whereby they might have something to admire at and talk of to deceive the time as they say and so to neglect the Tree of Life which is appointed for the healing of the Nations But rather that man having eaten of the forbidden Tree of Knowledge of good and evil and having experimentally known evil whereby he is expelled from the Tree of Life which before the Fall was his food and is become captivated in Understanding Will and Affections from whatsoever may be known of God either within in the light of his Immortal Mind which by Creation was in the very Image of its Creator or without in his visible Creation in whose invisible Power and Unity all things consist and subsist might come to know himself and his Creator in the Unity of the Spirit and all other things in that Unity so neither was it translated into our Mother Tongue to any other end than that naked and simple Uniform-Truth might appear to the confounding of that which appears to be Truth but is not but is masked various compounded and confused whose false Plea is Antiquity and chief support the self-ends of Ambition and Avarice It is a saying in the Scriptures He that is first in his own Cause seemeth just but his Neighbour cometh and searcheth him Also That the rich man is wise in his own conceit But the poor that hath Understanding searcheth him out How truly these sayings may be applied unto this Author with respect to the Schools both of Logick Natural Phylosophy Astrology Theology and in particular those of Medicine both as to the Theorie and Practick part thereof I may singly refer the judgement thereof unto him that hath the least measure of true Understanding without any further enlargment because such a one who with the Lamp or Candle of God being lighted in him whereunto the Author bears his Testimony in opposition to blind Reason in the Chapter of the searching or hunting out of Sciences is able to see in his measure eye to eye or as Face answereth to Face in a glass Nevertheless for the sake of some simple-hearted Reader who though not yet come unto such a discerning so as to separate the light from the darkness may notwithstanding truly hunger and thirst after the knowledge of the Truth I shall speak somewhat That the Schools of the Gentiles have had their time is well known wherein they have become vain in their imaginations exercised themselves in vain Phylosophy and opposition of Science fasly so called as the Apostle Paul observeth and whereof he admonisheth the true Christians as to take heed they were not deceived by it And although Histories mention That at the coming of the First-born Son into the World whom all the Angels of God were to Worship the Heathen Oracles at Delphos and elsewhere were struck dumb and gave no Answer as a sign that all Falshood false Voices deceitful Juggles vain Inventions c. were to give way and be abolished at the appearance and rising of the Day-Star and Sun of Righteousness on and over the Earth the Star of which Star the Wise men of the East saw and by its direction came to Worship the Child laying down all their wisdom at his Feet for a lively token that all true Wisdom and Science was to be received from him in whom all the treasures of Wisdom and Knowledge dwell and not by the dim and dark illustrations of mans own Reason and Discourse Yet such hath been the subtilty of the fleshly Serpent that under the pretence of owning and professing the Name of Christ he hath taken up in his Paganish means and instruments to build withal calling the dregs and dross of the Minerva of the Heathenish Schools Hand-maides unto Divinity and true Principles of Medicinal Science but this counterfeit fiueness can no longer dazzle or blind the eyes of those unto whom God hath given eye-salve that they may see and gold tried in the fire for such are able to discern an Image from a Man and true and pure Mettal from counterfeit Coyn so that the abettors of such deceits shall proceed no further but their folly shall be made manifest to all men forasmuch as that which alone tends to the healing of the Maladies of mans Spirit and the breaches there which Sin hath made is seated in the Invisible Life of God as is applied thereunto as a Remedy by the virtue of Christs Blood alone who is the Lamb of God and a quickening Spirit And so also seeing that which tends to the Healing of any Disease Radically in the Body is the Internal Faculty or Property seated in the first Being of Medicines which by due preparation being uncloathed of their gross corporeal cloathings are made fit to be applied by the Wisdom of a true Physitian unto the Archeus or vital Air of the Body wherein its Diseases Radically dwel not in Relolleous qualities nor in feigned Elementary complexions as in the following Treatise is clearly manifested And so that nothing can be a true Handmaid unto Divinity or Medicine but the gift of him who is Lord of the whole man And that which gives the Children of Wisdom an ability to justifie Wisdom her self and a Power to judge and condemn the Wisdom of this World whether it be conversant about things Visible or Invisible things Temporal or Eternal is the Son of God by whom the World was made and all living Souls created even the everlasting Father of Spirits who hath committed all judgement to the Son in whom they all subsist who filleth all in all this Son of God is the Eternal Eye of the Father which runs thorrow the whole Creation beholding the evil and the good it is that Eye which knows and sees the essence and frame of all things it doth not behold any thing in its essence to be evil because every thing in its Essence and Being is good and that because it is one and true but that which is double varie-form seeming or false that it sees to be evil and that is the fleshly and sensual apprehension and desire in man which vailes or taints his Spirit of Understanding and Will that they are not able to give a right tincture or rightly to apply themselves unto Objects intelligible or desirable whereby irregular and evil effects in Word Action and Conversation do visibly appear even as an Engine whose innermost Spring or Wheel being defective all its other parts and motions are out of order for the Body is but the Shell or Vessel of the Spirit That eye being opened in Man or Candle lighted so far as it is lighted or opened makes first to behold the evil and the good and the evil from the good in a mans self and so far as he doth this he is truly said to know himself for he consists of darkness and light till by a holy war the light hath comprehended the darkness The truth of this is not to be disputed for it hath been experimentally
a bottomless pit of darkness I was hugely agast and also I fell our of all knowledge of things and my self But returning to my self I understood by one conception that in Christ Jesus we live move and have our being That no man can call even on the name of Jesus to Salvation without the special grace of God That we must continually pray And lend us not into temptation c. Indeed understanding was given unto me that without special grace to any actions nothing but sin attends us Which being seen and savourily known I admited my former ignorances and I knew that Stoicisme did retain me an empty and swollen Bubble between the bottomless pit of Hell and the necessity of imminent death I knew I say that by this Study under the shew of moderation I was made most haughty as if trusting in the freedom of my will I did renounce divine grace and as though what we would we might effect by ourselves Let God forbid such wickedness I said Wherefore I judged that Blasphemy to be indulged by Paganisme indeed but not to become a Christian and so I judged Stoical Philosophy with this Title hateful In the mean time when I was tired and wearied with the too much reading of other things for recreation sake I rouled over Mathiolus and Diascoxides thinking with my self nothing to be equally necessary for mortal men is by admiring the grace of God in Vegetables to minister to their proper necessities and to crop the fruit of the same Straightway after I certainly found the art of Herbarisme to have nothing increased since the dayes of Diascorides but at this day the Images of Herbs being delivered with the names and shapes of Plants to be on both sides onely disputed but nothing of their properties virtues and uses to have been added to the former invention and Histories except that those who came after have mutually feigned degrees of Elementary qualities to which the temperature of the Herbe is to be attributed But when I had certainly found happily two hundred Herbes of one quality and degree to have divers properties and some of divers qualities and degrees to have a Symphony or Harmony suppose it in vulnerary or wound potions in producing of the same effect not indeed the Herbs the various Pledges of divine Love but the Herbarists themselves began to be of little esteem with me and when I wondred at the cause of the unstableness of the effects and of so great darkness in applying and healing I inquired whether there were any Book that delivered the Maxims and Rules of Medicine For I supposed Medicine might be taught and delivered by Discipline like other Arts and Sciences and so to be by tradition but not that it was a meer gift At leastwise seeing Medicine is a Science a good gift coming down from the Father of Lights I did think that it might have its Theoremes and chief Authours instructed by an infused knowledge into whom as into Bazaleel and Aholiab the spirit of the Lord had inspired the Causes and knowledge of all Diseases and also the knowledge of the properties of things Therefore I thought these enlightned men to be the Standard-defending Professors of healing I inquired I say whether there were not another who had described the Endowments Properties Applications and proportions of Vegetables from the Hyssop even to the Cedar of Libanus A certain Professor of Medicine answered me none of these things might be looked for in Galen or Avicen But since I was not apt to believe neither did I finde among Writers the certainty sought for I suspected it according to truth that the giver of Medicine would remain the continual dispenser of the same Therefore I being carefull and doubtful to what Profession I should resign my self I had regard to the manners of the People and Lawes and pleasures of Princes I saw the Law to be mens Traditions and therefore uncertain unstable and void of truth For because in humane things there is no stability and no marrow of knowledge I seemed to passe over an unprofitable life if I should convert it to the pleasures of men Lastly I knew that the government of my self was hard enough for me but the judgement concerning good men and the life of others to be dark and subject to a thousand vexatious difficulties wherefore I wholly denied the Study of the Law and government of others On the other hand the misery of humane life was urgent and the will of God whereby every one may defend himself so long as he can but I more inclined with a singular greediness unto the most pleasing knowledge of natural things and even as the Soul became Servant to its own inclinations I unsensibly slid altogether into the knowledge of natural things Therefore I read the Institutions of Fuchius and Fernelius whereby I knew that I had lookt into the whole Science of Medicine as it were by an Epitome and I smiled to my self Is the knowledge of healing thus delivered without a Theoreme and Teacher who hath drawn the gift of healing from the Adeptist Is the whole History of natural properties thus shut up in Elementary qualities Therefore I read the works of Galen twice once Hipocrates whose Aphorismes I almost learned by heart and all Avicen and as well the Greeks Arabians as Moderns happily six hundred I seriously and attentively read thorow and taking notice by common places of whatsoever might seem singular to me in them and worthy of the Quill At length reading again my collected stuffe I knew my want and it grieved me of my pains bestowed and years When as indeed I observed that all Books with institutions singing the same Song did promise nothing of soundness nothing that might promise the knowledge of truth or the truth of knowledge In the mean time even from the beginning I had gotten from a Merchant all simples that I might keep a little of my own in my possession and then from a Clark of the Shops or a Collector of simples I had all the usual Plants of our Countrey and so I learned the knowledge of many by the looks of the same And also I thorowly weighed with my self that indeed I knew the face of Simples and their names but than their properties nothing lesse Therefore I would accompany a practising Physitian straightway it repented me again and again of the insufficiency uncertainty and conjectures of healing I had known indeed problematically or by way of hard question to dispute of any Disease but I knew not how to cure the very pain of the Teeth or scabbedness radically Lastly I saw that Fevers and common Diseases were neither certainly nor knowingly nor safely cured but the more grievous ones and those which cease not of their own accord for the most part were placed into the Catalogue of incurable Diseases Then it came into my minde that the art of Medicine was found full of deceit without which the Romanes lived happily five
that it may come into its own freedom which else through the slavery of the body is plainly moveable dark and confused Otherwise the understanding makes not use of Instruments besides and without it self And therefore neither is it wearied as is the Imagination neither is it of it self subject unto Diseases changes disturbances alterations interchangeable courses or co-mixtures For errour juggling a lie or deceit doth not fall on the understanding while it stands in that light For neither do drowsiness sleep or defect inhabit in it neither doth it receive aid from any created thing as neither from the body reason or any imaginary power but it carries its own native light above all the circuite or ambush of Reason Yea which is more the understanding is not then provoked by any power more inferiour than it self nor from the things themselves even as they are known subject to deceit a juggle and lie because they are those things which stand in the nakedness of their Being before the understanding that they may be as it were informed by this and in passing over be quickned All things therefore are in such a manner in their understanding that all things of the Soul are their own intellect Yet so that although the understanding doth by an intellectual act transform it self into the likeness or kinde of the thing understood yet it keeps its own property and essence unintermixed whereinto it again returns as soon as it hath ceased from that act indeed the Soul possesseth this Prerogative from Clemency that it may be the Image of God and therefore a simple created unknown light So that as oft as it conceiveth any forreign thing in it self it ought of necessity to desist from the Being of a most simple light of the divine Image or to transform it self into the figure of the thing conceived So indeed as that the essence of the thing conceived is a naked essence and yet essentially in the understanding even as an Apple in the kernel of an Apple Hence therefore it comes to passe that intellectual knowledge is void of all errour Because Reason is absent which doth every where make us to stumble For essences do stand naked and uncloathed in an intellectual conception the which as such the Soul therein doth now behold in the glass of its own understanding as while the Eye doth behold it self in a glasse in its own reflex beam Therefore it is reputed for truth that it is no Eye except so far as it is conceived in the intellect as such Wherefore Aristotle was constrained to confess that the principles of understanding are wholly the same That is to say that the truth of Essence and the truth of an intellectual knowledge are one and the same And therefore as a Being or to be true good and one are convertible so essence goodness and truth ought to be co-melted with each other into the form of a Being in the oneness of understanding For truly in the understandingness of the understanding there is not any interchangeable course of the intellect which understandeth and of the thing understood because that before the act of understanding every reciprocal or mutual relation rebounding and reflexion on each other is first nullified Seeing the very understandingness of a thing is nothing but a coming to and immediate approach of the unity of the understanding and of the thing understood or a destroying of interchangeable courses in a relation The which that it may be made more clear by an example the understanding intellect is no otherwise different from the thing understood than as a beam of light which is direct differs from it self being reflexed Therefore the essence of a thing understood in the light of understanding is made a spiritual and essential Splendor Yea by a co-passing unto a unity it is after some sort made the light of the understanding it self That which cannot happen to the Souls of bruit Beasts Therefore also our Soul understanding it self doth after a sort understand all other things because all other things are in an intellectual manner in the Soul as in the Image of God Wherefore indeed the understanding of our selves is most exceeding difficult ultimate or remote excellent profitable beyond other things For a man knowing the divineness of his Soul he cannot but preferre the same before any kinde of decaying and filthy pleasures and those of no value But the difficulty of the aforesaid understandingness doth chiefly consist in that that it is the Image of God which very Image also as well in it self as in respect of the Type which it resembles is almost impossible to the understanding And then the Soul not having in it any Image of it self distinct from it self it cannot at all understand it self by Idea's or resembling likenesses But seeing it is simple and uniform neither can it understand it self in an Image neither also is it agreeable or convenient that by reason of the highest and homogenial simplicity of the Soul it should make use of divers manners and meanes of understandings in understanding in respect of it self and again of other manners and meanes in respect of other things understood Hence of necessity the soul for the preserving of its own homogeneal simplicity due to the Image of God hath whereby to understand all other things without a shape distinct from the things themselves But seeing the Soul wants a proper shape of its own divine Image that it may transform it self intellectually into it self Therefore it cannot properly understand it self after an intellectual manner but in the light and faithful witnesse of him whose Image it is For the knowledge which we have of God is of Tradition Faith and so of merit Although it be plainly negative as it is not this or that which may be conceived by the sense or minde And therefore the knowledge of the Soul as of the divine Image hath a negative abstraction or withdrawing of other things adjoyned to it which it calls non ens or a non-Being but of a non-Being no conception no figure and no understanding doth answer That is of a negative abstraction seeing its companion is privation but negative and primitive things are destitute of an Idea or equivalent shape therefore the light of knowledge which the Soul hath of it self is of clemency freely given nor ever at the full in this world or life But if a happy Soul shall sometimes conceive of God in it self by the beatifical Vision then by the same beam of light he shall behold and know God himself and all other things inwardly For therefore by how much the Soul doth understand intellectually of it self by so much it profiteth in the most profitable knowledge which can be had of created things in this life Because that in the light of its own light it doth after a sort behold the properties essences effects interchangeable courses distinctions and defects of all things whither therefore that knowledge hath once brought
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
therefore they were to perish with the Death of the fame And therefore neither are they substances although substantial or after the manner of substantial Spirits Neither therefore also of the number of Accidents even as I have elsewhere demonstrated in the Treatise of the Original of Forms Therefore the beastial Life is of a vital living Light and a neutral Creature between a Substance and an Accident which neutrality of Beings hitherto unknown to the Schools was given by the Etymology of the Father of Lights So indeed that he not only maketh the burning Light of the Sun and Splendour of the Glow-worm But also the Souls of all Soulified Creatures universally whereof himself will remain even the alone Maker and Master CHAP. XLVII The knitting or conjoyning of the Sensitive Soul and Mind 1. Alpha and Omega 2. The Body is a dead Carcass of no worth without the mind 3. The natural Phylosophy of the Author is far remote from the traditions of Aristotle 4. The understanding of Adam shews this truth 5. That by the Prayer of Abstraction the mind ought to be unfolded 6. The Author declareth his five Professions 7. From the fifth he draweth five Conclusions 8. The co-knitting of the mind as of a kernel in the Sensitive Soul as it were in a shell or husk 9. Defects are from the sensitive Soul 10. An Objection against Sin and desert 11. An answer to the aforesaid Arguments 12. By an example of the Sun 13. Corrupted nature doth alwayes want the aid of Grace 14. The mind as it is the Image of God doth endeavour as it were to create something of nothing 15. The difference of conceits to be admired in a Woman great with Child THose things which I have already above written for the immortality of the Soul being premised I forthwith for the knowledge of the Soul return to my Lord Jesus who alone is the beginning of the Fathers Wisdom the unlimiting end the Alpha and Omega or the one only Scope in whom a total clearness of all understandings is and ought to be terminated For the immortality of the mind being certainly known the Soul ought to be made known to it self as much as it can for truly seeing the Soul the governess doth continually employ it self about the Government of the Body Surely nothing can be searched out in the Body unless when by Anatomy alone I behold dead Carcasses which is worth ones labour without the knowledge of the Life or Soul yea verily I have many times been angry with my self that I would conceive of external and forreign things and in the mean time not to know who I am who dare to contemplate of forreign and sublime things But the Image being not yet understood which the mind bears before it nor who of what sort or how excellent the understanding may be And Lastly neither after what manner an intellectual act may be formed Wherefore I determined with my self that there was a far different knowledge of the Soul to be delivered to Christians than that which hath been diligently taught by the Schools of the Gentiles for look how much can be declared by words so much also the Holy Scriptures do deliver But the rest is in exercising freely obtained by Grace it self neither doth the mind admit of any other Teacher than him who hath commanded to be called the alone Father and Master Because in very deed all Learning which is drawn from a fore-existing knowledge of the Senses proceeds from the Sensitive Carnal or Earthly Soul and the which therefore the Apostle calls Divelish enlightned indeed but not by the very mind it self to wit which alone wisheth to be enlightned by its Beginning which is above nature and not from the observation of the Senses Whither the state of understanding in Adam had respect before the received learning of his Senses For he had known the essences and names of living creatures because he contemplated of these things within in his own divine image while he would and by the very aspect of viewing thereof he remembred the same But after that the sensitive Soul began to spring up whereinto the immortal mind was involved the sensitive Soul alone received the vicarship hereof but the mind being thereby laid asleep is scarce awakened at leastwise not more manifestly or lively than while it employeth it self in mental or mind-like prayer whether that comes to pass because the while it casts off from it the rains of the Sensitive Soul or next because God requiring to be worshipped only in the Spirit calls for his own delights to talk with the Sons of Men. Truly the Prayer of silence and of a profound intellectual humnity did require another manner of man than my self who am now an old man and an ignorant Physitian but seeing I have undertaken the natural explication of the mind and since the essence thingliness and natural nature of the mind is plainly Spiritual and respecting its own immediate and supernatural Beginning I ought by all means to declare and explain the Doctrine of the mind by its exercises that a man may be bewrayed by his Works Therefore I beg and deserve pardon if I shall not declare the thing according to the dignity of the matter Divine goodness shall supply my defects by some other more worthy thâ—â— my self But before that I proceed let the reader know that hitherto I have not found a writer which hath Meditated any thing concerning the more inward emptiness or voidness bottom and fabrick of the mind or of the Creation Beingness Truth or Thingliness of its Idea but they have rather cast or hung up this same Doctrine behind their Back as it were irregular unknown and desperate and through admiration only elevated into a dark Smoak neither have they looked any longer behind them as neither within them For first of all I will discover my Errors committed by thinking and will declare the Circumstances which have sometime deceived me For I knew first of all by Faith that we have an Immortal Mind therefore exceeding any the Powers of nature because it is that which was inspired into Adam immediately by God the same Mind also at this day is inspired into the young by the same Prince of Life Because it is that in which the Kingdome of God hath of its good pleasure established its seat and so that he enlightens every man that cometh into this World and he hath enriched it with his own free gifts of the God-head and by his presence hath excluded the evil spirit To wit for which mind he vouchsafed to die but not for the fallen Angell I knew in the second place from the knowledge of nature that bruit Beasts have Souls more or less prudent and quicke-sighted yet all frail ones and those which hasten into nothing and that those do perish no otherwise than as a Blast as the light of a Candle is extinguished and departs into nothing And therefore that the Souls of Beasts are
faces and visual knowledge of Plants but their virtues they all as one describe out of Diascorides they also tye them up unto the degrees of heat and cold as though they did demonstrate something from the foundation A shameful thing indeed it is to have drawn the Crasis or constitutive temperature of Simples out of heat but not from the fountains of the Seeds Dodonaeus Friso being now become a Dutch-man Tabernomontanus with a few others although they did insist on the same steps of Degrees yet they have subjoyned some additions from their own or the gathered experiences of others but as yet plainly confused uncertain and badly distinct because that they have not written from knowledge but either from the noted revelation of the vulgar or they being things drawn from a casual experiment There is none amongst them all who hath knowingly described the properties of Simples even as he who had described all things from the Hyssop even unto the Cedar of Libanus As a sure token that true knowledges or Sciences are not elsewhere to be fetched than from the Father of Lights even as I have elsewhere touched at by the way concerning the hunting or searching out of Sciences A living creature that is entire and alive cannot be bruised without its dung It is therefore to be lamented that it hath not been yet weighed that Herbs have much dung which have never cast forth any out of them and so that they are to be refined with the greater wariness In the next place we distinguish the arterial blood in a man from his venal blood by divers marks But in plants it hath seemed sufficient to have said it That plant in one only subject consisteth of divers and opposite properties they have acquiesced neither hath there been a deeper entrance than by some common savours and uncertain events For out of the stalk or hollowness of Poppy being hurt Opium distilleth Celendine or Swallow-wort weeps a golden and Tithymal or Spurge a milky juice out of the burdock gums out of the Herbe Chamelion a Bird-lime c. whose Simples if thou shalt bruise they shall give forth another and a far more inferiour juice to wit a dung and venal blood well mixt with arterial blood however they are clarified For let young beginners learn to distinguish and separate an arterial blood from the venal blood and substance of Plants if they do ever minde to have performed any thing worthy of praise by Simples for from hence it comes to pass that how stoutly soever thou hast operated in extracting the manner thereof being taught by those of late time yet one dram of crude Rhubarb doth effect more being administred in pouder than whatsoever thou shalt extract out of a dram and a half For the stomack resolves more by its ferment than whatsoever the mediating or middling juices of extractions can take away because they resolve without distinction liquor of the substance which is like unto a dreg and despised For Quercetanus when as he had taken notice that the innermost powers of things were not to be sufficiently examined by Palmestry and Anatomy which they call Sealed calls divination by the fire unto his help but he failed in the way to wit he had drawn out of the ashes of a nettle a Lixivium or Lye the which by chance of fortune an Ice in his galley pot had a little constrained or bound together for if the Lye had been the stronger it could not have been frozen he wondring in the morning cryes out Behold oh what a figure of the nettle do I behold in the glass And rejoycing he established a Maxim To wit That a seminal figurative Being of Herbs doth remain in the ashes unconquered by the fire That good man declareth his ignorance of Principles not knowing first of all that every Ice beginning maketh dented or tooth-like points like the shape of the leaf of a nettle And then that the Archeus is the figurer of the thing to be generated which is burnt up by the fire long before a coal or ashes is made Thirdly if a Lixivium should express the seminal Being of Herbes surely it ought to resemble not the leafes but the root stalk flowers and fruits But the figurative power of the Seeds lurketh in the Archeus the Vulcan of herbs and things capable of generation which cannot subsist with fleshly eyes It is to be begged only of God that he may vouchsafe to open the eyes of the mind who to Adam and who to Salomon demonstrated the properties of things at the first sight St. Theresa having once mentally seen a Crucifix perceived it to be the eyes of her soul the which she thenceforth kept open for her life-time and the flesh hath shut them up in us through the corruption of nature For neither for the future do we else know natures from a former cause neither do we now know the interchangeable courses of the Archeus but by a naked observation Many Simples are indeed assigned us but for the most part false and disagreeable Neither doth the reading of Books make us to be knowers of the properties but by observation No otherwise than as a Boy who sounds or sings the Musick doth notwithstanding not compose it as neither hath he known the first grounds of harmony by means whereof the tunes or notes were so to be disposed If this thing thus happen in sensible things which are to be known by sence the reason whereof the hearing measureth what shall not be done in Medicinal affairs wherein the virtues of Simples are not penetrable by any sense But the descriptions of all kind of Medicines are read being delivered in the Shops with a defect of the knowledge of properties and agreements For I speak concerning a knowledge of vision such a one as the soul hath being separated from the Body and such a one as God bestoweth in this life on whom he will and hitherto hath he removed this knowledge from the company of those who ascribe all reverence unto heathenish Books The Father of Lights therefore is to be intreated that he may vouchsafe to give us knowledge such as once he did unto Bezaleel and Aholiab for the glory of his own Name and the naked charity towards our Neighbours For so the Art of Medicine should stand aright in us under every weight But it is to be feared lest he who hath suffered the Books of Salomon to perish may reserve this knowledge of Simples for the age of Elias the Artist For the Schools have by savours or tastes promised an entrance unto the knowledge of Simples That as it were the crafts-men of all properties they by sharp bitter salt sweet astringent soure and un-savoury heats and colds would measure them But proud boastings are made ridiculous by the effect For truly also Opium being very bitter the which in this respect they will have to be hot yet they teach it to be exceeding cold So sharp or tart Camphor according to
Paracelsus described in his Books of the Faculties of the Members I here do hear Whisperers who are wont to swallow nothing but afore-chewed things accusing the unthought of darkness of Words Those Coale-men they say do expose their Medicines unto us hand to hand and afford unto us ocular Demonstrations But that is a new rule of learning the Phylosophy of Pythagoras Let them first buy Coals and Glasses and let them first learn those things which watching successive Nights and Expences of Moneys have afforded us the Gods do sell Arts to Sweats not to Readings alone Therefore the Example of Acâ—aeon affrighteth me from daring indeed to expose Diana to an open view being spoyled of her Garment He that can apprehend it let him apprehend it Depart thou therefore from thine own self and bid farwell to accustomed things who presumest by an easie Compendium of readings to search into the innermost Chambers of Nature But besides whereby we may give satisfaction unto the former head of a full Cure a searching out of a Medicine for the every way safe and secure Dissolution of the Stone did remain 1. Therefore it is fit that it be changed into Urin to wit that it may touch the Place affected 2. That it have in it a Power of loosing the Bolts of the Stone For it is the Gift of God which Art doth not provide but only sequestreth and extracteth 3. That it possess that thing in a specifical and appropriated Property but not in second Qualities because they are for the most part frail things failing in time of Preparation or Infamous through the Cruelty of Qualities 4. That it be subtile that it pass on every side and be able to demolish its Object at a far distance 5. That it be friendly to Nature least indeed it pervert all things For not every Messenger approacheth unto the Mines of Stones but he alone who being loosed from his Bands hath known the wayes being fited for his Journey being a Friend to the Places and which hath Virtues They erre therefore who ascribe this single Combate only unto Corrosives to wit they too much trusting unto second Qualities as being badly secure do sleep thereupon and through a neglecting of specifical Properties also appropriated ones which are only extended on their proper Object being sleighted they have gone into Obscurity For the Oestrich doth not break or digest Iron or little Birds Flints Unions small Stones through an emulous quality of Corrosion There is a Virtue of loosing the Bars and Bolts of Tartar It is convenient this Virtue to meditate of and this to imitate I have spoken Blessed be ye God of Wonders who at sometime converteth the Waters into Rocks and at sometime the Rocks into Pooles of Waters CHAP. CI. The Understanding of Adam ADam put right Names upon all living Creatures and therefore he had an intimate or intuitive or clear speculative Knowledge of these which is called the Attainment of Nature Perhaps he had likewise a most full knowledge of Herbs Minerals yea and of the Stars For truly an Object not before seen being presented unto him he had known the innermost Properties thereof From hence therefore many do conclude that the same Knowledge is given to us by a natural Property as to the successive Heirs of Adam but to be obscured through Sin But others contend that it is wholly withdrawn through eating of the Fruit of the knowledge of Good and Evil. Of these things I being long since badly perswaded alass I also believed them For I left something untryed that I might reach unto the promised Labour of Wisdom the Paradise of Long Life through the knowledge of Adam But at length I observed many things which might subvert these very principles For First of all I could scarce perswade my self that Adam in the State of Innocency knew those Things and more which afterwards he through eating of the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil was ignorant of That indeed was when he had eaten of the Apple of Oblivion Drowsiness or Ignorance But not when he had eaten of the Apple of Knowledge But if in Original Sin the Original Transgressour and Defiler of humane Nature himself as yet knew what he knew before after what manner indeed by a super-attained new Knowledge and that of another Disposition being as it were laid up in the forbidden Fruit had he withdrawn all knowledge from his Posterity And moreover how had not he who from his Creation had all Knowledge except that which by a hidden Paraphrase and Emphatical manner of speaking is called by the holy Spirit The knowledge of Good and Evil traduced this likewise on his Posterity For if through eating of the Apple His Eyes were opened the which was even made known to him before after some sort they were closed and he became a knower of Good and Evil and saw himself to be naked why was there not at least-wise in his Seed as much knowledge as there was in the Apple Why if through his Seed Sin be translated is not also Shame translated that it might naturally Shame the Indians of their Nakedness That likewise a Child of three years old should be ashamed of its Nakedness no otherwise than Adam was presently after the Apple was eaten In the next place if he were endowed from his Creation with the knowledge of the Natures Societies and Properties of Animals and from hence it was pithily essential unto him How had God who is so great a Lover of us withdrawn our essential intellectual and natural Gifts whereby he will be worshipped in the Spirit of Man but hath left natural Gifts unto the evil Spirit the most vile despised and worst of Creatures Had he so greatly impoverished our Spirit and favoured the Devil more than the Sons of Men with whom to be he cals it his Delights I indeed after that I conceived in my Soul the Knowledge of long Life and the Causes of Death knew that as long as Adam was Immortal his Mind did immediately quicken his Body and governed it Yea that for that Cause also he perfectly understood whatsoever things are read to have been put under his Feet But after that the sensitive Soul was seminally introduced as a Mean between the Mind and the Body Adam afterwards lived in the Soul and middle Life that is after a modern or mean manner And his Mind for the support of the sensitive Soul dispersed from it self only a darksom Light through the Mists of the Flesh upon the Life of a new and impure Generation But the former Knowledges which he had before the Fall were in the sensitive Life laid up though remembrance yet over-clouded with the Dim and wretched Discourse of Reason when as he had now generated after the manner of Bruit-beasts and had seminally transferred a middle Life then all his Knowledge as well former as latter of Good and Evil to wit the remembrance of the same were obliterated and Man thereby was
God will have other Recognisances or knowing Considerations from Man than from an Angel ought he therefore less to rejoyce in the Divine good Pleasure but to proceed in praising him in an humble Adoration wherein all understanding of Wisdom and clearness of all Spirits are as it were supped up in a lively Center Through this reward therefore of Degrees the unutterable God hath since the Fall Crowned Man with Glory and Honour although degenerate and hath put other things under his Feet for neither before the Fall had Man ever aspired thither Therefore Man ought neither to have the knowledge of all things which Adam knew in his Beginning nor also of his own self if it ought to be a Desert For a Crown presupposeth a striving Desert and Victory For we cannot bring back an increase of Grace for Victory but by fighting Therefore I conclude that as we are constituted in the middle and sensitive Life we know have are or are able to do nothing but only by Grace Desert co-operating and the which Merit that God might confirm the Moments of Degrees in the adoring Understanding were to be presupposed Therefore he that is of innocent Hands and of a clean Heart worshippeth God in the Truth of Spirit and the State of that mortal Man is far more happy than was that of Adam being Immortal For that poverty of Spirit doth in truth know Wisely knowes Knowingly believes Confidently perceives or feeles Truly and confesseth Humbly that he is a meer subject of all Defects that is an unprofitable and evil Servant In this Journey the unutterable Kingdom of God meets Man the Ocean of Light which gives an un-asked-for cleaâ—ness of Understanding and much more royal things than the Desires of the Angels do wish for These things exceed the Phylosophy of the Heathens and of Modern Atheists So it is Understanding and Truth hath it self in this manner wherein our Phylosophy doth place its Alpha or Beginning The which if it shall not do long Life is unprofitable being unknown to so many Ages being neglected by so many Wits and even unto the end of the World known unto none but Adeptists alone CHAP. CII The Image of God THe Fear of the Lord is the Beginning of Wisdom But the Fear of the Lord begins from the Meditation of Death and Life eternal But many with the Stoicks suppose the end of Wisdom to be the knowledge of ones self But I call the ultimate End of Wisdom and the reward of the whole course of our Life Charity or dear Love the which alone will accompany us when as other things have forsaken us And although the knowledge of ones self according to me be only a Mean unto the Fear of the Lord yet from this is the Treatise of long Life to be begun Because the knowledge of Life doth presuppose a knowledge of the Soul Seeing the Life and Soul as I have the second time said are Synonymals It is of Faith that Man was created of nothing after the Image of God into a living Creature and that his Mind is never to perish Whereas in the mean time the Souls of Bruit-beasts do perish into nothing when they cease to live The weights of which difference I have taught concerning the birth or rise of Forms But hitherto it is not sufficiently manifest wherein that Similitude with God our Arch-type or first Example is placed For most do place this lofty Image in the Soul alone I will speake what I judge yet under a humble Protestation and Subjection to the Censure of the Church It is thus The original of Forms being already after some sort known it is meet also exactly to enquire into the Mind of Man But surely there is no Knowledge more burdensome than that whereby the Soul comprehends it self yea and scarce is there any a more profitable one because the Faith doth stablish its Foundation upon the unperishable and un-obliterable Substance of the Soul I have found indeed many Demonstrations divulged in the Books about this Truth But none of them at all for what in respect of Atheists who deny the one only and constant Power or Deity from everlasting Plato indeed makes three sorts of Atheists The first indeed which believeth no Gods A second Sort also which indeed admitteth of Gods yet such as are un-careful of us and ignorant Contemners of small Matters Lastly a third Sort which although they believe that there are Gods and those expert of the smallest Matters yet they think them to be flexible through the least Dead or cold Prayer This sort is most frequent among Christians at this day even those who profess themselves to be the most Perfect and therefore they dare do any thing and believe Religion to be only for restraining People through the Fear of Laws the Obligation of Faith and Pain of infernal Punishment For these impose grievous Burdens on the Shoulders of others which they touch not so much as with their Finger they wipe the Purses of their own People they prostitute Heaven to sale to dying Men they every where offer themselves to be employed in Secular Affairs as if they would declare that Religion doth not subsist without the State It should be my greatest wish that they might taste at least but for one only Moment what it is intellectually to understand that they may feel the immortality of the Mind as it were by touching Truly I have not invented Rules or a Manner whereby I might be able to illustrate the understanding of another Therefore I deservedly testifie that they who alwayes study as enquiring after the Truth do notwithstanding never attain unto the knowledge thereof because they being blown up with the Letter have no Charity and do cherish hidden Atheism But this one thing I have learned That the mind doth now understand nothing by imagination neither by figures and likenesses unless the wretched and miserable Discourse of Reason shall have access to it But when as the Soul comprehends it self Reason and its own Image faileth it whereby it may represent it self to it self Therefore the Soul it never able to apprehend it self through the discourse of Reason as neither by Likenesses For after I had known that the Truth of Essence and the truth of Uderstanding are one and the same thing I knew the Understanding to be a certain immortal thing far separated from frail or mortal things The Soul indeed is not felt yet we believe it to be within not to be idle not to be tired nor to be disturbed by Diseases Therefore Sleep Fury and Drunkenness are not the Symptoms of the Immortal Mind being hurt but only the Pages of Life and Passions of the sensitive Soul Seeing that Bruits also undergo such Passions For neither is it a meet thing for an immortal thing to suffer by mortal Ones For as the Mind is in us and yet is not felt or perceived by us So neither are the continual and unshaken Operations thereof to be
