filthy excrements Therefore that radical Moisture is the nearest and never-ceasing subject of generation and life in which is first kindled the fire of Nature and the formal act in a well disposed and prepared matter But in a confused and ill ordered matter where that humour doth act the part of the male it begets spurious and bastard births of Nature for that generation which is made without specifical seed seems to be made rather by chance and default than by the intention of Nature although in it seems to be a dark and confused kind of copulation of actives with passives which is required also to the production of every though imperfect Being 223 That radical Ferment constantly abiding in the depth of mixt Bodies seem to be the Band Seat and Tye of that matrimony contracted between Light and Darkness between the first Matter and the universal Form finally of all the Contraries otherwise the Matter and Form by reason of their repugnant natures would not be knit together But that dark unbridledness of the first matter and its averseness from light was tamed and its hatred turned into love by the good office of that lightsom tincture which doth reconcile things repugnant 224 The inbred Heat and the radical Moisture are of a divers kind for that is wholly spiritual and of the Sun this of a middle nature betwixt a spiritual and a corporeal both participating of an aethereal and elementary Nature that is of the degree of things above this of things below in which was celebrated the first marriage of Heaven Earth by which also Heaven hath its abode in the very Centre of the Earth They are therefore deceived that do confound the inbred heat and the radical Moisture for they differ no less than smoke and flame the light of the Sun and the Air Sulphur and Mercury In mixt Beings the radical Moisture is the seat and food of the inbred and celestial Fire its bond with the Elementary body but that power of Fire is the Form and Soul of mixt Beings In seeds that moisture is the immediate Keeper and Case of that Spirit of Fire inclosed in the seed till it be set on to generation in a disposed Matrix by an adventitious heat Finally that radical Substance is Vulcan's Shop in every mixt Being the Chimney in which is kept that immortal Fire which is the first mover of all the faculties in an individual nature 225 That radical Moisture is the Catholical Balsam the most precious Elixar of Nature the Mercury of Life having a perfect sublimation by Nature a dose of which is administered to every individual of her family weighed to a just quantity by plenteous Nature They that have attained the happiness to fetch out this hidden Treasure of Nature wrapt up close in the heart and in the closets of Natures birth and can get it out of those close coverts of the Elements let him boast that he hath attained the chiefest staff and help of life and a most precious Treasure 226 The order of Reason and of Creation doth require that the first Copies of things being first of all concealed in the celestial Natures were transmitted into inferiour Beings but in the first they are of a far greater perfection both because of their greater tenuity and dignity as also because of their neighbouring seats to the Eternal Being but with us they are much meaner because carved in a grosser and less valuable matter and more distant from their eternal Principle There is nothing therefore printed in this lower Margin of the World which was not at first copied in the heavenly Being neither is there any particular kind of Being of the inferiour natures which doth not acknowledge the dominion of one Superiour agreeable to it and which it hath not the secret seal and signature of it So do things below depend on things above 227 The World is a creature of an ambiguous nature for it is of both Sexes the higher part to wit the celestial is active and masculine the lower Elementary nature is the passive and feminine nature The Globe of the Earth is the womb in which the engendering seed of Heaven is received and kept From the masculine part proceed life and strength from the female part corruption and death do issue 228 Since superiour and inferiour bodies have their original from the same Principles as from their parts yet are they not such as have their equal lot it is equal that those things that have the honour of being nobler substances and advanced to higher offices should distribute to their brethren of a lower degree being poor and in want some of their wealth and so provide for their life and conversation For it was provided by the foresight of the Deity that since there was a necessity that the World should be made up of unequal natures the more powerfull Natures should aid the weaker hand help to the fainting Natures So Love is the indissoluble knot of the parts of the Universe 229 In this sublunary Region diseased Nature sickens out of a defect of the proportion and temperament of the Elements either by reason of the quantity or of the qualities either out of a too great intension or remission and so is there a dissonancy in Natures musick and a distemper in her bodies Therefore the consonancy of the Elements which riseth from a proportion and constitutes their temperament being gone the matter and form of the whole mixt Being hath a bad coherence Nature is troubled and staggers with a perplexed confusion and hence do first diseases and then death assault disordering and falling Nature 230 That discord of those Principles have either an intrinsecal and radical cause as from a vicious seed an evil generation or age or an intrinsecal and accidental as from a too great repletion or emptiness from whence either an excess or defect in humours and spirits or from putrefaction mortal poison infection grief hurt or some other impediment brought upon the Organs of life with the like which do hurt Nature 231 The four radical Qualities of the Elements are as so many harmonious Tones of Nature not contrary but divers and distant each from other by certain pauses from whose rational difference intension and remission is made a perfect consent of Nature perceivable by the understanding bearing an Analogy to that vocal Musick which is heard by the Senses Sharp and Flat in Musick though they are extreams yet are not Contraries in Musick they are the terms of those means which lye betwixt them and are composed and tempered after a divers manner by these two extreams So Heat and Cold Driness and Moisture are the extream Qualities in Nature yet not therefore contrary but onely the bounds of the middle and interjacent Qualities from whose mixture and temperament do the middle proceed 232 The motion of Nature is continual and not tyred no less in every part than in the whole For she always acts never idle so that
the compleatly mixed body because their parts have a correspondence proportionable with the parts of the world and have a kind of Analogie with them we may call them by the same names the more solid parts Earth the moister Water the more spiritual Air the inborn heat Nature's fire the hidden and essential virtues a man may safely term Heavenly and Astral Natures or the Quint-Essence and so every mixed body may by this Analogie triumph in the title of Micro-cosme 53. He that did appoint the first Elements for the generation of bodies alone knows how out of them to make all particulars and to resolve them being made into them again 54. Let not them therefore refuse the Light who working about the Elements of Nature either in the production of some body from them or the resolution of some into them create their own trouble since these Elements are onely subject to the dominion of Nature and delivered to her onely from their beginning altogether unknown to all our art and not compassible by our endeavours 55. The Element of Nature may be termed the most simple portion of the first matter distinguished by its peculiar difference and qualities constituting a part of the essence in the material composition of mixt bodies 56. By the Elements of Nature are denoted the material principles of which some have a greater purity and perfection than others according to the greater Power and Virtue of that form that gives the compleatment They are for the most part distinguished according to their rarity or density so that those that are more thin and approch nearer to a spiritual substance are therefore the more pure and light and so are the more fit for motion and action 57. Upon this ground it was that reverend Antiquity did seign that the whole Empire of the world was divided between the three Brothers the Sons of Saturn as coheirs because it acknowledged onely three Elementary Natures or rather three parts of the Universe For by Jupiter the Omnipotent who shared heaven as his portion armed with his treble-darted Thunder-bolt superiour to the rest of the brothers what did those professours of mysteries understand but that the Heavens being the Region of heavenly bodies do assume a priviledge of Sovereignty over these inferiour beings But they placed Juno wife to Jupiter to praeside over the lowest Region of the Heaven or our Air because this Region troubled with vapours being moist and cold is as it were in a manner defiled and impure and nearest approaching to a female temperament as also because it is subjected to the orders of the higher Regions receive their effects and communicates them to us twisting it self with more condensed natures and stooping them to the bent of Heaven But because male and female differ onely in sex not in kind therefore would they not have the Air or the lower Heaven to be distinct in its essence and kind as another Element from the higher Heaven but onely diversified in place and by accidents To Neptune the god of the Sea they attributed a dominion over the waters By Pluto the lord of the lower parts abounding in wealth they denoted the Globe of the Earth replenished with riches with the desire of which the minds of men being inflamed are bitterly tormented So that those wise men admitted of three parts of the Universe or if you please of three Elements because under the Nature of Heaven they comprized the name of Fire and therefore did they draw Jupiter armed with his Thunder 58. We are Schollars to experience in this that all the bodies of mixt beings have their analysis and resolution into drie and moist and that all the excrements of creatures are terminated by the same differences from whence it is clearly evident that their bodies are made up onely of two sensible Elements in which notwithstanding the other are virtually and effectually But Air or the Element of the lower Heaven is not the object of our sense because in respect of us it is a kind of spiritual being The fire of Nature because it is the formal principle cannot be wrought to any separation or comprehension by any destruction by way of