made Man into the nearest Image of the Divine Majesty as a living Soul nor subject unto death Therefore neither is it said that God made Death It is therefore believed that Adam before transgression was Immortal from the goodness of the Creator Therefore I knew that Adam indeed was Immortal before the transpression of a Law Yet that it was not natural unto him from the root of Life but for the Tree of Life's sake For otherwise the planting of this Tree in Paradise had been vain if Man could not have suffered the successive alterations and calamities of Ages That Tree therefore was created for the powers and necessities of Renovation renewing of Youth yea and prevention of Old Age For although the Body by Creation was not capable of being wounded nor subject unto Diseases yet it had by little and little felt the successive changes of Ages if its vigor had not been continued by the Tree of Life For neither is it to be believed that the Lord of things the Saviour of the World was of a worse constitution than our first Parent But that the Redeemer of the World died and so felt the Calamities of Ages that in his thirty second year he was reckoned fifty years of Age. That happened not from his Nature nor from the root of his Life For Death as also the rottenness of Dayes had no right over him but out of his infinite goodness whereby he had appointed himself a Surety for our Sins he would subject himself to miseries and so also to Death in his most glorious
thirst after But now I being constrained by the Reasons and Letters of many moderate wise Men out of divers Kingdoms and States here and there who perswaded me that I was devoutly engaged by the pledge of Health to commit all the Writings of my deceased Father unto the Press and to annex thereunto when and after what manner he closed his Day Also in what State or Condition he left the aforesaid Writings And moreover to supply those things which were lacking for the vindicating the Life of Man-kind from many Errors Torments and Destruction It is That which hath extorted from me to leave all other things and thorowly to review the aforesaid Writings which being finished I gave up my self to hearken to their Calls I suspended my former purpose discoursing in plain and most simple Words the following Narrative in my Mother Tongue according to the tenour of the fore-going Dedication of my Father the which I also imitate by following him in the very same intent thereof The Death of my Father happened on the Thirtieth Day of the Tenth Month December of the Year one thousand six hundred forty four at the sixth hour in the Evening when as he had as yet a full use of Reason and had first required and obtained all his sacred Solemnities and Rights His Life it self was his Disease which remained with him seven Weeks beginning with him after this manner He at sometime returned home in hast on foot at Noon in a cold and stinking Mist which was a cause unto him that when he endeavoured to write a small Epistle of about fifteen lines or did indulge himself with too large a discourse his breathing so failed him that he was constrained to rise up and to draw his breath thorow the nearest Window whereby a Pleurisie was provoked in him at two several times from the which notwithstanding he restored himself perfectly whole yea the day before his Death he being raised upright as yet wrote to a certain Friend of his in Paris there being among other these following words Praise and Glory be to God for evermore who is pleased to call me out of the World and as I conjecture my Life will not last above four and twenty hours space For truly I do to day sustain the first assault of a Fever by reason of the weakness of Life and defect thereof whereby I must finish it The which accordingly followed after that he had bestowed a special Benediction or Blessing on me the which I esteem for a great Legacy I do not here more largely extend the property of his Disease by reason of the straitness of time seeing that I am besides to make mention of him in my Compendium from all things unto the one thing the which I endeavour God willing it to publish in a short time A few days preceding his Death he said unto me Take all my Writtings as well those crude and uncorrected as those that are thorowly expurged and joyn them together I now commit them to thy care accomplish and digest all things according to thy own judgement It hath so pleased the Lord Almighty who attempts all things powerfully and directs all things sweetly Therefore attentive Reader I intreat thee that thou do not at the first sight wrongfully judge me because I have taken care to have the more Crude Writings Printed as being mixed with the more Digested ones those not being Restored or Corrected Know thou that the desire of promoting this great and laborious Work hath been the cause thereof at length thou maiest experience that the desirous Reader was to be by all means satisfied no less in this than in the aforesaid Writings and then thou wilt judge that I have well and faithfully performed all things seeking nothing for my own gain the which shall more clearly appear by this my Preface I call God to witness that my Desire unto whom it is known doth extend unto the help of my Neighbour Wherefore read thou and read again this Writing and it shall not repent thee for ever for I tell thee in the height of truth that I have published these things from pity alone as taking good notice that men by reason of their own Imaginations are so little careful of or affected with the safety of an Eternal and Temporal Life Stop your antient in and out-steps enter ye into the Royal path Eternal dismiss ye those innumerable by-paths which I my self have with exceeding labour and difficulty thorowly beaten in seeking whereby I might come unto the knowledge of the Truth endeavourm in the mean time to find out the ordination of all created things and their harmony and that by all the more internal and external means which I was able to imagine I then bent all my Senses whereby I might make my self known unto Wise men so called hoping at length to find some Wise Man not learned according to the common manner in all places where I should passe thorow which I might call Nations of whatsoever profession or condition they were I spake to them according to their desire that I might joyn in friendship with them by discourse and according to my abilities I imparted unto them the whole cause by this and other means I touched at many clear fundamental Knowledges and Arts all which I heare advisedly pass by And when I understood all and every of them to be onely the esteemed workmanship of a great Man I discerned that by how much the more a thing was absurd vain and foolish or frivolous by so much the more it was exalted and respected or honoured the which servitude I perceiving became voluntarily averse thereto as being one who did prosecute plain simplicity I descending ascended unto essential and occult or hidden properties and for my aid the understanding of some Latine Books seemed to be desired to this end I read over diverse times the New Testament in the Latine Idiome and the Germane that by that means I might in a few days not onely understand the Latine stile but also that in the aforesaid Testament I might find the perfect and long wished for simple one onely and Eternal Truth and Life which the one thing to wit God doth onely and alone earnestly require and is averse to all duallity or plurality So also whatsoever God hath created he created all of it in that one and by that one thing otherwise he had not kept an order And by how much the more I knew this amiable free and one only thing in all things and did enjoy it I addressed my self to a quiet study I was outwardly cloathed with simple or homely raiment and for the more inward contracting of my mind as also for curing thereof I acted many things known to God alone as also for the preservation of my health and increasing of my strongth I lived soberly for many Years together I also abstained from fleshes like as also from Fishes Wine and Ale or Beer and that so far that I
Books in great number of the Divines and Doctors of Medicine of all Europe maintaining their Athiesm consisting of blasphemous Censures the which Censures they had easily collected because they live in all Countries under every kind of habit and countenance of Religion where Money or Merchandise abounds and these censorious Infamies they did every where spread abroad in Temples and other publick Places whereby the little Book was made known and was hunted after by every one I have known many seeking to compass it at a dear rate neither could they obtain it for no Printer had any thing of it to be found seeing that they kept it only to themselves it being so often printed only for the collecting of the Stripes of Censurers they suffering the loss of above fifty thousand Royals whereby they might overthrow the Author thereof Moreover because the aforesaid little Book or Discourse was approved of by some Wise Learned and Moderate Men great injury was done to the Author God foresaw otherwise and blessed him that he should not be suppressed according to their desire And lo in this restraint suffered from above he published upon it another little Book instead of a forerunner and this other principal Book was to follow after that it may cleerly be manifest those Writings of his are not afraid of a Censors Rod. Fourthly that the Authors own original Copy of his Book or Writings in the Heirs Possession should be by craft or prize apprehended it cannot be accomplished to be abolished by the Fire before that it be printed for I certainly know that some disdainful Persons have by sending a certain Bookseller before them offered to the fore-threatned Heir a thousand Crownes in hand and besides offering an Assurance of another thousand on the condition that he would deliver up all the Writings of his Father which were in his Possession no one piece being detained the Heir smelt out the deceit as being void of the desire of Money he heard him spake he asked him many Questions he enquired into all things and plainly confounded him so that at last he imprudently brake forth into reproaches departing home with a vain Journey These and many such like Attempts being acted which the Heir hath had experience of do breed in him a distrust so that he only requires a preservation from him who aspireth unto those things that he may not be deceived Besides I have understood if I rightly remember that himself hath taken care to have those Writings imprinted by an honest and faithful Man who will be diligent to sell them into all parts Fiftly to suborn baâ—â—ard Books on the Author containing strange and false Doctrine that would be made manifest for the reason of Invention doth now every where plainly appear besides we should so awaken the Heir thereby and according to the signification of his name he would so loudly exclaim that it should be perceived by all unto whom means should not be wanting although he wants a Patrimony for truly it is affirmed and is the very truth that he hath found Elias the Artist and hath made him his familiar Friend by help of whom he shall propagate the Phylosophy of Pythagoras whose ultimate Tables he doth by unwearied Labour dig up with the signification of the Parent of the metallick Rod. The matter being thus let us not provoke him let us spare our Pains and preserve our Charges or Expences for if this Doctrin doth bear any evil intent before it it will soon goe to ruine of its own accord and if it descend from God and we resist it we could not satisfie our purpose and we should spend our pains and costs in vain bringing on our selves destruction both now and hereafter When as all the rest of the Doctors had now heard these solid Reasons they returned him great thanks and esteemed his disprovement of what the other had said for a decision of the matter except the aforesaid Seniour this man hearing those things through grief and fear was smitten with an Apoplexâ—e and so died an exceeding sudden Death his Sons cryed out with loud howlings or lamentations his Neighbours were awakened and resorted thither apace being ignorant of what was done they found all his Family exceedingly perplexed Whither likewise a studious Man approached who had observed this rout he presently sacrificed to his own profit for when he saw all those Writings there laying up and down and left he taking them up hid them under his Cloak and presently withdrew himself asson as the day shone forth he did his endeavour to read them unto every one of his Friends and Favourites who spread it abroad and made it known Hence it was further spread abroad that thou in digging hadst obtained the Will or Testament of Pythagoras and it was declared by the Supream Lord of hidden Treasures this Lord did presently commit thee to custody because thou hadst not brought forth the Testament of Pythagorus to light the which ought not to be attained by theft but by gift the Lord appointed three of his Wife Men the Seekers or Lovers of peculiar natural Science whom many of all sorts of Nations and Conditions yea and the great Ones of the World did follow or defend to go thither where thou wast detained who thus spake unto thee Be of good cheer this sentence shall be to be sustained by thee which our Lord hath brought upon thee the which begins after this manner By the command of thy Supream Lord unto whom it is certainly known that thou Mercurius Van Helmont in digging hast found a Treasure which he had commanded to be enquired after by his Subjects by whom thou being accused and convicted by certain and full proofs art condemned to Death unless thou shalt bring forth that very patched and covered Testament of Pythagoras and likewise shalt most fully discover by what way and knowledge thou hast found that These things being performed a liberty shall be allotted thee throughout all his Empire Thou hearing these things with a sorrowful Mind and being again refreshed with cheerfulness didst certainly know that by proceeding in denyals thou couldest not escape Death wherefore thou answeredst unto those that were sent in message unto thee after this manner following I intreat you oh ye Wise like as also Prudent Sirs if I can prevaile any thing with you that ye mutually attest my thankful mind unto our Lord for so clementious a sentence wherewith he hath vouchsafed to prosecute me and to demonstrate unto him that I have imprudently retained that Testament as being ignorant that it was to be delivered I now prepare my self to preform it together with all the Experience and Knowledge whereby I have obtained it and that indeed unto whom it shall please our Lord so that his Goodness may grant me the space of a whole Week within which time I am to satisfie our Lord whereby I may re-obtain my liberty according to the tenour of his Sentence hoping that that will