sanctifying Love doth properly belong seeing that thou standest in no need of us neither can we devote unto thee any thing else The Prophet did accept A A A Lord I cannot speak behold I am an Infant but I reply to this Prophet O O O Lord my thoughts fail me and do melt in a naked wish of Love of the sanctifying of thy Name For loe O Lord I am nought but nothing nor any thing besides but as it hath pleased thee that I may pertain unto thee O All of All and All my Desire I deservedly seem to offer unto thee in my Mother Tongue and also to vow the Feude or Fee-farm of my Essence and Property wherewith I being invested by thee I enjoy the use of them for the help of my Neighbour For although the first conception of the Soul consisteth out of Words and so is without a proper tongue Yet I perceive that it is as yet crude and not sequestred as long as it is not polished and not being joyned to the mind doth depart into Cogitations Words and Writing This crudity I perceive doth make an infirm and unstable object of my first Conception and soon darkens it again Therefore thy Eternal Wisdom hath granted that it should be carried further even unto my Mind T is true indeed that thou wilt be worshipped by men in the Spirit but not in such a manner that it may remain in the undistinction of the first object But moreover the Angels and pure simple Spirits although they nakedly adore thee in Cogitation as Spirits yet they are busied by a certain and unknown Song to us in sanctifying thy Sanctifying Name without intermission Wherefore also thou commandest to be loved not onely from the whole Soul and whole Spirit but also from the whole Heart and with all our Strength So that the Prayer that is Spiritually framed and naked Worship do even exclude that which is Verbal which is unexperienced of the attention of the Mind Bestow on me O most beloved Lord that I may suggest that thing to my Neighbours thy Servants by similitudes An Organist hearing a new Tune or Song doth not presently at first play it without difficulty his Soul doth in part indeed perceive the Sound but his Fingers which are as it were the Framers of Sounds even as his other Members are the Formers of Words do not so fitly follow neither is it granted unto them to attain an absolute perfection of the Song so speedily quickly and distinctly He beholding indeed the Organ Table or Book doth presently play it to wit his Capacity being wont to carry his Fingers towards it at the first sight of the Book but that Song being composed according to the Laws of Musick but not turned into a Table he as less accustomed thereunto doth the more difficulty play it seeing a Table is accustomed to be first composed out of the Musick for his Spirit before he plays But as yet with a greater difficulty and rarity the Table and Plat-form of a Lute is extemporarily expressed in the Organ or that of the Organ in the Lute There hath not seemed unto me to be an unlike reason of the first conception of the Soul as of a sound as yet crude or raw and the Mind desires to have it reduced into Words or Writings through defect whereof not a few do stick in a good object the which by reason of an undistinct Mind vanisheth without fruit But moreover I perceive that the first Idea of the Soul doth follow an accustomed instinct of the Mind whereby it being even there polished or corrected is perceived by Words or Writings but indeed whereas man being from the beginning seasoned with the property of his Mother Tongue doth obtain it as incorporated or inspired and besides is wont to communicate unto his Mind and Mother Tongue his Cogitations which depart into Meditations Languages or Writings it seems an inconvenient thing and a Wonder to the Soul to endow an object of the first conception being decyphored in the Mind by Words in the Mother Tongue besides the inbred Custom with a forreign Idiome or Dialect wherein the Understanding labouring by changing the Dialect it over-shadows weakens and wearies it self and also doth alienate the pure and plainly Spiritual Conception of the first object But in very deed the object of every first Cogitation departing into Words I have certainly found to be alwaies first had in the Mother Tongue even in a man using none but tbe Spanish Dialect who also heard a Spaniard he being mortally wounded and weak of Mind spake many things but in Italian and heing called on in Spanish scarce understood I have likewise seen a Germane that was sick sitting or lying even as they placed him like an Image who never was capable of replying unto things asked him neither did he understand what Words either his Wife or any one of his Sons did pronounce in any other than in his own proper Germane tongue when as notwithstanding within the Walls of his House he alwaies used the Italian and French Tongues Yea and which more is he being a little after freed from this waking Coma or Sleep was scarce perswaded to believe the same And so O Lord I have cast down this poor Dedication of my Book in my Mother Tongue before thy most high Throne to wit the Song of my object which dammage of my Neighbour thou hast not disdained to let down into me Unto Thee be all the Honour I now proceed to signifie to my Neighbour the wretched ignorance of the Heathens whereby thy sick People have been hitherto seduced by the Universities and so miserably slain the Precept of the Prophet uttered in thy Name nothing hindring it Thus saith the Lord do not ye teach like unto the Gentiles Wherefore O Lord grant that my Soul may retain the gifts granted unto it unto thine Honour whereby I may imprint thy Goodness a part of my Debt in this Path of Death on my Neighbour Be thou unto me every Hinge who alone art the Way the Truth and the Life This is the one onely thing which it becometh us to love Thou my Angel Defender and Intercessor who beholdest the Omnipotent Good Beg in my name that which is wanting unto me insist thou in the steps of Raphael the Divine Physitian who carried the Works of burial of the dead performed by night unto God thou diligent Curer carry thou the present Work performed in the night of my darkness unto God that man may not hereafter be thus killed nor so soon undergo Death Offer up this my Work before the holy sacred Trinity whereunto I dedicate it So act thou for the Glory of God THE Translators Premonition TO THE CANDID READER FRIEND WHoever thou art know thou that as the things contained in this Work were not at the first written by the honest conscientious most learned and judicious Author from a vain ostentation or to draw out Peoples minds after the Tree of Knowledge
Medicines to drink and so they plainly prostrated his strength But it opportunely happened that his remaining strength and youth overcame the Disease he appeared to have received his lost strength whereby he was confirmed that Professours and Licensed Persons were true Physitians reckoning from their relation that he had deserved or was in danger of Death and that he owed his Life unto their Torments hence they took of him a double reward but not according to their deserts The young Man renewing his former pious steps was the second time oppressed with the very same malady and he hoped by their endeavour again to escape the same cruelty but alass his spirit failed him and from sound Reason and a knowledge of the Truth he cryed out unto this his Brother It hath befallen me as to all others and it shall so long continue untill Physitians so called do in very deed feel and see this present time to be for Eternity but now they forget the time past believing that they possess the present time they deny the time to come seeing they cannot see that and so they take no care for a longer Life for they have never been destitute thereof even as of any other frail or mortal good whereof there is made a repairing but they possessing one only Life and loosing that all shall be ended It is a vain thing to employ ones self in Studies when no necessity is urgent upon us The Servant who ought readily to serve us is beaten which doth perpetually provoke this Man whom he shall name his Master by all his qualities he shall be ignorant of his thraldom although all Men except a few are bound up by his Servitude the which for the most part deprives of Life both now and hereafter I despair of a temporary Life for they who are said to bring help do want the knowledge thereof and they are first constrained to obtain it by brawlings and discords which will arise among them through hatred and envy wherewith those called Doctors or Teachers have never laboured seeing they are but few who by running up and down day and night do excel in Wealth whereby they scrape together an abundance of Money as well among the Healthy and Sick as those that are dead and so they might continue in concord the which shall remain so long until the last times appear which thou shalt discern by that when thou shalt see the number of Junior and Licensed Doctors of Medicine so to increase that they shall scarce have employment The Seniours shall be offended with the Juniours and Young Beginners because their dayly revenues shall be diminished and because they shall find forreign or accidentary Juniours being constrained to learn more sure Principles for to get their living to cure some Sick whose like being under their care did undergo Death which thing the Seniours shall envy wishingly desiring that all the Sick-folks might die unto whom the Juniors should be called Lastly they shall reproach them publickly before all the People saying These wicked young Men do cure by Enchantments they should of necessity be forbidden to practise By these and the like means they shall labour to subvert them and and they shall offend God that it may add courage unto other godly and industrious Juniours to perfect that which they shall propose to the Seniours in these Words When we have invited you to suffer us publickly to cure some Sick of an Hospital appointing a Prize or Wager for the benefit of the Poor ye also to be solicitous or diligent on the other hand and that they who had not answered the effect should pay the reward thereof ye have refused that thing ye seek not the Poor but Give Ye ye resemble Beggars in that thing who disdain their fellow Beggars and are unwilling that their number should increase for they have a confidence in some rich Mens houses and places where a larger bounty befel them for their deceitful Words and Tricks that so they may leave their Arts and these Houses to their Children for a Dowry which very thing also ye cherish in your Mind but it shall have a bad success because through this publick discord which shall spring from Covetousnesse that dayly Deceit shall be made known to the World and they shall receive only true Doctors who may be discerned by their good Fruits and who shall imitate the steps of the Samaritan These Words being finished he felt his Life to fail therefore lifting up his eyes towards Heaven he with sorrow subjoyned Oh most merciful Lord abbreviate thou the term of Mans Salvation and change thou the frail Doctrine of the Doctors their Flesh into the natural or peculiar Love of the Spirit that the Innocent may finish their Life to thy Glory I pray thee oh my Saviour do not thou impute my Death to the Doctors hereafter for an Offence for truly they know not what they do commit but vouchsafe thou to open their eyes that they may assent to the truth and that the People may publish those things of them as in times past of holy Paul Which saying being ended he wholly committed himself to the Divine Will and breathed forth his last Breath in the armes of this his Brother who did alwayes ponder these Words aforesaid This Man in his turn uttered these following Words We are all of us being Brethren in Christ engaged to patronize the truth the which is not better perfected than by opposing and defending Hence we will prosecute two things one is that the strength of our Enemies may be made known unto us the other is that we may add more strength to our own and so that we may be the more confirmed in our purpose After that they had heard all these Words they compelled him to undergoe this charge with the threatning of a Fine for so much as he had taken this voluntary Office on himself And he alleaged I being the second of the Seniours am desirous to be instructed by any one in this difficult matter I being a Servant of truth do after some sort yield to the two former Propositions but unto the third I can in no wise assent to wit to subvert the aforesaid Books by interdictions and brands of Censures for if we should endeavour that we should act altogether rashly we thinking to extinguish them in one place should also again raise them up in a thousand other places Men are no longer so ignorant and unwary as in times past when as all Examples or Patterns of religious obedience were published by favour which thing is chiefly manifest in Printers and Booksellers they making gain here and there and it cannot be forbidden and hindered Doth not the thing it self bespeak that we need not go far That Author himself set forth a Discourse inscribed Of the Magnetick or Attractive cure of Wounds which was stoln from him and about five hundred of them printed in Letters by his Enemies whereupon they divulged three divers
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
delivered that which she had eaten as she who was to do that very thing in Adam who did eat of the same In like manner through the diversity of the shining Light from the Darkness uncloathing it self we understand after what manner the Ministers or Servants of God are able by the Light to perform external and everlasting Works as to remove Mountains restore Sight to the Blind hearing to the Deaf to raise the Dead and likewise on the other hand how Evil and Dark men are able or powerful only in committing or acting Works which are seperated and mortal or noysom through their Darkness issuing out of themselves We have perceived also that the Tree of Life was placed in the midst of the Garden and likewise the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil which we may collect out of the second and third following Chapter of Moses We also apprehend the Tree to be Good but its Fruits to have been Evil besides now we know this Tree together with Paradise from thy Words and the same from the second Chapter of Moses But the Lord God had from the Beginning planted a Paradise of Pleasure wherein he placed the Man which he had formed And the Lord God produced from the Ground every Tree that was Beautiful to behold and Sweet to eat also the Tree of Life in the midst of the Garden and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And a River went out from the Place of Pleasure to water the Paradise which was from thence divided into four Heads The name of one is Pison he it is which runs about or encompasseth all the Land of Havtlah where Gold is bred and the Gold of that Land is the best Furthermore we also conceive of this which is found in the third Chapter And when they had heard the voice of the Lord walking in the Paradise at the coole Air after noon day That which is further explained in the nineteenth Psalm of David The Heavens declare the Glory of God and the Firmament sheweth the Works of his hands Day unto day uttereth the Word and night unto night sheweth Knowledge There are no Languages nor Speeches of which their voices may not be heard Their sound hath gone out unto all the Earth and their words into the Borders of the Circle of the Earth He hath placed his Tabernacle in the Sun and he as a Bridegroome proceeding out of his Bride-chamber hath rejoyced as a Gyant to run his race or course his going forth is from the highest Heaven and his encountring even unto the highest part thereof neither is there he who can hide himself from his heat The Law of the Lord is unspotted converting Soules the Testimony or Witness of the Lord is faithful giving Wisdom to the little Ones The Righteousnesses of the Lord are right making glad Hearts The Precept of the Lord is lightsom or cleer enlightning the Eies The Fear of the Lord is holy remaining for Age of Age. The Judgments of the Lord are true being justified for their very own sakes they are to be desired above Gold and much Pretious-stone and are sweeter than the Honey and the honey Combe For thy Servant keepeth them in keeping them there is much reward Who understandeth his Faults Cleanse thou me from my secret Ones and from strange Ones spare thy Servant If they shall not have dominion over me then I shall be unspotted and I shall be purged from the great Fault And the Speeches or Oracles of my Mouth shall be such as may be well pleasing and the Meditation of my Heart alwayes in thy sight Oh Lord my Helper and my Redeemer We have also known that mortal Man might reach to the Tree of Life and enjoy it when he shal be a Cherub and he may be made one as Moses witnesseth in the third Chapter of Genesis And he said Behold Adam hath become as it were one of us knowing Good and Evil now therefore least happily he stretch forth his hand and take also of the Tree of Life and eat and live for ever And the Lord God sent him out from the Paradise of Pleasure that he might labour the Earth from which he was taken and he cast out Adam and placed before the Paradise of Pleasure Cherubims and a flaming Sword and that which turned about to keep the way of the Tree of Life Seeing that now that two days limited space is slipt away and that thou art to be left by us in a short time we first covet to hear because thou art instructed in the four lesser orders whether likewise thou dost ambitiously seek the other three or to be promoted into a Doctor of Medicine Mercurius The Priesthood is a great office and requireth many things now especially they ought to answer concerning many things and to be perfect when they will rightly discharge their duty the which I never should dare to undertake but constrainedly The Doctorship of the Art of Medicine I deservedly shun because the Professors of the same do for the most part foster other mens opinions and do the less follow the Truth But I shall intreat God that it would please him to grant me daily to perform his will with all my might even as long as Life shall last The prosperous Wisemen of the Night did bless thee with their Prayer exhorting proceed thou in thy purpose and act thou that thou mayest 〈…〉 through the mediation of the day of Saturn in the day of Lune by the day of Sol liberty to thy self as was said And next we commend thee to the supplication of our followers who have charged accused and convicted thee that thou mightest bring forth all the aforesaid things or secrets to light Speak to them and hear them gently as they shall observe all things which thou dost put in practise for this two days space we have stood to our Commission For these things thou having performed thy due thanks towards these wise Sirs and Masters didst say unto their followers Ye lovers of the Truth ye that are most honoured together with ye that are lesse honoured noble ignoble and ye who are present I have known none of you apart although I have been pricked forward by you because your countenance is now vailed unto me Know ye that I do humbly beseech you all known and unknown not displeasantly to receive my ready poor labour and courteous affection which devotes it self readily to serve all and every one of you with all its might Which words they hearing did aloft testifie their acceptation and a great number of those that were known did begin to undo their vails some did read written letters unto thee others sounded out Hymns in honour of thy Father and his Writings they being sent unto thee whereby they might be prefixed unto thy Fathers Work This applause ceasing after thy thanks being most perfectly performed thou didst go on I have known many of you some by sight and talk others by a
hundred years I reckoned the Greeks art of healing to be false but the Remedies themselves as being some experiments no less to help without a Method than that the same Remedies with a Method did deceive most On both sides I discerning the deceit and uncertainty of the Rules of Medicine in the diversities of the founders of Complexions I said with a sorrowful heart Good God! how long wilt thou be angry with mortal men who hitherto hast not disclosed one truth in healing to thy Schooles how long wilt thou deny truth to a people confessing thee needful in these dayes more than in times past Is the Sacrifice of Moloch pleasing to thee wilt thou have the lives of the poor Widows and Fatherless Children consecrated to thy self under the most miserable torture of incurable Diseases and despair How is it therefore that thou ceasest not to destroy so many Families through the uncertainty and ignorance of Physitians I fell withall on my face and said Oh Lord pardon me if favour towards my Neighbour hath snatched me away beyond my bounds Pardon pardon Oh Lord my indiscreet Charity for thou art the radicall good of goodness it self Thou hast known my sighes and that I confess that I am know am worth am able to do and have nothing that I am poor naked empty vain give O Lord give knowledge to thy Creature that he may very affectionately know thy Creature himself first other things besides himself for thy Command of Charity all things and more than all things to be ultimately in thee Which thing when I had earnestly prayed from much tiresomness and wearisomness of minde by chance I was led into a Dream and I saw the whole universe in the sight or view of truth as it were some Chaos or confused thing without form which was almost meer nothing And thence I drew the conceiving of one word which did signifie to me what followes Behold thou and what things thou seest are nothing whatsoever thou dost urge is lesse than nothing it self in the sight of the most high He knowes all the ends or bounds of things to be done thou at leastwise mayst apply thy self to thy own safety Yea in that Conception was there an inward Precept that I should be made a Physitian and that at sometime Raphael himself should be given unto me Forthwith therefore and for thirty whole years after and their nights following in order I laboured to my cost and dammage of my life that I might obtain the Natures of Vegetables and Mineralls and the knowings of their properties The mean while I lived not without prayer reading narrow search of things sifting of my Errours and daily experiences written down together At length I knew with Salomon I had for the most part hitherto perplexed my Spirit in vain and vain to be the knowledge of all things which are under the Sun vain are the searchings out of Curiosities And whom the Lord Jesus shall call unto Wisdom He and no other shall come yea he that hath come to the top shall as yet be able to do very little unless the bountiful favour of the Lord shall shine upon him Loe thus haue I waxed ripe of age being become a man and now also an old man unprofitable and unacceptable to God to whom be all Honour CHAP. III. The hunting or searching out of Sciences 1. The minde is not rational if it be the Image of God 2. The opinion of the Schooles concerning Reason 3. A Vision in a Dream concerning Reason 4. A Dialogue or Discourse of the minde with Reason 5. The chief juggle of Reason 6. The minde hath chosen understanding 7. Reason becomes suspected by reason of her juggling deceits 8. The weariness of the minde concerning Reason 9. Reason began from sin 10. What kinde of knowledge there is of the Soul being seperated from the Body 11. The minde hath withdrawn her Garments from Reason in her flight 12. Reason enters into the counsel of the minde from an abuse 13. Reason burdens the minde 14. Reason being reflexed towards it self doth produce many Errours 15. The great Art of Lullius is sifted 16. The manner of seperating Reason from it self 17. An unutterable intellectual Light 18. A feeling of the immortality of the Soul 19. Reason is not the Lamp of which Solomon speaks 20. In what part a Syllogisme dwells 21. Reason generateth a dim knowledge 22. Knowledges of the Premises are from the light of the Candle or Lamp 23. The minde is not deceived but by its own reason 24. Reason burieth the understanding 25. Reason is known in its poorest nakedness 26. The understanding refuseth the use of reason 27. Reason and Truth are unlike in their Roots 28. Reason doth not agree with the knowledge of the conclusion 29. A definition of Reason 30. The most refined Reason is as yet deceitful 31. What Reasoning and Discourse are 32. What intellectual Truth is 33. Imagination is a crooked manner of understanding 34. Bruit Beasts are discursive 35. A rational Creature for man is disgraceful 36. A true definition for a man 37. The Schooles hearken more to Aristotle than to Paul 38. An Animall or living Creature in the definition of a man belongs to corrupted nature 39. What kinde of Skeleton or dry Carcase that of reason is 40. A progress to chase after Sciences 41. Double Images or likenesses in the Soul 42. Where the Progress of the minde is stayed 43. How a truer Progress may be made 44. New understanding or the labour of wisdom 45. The understanding doth strike in or co-agree with things understood and how that may be done 46. Why there is made a transmigration or passing over of the understanding 47. The memory and will are supped up 48. The thingliness or Essence of an intellectual thought 49. How the Image of God lightens or shines all over 50. How the minde beholds the understanding under an assumed form 51. The Errour of the Rabbins concerning this State of the Soul 52. The quality of the understanding while it stands in that light 53. Why and after what manner the understanding transformeth it self 54. After what manner the understanding beholds it self 55. What intelligibility or understandingness may be 56. How the Soul understanding it self shall understand any other things 57. Whence that difficulty of understanding is 58. Why accidents cannot be comprehended by the intellect 59. The Errours of the Schooles about the dividing of the intellect 60. In things pertaining to understanding it is more noble to suffer than to do 61. Aristotle knew not a true understanding 62. The Phantasie or Imagination doth not pierce things neither in like manner do things enter into it 63. Eight Maxims touching the understanding which Aristotle knew nor 64. A dividing of the Predicament of a substance The hunting or searching out of Sciences begins from Know thy Self REason is accounted to be the life of the Soul or the life of our life But I believe that the
working motion to the co-working the action doth re-bound Therefore things that are produced without life do not receive their forms through the makeable disposition of the working terme or limit but onely they do obtain the ends or maturities of their appointments and digestions For while from the causes of Minerals or Mettalls a stone doth re-bound or from the Seed of a Plant while a Plant is made no new Being is made which was not by way of power in the Seed but it onely obtains the perfecting of the appointed ripeness And therefore power is given to the Earth of producing Herbes but not to the water of producing Fishes Because it is not so in things that have a living Soul as in Plants For as their Monarchies are plainly unlike so also their manners of generation and generating For therefore the natural gift of increasing Seeds durable throughout Ages is read to have been given to the Earth not so in living Creatures although these in the mean time ought to propagate Therefore the Seeds of things that are not soulified are indeed propagated no otherwise than as light taken from light Yet in the partaking of which enlightning the Creator is of necessity the chief Efficient But the Creator alone createth every where a new light whether it be formal or also vitall of the individual that is brought forth for neither was that light before not so much as in part although from the potential disposure or fit or inclinable disposition the Seeds of things not soulified may in some sort be reckoned to obtain a Form so are things that have life yet the formal virtue is not so neerly planted in these as in Plants For Souls and lives as they know not degrees so also not parts And although the Seed of a living Creature may have a disposition unto life yet it hath not life neither can it have it or effect it of it self for the Reasons drawn from the Rise or Birth of Forms Wherefore I shall teach by and by that there are not four Elements nor that there is a uniting of the three remainders yea nor of two that bodies which are believed to be mixt may be thereby made but that to the framing of these two natural causes at least do abundantly suffice the matter indeed is the veriest substance it self of the effect but the efficient its inward and seminal Agent and even as in living Creatures I acknowledge two onely Sexes so also are there two bodies at least the beginnings of any things whatsoever and not more even as there are onely two great lights For the three beginnings of bodies which the Chymists do call Salt Sulphur and Mercury or Salt Liquor and Balsam I will shew in their place that they cannot obtain the Dignities of beginnings which cannot be found in all things and which themselves are originally sprung from the Element of water and do fail being dissolved again into water as at sometime I shall make to appear for it behoveth the nature of beginnings to be stable if they ought to bear the name and property of a Principle Therefore there are two chief or first beginnings of Bodies and corporeal Causes and no more to wit the Element of Water or the beginning of which and the Ferment or Leaven or seminal beginning by which that is to be disposed of whence straightway the Seed is produced in the matter which the Seed being gotten is by that very thing made the life or the middle matter of that Being running thorow even into the finishing of the thing or last matter But the Ferment is a formall created Being which is neither a substance nor an accident but a neutrall thing framed from the beginning of the World in the places of its own Monarchie in the manner of light fire the Magnall or sheath of the Air Forms c. that it may prepare stir up and go before the Seeds This is indeed a Ferment in general But what things I here suppose I will at length evidently shew every thing in its place I will not treat of Fables and things that are not in being but of Principles and Causes in order to their ends actions and generations I consider Ferments existing truly and in act and individually by their kindes distinct Therefore Ferments are gifts and Roots stablished by the Creator the Lord for the finishing of Ages sufficient and durable by continual increase which of water can stir up and make Seeds proper to themselves Surely wherein he hath given to the Earth the virtue of budding from it self he hath given so many Ferments as expectations of fruits that also without the Seed of the foregoing Plant they may out of Water generate their own Liquors and Fruits Therefore Ferments do bring forth their own Seeds not others that is every ones according to their own Nature and property which the Poet saith For Nature is subject to the Soil Neither doth every Land bring forth all things For there is in places a certain order divinely placed a certain Reason and unchangeable Root of producing some appointed effects or fruits nor indeed onely of Vegetables but also of Minerals and Insects or creatures that retain their life in a divided portion For the soils and properties of Lands do differ and that by reason of some cause of the same birth and age with that Land Indeed this I attribute to the formall Ferment created in that place Whence consequently divers fruits do bud and of their own accord break forth in divers places whose Seeds being removed to another place we see for the most part to come forth more weakly as counterfeit young But that which I have said of the Ferment or Leaven placed in the Earth that very thing thou shalt likewise finde in the Air and Water for neither do they want Roots Gifts fermental Reasons or respects which being stable do bring forth fruits dedicated to places and Provinces and that thing not onely the perseverance of fruits doth convince of but also the voluntarily and abundant shedding abroad of unforbidden Seeds Therefore the Ferment holds the Nature of a true Principle divers in this from the efficient cause that the efficient cause is considered as an immediate active Principle in the thing which is the Seed and as it were the moving Principle to generation or the constitutive beginning of the thing but the Ferment is often before the Seed and doth generate this from it self And the Ferment is the original beginning of things a Power placed in the Earth or places but not in seminal things constituted But the Ferment which growes up in the things constituted or framed together with the properties of Seeds hath it self in manner of the efficient cause unto the Seed of things but the seminal Ferment is not that which is one of the two original Principles but the product of the same and the effect of the individual Seed and therefore frail and perishing Whereas otherwise the
as yet to follow that Patron in natural Philosophy seeing that we believe by Faith that Plants budded forth by a seminal virtue before the Stars arose For in Nature there is alway found the Agent the matter and thing brought forth or the effect the instrument and the disposition But every Agent measureth his instrument and fits the dispositions unto the end or finishing of the thing produced But heat whether thou wilt have it Elementary or heavenly may indeed be a disposition brought forth by the Seed and likewise the Instrument thereof but it can by no meanes be a seminal Agent measuring and squaring its dispositive Instruments For neither is the operation of heat any other than to make hot whether that thing be called Elementarily or Firmamentarily Therefore the operation of heat in generation is not ordained for the end of specifical dispositions and much lesse is it directed to the bringing in of a specifical thingliness For if that heat should be this seminal Agent or the nature of Seeds besides that it being one hath so many specifical differences as there are kindes of things generated in Nature it ought to have without it self an Instrument seeing that it is not granted to be without essential properties measured and manifestly limited to the bringing in of any kinde of specifical thingliness but no such Instrument or mean is present with heat therefore the co-measuring of every Instrument according to quantity manner motion figure durance and the appointments of any operations whatsoever dependeth on the seminal Agent in which such kindes of co-measuring knowledges of proportions are and no way on heat For seeing the knowledge of natural truth doth necessarily depend on nature and the essence thereof Aristotle who was ignorant of the thingliness of nature also knew not the truth thereof and so prostituted nought but his own dreams to be diligently taught in Schooles Truly the operation of generation depends on nature and its proper Instruments He therefore that looks on heat for every Instrument of nature and accounts this very Instrument for the seminal and vitall nature he supposeth one of the Kings Guard to be the King or the File to be the Workman Yea heat as heat is not indeed the Instrument proper to nature but a common adjacent concomitant and accidental thing produced in hot things onely but the knowledge of nature and essence is not taken from improper adjacent and accidental effects but from the knowing of Principles which hitherto even as it plainly appeares the Schoole of the Peripateticks hath been ignorant of I say the Principles of nature are the matter and the Agent But the Principles of Bodies are water and the seed or vulcane things answering to both Sexes which thing I will by and by teach in its place Wherefore since Aristotle knowes not the nature properties and likewise the causes and thingliness of generations who shall not shew that the Schooles have hitherto drawn the waters of Philosophy out of dry Cisterns For his eight Books of natural Instructions do expound Dreams and privations instead of the knowledge of nature I say they do suppose a matter or impossible corporeity or bodyliness with Mathematical abstraction for the principle prop and seminary of nature The which as it never existeth neither shall it have the efficacy of beginning or of causing Likewise privation is given to be drunk down as another Principle which the Schooles themselves do rashly confess to be a meer non ens or a non-Being And at length they diligently teach surely by an over rash dotage the form which is the end top and utmost aim of appointment and the thing it self produced for a beginning of nature to wit they place the effect in the room of a Beginning But in another Book he sets to sale the causes of nature for Principles to wit the matter and form privation being omitted As I shall sometimes shew concerning causes As though they were the Principles of nature or could principiaâ—e by causing But fortune and chance as if they were the proper passions of nature are handled in a particular Book For events do not deserve a place in the contemplation and Doctrine of nature Lastly a Vacuum or emptiness and an Infinite things not belonging to the knowledge of nature and well high privative things or plainly negative have obtained his treatises But time and place the Schooles do no lesse ignorantly than impertinently reckon among the lessons of nature And last of all they bring in locall motion as it serves to Science Mathematical or Learning by demonstration alike foolishly and with an undistinct indiscretion into nature Certainly I could wish that in so short a space of life the Spring of young men might not be hereafter seasoned with such trifles and no longer with lying Sophistry Indeed they should learn in that unprofitable three years space and in the whole seven years Arithmetick the Science Mathematical the Elements of Euclide and then Geographie with the circumstances of Seas Rivers Springs Mountains Provinces and Minerals And likewise the properties and Customs of Nations Waters Plants living Creatures Minerals and places Moreover the use of the Ring and of the Astrolabe And then let them come to the Study of Nature let them learn to know and seperate the first Beginnings of Bodies I say by working to have known their fixedness volatility or swiftness with their seperation life death interchangeable course defects alteration weakness corruption transplanting solution coagulation or co-thickning resolving Let the History of extractions dividings conjoynings ripenesses promotions hinderances consequences lastly of losse and profit be added Let them also be taught the Beginnings of Seeds Ferments Spirits and Tinctures with every flowing digesting changing motion and disturbance of things to be altered And all those things not indeed by a naked description of discourse but by handicraft demonstration of the fire For truly nature measureth her works by distilling moystening drying calcining resolving plainly by the same meanes whereby glasses do accomplish those same operations And so the Artificer by changing the operations of nature obtains the properties and knowledge of the same For however natural a wit and sharpness of judgement the Philosopher may have yet he is never admitted to the Root or radical knowledge of natural things without the fire And so every one is deluded with a thousand thoughts or doubts the which he unfoldeth not to himself but by the help of the fire Therefore I confess nothing doth more fully bring a man that is greedy of knowing to the knowledges of all things knowable than the fire Therefore a young man at length returning out of those Schooles truly it is a wonder to see how much he shall ascend above the Phylosophers of the University and the vain reasoning of the Schooles First of all he shall account it a shameful thing for the Schooles to be ignorant for example in an Egge that in that space of time while it comes