resolution nor by any art or artifice of man For the nature of Forms is not subjected to the censure of the Senses because of its spiritual being 59. The Earth is the thickest body of the Universe therefore is it accounted the heaviest and the centre of it we must assert its nature contrary to the received opinion to be accidentally drie because it doth retain most of the close and dark nature of the first matter but a shade and darkness are the coverts of cold from whence they flie the light and are diametrically opposite to it but the Earth in respect of its extream density is the mother of shade and darkness hardly passable by light and heat therefore roughly knit by an heightened cold And for this reason black choller is to be esteemed the coldest humour of all because it is under the power of the Earth the Earth under Saturns who is accounted the Authour of a cold and melancholick temperature Further those things that are ingendered in the bowels of the Earth of the substance of the Earth as Marble and Stones are of a cold nature although we must otherwise conceive of mettals because they are rather of an airy nature and have in them sparkles of the Fire of Nature and a spirit of Sulphur congealing their moist and cold matter Yet Mercurie surpassing the rest in moisture and cold is beholding to the Earth for his coldness and to the Water for his moisture It is otherwise with those things that are produced in the Sea as in Amber and Coral and many other things that have their beings from the Sea and fresh Waters which as it is apparent are of a hot temper so that we have this instruction both from reason and experience that the greatest coldness is to be attributed to the Earth not to the Water 60. But driness doth agree to the Earth accidentally onely and in a remiss degree for it was created in the middest of the Waters and the order of beings required that in respect of its gravity being sunk in the Waters it should never separate from them but the Creatour using his Prerogative having removed the Waters gave to it an open surface that so there might be room made both for the creation of mixed Beings and for their habitation The Earth therefore was enfranchiz'd from its natural yoke of bondage and subjection to the Waters not by any order of Nature but by a priviledge of favour that so having its face wipt it might lift up a dry visage to the view of the Heavens and might partake of the welcome light of the world 61. Every cold and drie is averse from the faculty of Generation unless it be helped out by some eternal helps therefore it was the will of the Supream Authour of Nature to heat
may guess that it abounds with a hot and moist though not a watry yet a fat Being which is the food of fire In this Region is much peace and a good temperature because it is not hurryed with the tempests of any wind and onely the lighter excrements of the inferiour Nature are sucked up hither 80. The higher Region near the Moon is all airy not fiery as it hath been taken up though falsely in the Schools There is the peaceable habitation of the purest Air and as it borders upon the Heavenly Region so it approcheth it in nature for it is not defiled with the least â—mut of the lower Abyss There is a temperature in the highest a purity but little inferiour to that of the neighbouring Heaven In this place to fancy a sphear of fire is the shame of a Philosopher which breaking the Laws of Nature would have long ere this ruined the Fabrick of the Universe 81. The Fire as a fourth Element of Nature was placed in the highest Region of the Air as in its proper sphear by the chief Philosophers being led by an argument from order and by conjecture rather than truth For let no man fancy any other fire of Nature than the celestial Light therefore the blessed Philosopher in his Genesis makes no mention of fire because he had before told of the creation of the Light upon the first day which is the genuine fire of Nature and truly he would else not have omitted Fire if it had been a principle of Nature having specified Earth Water and the Fowls of the Heavens 82. Let not any therefore fancy unless sleeping a Region of Fire burning next the Moon for the whole Air would not be able to bear so great an abundance of intense fire but it had long ago fed upon and ruined the whole Fabrick of the World for whatsoever it falls upon it feeds upon and devours being the designed ruin of the World and Nature 83. Such a Devourer of Nature is not lodged as an Element of Nature neither above the Air nor below the Earth Onely he doth tyrannize in the kingdom of Nature either in the height of the Air or the depths of the Earth or else being kindled upon the superficies of the Earth Therefore Lullius a man of a raised wit did justly account it amongst the Gyants and Tyrants of the World It may also be termed to be an Enemy to Nature because whatsoever is destructive to Nature is an adversary of Nature 84. Our common Fire is partly natural partly artificial It may be man borrowed it for the accommodation of life and for his necessity from the Celestial by an unition of the beams of it and a multiplication of its vigour or else by attrition or the collision of two bodies the Spirit of God suggesting the project to man 85. The Sovereign Creatour of all things did place the fiery spirit of a kindly heat in the Globe of the Sun to inspire light and an enlivening heat to the rest of the bodies in the Universe wherefore many have thought him to be the heart of the whole Fabrick for from him springs the principle of all generation and life He that searcheth for any other Element of fire in the world doth shut his own eyes against the Sun 86. The source therefore of the Fire of Nature is seated in the Sun whose heat is always of an equality and temperate in it self though it be felt by us either greater or less according to his appropinquation or distance or according to his direct or oblique beams or according to the scituation or nature of places The Sun hath been elevated by most Philosophers as the Soul of the World breathing in motion and a faculty of generation to Nature 87. The Sun is not the Eye of the World as some Ancients termed it but is the Eye of the Creatour of the World by which he doth sensibly view his sensible creatures by which he conveys to them the sweetly-affecting beams of his love by which he renders himself viewable to them For scarcely could a sensible Nature have comprehended an insensible Creatour therefore he formed for himself and us so noble a body roab'd in his own glory whose rays that nearest approach Divinity are Spirit and Life 88. From that universal Principle of life all the in-bred heat of Elements or mixed Beings is derived which hath gotten to be called by the name of Fire for wheresoever a free heat a natural motion or life lodges there Nature hath hidden Fire as the principle of them and the first mover of the Elements by which the sensible Elements or the Portions of the World are elementated and receive their animations yet doth it cleave close to the womb of the Earth being bound up by the Earths density and coldness exciting an Antiperistasis 89. That Fire of Nature which is seated in mixt bodies hath chosen the radical moisture as its proper seat the principal residence of which is in the heart although it be diffused through all the parts of the body as in the prime organ of life and the centre of this little world whence that Prince of Nature as commanding from its Castle doth move concordantly all the faculties and the rest of the organs and doth in-breathe life to the humours of the mixed Being to the spirits and finally to the whole Elementary Mass And being the Sun and Vicegerent of the Sun doth act all in this little that the Sun doth in that large World 90. As the Sun being in the middest of the rest of the Planets doth enlighten them with his light replenish them with his influential virtues beget an harmony of life by his enlivening spirit so doth the solar spirit in the middle of the Elementary Nature giveth it an influential light and gathers the Elements together in the work of Generation and doth unite and enliven them 91. The first Agent in the World is the Fire of Nature which being seated in the Globe of the Sun doth diffuse that vivifical heat by means of his rays through all the dominions of Nature working in the seeds a power of activity and setling in them the principle of motion and action at the removal of which all motion ceaseth and also the faculty of life and action 92. The heat of Nature and the light of Nature are really one and the same for they have a continual and uniform effluence from the same Fountain i. the Sun but are distinguished by their office for the heat is to penetrate into the most inward parts of Nature but light is to manifest and open the outward parts the office of heat is to move the occult Natures of things that of light to set before the eyes sensible accidents both of these is wrought by the rays of the Sun The Sun therefore is the first Organ of Nature by whose approach or distance all the operations of Nature are variously governed intended or remitted by means of light and
two Waters those above and these below betwixt our Water and Air yet it is neither of them because although it rarifie yet will it never be heightened to the great degree of the nobilitie of the Air It may be made a spurious but never a pure Air neither will the refined nature of the Air be so depressed and fall from its puritie as to thicken into a vapour cloud or Water For the right of Nature never got that first separation of the Waters which was really and actually done by that Architect spirit and that the established bounds of the parts of the World which God hath sealed with an indelible signature should either be blurred or removed by any new confusion 129 But those that dive deeper into things will acknowledge the Earth to be the womb of the World the vessel of Generation the mother of a multiplied and almost numberless issue which being rescued in the beginning of the Creation from the power of the covering Waters and priviledged to it self was made and remained drie land and her bodie being condensed sunk to the foundation and the centre of the whole and spread out her lap as a Parent to all vegetables and all other creatures yet did she want moisture whereby she might be made apt for a fruitful generation Gods providence set out a remedie for this exigence Therefore from the beginning was the water made volatile that so it might be carried up in vapours which being frozen by cold in this cloud might by heat be thawed again into Waters By this master-piece of Divine providence was this exigence of the Earth supplied and that driness which threatened barrenness was tempered with a large moisture and the womb of our mother conceived Therefore onely