not be refused For in very deed and according to a just computation I stand in need of two dayes to wit that of Saturn with that of Sol whereby I may with my self begin and perfect every Enterprize or that I may dispose of all things in order which in the following day of Lune and so afterwards in the whole Week following I shall distinctly signifie Whereto the wise Men answered Oh Mercurius we are instructed with a full Command from our Lord by whose authority we condescend to thy Petition as being supported with Equity thou shalt perform all things according to thy own sentence that the wise Sirs being not learned after the common manner and moderate or courteous Men may find no fault in thee when they shall hear thee in the said day or subject thee to examination and even as thou hast bound thy self to be kept in custody for thy own and that an ample limitted term of dayes until thy promises are accomplished we will alwayes remain with thee for an enquiry into thy Conceptions the which thou shalt frame in this two precedent dayes space Thou rejoycedst in their Company for whosoever he was that beheld them gathered by their habit and gestures that they were godly for truly their Countenance did carry a divine gladness before it and thou didst say unto them Seeing that the day cometh for the winning whereof my obediences are not in the least to be contested know ye oh my wise Men that I prefixed no time for the recollecting of my Memory nor any the like thing because I have no need thereof but considering that to day is the first day of the Week but to morrow the last day the Lords day the seventh day wherein he had finished all things and wherein he had rested It hath seemed meet unto me to distribute and contain my Knowledge according to the rate of the Dayes of the week I beginning the future day of Lune one the sixth day of the week after the custom of Mortals for before God all things are eternal and present so that unto us as unto Mortals the first day may be accounted the last and I beginning from Saturns day to number backwards have need of two and forty dayes for the fulfilling of the whole week that which would stir up a weariness in many through the largeness of time In the mean time I will briefly rehearse all things I Mercurius being from my tender years brought up by my Father in the select School of Hermes and there after some sort seasoned my Spirit being unquiet was not content therewith as desiringly desiring thorowly to know the whole sacred Art or Tree of Life and to enjoy it Neither would I set my hands to Work unless I could certainly understand this from the beginning to the end Moreover I concluded in my mind that through an approvement of the truth I might be brought thither at the last without the help of outward Instruction I distributed with my self all Creatures first those External and Corporeal as I may so say and then those Internal Spiritual and Corporifying ones which Parts I did again refer or reduce towards and into one I was not able to subdivide and know those Creatures called Corporeal ones without the adjoyning of the Spiritual Corporifying ones I beheld those with an unwonted Countenance even as according to my Judgment I had consequently placed all in every one his own order as being free from the anticipated or fore-possessed false and obstinate Opinions of the Heathens who have never frequented Universities as by this my unpolished Style doth sufficiently appear Nevertheless well observe ye I utter no Saying in vain but that it doth signifie something and pertain to the whole My Spirit could perceive no delight or desire of study in Temporary and Fraile or Mortal things I did alwayes thirst and breath after Perfect and Eternal ones I was taken up into admiration within my self from momentary necessary created things and from hence on God who created Heaven and Earth at once the which the Prophane Phylosophers cannot apprehend and they who desire to come hitherto they must worship God by a firme Faith with an humble Hope and in true Love then shall they obtain a perfect Knowledge of himself and of all other Creatures before their Beginning in their Being or Essence and after their transchanging the which I will more largely and manifestly make out so far as may be done by Words for the Temporal and Eternal Health and Preservation of the Soul and Body according to the measure of every ones Capacity which all have not alike nor had they And that they might be the further holpen towards Salvation God out of his Goodness raised up Moses of the Prophets who might be useful to them in a Type which after the Dutch Language is also as much as to say Books and by his Writings to wit in his first Book of Creations which containeth all of whatsoever can be desired the which I in part as the whole had sometimes learned by heart according to Jerom's Translation the rather because it comprehends all things which man in his Own-ness Selfishness and My-ness and the like Appropriations cannot understand For whatsoever God hath created he hath created free and at liberty by One and in One and he that arrogates that thing to himself makes that very thing it self his own seperates himself from God and doth in himself enter into the way that leadeth towards utter Darkness And as God is an Incomprehensible Eternal Piercing and a Filling Fire Light and Glory wanting Beginning and Ending such is he in the Men his Saints Hy-lichten according to the Dutch is as much as to say He shineth in a co-united Love and Glory and in the Godly Sa-lichten according to the Dutch expresseth He ought to shine he will be so according to more and less or a greater and less measure but in evil Men who are Eternal in the Dark and separated he is also an Eternal burning Fire even as it is said Therefore even as God is the Eternal Good in the Dutch Idiome it expresseth God so also all whatsoever was created he created Good The first Man was constituted into Light and Good as being created of God yet not united in Eternal Rest and Glory but as being created after the Image of God in a freedom of Will the which is now becomeâ— Property in us through the seducement and transgression of the Prohibition and Admonition of God in the touching and eating of Death or of the Fruit of the forbidden Tree which Hevah or Eve the Mother of all Living touched and ate Those called the wise Men did speak unto thee Run thou not out so far before we perceive whether thou hast known thy self and that thou hast told us what thy self art Mercurius I am a Man created by the Almighty God after his own Image and Likeness possessing my Body of the Clay of the Earth which
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
the disposing of instruments and the effect or thing produced 6. That heat is not an agent in seminal generation 7. Why Aristotle hath not known the truth of Nature 8. His Books of natural Philosophy contain onely tristes 9. How young men are to be instructed in the place or room of Schoole-Philosophy 10. Into what great Apolloes young men might climbe 11. The Prerogatives of the fire 12. What a young man so instructed might judge 13. Privations do not succeed in the flowing of Seeds to generation 14. There is no form of a dead Carcase 15. That generation and corruption do not receive each other 16. The Vulcan of life vanisheth without the corrupting of it self 17. Death is not the corruption of life 18. The distinction of privation and corruption 19. Of forms there is no corruption 20. The ignorance of Galen 21. His ridiculous Volumes concerning the decrees of Hipocrates and Plato 22. His books of preserving of health are foolish THE Schooles have so sworn constancy and their end to their Aristotle that even to this day they by putting one name for another do call him the Philosopher whom notwithstanding I certainly finde to be altogether ignorant of Nature and it grieveth me not to write down some causes which have enforced me hereunto and that for no other end than that hereafter as well Professors as young beginners may not through an aptness to believe and a custome of assenting be made to wander out of the way nor may suffer themselves hence-forward to be led by a blinde man into the ditch For otherwise I tell no mans tale nor am I more displeased with Aristotle than with a non ens or a non-being Therefore first of all Aristotle defineth Nature It is the Principle or beginning of motion as also of rest in Bodies in whom it is in by it self and not by accident Wherein I finde more errours and ignorances of the definer than words First therefore the word it is in sheweth that he speaketh of a Body really existing but not of his impossible matter 2. He denotes that such Bodies are not of the number or supposed things of Nature For truly it belongeth not to Bodies to be in Bodies by it self and not by accident 3. He takes away any accidents from the Catalogue of Nature as if they were without besides and above Nature because accidents are in by accident 4. He sets down that Bodies which have motion or rest by accident are likewise without Nature 5. That the Being of things is in Nature in Nature it self before the day or motion or rest of the same Because it must needs be that something first be before that it move be moved or doth rest And so the Principle of Being goes before the beginning of moving or resting notwithstanding Nature cannot be before its existence For if the beginning of motion or rest should be latter or an effect as to their Being Nature should be an effect as to its being a natural thing 6. What if God after Creation had enjoyned neither motion nor rest rest indeed according to Aristotle presupposeth the bound of motion there had now been a Creature and not Nature For God in the beginning created the Heaven and the Earth Now Nature was not understood by Aristotle to wit there was sometimes a Creature and it actually existed before or on this side Nature here defined 7. Bodies in which the beginning of motion is external and by accident suppose thou when 〈◊〉 heat of the Sun moves the Seed to increase or a Woman with Childe by accident transforms the imperfect Infant by her own Imagination should not be under Nature as neither that accidental beginning 8. To rest is not not to be moved but to cease from motion and so not to be moved is more general than rest Therefore Nature absolutely taken should be onely after the existence of Nature 9. If the beginning of motion in a moveable thing be Nature and the efficient cause be properly called the beginning of motion as he saith heat not elementary to be therefore it must needs be that the efficient cause is inward which is against Aristotle or that Nature in as much as it is the beginning of motion is not in Bodies most neerly or inwardly by it self 10. Every outward efficient cause is the beginning of motion in a thing by accident But every efficient cause according to Aristotle is external therefore no efficient cause external is natural which is contrary to his second Book of Physicks 11. Whatsoever things are moved by the Mathematicks and also a Mill moved by the Winde or a stream should not be moved by Nature But I believe that Nature is the Command of God whereby a thing is that which it is and doth that which it is commanded to do or act This is a Christian definition taken out of the holy Scriptures 12. But Aristotle contrary to his own Precepts of a definition takes the difference which he thinketh to be constitutive for the general kinde of the thing defined in Nature to wit the formall beginning of motion and rest But for the constitutive difference he takes the matter or Body wherein the said beginning of motion is But Christians are held to believe Nature to be every Creature to wit a Body and accidents no lesse than the beginning of motion it self 13. Death also although it be the beginning by it self of rest in a dead Carcase yet Christians do believe it not to be created by the Lord and so neither to be Nature and although it may light naturally on it yet that happens not by reason of the death but of its natural Causes But Aristotle in another place a like stumblingly touching on Nature saith Every power of the Soul seemeth to be a partaker of some other certain Body for neither dares he positively and simply to affirm it than those which are called Elements For even as Souls do differ so also the Nature of that Body doth differ the Seed contains the cause of fruitfulness to wit heat which is not fiery but a spirit or breath in the froathy body of the Seed and the Nature which is in that Spirit answereth in proportion to the Element of the Stars This Precept praised by the Schooles containeth almost as many Errours as Syllables And at length this Writer of natural instruction being exceeding doubtful knowes not what he may call or ought to call Nature For first he saith it to be a Corporeal power of the Soul and therefore he banisheth the understanding out of the powers of the Soul 2. He saith the power of the Soul which he afterwards calleth heat is a partaker of another Body than those that are called Elements As if it were a partaker onely of a Body above an Elementated one and heavenly 3. It is absolutely false and an ignorant thing that any power of the Soul is a partaker of the body although it be tied to the body For every