or glassen Bell doth shew that a great part of the Sulphur being untouched by the flame ascended upwards the which is again seperated safe from that Liquor by rectifying For Sulphurs or fats although they are many times distilled by any degree of the fire yet they do alwayes remain fats and even do retain their nature as long as they do enjoy or obtain the seed of their composed Body The which when as the flame or artificiall death hath touched they straightway flie over into Gas but not into water For that every Gas doth as yet retain some condition of its composed body For smoaks of the flame do differ by their generall and speciall kindes which surely should not be if they should immediately depart into their first Element The fire indeed destroyeth simply but it generates nothing for why seeing it wants the power of a seed and those things which it cannot destroy those it at leastwise seperateth or leaveth untouched and in this respect they are called fixt bodies But the fire doth not prevail in that as to exchange that which is in it self materially water into Air for otherwise it should have the seed of the Air. It is also sufficiently manifest before that water is made air or air water by no help of art or nature Therefore Wood since it is wholly of water its ashes and likewise Glasse shall be of water But that the Gas of Salts is nothing but water the following Handicraft-operation proveth Take equall parts of Salt-peter Vitriol and Alume all being dried and conjoyned together distill a Water which is nothing else than a meer volatile Salt Of this take four ounces and joyn an ounce of Sal armoniac in a strong Glassen Alembick confirmed by a Cement of Wax Rosin and Powder of Glasse being powred most hotly on it straightway even in the cold a Gas is stirred up and the Vessel how strong soever it be bursteth with a noyse But if indeed thou shalt leave a chap or chink in the juncture of the receiving Vessel and after voluntary boylings up thou shalt distill the residue thou shalt finde a water somewhat sharp the which by a repeated distillation and an additament of Chalke is turned into Rain-water Therefore one part of the Salts yielded into water but the other part into Gas But the Salts that fled away by a Gas are of the same kinde of nature with those that were reduced into water therefore the Gas of Salts is materially nothing but water But the Gas of fruits I have likewise already shewen to be nothing but water as arising immediately out of water So the Raisin of the Sun being distilled is wholly reduced by art into an Elementary water which yet being new and once wounded or bruised much new Wine and Gas is allured or fetched out If therefore the whole Grape before a ferment be turned into a simple water but the ferment being brought a Gas is stirred up this Gas also must needes be water Seeing the disposition of the ferment cannot form air of that which is materially nothing but water Therefore the unrestrainable Gas of the Vessel breaks forth abroad into the air untill it being sufficiently confirmed and by the cold of the place spoiled also of the properties of its composed body passeth over into its first matter and in the air the seperater of the waters it recovereth its antient and full disposition of the Element of water But exhalations which in the account of the Schooles are the daily matter of Windes Mists Comets Mineralls Rockie Stones saltness of the Sea Earth-quakes and of all Meteors seeing they have no pen-case or receptacle in nature nor matter sufficient for so great daily things and those for so great an heap they are wondrous dreams and unskilfully proportioned to their effects And therefore I passe by these unsavourinesses or follies of the Schooles by pittying of them At leastwise it followes that if Rockie Stones if all Mineralls do proceed from exhalations and being now fixed do resist the Agent which should bring them again into an exhalation there shall be in the remaining Earth matter for new exhalations producing effects of so great moment Especially because scarce any thing exhaleth out of the saltness of the Sea and such is the aptness or disposition of heat that it scarce stirs up exhalations unless it hath first lifted up all the water by vapours What matter therefore shall be sufficient even for daily Windes alone Truly it is altogether impossible for the Schooles to have known the nature and likewise the differences causes and properties of Bodies for as many as have set upon Philosophy without the art of the fire have been hitherto deluded with Paganish Institutions At length I have written touching long life that the arteriall Spirit of our life is of the nature of a Gas Which thing is seen in the trembling of the heart swooning and fainting For how much doth it die to a lively colour to a vitall light and to a swollen or full habit of flesh and the countenance it self being the more wrinckled or withered how quickly doth it decay straightway after the aforesaid passions For the Spirit which before did as it were unite all things by a pleasing redness doth straightway fly away and being subdued by a forreign Air is changed For truly seeing the Archeus is in it self a Gas of the nature of a Balsamick Salt if it shall finde the air of another Salt to be against it or in its way even as Sal armoniac when it meetes with the Spirit of Saltpeter it is subject too easily and forthwith to be blown away or dispersed through the pores as having forgotten to perform its duties and office of the Family For neither is it gathered into drops because it is prepared of an arteriall bloudiness If any thing of sweat at the time of faintings and death doth exhale that is the melting of the venall bloud but not of the arteriall bloud Therefore the vitall Gas because it is a light and a Balsam preserving from corruption from the first delineation of generation it began to be made suitable to the light of the Sun But after the aforesaid failings of the Spirit the in-bred Spirits of the other members as it were smoaking are again kindled by the Sun-like light of the heart even as the smoak of a Candle put out touching at the flame of another Candle doth carry this flame to the extinguished Candle by a Mean Seeing that the Spirit of our life since it is a Gas is most mightily and swiftly affected by any other Gas to wit by reason of their immediate co-touchings For neither therefore doth any thing thereupon operate more swiftly on us than a Gas as appeares in the Dogvault or that of the Sicilians in the Plague in burning Coals that are smothered and in persumes for many and oftentimes men are straightway killed in the Burrowes of Mineralls yea in Cellars where strong Ale or
onely They have consented through the strong belief of credulity into the errours of the Gentiles and have been seduced into many absurdities 1. They have been constrained absolutely to deny the forms of things to be lights 2. That lives or forms and lights are placed among substances seeing they acknowledged no middle Being between a substance and an accident 3. Matter although it is a substance to be constantly abiding and alway remaining but forms to be privative substances yet to be annihilated like accidents 4. That matter doth bâ—rrow its substantial essence from a form not constantly abiding but to be annihilated or brought to nothing 5. That forms do yield to the matter in supporting and subsisting which absurdities unless they had been credulous they had by looking back taken notice of 1. For they had known that the minde onely among forms is a substance 2. But all other forms to be of the rank or number of life without an accident and substance 3. That it is impossible for matter ever to be made an accident 4. Because matter is not to be annihilated 5. That it is impossible for an accident to be changed into a substance 6. That an accident taketh to it degrees but not a substance 7. And that therefore an accident being on both sides graduated cannot lay aside its graduality that it may be made a substance 8. That although light be accounted an accident it shall never make fire of it self unless fire cease to be a substance 9. That it is a frivolous Question how an accident doth make a substance seeing it presupposeth an impossibility Therefore an accident shall not produce a substance from it self seeing this is impossible neither can an accident make a substance of a substance For also the Question doth not presse how a substance is made of a substance But how an accident doth produce a substance For although a dispositive and accidentall operation doth interpose in the producing of a substantial thing yet the producing of a substance it self doth not any way respect an accident as its productive principle Moreover seeing the two chief leaders of the Schooles waxing blind under the beholding of the light and fire have been made to wander from the truth I have judged it worth my labour for me to demonstrate to the young beginner of the art of the fire that the fire is neither a substance nor an accident but a Creature peculiar and seperated from both which no where hath its like But that Kitchin fire is not a substance For indeed none is Elementary yea if it were it should be of no use as I shall shew in its place For four Elements cannot concur to the composition of Bodies which are believed to be mixt Because the substance of Elementary fire doth not descend from so many leagues that it may joyn it self to its fellow Elements for the constitution of those mixt Bodies and that hastily and presently at the pleasure of the seeds Neither is it the property of fire to descend as neither is it the property of the water to call to it fire for a mixture for the future to be made For those co-mixtures of Elements are the Dreams of Heathens and their ridiculous mockeries whereby the Schooles have hitherto without controversie suffered themselves to be circumvented Because if there were an Elementary fire nigh the Moon that it might be true fire it ought plainly to have the same properties which Kitchin fire hath or this likewise should not be fire and the properties of this should not be essentially common to Elementary fire For the Heavenly or Elementary fire ought actually to consume and to have a nourishment not indeed one more outward about it but wholly very well mixt within it seeing one part of the fire ought to be nourished as well as the other yea for unless this should thus happen the fire that was neighbour to the Air as to its nourishment had devoured and consumed that its nourishment and in the mean time the fire near the Heaven had before perished without nourishment Also I have shewen in its place that it is a ridiculous thing for the Air to be the nourishment of that fire and that being as yet granted that all Air had long agoe failed that fire cannot make an excrement out of Air nor any thing more pure simple before it or finer And moreover if it should make fire of Air there is not afterwards an Element a Neighbour to fire which of fire may at length produce another Element Now of necessity there had long since been no longer Air but whatsoever had been of an Aiery form had been onely fire Or if Elementary fire ought not to be nourished although it hath most exceeding devouring qualities at leastwise the Schooles ought to have shewen why fire is lesse nourished or doth turn the guest its neighbour into it self than they suppose the other Elements to do that And likewise why Kitchin fire seeing it is true fire hath this adjoyned necessity of nourishment for its support or decay and why the primary Element of fire it self is deprived of the same For they have not considered that true fire stands in the will of the Artificer and is forged slackened and heightened for his uses For he stirreth up fire at his pleasure out of things which it is virtually in neither also promiscuously out of all things Otherwise man shall be a creator of the fire who is onely the stirrer up thereof Furthermore I call accidents all the properties powers and qualities of things But the Beings which have those qualities in themselves besides their essence are not accidents but the originall or entertainment of these So the heat of the fire is 〈…〉 property and accident neither is fire more heat than fire is dryness as neither is drynesâ—â—eat And seeing there is a distinct duplicity of these those two cannot be together in the fire that they may be the immediate essence hereof But fire so differeth from both that it may rightly be denied that the fire is either heat or is dryness Therefore the fire hath also its many properties and first qualities To wit heat and dryness And likewise other properties as there is in it a force of seperating destroying burning up making glass of that which is not glass of promoting ripening c. Thirdly there is light in the fire as it were a property more intimate and formall to it But the first and second of the aforesaid qualities in the sire are meer accidents distinguished in themselves apart from the fire to wit whose subject of inhering the fire it self is but light doth little differ in essence from fire although in a formall piercing and congress the light may receive a degree requisite to the Being of fire Therefore I will shew that the fire is not a substance or matter yet it is the subject of inhering of those accidents or of its aforesaid properties therefore the fire is a
aforesaid light Suppose also after the same manner Vegetables to obtain a twofold light from the nature of light but not of an Element because all things do consist of one onely Element Seeing therefore the Schooles have been ignorant of the properties of Lights it is no wonder that they have stumbled in the degrees of Simples And so another judgement is hereafter to be given concerning the degrees of Simples according to their participation of more or lesse light from their governing light That which the art of the fire declareth by the separation or withdrawing of the lightsome Being from the other part of the composed Body which thing is scanâ—y or difficult enough to many but to the Adeâ—tists very easie For by the fire of Hell which is the Liquor Alkahest of Paracelsus it may be known how great a part of either light a Vegetable even unknown bruised and covered in its Scituation may possess no lesse than with what shape or figure it was adorned And that not by the perswasion of Quercetanus who when he had seen a weak Lixivium or Lye to be congealed thought the seminall Being of a nettle after its turning to ashes to have â—emained in the Salt of the ashes because the Ice beginning doth contract its drops point-wise Paracelsus also is deceived because he writeth that all Vegetables cannot exceed a heat of the first degree Indeed the great Lights have wonderfully shone in Simples and their seeds do ascend for the grace of the Universe to a largeness of degrees and therefore all Forms have a light of essentificall thingliness reduced to the conjunction of either light Yet the lights of the Luminaries are not the constitutive Forms of Simples for that the light of the Sun is combustive or burning up even in its simplicity Therefore it is a shamefull thing that a man and the Sun doth generate a man Because it is that which is stuffed with the Idiotisme or proper form of speech of Heathenisme In the next place the seeds of Birds and four-footed Beasts are at first muckie or snivelly because they are perfected by a very small help of the light of the Sun But they are contracted and thickned by little and little that they may be sufficient for the consistence of their generated young In the mean time the Eggs of Fishes are at first more hard and straightway the light of the Moon assisting they wax tender into a snivelliness Therefore there are two great Lights and those sufficient as there are so many primitive Elements The Sun is chief over the Air as the Moon over the wombs or Motherly Waters Wherefore a living Creature brought forth by the light of the Sun hath need of a continual sucking of Air as also Fishes are constrained uncessantly to draw waters for the sustaining of themselves and the refreshment of their light I have known indeed the light of the Sun to betake it self into a Flint to wit onely by the preparation of the Flint that without the presence of the Sun that attained light may remain for some space under the thickest darkness and again the light is drawn out by a new exposing of the Flint to the Sun in the day-time although clowded Therefore this was the necessity of inspiration not to be despised by us to wit as a restauration of the lights contained by a certain consanguinity in seeds doth happen but not onely a desired temperature of cold alone as the Fish witnesseth It sufficeth therefore that no form of naturall things is produced by the Heaven by the Sun out of the dreamed appetite of the matter or whatsoever disposition of the seeds because that all these things are included in the race of accidents neither have they known the way to a creating of nothing For nature is not able of it self ever to ascend to the procreation of a vitall light but Christ the Lord of the Universe is alone the life and parent of all things neither will he give this honour to any Creature Therefore God alone is the Father of Lights But he is not so called because he made the Stars For as he is not called the Father of Stones or of things not living so neither of the Sâ—ars Yea neither is he therefore called the Father of Vegetables although they have a certain vitall light in them Therefore the Father of all lights is he alone to whom onely the name of Father belongs And who is onely to be called Father and is in the Heavens For although a fleshly Father doth give of his own whence the name of Paternity or fatherliness is given unto him yet because he is not the giver of vitall lights or the Creator of Forms â—he name of vital Fatherliness is forbidden to be given to the Creature Therefore God is the Father of Lights or of vitall Forms And there are as many of those diverse lights as there are of vitall forms For because Souls are not known by a notion from something before them or of a precedent thing therefore are they by a general Etymologie called Lights with a Son-like property whose correlative is a Father Yet so as that paternity is by way of proportion or similitude For although he truly createth all living Souls yet Beasts do not assume the Sonship of a proper name because neither the likeness of that their father For their souls do perish with their life in manner of the flame of a Candle Therefore the mind of men onely is an immortall substance shewing forth the Image of the Father of Lights and therefore power is given to him of becoming the Son of God Which things seeing we believe by faith I am angry that even still to this day it is taught by Christians that the forms of things and souls of bruit Beasts are true and spiritual substances by consequence that they are not vitall lights nor created by the Father of Universal Lights but are given and made by the Sun and likewise raised up out of the power of the seed As though a spiritual substance could be created by the power of a matter For I esteem that thing to be retained in the Schooles among the sweepings or drosse of Heathenisme but not without wronging the Divine Majesty To whom all Filial or Son-like love is due CHAP. XXII Magnum Oportet that is it is a thing of great necessity or concernment 1. The unconstancy of Paracelsus 2. The birth of voluntary things by their generall kinds 3. The disagreement of Archeusses 4. Very many accidents do remain in a new generated thing 5. Species are to be added to or diminished by Oportet or necessity contrary to Aristotle 6. The errour of Paracelsus in Oportet it self 7. Accidents do change their own proper formall objects 8. A contrary perswasion hath hitherto overthrown natural Philosophy 9. How the same accident doth wander with the middle life of a thing 10. From whence there are so many diversities of natures in a man 11. That
surviving Wherefore the more weak stomach feels a greater load or grief about the end of digestion than presently after food as if the Archeus were mindefull of his antient lost dignity Therefore I call these surviving qualities of the middle life ambulatory or walking ones And so that which the Schooles do cry out of as impossible is a common and necessary journey in nature as though it should be necessary for the matter of generation to be wholly stripped of every accident of its former essence nor that it could overcome fore-going dispositions and as if corruption or privation should precede every generation And so that it should be of necessity for a first matter or summary hyle to be actually underlaid and immediately to go before generation which notwithstanding they will have to happen in an instant For unless previous dispositions and the ferments of those to be generated should fore-exist in being made any thing might indifferently be generated of any thing when as the authority of principles being badly understood hath forced the Schooles against this Rock they thinking that all accidents do immediately and originally depend on the totall Form of a thing As though the form coming to it in the point of generation should have all the characters of its seed in it self and had infused them before it were But if the dispositive properties are sent into the Archeus by the form of the generater at leastwise they differ in the whole individual of the thing supposed neither shall they have respect unto the form of the thing generated The Schooles have neglected the perfect act of the seeds and the Archeus as also the actualities of subordinate forms And they have not known that from the beginning of generation even unto the voluntary end of the thing generated there is not but the flux of one seed not at all reaching to the forms of things generated Therefore the powers of seeds arising unto vitality or liveliness and the lives or forms of the living thing underlaid are concealed in the middle life of the Archeus Therefore the properties of the middle life do passe with the transchanging Archeus of meats and are transplanted into the jurisdiction of the humane Archeus yet much more dull than themselves Therefore it is frivolous that there is no accident in the â—â—ing begotten which was first in the seed which they do badly call corrupt Likewise also that from the form of a thing is all the off-spring of accidents For so from the univocall simple and homogeneall immortall minde should so many properties and inclinations of men badly be fetched But if thou shalt adjoyn the Stars to the minde these will soon forsake thee And the far-fetcht aid doth faint in the journey and faileth before its striking upon it It should also go ill with the seeds if from the form of a vitall thing which onely comes to it afterwards every property and efficacy of seeds were to be borrowed Therefore the opinion of the Schooles brings a disagreement that generation doth presuppose corruption and this likewise it Otherwise if the middle power consisteth in the totall form and last life of the thing Surely Physitians deceive or blinde the eyes of the sick when as the vitall form being withdrawn out of Plants and living Creatures they make use of these for the refreshment of the diseased They see indeed that oft-times in the Urine of a sucking Childe the Odours of the things which the Nurse hath taken do subsist to wit Oil of Anniseed Mace c. That which the Nurse hath took casts a smell in the Urine of the sucking Childe and so they are drunk down by the Nurse to that end yet they forbid the same accidents to remain safe in the thing born or begotten which was before in the thing corrupted Notwithstanding that rather in every naturall point of motion and alteration or between one and another instant all accidents are renewed Indeed the Schooles had rather that the light from the Firmament even to the Earth should in every instant of places and motions actually produce infinite kindes of light propagating each other by a continuall thred in every Mathematicall point of a Mean than to grant that light is immediately brought through a place by the shaking of its beam They had rather I say that the smell of Asparagus should spring from the specificall form of the Urine than from the middle life For they have not known any Being but a Substance and an accident nor a light subsisting but immediately within the substance of a mean Neither do they observe that they acknowledge an equivocall or double generation of accidents while they acknowledge one to be sprung from an accident but another from the specificall form But there are Reasons why the objects of sight do more strongly move the Imagination of Women with young then the objects of the other Senses that are more corporeal The first is because a visible object is in place immediately and so doth more affect and reacheth nearer and pierceth the Soul by reason of the alike manner of existing To wit they reach to one another by an intimate touching 2. The other Senses do readily serve the sight To wit a Woman with childe seeing a Salmon is carried into a desire of eating For then whatsoever she shall take affords her indeed actually the taste of Salmon and the taste serves the sight as its Master but it falling down into the stomach nor she having Salmon really in a visible object she perceiveth her deceit which her appetite causeth unto her and therefore she hath a loathing and the Woman is weakened trembling or panting at the heart For the appetite feigneth the taste of Salmon but the womb is angry at the deceit but it cannot transform the meat into Salmon Yea although she shall eat of another Fish and there is an easie passage in things that have a co-resemblance yet she cannot thereby form the longed for Salmon because it is the object of taste but not of sight Whereas otherwise suddenly by the object Salmon or Duck she easily transchangeth her Young into such a Monster For the objects of taste sitting immediately in some body cannot by reason of their corporeal thickness form a tranchangeative Image Therefore they who study in Adepticall things do strive to promote their labour of wisdom by the objects of sight and indeed by the light of the Moon That indeed the Soul may be touched by a formall light and night unto night may shew knowledge As touching the Young surely I consider it as a forreign branch implanted in the stock of a Tree which although it be nourished by its Mothers Liquor yet it liveth presently within in its own proper quarter For neither is it within as an entire part but as it were an entertained Souldier it snatcheth all things into its pleasure or desire and enlargeth the Vessel it self for its own command or government But I consider the
of all things as well in generation as in the transmutations of meats throughout the course of life which office doth properly respect the inbred or implanted spirit But now how and whence the spirit floating in the Arteries may be constituted by occasion of the Blas of man already described consequently I have undertaken to explain in this path their Office and Properties The Schools teach That nourishments are first changed into Chyle and then into digested juice and venal bloud and so that a certain naturall spirit is made in the Liver which afterward by a repeated digestion of the heart is changed into vital and at length is in the Brain made animal or sensitive so as that the natural spirit is ordained for nourishing of the parts but the vital for the preserving of the same and the animal for the functions of sense motion and the soul But I think it hath been far otherwise Phylosophized and farther proceeded For they had known out of Hippocrates That a certain spirit is that thing which causeth violence or maketh the assaults But it was not sufficient to know that there is a certain Spirit to have told by what instruments it should be made or what it might act unlesse they should explain also the disposition substance and properties of the same together with the manner of its making I have elsewhere delivered That of any plant and fruit a ferment being applyed Aqua vitae or a water of life may be made which thing seeing it is commonly known while out of Grains Hydromel or Water and Honey and juices it frameth a water of life The Proposition needs no demonstration But Aqua vitae is a volatile Liquor Oylie as it is wholly enflamed and wholly Salt as being sharp biting as being detained the longer in the mouth it burns the upper skin of the gums and lips and is one and the same simple thing and so it containeth two only and not the three Chymical Beginnings So indeed That according to the will of the Artificer the whole Aqua vitae may be made Salt or Oyl that is That those Beginnings are not Beginnings not constant things but changeable at the will of man But the Wine as to its Winie part contains a spirit answering to Aqua vitae For this is searched through the Arteries of the stomack unto the head without the maturities of other shops So that if more wine be in the stomack than is meet drunkennesse follows as the spirit of the wine doth flow more largely into the head than that by a fit space or interval it can be changed by an individuating humane limitation For from hence the changing and likewise the operation of the ferment is manifest Notwithstanding in Wine that spirit is milder than Aqua vitae which is drawn forth by distillation which thing appears from the like in Oyl of Olives For the Oyl which they call Oyl of Tiles or Bricks or Olem Phylosophorum being distilled doth far differ from the Oylinesse which is drawn out of simple Oyl by digestion only with the circulated Salt of Paracelsus for that circulated Salt is seperated the same in vertue and weight after it hath divided the oyl of Olives into its diversities of parts For a sweet and twofold Oyl is seperated out of oyl of Olives even as a most sweet spirit out of wine being far severed from the tartnesse of Aqua vitae Whence I have learned by consequence That whatsoever is distilled only by fire doth far recede from the vertues of the composed body But in us although meat doth putrifie after its own manner to wit if that putrefaction be a mean of transchanging a thing into a thing yet in our digestions by that putrefaction I speak of the action of the ferment of the stomack Aqua vitae is not extracted out of Potherbs Graines Apples or Pulses For truly the intention of nature is not then to procreate an Aqua vitae and there is one ferment in us whereby things are resolved into Chyle and another whereby things do send forth an Aqua vitae or a water of Life out of themselves For while herbs do putrifie in water through a ferment the stalk stumps or stocks and leaves do remain whole in their antient figure and hardness for the extraction of Aqua vitae which being eaten by us are turned into Chyle and loose their first face Wherefore I have comprehended as many varieties of putrefactions and as many dungs of one bread different in the particular kind as there are particular kinds of living creatures nourished by bread Yea further far more ferments of bread because bread doth putrifie as yet by more means as well of its own accord as from an appointment But what is spoken of bread as much is said of other meats The Schools indeed knew That nothing doth profit us which should not contain a Beginning or Essay of life in its root and so therefore they do admit of the air for the increase of spirit being deceiued by the Lessons of Poets who call them Vitall airs to wit they would have in the venal bloud a spirit of the Liver naturally actually to be and to glister like air For they thought it to be a vapour being ignorant that a vapour is never made an uncoagulable Gas an air sky or wild exhalation but that it alwayes remains water Therefore they thought a vapour exhaling from the venal bloud hunted outwards even as out of a certain luke-warm Liquor should be that spirit of the venal bloud whence vital spirit should be materially framed But surely the venal bloud as long as it flowes in the vessels of the Mesenterie and Port vein is void of spirit Wherefore it being also called out by laaxtive Medicines it is voided forth stinking without any notable token of weaknesse which comes not so to passe if it hath once well touched at the hollow vein Because then the venal bloud is Homogeneally or after one and the same kind sealed in its entrance that it may be made the bloud of the Artery and spirit and therefore it is in the Holy Scriptures indifferently with the Arterial blood called a Red spirit in which the Soul inhabits Although that be properly understood of the Arterial bloud Because the Scripture is there speaking of men stabbed or slain whose venal bloud is poured out together with their arterial bloud I shall at sometime teach concerning digestions that whatsoever is made or composed in the stomack that doth wax soure there by a ferment also Sugar it self not indeed with a sournesse or sharpness of Vinegar Oyl of unripe Olives Citron or Vitriol but by its own like ferment and with a specifical sowrenesse although it symbolizeth or coagreeth with other sowre things in that which is sowre Yet the sharpnesse is diverse from them all by an internall power And that sowreness of meats is perfectly volatile Neither doth that hinder that the Chyle in Youths doth assume the
heat For if a little heat causeth a small digestion and amean heat a mean one Verily at a powerful and troublesome digestion a great heat ought also to be present Which thing notwithstanding although I have divers times the more curiously searched into I have not found to be true Then at length it is to be noted That the digestion of bread in a Man Dog Horse Fish Bird differ in the whole general kind no otherwise than as a manifold venal bloud and filths sprung from thence Wherefore from one only particular kind of digesting heat those kinds of varieties of digestions cannot proceed Therefore let the Schools erect and defend so many general kinds of heats and colds before they do require for themselves to be believed I therefore do draw so great a difference of venal blood from formal properties and specifical ferments never from heat For truly I perfectly know that whatsoever things have divers essential efficients have also divers effects and attributes to wit So that products divers in the general kind do necessarily require their own efficient causes diverse in the general kind For otherwise any thing should produce any thing indifferently to wit even as one and the same thing doth arise from the same nigh causes For how frivolous a thing is it to have adjudged the vital powers and the formal and specifical parents of transmutations unto luke-warmths For if the digestion of heat were needful a more prosperous and plentiful digestion should continually follow a greater heat For by how much every cause is more powerful in nature by so much it doth also more powerfully perfect its own proper effect By consequence the stomack of one sick of a Fever in a burning Fever should more powerfully digest than that of a healthy person But surely in the stomack of him that hath a Fever nothing is rightly digested For Eggs Fishes Fleshes and Broths are presently made cadeverous or stinking within and therefore they do cause adust or burnt belchings the which if sowre belchings do soon follow after Hippocrates hath reckoned to be good as well from the sign as from the cause Yet there is in one that hath a Fever a heat also sometimes that heat is temperate to wit while it is not troublesome neither doth stir up thirst yet the digestion is void Impure bodies by how much the more powerfully thou nourishest them by so much the more thou hurtest them which in a Feverish man is manifest wherein we must presently use a most slender food easie of digestion And we must abstain from the more strongmeats to wit those consummated or accomplished in growth from meat Broths because the ferment being absent they do easily putrifie contract an adust savour and turn as it were into a dead Carcass No otherwise than as raw flesh being bound on the Wrist Breast Soals of the feet or Neck so far is it that it should be resolved into Chyle that straight-way after some hours it putrifies and stinks although it be salt The same thing is in an impure Feverish body where heat is present but a digesting ferment is wanting For if heat be the cause of digestion otherwise digestion is wanting in a Feaver but heat is present but we must more apply our selves to digestion than to cooling refreshment especially if no very troublesome heat be present Therefore we should rather study the increase of heat than cooling And so the Scope of the Physitian should be changed while it should be devised concerning the increase of heat in a Fever for digestion nourishing and increase of strength Neither also shall sharp and hungry Medicines of Sulphur Vitriol Salt Niter Citron and the like help but the heat should be stirred up and increased by sharp things He speaketh something like madness who saith That the Snow makes cold as it is white So it is a ridiculous thing to affirm That the specificall ferment of the stomack doth digest by reason of vitall heat existing in it Surely it is to be lamented that the credulity and sloath of those to whom the care of the life is committed have changed burying-places into a meer Sumen or fatting juice despairing of the searching out of natural properties whence notwithstanding they have their Sur-name Paracelsus also being deluded by a digestive heat and ignorant of the Ferment of the stomack admires that some things which are most hard are changed into Chyle in a few hours and that a bone is consumed in the luke-warmth of the stomack of a Dog who aspiring to the Monarchy of healing failed thereof after that he named this a power to be admired at was ignorant of and knew not the ferments For being unconstant to himself he wrote elsewhere That this digestive property doth agree no lesse to the mouth being shut than to the stomack and so also from hence That Anchorets have spent their long life happily without swallowed meat But surely that Idiotisme is to be left to his own boldness while in the mean time whatsoever hath perhaps remained within the hollownesses of the Teeth is straight-way made like a dead carcasse with a horrible stink but is not digested For I remember that a white and thick glasse being cast out of my Furnace was swallowed by my Hens they being deluded through the heat of Milk but the fracture of glasse is always sharp-pointed but after a few dayes some Hens being killed the glasse was found to be pointingly diminished on every side and to have lost its sharp tops and to have been made roundish or globish But the other surviving Hens and Guests had presently after a few dayes consumed the rest of the Glasse although they had also devoured the small Pellets of Glasse taken out of the Hens formerly slain Thou shalt take notice in the mean time that glasse doth resist waters which resolve any Mettals Indeed the ferment in many Birds is so powerful that unlesse they are now and then fed with Tiles or Bricks Chalk or white earth they are ill at ease through the multitude of sharpness But on the contrary that the stomack of one that hath a Fever is wholly of an adust savour he rejecteth meats of three dayes continuance being oft-times as yet distinguished by the sight or sometimes turned into a yellow or rusty liquour to wit through the straining scope of the ferment I learned the necessity of this ferment of the stomack while being a Boy I nourished Sparrows I oft-times thrust out my tongue which the Sparrow laid hold of by biting and endeavoured to swallow to himself and then I perceived a great sharpness to be in the throat of the Sparrow whence from that time I knew why they are so devouring and digesting And then I saw that the sharp distilled Liquor of Sulphur had seasoned my Glove and that it did presently resolve it into a juice in the part which it had moistned which thing confirmed to me a young Beginner that meats are transchanged
in us its antient and unchanged principles of coagulating a diseasie Tartar or if it shall not lay aside the properties of Tartar while it was made an Herb while Chyle Cream Bloud and at length Milk why doth it not shew it self an open enemy For neither doth Phylosophy permit that it should be both a Tartar and also a Cabbage or at length living arterial bloud and Tartar also Wherefore if Tartar hath lost its own essence and departed into a strange one it could not have retained its own and much lesse rather have passed in us from a privation unto a habit than in Herbs than in Bruits At length if there be real Tartar in things surely that should be persevering through all the transmutations of a Body nor suffering any thing by the powers of sublunary things which should suffer nothing at all by so many transmutations succeeding each other unless being taken by us alone But this is absurd to endow any thing with the excrements of perpetuity which should not be familiar to their pure Being yea either a field that is dunged Rape roots springing a fourth time therein should bring forth fruits laden with no Tartar at all or it is absurd that at the third or fourth turn Tartar should even manifest it self before it be hidden Moreover if every growing or increasing thing should have a proper and unseparable Tartar in it that in us onely but not in the Milk and Bloud of bruit Beasts Tartar by an appointment should be made it should needs be that Tartar began from the beginning of the Creation and not from the reproof of sin But if Tartar should not be in other Creatures but onely in us now its original should be supernatural and no Disease should be natural but every Disease should arise from a Miracle and our digestion should be viler and life shorter than that of the vilest little Beast whereof to wit there is a digestion unto a true transmutation and in respect of them all Tartars of meats do remain miraculously changed in its first matter This I say Phylosophy destroyes which teacheth that a transmutation is never made without the death and decease of the former Being and the destruction of the terme from whence to wit least one onely thing should consist to be in two terms or bounds at once For that the juyce of an Herb may be made venal bloud the essence of the arterial bloud of the Herb must needs first perish with the properties of its own Archeus and for this cause also all Tartar to perish in every transmutation of things VVhat if Stones in Cherries Peachies Medlers Peares c. be the created Tartars of those fruits surely they ought rather to have been brought on the Stage of Tartars and into the causes of diseases than the very Tartar of Wine it self which is resolved in boyling water Also the Medicinal Schools should be wicked and pernicious who do give the shells of those Fruits to drink to their sick folks in manner of a Powder in as much as whatsoever should melt through our digestions should contain Tartar and therefore should necessarily increase our Stones And moreover Tartar being granted for the cause of Diseases of necessity a Kernel had before sin been in a Cherry without a shell and so every created thing after sin had been forthwith changed even unto the Sciences and Idea's of Seeds and had put off its former disposition and figure and should presently increase from the curse and not from the virtue of the blessing Increase and multiply Therefore are the shels of those Fruits vainly adorned with so great a grace are sealed by providence and do keep every where a specifical sameliness if they are the off-springs and Reliques of excrements or Tartars if they are not the appointed works of Seeds but the accidental structures of Tartar So also thorow the stalk of a Cherry surely a small thred a Liquor should passe the future Tartar of so great a hardening which had never grown together in the stalk or body of its Cherry but onely about the Kernel And moreover the appointment of Nature is rather and more prime about the skin and shell of the Cherry than about its Winy juyce And so nature should intend an excrement before the thing it self But in us onely by the co-touching of the teeth Tartar should straightway wax hard Also Tartar should exceed in a notable knowledge because it being taken doth not yet wander thorow the Plant nor also while it being chewed by a bruit Beast is it wasted or grinded but being in the possession of man alone should be formed into Tartar but elsewhere it will not or knowes not how to be coagulated Truly if in Fruits Tartar doth not follow its own appointments but first onely in man I can scarce believe that this Command was enjoyned it by God while it enters into us in manner of meat But rather if any thing of meats doth degenerate within from the banishment of that which was accustomed in nature let that be our vice not the vice of things great with child of Tartar But if Tartar should lay hid in things the errour should be in the Archeus from the ignorance of the Lawes of his own nature Let that be an absurdity to wit to deny that through digestion the thing digested and transchanged from the former visage and inclination of its seed can be changed into the nature of the digester For indeed by one onely and homogeneal juyce four hundred herbs and as many diverse trees are sumptuously nourished not indeed that from that similar juice that is separated for wood which containeth more of Rozin and a stronger cream and as many separations of the same juice of the earth are made as there are diversities in the aforesaid plants far be it That is unworthy of the Archeus who hath fully known the office of his own life and hath obtained means for the perfecting those things which are to be done by himself in the matter subjected to him For not any thing is separated from the seeds for a root stalk leaf flesh bone or brain The diversity of members is not drawn from the truth of a simple liquor for the Archeus wanteth not a little and unperceivable diversity thereof in seeds on whose power every interchangeable course doth depend and of which fore-existing disposition indeed the Archeus himself is the principal and one onely workman to wit from the same Vulcan the diversities of things do issue forth no lesse than the properties of diversities for else the Archeus should not be a transchanger but onely a ripener and cook For was not wood a juice in its beginning and so a meer herby liquor waxed hard by a seminal virtue but not by a fore-existing hardnesse in the matter That also of Paracelsus is absurd that although material dispositions the causes of heterogeneal members do not actually exist at least wise there is a spiritual humane Idea in