Water hath the circulation to the intent that it might moisten the bosom of the Earth or more truly it is distilled in the lower region of the Air as in its Alembick that so by often pouring in and reiterated distillations it being abounded and having gotten virtues both from above and below and endued with that celestial Nectar it might more effectually soften the bosom of the Earth and endue it with a prolifical virtue The chief worker of all who maketh use of the art of Nature hath added nothing superfluous to his work nor left any thing defective in it 130 But the Water being the menstruum of the World doth cherish and contain in it the seeds of things and their elements but she having this circulation the true and genuine Elements of things which are in the Earth as in the matrix and vessel of Generation and in the Water as in the menstruum are also whirled about In the vapour therefore are the Elements of the Earth the Water and the Air have their sublimation and exuberation with it They are not the bodies of Earth Water and Air which have their proper sphears and constitute the several Regions of the World but they are the very spiritual Elements of Nature which lye hid and inhabit in them out of which many bodies as stones may be generated and excocted in the Air For where all the Elements well mixt do meet as they do in a vapour there bodies may be generated but when they find not a convenient matrix as in the Air there are ingendered imperfect mixtures not by reason of any fault in the mixture but in the Matrix 131. The Water being seated as middle betwixt the Earth and the Air doth trouble both it by its flowing and always moving inconstancy infesting the Air with a black soote and noisom vapours and often drowning the Earth by flouds causing tempests in the Air ruines to the Earth and corruption to both and it doth assault the Region of the one with its levity and of the other with its gravity and doth cross the order of Nature and the nature of Times by its defect or excess yea doth shake all her borderers with her terrible claps and tumultuous ragings Her nature being altogether female the supream Creatour seems to have bestowed her on the World in the nature of a Woman or a necessary Evil even so doth she arrogate all things as subject to her and turns those things that were given her for a general good to a publick ruin Finally it is the scourge of divine Justice revenging Nemeses which being designed to the vengeance of sin doth break out to punish and sets the hopes and wealth of many the very roots of pride under several shapes of judgements the scoff and blast of the world 132. The universal Natures the more thick they are the more impure the more endued with tenuity the more purity The Earth because more thick than Water therefore is less noble and so Water than Air and Air than Heaven and so the highest Region of the Heavens is the most noble because it is most subtile For it is an undoubted truth that spiritual Natures are more excellent than corporeal and the more bordering upon the spiritual Natures the more they draw nigh to perfection 133. The foundation of Generation and Corruption is in Moisture for in both the travails of Nature Moisture of all the Elements is the first patient receiving the first seal of the form The natural Spirits are easily united with it because flowing from it do lightly return to it because the root of them in that and by that are the rest of the Elements mixed The moist Element hath its circulation no less in mixed and individual bodies than in the World both in the work of Generation and of Nutrition for it was Natures pleasure that both these works should be performed by the same instruments of condensation and rarefaction and by the same means to wit Spirits 134. The Earth is the Vessel of Generation Water the menstruum of Nature containing in it the formal and seminal virtues which it borrows from the Sun the male and the formal universal Principle from him is derived into all things the influence of the fire of Nature and of formal Spirits in which are all things necessary for generation the in-bred heat being wrapt up in the moist Therefore Hippocrates did rightly affirm That these two Elements Fire and Water could do all contained all things in them For from them do issue two masculine qualities of Hot and Drie from the other two more of Cold and Moist being the female qualities which so concurring and mixing perfect the generation of mixed bodies Over those two principal Elements the two greater Lights were set the Sun the authour of Fire and the Moon the Lady of Moisture 135. Nature perfects the circulation of the volatile Element by a three-fold action or instrument by Sublimation Demission or Refusion and by Decoction which stand in need of a divers temperament So doth the rightly ordered intention of Nature wandering through various motions directeth her interrupted actions to their designed end and attaineth the same mark though it trades through divers wayes
Heavens for the Air giving way to the vapour that flies up to it receives it to lodge in the Region of the Clouds as in a large Hall but ere it comes thither its body being in a manner spiritualized the moist Being is divested of its ponderous nature that so it might by this addition of agility the sooner compass its desire and enjoy the priviledge of an ambiguous nature 148 In the mean time the Sun the Prince of the celestial Quire and the rest of the superiour Natures taking care of the inferiour do instil by continual breathings enlivening spirits as so many trilling rivulets from their most clear and pure Fountains But the Vapours being thin and so swimming in the Air or else bound up into a Cloud do most eagerly suck in in that spiritual Nectar and attract it to them by a Magnetick virtue and having received it they grow big and being impregnated and quickened with that ingendering seed as being delivered of their burden do freely fall down back into the lap of the Earth in some Dew hoar Frost Rain or some other nature and this Mother of the Elements doth receive into her womb the returning moisture and being quickened by this Heavenly seed sends forth in her due time innumerable issues according to divers degrees more or less generous according to the goodness of the seed or the disposition of the womb and the inferiour Waters also are made partakers of the benevolence of the Superiour and Celestial because she goes with the Earth to the making up of one and the same Globe and so they receive joynt and common benefits But by the nature of Water is the fermentation of the rest of the Elements 149 But this ferment or leaven is a vivifical spirit flowing down from the superiour Natures upon these inferiour without which the Earth would be again void and empty For it is the seed of Life without which neither man nor any creature nor any growing thing could enjoy the benefit of a generation or life for man lives not by bread alone but especially by that Heavenly food by Air to wit by such a spirit so breathed in and fermented 150 The three material Elements being remote in the composition of things do onely obey God and Nature and come not under the laws of Art or of humane Invention but there are three others that issue from the copulation of these which being extracted by resolution do sufficiently shew that they are the nearest in the composition of mixt Beings to wit Salt Sulphur and Mercury And so it is manifested That there is a Trinity of Elements and a Signature of the universal NATURE 151 These three last Elements are the issue of a three-fold copulation of the three former Mercury of the mixture of Earth and Water Sulphur of the copulation of Earth and Air Salt produced out of the condensation of Air and Water and there can be no more combinations of them named The Fire of Nature is in all of them as their formal principle the virtue of the celestial bodies contributing their influence and co-operation 152 Neither are these latter produced out of any copulation of the former bodies for Mercury comes forth of an unctious Earth and clear Water well diluted and mixt Sulphur is generated of the most subtile and driest Earth coupled with the moist Air Finally Salt is congealed of salt and thick Water and crude Air 153 It may be lawfull to affirm that Democritus his opinion That all bodies were composed out of Atoms is not far distant from truth for both reason and experience do vindicate him from biting tongues for the knowing Philosopher would not wholly conceal but would unfold in an obscure and dark term the mixture of the Elements which that it might be agreeable to the intention of Nature must necessarily be done by the smallest and by actually indivisible Beings other wise the Elements could not combine into a continuous natural body Experience teacheth us in the artifical resolution composition of mixt Beings which are tryed by distillations that the perfect mixtion of two or more bodies is not done but in a subtile vapour But Nature doth make her mixtions far more subtile and as it were spiritual which we may safely believe was the opinion of Democritus for the grosseness of bodies is an impediment to Mixtion therefore the more any thing is attenuated the more apt and fitted it is for mixtion 154 The three-fold degree of Existence in mixt Beings doth offer to us three supream kinds of mixt Beings to wit of Minerals Vegetables and of Animal Beings Natures law hath appointed a Being for Minerals in the Earth for Vegetables in the Earth and the Water for Animals in the Earth Water and Air yet to all the Air is the principal food and foster of life 155 Minerals are thought simply not to have an existence or a life although Metals from Minerals may be said to be endowed with a principal life both because in their generation there is a kind of a copulation and a commixiton of a double seed male and female viz. Sulphure and Mercurie which two by a long and multiplied circulation are turned and purged and being seasoned with the salt of Nature and fermented by it and being perfectly mixed in a most subtile vapour are formed into a clay or soft mass the spirit of Sulphure by degrees closing in the Mercurie at length that Mass doth grow hard and is confirmed to a metallick body 156 As also because perfect Mettals especially do contain in them a principle of life to wit in-set fire infused from heaven which being dulled by being bound in with the hard outside of the Mettal lies hid as void of motion and as an enchanted treasure till getting libertie by philosophical solution and the subtile artifice of the work-man it doth powerfully display its refined spirit and celestial soul by a motion of vegetation in the issue heightned to the sudden perfection of art nature 157 Vegetables also are invested with a vegetative soul or spirit they grow by a vegetative motion and multiplyâ— yet want an animal sence and motion Their seeds are of an Hermaphroditical nature for every particular grain doth contain in it a fruitfull seed without copulation or mixture of a double seed although in every kind almost of Vegetables experience sheweth there are both sexes to be found 158 God also hath wrapt up in the seeds of Vegetables a secret spirit the authour of generation ennobled with a special character which is wholly celestial and a ray of the heavenly light void of corruption in which is preserved the specifical form under the bodie of every individual subsistance which being through corruption resolved lost that immortal spirit being called out by the vivifical and homogeneal heat of the Sun doth rise up in a new stalk and doth bring into it the form of the foâ—mer 159 Animals besides their existence and faculty of