its obtained Ferment the proper savour of the seed and consequently is disposed thereby into a transmutation of it self For through the putrefaction by continuance that native or seedy moysture as soon as may be thinks of its resolving whence is a certain vapour and afterwards an exhalation A Gas which indeed doth easily ascend out of putrifying things is stirred up and there ariseth out of them a heat at the time of that putrifying of what sort soever it be such as plainly comes to passe in Woods rotting by laying under the ground and the which do straightway thrust forth a spongy smoak because that smoakiness the signifier of the heat and dissolved Body doth threaten a seperation of things of a different kinde and so that vitall Air although but even now more deeply shut up threatens a breaking forth out of its seminall Liquors yet its reins being loosed it wanders first within So new and moyst Hay hath made the un-looked for firings of houses truly not tokens of a slack heat but of heat rising to a degree Therefore the Air having once gotten a moderate heat it by degrees meditates of the perfection of an Archeus doth aspire it and provoketh the lump of the Body placed under its charge to the archieveable dispositions of Forms But what hath been already said concerning Vegetables that doth more plainly appear in the Eggs of Fishes flying Birds and creeping things and most manifestly of all it shines forth in the seeds of four-footed Beasts At length therefore the thin shining and twinckling or bright light doth kindle the aforesaid Air of the Archeus so as thereby he may be made vitall Furthermore as Mineralls are not diminished nor made great by the substituting of off-springs and their manifold propagation yet because they do contain in them their Beginnings from whence they have increased and are therefore although they are not blessed with a fruitfulness of Issue yet they have in their own Monarchy the constitutive radicall and seminall beginnings of themselves within I have already said that this Air is awakened in the seeds of things by a fit matter and then that by the young birth of an inward heat by reason of a received putrifying through continuance it doth conceive a heat and at length a brightness as in Fishes or a shining as in things actually hot not indeed that that splendor is the soul or form of a Plant bruit Beast c. For otherwise there should be of every Plant the same Form in the Species or particular kinde notwithstanding there is in the splendor it self another specifical thingliness conceiving with young by a specificall Odour nor far different from the Splendor which limits the light it self unto this something or particular essential thing So indeed that although that splendor be stirred up by the force of nature alone as putrified Woods things salted and the Sea it self do teach yet it is never made vitall but by the Creator the specifical form of a certain light being added to it the effectress of a thingliness or essence To wit which alone draweth the Odour Splendor and all the properties of the enlightned Air at once into the unity of it self Indeed this is the life or form of a thing for want of whose supply the young degenerateth into a hard piece of flesh in the womb a monster or corruption And although the vitall Air and its Splendor be present and do increase yet because the formall and vitall light faileth which draweth the subaltern or coursary succeeding properties and diversities under unity the young is corrupted and straightway putrifieth Wherefore the Father of Lights alone doth immediately frame or create the Lights of Forms and the Forms of Lights who giveth life and all things to all nor is not far off from every one of us Moreover the progress of generation in hot seeds is of a more easie conception For the seeds do presently putrifie by reason of heat afterwards the Archeus of those doth easily borrow a Splendor as the betroathed Air of a greater light For being not yet contented with the obtained vegetative faculty of his own kinde he breatheth further and proceeds to the light co-promised to his seed and stayeth and is quiet in the sensitive soul as not being able to climbe beyond it But even as in the Systeme or constitution of things there are onely four degrees So also there is a fourfold Form of them one of them indeed is of those which do promise scarce any manifestation of life as the Heaven the Stone Metall Fire-stone Salt Sulphur Liquors Earths likewise barren Vegetables dry bones c. whose form is a certain material light a form containing and giving a Being to the thing and therefore it is also deservedly called essential But the other rank of things seemeth to contain a vitall beginning and character of a Soul by the vigour of nourishment and increasing As are Plants whose form varying from the fore-going form are graced with the Title of life therefore is it to be called the vitall Form Not indeed that such a Form is a living Soul but vitall onely as it beares the entrances or flourishes of a sensitive and living Soul At length the third Order of things obtains a living Form not by Similitude but truly motive and sensitive And therefore it is likewise called a substantial Form not indeed by an absolute name a substance but substantial onely as if it should carry it self after the manner of a certain abstracted spiritual substance And lastly the fourth is truly and one onely substance among them all So it ought to be callod a formall substance never to perish through the infiniteness of its continuance But I have demonstrated the light and fire to be a neutral Creature between a substance and an accident The same thing in this place comes to be understood concerning every natural Form to wit the essential and substantial as they are of the race of Light But that the Angel and minde of man are formall substances and truly spiritual their abstracted manner of existing doth prove which is denied to other forms who do subsist and perish after the manner of every light Whence I collect it into a new position for the Schooles That no substance is to be annihilated by the force of nature or art It hath alwayes seemed an absurd thing to me that a matter imperfect in it self barren and impure should after its Creation be thenceforth eternall and that forms that are to be annihilated by death should be true substances that substances I say should be so much more lively than matter and yet momentary Wherefore it now appeareth that the consideration of the fire by the discourse of nature doth unlock the gate of nature and enlighten all Philosophy and hath excluded all despisers of the Art of the fire I considered in times past with trouble If the form of a thing be most chiefly and principally a
unprofitable in other kind of madnesses Therefore it happened at Antwerp that a Carpenter perswading himself that in the night-timehe had seen horrid appearances or ghosts became wholly mad with the terrour thereof And he was sent unto the Tomb of St. Dympna the Virgin where those who are possessed by an evil spirit are wont to be freed the matter being thereby wrested into an abuse that all mad men should indifferently be sent thither As if the condition of those that are possessed and mad were the same The Carpenter therefore is nourished a whole year and mad however the wonted remedies were implored and when as moneys were not sent from Antwerp for the last half year they sent back the mad man bound in a waggon who when he had loosed his bonds he leapt out of the Wain into a deep and neighbouring pool He being at length drawn out was laid up into the Waggon for a dead Carcasse but he lived for eighteen years after free from madnesse By which example I being raised unto an hope knew that not only the madnesse from a mad dog but also that an inveterate or ancient Mania or madness might be cured And that thing I afterwards often tried neither hath the event deceived me but as oft as through fear I drew these mad persons over-hastily out of the water I likewise learned by the example of the Carpenter that it would be all one whether the aforesaid plunging or choaking of the mad Idea should happen to be in fresh water or salt A certain woman to me known commendable for her much honesty in the moneth November in a dark evening rushed head-long from a bridg into a small River or Brook with a Carr of two wheels And when they were intent about the horse they neglected the poor â—id woman but she remained under the water until they had unloaded the Carr of some wares At length being mindful of that poor old woman they brought her to a neighbouring Village as it were a drowned dead carcasse wherein the wife of the Inn laid that woman on a table with her face placed downwards and her head hanging downwards And it came to pass that she thus dismissed the water drawn into the lungs It seemed to me like a fable until mat in the mountains of Hannonia or Hungarie a young man drowned in swimming is brought unto a noble Matron a companion of my journey who bad the mother bewailing the death of her son to be of good cheer Therefore she stretched the young man with his face placed downward upon his knees and when the feeble young man thus hung being altogether naked he at length the water being cast back began to breath again and revived in our sight Again I remember that in the year 1606. I returning in the evening from the Castle of Perla two leagues distant from Antwerp found a company on the bank of the Rotomagian Channel because they complained that a young man the only son of a rich widdow was drowned who was sent for and found his dead carcass laying on the ground in the stubble or straw she took him up into her lap and kissed him weeping bitterly I bad that she should turn his body with his head and shoulders hanging downwards and his back upwards and the young man began after a quarter of an hour to breath again I have learned therefore that drowned persons do not easily die seeing both the aforesaid young men lurked perhaps for the space of half an hour under the water Neither must there be a cessation from prayer as soon as he which is believed to be dead doth cease to take breath Galen for madnesse of the biting of a mad dog before the fear of waters hath arose gives Cray-fishes or Crabs calcined to drink for fourty dayes Yet if that Calx be not given presently after the beginning it profiteth nothing and so also thus the use thereof hath remained unaccustomed In the mean time it is ridiculous that in burning of Crabs they add myrrhe c. or when they melt silver for to make a cup or flagon for a Perfuming-shop that they add Triacle The antidote whereof the devouring flame consumes before the living creature be roasted But Paracelsus affirms that the Hydrophobia is cured by sharp loosening medicines but surely the event hath not answered his promises Therefore Catholiques despairing nor trusting to these remedies of the Universities our Country-men flee to St. Hubbert where by some Rites performed they are cured Yet this is remarkable therein That if the Rites be not precisely observed the madness which otherwise did hitherto long lay hid doth forthwith arise and the Hydrophobians are left without hope There is a robe or gown of S. Hubbert locked up in a chest with six divers keys and also kept by six divers Key-keepers but they do every year cut off part of that garment the garment the while remaining always whole for eight hundred years now and more Neither is it a place of jugling deceit because it is not known at this day whether the Robe be of fine flax wool hemp or cotton and so neither could a new one be yearly substituted in its room But they cut off part of the garment that they may incarnate a thread or rag thereof within the skin of the forehead of every one that is bitten by a mad dog For from hence there is another miracle That he who hath once recovered by his rites through the thread or rag taken out of the robe may delay the time for another that is bitten and stupifie the prevailing madnesse for fourty dayes and that for some years until they to their own profit can at length come to Saint Hubbert yet with that condition that if any one do tarry never so little above fourty dayes and hath not as was said before obtained by request a prolonging of the limited time he presently falls into a desperate madness For the Lombards do thus run to the Saints Belline and Donine and so do request preservation And they require the healing to be from a madnesse arising from a deed done But for foolish madness or being out of ones mind they do not hitherto as I know of invoke any heavenly Patron CHAP. XXXVII The Seat of the Soul 1. The matter is as yet before the Judge 2. A third opinion 3. The head being dead a certain Bride hath over-lived for eight hours at least 4. The mouth of the Stomach being smitten hath brought a sudden and total death 5. A Paradox of the Authour concerning the Seat of the Soul 6. The Creation teacheth this seat 7. Physitians do occultly consent to those very things unwittingly 8. The Lord confirmeth the Paradox of the Authour 9. Some reasons 10. Against the existence of the Vegetative Soul 11. The Heart is a servant to the Stomach 12. The seat remains fixt 13. That the first powers of conceptions are felt in the mouth of the Stomach 14. They unwillingly place