Cough Concerning the Remedy thereof nothing hath been dreamed of which may be profitable For first of all they have given to drink the decoctions of Herbs and Colts-foots but with what an unprosperous event almost every house doth mournfully detest by its own Law At length decoctions being lesse succesfully used it hath made the Physitian to meditate of Tablets made or confected of Sugar lastly they have receâ—ed into Syrupes and Lohochs hoping I have shewen that to be ridiculous in its place that by swallowing slowly the spittle together with the Eclegma or Lohech would slide down through the think of the voice into the VVind-pipe Nor having regard that there would be a straightning of breathing Coughs choaking and expectorating of greater misery by reason of the admitting of a forreign guest than the Cough it self becomes which stirs up such unhappy fictions of help which things I have elsewhere on purpose opened at large Alass and a wretched remedy of Fox-lungs hath also entred whereby the poor living Creature may bestow the power of his daily race which living he possessed on Sugar after death For the Schools and the dispensatories of these have been wholly ignorant that the Lungs in only a sieve of Brasse neither that it doth bring any help at all unto the in-breathings of a daily motion They are ignorant I say that it affords no comfort to him that is lame or hath the Palsey although be should daily eat Hares feet or Stags-feet At length the root of Chymists succeeded who when they saw the ground where Sulfurvive groweth to wax dry and barren but I call the vive or quick naked Sulphur that which is not exacted out of the Firestone or from elsewhere they likewise hoped that snivel the off-spring of the Keeper was to be dried up by Sulphur which thing the Schools hoped to finish by the flour of Brimstone Therefore some have sublimed that from Aloes Saffron Myrrhe and burnt Vitriol But others afterwards tryed to solve it by Lime and Alcalies which they have â—amed the milk thereof surely a stinking one but that lost its credit after that the milk yea the yellow Liquor of the Sulphur being prepared with Lime Vinegar being powred on it the antient Sulphur returned again unto it self Indeed they have covered the stomach with a various Vifard that they might restore the defects of the Keeper placed in the entrance of the Wind-pipe and the apprehended blemishes of hurtful things For so the hope of the sick and the purse hath been divers wayes deluded I deny not indeed that Sulphur fitly resolved doth relieve or help the Asthma or shortness of breathing But that Asthma is not the guest of the Lungs to arise from its proper Epileptical passion to wit whither those Sulphurs have not entrance But the nest of that Asthma is about the Stomach which I shall teach afterwards which way also there is an entrance for the Sulphur the helper Furthermore the saleable floures of Sulphur are from the vein of Brasse For the veins are burnt with a slow fire that they may thence drive away the theevish Sulphur For else the Sulphur would snatch a great prey of the Brasse Therefore let every one who hath known why Arsenick hath obtained the name of the fume or smoak of Mettals well consider the strength of that Remedy Truly the Lungs doth speedily hearken to the destruction of it self and there is a very difficult restoring of its sliding life Also the Lungs doth scarce obtain help by nourishments which have through so many shops of digestions long agoe laid aside the endowments of their natural disposition before they enter unto the Lungs And it is little although they have reserved a small quantity of their antient Odour from their own composed Body in then middle life For that is unefficatious enough and unsuitable or unequal for restoring their weakness And that is especially more manifest in the Inn of the Lungs where the power of the Keeper according to his pleasure doth retort alienate and corrupt its proper nourishments that are immediately to be assimilated or made like unto it Wherefore I have expelled Minerals from this aim or scope except the greater Secrets because they are those which neither have a passage to nor have contracted a familiarity with the implanted Archeus of the Lungs I have also examined the Remedies throughout all their Ranks or Orders and those vulnerary ones have promised singularities which do appease the Archeus next which do divert from corruption and hence do restrain the wonted furies accustomed to the wound But not that I hope that those Remedies can reach unto the Lungs or vvind-pipe in their former power even as I shall elsewhere make manifest more commodiously on purpose But onely I did meditate that although the defects of Coughs were not separations of the Continual as neither that spittings were corrupt Pus yet that a vulnerary potion is that which might afford a nourishment to the whole Inn of man of such a sort that it might materially and efficiently by it self employ it self in restoring the exorbitancy as well of the Archeus as of the Keeper Therefore there was a great necessity of both Keepers to wipe of the inspired filths which else being brought inward would willingly affix themselves to the moyst sides of the Ribs and the Breast would presently thereby in all its parts be filled up with a Clay wherefore the snivel which should receive those opposite filths ought to sweat out as well in the entrance of the wind-pipe as before the Organ or Instrument of smelling Snivel I say and not water was necessary because this would presently hasten drop by drop into the bottom But the inward parts ought to be moyst least through a continual in-breathing of Air they should chap or cleave asunder Therefore a certain distributive virtue ought to accompany the continual moysture such as is that which dispenseth the Spittle I say a moderate and slow or gentle moysture ought to be borrowed out of the masse of the juyce Latex in healthy persons but when as the Keepers are ill affected they do continually weep out part of their own nourishment which they ought to assimilate to themselves To wit it being diversly altered in the form of water or also of a transparent or thick Muscilage according to the variety of passions whereunto the Keepers have hearkened But the restoring of the Keepers from weakness is very difficult and that of the vvind-pipe more dangerous or destructive than that of the Nostrils because it threatens a Consumption doth alwayes gape and is molested with a plenteous Air. At length it never satisfied me that the snivel of the nostrils although not much unlike to the snivel of Coughs in colour tast and aspect should be the same with that which is expectorated from the inward pipes of the Lungs For I could not perswade my self that the same snivel should proceed from two Bowels so diverse For if
in its essence by the Divine Goodnesse And the mind hath an eternal permanency henceforward not from its own essence but from the essence of eternity freely given unto it and kept with it Therefore from elsewhere and from that which is infinitely more powerful than it self Therefore it is sufficient that the mind is a spiritual vital Substance and a lightsome creature And seeing there are many general kinds and species of vital lights that light of the mind differs from other vital lights in this that it is a spiritual and immortal substance but that the other vital lights are not formal substances although they are substantial forms and therefore by death they depart or return into nothing no otherwise than as the flame of a candle But the Mind differs from the Angels that it is after the likenesse and image of the eternal God for the mind hath that light and lightsome substance from the gift of Creation seeing it self is that vital light but an Angel is not a light it self noâ— hath it an internal light natural or proper to it self but is the glasse of an uncreated light And so in that it faileth of the perfection of a true divine Image For else seeing an Angel is an incorporeal spirit if it were lightsome of it self it should more perfectly express the image of God than man Moreover whatsoever God more loveth that thing is more noble for that very cause but God hath loved man more than the Angel who to redeem the Angelical nature was not made in the Figure of the evil Spirit even as the thrice glorious Lamb the Saviour of the world took on him the nature of a servant that he might redeem man Neither also doth that withstand these things That the least in the Kingdome of Heaven is greater than John For the Son of man is not lesse in dignity and essence than an Angel although he be also made a little lesse oâ— lower than an Angel because the Son of man in his condition of living was diminished a little lesse than the Angels while he was made man so also was John therefore also an Angel doth alwayes remain a ministring Spirit but he is no where read to be the friend or Son of the Father the delights of the Son of man and the Temple of the Holy Spirit wherein the thrice glorious Trinity hath made its Mansion For that is the famous or royal Prerogative of the Image of God which the eternal Light imprinteth on every man that commeth into this world In the year 1610. after a long wearinesse of contemplation that I might obtain some knowledge of my mind and because I then as yet thought that the knowing of ones own self was a certain compleating of Wisdome I having by chance slidden into a dream being snatched out of the paths of reason did seem to be in a Hall dark enough on my leâ—â— hand was a Table whereon there was a Bottle wherein there was a little Liquour and the voice of the Liquor said unto me Wilt thou have Honours and Riches I was amazed at the unwonted voice I walked about weighing with my self what that should denote in the mean time on my right hand a chink was seen in the wall through which a certain light with an unwonted splendour dazled mine eyes which made me unmindful of the Liquor of its voice and former counsel because I saw that which exceeds a cogitation or thought expressible by word and then that chink presently dispersed I returning thence unto the Bottle again but sorrowful brought this away with me But I did endeavour to taste down the Liquor and with long pains I opened the Bottle and being sore stricken with dread I awaked out of my sleep But the foregoing and great desire of knowing my Soul remained with which desire I breathed for 23 full years For at length in the year 1633. in the vexatious afflictions of Fortunes yet with the rest or quiet of my life given me to drink from the safety of an innocent life I saw in a Vision my mind in an humane shape but there was a light whose whole homogeneal body was actively seeing a spiritual Substance Chrystalline shining with a proper splendour or a splendour of its own but in another Cloudy part it was rouled up as it were in the husk of it self which whether it had any splendour of it self I could not discern by reason of the superlative brightnesse of the Chrystal spirit conâ—eined within Yet that I easily observed that there was not a sexual note or mark of the sex but in the husk But the Seal of the Chrystal was an unutterable light so reflex that the Chrystal it self was made incomprehensible and that not by a denial otherwise than because it cannot onely not be expressed in word but moreover because thou knowest not the essence or thinglinesse of the thing which thou feest And then I knew that that light was the same which I had seen for twenty three years before thorow the chink I likewise from thence comprehended the vanity of my long desire For howsoever beautiful the Vision was yet my mind obtained not any perfection to it self thereby for I knew that my mind in the dreaming Vision had acted as it were the person of a third neither that the representation was worthy of so great a wish But as to that which hath respect unto the Image of God I could never conceive any thing not indeed in the abstracted meditation of understanding which would not by the same endeavour bear some figure before it under which it should stand in the Considerer For whether I shall conceive the thing in imagining it by its own Idea or shape or whether the understanding doth transchange it self into the thing understood A conceipt hath alwayes stood under some shape or figure For neither could I consider the thinglinesse of the immortal mind with an individual existence deprived of all figure neither but that it at least would answer to an humane shape For as oft as the soul being separated doth see another soul Angel or evil Spirit that is made with a knowledge that these things are present with it while it distinguisheth the soul of Peter from that of John For truly such a distinction doth happen onely by a proper vision of the soul which vision of the Soul includeth an external interchangeable to urse and therefore also a figural one For truly an Angel is so in a place that at once he is not elsewhere wherein as well a local as a figural circumscription is of necessity included And then the Body of man as such cannot give unto it self a humane shape therefore it hath need of an Engraver which might be shut up within the matter of the seed and that had descended into it from elsewhere yet that Engraver for as much as it was of a material condition it hath of it self no more power of figuring than the Masse of the Body
health the mind or life is alienated but hurtful matters being conceived bred and procured within or also characters only divers properties are introduced into the life or into the Archeus the instrument of life And not only those good inclinations of fathers or grandfathers are propagated into the Seed but also certain diseasie seedinesses such as are in simples are co-bred being as it were hardly threatned on us The which indeed as they do deserve a serious observation so much the more as oft as that hostile and diseasie poyson is divers wayes coupled somtimes to the ferment of the Stomach somtimes to the implanted Archeus then next unto the arterial spirit also oft-times beamingly to the life it self which indeed is nothing but a central light capable also to be pierced by any radial or beamy light So indeed the vital light of the sensitive soul is pierced by a forreign light being coupled with it no otherwise then as light thorow coloured glasse doth tinge a simple light in the wall Truly in the Monarchy belonging to life and the which descendeth from the father of lights are those living lights which otherwise do shine in a simple Sunnie light or in a coloured light being attributed wholly to a fraile or mortal light And there is a combination of living lights not only capable of bearing each other but also active on each other so that from hence it is plain that the Father of lights doth restrain the Bridles of life and of whole nature Therefore in the Arteries of the spleen or in the very substance of that Bowel is now a property stamped which I call the characteristical one of a disease or next in the very coat veins sinews of the Stomach or also in the vital Archeus of the same which property doth propagate it self by intervals or spaces into the sensitive soul or it shineth thorough it with a continual fewel and compels that soul to be its Chamber-maid so that the soul it self or the life or vital Archeus thereof being vexed or troubled by turns they are carried headlong into some motion of fury madness swooning giddiness of the head falling evil apoplexy palsie convulsion c. I know well enough that the adverse party that is not desirous to learn will accuse the mist which I spread while I wrest these sublunary things aside unto the life unto vital lights or unto the invisible world where the Father of lights is President But I pray let them remember that this is the right way which else cannot be searched into from a former cause And let them know that vital motions are not disturbed by and doe not depend on the life Whether the while we contemplate of our life or in the next place of the life and vital properties which do appear to us diseasie mortal and hateful Truly I every where behold it to be nothing but the common good of my neighbour for to open the windows whereby the light of nature hitherto obscured may come into the Schools and wits more successful than my self Wherefore I have withdrawn the Complexions of elementary qualities and likewise the humours tartars and these kind of dreams of Writers I could wish that in the room of them a true knowledge of nature and diligent search of our selves were introduced Lastly I have taken away Catarrhs or Rheums out of the midst of them as vain fictions and broken staffs wherewith mortals have been hitherto supported And se whatsoever hath deceived these through the fraud and deceit of a humour flowing down as the cause making a disease all that is to be referred into the fruit and product of a vital cause and that which is thought by the Schools materially to flow down out of the head that is darted shot 〈…〉 forth and propagated from the vital seat of the soul by a common guidance of the Archeus or is in stilled by a participation of life * Good God how far do I dissent from the tradition of the Antients I would there may be such or at least I would thou mayest make them such who may comprehend me and nourish the hope of the sick with a richer talent But thou O God wilt do in these things according to thy own good pleasure to whom I totally refer and offer all things and every thing which I have know see and am able to do I return therefore unto my path First of all I have elsewhere shewn that vulnetary or wound-herbs do operate by virtue of a certain in-bred Alcali or Lixivial Salt Indeed I have taught that vulnetary Mercury as well the praecipitate as sublimate are easily to be revived a clarified juyce being imbibed by boiling Whence it follows that those herbs are the more excellent in this degree that juyce of whom being boiled with the praecipitate and afterwards washed away shall the more easily and plentifully revive the Mercury Wherefore also in healing the stone of Crabs doth excell if it be drunk with wine more than if in water because that stone in wine doth most easily put on the virtue and savour of a Lixivium or Lye Neither I pray therefore let the Physitian abhor the use of wine in a wound or fever c. For at that very time that it savours of an Alcali it loseth the virtues property of wine For so the Lixivial Salt of the Teil-tree is successfully given to drink no otherwise than that powder of Crabs For the goodnesse of God hath invited us that by reason of the rarenesse whereby that stone doth subsist in a little space mortals may be drawn into an admiration thereof and thereby also may learn its virtues and may sift out its property alike wonderful whereby it profiteth wounded bruised people and those that have fallen head-long from an high place And here presently a wonder not yet declared comes to light to wit that a wound in the foot and also in the leg or in the most remote parts from the mouth is healed whither notwithstanding no Alcali hath ever obtained accesse to wit as the Lixivial Salt of this Stone doth correct the sharpnesse which is kindled in the utmost members or habit of the body and which is prepared to be kindled For neither doth the force of the Alcali passe from the Stomach thorow the Veins even into the Toes But neither is it admitted thither and although it should be admitted yet it could not proceed free and unbroken thorow the foregoing questions and examinations of digestions For there is no man which may be ignorant of this and not grant me what I have said Therefore from thence it is altogether manifest that that Alcali although it go not materially even unto the habit of the body yet it is sufficient that it doth disperse its property even thitherto beamingly onely that it shall forbid a sournesse or sharpnesse in the stomach the Fountain of Digestions and the chief Court-house of life wherein is manifested the power of the Stomach
he would that all Salts Stones Minerals Herbs c. should lurk in man as it were in their own Seminaries or Seed-plots But that they break forth into act not indeed by the warmth of confused seeds lurking in a Chaos but only that by a separation of the vital Liquor that they return from those things which were co-bred with themselves into their antient Minerals Not heeding that it is an absurd thing seeing he will have the Macrocosme or great World to consist no lesse of Stars and Plants than of minerals that it should resolve it self rather into Salts than into Plants and four-footed Beasts Therefore in this matter hath not Paracelsus onely forgotten Seeds Vegetables Stars and soulified creatures but his own self also That it should be the property of a Seed from whence that heap of venal bloud is separated by mans vital Beginnings to return rather into this than into another mineral For as Galen endowing all things with heats and feverishly doating drew for some Ages the chiefdom of healing into himself So Paracelsus reducing all things into an under-earth off-spring being proud of his pretious houshold-stuffe grew mad a while and thereupon aspired into the same Principality But I pray who is that separater which withdraws and plucks away a part of himself from the Balsam of life in the next place who is that corrupter which had changed the part plucked off from a vital condition also into a mineral Salt which knowes not how to putrifie in it self or into a hidden metal credible onely by belief Dost thou not concerning long life call death the dominion of the Balsam How is it therefore that thou now callest death the separation of the Balsam Or who is the seminal distinguishes in the Zodiack of man which may wrest the one onely and the same Liquor from the Balsam of life sometimes into Alume and at length sometimes into Arsenick Truly Paracelsus after that by a laboursome and ridiculous diligent search thou hast heaped up great Fables because thou hast been ignorant of Ferments whereunto notwithstanding thou shouldest have come as to the active and seminal principles thou hast past by the Beginnings of Nature and sporting with the Zodiack or compass of the microcosm at thy own pleasure hast made thy self ridiculous to Posterity For a full knowledge of the ferments doth finde out an easie way to know take away overcome and separate the poysons of any Ulcers whatsoever For whatsoever is made in the course of Nature that is made by the necessity and guidance of the seeds and is moved unto the last period of them But not from the lot or condition of a resolved dead Carcase or the naked will of a slain or groveâ—ng part The which indeed should hasten from a privation by rising again into its former Being Away with thy trifles For we have no fountains of Salt no reducements of venal bloud into feigned and lurking mettals Neither are there minerals in us which by wantonizing do withdraw themselves from the vital Beginnings or which do exspect the withdrawing of these to wit that they should return from mans essence into their antient and appointed minerals that so they may become the wombs and springs of Ulcers Neither also are there microcosmical Lawes in us any more than the humors of four Elements mutually agreeing in us and the fights or grudges of these For with Nazianzen I cannot tie up man unto the sporting Rules of a Microcosme For I had infinitely rather to be the Image of God than the Image of the corruptible and torturing World for although man doth grow and increase with Beasts and Plants yet Beasts shall not therefore be the Image of Plants So although man do feel or perceive and be moved yea discourseth together with Beasts yet nothing speaks but a man Because an Angel neither stands in need of speech as neither of the Instruments of Seed But if a Bird seem to speak he imitates onely the tone and distinctions or significations of speech for there are not in us Hails Snowes Rocks Stones Metals Marbles Flints Gems as neither that Center of a World whereunto all weighty Bodies do incline Neither is there in us a Stone by Creation neither are there particular kindes of the red or purple Marble Jasper-stone c. and the stone in a man differs from a true stone no lesse than a Peare doth from a Cow for a Peare is indeed changed into the flesh of a Cow sooner than the stone in a man can decline into a Mineral Rock or stone The name therefore of Microcosm or little World is Poetical heathenish and metaphorical but not natural or true It is likewise a phantastical hypochondriacal and mad thing to have brought all the properties and species of the Universe into man and the art of healing But the life of man is too serious and also the medicine thereof that they should play their own part of a Parable or Similitude and metaphor with us Last of all Paracelsus is wholly ridiculous who teacheth that an Ulcer and a wound are nourished by Herbs Balsam and Oyntments So that these defects are nourished by Remedies with a true nourishment and severing of excrements and that thereby the lost flesh of them is truly actually and immediately restored and that he hath seemed seriously to have written which thing surely I willingly grant unto his own Idiorisme or propriety of speech At length for the curing of Ulcers there is use for Colcotar or calcined Vitriol being diversly applied according to the difference of the Ulcer For oft-times the Wine wherein it is steeped doth by its washing do that or else the Powder thereof after an exact separation of its Salt and sometimes being boyled in the Oil of Line-seeds even unto a blackness which is for the foundation of the Oyntment of successful VVurtz in wounds But I say enough to the curious To wit that Colcotar doth kill every corrupter of wounds Finally for a wound know thou that the very separation of that which held together is indeed the immediate and sufficient occasional cause to wit as it openeth beats in pieces or bruiseth c. Every separation also wants a confirming closure and is presently glewed together by glew dissolved in Wine because it is prepared of the Skins of living creatures Especially if the Glew be of the hide of a man dying a violent death that is he being slain in his full strehgth But the alterations of the Archeus from venal bloud largely poured forth and a conceived Idea of another revenge or indignation being bred which by a proper name I call our wounds and not anothers or those wounds which are inflicted from without do not onely stand in need of a co-glewing of that which is discontinued or separated but an appeasing of the altered Archeus For hitherto have Oils Balsams emplaisters respect which may procure the peace of the implanted and local Archeus being injured To which end the Balsams
the Brain But the Schools elsewhere when they noted that from yesterdayes gluttony giddinesses of the Head have arisen in the morning they had rather to have the matter of Diseases to be conveighed into the Brain in a right line out of the stomach in the likeness of vapours through unnamed Trunks and the throat And so black Choler according to Hippocrates to be brought sometimes into the body of the Brain and to bring forth the falling-Evil or else into the Soul it self and then to cause the passion of hypochondrial madness And that by uncertain passages conveighers and unto certain scopes or objects But seeing one onely melancholy humour should be unfit for so great evils it was doubted in the Schools afterwards not indeed in a Quaternary of humours now antiently established in the malice of humours as yet not searched out but undiscerned For least they should be pressed with the straightnosses and samelinesses of passages not satisfying so great a variety they fled unto fumes and vapours that the various fumes of one black Choler should pierce into the bosom of the Brain and stir up diverse cruelties And they have safely covered these toyes from credulous young beginners they being secure that they were never to be compelled unto a designing and beholding of those fumes In the mean time the Schools are worthy of compassion that in so great a sluggishness of narrowly searching into the truth hitherto they are compelled unto so miserable straights but surely the sick are more worthy of pity who have suffered such helpers hired for much money unto the dest uction of their life Because such Patients be more inferiour and miserable than such Agents Therefore the Schools have neglected the matter of so diverse poysons besieging the Head and life But they being heedless have passed over the application of that matter unto the life to wit that a diseasie occasional cause should stir up a diseasie Agent and the immediate and whole mentioning of this History no lesse than the consideration thereof Likewise also they have therefore dis-esteemed the manner of making a Disease and of deriving the poysonous activity unto the vital object To wit because they have been wholly ignorant of the sink from whence those poysons should be derived and have passed it by as a thing altogether unheard of Because they have neglected the proper action of the Family-government of man without the knowledge of which notwithstanding nothing of those things which do befall us within can be known For onely the action of the Agent on the Patient hath been known in the Schools the which indeed they would have to be made with a certain circumventing or invasion with a strife and reacting of the Patient and with a weakening and re-suffering of the Agent But there is a certain action far different from the former whereof Predecessours have never made mention which I call the Action of Government which indeed is not onely made without suspition of re-acting but also without a bodily co-touching and therefore it hath its supposed object at a distance and separated It is called magnetical and sympathetical or attractive and co-passionate being derided by the modern Schools when it consisteth between objects at a distance in place but when it is circumscribed in our Body as a difference from a Magnetisme or an attractive virtue I call it the action of a meer government wherein the Agent disposeth of his proper patient or object of his own Sphere as of an Client of a hereditary right according to an ordination of Laws inbred in him subjected by a Symbole or mark of resemblance Indeed let the Agent be the Tutor here and the Patient be in his minority And there is a co-like action of the Stars in the Universe as well on each other as on sublunary bodies The which seeing without controversie it is there influential yet in sublunary things it hath been undeservedly suspected and so hitherto barren and neglected But our present action of government is not the action which the Schools have acknowledged to be a consent of parts or by a conspiracy of offices and necessities For truly government doth not require a consent It is therefore first of all a deceiptful name and therefore it either contains a mask or besides a deceit or juggle a Fable that is it containeth nothing For in very deed they will have this consent to be stirred up required wrested back by Fumes Channels Conduits or threddy fibers which as they are not in nature nor are there required So also they have nothing common with the action of government For the Schools do no where admit of the action of an Agent unless it be applied to the Patient by a mean in a continued channel as it were by a Chain They deny I say a continuation of virtue extended by the sameliness of a mean unless it be brought or conveighed unto its proper suffering object by a certain Trunk And especially in the Body of man they decree nothing to be done without a communication of passages And this hath been that continued yet ridiculous necessity of revulsions and derivations amongst them Truly by this inducement Anatomy hath been garnished for the Body of man as if it were the undoubted betokener and healer of all Diseases For hitherto they have taken so great pains therein that the Schools having forgotten their own Galen do measure him to be a true Physitian who shall point out most in the filths of dead Carcases and who shall certainly finde by his own knife those things which are published by Predecessors in this respect even unto superstition And the errour of so superfluous a curiosity and pride of unsound Doctrine praysed by the ignorance of the Schools is to be judged to have been brought in by the spirits of giddiness and the Authour of dark dimness for unto whom it is acceptable under what Title soever we loose our time unfruitfully For it was sufficient for Anatomy to have known the scituation co-knitting and uses of the parts but not to have exercised a butchery on dead Carkases all ones life-time to finde out the passages or conduits of the least vein For truly they have regard unto a vain and sordid boasting wherein the most pretious race of our life is unfruitfully consumed For in truth the knowing and Phylosophical preparation of Simples require almost the whole life of the whole man to themselves For indeed seeing one muscle ought to be moved another being in the mean time quiet the chief Judge or Arbitrator of things hath appointed interchangeable courses of Organs so that the command of our will should be declared in the muscles by deputed sinews onely but that by the muscles and bones it should be put in execution From hence the Schools have thought that therefore all our actions are made by nothing but a co-chained thred of Organs or Instruments through the far-of sequestred and divided Families of the members neither have they
strangle with a Cramp no otherwise than as being stirred with fury on them I remember that I once saw those that were strangled by their womb whose dead Carcasses looked black and blew being black in those parts wherein they had been pained before death Neither also doth it largely poure forth its Issues unless it should open its own Veins by an inordinate madness to overthrow the guiltless treasure of life So neither doth it contract the sinewes and muscles make the joynts lame displace the tendons resolve the muscles and crisp and cowrinckle the coats or membranes but onely by the action of government and unless it being stirred with fury it should keep a duality with the Womans life otherwise as long as every thing keeps unity it desires to remain in its Essence or Being When therefore a fury acts out of the womb alone it is the lesse evil But when it flies thorow into the sensitive Soul with which I have shewen that it hath an agreeing co-resemblance it pours forth the true madness of its own fury out of the hypochondrial part In young Maids at their first being enflamed or swollen with a lesse pleasure it withholds suppresseth discoloureth their courses and brings forth inordinate ones Then at length it produceth Palsies Cramps beatings of the heart tremblings and swoonings and contracteth the sinews which distempers by the volatile tincture of Coral Oyl of Amber Salt of Steel and such like Medicines I daily cure The same distempers being of the milder sort do obey stupefactive things Also the more cruel ones require greater Secrets of Chymistry What things I have already spoken touching the government of the Stones and Womb I have demonstrated by many Arguments in the Treatise of Catarrhs and likewise of the Duumvirate not by a more dull priviledge to belong unto the Stomach neither that fumes as neither that vapours do ascend out of the Stomach unto the Head and so that in this respect an impossible Fable is taught in the Schools Likewise in the Treatise of Fevers and elsewhere I have shewen by what sume drunkenness is made and by what way fumes are derived into the more formerly bosoms of the Brain Now I will teach the manner of making in an Apoplexie the Falling-sickness drowsie Evil c. that when I shall have denied them to be made by a co-knit Chain of vapours they may at least be understood to undergoe the action of Government To which end I must repeat what I before spake by the way To wit that the Beard is bred by the stones and that the distinctions ages varieties and colours hereof do depend thereupon which thing seeing it is commonly known I at leastwise admonish that it ought to be understood that a Vapour is not made which is brought forward by the Ministery of particular Organs but that a power is to be considered which in manner of light doth affect and dispose the whole Body or at leastwise its own objects according to the gift and ends seminally implanted in them by the Creator therefore a certain power or virtue beames forth from the Stones throughout the Body into the Archeus and so also into the sensitive Soul seeing the Church commends the femall Sex for a natural devotion Why therefore doth the Beard grow on the Chin and not on the Fore-head or on some other place seeing that eflux of the light of the Stones throughout the whole Body is universal This matter carries in it a most hidden Root of Philosophy demonstrated in the Treatise of the entrance of death into man For we must know that Souls do act on their own Body by the power of their own certain vital light the which seeing it is by the life in which the Soul it self is every where present every way extended the Soul in that its light deciphers the Idea's of its own conceipt and command that afterwards it may by the administring Spirits be wholly committed into the Organs for execution But those soulified lights or lightsome Souls themselves cannot be comprehended by us by a direct conceipt Seeing they are as it were the immediate clients of another and that an intelligible World wherefore the most High calls himself the Father of Lights For the Senses do bring nothing unto us from without which may decipher a conception of the soul in the phantasie wherefore in the Treatise of forms I have according to my slenderness touched at this matter as largely as I could in the newness of so great a Paradox which is as yet more strongly to be considered elswhere therefore lest repetition should tire it is sufficient here to have said by the way that substantial Souls and Forms even as likewise also a formal substance which I elsewhere distinguish from the former are certain unnamed Lights immediately framed by the Father of Lights Therefore the powers depending on Souls and certain ministring guarding Lights are also thus far lightsome I have shewen therefore by Science Mathematical that those very Lights do pierce each other yet that they reserve the Essence and properties of their former Lights But in inferiour things wherein Forms do inhabite and also formal Powers that these have their light even actually capable of being stirred up by our Archeus no otherwise than as in an Egg the power of the seed is actuated by a nourishing warmth Therefore there is in the roots of the hairs in the chin a power of growth duration and other dispositions although the masculine ruling power thereof be of one stone which power of the stones indeed although it be absolute yet it is not but diversly received in places to wit according to the manner and capacity of every receiver But as much as this speculation conduceth unto Medicine I will translate poysonous powers into the place of vital ones Because they are not lesse lightsome than those which are otherwise wholsom if poysons do immediately issue from their own forms For they are the gifts either of the more outward or forreign Simples of the first Creation or in the next place are begotten afterwards in us through errour of living By the same priviledge also the natural powers of the parts to wit of the Womb Stomach Stones c. do beam forth their own lights throughout the whole Body and do pierce the light of the Archeus also by the action of government depending on their light whence indeed this Archeus is comforted weakened estranged prostrated yea perisheth Therefore poysons in the Midriffs or those bred elsewhere do act by virtue of their own formal and lightsom powers according to the natural endowed Idea imprinted on them and they do affect the vital light planted in the sensitive Soul in the Archeus and so in the parts and they mutually pierce each other by a radical union and that either by a contagion of poyson remaining and transplanting the in-bred formal and vital light of the parts or onely for a little space as in those that have the