as by way of requital not deny me her assistance as a buckler against the delusions of Sophisters and a breast-plate against the environed darts of either Envy or Ignorance These Beasts will bark the first pining at anothers good the second raging in its own clouds both break into the cultivated Gardens of Knowledge and the delightfull paradise of Philosophy and either snip or blast the endeavours of a more fortunate Genius These to no purpose strive to stop my course by their frights I am seated above their highest reach as long as I can see the Deity of Truth under her patronage I walk I work secure Onely be you pleased to accept these sprinklings of my retirement with the same soul it is presented if any thing seem in it to disrellish deal so gently as that you may seem rather not to comply than wholly to refuse I shall in the interim reach my end if my pains shall cause you to fall upon greater attempts with better success Enchyridion Physicae Restitutae OR A Summary of the Physicks Recovered THE FIRST RULE GOd is an Eternal Being an infinite Oneness the radical Principle of all things whose Essence is an incomprehensible Light his Power Omnipotency whose beck is an absolute act He that dives deeper is swallowed up in a trance and silence and is lost in the abyss of unfathomed glory 2. Most of the Ancients conceived the world from eternity to have been figured in its Archetype and Original which is God who is all Light before the Creation of the Universe he was a book rowld up in himself giving light onely to himself but as it were travailing with the birth of the world he unfolded himself and that work which lay hid in the womb of his own mind was manifested by extending it to view and so brought forth the Idaeal-world as it were in the transcript of that divine Original into an actual and material world This is hinted by Trisgmegist when he says That God changed his form and that all things were in a sudden revealed and brought to light For the world is nothing else but the disclosed image of an occult Deity This beginning of the world the Ancients seem to have denoted by the birth of their Pallas out of the brain of their Jupiter by the Mid-wiffery of Vulcan that is by the help of divine fire or light 3. The eternal Parent of all things not less wise in governing than powerfull in creating did so orderly dispose the whole organical frame of the world that the highest are so intermixt with the lowest and the lowest interchangeably and inconfusedly with the highest and have an Analogical likeness so that the extreams of the whole work by a secret bond have a fast coherence between themselves through insensible mediums and all â—â—â—â—gs do freely combine in an obedience to their Supream Ruler and to the benefit of the inferiour Nature onely being subject to a dissolution at the will of him who gave them their constitution Wherefore it is well said of Hermes That whatsoever is below hath an assimulation to somewhat above He that transfers the sovereign order of the Universe to any Nature diverse from the Nature of God denies a God For it cannot be just to conceive any other uncreated Deity of Nature as the Cause of the production or conservation of the seveâ—al Individuals of this large frame of the world besides that spirit of the â—ivine Worker which lay upon those first waters and brought forth the seeds of all things confusedly rowld â—n the first Chaos from their power into act and wheeling them by 〈◊〉 perpetual alteration doth mannage them Geometrically by composition and resolution 5. He that knows not the soul oâ— the world to be that Spirit the Creatour and Governour of the World by its contâ—â—â—ed infusion oâ— its breathing upon the works of nature and by its enlarged diffusioâ— through all things giving to alâ— things a set but secret motion according to their kind he is wholly an Ignaro of the laws of the Universe for he that created cannot but assume the power of ruling what is created and it must be acknowledged that all things have their creation generation and conservation by the same Spirit 6. Notwithstanding this he thiâ— shall grant Nature the honour of being the second universal Cause attending on the first and as it werâ— an instrument moved by it and 〈◊〉 giving according to a material order an immediate motion to everâ— thing in the world will not speâ—â— what disagrees with the opinion 〈◊〉 Philosophers or Divines who 〈◊〉 that Natura naturans i. Nature giving nature this Natura naturata Nature made nature 7. He that is verst in the secrets of Nature will acknowledge this second Nature the attendant of the first to be the spirit of the Universe or the quickening virtue of that light created in the beginning and contracted into the body of the Sun and endowed with an hidden faecundity Zoroaster and Heraclit called this The Spirit of Fire the invisible Fire the Soul of the world 8. The order of Nature is nothing else than a large Rowl of the eternal Laws which being Enacted by the highest Sovereign and Recorded and written in various leaves to innumerable people of a various nature by the auspicious power of which Laws the frame of the Universe doth accomplish its motions life and death always atttending on the margins of the last Volume and the other spaces being taken up by alternal motions 9. The world is as it were a Smithswork made orbicular the links of the chain enclasping it each the other are the parts of the world Nature as it were deputed to sit in the middle always present and ever working continually repairs the changes and motions of all things 10. The whole world as it hath its constitution from a three-fold Nature so hath it its distinction into a three-fold Region viz. The Super-celestial the Celestial the Sub-celestial The Super-celestial is that which is otherwise termed the Intelligible it is altogether spiritual and immortal having the nearest approch to the Divine Majesty The Celestial is seated in the middle which having allotted to her the portion of the most perfect bodies and being replenished with spirits doth pour out by the conveyance of spiritual channels numberless efficacies and vital breathings not enduring a corruption onely having attained its period subject to change Lastly the Sub-celestial or Elementary Region hath its assignment in the lowest portion of the world This being wholly of a corporeal nature doth enjoy spiritual gifts and benefits the chief of which is in life by loan onely and upon request being as it were to repay Heaven for it In the bosom of this Region there is no generation without corruption no birth without death 11. It is enacted and setled by the Laws of the Creation that the lowest things should immediately be subservient to the middle the middle to those above these to
the weak and faint heat of that scattered light could not get the conquest of that moist and cold matter nor put forth its virtue in any higher actings 32. From the light therefore the Elements as well as the first matter had their information and so attained a joynt nature of light and by kindred a fast friendship betwixt themselves not according to the vulgar opinion an hatred and quarrel they embrace each the other with a common bond of friendship that they may joyn themselves to the making up of several mixed bodies according to their several kinds But the light of the Sun being of a far greater power than this former is the Form of all forms or the Universal form which doth convey all natural forms in the work of generation into the disposed matter and seeds of things For every particular nature hath within it a spark of light whose beams do in a secret maÌ„ner attend with an active motive power 33. It was necessary that the entire portion of the first matter allotted to this lower Region as well as the Elements who did flow from it should be seasoned from the beginning with a light tincture of that first Light whereby they might be the better fitted to receive that greater and more powerfull light in the information of mixt bodies So fire with fire water with water light with light being homogeneous bodies have a perfect union 34. From the sight efficacy of the Sun we may inferre that he is in the stead of an heart to the Universe for from him is life derived to all parts for light is the Chariot of life yea the fountain and next cause and the souls of creatures are the beams of that heavenly light which do breath life into them exempting onely the soul of man which is a ray of the Super-celestial and uncreated Light 35. God hath imprinted in the Sun a threefold image of his Divinity the first in his unity for Nature cannot away with a multiplicity of Suns no more than the Deity can with a plurality of Gods that so one may be the spring of all Secondly in its Trinity or his threefold office For the Sun as Gods Vicegerent doth dispense all the benefits of Nature by light motion and heat from hence is life which is the supream and most accomplisht act of Nature in this world beyond which cannot go unless backward But from Light and Motion issues heat as the third in the Trinity proceeds from the first and the second Person Lastly God who is the Eternal Light Infinite Incomprehensible could express and demonstrate himself to the world onely by light Let none therefore wonder why the Eternal Sun did beautifie that most excellent draught of himself which was his own making that heavenly Sun with so great endowments for in him hath he pitcht his pavilion 36. The Sun is a transparent Mirrour of the Divine Glory which being seated above the sense strength of material creatures did frame this glass by whose resplendency the beams of his Eternal Light might be communicated by reflection to all his works and so should by this reflection be rendered discernable For it is beyond the capacity of any mortal to have any immediate view of that Divine Light This is the Royal eye of the Divinity which doth conferre by his presence life and liberty to his suppliants 37. The last