aboue its bounds unless he be enlightned by the light which the Atheist excludes he defineth all things by the Contemplation of his own conceit alone because he reflecteth every where on all things as to himself Being indeed wholly carnal and vain as long as he believes his understanding to arise from a sensual Subject For whatsoever is perceived by Consequence Numbers Figures Proportions and Suitings is deceitful as oft as he preferreth or equalizeth the same things understood unto things intellectually understood by Faith and Revelation What if Science Mathematical doth abstract from real Objects and all perceived things and yet they are believed why shall it be more difficult to believe things not seen so they are revealed by a Being which by transcending Acts sheweth that he deserves a more full Credit If an Atheist can assent unto profane Histories why not also to the sacred ones For Moses was famous by many Miracles known to all Israel he writeth the History of the Creation of the World the successive Progeny of men in the next place he by Abraham enlarged the bringing forth of Israel out of Bondage Lastly he delivered the Law prescribed by God being confirmed by many Miracles before an unbelieving people They being indeed seen in the sight of an hundred thousand co-living people Their Sons and Nephewes subscribed to the Writings of Moses and then indeed to the Traditions confirmed by their Ancestours And that was undoubtfully believed by all the following Ages And the Gentiles took a diligent care to have them Translated and indeed the Seventy two miraculously Translated them without any disagreement of words But thus far as well Jewes and Christians as Enemies have believed the sacred Histories touching these things At length by the Prophets there are read predictions for many Ages before that by profâ—â—e Histories they are afterwards proued to have happened For to Abraham it was promised by God that the Messias should arise out of his own Stock The same thing Melchizedech foretold unto him and therefore offered a new Sacrifice of Bread and Wine unto him which should sometime by prâ—pagating proceed out of his Loyâ—es But a Sacrifice is no where offered but to God alone Afterwards in the dividing of the Land of promise there was Bethlehem or the house of Bread for the Prophets had foretold that the Messias should from thence be born of a Virgin The Gentiles also saw the Bread descend from Heaven which should destroy the camps of Midian and he was called the God of Gideon whom notwithstanding Gidâ—on had not yet acknowledged for his God This Messias also David afterwards divinely foreknew should be born of his stock and therefore he named him his Lord or God and that he was to be a Priest after the order of Melchizedech to wit he foretold it in the Bread and Wine by the inspiration of the divine blast Balaam foretold of this God as the Star or Jacob which the Magi or wisemen coming from the East afterwards learned that he ought to be born in Bethlehem or the House of Bread and they saw his Star going before them by admonishment whereof they had come from the utmost parts of the East to worship the Child who only is to be worshipped For he who fore-taught them concerning the signification of the Star could have evidently shewed them the place wherein the Child was born whom they sought by so remote a journey but that he he had determined that that thing should be drawn out of the writings of the Prophets for the honour of God and the learning of People Therefore if there be any credit to be given to sacred History that convinceth that God is one that the Gods of the Nations are Devils That this God Messias his Son was at length to be raised up out of Abraham without the will of Man of a Virgin only that he is the Angels food which came down from Heaven who saves those that are to be saved freely And seeing the understanding of Man cannot comprehend these Mysteries and much less fore-see them by the help of the Senses therefore it is needful to draw the understanding into the obedience of Faith which it can in no wise conceive of it self Because seeing that is of a limited power and Faith every where of a profound obscurity the understanding cannot comprehend an infinite term of continuance or The Immortality of the Soul Therefore the Holy Scriptures being at length granted and believed at least after the manner of Chronicles One Eternal Unchangeable Immortal Infinite Omnipotent Good True Wise God the Creator Author Sustainer Governour and Life of things doth for that very cause manifestly appear Lastly this divine Power being granted the arguments of St. Augustine do conclude for The Immortality of the Soul and Life eternal Fire eternal Joy Peace also everlasting Misety or Sorrow are to be granted And there are Angels evil Spirits Prophesying dark Spirits or the Devils Bond-slaves But the conceivings of these things are wanting to an understanding which savours only of the Senses according to Aristotle and words are wanting to the tongue and positive words want Properties of Expressions to declare those things which the Ear hath not yet heard nor the understanding could comprehend that which hath not yet descended into the Heart of Man and that which is in it self undemonstrable by the Discipline of the Senses and intellectual faculty For Faith the reward of Faith and expectation of the Righteous do exceed all Sense and whatsoever can be conceived by the understanding Furthermore if the mind be Immortal and to enjoy eternal joy if it being seperated by Death from its own Mortal body doth in very deed exist and live therefore it is not generated by a Body which in it self with every disposition of it is frail mortal and a dead carcass subject to dayly and any kind of importunities of successive changes Therefore the mind is an immortal substance a Life of the nature of the eternal Light not to be extinguished And therefore neither is it generated or proceedeth it from a Man Parent or Frail-seed much less doth it arise or is produced of it self but by some Eternal Beginning which in it self is Life Light eternal Infinite not to be altered or extinguished But these words are of Faith and the revelations of this eternal Light and therefore are they eternally true But the Carnal Man doth not perceive those things which are of God and therefore his Wisdome is Foolishness with God who is Order Integrity Essence the Father of Lights and total Independent absolute abstracted cause of all things unto whom therefore is all honour due from every created thing But he created not only the substance of the mind that it may be a substantial Light after the likeness or Image of himself but he also made all the living Lights of Soulified Creatures The which indeed could not subsist in the abstract without their concrete or composed Body and
is a beginning of declining Therefore let all Fruits Flowers Roots Leafs Barks c. have their own determined spaces of ripenesses For also the juice in Plants doth first abound the which in many doth forthwith after wax dry or is consumed into Leafs Therefore the variety of maturities doth bring forth a variety of Collections For so some Leafs are more lively after their Flowers but others are more juicy before their Leafs Then also there are some things which are stronger before the increase of their Fruit. Some remain with a perpetual countenance Wherefore they do the more rightly determine who measure Simples according to the requirance of their aim CHAP. LX. The Power of Medicines 1. The Authors comfort in his persecutions 2. The Author decyphers his Adversaries 3. A dream of the Author 4. He felt or perceived the Elementary qualities 5. He perceived Coagulations 6. He perceived Atrophiaes or Consumptions of the flesh 7. He perceived drynesses in us 8. He perceived drynesses in other things 9. An Error of the Schooles 10. Whence the heat of the Liver is and in what manner it subsisteth 11. He perceived the adulteries of Merchants 12. He perceived two savours of things 13. Notable things touching the taste and savour 14. He perceived the Causes of Healing 15. And likewise a twofold manner 16. He perceived the hope of immortality to be taken away 17. He perceived a certain goodness in nature 18. He perceived the digestive Ferments 19. He perceived true diureticks or provokers of Urine 20. He perceived the changing properties of Salts 21. He perceived the spirit of Salt to be changed by the co-touching of things connexed 22. He perceived the nigh or ready or slow obediences of Salts 23. He perceived Salts to be the Authors of wringings of the Bowels 24. The top or perfection of Salts is seen in their first Being 25. He perceived specifical Savours 26. The definition of a Savour 27. Things without savour are tasted by the stomack which are not judged of or discerned by the tongue 28. He perceived the occult property and the boastings of the Schooles 29. The searching after hidden or secret things is not for what but by the way of because from the effect to the cause according to the Gospel 30. He perceived unstopping or opening things 31. He perceived the activities of Salts 32. He perceived the spirits of Minerals 33. He perceived the loosening poyson of purging things 34. A threefold sign of a laudable Laxative 35. The error of Paracelsus 36. Chymistry 37. Distilled things are not to be judged suitable or equal to their concrete Bodies 38. He perceived many things to be transchanged by adjuncts 39. He perceived the sanguine glassie colour of a Mettal 40. He perceived the distillation of Lead whereof Paracelsus above 41. He cured divers Diseases 42. He perceived that the planetary faculties of Mettals were to be drawn forth by a higher or deeper resolving than that which hath been before 43. He perceived the divers virtues of dissolved Gold 44. He perceived the virtues of the Alkahest 45. He perceived the virtues of Mercurius vitae in its synonimal or fellow name of Lile 46. He perceived the action of renewing things 47. He perceived the root of a bewitching Sorcerie 48. He perceived Poysons 49. He perceived the actions of things according to the applications of the receiver 50. An Idiotism of Paracelsus about the nourishing of a Wound 51. The use of Salt 52. The variety of Oyles 53. The use of the water and salt of artificiated things 54. The Elixir of a Spice 55. The praise of Magisteries 56. Meats seasoned why unwholesome 57. A censure of some Minerals 58. He perceived a sixfold digestion 59. He perceived when the venal blood is quickned 60. What the inward and anointed grease may suffer 61. He perceived the action of Cantharides and Caustick Remedies 62. He perceived the virtue of an Amulet 63. The virtue of Stones 64. He perceived whence the diversity of effects in acting is 65. He perceived the necessities of death 66. The order of Chymical operations VExation brings forth understanding as too much pressure stifles it Although in my sharpest adversities I might make use of Job and Paul yet the Lord Jesus the Son of God so over-mightily helped me by his exemplary straits or griefs that he did not only ease my labours but as it were bear them in himself Let his name be alwayes honourable in my sight For I perceived the examples of Saints to be indeed inductives or motives but not to confer any grace by themselves For my mind in my greatest pressures for the most part grieved that I was comforted after a certain humane manner and through the sloath of unsensibleness that I did rather resemble an arrogant Stoicism than that I did with the joy of concentricity or a mutual centredness purely resign up my tribulations unto my most bountiful Jesus For I feared that rest of my soul which innocency raised up lest it might proceed from a despising and arrogancy and so lest my tribulations should be fruitless That I I say being immingled with the common lot and fellowship of the good men of the age prophesied of had become evil and unprofitable For I feared every hour that I was unsensible of grief neither that I did in the least feel those persecutions brought on me by a certain Clergy-man and those great ones which joyned with that Clergy-man and at length by the better part of the people otherwise in a man which was but in the least judicious very sensible ones For I feared lest that unbroken rest of my mind might happen from a despite toward my enemies I intreat therefore that God the fountain of all good may judge with Clemency At least wise I often considered by largely running through the foregoing ages and future persecutions of the Christians that the first persecution of the Church was violent and that of Tyrants Afterwards that there was another which followed that was fraudulent and that of Hereticks But ours hath indeed arose from Hypocrites but that it should be composed of deceit and force For there are those as saith the Prophetess St. Hildegard who shall first deceive the potent Prelates and their subjects or substitutes under a shew of Piety and at length as many as will not favour them they shall oppress by the power of great men Good God what have not I felt and how much could not I witness But the whole revenge have I referred to thee alone and I intreat thee out of Charity that thou wouldst spare them or that thou wouldst not damn them for my sake Because I receive all things from thy hand and they know not what they do At length I thought of a means whereby I might meditate that all my tribulations were transferred on the head of Nero and Tiberius Therefore I being at once wearied and refreshed and suddenly with great consolation sliding as it were into a