not Spiritual substances of a proper Name but only the living vital lights of Soulified Creatures The which notwithstanding are Created by God the Father only and are dispensed according to the requirance of Seminal dispositions I knew thirdly that every frail and Sensitive Soul did issue from the seeds occasionally and dispositively only and therefore that it did partake of nothing of likeness or unity with the Mind of man For although both were Created by God yet that they were both divided a sunder no otherwise than as a frail or Mortal Being from a future Immortal one or as Light that is to perish by blowing out from a substance which should be the shining Image or likeness of the God-head I knew in the fourth place that in the seed of Man dispositions and hopes lay hid unto such a frail or Mortal Soul no less than in the seed of a Dog unto a living Whelp Fiftly I knew that the Sensitive Soul even as I have proved concerning long Life in the Treatise of the entrance of Death into humane nature arose in us from sin and that it doth naturally remain afterwards through a successive coupling of the Sexes neither that the Mortal mind could be made by nature Man or any natural means 1. Because it was a Substance 2. Because that it was permanent or durable and therefore 3. That it could never be made from a perishing Being 4. That the mind therefore ought to be made of nothing after the manner of all Substances without the aid of Co-operating nature 5. And that therefore the Sensitive Soul before sin was not in us as neither necessary Next I knew in the sixth place that forthwith after transgression the mind was fast tied to the Sensitive Soul Because that in a Body subject to Death there was nothing more near or more a-kin to the mind wherein it might sit and that therefore the mind had sunk it self into that cleer and Vital beginning as in an Inn and had been annexed to it by God even unto the Period of Life For I have therefore beheld so many foolish madnesses fallacies defects errors and Treacheries of men yea and all madnesses which might utterly deny all the use of the Mind and might make its totall absence rather than its presence to be Suspected Seventhly I knew that the Mortal Soul forthwith after the fall did so over-darken the Mind in its Inn and over-spread it being idle and as it were detain it Sleeping that it did Govern not only corporal actions but it did for the most part so dim or blacken the very presence of the mind it self that it is able to do nothing at all readily in this Life as though it were no longe belonging to its own right For there is a Law in our Members resisting the Law of our Mind Lastly I felt or perceived a contrary or contentions disquietness sprung up which endeavoured to excuse the liberty and burden of sinning For howsoever the mind doth continually breath forth a vital beam into its vicaress the sensitive Soul because it is that which never keeps holiday is wearied or sleepeth nevertheless it seemed to be so servile to the mortal Soul in its faculties that it is unable to enjoy its own understanding freely but to yield to the mad will or pleasure of the sensitive Soul Wherefore I being easily seduced through the deformities of Diseases readily descended because I saw that Serpents and some Simples yea even our hous-hold excrements did every way alter the use of the mind indeed the powers and functions of these to become wholly oppressed and mad and that we who were constituted in so great a majesty under the image of the Divinity did become far more miserable than Beasts For I was incited hereunto because it did not seem agreeable to 〈◊〉 or possibility that any Poysonous frail Being and that which is unlike to the immortality of the Mind could Spurn against the Image of God that it should loose all right and Prerogotive at the will of a mad Dog and that the Power of the meanest thing should be enlarged beyond the excellency of a Being which is infinite in duration hereafter For it seemed that that ought not to be capable of suffering by a frail or Mortal thing whatsoever should by it self be immortal But moreover the mind of a prudent man is be-set for the most part by foolishness because almost every one doth labour in his own point of giddiness For whosoever loveth that which is not to beloved is ennared and who so keeps not a proportion of suitableness between things that are to be loved now he herein beholds plausible things as pleasing with an affection of madness For so Eve beheld the apple as beautiful and therefore as pleasing she presently took that apple and ate And that thing is so usual that the holy Scriptures say that the number of fools is infinite For I have gone head-long into these-fallacies of errors because I as yet knew not what the necessity and bond of the combination of the mind and of the Sensitive Soul was For indeed because the mind was now connexed unto the mortal Soul it stood bound to this by the right of an Inn so that although the mind were of it self not capable of suffering yet because they were both combined by a conjugal bond and bride-bed of unity so as that the mortal Soul did enjoy the sole Life of the immortal mind it was altogether necessary that as oft as the mortal Soul did suffer any thing by frail or mortal hurtful things or things hostile unto it it should consequently also suffer that very thing through an equality or likeness of wed-lock a conjugal unity and social right of hospitality Not indeed that therefore frail things should obtain a power over an immortal Being which is supereminently above it and of a diverse station but God would have the mind thus to suffer as it being hindered by the discommodities of its Inn it should be deprived of its own liberty of ampleness and should hearken to the straights and anguishes of its mansion For the immortal life of the mind is communicated to a mortal Soul Seat and Inn which life notwithstanding as otherwise every thing received is received after the manner and capacity of the receiver is made mortal in that which is connexed with it or in a mortal light And the which may therefore also be oppressed by mortal things that the Life may be wholly blown out and then the mind being deprived of its Inn is not indeed extinguished or annihilated but is compelled to depart by reason of an untying and annihilating of the bond Whatsoever therefore the mind seemeth to suffer under Life it self indeed remaineth safe but it doth not freely exercise its Offices because feeling or perceivance is in the middle of the Bond. For truly I have constantly considered the light of the Sun married as a husband to the Splendour of the Glo-worm so
to the guidance of divers Seeds and Ferments For he had learned that from Galen thinking that the blood did consist of as many simples as it was resolved into I wonder therefore at the unconsiderateness of Paracelsus that he did not know that the three first things are never separated but by the fire their last life being destroyed the mark of the Seed of their middle life being retained But that they are not therefore to be called three beginnings for they are made and so are bred or born And much less are they to be reckoned the beginning of Bodies while as that returneth whole through the guidance of a strange Seed by transmutation into another nature For neither hath that Man ever seen the three first things of any composed Body to have appeared in living Creatures in any degree of heat nor otherwise made and extorted but by fire I am also angry that it is not known that the same first things remaining they are nevertheless materially subject to the divers transmutations of Seeds under the same weight He hath after a sort relapsed into the Errors of Galen who thinks that the Elements do essentially remain in mixed Bodies For thus was he deluded in his three Principles For there is every where the same defect of both in the Principles of Philosophy which teach that the life alone doth operate in a living Body and into a body But that the subordinate forms of the entire parts even of the three first things if these are within before they are made by extraction are restrained by the form or superiour life under the unity of an Archeus because the three first things do never appear and operate much lesse do they offend by distemper or are diseasie unlesse their obedience due to the Archeus be first dissolved that is that they shall be separated by the fire and their last life be destroyed with a persevering not of the whole seed but of a small quantity of the middle life of that composed body whose properties every one of them do after some sort imitate when they are made a Being by it self subsisting For this being unknown Paracelsus thought every power and the formal operations of things so immediately to depend on the Essence of the Three first Things that he hath described the properties of Vegetables as they did contain such a Mercury Salt or Sulphur and all those according to his own pleasure As though these beginnings being shut up under a formal Archeus could operate the Archeus of life being idle or at rest For Galen attributed all things to the Elements for which Paracelsus being angry thereupon attributed all things to his three adoptive beginnings Like Quack-salvers who having gotten one onely Oyle or Emplaister give forth that that prevaileth wholly for all Diseases and at least for most Diseases Paracelsus I say heeded not that Lead as long as it is Lead hath other virtues than when it is changed into Sulphur and Mercury For Water Oyle and Ashes being shut up in a bottle do not operate out of the containing Vessel The bottle indeed as such doth operate but not as it containeth three things which of themselves may be separated So also judge thou of the Three Things as long as they are enclosed under a common Life Paracelsus therefore although he hath searched more nearly into Nature than Galen as some of the Three Things are actually allured or drawn out of many Bodies which doth not happen unto feigned Elements and Humors yet both of them have stumbled in this that he hath introduced his own suppositions into Diseases when as otherwise nothing feels sicknesses in us besides the vital powers themselves But the Life moves and altereth matters by its own Seminal Blas and nothing doth materially hurt us within which is not hostile forreign and an excrement in respect of the Life and so that it cannot be of its first adoptive beginnings For neither are those Three Things originally and immediately subject to the whole Life but to the middle Life of that seed where of they are said have been to the three corporal beginings to wit the Three first Things of the flesh blood brain c. are not immediately subject to the command of the total Archeus but to the Seminal mumial Balsame of composed bodies And that not before their manifested Nativity Diseases therefore do not owe the Original or Cause of their birth unto the birth of the Three first Things or any of them Because they cannot be act or hurt unlesse being first separated from each other and the intireness of the whole Body wherein they are potentially contained being destroyed by death But if they should be seperated that they may be able to wrong and hurt surely that should be made by some internal disease and agent besides Nature and by a former thing or cause Therefore the separation of those Three Things from each other could never be but a product and so also a more later thing than the Disease neither should it first appear unless a Disease being supposed Therefore it could not be the immediate or nearest occasional cause of Diseases For although the Three first Things are not the Causes of Diseases yet this doth not-argue whereby the Salt Sulphur and Mercury of things are ever the less the Medicines of of Diseases For it is not requisite that the Remedy and external Cause of a Disease should have a co-resemblance how ever notwithstanding Paracelsus hath so commanded whereby he might oppose the maxime of Galen Contraries are cured by Contraries For Poysons are not overcome by a co-resemblance of the Venome but by that which conquers the Venome For those medicinal Powers are the gifts of God which do neither bear a contrariety or character of hostility mutually towards themselves nor towards Diseases But every thing acteth from a gift that which it is commanded to act And moreover bodies being freed from their lump enclosure filths and impediments do unfold most noble gifts and most excellent Powers or faculties Even as elsewhere more largly Furthermore it hath been already sufficiently and over demonstrated that Nature doth not suffer four Elements neither that she doth admit of their congresse or encounter for the constitution of composed Bodies and consequently that there is no contrariety or skirmishing of the Elements for a Disease or Remedy It follows also from thence that there is no Quintessence or Fifth Essence by a proper Name to be so called if a Fifth Thing shews a necessary relation unto other four The Invention therefore of a Fifth Essence is indeed Chymical but of Phylosophers who before me knew not the Number Essences of the Elements and the Nullity of their mixture Which things if Paracelsus had known he had undoubtedly named the Essence which he calls a Fifth a Fourth in respect of his Three first Things Indeed he thought that every Body is constituted even as also resolved as well by Art as by Nature into
the giddiness of the head Doatages Asthmaes bastard Pleurisies the Convulsion Cramp the Disease of the standing of the Yard the Tympany furies of the Wombe yea and of the falling Sickness with some other affects divided in their particular kind do without controversie owe their beginnings unto windy blasts and vapours wherefore also they by an equal right enlarging the Catalogue brought down their searches unto the Book of Hippocrates Peri Phusiâ—n or concerning natural things That old man hath so altogether consecrated all Diseases to flatus's or windy blasts that he hath promiscuously confounded winds with the principles of life Therefore the more fruitful wits of the Schools began to search not so much into the nature and properties of windinesses as the suppositions of windy blasts being granted and yeelded to further to superstruct and build the nature and causes of almost all Diseases and to dedicate them to windy blasts vapours and exhalations climbing from beneath upwards or being thrust head-long downwards But when as they were not able wholly to deliver themselves out of straits nor that the edifice of so great a moment could stand firm because it was supported by no foundation of a more solide enquiry it was as it were the thred of an enterprise broken asunder by too much twisting Truly Hippocrates constrained a flatus into a predicament whether they should be partakers of life or death or at length of destruction and should contain the causes thereof or should be stirred up from Heaven by the Blas of the Stars and so should promise causal necessities of the heavenly circle or at length they should obey a sublunary or voluntary Law to wit he left it wholly undecided And so he left a broken method And that stood because there was not yet so great a necessity experience frequency and stubbornness of Diseases For it was not as yet known that the vital spirit had conceived the light of life which was that of the sensitive soul and that they were the immediate seats of the forms of soulified Creatures and so that they did contain the crasis or temperature of the whole Essence For none then had learned that the matter of that Gas the Water and so none had as yet dreamed that the vital spirit did differ from the wind of the World in the whole Element For truly the Schools had easily fallen down into this ditch of windy blasts and had stubbornly there remained but that they acknowledged the succours of purging Medicines and blood-letting in winds to be vain and foresaw that they should be in vain without the aid of both those succours Galen indeed had seen that Oyles and fatnesses did by degrees exhale through fire therefore he thought that winds also are awakened in us through a melted fatness or the inordinacy of the digestions because he was he who was not able to distinguish the Air or wind from an exhalation from a vapour and from a windy blast The Galenical School I say hath not hitherto known the difference between a windy Gas which is meerly Air that is a wind moved up and down by the Blas of the Stars a fat Gas a dry Gas which is called a sublimed one a fuliginous or smoaky or endemical Gas and a wild Gas or an unrestrainable one which cannot be compelled into a visible Body Wherefore the obscurity of the darkness of natural things hath remained unexcusable among those that are ignorant of the Art of the Fire The which doth instruct us in what degree watry Bodies or in what degree and order every fatness may flie away in the next place by what separation or by what Ferment Bodies may depart from each other may putrifie what all particular Bodies may carry with them by resolving in the next place by what means the Crases of Seeds and properties of a composed Body may shew themselves Lastly by what endeavour all of whatsoever is in us may be disposed into transpiration without a separation of parts They had heard indeed winds in the belly and then unhurtful rumblings and painful wringings they took notice of to be in the stomack and Colon but in Winter a plurality of winds wherefore they dreamed of an icy Phlegme in the bowels and hot Remedies to be applyed to cold Diseases Wherein the Schools do at first infold or ensnare themselves while they deliver the original of vapours and windinesses and do intend to cure and put these to flight by contrary Remedies as they call them For they contradict themselves in their principles or beginnings mean and manner For if windinesses in us are vapours or exhalations in us Surely there will follow upon the administring of hot Remedies against winds a greater exciting of pains and flatus's and stretching out of parts because vapours must needs be increased and torments be multiplyed as well by reason of stretchings out as the sharpness of the winds And that thing the Art of distilling doth prove throughout the whole Paracelsus although a Potentate of the Art of the Fire was not free from the storm of winds Because he was he which was ignorant of the nature of winds and of the Air that the matter of vapours of flatus's is a watry Gas that their efficient causes manners means as also matter is water got with child by a Seed Because he was he who plainly despised the authorities of Philosophy and endeavoured to bind nature under his own idiotism he was also forsaken God so permitting it by the light of nature who maketh such endeavours every where void Also no man ever attaineth unto Wisdom who hath thought to have come thereunto by himself For Paracelsus doth every where constantly perswade that we ought to feel the Diseases and defects of all things because we are hitherto every way an extract of the whole universe That we ought to express the universe as it were the Parent of a Son For so he will have us to contain winds and their varieties our wringings of the bowels also to answer unto the tempests of the Air. But I will not depart even a nails breadth from the famous Image of God that we do resemble the Macrocosme or great World rather than God in his Image For I believe that I am not a man that I might undergo Diseases and so resemble Pirke Olam or Holam Hapiroud but rather I know that I do undergo Diseases that I might shew a depraved and mortal nature but that I am a man for no other end than that according to the good pleasure of God I may represent his lively Image That man therefore divides the wringings of the bowels into four parts according unto the four accustomed hinges of the winds Whereof the Northern one he first of all placeth in the loyns whose wind in its colick should blow against the Navil But in the Navil he placeth the Southern one which in its colick should blow Diametrically on the back So also he hath disposed the Eastern one in the
shall endure or as long as from the juyce of the grape the wine is not perfected For as meal differs from the leavened paste or dough and the mealie lump from bread so doth wine from the juyce of grapes And as meal if it be boiled doth not bring forth windinesses but being leavened doth of its own accord belch forth windy blasts so meats do not in their own nature contain the flatus which the ferments do draw out A wonder surely it is that the Schooles have perceived nothing have written nothing of these things hitherto but that they have delivered all things by hand to the command of heat Moreover concerning the Gas of new wine and properties of a wild spirit enough elsewhere Neither let those things be unseasonable or unfit which I have elsewhere written concerning ferments concerning digestions touching transgressions under anothers harvest and the diseasie transplantations sprung from thence to have brought them over unto this limit concerning flatus's A most weak stomack therefore affords un-savoury belchings but a less weak one soure ones a vitious stomack burnish bitter and sharp ones But a stronger stomack doth indeed rightly concoct meats that are full of juyce not likewise the Onion Garlick Radishes c. Belchings therefore do witness some weakness and therefore do express the savours of meats But under the fardle of much meat that is full of juyce brackish also burntish belchings do bewray themselves especially if the meats are mortified But brackishness being stirred up by an exasperated ferment doth bring forth a various appetite to meat Furthermore also that flatus's are not bred of windy things mark an example Distilled Vinegar while it dissolveth Crabs stones Crysulcha Silver a wild spirit is belched forth A harsh apple in roasting stirs up very many flatus's not so if it do longer sweeten on the tree by ripening If therefore in the same apple a flatus had materially been it must needs be that the greatest part of the apple which was flatutulent and a meer windiness was through ripening converted into the sweet and homogeneal substance of the apple that is into a non-windinesse That a mixt Body as they say is made of almost a simple element Wherefore the whole apple whether it be ripe or unripe consisteth of the same matter and indeed not of a windy one A sharp apple being roasted in a glass Hermetically shut constraines the vessel by reason of its windy blast to burst asunder But a like apple being closed up in the like glasse with as much water as that it may boyle sends forth no Gas but onely a watery exhalation Aqua fortis being distilled by its self doth wholly pass into the vessel receiving without a wild Gas But if a dissolvable mettal be added unto it it brings forth a Gas so as that if the glass be well stopt with morter although most strong it breaks in pieces when as in the mean time none of the aforesaid mettal departs into a Gas. The Tartar of Wine cannot be distilled so much as with the hundredth distillation of its own oyle unlesse a chink or chap be left in the joynts Otherwise a wild Gas how big soever the vessel be doth suddainly break in pieces But if therefore Tartar should materially contain a flatus it had uttered the same in its first combustion at least in another distillation the which notwithstanding is made a new afterwards in every of its distillations also of its oyle or sulphur onely Because a hidden sharpness of the Wine and also a volatile Alcali is herein whence of the coupling of them both a wild Gas is made For the food not being sufficiently subdued in the stomack putrifies and causeth a Gas For it putrifieth through the corruption of the place which is of the dung of the stomack or by an action besides nature For the least atomes of the meats being well chewed are well turned into chyle but the greater atomes in a more weak stomack although in their circumference and outward appearance they are by digestion resolved into chyle yet in their center seeing they indeed perceive sufficient heat yet do not equally enjoy a ferment they remain undigested are corrupted of a yellowish colour and for the most part do the business for the bowels or if they do retain the ancient sliminess of the food together with a little sharpness they are changed into wormes which are alwayes messengers of weakness but the ferment of the stomack finding some things resisting it and therefore half-cocted and half-putrified presently enflameth doubleth and heighteneth its tartness whence there is a gnawing belching from a brackishness the companion of apetite which lump falling down into the intestine stirs up rotten and stinking flatus's from a fat putrifaction By way of handy-craft operation Take of Sulphur one part let it boyl with a double quantity of oyle of Line presently the Sulphur putrifies and the substance of Birds lungs appears breathing forth the smell of humane dung even as also in distilling the like Gas belcheth forth The lump therefore being badly digested in the stomack descending through the intestine stirreth up sharp flatus's if the tartness shall be heightened whence there are wringings of the guts But if any snivelly thing thereof shall adhere to a bowel the more stubborn gripes or wringings are made and now and then an accompanying Flux And by so much the more cruel by how much the sharpness shall be the more brackish For from a brackish flatus there is a small and fluid Colick but from meats it is far more stubborn and changeth its places and wandereth But if from a brackish adhering and affixed muckiness it most cruelly afflicts and puls together Flatus's or windinesses therefore do proceed not from the matter properly but from an operation of the ferment attempting a new generation besides nature and from the error of the provoked Archeus These things of natural and diseasie flatus's But poysons being drunk why they produce the habit of the body swollen with a flatus Know thou that that comes to pass a little before and after death For neither doth a dead carcase swell by reason of an attainment of a new matter but because the life is chiefly in the bowels therefore the habite of the body is first defiled by the poyson But the corrupting of the flesh is alwayes in a sour or sharp savour for leavened things are by a famous mystery read to have been forbidden to the Jewes therefore a sudden and cruel corruption dashing it self into fleshes doth also beget in them a windie blast and swelling So a dead carcass that is drowned doth presently sink to the bottome so long as until the flesh waxeth sharp under putrifying then indeed it springs up and is swollen with windiness and the life of the muscles which is as yet left after death doth work the flatus For it is wont to be said That a dead Carcass will issue to the top of the Water when
Catarrhe be feigned to flow down with a like success unto other and inferiour parts how therefore do the upper parts seem to be free from evil for seeing it should proceed from the same fountain the brain and through the same channel of the marrow of the thorn of the back why doth it not rather follow the path already opened doth it more largely fall down unto a weakened inclinable and affected part and commit new adulteries why doth it shake and seek new Innes Is that perhaps the delight of nature that through a whorish appetite it doth molest and divide new parts successively Finally that there is no place of refuge for a Catarrhe running down between the scull and the skin and the muscles cloathed with their own membrane hath been already before discussed Therefore there is no way manner mean connexion or dependance whereby a Rheume may in truth subsist And seeing no material thing runs down in those affects for which the Schools have rashly feigned Catarrhs therefore let the lovers of truth know that as oft as a strange or forreign Air odour ferment or forreign seed is received into the Spirit which makes violent assaults so often that spirit being defiled by the Archeus is excluded from the Communion of life But the genius or disposition of that conceived Seed hath no less parts whereby also the Spirit defiled by a strange ferment is sent unto remote rather than to nigh places As shall be said in its place concerning the joynt-sickness or Gout in the Duumvirate and elsewhere For so Mercury being even outwardly anointed doth affect the jawes tongue teeth Moreover when this defiled spirit shall come down unto the place of its sending it presently seasons the nourishment of the part with its own ferment transplanteth and translateth it according to the idea or likeness of the Seed and that Seed doth there interrupt the offices of digestions by successive blasts being drawn with strange dispositions Whence it at length stirs up a plentiful houshold-stuffe and doth oft-times characterize the impression there made on the implanted spirit with a brand durable for life These things the Schools beg for primary feigned humours and for the fallings down of defluxions from the one only brain I therefore am far from a Catarrhe who deny the matter shops efficient cause manner of making and defluxing thereof and therefore I also seperate the causes effect as also the cure far from the fictions of a Catarrhe Therefore salt soure sharp phlegmatick and cholerick humours do not fall down but as often as the defiled spirit hath passed thorow unto the places the first which shall come thither from a common endeavour and study of washing it off is the liquour or humour latex For the spirit being depraved by a forreign contagion is carried through the Nerves Arteries yea and through the very habite of the Body From whence the brain hath bore the blame and the sick do feel as it were the falling down of a defluxing humour and because the latex is designed thither by the veins not as a primitive cause of the evil although by accident it doth oftentimes nourish the evil the longer but for an easment and washing off therefore the Schools have as yet remained doubtful whether Rheumes should be dismissed from the Head through the sinews or between the skin or indeed through the veins out of the Liver at least wise in Gouty persons Therefore the Phlegme and Choler of the Schools do not flow from a Fountain or Flood-gate as if the Head were the one only sink of these And then neither do they fall down by reason of a steeper scituation or by reason of an easiness of passages For truly as in a dead Carcass there are no such defects but in live creatures only so whatsoever of these defects doth come to pass it proceedeth from a spirit which maketh a violent assault and from a vital beginning In whose family administration an ascending upwards is no more difficult than a descending downwards Seeing nothing of these in living creatures floweth by its own motion of weight but indeed is directed being sent unto its own certain bounds It also often comes to pass that the latex being defiled with a strange salt doth thenceforth infect the spirit so that the spirit is not therefore alwayes estranged by an external injury of Air or from a proper Air of contagion bred within but rather being stirred up by the latex because that is less lively it takes on it an animosity or angry heat And the latex accompanies it being troublesome as well through its aforesaid sharpness as through quantity and it enters as an importunate Souldier against the will of his Host Wherefore natural and artificial Baths do reconcile many of these sort of defects and overflowings to wit by consuming the latex they restore health rather than the loosening and drying Medicines of the Schools Vain therefore is the History and matter of a Catarrhe lifted up out of the stomack unto the Head vain also is the defluxing and falling down thereof between the muscles and the skin and deplorable Remedies from unknown causes Vain also are cauteries or searing Remedies to pull back and consume feigned humours Lastly vain are the Medicines of drying drinks seeing the evil or Malady is by the latex and a larger quantity of drink only occasionally bred Therefore it is manifest how wholesom sober drinking is for the liquor latex in respect of its appointment ought to be without savour but it waxeth sharp through the much drinking of pure and more sharp wine But the History and necessity of the latex is due in its own Chapter Thou shalt remember that all the fruits of composed Bodies do materially spring from water Let us therefore also suppose the un-savoury latex through a little help of a Seed presently to wax sharp For example For at the Spring-time a plentiful liquor drops out of a Vine or Birch-tree To wit if the bark near the earth be hurt it poures out an un-savoury liquour of the earth But if the wound be made in the stem or branches now the same juice is sharpish So it comes to pass in the latex being of its own nature without savour which through the contagion of things receiving doth at length wax sharp or becomes the heir of a strange quality For the Schools have neglected the latex because they have confounded the urine with the latex But it is a blockish argument to have co-melted the thing generated with the matter whereof as if the snivel spittle water between the skin and flesh and urine were drinks The Liver therefore being badly affected if it recal the latex unto it self truly it doth not thereby prepare urine but Oedemaes or the Dropsie Anasarca therefore I am not such a man as to call the Pleurisie Tooth-ach and other madness of furies non-beings For I know and grieve for their too much serious commands over us I do indeed admit of
those very Diseases but the causes manner means passages end or appointments of a Rheume I deny I deny those causes and I diligently search into those in the removal whereof health consisteth I acknowledge indeed that a corrupt mattery Imposthume of the Lungs being broken any one doth presently dye yet I deny that the mattery Imposthume is a Rheume or that death is to be imputed to a Catarrhe And much more vehemently do I deny that the corrupt mattery Imposthume is bred of a vapour of the stomack So I name a Consumption not a defluxion into the Lungs but I know it arose from an inward error of the Lungs I grant that the Gout is fore-felt as it were a hot defluxing drop yet I do not admit of a Catarrhe in its matter manner means and bound of making Even as in its own Chapter more cleerly The latex also being dedicated to the sweeping or cleansing of the Kitchins is in it self indeed guiltless but it in the way admitting of a coupling of dissolved salts doth constitute divers Colonies of Imposthumes Ulcers and itchings I deny therefore that vapours are carried into the Head which may pierce through the brain and coats Neither in the next place do I endure that the breath is carried from the breast unto the stomack and the bowels in a direct passage as it hath otherwise pleased Paracelsus but that a very small quantity thereof doth breath thorow the pores of the Diaphragma For neither when the breath is pressed together doth any thing worthy of note go forth under the Midriffe neither doth the breath smell of the places which are under the Diaphragma In like manner neither are vapours carried from the stomack into the Head but by the Arteries if men are made drunk But whatsoever causeth the giddiness of the Head faintings and other distempers of like sort is the retainer of another Common-wealth than that of vapours So neither from the womb are vapours derived into the Head however bruitish symptomes of the Head may thereby be said to be bred for that is not the obligation of transpiration which is the single duel of another Monarchy and that whereby the throat ariseth unto the height of the chin is not to be called the action of vapours indeed it is an action unknown to the Schools which I shall some times explain to be that of government whereunto all parts in the Body do owe a Clientship For there is no other command of the womb over the whole Body than that whereby the stones do distinguish a Cock from a Capon a Bull from an Oxe and a Man from an Eunuch in figure blood flesh hide and courage But because in supposed Rheumie affects the liquor latex being defiled doth obtain its own dominion of water hence as many Diseases as are ascribed unto Catarrhes are for the most part exasperated in the night time indeed the Blas of the Moon doth work the operations of successive changes in us The which do most especially boast themselves over the weak or defective brain and likewise over the sinews and membranes and these operations do oft-times fore-feel and fore-divine future tempests and therefore I also call them the torture of the Night And I wish this knowledge of presaging were not sold to us at so dear a rate that they ought to be thorowly paid by pains and anguishes For a short-winded Gouty person yea he that carrieth a callous matter or corn under his foot being often awaked out of his sleep in the bed or chimny doth fore-feel the future storms of times or seasons a black cloud to be by degrees spread over the Heaven and the hinges of winds to be shortly changed But Paracelsus would have Mercury to be President or chief over the liquour of nourishment throughout the whole Body and therefore he elsewhere concerning Minerall Diseases confounds that in name and thing with an earthly Moon Yet I know that the humour follows the commands of the seminal or seedy part whereunto it is most neerly resembled for therefore neither do liquid Bodies as yet rejoyce in the conferences of the Stars as long as they are not radically implanted in the Spirit of Life For from hence it is manifest that the marrow is a homogeneal or simple part of the Body but not the liquor thereof Because it manifestly answers to the Moon and brain whereunto the bones are obedient For so whatsoever things do tyrannize under the name of defluxions and likewise the foul Disease Convulsion wringings of the bowels do return under the torture of the Night because they hearken to the latex through the Dominion of our Moon they being offensive affects which hearken unto the motion of the Stars CHAP. LVIII A Reason or Consideration of Food or Diet. 1. They prescribe a Diet for Diseases who are ignorant of Diseases 2. The dietary part of Medicine is suspected 3. Some errors about the rules of Food or Diet. 4. Curing is not subject to the dietary part of Medicine 5. The Authors opinion 6. The object of the dietary part 7. A proof from a common event 8. Crooked ends 9. From a numbring up of parts 10. A diet doth privily accuse of the ignorance of a Remedy 11. A just complaint of the poor 12. Observances of the Author 13. The mockeries of the dietary part 14. Bread is not so much a meat as a universal victual 15. Why bread is mixt with meats 16. The chief hinge of the dietary part 17. A certain rule 18. Why the commands of the dietary part of Medicine are not to be trusted to 19. Ten Positions of the Author 20. How far the force of a sparing Diet may extend it self 21. The necessity of chewing 22. Whence the varieties of things digested are 23. An examining of Barley water or Cream 24. Some preventions or fore-cautions accustomed to the Author 25. A Question concerning the Ferment of the Stomack 26. The digestions do prescribe the Rules of Diet. AFter that I had finished the Treatise of Digestions I had willingly brought Diseases on the Stage but the action of Government being too scanty in the Schools was left behind as yet maimed and the Majesty of the Duumvirate it self and plainly the spiritual radiation or beaming influence of spirit according to its whole Wherefore I interweaved the Treatise of the Soul as it yeelds up its full right to the Duumvirate But I could not as yet moreover depart out of the Stomack but I presently added upon the Duumvirate some examinations of my opinion concerning Diet. Truly I have promised to demonstrate that the Schooles have passed by those things the profession whereof they chiefly boast of to wit that they have not as yet known a Disease in the general kind or have diligently searched into it by its particular kindes or species or to have handled it by its causes or by meet remedies And therefore it consequently followes that if through the aide of Physitians by conjectures there hath
doth not reach out of the Spleen unto the Stomack by reason of some defect of either of the two of the duumvirate or at leastwise the ferment received into the Stomack is covered over with a strange and Feverish odour The which thus understand thou Any one being an hungry and in most perfect health staying too long in the importunate fumes of Coales doth presently perceive a loathing or nauseousness to arise upon him and an averseness to meats and then also a pain in the fore part of his head and at length a Vomiting Therefore the ferment of the Stomack as it is covered with the hurtful odour of the Coales So likewise through a poysonsome odour and burntish contagion of the moved Fevers it happens that an averseness to fleshes is straightway bred as the ferment proper to the Stomack is overspred with that burntish odour or contagion These things I had thus concluded with my self concerning Diet and the consideration of Food within those few common rules abovesaid I did measure according to the course of Nature before I had obtained the greater Remedies Yet knowing whatsoever is converted in the Stomack in the likeness of a transparent cream by virtue of its ferment that that hath received the beginnings of a vital juyce although not yet life and for that cause not so readily or voluntarily to putrifie But whatsoever is either not dissolved or if in it self it be dissolved neither yet hath received a ferment as the latex the brine of Salt that very thing is either an excrement or is easily made such or is obvious or ready for corruption Therefore in the consideration of Diet we must especially give heed unto the Diseases and Meats which by reason of the Disease the sick party is averse to or desireth For we must be hand-maides to Nature but never command her To wit the ferment which ought to concoct the meats prescribeth those but not the Physitian according to his own appetite or desire neither may he take out of Authors one form for every shooe As if the various nature of men should not have it self by way of relation unto some particular thing Finally Exercises Labours Works Rests Sleeps and Aire do depend on the Rules which the moments or requirances of other Digestions do dictate unto us To wit that the juyces generated of the Cream may the more succesfully attain unto their own ends or come unto their bounds This is the truth of Diet which Nature doth of her own accord shew and teach and let that thing be one and perpetual That whosoever hath obtained the best Remedies of Secrets as he presently restoreth the sick and vindicates them from any Disease whatsoever So also he prescribeth no other Diet for sick than for healthy folk For to the healthy all things are accounted healthy because the digestive ferments do powerfully draw and restrain all things into their own jurisdiction And so digestions do prescribe the rules of Diet. CHAP. LIX A Modern Pharmacapolion and Dispensatory 1. The Art of Healing hath crept into Fables 2. The Barbarians excel the Europeans in Herbarism 3. The custome of Galen of filching the Inventions of others 4. A Tragedial sex of Herbs 5. The signate or thing signified in Herbs was ridiculously translated into Palmestry 6. The Rashnesse of Paracelsus 7. It was a vain Invention to have brought back Herbs into the Zodiack 8. How little that is regarded which is very much to be weighed 9. It is a shameful thing ta measure the natural endowed gifts of Simples by their degree of heat 10. The stumblings of Herbarists 11. The true refining of Simples hath been hitherto scanty 12. The venal Blood and arterial Blood do differ even in Plants 13. Ice hath deceived Quercetanus 14. The Father of Lights is the alone giver of infused knowledge without the observance of effects 15. Vain means to know the virtues of Simples 16. A specifical savour 17. Things desired in the knowledge of Simples 18. The art of the Fire opens the way 19. The diversity of Agents in Nature 20. A diverse activity of Spagyrical or Alchymical remedies 21. A Balsame preserving all the juices of Herbs from putrifaction without an alteration of their properties 22. A censure or valuation of Extracts and Magisteries 23. A horrid confusion and plurality of Simples 24. Dispensatories prevail onely for expedition but not for appropriation 25. A deceiving of Clients or Patients obtained by the authority of Magistrates 26. God composeth some things which man may not separate nor over-add a third thing unto them 27. When a conjoyning is to be admitted 28. A sentence concerning the prevalency of Dispensatories 29. The virtues of many things are blunted by sweet things 30. An Answer to things Objected in behalf of sweet things 31. The vanity of Syrupes 32. Chymistry is preserred before other professions 33. The use of things from beyond the Seas 34. The Crasis or constitutive temperature is the kernel of Remedies 35. Vices in Decoctions 36. A defect in Electuaries Pills and Confections 37. Against the confoundings of Simples 38. An examining of loosening Medicines 39. What kind of preparation of Simples is to be despised 40. The dammageable boyling of Odoriferous things 41. The ridiculous burning of Harts-horne 42. The Correction of many things is fatal 43. The Offences of Simples 44. Absurd Miscelanies or Hotch-potch mixtures 45. The whole Earth hath and brings forth Poyson 46. Under Poysons do lurk the most powerful Secrets 47. An Errour concerning the gelding of Asarum 48. An errour concerning its Crudity 49. No true Poyson in its first Being 50. The Death of the Marquess Spinellus by the folly of Hellebore 51. The examination of the Viper 52. Arsenical things by what right they are the Remedies of Ulcers 53. How Poysons may be made Remedies 54. The Chymical Remedies of the Shops 55. An examining of Gold and Pearles in healing 56. The use of Oylie things 57. What hath departed from clarified Sugar 58. The manner of applying of external things 59. The Collection or gathering of Simples THe Art of Healing is every where drawn into the Tragedies and scorn of the vulgar Because Physitians will not be wise but according to the custom of the Schools For what they read they believe and what they believe they deliver to the trust of the Apothecary his Wife and Servant or Family to be put in execution For thereby every maker or seller of Oyles or Ointments and old Women do thrust themselves into Medicine scoffe at Physitians because also they oft-times excel them in many things For they were wont in antient time to reserve some things to themselves for a pledge of fame and family But afterwards sloath overcame and gain disposed of Medicine as a plough and by the just judgement of God all things grew â—orse Before my entry of the Shop I cannot but be angry at the describers of simples For although there be no field more spacious plentiful and