work of this Great Worker and as it were the corolary and shutting of all man enters 〈◊〉 Summary of the Worlds Fabrick 〈◊〉 small draught of the Divine Nature The Creatour deferred his making to a part of the sixth Light â—nd the last of all his working that the rich Furniture of Nature and â—ll endowments of things both above â—nd below might bring their confluence to the humane nature as to another Pandora Thus the things of the world being ordered man wanted onely to be annexed as the perfection of all whereby nature being now strengthened by a various light might bring into his perfect temperature more refined Elements and that there might be the best Clay for the forming of so exquisite a Vessel Yea the lower Globe and the inhabitants of it did require such a Governour lest otherwise they might refuse his Rule 38 Upon the sixth day from the Creation the third day of the Suns rising did man rise out of the Earth by the time of his production and the number of the days is shadowed forth a great mysterie For as upon the fourth day of the Creation the whole light of the Heaven was gathered into the single bodie of the Sun and on the third day from the making of the Sun which was the sixth day from the beginning of the Creation the Clay of the Earth received the breath of life and was formed into a living man the image of God So on the fourth Millenary day from the beginning of the world the uncreated Sun viz. the Divine Nature infinite and never before comprehended within any bounds was willing to be comprized and in a manner shut into the cage of an humane bodie Upon the third day or millenarie for a thousand years with God are but as one day after the first rising of that Sun and about the end of the sixth day to wit of the millenarie from the Creation shall fall out the glorious Resurrection of the Humane Nature in the second coming of that supream Judge which was also praesignified to us by his blessed Resurrection on the third day So did the Prophet in his Genesis roul up the secret age and destinie of the world 39 Although the Almightie according to his pleasure created the World yet could have brought it out of darkness into light if his will had so been in a moment and by a beck for he said and it was so Yet the order of Creation of principles and successively of the natures according to their times was set in the mind of God which order rather than the work it self of Creation that sacred Philosopher seems to describe in his Genesis 40 There seems to have been in the beginning a threefold way of the information of the first matter For in what portion of the matter there was an irrational lightsom form and without proportion above the rest as in the Empyrean heaven where the light first seized upon the matter then the form having as it were an infinite virtue did swallow up its matter and translated it into a nature almost spiritual and free from any accident 41 But where the virtues of the form and matter did meet in an equal poyz and a just equallitie according to which the aetherial heaven and the celestial bodies are informed there the action of the light whose force in acting is of greatest power did proceed so far that it did rescue its matter from all original blemishes as also from the loathsom infection of corruption after a wonderfull sort by illumination and attenuation and this is to be accounted as a
the cold womb of the Earth with an heavenly fire and adjoyned to the drie globe of the Earth the moist nature of Water that so by the mixture of two generative causes moist and hot the sterility of the Earth might be helped and that by the mediation of the concourse and mixture of all the Elements the Earth might be made a natural Vessel for fruitfull Generation Therefore all Elements and all qualities are in the Earth 62. The body of the Earth was rightly created by the great God of a spongeous nature that so there might be a receptacle for Air Showers and heavenly Influences and also that the moist vapours being expelled by the force of inward heat from the Centre to the Superficies through the porous passages of the Earth might by a mean putrefaction corrupt the seeds of things and so prepare for generation these being thus disposed receive that enlivening and heavenly heat For Nature hath sunk in the depths a magnetick love by the actings of which they draw down and suck out the efficacy and virtue of things above which do increase the strength of the information and hasten the sweetness of vital Air 63. The heat that comes from the inwards of the Earth is moist and impure and doth corrupt by reason of the tainted mixture of Earth and Water But the most pure and heavenly doth generate by excitation dilatation and furthering the inbred heat to life even that inbred heat which is hidden in the seeds of things and as Natures secret closed in their centre But because both these heats are of the same kind they have a joynt and amicable operation in the act of generation and are inseparably united until they are brought forth to life and large vegetation 64. Water is of a middle nature betwixt what is thick and what is of a thin nature betwixt the Earth and the Air Natures menstruum a volatile body flying and not enduring fire drawn forth by a moderate heat into a vapour assuming multiplyed shapes more unstable than Proteus 65. The moist Element is Mercurie which sometimes assuming the nature of a bodie sometimes of a spirit doth attract to himself by his revolutions the virtues of superiour and inferiour Beings and as it were receiving their instructions doth trade in commerce as their agent or factor amongst the remotest natures of the Universe neither will he leave his trafficquing till all the Elements of the corruptible Nature receive their fixation and purgation by fire and there issue upon it an Universal Sabbath 66. Water being the nearest in nature to the first matter doth easily receive her impress The Chaos the ancient Parent of all things was a kind of subtile and dark vapour a kind of a moist dark substance like a thin smoak from whose most subtile part the Heavens are drawn forth into order which a three-fold difference divides into a three-fold province to wit the Supream which is the noblest the middle which assumes the second place of dignity and honour the lowest is inferiour to the other two both in scite and honour The thicker substance of the matter went to the making of that watry heap which is a middle nature The thickest part which is as it were the dregs of the whole Mass sate down to the bottom and was setled for the globe of the Earth The extremities of this artifice to wit the Heaven and the Earth did recede more from the first state of their matter and from their ancient shape the Heaven in regard of its great rarity and levity the Earth in respect of its great density and gravity But the Water which was a mean betwixt them continued a nature more like the first formless Abyss from whence it proceeds so that with ease it turns it self by rarefaction into smoak or vapour which is the image of the ancient Hyle or first Matter 67. Moisture is more proper to Water than Coldness because Water is of a greater rarity and more lightsom than Earth but those things which communicate most of light are farthest off from cold the morâ—rarity there is in any thing the nearer vicinity there is to light Wateâ— retained the symbole of moisture from the first matter the Abyss as the Earth coldness For the Architect Spirit of the World divided the more thick parts into those two nearly-allied Natures 68. Coldness wooes Driness and invests it self with it where it is vigorously predominant by the constriction of moist beings and by the desiccation of them as is evident in Snow Ice and Hayl For it is the work of Nature to bind and drie the Water than which nothing is more humid by the proper instrument of Cold yea the principal and common subject of Heat and Cold is humidity by both which it is so strongly assailed till it be conquered from whence it falls out that in Autumn so many drie leaves fall at the first cold that the stalks of feeble Plants upon the strength of Winter in the height of Drought are void of moisture and drie away The cold penetrating doth so scorch and makes so furious an assult upon the vital humours hence proceeds flaggy and withered age at length death comes and cuts down all with his well-set sickle and sweeps you into his general Granary How then can any one conceive Cold to be friendly to Moisture and to be its inherent property Since Nature suffers not the Elements to act against each other lest they should destroy and oppose each the others powers but an intense Cold quickly would bring under a remiss and weak moisture and would swallow it up all by a violent constriction so that by this means one of the Elements being lost there would necessarily follow an imperfection in the work of the rest and a deficiency in the generation of all things It is therefore not suitable to the Law of Nature to invest Water with the property of being cold in the highest degree 69. Out of these solider Natures of Earth and Water doth Nature extract her Elements by which she compacts Vessels and corporeal Organs for out of the commixture of both is made a clay which is the next matter of things in generation for it is in stead of the Chaos In which virtually and confusedly are all Elements Out of this clay was the first Father of mankind created and after all Generation issued from it In the Generation of creatures is a clay made of the seed and the menstruum from whence proceeds the living Creature In the production of Vegetables the seeds do first fall into a subtile clay by putrefaction and then are wrought up to a vegetable body In the generation of Mettals there comes forth a clay from the perfect mixture of Sulphur and Mercury and their resolution in a fat Water by which means the mettallick bodies are indurated by a long decoction In the Philosophical resolving of mettals and in the creation of that Philosophical Secret first is brought forth a