Life and Soul of soulâ—fied Creatures For in that those Words did differ to say Let it be made and to make For in the sixth or last day Adam was formed But on the seventh day God rested At length he afterwards translated Adam from the Earth into Paradise and deliberated to make Woman of the Rib of the Man but not of his Reins Thigh or Belly Therefore on the eighth day that it might be the Beginning of a new week for a new and super-natural Generation of an off-spring to come Wherefore it may be collected that Woman being wholly an Out-law ascended into a new heap of Choiceness as being a Vessel of Choiceness or Election But we may after some sort conjecture of the quality of humane generation in Eve a Virgin before the Fall by the most glorious Incarnation of our Lord For indeed the Father unto whom every name of Paternity is singularly and solely due and whom his Son as a Father doth alwayes adore hath indeed alwayes generated his Son from Eternity who yet is not read to be the Father of his Incarnation The which thing I even reverence for a vast mystery and the rather after that I understood the insinite goodness of the same as well from the first virginal conception of Creation as in the restoration by the regeneration of Man Indeed the Father Almighty would that the glorious incarnation of Christ should be conceived of the Person of the holy Spirit the which it self to wit therefore was not generated but proceeded from eternity from the Father and the Son For the Spirit of God had caused a humane conception of off-springs in the Arterial Blood of the Heart of the Virgin Eve it being the Image of the Divinity with all its free Gifts without the pleasure of the Flesh But the Mind being thus in the garment of Arterial Blood conceived in the Womb of the Virgin in a humane Shape had took an increase and full maturity from thence For he who the Womb being shut and the Gates being closed came into the World and unto his own also out of the Case of the Heart wherein he was conceived was by a foregoing consent brought unto the Womb of the Virgin and kept even unto the maturity of his Body For he piercing all Members was brought into the Womb For therefore our Lord's Incarnation happened altogether besides the order of Nature now accustomed For 1. The Incarnation of the Lord happened not first in the Womb but in the very Sheath of the Heart of the Virgin 2. Of the most pure and most lively Blood of the Heart but not of the Seed of the Virgin For truly the God-bearing Virgin in that singular respect was not only cleansed from Original Sin but was conceived altogether free from Sins to wit that she might be so much the more void of all Seed than a Child that is newly born For Seed is composed of a mixture of Venal and Arterial Blood or from a co-mixture of Bloods which mixture was no manner of way not so much as materially in the conception of the Son of God who was conceived not of Bloods nor of the Will of the Flesh or of Man but of God alone and born of a Virgin 3. He had not a Man to his Father nor a masculine Matter from whence he should be made which thing surely confirms that a feminine Matter was the more excellent governess or deputy and alone fore-elected from the Beginning 4. He fore-elected the most chast and unspotted Virginity of a Mother which he formed with a divine Hand 5. He was materially conceived onely and of most pure Arterial Blood To wit whereinto the seal of the holy Spirit inspired an humane Mind and a most pure Image of it self made or framed by his Father God 6. That conception was brought from the Heart into the Womb of the Virgin with a piercing of Dimensions 7. Lastly He exspected an increase and just maturity of Nativity as it were in the celebration of a Sabbath Furthermore that the knowledge of Good and Evil signifies nothing but the Concupiscence of the Flesh the Apostle doth manifestly testifie calling it the Law and Desire of Sin From whence to wit the first Bruital and Original Sin the fewel of the other Sins hath immediately issued and is hereafter to endure for a continued Seed of Mortals In the 8th to the Romans God sending his Son into the likeness of the Flesh of Sin hath also concerning Sin condemned Sin in the Flesh that the Righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us Original I say because it is the Beginning of the original of a humane Generation whereby all contagion of Impurity is derived on Posterity and Death became natural unto Man even as unto Beasts So that although the eating of the Apple did contain a note of distrust and ingratitude and the which also is a Companion unto every Sin Yet therefore even every Sin afterwards ought with the same Punishment of necessity also to descend unto Posterity unless the unwonted transgression of a loving Admonition should not so much consist in the disobedience of eating or abstaining as in the horrid Distrust of doubting and confidence of Faith given unto the Devil And so that the generation of the Flesh of Sin which is an effect of the Concupiscence of the Flesh hath of necessity defluxed into Death even unto all Posterity For it pleased the Lord of things to insert in the Apple an incentive of the Concupiscence of the Flesh to wit from which he was able safely to abstain by not eating the Apple therefore diswaded from For otherwise he had never at any moment been tempted by the Flesh or his genital Members the which I will hereafter shew to be therefore called the North in the holy Scriptures Therefore the Apple being eaten Man presently from a natural property of the Apple conceived the lust of being luxurious and from thence was made an Animal Seed which hastening into the previous or foregoing Dispositions of a sensitive Soul and undergoing the Law of other Causes reflexed it self into the vital Spirit of Adam which therefore like an ignis fatuus or foolish fire presently receiving an Archeus or ruling Spirit and animal Air I say a houshold Thief it conceived a Power of propagating an Animal and mortal Seed ending into Life At the arrival whereof at length the immortal Mind putting off the Rains of the Life and government of the Body substituted the sensitive Soul as its Chamber-maid From hence therefore we are conceived born and do die after the manner of Beasts For the day before the immortal Mind acted all in all and was the very immortal Life it self in the whole Body because it was solely and wholly immortal in the whole Body But that very so great Beauty of Nature was presently vitiated in our first Parent after that he was cloathed with the similitude of a bruital generation For then the immortal Mind being moved
which b. also denies for their Bodies after the Resurrection Therefore it behoves that we are Born again of Water and of the holy Spirit For as from the Beginning man was created and had not proceeded from a being born of Flesh So whatsoever is afterwards born of the Flesh is Flesh But the Water the Blood and the Spirit are one and the same in Christ John 5. and these three do denote an indifferent and one only Baptism in valour or effect Wherefore the only new Birth unto Life Is by Water and the Spirit in the participation of the virginal Body of Christ alone For truly it is alike impossible for Flesh to enter into and see the Kingdom of God as for to ascend into Heaven by a Motion of ones own and that is granted to none but to the Son of the Virgin who for that end descended from Heaven who was in Heaven while the same Son spake these things to Nicodemus and the which a little while after ought moreover for the same Cause to be exalted in the Cross The same therefore which descended from Heaven that he might be incarnated of the Matter of the Virgin is he in whom the Water the Virginal Blood and the holy Spirit are one The Spirit therefore which maketh the Corrupted and Adamical Man to be renewed by Water doth so regenerate the inward man from a new Generation in the Spirit that it becomes a true Spirit to be glorified by rising again whose Voice the Sons of Adam shall hear yet shall they not know from whence it may come or whither it may go because the Spirit the Regenerater is the glorious God himself who breatheth where he will and thou now hearest his Voice by Faith and the Sacrament Thus every one who is born again of the holy Spirit is made Spirit and united to him who is not known from whence he may come or whither he may go I call these earthly things although they touch at a spiritual Generation and new Birth because they have some things like unto them in a sublunary Nature which things every one hath not indeed every where known and therefore neither doth he believe them For the Generations of Bruits do happen from a watery Liquor and a seminal Spirit Notwithstanding those things are not therefore plainly terrene or earthly and naturally intelligible by the Vulgar which the Lord speaks to Nicodemus because the reason of the Love of God is no more conceived in this New-Birth than of his infinite goodness To wit it remains unpassable why he would adopt Man for a Son and Co-heir of his Kingdom yea reduce him into a Spirit of a God-like Form who shall materially be born again of Water For that mystery of love exceedeth all the understanding of Angels Yea to believe and contemplate of the actual Person of Christ in an old Man a Woman a young Man a poor diseased Man a miserable and naked poor or little esteemed Man or Woman none can naturally understand it unless he being compelled by Faith hath subjected his understanding unto Faith So neither are we able to conceive what one thing all are made by that new Birth of Baptism in Christ without a difference of Sexes or Nations unless we are holpen by Faith At length it was not enough for the Love of Christ to be born in the form of a Servant and so to be exposed unto Scorn But moreover he ought to suffer a most sharp and most exceeding reproachful Death the which so cruel and disgraceful Death himself in the abounding goodness of his Love cals his Exaltation But he brings it into the similitude of the exaltation of the Serpent Nehushtan Not indeed because the Serpent did any more represent the form of the Son of Man than the Fork did the Cross but only the likeness of impure Man slidden into Death through the perswasion of the Serpent the likeness of whose Servant the Lord was to assume Therefore the Son of Man ought to be exalted not indeed as being unhurtful in the Fork or as it were an unsensible brazen Serpent and the which otherwise being a live one was perceivable enough to be most fit to hang up But the Son of Man must be exalted alive he being full of Love and also at length to die in that Cross that the deserved New-Birth or Regeneration might be made effectual by his Death For truly else without the Death and Exaltation of him Crucified a Participation of the new Birth by Water and the Spirit had not succeeded neither had Death Perished So that plainly from a deep mystery the similitude of the Fork Cross and Saviour was fetched for a similitude of an incarnated Servant and him compared with the brazen Serpent Neither also did Israel Worship God in the Serpent otherwise Moses by the Command of God had been the Author of Idolatry Neither therefore is a live Serpent bound to the Fork as neither likewise his dead Carcass but his brazen Image only as being uncapable of Life that by this mystery it might be manifest that the whole similitude in that the exaltation of the Fork or Pole and Cross did manifest and clearly hold forth unto us the Flesh of Sin which the Son of Man by way of similitude represented was plainly uncapable of Life and of the Kingdom of God no otherwise than as the brazen Serpent was Therefore it is simply and absolutely true That unless Man be born again of God and doth partake of the unspotted Virginity which the Lord Jesus drew in his most glorious Incarnation from the material substance of the Virgin his Mother the hope of Salvation is for ever cut off Wherefore also from thence it is manifest that from the intent of Creation nothing but a Virginal Generation was afterwards required And by consequence that a Seminal Impure Beast-like and Adamical Generation was by the Craft of the Devil drawn and exhausted from the Apple wherein the Fewel of Lust was Therefore unless the Adamical Flesh doth again die and an unspotted Virgin-Flesh be restored in us in its stead by the favour of the holy Spirit who saveth those that are to be saved freely it is certain that the first intent of our Creator should be frustrate whatsoever may be otherwise done or hoped for For in the Beginning it was sufficient to be born because also then they had been born of God But after the Fall it thenceforth behoveth the Adamical Flesh to die and perish and to be again renewed or re-born of Virgin-Flesh which the holy Spirit by Water stirs up in us while we wish or desire to be Members of that Head and Branches of that Vine We are therefore regenerated in the Lords Body by Grace unto the immortal Life of the Age to come and that we may be raised up again in the Participation of Virginity Death must interpose and whatsoever is Adamical in us be blotted out We all indeed shall rise but we shall not all be