their Rules ought to be hot yet they declare it to be without controversie cold In like manner also Aqua fortis oyle of Vitriol Sulphur c. being soure things according to the Rules of tastes ought to be exceeding cold But I am to shew at sometime in its place that the Schools have not yet beheld the faculties of things as to the outward bark or shell of them and therefore that they have passed by the fountains of their seminal properties Finally there is in every thing a specifical savour which ought to teach their property if there be any other external signates To wit there is in Cinnamon besides a quick sharpness a peculiar grace or acceptableness in savour the which thou canst scarce find in any Simple besides So Gentian Elecampane c. have besides common bitterness a specifical savour which by reason of a singularity proper to any kinde of Simples cannot be reduced under Rules and is the alone accuser as also distinguisher of all properties Furthermore that Simples are to be chosen or gathered in the station wherein they are in their vigour this is common to the Schools country people and my self To wit Seeds while they are almost dry but stalks and leafs while being juicy they are moist through a full quantity of venal blood roots also while they swell with strength and are not as yet worn out with generating and cocting but being now filled through much rest their Archeus being awakened they meditate of budding Others perswade the Autumn I for the most part love the Spring the which I have learned by experience in Polipodium Briony c. For the juice of Herbes is their venal blood the which being more and more ripened is either gathered into them or ends into the nature of fibers or at least wise doth slackly perform its office whilst the vital power meditates of propagating a Seed Therefore in searching into and gathering Simples nothing hath remained more neglected than that which was most desired and wherein even from the beginning hitherto there hath been no progress Indeed the powers of Simples and their immediate subjects have remained unknown For those besides a cleer and visual knowledge of them do require a desired preparation and appropriation First of all the knowledge of Sciences but that doth not presuppose traditions declared at pleasure and transcribed one to another But preparation doth not only require the boylings and bruisings of the shop but the whole Art of the fire At length a fitting or suiting applying or appropriating requires a speculation founded in the light of nature of man Diseases and affects and then their dependencies changes and interchangeable courses It s no wonder therefore that the Doctrine of Simples hath remained barren In the mean time under so great sloath of mortals the Almighty hath vouchsafed to raise up Alchymists who might worthily think of the transmutation ripening tincture and promoting of virtues as of things chiefly necessary And so they having proceeded by degrees unto the harmonious unity of Medicine have become the obtaining followers of their own desire For they have not gone unto the unequal tempering or mixture of feigned humours their strise and defluxions yea nor indeed unto the products or fruits of Diseases to wit for the avertings whereof they had known that they followed only the relapsing cloakings of Diseases but they converted their study unto the more formerly or first causes knowing that the impowering foundation of many defects was stamped or imprinted in the Archeus of Life Wherefore by the purity simplicity and subtility of Remedies which have a mark of resemblance they have attempted an entrance unto the middle Life That if any of them do not pierce unto the first Constitutives of us at least wise they may unfold their natural endowment in the entrance of these by stirring up our powers by their acceptable talk or communication For truly nature doth not only acknowledge the actions of agents which do wholly enter into the jurisdictions of Patients indeed there is only a corporeal action of such and an obedience of the nourishing faculty but there is also another authority of agents not to be despised which is an unfolding of their native endowment into the very middle Life of the Archeus by reason of the sequestrings of mortality dregginess and turbulency By which superiority such agents do suffer not any thing from their Patients and much less are they altered by resistance or re-acting For some Remidies being thus prepared do by their deaf wedlock so refresh our faculties that they do the more assure us that they came into the world for this purpose For some things do even refresh us by their fragrancy Also there are other things which being shut up are hindered from shewing their good will unto us as gold and gems or precious stones Others in the next place their shakles being loosed are brought up into a degree being as it were happy through the favour of an increase and the liberty authority of their powers or virtues being obtained they raise us up from a fall and comfort us Surely not more sluggishly than after another manner deadly poysons do prostrate our strength To wit they drive away a corporal yea and fermental poyson but not that any Medicine is able to renew again the powers implanted in the parts they being extinguished abolished and worn out But it hath been the error of the Schools not first to subdue the juices of Herbs together with their substance and their ferment before that a choice or separation of the best parts be possible to be made Then also they have neglected diligently to search that the juice of things being pressed forth with a press doth afterwards only through the odour of a certain sulphureous fire remain uncorrupted without sugar or any other additament by favour whereof it attains a certain Balsamical Being and translates the airy draughts incorporated with it unto a great act of perfection Moreover I now descend unto the labours of the shops For first of all although Extracts may seem to ease a weak or dull stomack of pains yet I have those in no great esteem for their errors already before noted But Magisteries I willingly lay up in the place of extracts whereby the whole substance of a thing is reduced into its primitive juice Which manner of preparation shall remain for ever unknown to the common sort of Physitians In which regression or return of solution juices differing in kind are voluntarily separated swimming upon each other for the most part with divers grounds and one Ruler famous in diversity containing the seminal Being settles to the bottom In the second place I pitty the so many connexions and confused hotch-potch mixtures in the shops the bewrayers of ignorance and uncertainty For the Schooles hope that if one thing help not another will help and so through the preachment of Herbarists they joyn many things together with each other
thirst remaining safe For that thirst doth proceed as a forraign excrement doth cause the nourishable juice of the stomack to melt For truly while I describe my feelings or perceivances I am not so much besides my self as that I shall deny the excess of an external heat to burn and cause a wound or ulcer or that cold excelling doth mortifie as if it did burn But in the Dream proposed I onely perceived them as they are serviceable to the speculation of healing Therefore the examples of excessive heat and cold are like a sword but not to be referred among the occasional and internal causes of diseases to be considered by a Physitian If indeed according to the speculations of Medicine health is expected by the removal of those wherefore the speculation of external and antecedent Causes is not curative but onely now and then significative and directive For a wound being once inflicted although the sword be taken away the wound is not healed neither is the fire to be taken from the hearth although it hath at sometime burnt or scorched some-body in the same place For truly the causes of Diseases are inward as they are connexed occasions therefore the consideration and removal of those is truly medicinal But the Schools when they saw the fire to burn its objects likewise also cold to mortifie and destroy and so the body of man by those external qualities excelling to be diversly disturbed they for that cause thought that Effects which should have heat adjoyned unto them were raised up by fire and in this respect that in Feavers two Elements did strive in us whereof the Water should alwaies obtain the former part of the victory but the Fire the latter part thereof to wit that the Fire did cause Erisipelas's the Prune or burning coal the accute or Persian fire the burning Feaver c. That it did likewise harden by drying or exsiccation of Schirrus's Stones Bones and Knots They have also decreed Remedies beseeming such rules by contrarieties not knowing after what sort the spirit of life may stir up heats and colds without fire or icy cold because neither from the Elements of our body or from feigned humours But they have on both sides neglected the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or violent assailant of Hippocrates Even as I have sometime by one example of a thorn thrust into the finger demonstrated wherein the Heat Pain Inflamation Feaver do not efficiently proceed from the fire of the thorn but because the sensitive Spirit doth grievously bear the forreign thorn So indeed heat and cold are accidents impertinent to the nature of a Feaver even as in the Liver are felt its heats because in the same place there are its thorns and the heat is not the cause but the effect of the thorn And therefore the alterations which do happen in the vital Family-admistration and do cease in dead carcases do not depend on the fire or icyness of the body or humours but on the Beginnings of life Yea if the Schools had touched at the matter as it is they had found that natural artificial Baths c. do not dry and burn us up but rather moisten us unless their heats are inordinate and of daily continuance yea neither then indeed otherwise than because more is consumed than is received doth the body accidentally wither At length I presently after the first qualities perceived the theevish adulteries of Merchants wherewith they load defile estrange and substitutively dissemble foreign Medicines or Drugs who have no need of my Doctrine because they are such as are not moved with the fear of Hell I presently after perceived two distinct Savours at least of things if not sometimes three or four one to wit whereby things are sharp bitter salt c. but the other which is called specifical being appropriated to the seed The first therefore I perceived to be the dignities and offices of Salts not indeed of Salts separated from the three first things or as they say drawn from corporeal Beginnings but of Salts glistening in their composed body But the other of the savours I perceived to be the seminal nature of Odours performing or at least unfolding the office of Forms in concrete bodies for Salts as being most sensible do first offer themselves to the taste whereunto therefore Hippocrates hath attributed the knowledges of diseases to wit bitter salt sharp and brackish pointing forth diseases But heats and colds he rather understood to be subsequent affects or passions than diseases But I do ascribe their judgement to the taste by reason of the aforesaid tastable qualities wherein for the most part a more profound power or faculty sits and containing the seminal and efficient cause But not that therefore the judgement concerning diseases doth belong to the tongue and the pallate but I name it the taste by reason of the tastable qualities Otherwise it is the feeling wherewithal the Instruments are strongly endowed whose sensitive force by an approximation of touching makes the signs of friendship or enmity about the hidden thing perceiveable After this manner therefore I perceived that it is the offices of the salts exceeding in force which do unfold the vertues of the subordinate forms of their concrete body and carry them unto the Archeus as it were their object whereon they act Therefore I perceived that Cures as well by Mediciues as by Nature are made by an appeasing of the disturbed Archeus and the removal of the seminal and diseasie character produced by the Archeus This indeed I have perceived to be the nearest safest and highest or chiefest curing But that which succeedeth by the help of secrets is busied about the taking away of the product And therefore I have perceived that Arcanum's do operate as Salts Indeed such cures do happen by removing of that which is hurtfull and by adding that which is defectuous for else those things which do hinder increases or appropriations have rather a regard unto prevention than unto curing it self but hurtfull things are taken away by resolving cleansing exhaling or expelling which properties are agreeable unto Salts But the removals of that which is hurtfull are not duly wrought by poisonous melting and putrifactive things as neither by the withdrawings of the venal blood and life But the adding of that which is deficient I have perceived not to be done by a proper means and therefore that we go back or decline by little and little through great want of the Tree of Life the which be it spoken of the vital faculties but not of the want of the venal blood which is restored by the kitchins But I have perceived that Nature doth voluntarily rise again and repair some of her defects if she shall be made to sit up after her prostrating To which end also balsamical and tinging things do help I perceived also that in the stomack is bred a soure salt partly volatile and partly fixed But that both are afterwards changed by their
have ascended into a poysonsomnesse by addittaments But these seeing they are not admitted within the root of the Mercury do operate onely without about the Sulphur and are there variously disposed according to the manner of the receiver At length I perceived That there was a sixfold difference of Digestions in us and that the three former of them were busied about the disposing of the matter appointed for to nourish the which although they do truly transmute yet they are sent before rather for a preparatory disposing than for a vital espousing thereof For truly in the Fourth Digestion a vital power is communicated to the venal blood and so the Controversie is decided whether the arterial blood be quickned For the venal blood is not truly enlivened until it be made arterial blood The which is drawn through the partition of the Heart into the Arterie Aorta for no other end but that in that Buttery it may be endowed with Life and informed with a mind But we are nourished by both bloods even as we have our original of the seed of a twofold Sex For perhaps the Mysterie of the Lyturgie is hence known why a little Water is mixed with much Wine That the Water may pass into venal blood and the Wine into arterial blood I perceived therefore That the Fifth Digestion was plainly occupied about the participative communion of Life But Lastly That the sixth did operate by a dispositive quality but did rejoyce in an assimilating ferment and that inducing humanity Therefore external aides are stirred up and do operate by another quality than internal ones Fat or gross persons are taken with Paines or Crampes or Convulsions of the Tendons the which notwithstanding the grease of man being outwardly over-smeared doth alay For the Sixth Digestion is wholly assimilative therefore it indeavours to change the grease brought on it into its own vital aire But the internal grease of fat things being now subdued by an assimilating ferment is kept without action But the Sixth Digestion enters into the middle Life of the external anointed grease the which our Archeus doth therefore appropriate to himself which Life and its properties are hidden in the last Life of the internal grease Moreover I perceived after what manner a Cantharides doth embladder in living People but not in a dead carcase as neither doth it raise up a burnt Escharre in the dead carcase although it dissolves the dead carcase no otherwise than as Calx vive poudered doth resolve Cheese For the Cantharides as long as it remains dry doth not act but is moistened by an unsensible eflux of our dew then first it begins to itch whence the Archeus under the Epidermis or outward skin is furiously inflamed not much otherwise than as under an Erisipelas the burning Coal or burning Fever and so the Cantharides begins in the Epidermis and an Escharotick in the skin the same which a Gangreen doth at length finish in the habit of the Body For Causticks do at first crisp the skin the which afterwards they resolve into a muscilage after they have fully moistened For then they do not onely sharpen our heat but also they assume the strength of a proper corroding Then I say they do not onely make an Escharrhe which ariseth from an inflaming of the Archeus but do melt the whole Lastly I perceived also that Amulets or preservative Pomanders things bound about the Head and hung about the Body do act by the virtue of influence and that directive without the evaporation of those things which indeed do reside in the more fixed Bodies Although there are other things hung on the Body which are by little and little diminished of their Virtues because they dismiss a Vapour out of them But things tied to the Head or Body are Bony Horney Animals and Plants but others are Mettallick Stony Salts Transparent things or Thick or Dark things But Mettals are seldome Amulets unless they are as yet opened or exalted by an external adjunct Because they have a dividable Sulphur in them But in Stones there is great virtue but of Stones some are transparent Looking-glasses but some are thick or dark ones As Corral Coraline the Turcois the Jasper But in clear Stones the Evestrum or Ghost of Life being well or ill affected doth reverberate To wit the life rejoyceth to be reflexed in a clear glass whereby it is then made like to the Understanding which in its own light is altered after the manner of a Chamelion at the assimilation of Objects Neither also have I in vain perceived Gemms to be as it were thick Glasses well polished Because the native and natural Endowment that is in them from the nature of the Glasse doth more powerfully reflect the vital beam communicated unto it For something is continually and necessarily discussed or blown out of us which is not yet plainly destitute of the participation of Life That very thing doth keep the activity of its own sphear about us the which while it findeth in the polished Glass it easily reflecteth on the whole Body from whence it issued for thereby sympathetical Remedies or Things were first made known But afterwards when it was known that things tied about the Body were applied in operating by virtue of a Glasse there were thereupon boughtie or convex concavous c. figures of Looking-glasses presently bethought of whereunto Gentilisme joyned Hieroglyphicks that by a figure they might denote the sign of a hidden virtue Superstition in posterity thereby encreased who anointed Gamahen Talismanicks and devilish Scurrilities of that sort Thinking that Figures had not indeed the virtues of a Sign but of a Cause But transparent Glasses do receive an Evestral or Ghostlike faculty the which although they do not reflect as otherwise dark ones do yet they approach nearer unto the nature of life or the shining glasse Finally I perceived that the diversity of Effects the end and appropriation of Medidines did not proceed from the fourfold fiction of Complexions but from the very powers of Simples themselves whose Election dose and preparation have therefore stood neglected because they have not been hitherto searched into in their root and manner After the perceivances of all these things at length another Spirit took from me the bottle which the other had given me And with great grief I then perceived all the necessities of Death in me unfit to be declared Whereby I presently returned unto my self neither could I receive comfort but when I truly knew that all things were acted onely by a Dream and because that if I ought to rehearse the virtues of things I could not better performe it than if I had as it were felt all those things within This one thing at least I did moreover remember that Chymical things did rather act by the force of Art than by the native power of Nature because their beginnings were brought forth and changed by the Fire To wit Chymistry separates fixed things from things not fixed
which is the first and easiest sequestration of Heterogeneal things There are not a few things also which it fixeth before they were volatile or on the contrary And then among some volatile things it separates odoriferous things from things not odoriferous which distinction is falsly reckoned of the pure from the impure For truly the action of the fire is to burn and therefore it burns as well the pure as the impure And then a third separation is made by digestions and proper ferments as the parts which do stick fast with a stubborn continuity do depart from each other through a discord of the ferment For so Bodies do in the fulness of their last life voluntatily decay and entertained faculties do come to light Moreover by boyling and melting the parts formerly ruled by one rein do now act on each other under which degree they attain other virtues Therefore Chymistry produceth those things which else should never be made or had in Nature and that not onely in separated volatiles but also in things residing and the which residues are therefore calcined But if by a co-mingling and co-fermenting of the composed Body new faculties do arise that very thing is more beholdable in Alchymical things not only because Art doth wholly imitate Nature in all her operations but also in a peculiar efficacy of a moist influx and melting which do perform various operations under the fire and change the Nature For so the spirit of Salt-peter doth elevate a moist Sulphur and embrination or sharp waterishness of Vitriol from whence are poysonous waters the Spirits of both which notwithstanding being separated were fit for Healing and grateful to the Stomack In the last place Chymistry doth bring up some more milde things unto a degree as poysons may be made of Honey Manna c. most things how violent soever they are do also wax milde under the Fire So that fixed Alcalies is they are made volatile do equalize the powers of great Medicines Because by the virtue of Incision Resolving and Cleansing they being brought even unto the entry of the Fourth Digestion do fundamentally take away the toughnesse of things coagulated in the Vessels For Chymistry doth so resolve the most hard and compacted things that they being not onely forgetful of their former curdling and constancy against the Fire do retire into a tameable juyce and being occult are made manifest but moreover they become social unto us Yea it doth not onely so prepare things themselves but it also effecteth means whereby Bodies may be opened For so coagulated things do depart into the Family of resolved things fixed things are changed into volatile and on the contrary crude things are ripened and things Heterogeneal or of diversity of kind are divided into their Classes's or Ranks In the next place drowsie or sleepie things do attain degrees of Virtues and many new things spring up which have remained unknown in the Schooles of the Gentiles Finally and finally Chymistry as for its perfection doth prepare an universal Solver whereby all things do return into their first Being and do afford their native endowments the original blemishes of Bodies are cleansed and that their inhumane cruelty being forsaken there is opportunity for them to obtain great and undeclarable Virtues But how much purity the Understanding may attain under this Work the Adeptist hath onely known Ah I wish the Bottle once possessed by me had not been taken away But God hath known why he hath given to the Goat so short a Taile Let his Name be exalted throughout Ages and let the alone sanctifying Will of him onely be done CHAP. LXI The Preface 1. The Authors intention 2. The Authors excuse 3. The event is suspected from Divine Ordination 4. A wish of the Author 5. A reason of doubting of the fallacy of the Devil 6. How the Author knew that he was not deceived 7. A Reason teaching that this Talent is of God 8. The judgement of quick-sighted men 9. The whole light of Healing hath appeared in one only moment 10. What the Author hath conjectured from thence 11. Why the Author hath written sharply against the Chaires 12. The event is intellectually foreseen 13. Fevers are frequently stirred up the occasional cause being absent 14. A Relation of terms seeing it is not a Being it doth not cause a Being in act To what end the dissection of a man of sixty years old was re-minded in his sleep I Have deliberated in the good pleasure of God to make manifest that before the world and especially in the Schools the causes of Diseases the knowledge of their essences and their Remedy have been hitherto hidden To wit that the essence of Diseases have not yet been pierced by so many Ages and Judgements of men Truly I have earnestly and notably grieved that this Ignorance of Ages past and of the present Age is true and so that it ought to be discovered by me an unprofitable old Man It hath seriously grieven me that they have been careless as well for their own life as for the life of their Neighbours and that Physitians should seem to have studied only for gain but that such was the ordination of God that as long as the Schools did adhere to Paganim Doctrines they should also persevere in the aforesaid darkness until at length in the fulness of times there should be one who should open the essence and thingliness of Diseases unto his Neighbours and that indeed before the very Chaires of Medicine to wit that as it were in a Fountain the errors of Heathenism being driven away the Truth may hereafter shine and as many as had not shut their eyes through obstinacy may repent Truly I propose to the whole World and to our Posterity a matter new and plainly to be admired And ah I wish that I alone who do first make manifest these things may therefore contract on my self and sustain the reproaches nor that the life and health of my Neighbour may suffer For I had willingly been silent neither had I divulged my Talent but that I knew this one only Talent to have been given me for the life of my Neighbour And while I do as yet contemplate with my self of the greatness of the thing in the succession of so many Ages and their fatal ignorance and the continued sluggishness of Body or negligence in a thing I say of so great moment as is the life of Man I cannot but many times for amazement look back repose my quill and doubt of my own fallacy of rashness To wit that in the Universities themselves wherein fresh the more fervent wits and those not yet defiled with gain are exercised a Disease is as yet altogether unknown to wit the adequate or suitable object of the Medicinal faculty the object I say of so many readings established by Princes Surely I had wholly doubted of my own rashness unless he who giveth such a Talent were the dispenser of the same within and
that the Liver being cooled doth afterwards generate the more cold Blood for all Blood being deprived of vital spirit naturally waxeth cold because it is a dead carcase But that a more cold Liver doth melt fleshes into a Dropsical water that can be founded upon no reason 18. The Schooles cannot deny but that a Dropsie is sometimes solved by the Kidneys But there is no reason why the Reines do stubornly close themselves even untill Death because the Liver was more cold than was meet Let these arguments onely as yet suffice the Humourists which are distempered with cold that the Liver may be from a mortal offence Now I will over-add somethings concerning the occasional Cause I will therefore resume the fact of our Treasurer who shewed nothing memorable in this dissection beside Blood out-hunted and hardned in his Kidney to be the occasional Cause of his Dropsie and Death yet while the Stone plentifully stopping the Kidney doth not produce a Dropsie yea although the whole Kidney shall wax brawnie or hard with little Stones and shall reserve nothing of its substance besides skin Therefore the obstruction of the Kidney as such is not the occasional cause of Dropsie But the out-chased venal Blood For so the Woman of Sixty years old having dashed her self against a corner of the Table contracted a Dropsie So those that are wounded in their Abdomen and badly Cured do become Hydropical So out-chased venal Blood lighting and laying on the Menynx or Coate of the Brain doth presently render the countenance swollen with a Dropsie So at length great gripings of the Guts do pour forth Blood out of the Veins into the space bordering on the hollow bending Bowel So those that have the Bloodie-flux And so Drinkers do enter into a Dropsie as something of blood is co-heaped in the hollow Bought of the Bowel But this thing I learned in a Fracture of the Scull and in a Dropsie of the Lungs For there the Blood making oftimes a stop blows up the whole Head and Face as it were with a Dropsie But here I have observed the Blood to have consisted or remained about the conduit of the arterial Vein for neither doth the venal blood degenerate in the form of corrupt Pus unless it be cocted in the hollowness of the Flesh but without the Flesh in a free place the Blood presently waxeth clottie and straight way after it being made more dry is hardened and presently conceives a Poysonous ferment Whence the Archeus stirs up a Dropsie Indeed our Treasurer hath taught me that the blood being hunted out and become clotty causeth a Dropsie of the Belly and besides that the Kidney is an Adequate or suitabl Aertificer Causer Executer and Judge or Arbitratour of a true Dropsie That thing hath confirmed it to me because at the time of a Dropsie the Kidney scarce makes Urine and on the other hand because the Kidney being excited to restore the Urine himself doth empty the whole Dropsie out of the Belly Wherefore also that the water is brought back into the Abdomen by the arbitration of the Kidney Vain therefore is the devise of Paracelsus that the Star Zedo is the one only and singular Architector of the Dropsie For the cause is in our innermost parts and in the very Beginnings of Life but not to be so far fetched and Cured For the Dropsie is not the workmanship of the Stars neither is there such an ordination of the Stars neither is that of concernment although Mercurie being seperated dead from its Vein doth truly and perfectly cure the threefold Dropsie For Mercurie is an Analogical and feigned Name neither doth it denote a Star but a running Mettal For what doth a Name that is Metaphorically feigned belong unto the feigned Star of Zedo For metallick Mercury is neither a Star nor kills a Star nor hinders its operation nor dis-joynes the conjunction of a Star with us if there were any For the Stars are the occasions of Meteors but of Diseases occasions onely by accident For primarily they are the Causes of times or seasons and of the Blas of a Meteor but secondarily and by accident they disturbe our Bodies proyoke Diseases or ripen the occasional matter But Causes by accident do not respect Cures but fore-cautions especially where Causes per se or by themselves do operate with or in us by a proper motion and appointment of their own seeds For indeed the left Kidney of the Treasurer is stuffed or condensed with the more dry Blood the left part of his Abdomen is extended and presently waxeth hard the right part being safe His Leg also presently swels and afterwards his Thigh on his left side and therefore the extension of his Belly is extended not by reason of the quantity of water onely but his Membranes are extended from the Disease it self no otherwise than as the Artery under a hard pulse But the Membranes are extended and contracted also before a plenty of water by the same workman which begets the Dropsie Indeed it contracts all the pores of the Membrane that they cannot transmit or send the Wind or Liquor thorow them when as otherwise in those that are alive that is healthy the whole Body is perspirable and conspirable or inspirable The Treasurer therefore first of all makes a little water the Dropsie straightway invades him by degrees and begins on his left Side And therefore presently after its Beginning his left Leg is besieged by an Oedema and afterwards his whole Body becomes swollen But why doth not his right Kidney draw the Urine nor transmit it the which otherwise happens when but one Kidney is besieged by the Disease of the Stone For therefore there is a double Kidney by Nature and a single Spleen or Milt that one may relieve another in their troubles and banishments of an Excrement Yea and from hence it is sufficiently manifest that the Spleen is not a sink nor emunctory Therefore in the Blood being chased out of the Veins deteined and condensed there is an exciting ferment such as is wanting to the Stone I will therefore declare the whole order of the matter so far as my Observation hath taught me For the Liquor Latex unknown to the Schooles as long as it is carried with the Blood in the Veins or to the Glandules it enjoyes a common life neither doth it obey the rules of water-drawing Organs But it knowes not upwards and downwards because it hath it not But it being once rejected out of the fellowship of Life now it undergoes the nature of an Excrement and hastens downwards as being burthened with its own weight Therefore the Latex is of a vile esteem And therefore as oft as every Bowel is ill affected it presently neglects the Latex and excludes it from the company of its Venal Blood and findes business enough for it self at home for its own defence The Latex therefore being once divorced elsewhere and spoiled of the society of Life doth presently receive
destruction of the whole Bodo and his own I will therefore open the matter so far as my Industry hath permitted me to conceive For in Nature there is twofold Action to wit One whereby a Body is enclosed in a Body as Wine in a Bottle and the Water of the Dropsie between the Peritoneum and Abdomen Yea the pores of these Membranes are Diseasly closed For the Body is per-spirable in health and the sweat doth wholly diminish the Latex so that the watery drink in Summer doth presently by sweat flow through the skin But sweat is for the most part unprofitable in the Dropsie so that although the Belly sweats yet it doth not diminish the Dropsie however many have vainly tryed many things about these trifles There is also another Action which is regular and of a different kind in Nature Whereby I have elsewhere shewed by many Examples in us a certain solid Body to wit a knife beard of corn needle arrow or dart head bones shells of fishes and the like are transmitted thorow the Stomack Paunch Veins without the hurting or wounding of these And so that there is a wonted and necessary penetration of Bodies in Nature For the first of those Actions as it is every where known is made so far as a Body doth altogether obey its own bolts of superficies hardness weight channels c. And one Body in respect of the other is as it were dead But the other Action is wholly vital and of the Spirit of Life which is not cloathed with the Garment of a thicker Body But it s own self is the veriest Garment of that Body And the which it doth therefore derive through another vital body subjected unto it For so Chyrurgions have noted Apostems or Ulcers to be made through the very bones themselves And so Authors who are worthy of credit whom in the Chapter of injected things I have alleadged do admit of a penetrating of corporeal dimensions as oft as a knife passeth through the Stomach and with a corrupt mattery Aposteme is returned through the Ribs without a wound of the Stomach In the Dropsie therefore the aforesaid double action is conversant about the same Latex For this Latex as long as it being cloathed with a clear vital spirit doth after some sort enjoy a venal life is led through the solid places it slighteth passages seeing there is none unpassable by it But it deriveth it self unto the Prison of the Dropsie and there as well through a constriction of the Pores of the Membranes as singularly and especially by reason of a deserting of the same cloathing spirit it lays up it self as it were an excrement now dead And the which neither doth therefore find deliverance from thence unless the vital spirit doth again cloath and encompass it This is indeed that spiritual force which is more powerful than any Bellows The which we bear in our inward parts the power whereof we dayly admire have never known and being compelled by demonstrations to admit of do scarce beleive In the Dropsie therefore I have found a fury of the Reins and their erring powers which furie shutteth and is scarce that which may open and the which doth open and lay up neither is it that which maketh to re-gorge Seeing therefore those actions of fury conspiring toward their own destruction are plainly spiritual for as a Physitian I every where contemplate of the spirit as a vital air raised out of the arterial Blood but I touch not at the immortal mind neither do such spirits act unless they are constrained by likenesses or Images framed by them Therefore indeed I call it the furies of the Archeus while the Kidney ceaseth and is almost forgetful of its own Office and appointment in separating the Latex from the venal blood therefore it shuts it self and being as it were wroth and exorbitant it lays up the Latex elsewhere But that I may analogically or resemblingly conceive of and express this tenour of fury as I ought I first of all consider the out-chased venal blood to be detained in the Kidney or to lurk upon the hollow boughtiness of the intestine c. Wich blood when it hath put on a fermental malignity presently the Kidney the governour of the Latex being full of wroth receives the sleepie or stupifying poyson of that blood But the ordination of the Latex is to wash off filths if there are any detained in any place of the Body and seeing the Kidney cannot by the Latex wash off that out-hunted blood because the Latex cannot descend thither this co-heaped in the veins for disdains sake and the Kidney is thereby so affected with disdain and weariness or grief that it cannot performe the office enjoyned it And therefore it presently shuts the passage of the Urine that that which it cannot do by a regular plenty of the Latex it may perfect by an abundance thereof As if it considered Thou Latex goest not whither I would send thee to wash off the out-chased blood I will not let thee pass through thy accustomed Ureters Such therefore is the fury of the enraged Archeus of the Reins the which at length arising to a degree cloaths the Latex and derives it whither it will But besides not only the event in making doth confirm this fury of the Archeus but also in drying especially while a Dropsie is sometimes cured of its own free accord For truly that comes to pass as if the Archeus did repent him and were sorry for his deeds I knew the Countess of Falax who while being a young Maid did swell with a Dropsie by the perswasion of a certain Physitian for she was held desperate by all abstained almost for the space of a full year from drink being content with the more solid food and broaths And she became healthy and is now alive being seventy years of age In the first place thirst whether it be taken from a sense of moisture failing or for the defect it self of moisture At leastwise in neither manner doth it dry up a Dropsical water For although no drink be Drunk at leastwise broaths which do afford a sufficient quantity of venal blood do also yeild a small quantity of Urine and Latex so much as is sufficient for the subsistance of a Dropsie In the next place neither doth thirst nor the defect of drinks it self take away the occasional Cause of a Dropsie which for the most part is venal blood expelled but rather they do the more dry up and the more stubbornly reserve for it that it may resist a resolving through the abstinence of the counterfeited thirst But that continual thirst together with a hope and perswasion of health did pacifie the errour or indignation in the Archeus of the Reins from whence I have learned that thirst doth regularly arise from the Kidney but not from the Liver and much less from the lesser branches of the veins sucking the greater until a defect of moisture be brought unto the Orifice