clay out of the seed of both parents purged and mixed 70. Water is the base and root of all moistures yea it is moisture it self from which all moist things receive their denomination therefore Water may be rightly defined the Fountain of the moist Element or the Spring of moisture whose property it is to wet by its liquour But those things are termed humid which do in themselves according to a less or greater degree contain a moisture or a watry liquor Moisture is receivable of all qualities so bloud and yellow choler are humours endued with their own heat although they have their foundation in the Element of Water Aqua-fortis and the like are empowered with a burning and a fiery nature The burning Water and many other essences which are extracted from oyls and water do abound in heat although the root of them which is Water be cold because Nature doth first imprint in a moist elemēt various resemblances and signatures of its powers and doth in it en-root and infuse its principal and choice qualities Moisture is the first subject of Nature upon which her prime care is bestowed her first charge layed out by whose liquour it doth dilute and mingle various colours and indelible tinctures To it first do the spiritual qualities communicate themselves in it first do they take up their being and actings 71. The lower Waters being divided into two do occupy a double seat for one part of them brimming the Earth doth lean on it as it were as its proper Base and with the Earth makes but one Globe the other part flying upward doth range up and down the Region of the neighbour Air and there making to it self many masqued fancies of bodies and various figures of several phantasms doth reave hither and thither over-hanging the lower Region 72. Always there is a great part of the Waters that keep above and being driven to and fro by the Caroach of the Wind doth post over divers parts of the Air which was in this manner ordered from the Day of the Creation by the enacting of the Wisdom of GOD that so the uncumbered and plain face of the Earth might be unmasked and fited for the generation of things For the Channels of the Sea and Rivers were not sufficient to receive the whole Waters but if all should break the confining Bars of the Heavens and come tumbling down it would not onely cover the plain face of the Earth but it may be overtop the highest Mountains Such an enloosening of the Cataracts of Heaven we may guess did occasion the old Cataclysm or Deluge 73. Water is not onely sublimated into a vapour by heat alone neither is it onely bound up in a cloud by cold but to both the virtues of the Sun and the Stars do contribute their aids not onely by multiplying the vigours of the Elements but also by a kind of Magnetick virtue attracting and retaining a moisture much or less according to their different position and the diverse figure of Heaven from whence we observe the various ordering of years and times for indeed that Mass of Waters is not kept in so poized onely by the solidation of Cold or the Air but by the powerfull order and regiment of superiour bodies 74. Lest there might seem to Divine Justice a want of judgements for the execution of his wrath he made that Ocean which is poized over our heads to be volatile or flying and withal brought into his Armoury those fiery darts his Thunder-bolts that so the presumptuous sinners that cannot be won by love might be wrought about by fear 75. They are much out of the way who do attribute to Air moisture in the highest degree upon this ground because it is easily kept in within the bounds of another but hardly within its own for this is the property of light and liquid bodies not of moist and so doth better agree with fire and Heaven which natures are more rarified than with Water and Air for bodies that are rarified because they of their own will flow every where cannot be comprized within their own bounds and therefore stand in need of another Onely firm and solid bodies are kept in within their own compass and superficies which cannot be done by those things that are of a subtile nature because by reason of their thinness they melt and are fluid and so less consistent From whence this flows that the Air is a body of greater rarity but not of greater humidity 76. The Air from it self hath no quality intense and in the highest degree but sometimes hath them upon loan else-where The nature of Air is a middle nature betwixt things below and above and so doth with ease assume the qualities of those that border upon it from whence it happens that its inferiour Region according to the diversity of times hath a variety of temper which inconstancy is occasioned by the changes of the neighbouring and thicker bodies of Water and Earth whose state is easily altered by heat and cold 77. The whole Air is the Heaven the floor of the World Natures sieve through which the virtues and influences of other bodies are transmitted a middle nature it is that knits all the scattered natures of the Universe together a most thin smoak kindled by the fire of Heaven into a light as it were an immortal flame the subject of light and shade of day and night impatient of vacuity the principal transparent the easiest receiver of almost all qualities and effects yet the constant retainer of none a borderer upon the spiritual nature therefore in the Tracts concerning the Mysteries of Philosophers it is called by the name of a Spirit 78. The lower Region of the Air is like unto the neck or higher part of an Alembick for through it the Vapours climbing up and being brought to the top receive their condensation from Cold and being resolved into water fall down by reason of their own weight So Nature through continued distillations by sublimation of the Water by cohobation or by often drawing off the liquour being often poured on the body doth rectifie and abound it In these operations of Nature the Earth is the vessel receiving Therefore the Region of the Air that is nearer to us being bounded by the Region of Clouds as by a vaulted Chamber is of a greater thickness and impurity than those Regions above 79. The middle Region of the Air is not that in which is the gathering of the Clouds from whence are Lightenings and Thunders which is onely the higher part of the lower Region and the border of it but that which is above the Clouds is to be stiled The Middle Region whither the watry Being by reason of its gravity cannot reach yet whither sulphureous exhalations disburthened of the load of their Vapours do climb up and there by a motion either of their own or anothers being kindled burn Such are the flaming Meteors of divers sorts which are viewed in the middle Region whence we
by reason of their opposite qualities but those qualities were tempered by the coition of both principles and from the extreams became a middle temper and such were they when they dislodged from the first and went into the second principles or Elements 116 The extreams are contrary each to other onely by reason of the intension of their opposite qualities but those things that spring from the mixture of these extreams are not â—dverse because they are of a middle nature and the â—fflux of the union of the two extreams to wit of Light and Darkness 117. That out of the mixture of Contraries to wit of Light and Darkness do not come contraries forth but in a temperature is plain by that of the Kingly Prophet breaking forth into these words of the Eternal Light He bowed the Heavens and came down and Darkness was under his feet c. He made Darkness his Covert his Pavilion in the middest of it c. The very fountain of Eternal Light that he might exhibit the brightnes of his infinite glory to mortal eyes did wrap it up in a cloud and dark mask and brought the Darkness to the Light that he might make of the two Extreams a moderate light and so allay the splendour of so great a light as was not to be gazed on without the ruin of the Spectatour yea Philosophers do affirm the Rain-bow that was given by God as a sign and token of a Covenant made with man to be produced out of a mixture of Light and Darkness that so that Symbole of the temperature of Gods wrath existing out of contraries might be tempered of various coherent and friendly colours 118. Those that have delivered that the Earth Water Air and Fire in their sphears are distinct Elements of the World and are turned each into other by mutual reciprocation did but slightly look into the depths of Nature for it is more safe to call them the compleating parts of Nature or the Shops of the Elements for the Elements of the world do not lye under our view or senses as separated in their proper Regions but do lye hid and keep close in their wombs till they come together in the generation of mixt bodies and make up a body But those parts of the World as so far mutually different can never have a conversion in them neither can that one common quality whereby those natures are linked together beget such a change that out of things of a diverse should be formed a like nature yea that they should be turned into the same 119. If those four Elements asserted by them do change and barter their rooms natures and offices all the compact frame of the World devoted to a chance and motion would be in a perpetual fluctuation which we know is established by God in a certain and constant order and scite and distinction of parts For Earth will quickly be made Water Water Air Air Fire and so backward and by this the Centre shall run out to Circumference and the Circumference run into the Centre the farthest and the middle parts of the World shall of their own accord remove out of their places that so after a long time the order of Nature shall be inverted whilest the top and the bottom and the bottom and the top change places and clash together He who doth fancy this so fair composure of a World doth not deserve to have so fine a piece termed a World but a Chaos an Abyss which Nature a friend to Order doth absolutely detest 120. They which do say that those extream bodies of the lower World Earth and Fire supposing not granting a sphear of Fire are turned into each other do wrong themselves and truth too For their distant and repugnant natures do disagree from such a change for the heightened cold thickness and gravity of the Earth are so opposite to the same degree or heat subtility and levity in Fire that they can never be brought to change Besides the Earth a fixed body will not yield to fire but slighteth its virtue if we may believe the opinions of Chymists and common experience neither doth any thing flie out from it but a fat and warry humour both of them not natural to the Earth but if any thing is to be turned into elementary Fire it must necessarily be light and volatile that it may be translated into its Orb and Nature The Earth therefore being most weighty and so the Centre of all being most fixt and so least volatile how can it be turned into Fire and be carried up into the Sphear of Fire or how can Fre the highest and lightest of all be beaten down to be essentially united with the Earth contrary to the laws of Nature It were a more easie conversion of Water and Fire because they are nearer by one degree than Earth and Fire 121 They that believed the exhalations from the region of the earth drawn up into the Air and because kindled there to be earthie and converted into the Element of Fire are far out of the way of truth for they are not earthie but rather airie natures for our Air being moist through the contagion of water lying in the drie bosom of the Earth gather a fatness and by the consortship of the Earth doth temper the moist with the drie but when it exhales through the pores and crevises of the Earth being drawn by heat or else the abundance of the matter forcing out it breaks not forth out of its prison without a noise crack whence proceed earth-quakes and openings not without much ruin that exhalation got loose doth flie up into the region proper to light bodies and there is set on fire being digested by its errant motion and heat more fully into a sulphureous matter Therefore that matter is not truly earthie since it is neither ponderous nor cold but because it is made fat and combustible by the concourse of hot drie and moist it may more properly be called the accidental food of fire than the Fire of Nature or the Elementarie Fire That is a bastard a spurious generation which for that very reason ought not to have been placed amongst the natures or been called by the names of Elements therefore these Firings are rightly called by Aristotle imperfectly-mixed things The same we must conceive of the smoke of combustibles For Smoke being unctious doth quickly take fire which is nothing else but smoke kindled 122 Fire feeds upon fat and unctious matter but the fat moisture of the Air is contempered with drought whence we often may see a sulfureous matter extrinsecally drie and terminated with drought as our ordinarie sulfur gun-powder and the like which though they seem to be outwardly drie do close within them a fat moisture and upon the firing are resolved into it 123 And truly they slip to purpose that have taken an opinion seeing stones and heavie bodies sometimes generated in the Air and shot down thence by lightnings thunders