Matrimony were in times past dissembled Yet Phinehas being neither a Judge nor a Prince from his very own zeal slew the Fornicator Zimri and the Harlot Cosby and by that famous act not onely diverted the wrath of the Lord from the whole People of Israel But also although he were a Man-slayer and Man-slayers were repulsed from Sacrifices Yet by reason of that simple Death the Priesthood was given unto him persevering in his off-spring In the next place the Potters field Akeldama called Acheldamah or The field of blood as long as it retained the name of a Field confirms the Position because indeed by a supernatural Miracle it so consumeth a dead Carcass inhumed in it in one onely day that besides a Sceleton of Bones nothing remaineth surviving which effect that it was supernatural I prove For otherwise if it should naturally happen that thing without doubt should be done by a corrosive force of the Earth and the which therefore should be wholly a corrosive Salt or at least-wise a certain Mineral vein co-mixed with very much Salt 1. But first of all That corrosion of the flesh happened not onely at Jerusalem as long as it was a Field where there might be a suspition of some Mineral growing but also its Earth being brought from thence the same thing happened in the burying-place at Rome for that cause called The holy Field to wit wherein that Earth scarce equalizeth the depth of one Foot 2. But whether we may suppose a corrosive Salt or next the Earth it self to be Salt yet seeing it is the property of Salt and a thing unseparable from Salt to melt through Water being poured on it Therefore long ago before so many Ages that substance of the corrosive Salt being melted by Raines Snowes and Hailes had wandred even unto the bottom of the sand and the rather at Rome where it found not its native place Wherefore also that faculty of corroding should cease nor should it continue safe until now 3. And so much the rather because the corrosion of Salts is by little and little satisfied and desisteth in gnawing 4. Lastly Such a corrosive of Earth is not any where found in the Earth whether thou shalt respect a Vein of Arsenick Orpiment or any other For all the activity of such Corrosives presently after a good while waxeth mild and is satisfied Therefore the property of that Field remaining after so many Ages doth clearly shew withal against the will of Atheisme that the Field being purchased with the price of the Life Blood and Death of the Saviour presently consumes the flesh of Adamical generation Because that for the consuming and renewing whereof by the body of Christ which was sold for thirty silver pieces paid for the price of that field the coming of the most glorious incarnation is believed to be directed from God as its onely scope The unsufferableness therefore of that Earth with the flesh of sin continually persevering now so many Ages however the Bowels of the Atheists may burst convinceth of an honour to be due to the Saviour or Son of God for ever In the next place a humane dead Carcass was alwayes buried for honour and desert yet in the Law it caused an impurity for a time Because neither did it pollute the Soul but the Body onely for the meritorious fact And that impurity did indifferently affect any one not as the dead Carcass was deputed to the Wormes for the Wormes by their co-touching are not read to have caused an impurity but because Adamical flesh is horrid in the sight of the Lord who indeed promiseth that he will raise them up at the last day as many as shall reverently receive the Eucharist For all indeed shall rise again by the finger of God to wit by a supernatural Virtue Therefore whosoever in rising again shall be changed are reckoned onely to be raised up again by the Lord Jesus to wit in as much as in a Body which they have attained by the Wine which buds forth Virgins they shall rise again partakers of the unspotted Virginity of Jesus I will raise them up again at the last Day What other thing I pray you doth that Promise denote but that the Elect shall rise again changed and raised up by the Lord not indeed in the flesh of sin but in the flesh of the Lord which they have partaked of by Baptisme and the Eucharist Therefore the horrid and damned flesh of sin doth besprinckle its touchers with no undeserved spot of impurity There is therefore a distinct diversity of Virginal purity The First comes to hand before the Fall of Adam and the which therefore did contain a certain Immortality from the suffrage or consent of the Tree of Life But the Second is of them Who were sanctified in their Mothers Womb the which in it self is also twofold For such a sanctification although it dismissed Original Sin and did restore the integrity of withdrawn purity yet because they were conceived by the Will of Man and by Bloods or of the flesh of Sin they were also Mortal But the most holy Virgin Mother presently after the seminal mixture of her Parents was preserved from the knitting and blemish of Original Sin before hec-ceity or the coming of her Soul But Jeremy and John obtained the same but after quickening In these two indeed there was a Remission of sin admitted but in the God-bearing-Virgin there was a prevention before sin could touch her Soul and therefore she was taken up with her body into Heaven but not John or Jeremy Next a Third Purity is in being born again of Water and of the holy Spirit which also happens two manner of wayes To wit Unto Little Children and Unto those of Ripe Years For in these Regeneration doth not onely remit Original Sin but also every grievous Sin But in little ones it remitteth onely Original Sin because it as yet finds no other But on both sides it leaveâ—â— Death and Flesh hastening into a dead Carcass because stirred up by 〈…〉 copulation Fourthly The purity of those is regarded Who have made themselves Eunuchs for the Kingdom of God its sake and that as yet in a two-way-journey For they have either from a Child devoted their Virginity to the Lamb and have observed it and therefore also they follow the same whithersoever he may go do sing the Hymn c. but all that after Death For otherwise they are of the flesh of sin and therefore are of necessity also guilty of Death and corruption But they who have lost their Purity through a proper Error and afterwards rising up again have vowed or observed chastity These although they are chaste yet are they not to be reckoned among Virgins But moreover after that a Matrimonial generation was constituted by the Lord Regeneration by the holy Spirit and Water doth not fore-require Virginity Fifthly The top of all Purity and Chastity is the Lord Jesus himself who was not conceived by a
Mortals that would come from thence he then also well perceiving his own Miseries in himself certainly knowing that all these Calamities had happened unto him from the Concupiscence of the Flesh drawn from the Apple which were unavoidably issuing on his Posterity he thought it a discreet thing for him for hereafter wholly to abstain from his Wife which he had violated and therefore mourned in Câ—â—stity and Sorrow a hundred full Years Foolishly hoping that by the proper merit of that Abstinence as by an opposite to the Concupiscence of the 〈◊〉 that he should again return into his former Majesty of Purity But the Repentance 〈…〉 Age being finished probably the Mystery of the Lords Incarnation was revealed unto him Neither that Man ever could hope to return unto the brightness of his antient purity by his own strength and much less that himself could restore his Posterity from Death And therefore that Matrimony or Marriage was well pleasing and was presently after the Fall indulged unto him by God to wit because he had determined thus to satisfie his Justice at the fulness of times which should to the glory of his own Name and the confusion of Satan carry up Mankind unto a more eminent blessedness From that time therefore Adam began to know his Wife and to fill the earth by multiplying according to the Blessing once given him and a Law enjoyned him Yet so nevertheless that although Matrimony by reason of the great want of Propagation and otherwise an impossible coursary succession of the primitive Divine Generation be admitted as a Sacrament of the faithful Yet because at length it seemed by reason of necessity as it were by dissembling or connivance to be indulged Therefore the Comforter dictating it it was determined against the Greeks by the Church that the Priest by whose workmanship the Lords Body is incarnated in the Sacrifice ought to be altogether estranged from the act whereby Death and the impurity of Nature were introduced For the necessity of propagation hath indeed thus in times past excused the offence of a coursary succession in Generating For as Augustine witnesseth If the propagation of Men could have been made after any other manner the Conjugal Act had been unlawful Wherefore Bigamy or a Duplicity of Wives is not undeservedly expelled from the Bishoprick even as actual Wedlock from the Sub-deaconship For however it be a Sacrament yet it is unbeseeming the Sacrament of the Altar to wit by which the chastity of the first constitution and intention of the Creator are recompensed For God despised that blood should be offered unto him even in burnt-offerings and that Man should eat blood being mindful that the blood in which the sensitive Soul is had proceeded from the eating of the Apple But besides bruit Beasts are indeed afraid are angry do flatter do mourn do condole do lay in wait and those Passions Man from the sensitive Soul possesseth common with Bruits Yea also it shameth Elephants if they are upbraided with any thing that hath the less generously been done by them But no Animal or sensitive Creature perceiveth shame from a sexual copulation From hence its manifest that Concupiscence of the flesh is Diabolical onely to Man which in Bruits is Earthly and Natural If therefore both our Parents presently after the eating of the Apple were ashamed if they therefore covered onely their privy parts therefore that shame doth presuppose and accuse of something committed against Justice against the intent of the Creator and against their own proper Nature By consequence that Adamical generation was not of the primitive constitution of their nature as neither of the original intent of the Creator Therefore when God foretels that the earth shall bring forth Thistles and Thornes and that Man in the sweat of his Face shall eat his Bread even as was already proved above they were not Execrations but Admonitions that those sort of things should be obvious in the Earth and because Beasts should bring forth in pain should plow in sweat should eat their food with labour and fear that the Earth also should bring forth very many things besides the intent of the Husband-man therefore also that they ought to be nourished like unto Bruit-beasts who had begun to generate after the manner of Bruit-beasts And then if the Text be more fully considered it is told unto Eve after Transgression that she should bring forth her off-springs in pain For it undoubtedly followes from thence that before sin she had brought forth without pain that is as she had conceived her Womb being shut so also she had brought forth Therefore what hath the pain of bringing forth common with the eating of the Apple unless the Apple had operated about the conception or concupiscence of the flesh And by consequence unless the Apple had stirred up copulation and the Creator had intended to disswade it by dehorting from eating of the Apple For why are the genital members of the Woman punished with paines of Child-birth if the Eye in seeing the Apple the Hands in cropping it and the mouth in eating it have offended For was it not sufficient to have chastised the Life with Death and the Health with very many Diseases Moreover why is the Womb which in eating is guiltless afflicted after the manner of Bruits with the pain of bringing forth if the conception granted to Beasts were not forbidden to Man After the Fall therefore their eyes were opened and they were ashamed It denoteth that from the filthiness of Concupiscence they knew that the copulation of the flesh was forbidden them in the most innocent chastity of Nature and that they were over-spread with shame when their eyes being opened their understandings saw the committed filthyness But on the Serpent and evil Spirit alone was the top of the whole curse even as the priviledge of the Woman and the mysterious prerogative of the blessing upon the Earth To wit that the Woman but not the Man although he was now constituted for the head of the Woman should at some time bruise the head of the Serpent And so that it is not possible that to bring forth in pain should be a Curse for truly with the same mouth of the Lord is pronounced the Blessing of the Woman and Victory over the infernal Spirit And moreover to be subject to the Man was not enjoyned unto the Woman in stead of an Execution But it denoted in the mind of God humility chosen in a new Law and another method of living appointed anew by the Son of Man For the Son of Man humbled himself even unto death also to be extinguished by a reproachful death he called it to be exalted Therefore while the Lord depresseth the Woman under the power of the Man he exalted the same Woman in his presence and made her the more like unto himself After another manner because the Serpent should for the future creep upon the Earth The name of Serpent proveth that that was not