have been made consonant with truth by an hundred thousand experiences Therefore as many Physitians as do object such things as these from debility of mind and ignorance of Art are cruel Impostors Enemies of Christians being envious for a little advantage For truly they increase fears in the sick and vex the sick that they may extol themselves and their own Medicines And they say for we are willingly ignorant of those things which are evil Because the new remedies of Chymists for we make use of them sometimes when there shall be need are cruel hurtful burning and dangerous But if thou shalt admit of a Chymist thou shalt be alone with thy Chymist all we will stay at home because they are Idiots and boasters who do not agree with us Be ye mindful in the mean time that eyes do see more than an eye Therefore in a toren ship thou seekest ship-wrack if thou shalt depart from the safe shore They bring the Apostatical rout of Chymistry and likewise the Jews and wicked Men for a confirmation As if in like manner all the dross and froath of Harlots and Knaves do not insinuate themselves under the name of Humorist-Physitians For if Brawlers had been of value with me I had not been constrained to Write For if Charity or the care of your Souls doth vex or grieve you let us go unto the challenged Combate For I promise if ye shall overcome that I willingly hereafter depart from my Evil into your Doctrine wholly In the next place while I prefer refined Medicines before yours and the true principles of healing before Paganish trifles This is not done from an intention of catching or alluring of gain Neither also is it meet that I should be judged by your covetous mind for I have begun to preach the truth of Medicine from a pure intention that Physitians may repent and may learn those things which they know not may enter on a safer way and may cease from badly handling the life of their Neighbour That they may cease I say to destroy Widows Orphans and their own Souls For I know that in the fulness of time for nothing is so hidden which shall not be revealed the Doctrine which I have now divulged by this volume shall be made manifest I wish at least that it may happen the more timely or seasonably for the safety of Souls and preservation of Families but as to that which concerns my self I do not now for many years go to see the sick neither do I invite any one to make use of my endeavour which thing is sufficiently known to our country men Because I am he who get not gain by others miseries But I dismiss no sick Body from me without comfort Let the boastings also of the Schooles cease which do implore authority from the antiquity of possession For truly a prescription or title doth not happen into nature For I grant Paganisme to be older than Christianity I also presuppose that the errours of the Schooles began presently together with Paganisme They are new and unheard of things which I teach because God taking pitty on our kind hath under this fulness of dayes opened a treasure of truth even when it pleased him for all the Nurseries of the Heathenish Schooles that hence forward they may learn to assent unto safer Doctrine for by reason of an old abuse those things are withered rotten and wormy which are demonstrated to be deprived of the juice of truth because it is universally and singularly true that every gift which descends not from the Father of Lights is false and obscure but it is not to be believed that an Adeptist hath enlightned the Medicinal Schooles of the Gentiles whose posterity doth as yet cure with so great blindness of Speculations and is deprived of the Favour Vigour and honour of Medicines Let those boastings also cease as many as do glister with a wording or discursive Doctrine because they are celebrated by the Powers of the World For those Physitians whom the Almighty hath created are not Pipers But in the commpassion of Charity do peculiarly cure the poor and are acknowledged by that token But the Father of the poor beholdeth them with bountiful eyes who hath attended unto the intreaties of his miserable ones for the remembrance of his Christ They with-draw themselves from the flatteries of the People and great men they live of their own right being injurious to none And by this one only sign they are distinguished from paultry Physitians as in well doing they do suffer vilifying from these and do willingly bear it Yea the People to whom they are bountiful do report ill and prate of them Because that is the Lot which the Giver of Lights doth always reserve for his For without hope of gain they procure to be merciful But if money be voluntarily given unto them they receive it indeed but they lay it not up but for the former uses But these are very rare and not easie to be seen in Princes Courts There was in times past witten in the Epitaph of an Emperor He perished through a Rout of Physitians So that Princes are the unhappiest of men unto whom none speaketh Truth but being environed with flatterers they hear nothing but flatteries and are nourished with deceits At leastwise it doth not belong to Princes to have known how to chuse the best Physitian unto whom they may commit their Life but they receive this Physitian being commended or approved by a former Physitian and thus they remain in Courts by a continued race or line And therefore a Prince for the most part is not to be numbred among those that are endowed with long Life For although he hath honoured his Father yet of length of dayes promised unto him he is spoiled by unfaithful Helpers So much in Answer CHAP. LXVI A Treatise of Diseases A Diagnostical or Discernable Introduction 1. A Re-sumption of the whole work 2. Why the Author useth so great austereness in repressing 3. He invokes God while he perceives himself deprived of humane aid 4. The poverty and false 〈…〉 of Logick were discovered 5. The nakednesse of hearkening to the natural Phylosophy of Aristotle 6. An unheard-of method of searching into a Disease 7. Why the Schooles have wanted the knowledge of Diseases 8. A Disease hath flown from departing out of the right way 9. An entrance into the knowledge of Diseases 10. A Scheme of Diseases out of Hippocrates 11. The Schools being fed with Lotus have forsaken their own Hippocrates 12. A pithy contemplation of Diseases IT hath seemed necessary to have begun from Elements Qualities Mixtures Complexions Contrarieties Humors and Catarrhes that I might demonstrate the Schooles never to have heeded the Nature of Diseases and therefore that they have been ignorant of the true Scopes of Medicinal Affaires or the Principles Theorems Manners of making Causes of suiting Allyances Agreements interchangable Courses and properties of Diseases likewise of the Inventions Choyces
that the Life is the immediate mansion of a Disease the inward subject yea and workman of the same But seeing Life is not essentially of the Body nor proper to the Body but that a Body without Life is a dead Carcass and a Disease is in the Life Of necessity also every matter or mansion and efficient Cause of a Disease doth not exceed the Limits of Life That is of necessity every Disease doth inhabite within the Case of the Archeus who is the alone immediate witness executer instrument as also the inne of Life but Apostemes Ulcers Filths Excrements c. Are only either the occasions of Death and Diseases or the latter products of the same raised up into a new scene or stage of the Tragedy Neither surely is it therefore a wonder that together with the Life all Diseases do depart into nothing if the Life be the immediate subject and mansion of Diseases But I long since admired that no Physitian hath hitherto known in what the essence of Diseases should shine But that they have wandred about Elementary qualities Humours Complexious Contrarieties and Dispositions Neither that indeed they have once observed that as filths are not Diseases so neither are Diseases in filths but that they live only in the Life it self and being included in the same do so arise grow and perish that seeing they are no where out of the Life they ought to be the intimate and domestick Thieves of the Life These things be spoken of the proper receptacle of Diseases Furthermore seeing a Disease is without controversie admitted to be a Being existing in us as in an inne and doth enjoy its own and singular properties and different Symptoms A Disease of necessity is not of the number of accidents because an accident is not of an accident combined with it and distinct from it self in the whole Species For truly sharpness or bitterness is not a property of whiteness blackness lightness or heat But every one of them do stand by themselves Wherefore if a Disease be a Being and not an accident if in the next place it produceth from it self not only alterations diverse dispositions weaknesses c. But moreover doth generate substances degenerating from the ordinary institution of their own nature of necessity also it ought to consist of matter and its own internal or seminal efficient Lastly seeing a Disease is internal as to the life it self it also follows of necessity that the matter of a Disease is Archeal and its efficient cause is vital And that I may speak more clearly every Disease is of necessity an Ideal efficient act of the vital power cloathing it self with a Garment of Archeal matter and attaining a vital and substantial form according to a difference of the slowness and swiftness of Ideal seeds which things indeed have been hitherto unknown by Mortals and those things which follow are as yet more largely supported with this position God made not Death and so far is he alwayes estranged from Death that he refuseth to be called the God of the Dead First of all also although Death doth sometimes invade without a Disease yet for the most part Death follows Diseases so that none doubteth but that that Death is the daughter of Diseases or the second Cause whereby and by means whereof the Life is extinguished That is Death is present but seeing God is not in any wise the Author of Death to wit by whom Death entred into Man who else was immortal and that no more or by a stronger right in the beginning of the World than at this day A Physitian must diligently enquire from whence Death doth causally invade from the beginning and even unto this day that it may from thence be manifest from whence a Disease hath drawn its integrity For truly although it be sufficiently apparent that Death doth contain as it were a privation or exstinction of Life so neither in it self or for its existence it doth not require any substantial form and much less a vital one But surely a Disease as such doth not bespeak a privation but a Being truly subsisting acting by an hurtful act of Life and ensnaring the Life So also it behoveth a Disease to consist in the form of its own thingliness which the Life can receive into it and be informed by it But seeing a Disease arose from the same Beginning as Death did neither is God ever the Author of Death It by all means follows that God is not the Author or Creator of Diseases neither therefore although a Disease hath a certain substantial form Yet it hath not Life nor a vital Light but what it hath borrowed from the Life it self to wit so far as it glistens in the Light of our Life or in that of Cattel But not that a Disease doth require or hath begged a vital Light from the Father of Lights for the being of its seed the which in it self is rather to be named a deadly or mortal thing and altogether estranged from the goodness of God the Creator Therefore although God alone doth create all the forms of all things and the Father of Lights doth give every essential form to wit a vital substantial form and so also the formal substance without any mutual competitor yet that hath not place in Diseases in the forming of which indeed man alone is chief Because the Life of Man alone containeth the second Causes of Diseases and Death Therefore because the Creator God denyeth that he made Death therefore also a Disease For a Disease standeth in the Life of Man and therefore all its quiddity or thingliness depends on the Life of man and that not only Seminally even as otherwise it is proper to all the seeds of any things whatsoever But besides also formally so that the Life of the Archeus or his Flesh and Blood are and do remain the whole formal Cause of Diseases or the effective Cause of the formes of a Disease For he who from the beginning refused to have effected Death or Diseases will never at length thence-forward be willing to have made Death nor Diseases For the Father of Lights will not give his Honour of Creating formal Lights unto any Creature except the Mortal formes of Diseases whereof as neither would he be called the God of the Dead Therefore Man remains the workman of his own Death who the day before was immortal as also of his own Diseases as if he were the Creator of Death So indeed that whereas God hath made vital Lights Man Createth Diseasie Obscure and deadly Idea's or Shapes and such an Idea doth as much differ from a vital Light as a black heat doth from Light Therefore the formal act of Death and Diseases sprang from the action of original Sin and shall so spring even unto the end of the World For the same Cause which in the beginning of the World made Death or the same second natural Cause which gave a natural entrance of Death into
But a Disease hath proceeded from the confusions and disturbances of an impure Archeus and being radically implanted in him hath so remained thenceforth unseparable to wit as to a formative power of infirm Idea's A Disease therefore growing together from Idea's as from its seminal efficient Beginning cloathes it self with a fit matter borrowed from the Archeus and ariseth into a real Being after the manner of other natural Beings And seeing the Idea is now formed in the Archeus he presently also begins to act these things neither is he idle but defiles a part of the Archeus In which part a ferment as the means of the efficient Cause is forthwith stirred up through an aversion from the integrity of Life and at length by assistance hereof he either defiles the more gross masse of the Body or at least-wise disturbs the family-administration of the digestions The Schooles I well know will deride the doctrin of Ptato because I have assigned seminal Idea's Ideal powers and formal activities unto Diseases for they will rather acknowledge four qualities environed with feigned Humours and do grin that these trifles are trampled on by me as not knowing whereunto the Causes Essences and Medicines of Diseases should be due Being ignorant I say that a more powerful near and more domestical Being hath mustred an army against the life of Man of whom also it was divinely said That a Mans Enemies are those of his House for they do every where notably accuse obstructions occasionally induced by the injuries of filthinesses as Diseases which obstructions do notably argue not so much the obstructer or also the thing obstructed it self as they have alwayes noted with a losty brow the majesty of an action passion and relation sound in the obstructer as if the obstruction it self or a relation it self should be a Disease but that the foundation of that relation should include the reason of a Diseasifying Cause Indeed the whole errour of the Schooles ariseth from the ignorance of a Disease which consisteth immediately in the life it self but not in dregs and filthynesses which are erroneous forreigners and strangers to the Life Good Jesus the wisdom of the Father of Lights with how great confusion of Darkness do humane judgments stumble unless thou govern them For truly while they have consecrated the Stone of the Bladder in the next place all the filths mixtures powers properties effects and liberties of effects activities and interchangeable courses unto the combates and wars of the Elements alone they have signified by the same method that they will not and cannot be wise beyond heats and colds For so they have hitherto taught without shame and judgment that the Stone doth wax dry is dryed and hardned in the midst of the Urine by heat and by the same priviledge of rashness or boldness they have neglected every thing the whole history of Nature and nativity of things and have made themselves miserable because ridiculous in the age to come Wherefore I have often complained with thee good Jesus O thou Prince of Life how difficult it would be for the Schooles who have been constantly nourished from their childhood with so great an harlotry of trifles and juggle of mists to have assumed the true Principles of things Unless thou hold the stern of the Ship and inspire a prosperous wind on the Sailes I guesse that the envious man will be ready to deliver up my Writings for Volusian Unlearned or wast Papers Help O God for the good of thine own Image that Seeds themselves may testifie the Archeus to be present with them who unless he be fructified by the onely conceived Idea of the Generater they do return into a Lump and dis-shaped Monster unto which a vigor is wanting no lesse of figuring than of unfolding of Properties Let Diseases witnesse I say although I am silent that they are Active Beings admitted into Nature by natural Principles Let them confesse according to Trismegistus that things superiour and inferiour are carried by the same Law of proportion and co-like Principles That by the meditation of one Thing Archeus or Principle all things do even to this day subsist and are continued That by the Meditation and Idea of that one they do receive the perfect Act of Superiour or Inferiour Beings What he spake is Truth and that Truth shall vanquish every strong Fortresse and pierce through all Solidities or Difficulties CHAP. LXIX Of the Idea's of Diseases 1. A division of the things to be spoken 2. The Spleen sits in the middle Trunk of the Body 3. The forming of real Images of the Phantasie is confirmed by an Example 4. Why an Idea descendeth from the Mother into the Young 5. Consequences drawn from thence 6. A measuring of the moderatenesse of Wine 7. The piercing of Idea's 8. A Child declines from his native disposition 9. What may be understood by an Agony 10. Most cruel Idea's 11. A most especial care of Educations 12. A difference in the motions of the mind 13. The doctrine of Desires 14. The rise and progress of Desires 15. A diversity of the Sin of Commission and of Omission 16. Why God hath endowed the Femal Sex with a peculiar favour 17. What the gift of a Sexual devotion may operate by it self 18. Why the Author hath treated of Morals 19. The Author repeats Eight Suppositions concerning the Idea's of the Archeus 20. The Author wanders about forreign Idea's 21. The foundations of Physiognomy 22. A Reason why Idea's are so powerful in us 23. What the Abolishment of the Cause of a Disease may be 24. A Diseasifying Cause is invisible 25. The Birth-place of Diseases 26. The Author brings forth that Divine thing of Hippocrates in Diseases unto the Light 27. Why Diseases do imitate the properties and activities of the Life 28. An Example in the Stone 29. There is need of two suppositions for an introduction of the knowledge of Diseases 30. A Conclusion drawn from thence 31. A Mechanical proof in a Bean. 32. The same in a Cancer 33. The progress of a Cancer 34. How the Beings of Creation do differ from the Beings of Prevarication or Transgression 35. The Thinglinesse or Essence of a Cancer 36. Some products of Diseases do lose an occasional causality 37. An erroneous Method of Curing hitherto kept 38. The Schooles their Causes of a Cancer are Erroneous SEeing therefore a matter and efficient Cause is required unto the Essence of a Disease and seeing the Idea is the Efficient Cause it self of a Disease both of them are to be explained And first of all I will describe the thingliness of Idea's their Efficacy and Fabrick that the Action and Nativity of effecting a Disease may clearly appear And first I will declare the Idea's conceived by Man And then I will treat of the Idea's of the Archeus And at length of strange and Forreign Idea's And Lastly I will deliver the matter making a Disease that from a Connexion of both Causes the thingliness
water to dry up the brook In the mean time seeing the Archeus proceedeth in an unknown path in his own fabricks of Images I am constrained in the explication of Diseases to keep the Antient Names and to follow their Sir-names That in the beaten path of occasional Causes we may descend unto the knowledge of hidden Diseasie Essences But it is sufficient for me to have shewn in this by-work that seminal Idea's in the whole Systeme of the World are the beginning principle of every Blas of seeds generations successive changes and storms Yet before that I attempt the Scheme of Diseases seeing it is as yet to scanty that Idea's are formed by the Archeus no less than by the imaginative power it shall be profitable to shew that thing unto the Young Beginner by one argument For the dead Carcass of a man which is dead through a voluntary Flux exceeds all Ice in coldness not indeed that in very truth it is more cold than the dead Carcass of a Cow which dyed of her own accord for I distinguishing that thing by the Organ of qualities and the degrees of the encompassing air it is clearly demonstrated although notwithstanding that thing be thus judged by our touching for that happens through the fear of the Archeus alone which greatly dreadeth at the co-touching of Death in the dead Carcass 1. He feels Death the which perhaps the imagination is as yet ignorant of 2. He greatly dreadeth 3. The inflowing Spirit retires 4. But that which is implanted in the hand is troubled and fails for fear and so conceives a beginning of Death unto himself from the trembling fear Therefore the Holy Scriptures do not incongrously say That he that should touch the dead is reckoned impure and half dead Which Image of Death the Archeus will he nill he doth conceive and doth so stiffly retain it for some good while as long as that Idea of fear is surviving that it scarce becomes hot again at the hearth within an hours space Therefore the Idea of trembling fear is really there for truly it works its effect and is formed by the Archeus and not by the imaginative power of the Man Therefore if the Archeus runs away trembling for fear by a like reason also he shall be sorrowful angry shall be stirred up through fury and other passions and is in a conflict through the Idea's of any perturbations whatsoever becomes troublesome and hurtful to himself according to the pleasure of Idea's which he hath formed unto himself by his own force and liberty CHAP. LXXII The passage unto the Buttery of the Bowels is stopped up 1. The difficulty of curing a Disease is concluded from the very seat of the Soul 2. An example of a quartane Ague 3. A remarkable thing concerning Remedies hitherto used against a Quartane 4. Wherein purging Medicines have hitherto decieved the unwary 5. Purging things have sometimes cured by accident and have remained through this deciet 6. A reckoning up of incurable Diseases 7. Distillation brings forth new generated things 8. Singularities in things produced by the fire 9. Deccocted things differ from distilled things 10. What was the scope of the Author in times past 11. Some Remedies have decieved the Author 12. An examination of Remedies 13. An examination of Digestions 14. An examination of Water-remedies 15. The abilities of the Stomach 16. Whence the chief variety of conditions is AFter I had discerned that the Stomach was the root of the tree or the root as well of a universal Digestion as of all particular ones whatsoever I had alike seriously known that the Mortal or sensitive Soul the Mistris of all kind of actions whatsoever in us and the Dispenseress of Life throughout the whole Body did inhabit there That indeed also the Frameress of the first conceptions was there scituated likewise the shop of sleep no less than of watchings and madnesses I held it consonant to reason that the immortal mind or Image of God could be no where more decently infolded or co-knit than in the aforesaid formal and vital Light to wit in a spiritual principle for that reason also most near because akin unto it And when as the Monarchy of Life being thorowly searched into I saw and optically or clearly knew that every Disease did essentially consist in the Life and arise out of the same the causes of difficulties in curing Diseases offered themselves unto me especially those which are not silent of their own free accord or which do not hasten through their own violence unto the end of their period but do accompany the Life which they do bitterly molest Wherefore of the more lingring Diseases I saw a Quartane an Atrophia or Consumption for lack of nourishment a Cacochymia or state of bad juice likewise weaknesses and afterwards as well those which have chosen their bed in the outmost habit of the Body such as are the Leprosie Palsey Sciatica Convulsion or Cramp Gout c. as those which are fast tied to any of the Bowels as the Apoplexie Epilepsie Astma affect of the Stone Dropsie Madness c. were not cured not indeed through a defect of desire of curing but through want of a remedy alone but I long laboured in that remedy and I many times retreated until I knew that it should respect the very fountain of Life or sensitive Soul Wherefore first I took the Quartane Ague it self in hand because it was obvious most tiresome or tedious and plainly known and the which while it did despise the usual remedies of Physitians it rendred the hope of the same void First of all I was more assured by the same that wheresoever any material Diseasie product lay hid the application likewise of a convenient remedy was required or else it was to be feared that the effect raised up from that occasional Cause would remain surviving And therefore from the correlative of this proposition I found no remedies of Physitians hitherto however through their fame unstopping resolving cleansing or purging Medicines may be boasted of yet that the same do only come or are brought down at most even unto the entrance of the spleen alone which bewraies it self to be the inn of a Quartane Ague by a sensible testimony Therefore I being from hence certainly instructed have conjectured that that unstopping c. force of a remedy doth soon even in the Stomach perish wax mild is tamed or banished through the intestines if at least-wise it shall not first die But if any quality of remedies shall remain safe from their middle Life something broken and being recieved shall more fully or inwardly pierce as Mace or Terpentine do from the necessity of Magnum Oportet retain their Savour in the Urin but at leastwise the same offers it self so gelded and dismembred that it doth not effect any of those things to which end and for which things sake Medicines are swallowed Eggs indeed and the Fleshes of Beasts do represent the favours of the nourishment
were most miserable if Satan could execute the Evils known by Satan For the Kingdom of the infernal Spirits is not in the Earth For Example 1. A Man is able by his own perturbations to hurt his own Prudence Health and Life 2. Those tempests which are of the mind do not remain the Beings of Reason but falling seminally into a matter they imprint the constant Idea's of their own perturbations which things are proved by a Woman with Child being affrighted at a Mouse who if shee apply her hand to any place she presently seals a hairy Mouse on the same part in her Young Yea if such perturbations are fore-timely made they do oft-times transform the whole Embryo into a Monster 3. But whatsoever is natural and ordinary to a Woman with Child that none doubteth but that it may be natural to a Witch not great with Child Indeed that she can form any kind of Idea What Impressions therefore or what Idea's and sealing Seeds the evil Spirit raiseth up in his he also borrows from thence and imprints the same on filths which he prostitutes to his own that they may infect them And so right calleth those Sorceresses or makers of Poyson But not because they offer Poysons to be drunk only but rather because of not Poysons they do make Poysons but those Poysons are applyed as well by a local motive faculty proper and free to the Devil as also because they are transferred unto the intended object by desire only being the mover and directer As hereafter more at large The Witch therefore hangs up buries drinks up those filths defiled by her through an Ideal Being yea and anoints her own hands or washeth them with those filths and seasons or besmeares them with cursed Poysons that by a co-touching she may transfer those Poysons into the object which she would hurt For truly those seminal Monstrous and poysonous Idea's seeing they are now the Citizens of another and forreign Archeus introduced into the Body of the enchanted and so being without their proper place and subject the Archeus of the enchanted is forthwith defiled and corrupted by them Wherefore seeing the Enemy of Nature cannot of himself compleat the very application for else all the miserable enchanted Mortals should fall under the will of the Devil he stirs up the Idea of a strong desire and hatred in the Witch that those mental and free means being borrowed he may translate his own will by what and the which he intends to affect or corrupt To which end he also first of all prescribes exsecrations to his Imps together with an Idea of desire and most hateful terrour For Man hath a free will of hurting Man by which a Man is able to kill a Man with a knife and so to destroy any innocent Person which the Devil likewise cannot do And therefore as the application of a knife so also of a Poyson is equally forbiden to the Devil at his own pleasure And therefore also is altogether impossible that is without a free-man or bond-slave devoted unto him For neither indeed doth a Man kill another with a knife unless a desire shall happen or have access in the free consent and command of a resolute will from whence it is sufficiently manifest That First of all the Devil hath not the creation of a seminal Idea actually and positively subsisting such as is granted to the divine Image And likewise that neither hath the Devil obtained a voluntary application of such an Idea unless he hath from elsewhere obtained a free faculty not bound and enflamed or provoked by desire because that desire as it is a passion of the Imaginer so also it creates an Idea not indeed a vain one but an executive and motive Idea of the enchantment Therefore indeed that hostile Mocker requires a touching at the Body to be enchanted or at least-wise at something which may primarily be affected and at length of enchanting the Body that the Idea's recieved may act on that thing by a Sympathetical and Natural force such as is that whereby Chalcanthum or Vitriol doth naturally cure an absent wound and afterwards on the Body a Sympathetical commerce whereof such natural effluxes do hold as means Lastly things buried under the threshold or hung up do hurt yea and do unfold their poysonous cruelty on the first entrer only without a co-touching of the Witch at the Body of him that is to be enchanted and without a knowledge hatred or hurtful desire against that which is first to enter But the buisiness is of a more difficult resolution to wit of a more subtile hurt and propagation which in Nature hath called unto it the sight the directions of the Basiliske or Cramp-fish for approbation For even so as the Basiliske doth by a beam of Sight spread his poyson into an object not into a place and not into any other Body whatsoever although it be more near unto him but only into that Body on which he hath first directed and shaken the poynt of his Fye And as the Cramp-fish doth not cast the Poyson of his sight into any one perhaps more nigh unto him but rather and alone into him that draws the ropes aloof of So indeed seminal Idea's being connexed to filths hung up and buried are vigoured or strengthened by the Idea of the enflamed desire as by the will of the Basiliske or Cramp-fish and do exercise it only on the determined object And although the similitude may not every way answer in the sameliness of both terms At least-wise it is sufficient to have demonstrated that not only in man but also that in vile small living Creatures there is naturally an attributive and executive faculty of their intention whereby they begin to hurt by their sight intention desire or hatred alone For that natural endowment extends it self also unto whatsoever things do Attractively or Sympathetically move their Objects being afar of which means being naturally given to Man that they exist in him as yet in a more excellent manner is no absurdity while as we read That all things are put under his feet Wherefore likewise Witches do by a simple touching or stroke transfer their enchantments into the object but after a far more gross manner than that aforesaid and therefore it coucheth in it something like unto a Sympathetical mean And as yet far more strictly while as those enchantments are tyed up unto the venal Blood Snot or Snivel or any other Efflux But moreover also they do of necessity touch or strike the object it self But neither have I brought Sympathetical things hither that I might defame the same as I have demonstrated by those the manner of application unto a mean But rather that I may shew that Witches do use natural manners and meanes otherwise accustomed in the Cramp-fish and Basiliske that I may extinguish all hope of diabolical deceit from Sympathetical things And indeed it is manifest by natural things how falsly and Iyingly the infernal
seeing the work of Butlers Oyl to be vain on me and being willing before some Gentlewomen to mock my credulity anointed one only drop of that Oyl on her right Arm and straightway it being freely moved was beyond hope restored together with its former strength we all admired at the wonder of so sudden an event wherefore she anointed the Ankles of both her Legs with one only drop on both sides being spread about on the circle of the Ankle and presently within less than a quarter of an hour all the Oedema vanished away she also through Gods favour liveth as yet nineteen Years since in health A certain Hand-maid as soon as she heard that thing to have happened in her Mistris required some drops of that Oyl because she had thrice suffered an Erisipelas in her right Leg it being badly cured she shewed a leaden-coulered Leg and swollen from the Knee even unto the Toes in the evening therefore at her going to bed she rubs four drops of that Oyl on the hurt part and in the morning there appeared no footstep of the former Malady so that she who now before could scarce go into the Market in one day the same morning went unto the Temple of the holy God-bearing Virgin in Laken and cheerfully returned and broguht me Water from the spring of Saint Ann being far remote from thence Which thing being heard a certain Gentlewoman a Widow being now afflicted for many Months in both her Arms that she could never lift her hand upwards was by a few drops of that Oyl in one only evening presently restored into full health and so remained Afterwards I asked Butler why so many Women should be presently cured but that I while I most sharply conflicted with Death it self being also environed with Pains of all my Joynts and Organs should not feel any ease But he asked me with what Disease I had laboured And when he understood that Poyson had given a Beginning unto the Disease He said Because the Cause had come from within to without the Oyl ought to be taken into the Body or the little Stone to be touched with the Tongue Because the pain or grief being cherished within was not Local or External I observed also that the Oyl did by degrees uncloath it self of the efficacy of Healing because the little Stone being lightly tinged in it had not pithily changed the Oyl throughout its whole Body but had only blessed it with a delible or obliterable be-sprinkling of an Odour For truly that little Stone did present in the Eyes and Tongue Sea Salt spread abroad or rarefied and it is sufficiently known that Salt is not to be very intimately mixed with Oyl Butler also cured an Abbatess sufficiently known who for eighteen years had had her right Arm swollen with an unwonted depriving of Motion and her fingers stretched out and unmovable only by the touching of her Tongue at the little Stone But very many being witnesses of these Wonders presently suspected some hidden Sorcery and Diabolical compact For the common People hath it already for an antient custom that whatsoever honest thing their ignorance hath determined not to know they do for a privy shift of Ignorance refer that thing unto the juggles of the Evil Spirit But I could not decline so far because the Remedies were supposed to be Natural neither having any thing besides an unwonted quantity For neither Ceremonies Words nor any other suspected thing was required for neither is it lawful according to Mans power of understanding to refer the Glory of God shewn forth in Nature unto the evil Spirit For none of those Women had required aid of Butler as from Necromancy any way suspected yea the things were at first made trial of with smiling and without Faith and Confidence Yet this kind of easiness and speediness of curing shall as yet long remain suspected by many for the wit of the vulgar being unconstant and idle in hard and unwonted matters is alwayes ready for judgements of the same tenour by reason of their facility and therefore also is weak or flaggy for they do more willingly consecrate so great a bounty of restitution unto diabolical deceit than to divine goodness the Framer Lover Saviour Refiesher of humane Nature and Father of the poor And that thing indeed not only in the common People but also in those that are learned who follow and rashly search into the Beginnings of healing being not yet instructed or observing the common and blockish Rule Because they are alwayes wise as Children who have never gone over their Mothers threshold being a fraid at every Fable For indeed they who have not hitherto known the whole circuit of Diseases to be concluded within the Spirit of Life which maketh the assault or if they hereafter reading my Studies by the way shall imprint on themselves this moment or concernment of healing nevertheless because they have been already before accustomed from the very Beginnings of their Studies to the precepts of the Humourists they will easily at length depart from me and leap back unto the accustomed and antient Opinions of the Schooles For look what Liquor Men do once in a new Vessel steep Its Odour whether Sweet or Sour it will long after keep They will again easily betake themselves unto the importunities of Decumbent or falling down Humours But I in a more near search being unwilling to refer the benefits of God unto the Devil have first of all certainly found that all things in Nature do consist of an invisible Seed That they begin I say are supported and ruled by a Being which the great God began from an imaginating Desire or derived Power and which remains afterwards throughout the whole duration of their Essence and being But that afterwards things are made visible or are this something onely by the cloathing and apparelling of Bodies espoused unto it self But I have taught that Diseases do by a stronger reason arise from a more invisible Seed Wherefore that the Diseasifying Idea is only to be Vanquished Abolished and Extinguished because a Disease is a monstrous and equivocal or doubtful generated Being and off-spring of Sin not adhering therefore to the Humane Species but only to individual Persons after an irregular manner Because seeing that after the fall it began almost from a non-being For in more fully looking into the matter first of all very many Maludies do depart by reason of Amulets or Pomanders being hung on the outside of the Body even as is plain to be seen in the Plague Falling-sicknesse and other Diseases In the next place whosoever he be who shall rejoyce to have a Towel which was withdrawn from a pestilent Ulcer or desiled with the sweat of him that hath the Pestilence applyed unto himself nor doth fear in himself that the Plague can thereby naturally be communicated unto himself we have seen health restored as with the anointing oâ— Butlers Oyl For truly a Sympathetical Remedy hath been of late