vegetation do exceed in a sensitive soul which is in them the principle of life and motion Therefore an Animal seated in the highest degree of things below doth compleat the work of Nature in her Elementary kingdom doth live properly generate properly and in it hath Nature truly distinguished each Sex that from two a third to wit their issue might be produced So in the more perfect Beings the most perfect Symbole of the Trinity is most apparent 160 Man the Prince of all creatures and of the lower World is accounted the Summary of Universal Nature For his Soul is an immortal ray of the Divine Light his Body is a beautified Composure of the Elements The inward and unperceiveable faculties of the Sense by which man doth comprehend all things obvious are altogether celestial and as it were Stars giving the influence of knowledge of things the motions and perturbations of the mind are as it were the Winds Tempests Lightenings and Thunders the Meteors which break forth in the Aerial Region of the Spirit do trouble the heart and the bloud Therefore was man deservedly called a Microcosm and the accomplisht Draught of the Universe 161 But not onely man but even every living creature yea every Plant is a Microcosm So is every Grain or Seed a Chaos in which are the seeds of the whole World compendiously bound up out of which in its season a little World will spring 162 Whatsoever Beings of Natnre have a perfect mixture and life they have a body spirit and soul The body is made of clay in which are all things necessary for the matter of generation for it is most agreeable to reason that Bodies should be made of two corporeal Elements especially viz. Earth and Water 163 The Spirit is a small portion of the purest Air or the Heaven a middle nature betwixt the Body and the Soul the knot and bond of both the case of the Soul and the conduit of the more subtile and spiritual parts of the body 164 The soul or form of a mixt body is a spark of the Fire of Nature an undiscernable Ray of Celestial Light brought into act from the power of the seed by the motion of generation bound to an Elementary body by the mediation of the Spirit giving its individual Being to the mixt body the nearest principle and the efficient cause of life It acts according to the disposed matter and the qualities of the Organs 165 The nature or from of the Soul because it is altogether full of light in living creatures especially hath so great a distance from the dark and earthy matter of bodies that this is wholly irrational in respect of that and this unproportionably more noble and therefore is fastened by that strictest tye which Nature makes use of in her works to the body by reason of the disconveniency and distance unless the conjunction and knot had been made by the virtue and efficacy of a peculiar and powerfull mean therefore did the provident Creatour assign a subtile mean which is the Aetherial spirit which receives and retains the begotten from and is the tye of it to the body communicating in its nature with both These things are to be conceived to be spoken of the celestial Soul of Natural things not of the Super-celestial and divine Soul of man which notwithstanding is according to the good pleasure of the Creatour brought into a consortship with the body of man by natural mediums 166 The specifical forms from the first day of the Creation were imprinted in the first individual and particular persons by the character of the Idaeal copie and that diviue and indelible impress was according to the direction of the Creatour by the way of generation traduced to posterity that so by the perpetual succession of particular individual natures the priviledge of immortality might be continued in the kind 167 It cannot nor must be conceived that Forms do generate in the matter their like for to generate is the alone property of bodies but by an harmonious motion of their Organs they do by them dispose the seminal matter for generation and shut up in it a ray of Light or a secret spark of life as a treasure This is the office and priviledge of the Form as also to imprint its own specifical character on that vivifical spirit wrapt up close in the seed which in its set season doth in the work of generation by the engendering heat display it self into a soul whether Vegetative or Animal so that what was a formal and hidden spirit in the seed is now a Form in the mixt body So that occult thing that was closed in the bosom of Nature is now made manifest and brought forth from a power to an act 168 The Form issues not forth onely out of the power and virtue of the seed because there is an influence of celestial virtues in the generations of Beings which do heighten the efficacies of the matter do multiply them and as it were midwife it to groaning Nature yea they do get into and mixe themselves with and bring in auxiliary strength to the formal and seminal spirit that is in the matter which is also by its original celestial 169 There do not onely meet in the generation of every mixt Being the corporeal Elements but also all the Virtues all the Powers of Nature in general and these do contribute something of their own so are the parts of the Universe bound up together that they have an unanimous combination for life and couple by a mutual affection 170 The natural Forms of things though they are potentially in the seeds yet are they neither of nor generated by the substance of the lower Elements for they have their rise from a more noble spring their original is from Heaven for their father is the Sun the heavenly Nature the bond whereby these matters are knit together 171 The specifical Forms of mixt Beings have within themselves closed a dark kind of knowledge of their original and are carried up by their own strength and by a secret motion like unto Waters to the height of their Fountain head So the Soul of man being derived from the divine Spring of the uncreated Light is reflected to the same by the sharp sight of his mind and by the soaring contemplations of his soul but the forms of other living creatures being taken out of the privy Treasury of the Heavens and the Sun do by the instinct of Nature and by a weak kind of reminiscency glance back thither Hence we may observe the frequent Prognosticks of several creatures concerning the courses of the Sun and the changes of the Heavens But the forms of Vegetables being for the most part airy and inspired from the lowest Region of our Air therefore they are not able to extend or reach forth their power or faculties beyond it they do according to their ability lift up their heads into the Air as willing to visit their Countrey but they
comprehend nothing but what is sensible But the mind rangeth far abroad beyond the Cloysters of the Senses and searcheth to a greater height for the hunting out of the bounds of Nature The bodies are as it were the barks the grosser parts of the Elements the accidents of things under which lye hid the pure and sprightly Essences which acknowledge not the subjection and censure of the Senses and which it was a necessity to cloth under a dark Cloud that they might pass from their heavenly to their earthly province of the corporeal Beings The supream Creatour of Nature enacted this copulation of spirituals with corporeals whereby his uncreated spirit communicating it self first to the more spiritual and simple Natures might be conveyed through them as by so many conduits to corporeal Beings and in this manner diffusing it self gradually and orderly through all the Regions of the World through all and every Being doth sustain all things by the Divine presence as also that by a sensible creature the insensible CREATOUR might be apprehended through corporeal and sensible resemblances 189 Whatsoever lives either an Animal or Vegetable life stands in need of food that the natural spirits might be recruited which do continually slide forth through the pores and that so the loss of Nature might have a successive repair For the nourishing juice is made by the more succulent substance of the meat whereby the parts and humours of the body are re-inforced The radical Moisture is renewed out of the purer portion of the humours especially of the bloud the celestial influence intermingling it self by respiration with it 190 Living things have a two-fold nourishment to wit a Corporeal and a Spiritual the former being of small avail to life without the latter For Vegetables do evidently referre the benefit of their increase and nourishment no less to the Air and Heaven than to the Earth yea the Earth it self unless suckled with the milk of Heaven would quickly find her own breast to flag drie this that holy Diver into Natures secrets when he blessed Joseph doth thus express Blest be the Lord for his Earth for the apples of Heaven for the Dew and for the Deep that coucheth beneath for the pleasant apples of the Sun and of the Moon for the top of the everlasting Mountains for the fruits of the eternal Hills c. By which mystical speech the Prophet fore-ensureth the Earths plenty by the abundant influence of the Sun Moon and of the rest of the celestial bodies 191 That spiritual Diet as far as it conduceth to the life of creatures is acknowledged by every vulgar capacity