no Subtilties but those which are sifted about Charity and which regard and preserve the Life of thine own Image For I grieved at the first at so great rashness of belief of Principles and at so great a sluggishness of Mortals about things of so great moment and the pitty of this thing increased with me dayly Hence at length I having obtained a little Light I knew with great grife that the Errours of the Schools ought by me plainly to appear But indeed in the entrance that thing seemed to me to be full of untamed arrogancy that I the least of all should brand all before me with the ignorance of Phylosophical truth but should attribute to my self only the obtainment of healing Therefore I oftentimes begged of the Lord that he would re-take that his own Talent from me and vouchsafe wholly to take it away and to bestow it on another more worthy than my self For I knew that he who had well lay hid had well lived at least-wise morally and in this ulcerous age Therefore I resisted and a good while deferred to propose this ignorance of the Principles of Medicine to its own World until that now being an old Man the last necessity constraining me and being placed in an Agony of Death I promised the Lord that I would sincerely divulge his Talent least I should at sometime be accounted in the strict Judgment of God to have come into the world in vain and to have departed as unprofitable from hence For by a Vision in a Dream I understood that I was more afraid of gainsayings than of Gods Indignation that Nature was crafty as long as she made a pretence for Pride in purely obeying God by reason of deceitful humane respects Also I saw not that my own Arrogancy which was placed rather in fear did make me less freely or generously to perform what was required against Judicious Men that would rise up against me for so many ages past than in purely obeying the most glorious Giver of Truth Yea that I did not commiserate my Neighbour and that I buried my Talent in the Earth in looking back on the uncertain Censures of the World concerning me I knew indeed the doores of Medicine to have been locked and the Bars and Bolts thereof to have been covered with rust for so many ages but I doubted to open them as if I should presume the Office of a Porter to be meerly my own and not to be given to any other Therefore I resolved with my self to do what Charity not arrogancy perswaded to be done as knowing that he is not injurious who beholds a publick good although it may make those blush who have rashly subscribed to the trifles of Heathens unto the dammage of mankind At length therefore I stood as a middle man between the shame and sore fear of the greatness of the thing and many times reposed my Pen And again I seriously begged of the Lord that he would vouchsafe to chose another more worthy than my self Wherefore the Lord being deservedly wroth suffered this Evil and unprofitable Servant to be sifted by Satan For an Order whose Zenith or vertical Point is the house of Powers and whose Nadir or Point under their Feet are other Orders began undeservedly to persecute me by unworthy Wiles I knew presently that the hand of the Lord had touched me And therefore in a full tempest of Persecutions I wrote a Volume whose Title is the Rise or Original of Medicine that is The unheard of Beginnings of natural Phylosophy wherein I have discovered the accustomed Errours of the Schools in healing I have I say afforded and demonstrated new Principles as also hitherto unheard of Speculations of Diseases that the Universities leaving the Vanities of the Heathen may for the future accustom themselves to the Truth For from thence I found a rest in my Soul such as I never found in the times of my Prosperity so that I being full of suspition grieved that so great Storms did not any thing disturb the rest of my Soul or sleep of my Body Wherein O God my Protectour I am not able sufficiently to praise the abundance of thy bounty which suffered not my Soul even in the least to fall out of a full enjoyment of peace under so great straits on every side I fearing this one only thing least as an unprofitable Servant I should be buried with my small Talent Whosoever therefore thou art who interpretest my Zeal to be proud boasting thou mayest do it for me so thou shalt not hurt thy self for I will rejoyce to bear back all confusion for the good of my Neighbour and of Posterity and I shall enjoy my wish whether in the mean time my boldness shall turn unto me for rashness or not For God the Sower will water what he would have to grow And moreover in the Book of Fevers I have declared the Beginnings of my repentance and in what manner I desisted from Galen and Avicen to wit by reason of the discerned falshood of the Pillars of Medicine from whence a singular boldness of confidence thenceforth increased in me being as yet a young man whereby for my Neighbours sake I willingly exposed my self to the infurious Censures of all and the number of dayes by degrees running on the Lord beheld the Candor of my Zeal and granted me now a Man to see that whatsoever is taught in the Schools of Medicine is full of Miseries and Ruine and that it should be a laughing stock to Posterity Good Jesus how greatly was I then amazed at the greatness of thy Clemency which reveals those things unto little ones which were denyed for so manyages to men otherwise most religious and ingenious Moreover although I was from thence more assured that the manifestation of my Talent of truth received lay heavy upon me yet Nature is ready to find out excuses and deceives it self and its own Sorrows by the Props of Reason its Chamber-Maid I presently therefore fie it sâ—ames me of my own unconstancy shook off the undertaken burden again from my shoulders and said who am I oh Lord for the more solid things are defective unto me which I should substitute in the room of those that are to be depressed For what things I before believed were commanded me I again suspected to be suggested by the subtilty of Satan because secret Remedies were wanting unto me to wit the Letters Patents or Signes of my message Wherefore in my youth I had a good while perswaded my self that the very Art of healing was nothing but a meer imposture devised by the idle Greeks being at first framed for the destruction of the Romanes their subduers and afterwards confirmed for the Calamities of Men whereunto humane Credulity by reason of a conceived hope had easily subscribed and so that that Profession of Medicine had brought forth its own authority because for the most part we too readiâ—â— believe those things which we too greedily desire Indeed I knew
impossibility and had rather accuse God as having forgotten Mercy and Goodnesse than that he had afforded Remedies in Nature against the stone being as they say confirmed and against most Diseases Yea they do more willingly accuse God of forgetfulnesse than they themselves can admit of the mark of any ignorance in their own Paganish Doctrine But Princes being circumvented by the Schooles have subscribed to the juggling deceits of these and they being seduced by the Impostures of the Schooles the liberality of their Piety hath erected Hospitals of uncurable sick which Impostures have reproved that Text of Wisdome of a Lye God hath made all Nations of the earth curable neither is there a Medicine of destruction For the Schooles have made their own and too gross ignorance reciprocal and convertible with the impotency of Nature as if they knew every thing that is possible and were ignorant onely of that which were impossible and that not onely Negatively but altogether privatively As though their ignorance did not depend on the deâ—ect of Universities but rather on the scantinesse of Divine Goodnesse or Providence Wherefore since a denial of possibility in healing seemed to me to contain a hidden wickednesse I alwayes hoping well even from my youth did argue on the contrary after this manner If it be of Faith that every Disease began from the Fall or departing out of the Right way but that every sin may be wholly remitted we must by all meanes hope that every Disease may in its own kind be taken away if the punishment be equalized with the sin in Remission Especially because the same God who forgiveth sins doth also heal Diseases hath afforded Remedies and hath created the Physitian through the abundance of his Goodnesse which exceedeth all his Actions and is infinitely greater in his Indulgence than all the sins of men For could he not perhaps create a suitable and victorious Remedy for every Disease Or knew he nor how to do it Or was he unwilling so to do Who hath afforded the Remedy of Eternal Death For he rejoyceth not in the destruction of the living who hath made all Nations of the Earth curable But as to the authorities of Writers For Cardanus writeth that in his Age there wandred a man about among the Lombards who in a few dayes by a certain Cup cured in many places safely certainly and briefly as many as had the stone in their Bladder and he adds his Judgement that he doubted not but that this man was in Hell because dying he envied his Art unto mortals In so great a Paradox one onely witnesse is not sufficient against the Clamours of the Schooles The Epiaph of Theophrastus Paracelsus which is seen in a wall in an Hospitall nigh Saint Sebastians Temple being erected by the Prelate of Saltzburge doth represent the same wonder to have many times happened however the Guts of the scoffing Momus may crack His words run thus Here layes Entombed Philippus Aureolus Paracelsus a famous Doctor of Medicine who by his Wonder-working Art took away those cruel wounds the Leprosie Gout Dropsie and other uncurable contagions of the Body and honoured his Goods so as to be distributed and disposed of to the Poor In the Year of our Lord 1541 on the 24th day of September he changed Life for Death But that under uncurable Diseases the Tabes or Consumption of the Lungs Asthma Stone and all such like Diseases were understood by the Prince of Salizburge the Schooles themselves do teach Because they are those who do alwayes Thunder out That such Diseases are every where chiefly uncurable And then the indefinite phrase of the Epitaph hath respect unto the Books published by Paracelsus concerning the Stone and that with a far more acurate Quil than concerning other Diseases At leastwise therefore whatsoever is once and the oftner done in Nature it is not impossible that this should be done again And by Consequence whosoever affirmeth that to be impossible which by divine Goodnesse was at sometime done in Nature according to the desire of the Physitian he lyes before God the Workman of Nature For in the Right which is of the deed done those very Witnesses do disclose it and those are reckoned unprofitable brawlings which are brought in against Witnesses The Schooles therefore which call us Deceivers do mock mankind with an Elenchus or faulty Argument saying The stone that is far remote from the mouth is far harder than the membrane of the stomach whatsoever therefore should corrode or lessen the stone being at a far distance had now a good while before consumed the stomach it self whereinto it had newly fallen Therefore the stone is of necessity an uncurable evil But if the holy Scriptures write otherwise a way is to be sought whereby with moderation they may be excused of falshood But surely the Keyes of Wisdome are by a certain force so detained in the Schooles that seeing themselves enter not in they also endeavour to drive away others that are willing to enter For it is not in the intent of the Chymist to take away Duelech by Corrosives but by proper and specifical Dissolvers For neither doth the stomach of a Pigeon dissolve Pearls or that of an Oestrich Iron or Flints by Corrosives but by an appropriated Ferment of Digestion Or if thou shalt grant Corrosives unto the stomach of Animals at leastwise they are such which bring not any dammage to the stomach And moreover if thou hast regard unto the highest Corrosives Aqua fortis dissolves indeed Iron Brass and Silver but Wax it doth not so much as pierce Through the inconsiderateness of which thing the Schooles have affrighted their young Beginners the unlearned vulgar yea and great men from diligent searching into things their own ignorance the drowsiness of diligent searching and hope of Gain perswading them hereunto Therefore for the stone and diseases in the Bladder as if Physitians did intend a Derivation or drawing them another way they being ridiculously converted unto the Fundament have attempted the matter by Clysters as if to have unloaded the Fundament were to have purged out the stone For they saw that the juyce of Citron did diminish a humane Duelech in a glass and they hoped that the same thing ought to be done in us But if not that they could boast that by administring the juyce of Citron they had performed as much as was possible for nature to do As being ignorant in the first place that the sharpness of the Citron doth wax sweet under heat like an unripe apple which in it self is at first sharp and afterwards being ripened by heat becomes sweet In the next place if one only drop of the more tart wine be sent inwardly unto the bladder it brings more pain thereunto than a great stone They therefore imagine a ridiculous thing who boast that by administring the sharp juyce of Citron at the mouth they have done some profitable thing for the diminishment of the stone They
PESTIS OR THE PLAGUE-GRAVE JOHN BAPTISTA VAN HELMONT Tobarch in ROYENBORCH Pellines c. being the Author THE PEST Reader the Title which thou Readest is a mournfull Terrour affixed to the doors within it shews death the kind of death and scourge of men stand still and enquire what this may betoken What the Epigraph of the Plague-Grave will have it self to be I have departed under the Anatomy not dyed as long as the ill-Counselling envy of the scoffer and ignorant lust of men shall cherish me THEREFORE HERE IS No Funeral no dead Carkase no Death no Sceleton no Mourning no Contagion GIVE GLORY TO THE ETERNAL That the Pest hath now fayled under the proper punishment of an Anatomy JOHN BAPTIST A VAN HELMONT Of BRUXELS A Phylosopher by the fire Toparch in Royenborgh Pellines c. Wisheth health and joy to CHRISTIANS Dear Reader I Have always even from a Child sought after the truth above every delightful thing because I every where found every man a Lyar and so that from the impiety of the world all false ignorant devised deceitful things and things ful of impostures have been invented And when I had fitly searched into all States Religions and Conditions by their individuals I saw indeed the certain and unchangeable truth in numbers and measures In the next place in created things I found indeed the essence and properties of things to be true and good but the truth it self however I in quired amongst men I no where found I greatly grieved that truth had hid it self from my capacity as not knowing that that was my own vice but not the fault of things At length when I had considered that God himself was the naked truth I took the Gospel-book in my hand wherein although I every where noted singular verity yet I found the interpretations thereof to be according to the will of the flesh Yea at this day I have noted some to be diligently studious to excuses excuses in sins especially in those of greâ—â—men And so the truth of the Gospel is reckoned to be professed but not consented unto as it ought to be For there is none who having two Coats puts of one that out of meer love he may cloath the poor man as if Christ were present therewith None turns the other cheek to him that strikes him And so Evangelical truth through the endeavour of some is at this day grown out of use among Christians In which consideration when I once had tarried out almost all night after the studies of some years and very many anguishes I resolved with my self that I would every where assault the Plague freely which had then invaded our Country-men and the which all fled from And although I had on every side contracted the most choiseremedies out of books into a breviary and also had remedies described by others at hand yet I experienced them all to be void feeble and vain For the forsaken sick and poor did oft-times utter their vomitings and belchings upon me and breathed out their soul between my armes to my grief but God preserved this ignorant and unprositable servant And at length I comprehended the nature progresse and properties of the Pest to be far different from what the Schools had hitherto understood them to be Because Doctours and writers themselves do first run away and what things they have here and there compiled out of diverse Authors they do equally extol and commend to the ignorant as most exceeding good and the which from their own ignorance they so judge to be And so all their doctrine is supported by the foundation of supposition In the mean time notwithstanding the knowledge of a Pestilent poyson hitherto scanty is desired and remedies are required which their gift being unchanged in the first shops can overcome the contagion of the poyson whereof nothing hath hitherto been dreamed by the Schools Tumulus PESTIS OR THE PLAGUE-GRAVE CHAP. I. Of what kind the Pest or Plague is AFTER a pensive lodging out all night a dream befell me and since night unto night sheweth knowledge I have thought that a dream doth contein knowledge Therefore I willingly submit my dreams unto the judgment of the Reader For I beheld my self to be in the vaults without the city they call them Grotts I saw Daedalian Labarinths in some place Arches threatning a cleft and ruine I had called them the porches or galleries of Pluto wherein inveterate or long accustomed darknesse and a thick aire wearied with long rest suffers not the light of a candle to shine a-far of For the thicknesse of the air did so meet with the Gas of the earth that the flame of a wax-candle would scarce shine but a few paces from thence For the voice becomes so dumb with a duskish sound that not far of from thence an out-cry cannot be heard and the more dull sound seemes to resemble not a voic but the shadow of a voyce For nothing is there which is vital except a company of Bats their nests being adjoyned or knit fast in the Arches of the co-heaped rubbishes Alas a sad spectacle the Image of eternal death where the seat of night-thieves is Wherein if thou shalt chance to hurt one of its cruel inhabitants thou art deprived of candles and presently of life unlesse thy light being extinguished thou prostratest thy self as humble and feign thy self as dead For those lurkers being the natives of obscurities do not endure to be obtained or corrected by any and much lesse to be driven away from their seat They call it an injury to have the light brought against them because with them they neither have light neither do they love it under doctrine and correction not issuing out of their nests they cry out for revenge and they gape for it with conjoyned votes For how strong are they because and when they are very many How bold are they in the Age and Kingdome of darkness and how unmild where all things favour their own wishes and flyings For our breath there smells of so great an hoary putrefaction that delay presently tingeth us with paleness And indeed it is familiar to the Mines of Metals that except the soil be frequently pounced and new air do breath on it from the Sky mountainous Inhabitants do certainly perish with a blind Gas but if they shall not lodge out of their house all night they at least do contract a disease deplorable even for their life time For therefore they are wont that they may preserve the life of mountainous Inhabitants to blow in new ayr and to blow out the hurtful by Engines But in the Roman Vaults they seek not for Minerals therefore also they want an Arsenical Gas For there frequent Sepulchres are found which are thought to be those of Martyrs who gloriously died Therefore I dreaming began to doubt whether fled Truth and not to be found at this day had made its grave with the Martyrs in the same place the question smiled on
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
nativity wherein the Lord took on him the Form of a Servant But how much he departed from that former and proper or natural dignity of his humane nature wherein he was conceived in the Womb himself sheweth Because he who came forth into the World the Womb of the Virgin being shut and the bolts of dimensions being contemned presently prostrated himself to the ordained condition of Death and willingly felt every necessity of a servile nature For both Adams in their beginning were immortal For the first Adam ought to be preserved by the Tree of Life But the second did wholly contain the Tree of Life in himself Both of them indeed chose to dye before a possibility to live For the former chose it from a Vice but the second from Charity The Tree of Life therefore and wholsomness of the place of Eden had vindicated Adam in his antient vigor from Death until that a number of years being finished he as happy had departed translated without death unto the Country of Glory Moreover it is of Faith that Adam never tasted of the Tree of Life and that lest he should eat of it he was cast forth of Paradise who ought to dye the death Yea he being now banished out of the Garden of Pleasure was of so perfect a constitution that he had lived unto some thousands of Years who was immediately formed by the hand of the Almighty without the commerce of Nature and had far exceeded the age of Mathusalem from the voluntariness of his own nature but that through the continued mourning and grief of one Age he had cut off the thred of a most Long Life from himself The Death therefore of Adam is not to be bewailed as otherwise Paracelsus badly perswaded himself because that the vital Spirit and knowledge of Long Life had fallen at once together with him For those are contradictions to enjoy Long Life from Knowledge and likewise to be Immortal from the forming of the hands of God and the suffrage of the Tree of Life also after sin to have retained the gift of Long Life by reason of his most perfect and noble constitution of Life and Body From whence the Spirit of a flourishing and abounding Life being at length translated on Posterity its vigor by degrees declining through a passing over of Generations the injuries of Life and Diseases and through the rottenness of Years the Curse co-operating manifested it self as a Magnum Oportet or a thing of great necessity The which having once entred into the Bowels of Mortals presently took possession of the same For the Life of those which at first was by the Tree without Death presently also without that Tree languisheth as being enrouled in a short term of Time and underwent an increase state or height declining and cessation after the manner of other things For so indeed Death through the perswasion of the Devil stablished it self into its Empire For Poysons that were harmless under the Tree of Life were afterwards supported for a Medicine of Destruction For I think that the Conditions and presence of the Tree of Life were hidden from Adam Else that he had extended his hand unto this sooner than unto the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And although the Tree of Life which the bounty of the Creator hath of late discovered may be so prepared that it may proceed unto the first constitutives of us with a refreshment of the decaying faculties yet I do not understand it to be that which is read to have been implanted in the Paradise of Pleasure whereunto no mortal man shall ever stretch forth his hand But ours is a shadowy one and the Vicaress of the other To wit the which hath nothing excellent and famous unless that under a retainment of properties it be reduced by Art into such a juice which may be able by its least parts to co-mingle it self with the solid parts Neither indeed doth our Tree of which I as the first do treat contain a non-sufferance unsensibleness of the pain of Diseases and an uncapacity of Death as the other did And moreover although the Tree of Life of Paradise should at this day be present with us yet it should not cause immortality Because the condition of the receiver is changed For indeed man is become composed by the bond of another generation of corrupted Nature and of another Long Life wherein the immortal mind hath no longer immediately sustained in it all the actions of Life but a frail or mortal sensitive Soul succeeded exercising the Vicarship of the mind and providing for the necessities of Life it self being like the flame slidable and extinguishable every hour CHAP. CX Short Life THe Air which is the former in the Seed ascending by degrees unto its Maturity at length conceives the Light or essential Form of its own Species which is made immediately by the Father of Lights and is of a proper name Life For as many things as differ in their particular Kinds which are involved in Darkness so many also ought the Forms to be under the species of Light For if a thing is what it is by reason of the Form in diversity from any other things whatsoever But the Form of living Things except the Mind and Life are Sunonymals there must needs be as many Lives as there are vital Forms Therefore the Light of Life is by it self every where simple and specifical but not fiery because vital formal and essential But that the Light of Life is hot or cold it denotes that the Life hath not married Heat or Cold but accidentally so that Heat or Cold proceeds from Life but not Life from Heat or Cold Life therefore cannot be otherwise understood than under the Conception of Light And neither Light is more demonstrable from a former Cause than the Forms of things themselves and whatsoever issues immediately out of the Bosom of the Almighty A vital Light therefore by its species wants a proper name We may indeed make a fiery Light to be given unto us for great necessities but it is not in the Power of the Artificer even immediately to produce a vital Light from himself Which thing the Chymists say The Artificer cannot introduce a substantial Form The Generater indeed is the begetter and producer of a vital Air forasmuch as he contributes Matter after the likeness of himself and Dispositions thereof in order unto Life but is in no wise able to produce Life or an ultimate perfect Art In Diseases also sometimes the Light of Life ascendeth unto the degree of Fire Because the Archeus from a threatned distinction or nothing of difference strikes out a fiery Light Not that the Archeus produceth this Light as he that generates his Like But the Archeus through Fury presseth together the moist Hay and it is enflamed the which being dry comes not so to pass After another manner also Woods by a co-rubbing and Iron by striking against it do conceive the fire