that sees the renewed respiration and the frequent sucking in of the external Air For not onely according to the opinion of ordinary Physicians hath Nature so workmanlike framed those bellows bordering upon the heart to cool it but also that by their continued fanning they might breath in an aethereal Air and hand to it celestial spirits that so by their recruits the vital spirits may be kept in repair and be alwayes multiplied 192 Philosophers do not onely call those spiritual Natures which being created without matter are onely comprehended by the Understanding as the intelligencies Angels and Devils are accounted to be but also those that which although they have their original from matter yet in respect of their great tenuity nobility do not subject themselvs to the search of the Senses and nearer approching to spiritual Beings are rather under stood by reason than found by sense Such is the pure part of the Air such are the influencies of heavenly bodies such the in-set fire and seminal virtues such the vegetable spirits such the animal and the vital and the like in which consists the very nature of Beings than in grosser bodies Such like natures spring from Heaven and in relation to sensibles do assume to themselves the name and right of spirits 193 It is suitable that we should give the Fire of Nature a place amongst the spiritual Beings for in it self it is not perceivable by any sense but discovers it self onely in bodies by heat and other effects and accidents This is apparent in living creatures into which by this unperceiveable fire is infused a sensible heat and that Fire with the life stealing away the Elementary body or the carkass yet the mixed being dissolved remains sound and unhurt In Vegetables because this Fire is weaker it doth elude the sense and is not to be perceived by any heat 194 Reason also convinceth that our common Fire is to be sorted amongst the spiritual rather than corporeal Beings For if it were corporeal it should have from it self a peculiar and inseparable body no less than Earth Water or Air and the rest of the sensible Natures which do consist and are bounded within their proper bodies which do exist in them and by them which do act according to their virtues and produce them to the Senses But Fire hath not a peculiar and sensible body lodgeth onely in anothers for a Coal is not Fire but Wood fired neither is the flame Fire but smoke inflamed finally that Robber onely feeds upon what is not his own lives upon the prey and is extinguished when this fails having nothing in it self to feed it Besides a body super-added to another body doth augment the quantity of it but this not found in fire put into wood or smoke for the smoke or wood is no way increased by the accession of fire in their quantities from which it is evident that a fiery spirit rather than a body doth invade the wood or smoke A sword melted the scabbard being untouch't the bones shattered by the fiery bolt of Thunder and yet the flesh unhurt do sufficiently argue the spiritual nature even of that thundering fire Yet we must know that Fire is not wholly immaterial for it hath a matter though a very subtile and light one whereby it cleaves to the encompassing air whereby it may be kept in by a more gross body Yet doth it rather deserve the name of a spirit than of a body because it hath not a sensible quantity neither can it be comprehended but when it is arrayed in another body 195 For Light the original of it doth evince that it ought to be seated amongst those things that are truly spiritual There was no light but in God before the informing of the first matter the birth of the world But when Nature received her Being then began there a spiritual light to issue forth from the fiery spirit of God upon the matter and there to settle as in its lamp and this was the creation and original of Light that was the first act of the Deity upon the matter the first copulation of the Creatour with the creature of a spirit with a body Therefore the first informing Light was a meer Spirit which did kindle with its fiery virtue as with heat the nearest matter being exceedingly rarefied by its spiritual
spiritual light 204 A transparent body as glass being pointed with the Sun beams doth gather them and receives in it the image of the Sun and is made lightsom as it were a brief draught of the Sun which sends forth its beams on the farthest side opposite to the Sun from which the beams of the Sun being refracted by the concourse of the glass seem to pass through the glass which yet indeed they do not for the rays by reason of the Air that cleaves to them are setled about the glass the spirit of light onely passing forward but by the beams which are darted out on the other side are the beams of the Sun or of the glass being kindled by the Sun-beams into a lightsom bodie 205 Every transparent body especially glass is a medium of light because it receives light into it and having received it doth communicate it to the Air that is beyond it not by the sending forth of lightsom Air about it which is repugnant to Nature but by another double way First because a transparent body yields to and le ts pass the spirit of light and doth send it forth abroad being received by it which sent forth gets into the adjoyning Air hence springs that plentifull light and besides because that transparent Medium is made by the benefit of the light it receives not onely light in it self but lightsom to others and by the spirit of Light which is in love with transparent bodies becomes as it were a lighted lamp But now every lightsom body hath the priviledge and power to scatter its light which is not granted to thick and dark bodies unless by reflection 206 Those which are the pure natures of mixt Beings are mearly spiritual the bodies are as it were the Barks and Vessels in which they are contained and kept And not otherwise could those sublime Natures unless tied to the corporeal Elements and so bound in by their weight pass this lower Sea and lodge in the Centre of this Abyss They come subject to sense by their bodies the bodies are moved and acted by them so do they do interchangeable offices This that secret of Homers Juno whom Jupiter let down with a weight at her heels 207 Since the whole frame of the Universe is but one onely body one onely universal Nature consisting of many natures and bodies bound together by their proper Mediums and bonds it should not be wondered at that such parts members are knit together by a strong but secret tye and do give a mutual assistance each to other for they have not onely a mutual relation to but also a communication with one the other and these various natures do exercise a kind of a commerce the extreams by the middle the middle by the nearest But this communication is performed by spirits sent forth for all the parts of the world all the individual natures of the world do abound in spirits many of which flowing forth leave room and give way for those that flow in and so is there by the continual ebbing out and flowing in of spirits a continual reparation of the world and of the natures thereof This is the scale of general Nature presented in a vision to the Patriarch Jacob these are Mercuries wings by whose help being mistically termed by the Ancients the Messenger of the Gods he was thought frequently to visit the coasts of the Earth and the courts of Heaven 208 The active principles of every kind of Vegetables or Animals are spiritual their bodies are the passive organs of the spirits by which they exercise the faculties of the senses and do by various actings put forth their powers as the authours of actions so that in the general life may be termed a concent of actions or a continued act diversified by the multiplicitie of actions flowing from a spiritual fountain and brought forth by corporeal organs 209 It is the propertie of the spiritual nature to act of the corporeal to be passive where therefore there is a concourse of both as in mixed bodies that as the more noble doth act and rule this as passive doth obey For the power of act is the priviledge of ruling but the burden of being passive is the mark of being servile so the in-set fire in the seed is the principle of generation and life the highest operating spirit the Archaeus of Nature the orderer in the preparing and forming the matter in the mixtion and distribution of the Elements So doth the Form in the mixt Being exercise its rule at his will as the fountain of all actions So do the virtues of the heavenly Beings dispose and seal all inferiour Elements and corporeal matter 210 Natural bodies which have an active vigour and an occult cause of acting do not as is commonly thought act alone by their qualities but by secret spirits For the fire doth not heat and burn by the single qualitie of heat but by the continual flux of spirits and rayes Neither do the Earth and Water refrigerate or moisten by the alone qualities of cold and moist but by their vapours and in-nate spirits sent forth do affect the sense from without Neither do poysons onely by cold or hot qualities but by malignant spirits bring death or infection sooner or later Concerning Plants or Herbs we must judge alike because their active virtues do not lie hid in their qualities but in their essence which Nature hath made abundant in spirits whose basis and principle powers are concerning spirituals for the bodies are as the shadows or the investments of things under which the invisible Nature is hidden but since qualities are the accidents of things are not therefore able to constitute their essence nor shew forth in their actings those wonderful virtues but are onely as the in set instruments of actions passions which the working spirits that are the workers of all actions make use of in their actings but yet Nature indures them not as principles and efficient causes of actions 211 The natural tinctures odours and tasts of things are special and spiritual gifts of Nature with which it hath suitably inriched her Beings which do not onely contribute to their ornament or onely are inherent in them as extrinsecal accidents but also have an in-set and radical cause and are not so much to be termed accidents as demonstrative tokens of inward virtues by which the occult and formal signatures of things discover themselves 212 Rarefaction and condensation are the two instruments of Nature by which spirits are converted into bodies and bodies into spirits or also by which corporeal Elements are changed into spiritual Beings and spiritual into corporeal for Elements do suffer these changes in mixt bodies So the Earth doth minister spiritual food to the roots of vegetables which being fed upon doth go into the stalk the bark the boughs the branches the flowrs and into the corporeal substance The same is done by Nature in Animals For the meat and