mishapen And so in the next place Diseases do vary in respect of a six-fold Digestion being hindred inverted suspended extinguished or vitiated Diseases also do vary in respect of the distribution of that which is digested For a proportioned distribution doth exercise the force of distributive Justice due to every part But if they are disproportioned now there is an infirm and necessitated distribution and that as well in respect of the natural functions which are never idle as of a continual transpiration and from thence for the sake of an uncessant necessity But that disproportion is voluntary and as it were an overflowing distribution in respect of a symptomatical expulsion by reason of a conspirable animosity of the disturbing Archeus or at length the distribution is disproportioned as it is necessitated in respect of penury or scantiness whence at length also no seldom dammage invadeth the whole Body To wit while in some part the nourishment degenerateth is ejected and so is wasted Such as is the Consumptionary spittle in Affects or Ulcers of the Lungs a Snivelly Glew in the Stone in the Gonorrhea or running of the Reines c. For seeing the part its nourishment being once defiled and degenerate is thenceforth never nourished but despiseth and thrusts that forth yet by reason of a sense of penury that ceaseth not continually with importunity to crave new nourishment from the dispensing faculty and to obtain it by its importunity that it may satisfie its thirst Therefore new nourishment is many times administred unto it and is withdrawn from its other chamber-fellows because a sufficient nourishment for all parts is wanting From thence therefore is Leanness an Atrophia a Tabes or lingring Consumption and an impoverishment of all necessary nourishment So indeed Fluxes Bloody-Fluxes Aposthems Ulcers and Purgative things do make us lean and exhaust us For the infirm parts are like the Prodigal Son because they do waste and unprofitably cast away being those which have badly spent whatsoever was distributed unto them and the other parts do lament that lavishment Things Retained that are taken into the Body offend onely in quality or quantity or indiscretion or inordinacy For if they are immoderate in quantity if frequent or too rare for numbers are in quantities also one onely error doth sometimes give a beginning unto a Disease whereas in the mean time otherwise Nature makes resistance for some good while But Poysons received Solutive Medicines and likewise altering things which are too much graduated do chiefly hurt in quality Discretion also doth offend in things assumed if they are taken rashly out of their hour and manner As if the Menstrues be provoked in a Woman with young or in a Womb that doth excessively flow For indiscretion doth every where bring forth a frequent inordinacy when as any undue thing is cast into the Body or required the scopes of Causes and betokenings of being unknown Also harmless things which are cast into the Body are vitiated onely by their delay and long continuance of detainment And they become the more hostile by how much they shall be the more familiar or the further promoted for truly by reason of a mark of resemblance sometime conceived they do the sooner ferment and more deeply and powerfully imprint their enmities And as by things Assumed things Retained are sometimes at length made inbred So by things inbreathed Diseases are oft-times made like unto those made by things Retained For some inspired things are Retained and do affect the same parts which things Retained do Otherwise they differ in their internal Root as much as breath doth from drink and as much as food from blood But before I descend unto inbred Retentions it is necessary to represent the unknown Tragedy of the chief or primary Diseases Because inbred Retents do for the most part take their beginning from primary Diseases For indeed I have already before distinguished of all Diseases that they do either affect the Archeus implanted in or inflowing into the parts Although in both cases Diseases do proceed by the forming of Idea's The which I will have to be understood of primary ones To wit out of whose bosom superfluities do arise or degenerate which give an occasion for new Idea's or onsets of Diseases For it is scarce possible that the Archeus being remarkeably smitten by a voluntary Idea of a Man or the Archeus a lot of Disaster should not arise in the inferiour family-administration of the Body from whence the Digestions themselves first of all wandering from their scope do frame the pernitious collections of Superfluities whereby the primary distemperatures of the Archeus are nourished to wit if they shall proceed from the same root That is if the root of a primary Disease shall produce its like to wit the former Idea of exorbitancy persisting or the new off-springs of Diseases are stirred up But at leastwise after either manner the aforesaid Excrements are the Products of primary or the chief Diseases But primary Diseases are either of Idea's Archeizated to wit by the proper substance of the influous Archeus issuing into the composure of the Body the which indeed he by reason of his madness wasts And such kind of Diseases are oft-times appeased by Opiates yea are also utterly rooted out Because they are for the most part the off-springs of a more sluggish turbulency The flame of the chaffe either ceasing from a voluntary motion or being silent at the consuming of the Archeus informed by the vitiated Idea But Idea's arising from the implanted afflictions of the vital Spirits whether they are the governing Spirits of the similar or organical parts they do for the most part disturb the family-administration of Life especially if the Archeus being badly disquieted in some principal bowel shall form the Idea's of his own hurt For then he brings forth most potent afflictions Yea sometimes those remaining safe for term of Life For as they are the Rulers of a greater nobleness and more eminent power So also they draw forth the more efficacious Idea's and do propagate Diseases of a prostrating nature Because the Powers themselves the In-mates of the more noble parts are defiled with the same Images as it were with Seals the which diseasie Products arising from thence the foot-step of the Seal being as it were received into themselves do afterwards linkingly expresse through the ranks of the Digestions For so the primary Diseases of the Bowels do abound neither do they hearken unto Remedies but of a more piercing wedlock yea and do bequeath their inheritances on Nephews The Arcanums of which sort I have reckoned up in the Book of Long Life to wit the which do every one of them represent the Majesty of an universal Medicine Although I will not deny but that there is that Majesty in some the more refined Simples which can heal particular primary Diseases The Galenists do laugh at the promise of a generality but every Bird doth utter his voice according to
aforesaid opening causeth a sucking for fear of a Vacuum which if it be made at an undue moment it now becomes Vain For the Womb of a Virgin doth scarce shew the largness of two Fingers because it is that which wrinckled into it self by the least foldings but the opening of it doth not consist in the will of Man as neither in the tickling or luxurious desire of Pleasure but altogether in the good Pleasure of God from whence also Endowments are dispersed into nature of opening and shutting So that some Simples have obtained this Faculty Neither is it sufficient for the Womb to be opened at the set Moment unless the Guest which comes unto it be acceptable to the Place For if it be defiled with a blemish the hope of generating for the future is void with that Man because the Womb being wroth doth conceive a fury of abhorrency which is scarce appeasable CHAP. LXXXVIII A Preface I Have already demonstrated elsewhere that the Schooles have passed by the knowledge of Diseases and Things the neglect whereof is a Fault Neither is it therefore a Wonder if there be nothing hitherto of unheard of things For it hath been an unwonted and difficult matter to be willing to be wise in departing from the Opinions of the Schooles while they should fall from those things which I substituted in the room of acknowledged Errours There are few also who Phylosophize only for the sake of Charity towards their Neighbour Most of the more preferred ones refuse to learn as if the Greeks and Arabians had known all things and they despaire that more can be known And therefore they have put on sluggishness as their Skin But it is a frequent thing for him who presently after Promotion runs up and down from House to House to be intent upon Gain only and he prostitutes a saleable health for Visits Therefore he is most rare who is admitted unto the privy Chamber Many in the mean time walking before the doores of Chymistry do boast of great Matters being deluded with vain hope But indeed I first unless I am deceived have written the History of Life and Death hoping that thereby God his own Honour will redound unto him from his free gift of the Tree of Life and a useful Fruit unto those whom he reserves unto long Life after me For Paracelsus who before me hath treated of long Life hath indeeed given a Title but hath been altogether ignorant of the Matter In the mean time unless the Lord shall avert it I guess from a just fear that the Life of Mortals will dayly be shortned and at length to pass unto the Grave in its green eare through the Offence of Cutting of a Vein and Purgings Unless I say God do make almost all things new For the attainment of the Tree of Life is most difficult of much Labour and revealed unto few for it behoveth that the innocent in Hands and Heart doth ascend by the Mountain of the Lord Who hath not betaken his Soul to Vanity nor hath prepared Deceit for his Neighbour For he only shall receive this blessing from the Lord Until at length in the extream confusions of times Man shall dare to teach Man those things which otherwise for the conserving of mutual Commerces of Men do remain in secret For most Physitians at this day suppose that they know enough if they being initiated in the Paganish Doctrine of their Ancestors wax rich only and by the Rules of Writers are excused from Death among the common sort Most of them also deride at long Life because they are ignorant But these Men will at sometime be at the full and their Mocks shall fall on their own Authors Because in the Age to come it shall grieve God for so great neglect toward the Neighbour and Poor Vices also succeed one another throughout Ages in a Chain It hath already been sometimes an honour to have drunk down many large Cups elfewhere to have slain many in a single Duel Fraud and Deceit flourisheth at this day under the Title of Quicksightedness and virtue doth lay hid as Rare among Few although it be alwayes nominally esteemed It shall again wax feeble while the number of pernicious Wits shall depart from the delicate Idleness and evil curiosities of Studies unto Arts and Workmanships For a tranquillity of times shall spring up when the root of Worms living on idleness and that which is other Mens being covered with the cloak of Piety shall be driven away At length repentance to come bids us hope for reformation For which happy age I have decreed to write of long Life praysing God that my Pilgrimage is shortly to be devolved unto a period But while I open unheard of things if in any place I shall discover the Errours of Predecessors I have constrainedly done that that those who shall follow me may not dash themselves against rough places and be deprived of the scope of Truth For I my self by Degrees beholding from my Youth the empty Husks wherewith the Beginnings of Nature did incrust themselves I began to be accounted an Apostate from Galen and I exposed my self willingly unto the vile esteem of Physitians supposing it a laudable thing to have my Stupidity to be derided by ignorant Men because throughout my whole Life I have neglected the common Applause For by Haters I am called a Paracelsian and a Forsaker of the Schooles and yet I am esteemed an Adeptist the Obtainer of some Secrets And although under this Title I have been invited by two Emperours to Court yet have I refused Honours and a Courtiers Life who all my life time have despised the Sents of Ambition And now much more I being detained at the Ship of the Mote by the Bank of old Age do I as careless avoid and neglect whatsoever Posterity shall think of me alive or dead because I in dying desire the tranquillity of my Soul Therefore do I every where protest that I have never taken notice of the Errors and Neglects of the Schooles but that I might satisfie my calling and profit credulous Mortals CHAP. LXXXIX Of Time 1. Why the Author Treats first of Time 2. The Proposition of the Treatise 3. The Profession of the Author 4. That Time hath nothing common with any Motion 5. Negations of Time 6. The Error of the Schooles 7. Some Absurdities following from thence 8. What hath deceived the Schooles 9. The Consideration of Mathematical Science differs from the Truth of Nature 10. A third Error 11. A Fourth 12. A Fifth 13. A Sixth 14. Some Absurdities spring from thence 15. A Conclusion drawn from thence doth unfold the true Properties of Time against the will of the Schooles 16. A Seventh Error is proved 17. A false Definition of Time 18. A continuance of Motions is essentially included in the Seeds of Things 19. Time cannot be the internal measure of Motions 20. An Eighth Error 21. Some Absurd Errors following from thence 22. The Praise of
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
hath introduced by a speech altogether fabulous because of Time there is no Part Succession or interchangable Course CHAP. XC Life is Long Art is Short 1. The Life deservedly ought to be shortned 2. The Consideration of Long Life issues from the gift of God 3. Some Factions of the Schollars of Paracelsus about Long Life 4. An Objection for the despairing of Long Life 5. How great the length of Life is according to the Author 6. Why the term of Long Life is so Diverse 7. Long Life is proved 8. The unsufficiency of Galen is noted VVE all almost do complain of the shortness of Life but the space of Life is long enough and the plurality of Dayes great enough if the whole be well imployed For thorowly weigh thou how much sleep leisure or idleness vain imployments Parents and Friends have divided with thee of the space of Life and thou shalt presently discern that ours is a lying complaint concerning the Shortness of Life These things Seneca sometime judged But Christians who hope Death to be an enterance unto Life ought never to lament them of the shortness of their Life For there is a certain number of Elect and Reprobates the which that it might be the sooner fulfilled by reason of the Iniquities of many the Day of Life ought to be cut short as also the number to be speeded for the hastening of the last Day For else although the World should be fruitful in its whole ampleness yet it should not be sufficient for the nourishing of all that are brought forth and to be brought forth by reason of the aforesaid hastening if every one of these should attain unto the term of Long Life Furthermore although the Righteous ought deservedly to rejoyce concerning the shortness of their Life and in a contrary sense the Unrighteous do most of them wish for a long continuance of Life for perhaps they shall be amended in old age yet seeing it is manifest to none whether he be accounted Righteous in Gods sight especially because In his sight shall no man living be justified I have therefore judged that every one is to be seriously imployed for the obtainment of the antient blessing promised unto him that is obedient unto Parents Therefore Long Life hath seemed unto me to be the top of all Phylosophy because it ponders of a pleasant and most profitable Meditation The Death of a Person is first of all most greatly to be lamented which might be a Pillar unto mortals to his country or family but that by the command or permission of God he should dye for some better end For therefore every one is of his own free accord carried into the love desires and wish of Long Life and onely a miserable loss of Health or Fortunes brings on a Desire of Death and wearisomness of Life unto the desperate But a despairing onely of Long Life to be obtained doth affright those who diligently search after it Because that in the Ages preceding Paracelsus the dumb silence of the Schooles teacheth that they have meditated nothing concerning Long Life Because Death crept in through the subtilty of Satan therefore I conjecture also that Long Life hath not undeservedly even hitherto been suppressed through the deceit of the same seeing he is the sworn enemy of our kind Which scope of Long Life notwithstanding the Almighty hath of late vouchsafed to instill into the Mind of man that after an army of new Diseases mustred against us we may seriously consider of these things as those things which are glorious to his Name and necessary for us Although the gift of the Tree of Life doth remain in the hand of the Lord as long as he hath decreed to remain be the dispenser thereof The late Adeptists despising the wedlocks of the first Qualities the collections of Humours their Prerogatives and Decayings or Cessations have by little and little aspired unto a Unitone of Healing under which they at first supposing that they had found the entrance of Remedies gloried that they were made partakers of their desire whom those succeeded who could find that the subtilties of things or purities of Medicines were not as yet sufficient for so great a Spire to wit that they could enter unto the length of Life because the Offices of our growth being finished they could no longer pierce unto and comix themselves with the first constitutives of us The natural endowment I say which things have obtained in growing if they do not put it off within at their first entrance at least-wise they do not carry it far inwards towards the roots of the homogeneal parts but they are as yet far absent from detaining the vital powers from their flowing unto Death For therefore the more learned from Paracelsus have afterwards declined into divers factions of Opinions and into a despaire of Long Life Others also being allured with greater courage and hope more by the Promises of Paracelsus than as being supported by Experience the Witness of things have promised many things whereunto the events have not afterwards answered because they together with Paracelsus have not known the root of Long Life The more sloathful also have despaired in matters of difficulty in saying The bound of our Life is set the which none shall over-pass They therefore thinking it to be vain whatsoever those who were somewhat too rash have promised concerning Long Life But they do not rightly well weigh that he who hath appointed the bound of Life hath together also by the same endeavour appointed all means requisite unto that term of Life Otherwise the Tree of Life had been in vain in Paradise and in vain had the Creator created Medicine out of the Earth from the Beginning unless the natural terms or bounds of things might be prolonged by Healing or Medicine For if I use not Remedies my bound is set which I shall not pass over according to that saying We is me that my Pilgrimage is prolonged If Adam doth not eat of the Tree of Life he had a bound of Life appointed him But if he had eaten verily neither had he been Dead There is therefore a hope for Long Life but the knowledge of the Mean onely hath been wanting For neither do I speak of Long Life issuing out of the Scaiolae or four spiritual powers of the Mind such fables I leave to Paracelsus Nor in the next place am I he who extend the Years of Long Life unto the days of Mathusalem But I greatly esteem of the Age of Nestor or of Johannes de Temporibus or John of the Times But Paracelsus calls the Life of three hundred Years by a despised name a short natural and curtailed one yea if it be not prolonged unto the Year of Fire he esteems it unworthy and promiseth that by the virtue of his Arcanums the Life of Nestor should follow as it were with no difficulty But with me a Long Life hath the term of one Hundred and Twenty Years but the
same day where in they should eat of the Fruit of the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil they should die the Death because by the approach of the sensitive Soul there was made another and a new Generation by reason whereof the Mind being astonished withdrew it self from the Sterne of Life In this thing indeed did the necessity of Death and Immortality stand For Man had wanted a mortal Soul as long as he had wished to be immortal not only because one only immortal Mind was sufficient for the governing of the Body neither was it convenient that the Body should serve two Masters at once But moreover because there was no need of a Seed which might contain in it a Disposition unto a mortal Soul Therefore the whole seminal Disposition to propagate Seed was in our first Parent Presentâ— after the Apple was eaten and before the sensitive Soul was born as well in himself and his Posterity From thence indeed it is manifest that the Mind although it hath withdrawn its hand from the Stern of the Body Nevertheless that it is no less guilty in every production of a fructifying Seed than it was in Times past after the eating of the Apple Indeed that thing the words of the Text contain In Sins my Mother hath conceived me But after what manner under the Mean of the disswaded Apple the most chast innocency was defined being free from the Concupiscence of the Flesh and from the contagion of a brutal Impurity I will profesly demonstrate afterward But let it be sufficient to have now said by the way that a vital Seed hath arisen and was conceived through the lust of the Concupiscence of the Flesh for the begging of a sensitive Soul after a brutal manner on which Seed the Mind imprinteth its seal And therefore neither with the similitude or determination of a specifical brutality Without which Seal every Seed is barren otherwise ending into a lump of Flesh or a Monster Therefore from the Concupiscence of the Flesh as the Seed so also the Mortal Soul and the Life thereof and by consequence the flesh of Sin have drawn their original and by consequence also Death But indeed Athiests and Libertines do even at this day take the Text of the disswaded Apple together with that Original for an Allegory The which the Church hath long since banished for an Heresie and hath long since condemned it Therefore the History of the Deed which Genesis describeth is true But why and after what manner that eating of the Apple hath naturally unavoidably unremissibly and irrevocably caused Death to be equally continued on all Posterity so as that the one onely transgression of the Admonition being among the most hainous of Sins hath committed an original Crime and afterwards should enclose in it the Reason of a second Cause by propagating from an unexcusable necessity of Mortality or after what manner the withdrawing of Life and Cause of Death are necessitated in the eating of one Apple I desired not to have narrowly searched into the reason of the good pleasure of God and the motion of his Decree from a former Cause or from a consequent Effect seeing it abundantly sufficeth me that I know and believe it was so appointed of God but that truly I had hoped it might be for his Glory the Splendor of Chastity and Instruction of Libertines to have more fully sifted this Parâ—â—â— and therefore also to have applied it unto my Treatise of Long Life For now is the hour come wherein that Evil shall from the North be spread over all the Inhabitants of the Earth CHAP. CXII A Position 1. The substance of the Position 2. A summary Objection compacted of the Law Sin and the Curse 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. are Arguments against the Objection 8. A new Objection 9. The Objection is solved 10. The quality of the Sin in our first Parents 11. Why the Serpent assaulted the Woman 12. The Man is not cursed 13. The Woman is not cursed 14. The Text which is thought to contain a curse confirms the Position 15. The likenesse of Conception and bringing forth after the Fall and not before the Fall doth strengthen the Position 16. The Text proves the Position 17. An eight Argument against the Curse 18. A ninth 19. A tenth 20. An eleventh 21. A twelfth 22. A thirteenth 23. A fourteenth 24. It is shewn that Sin hath not caused Death much less if there had been any Law 25. What kind of knowledge was included in the Apple 26. Two faults in arguing of not the Cause as of the Cause 27. From what Causes the Corruption of Nature hath arose 28. From whence is the continuation of the original of Sin 29. Some Errours about the abuse of those faults in arguing 30. The Corruption of Nature from what immediate Cause it hath proceeded from what occasional Cause and from what mediate Cause 31. A fifteenth Argument against the Curse 32. A sixteenth 33. A seventeenth 34. An eighteenth 35. A nineteenth 36. A twentieth 37. A twenty first 38. A twenty second 39. A twenty third 40. A twenty fourth 41. After what sort Death entred the Apple 42. A conjecture from things going before 43. The conjecture is proved 44. Brawlings about Goats-wool 45. A twenty fifth Argument 46. It is concluded from the Truth of the Text. 47. Death doth not exspect an hec-ciety or this very momentnesse as neither doth Sin 48. The intention of the Creator placed in the Text is proved because he hath no where admitted of incest between him that goes before and him that follows after in generation 49. The place of Mans corrupted Nature is narrowly searched into by eight Arguments 50. A ninth is also added 51. The chastity of the Text is celebrated 52. The excellency of those that are regenerate beyond the happiness of Adam THe Almighty out of his vast and voluntary goodness of Love hath loved and raised up Man peculiar for this purpose that he might intimately and as nearly as might be express his own Image Wherefore he adorned the same Image of himself with so great a Grace of his own divine Majesty and so prevented it with the bountiful beholding of his Love that of his own good Pleasure he created Eve and ordained that she should be the future Mother of all Humanity and Adam after the Fall called the name of his Wife Hevah because she should be the Mother of all living who was to conceive her off-springs not indeed from carnal Copulation and after the manner of Bruits nor from the concupiscence of the Flesh or by the will of Man but from God or from the overshadowing of the holy Spirit alone after the manner whereby the Humanity was conceived and born in which and by which all that are to be saved ought to be regenerated That is the Virginity of the Mother remaining entire and her Womb being shut she had brought forth without Pain Eva was constituted above the Man This indeed is
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
proper unto him from a Curse but from his being made creeping and that thing was sufficiently manifest to Adam For herein the Curse seized not so much on the Serpent as on the evil Spirit because the lying Impostor had hid himself in the most vile of creeping things on whose head therefore and not on the head of any creeping thing the Woman trod upon But because all Bruits which do generate by a long continued copulation were in times past reckoned impure and also forbidden from Man's use in Kitchins among which creeping Animals are not in the last place c. It containeth and likewise confirmeth the mystery of our Position To wit That the impurity of our Nature draws its rise from the Concupiscence of the Flesh And therefore the copulation in Beasts seemeth to be taken notice of in Beasts by God which was distinct and defiled with impurity In the next place also in the Law a Menstruous Woman and the person touching her were accounted to bring an impurity on every thing The which otherwise being now turned into a second and natural Cause ought to be plainly guiltless unlesse the Menstrues should by a Natural course derive it self from the same Causes from whence Death happened unto us And therefore also for this Cause it being plainly impure in the Law was reckoned a horrid thing with God But for that Woman alone doth suffer Menstrues before Bruits surely it doth not attest any Prerogative of our kind but rather every way a defect to wit that it is reckoned for a punishment of frustrated Chastity and referred into second Causes plainly from a notable Mystery of our Position neither doth it hinder these things that chast Virgins obey the Menstrues and that she is Monstrous who an opportunity being given is not Menstruous because Adamical Generation its self is constrained to carry no less the importunities of its own Nature than Death it self Yea seeing Chastity doth not excuse a Virgin from the Menstrues it is for a token that the Menstrues is not from a Curse nor from the punishment of Sin but altogether from Natural Causes no otherwise than as Death it self began from second Causes inserted in the disswaded Apple although hitherto unknown nor thorowly weighed The Menstrues therefore onely in Woman alone but not in Bruits doth accuse that the Transgression of the despised fatherly Admonition happened in the very privy parts therefore branded as it were with an unclean bloody Seal for a perpetual sign The which surely should not have place if a Sexual Copulation for the Propagation of man had not inverted the intention of the Creator rather than in Bruit-Beasts In this place a Paradox and impertinent consideration doth occur being interlaced as it were by a Parenthesis that Adam seeing he was created in the possession of Immortality God intended not that Man should be an Animal or Sensitive creature nor should be born conceive or live as an Animal for truly he was created into a living Soul and that he might be the immediate Image of God Therefore he as far differed from the Nature of an Animal as an Immortal being from a Mortal and as a God-like Creature from a Bruit The which is indeed more than in the whole Predicament And it is exceedingly to be admired and deservedly unworthy to be endured that the Schools of Christ do believe and confess these things and yet that even until now they draw the Essence of a Man Essentially from an Animal Nature because although Man afterwards procured Death unto himself and therefore may seem to be made nearer unto the Nature of Animal Creatures yet it stood not in his Power to be able to pervert the Species of the Divine Image Even as neither was the Evil Spirit of a Spirit made an Animal although he became nearer unto an Animal by hatred and brutal vices Therefore Man remained in his own Species wherein he was created For as oft as man is called an Animal or Sensitive living Creature and is in earnest thought to be such so many times the Text is falsified which saith But also the Serpent was more crafty than all the living Creatures of the Earth which the Lord God had made Because he speaks of the Natural craftiness of that Creeping Creature Again if the Position be true Man was not directed into the Propagation of Seed or Flesh neither therefore did he Aspire into a Sensitive Soul And therefore the Sensitive Soul of Adamical Generation is not of a brutal Species because it was raised up by a Seed which wanted the Original Ordination and Limitation of any Species And so that as the Sensitive Soul in Man arose besides the intent of the Creator and Nature So it is of no brutal Species neither can it subsist unless it be continually tyed to the Mind from whence it is supported in its Life Wherefore while Man is of no Brutal Species he cannot be an Animal in respect of his Mind and much less in respect of his Soul which is of no Species For a woman great with Child while by reason of sudden fear she changeth the Humane Young into a certain Bruit the mind indeed doth not wander into a brutal Soul but the mind departs and a Sensitive Soul begged of the Creator is substituted in its stead And seeing that it is promoted onely by the Idea of the Woman great with Child without an Original appointment therefore such kind of generated Creatures do most speedily die And the off-springs of Adam had likewise presently perished unless God had granted Matrimony unto him Wherefore in the Birth of Cain she truly said I possesse a Man from the Lord. Far be it therefore to have placed Man among Sensitive living Creatures Truly we must indulge Pagans who know not that thing but not equally Christians who too much adore Paganish Doctrine At least wise the Schools confesse that there is an ordinary Progress of Nature from not a sensible Creature into a sensible Animal but that the Life and Sense of Men is immediately iufsed by the hand of the Almighty They confesse in the next place that the Conditions of being living and feeling or perceiving in Man differ in their whole Condition from an Animal Nature because it follows the Faculty of the rational Form or Immortal mind But they shamefully believe that a Man aswel of the first Constitution as being now Divinely Regenerated by the Sacraments is an Essential Animal Fie let it shame man not to know that the Evil Spirit and whole Nature also are not able by any means or any way to change the Essence given unto him from the foreknowledge of the Creator but that he should continually remain such as he was created although in the mean time he hath cloathed himself with strange properties as Natural unto him from the vice of his own will For as it wants not an absurdity to reckonman glorified among Animals because he is not without a sense or feeling So
it is certain That the Heaven hath received no other Law since Transgression because the Earth alone hath undertaken all the Curse on it self For from hence I have sufficiently demonstrated elsewhere That the Heaven is free from our sins neither that it playes the part of a revenger of iniquities But if some places are subject unto Death and certain Diseases that is not to be attributed unto the circulation or whirling of the Heavens blind influxes of the Stars But it is altogether proper unto the dispositions of the Earth For although Eastern Provinces may seem the more fruitful or happy that is not to be attributed to the Heaven Seeing that in a circle every part subjected under the same circle is alike Oriental or Easterly Otherwise a Circle should not want a Beginning End and Extremity of parts Therefore there is an inbred goodness in the soil and the fertility of the ground is holpen by the continual cherishment of the Stars and a perpetual familiarity of visitation Truly under the circle of the Sun Climates have an ordinary and equal heat and so that as many fruits as by ripening do ascend unto a degree of perfection by reason of heat are there more happy the which otherwise through want of heat are not alike perfect But the heat of the Sun hath respect unto Fruits but not to Long Life which is of no less length of continuance in Cold Mountanous and Northern places than else where under the Hot or Torrid Zone Surely the favours of the Soyl do not depend on the Stars as neither the prolongations of Life The Stars are daily wheeled about and do daily almost equally affect the Climates of the Earth which are under them but they do every Year receive their Winter and Summer according to the access and recess of the Sun In the mean time the Tracts of the more adjoyning Lands do far vary from each other They are therefore the particular gifts of the Soyl but not of the Heaven which therefore keep a stable goodness as it were Provincial to the same Tracts of Land In the holy Scriptures indeed The Land of Promise floweth with Milk and Honey being fruitful in Wine Corn Pulse and rich fruits of the Tree And likewise scarce requiring dunging and the toyles of Labour And then I see other Coasts of the World to owe and pay the Tribute of the Land of Promise For from both the Poles continual Rains do steep the Earth that the promised Soyl may without the trouble of Rains take unto it self its due Water and that Aegypt may repay the favours of the Soyl of Heaven with a double usury of fruits For Seas and Rivers strivingly hasten unto those places with a speedy course Yea and from beyond the Tropick of Capricorne Nilus brings down his melted Snows through Aegypt unto the Mediterranean Sea as it were a Yearly Tribute of Nature that may water the more fruitful Countries if not with Rain at leastwise with Dew and the blackish cloudy Waters of Nile and that the Vapours being lifted up from the Sea throughout the Soyl it may most plentifully repay a plentiful Dew round about And so that the whole World seemeth readily to serve those more fruitful Regions Under the Aequinoctial Line it Rains many times every Day because the Tributary Waters do not reach thither But they are supped up in the Countries which God in times past appointed unto his own People but now unto Barbarians by reason of Transgressions fore-monished of by the Prophets He therefore blessed the Land of Promise for the People of Israel from the beginning but for Reasons foreknown to himself from Eternity and the which he fixed stable into Nature Yea he not onely appointed the Tribute of the whole World unto these Lands but unto most of them he added Reasons Idea's Seeds and Gifts whereof the more intemperate Climate are destitute Nor all that for any other ends than because it so well pleased him for his hidden Judgements But these things do not make for the consideration of long Life for in Is-land Men are found to be of a Longer Continuance of Life than in Palestina Phaenicia Aegypt c. Oftentimes also in Mountainous and rough Hills Older Men are met withal than in a pleasant Champion To wit that we may know that the Prince of Life hath granted a long continuance of Life unto so miserable places and to a singular tract of Land which he hath denied unto whatsoever the most pleasant and wealthy Countries Nature therefore is subject unto the Soyl even for a stability of Life For we measure a Diseasie and short Life from Endemicks Doth happily an Endemical Being breath out of the Lands wherein Life is prolonged No surely And it is sufficient that a place doth want malignity that a continuance of Life may be attained so far as is from the nature of the Place Lastly Fountains are either without Savour or Mineral they not being those which may have positively a long continuance of Life But as being those which unsensibly mow down the daily Superfluities or growths of oily Dregs and in this respect Life is not untimely taken away by and by Neither also doth much and a sweet temperature of Air prevail hereunto For truly in the rough Hills of the Forrest of Arden of Scotland and Spain in our Champion a longer Life doth for the most part occur than in Aquitane For Hieres is a Valley nigh Apulia environed with Mountaines being fruitful in the sweetest Fruits where the most sweet Station of the Spring is almost continued Yet having Inhabitants of a shorter Life being deformed with a pale Countenance so that it hath crept into a Proverb of those that were Sick and Recovering Thou seemest to us to be a Stranger come from Hieres For the pleasantnesse of Fruits takes up the suspition of a Mineral Endemick Also not onely Mountainous Colds do extend the Life but Old Age is frequent among the Aethiopians Let therefore those places be fit for Long Life which being not polluted by any Endemicks have moreover not unwholsome Waters nor the which are infamous for a stormy Wind. CHAP. CIV The Radical Moisture THe Schooles with one Voice promote the Radical Moysture of Life For they declame That from it and in it we live and that that onely being consumed we die For they who together with Aristotle attribute all things to heat as to an active Principle do not say That the Radical moisture is the Beginning as neither the Inn of Life unless they derive the Primateship on Heat in the moisture But the moisture hath more pleased others From whence they being sore afraid through the sloath of a diligent search least they should erre they will have our Life to depend on and be prolonged as well by moisture as by heat without distinction And so they denominate it not indeed heat but composedly Radical heat or the first-born moisture That indeed the first-born or original
moisture in us and the radical heat may be for synonymals But moreover all do with one consent presage that our Vital heat would never fail us if there might always be enough and to spare of that moisture and fodder Which moisture because they believe to be hereafter wasted by a necessary action of heat they finish the hope and Treatise of Long Life by a denial But alas with what pernicious blindness hath the Schoole of Medicine through thinking stumbled in all things It had also seen the Flame of a Lamp to be nourished with Oyl and that through defect hereof that also failed but that it was continued by the pouring on of Oyl Wherefore a plausible Invention smiled on them and therefore they drew that Invention into the History of Life Especially because they by sense took notice that heat was no less in the four-footed Beast and Bird than in a Man So greatly with the Patronage of Aristotle have they confounded heat under the Etymology of Life And then they presently drew out of heat the token of true and presential Fire Yet the Question remained under Controversie The Aristotelicks indeed attribute this Fire unto the Element of the Stars and contratrarily distinguish the sublunary Element of Fire in its species But others attribute it unto the Element of sublunary Fire And have about this and the other their own Arguments of Brawlings In the mean time the Schoole hath been wholly dumb about mute and cold Fishes and although it confessed that Fishes do live are moved and nourished no more unprosperously than four-footed Beasts yea although it knew that they are enriched with a far more fruitful race of Off-springs in the next place that they live a more healthy Life and notwithstanding that Fires and heats are wanting under the Sea especially the frozen Sea wherein in the mean time there was the greatest and most populous Common-wealth neverthelesse it would not forsake the embers of the vital spark drawn in from its tender years although it took notice that it was deluded through a Patronage of truth Wherefore the miserable Schooles flee unto Decrees or Authorities Therefore they would have Man Birds and also four-footed Beasts to be indeed in a Trine Number and that the Fish might be involved as a Fourth and consocial thereunto and be constrained under their large Doctrine That they might determine of an equal right concerning the Fish as absent in the participation of Radical heat But because the Soul comes as a Servant unto established pleasures and doth also administer Reason even for a non-Being at pleasure they have devised a privy shift and determine to wit That hot living Creatures are actually hot with a palpable Fire but that Fishes are onely potentially hot As if therefore Fishes should onely potentially live if the Effect doth not badly square with its granted Causes The Schooles I say do feign Heat to be the total Cause of an actual Life to wit they substitute an equivocal or doubtful Quality like unto heat but an irregular unnamed one because an unknown feigned and dissembled one to be received under the name of potential Heat For the Schools by imagining have abhorred to enter into the Depth of the Sea wherefore the Speculation of Fishes being left as barren because it was resisted by a plausible Devise they have well pleased themselves as it were wandring in a Dream in hot Animals with the Application of Lamps and Life Shall the radical Moisture thus be no longer with Aristotle Spermatick Froathy and Muscilaginous but now to let it be Oylie Fat and Combustible Shall thus therefore a Fat Belly which through much Grease shall afford Fewel for the radical Moisture be only of necessity Long-lived A Capuchin in our Country was Cold for almost an whole year at least-wise in both his Legs and Arms because he shall loose less of his Moisture he shall of necessity retain his Oyl the longer in his Lamp But at least-wise here a certain wan Stupidity of the Schools elsewhere by me demonstrated is adjoyned To wit that the Action of Heat especially if it shall not be kindled by a lively Flame doth indeed dry up all Moistures into a Sandy-stone and Coal but never consumeth them without the remainder of a residence even as is easie to be seen in us so that it is even a wonder that they have not hitherto observed that Consuming is not made in us by Heat alone But at least-wise there should be need of a torch in the Heart which thing also the Schools have not yet considered least otherwise the feigned and vapo rous fatness of the Moisture because it is that which in the Heart should be wholly Spiritual like Aqua Vitae should in a small moment and great breviary burn up all at once and cease to be For else without a torch neglected by the Schools the feigned History of Life shall badly square unto Fires built from the first-born Liquor which are on every side kindled at once However they shall say at least from one Absurdity drawn out of the Latex or Liquor of Life there are many Anguishes But let us freely feign that this idle Devise of the Schools might stand To wit that the Life is a certain Fire wasting the radical Moisture because it is Fat and doth thereby live and that Lean Persons alone are of a shorter Life But from whence is that Moisture in us Is it not from the Nourishment materially and from the vital Archeus efficiently Certainly our Lamp shall never be extinguished if the Power of burning or blazing Heat as they will have it be for the making of Oyl out of the Bread and Drink and if nothing of a Residence remaineth from the fatness in the Torch which may stop up and stifle that Torch To wit even as nothing at length remains from the Blood in Persons of ripe Years which may have it self in manner of a superfluous Coal And indeed in a Feast hath it not its abundance of Nourishments and heat the Workman of that fat Moisture resulting within from thence Seeing that Light proceeds from Light and an uncombustible Fire from Fire with no difficulty Why therefore doth the Man die For I find from the Positions of the Schools a perpetual Motion in the Theory but not in the Practick Therefore Fraud and Deceit do subsist in their Positions or at least-wise a shameful Rashness But they will say that after growth nothing is any longer applyed from the radical Moisture unto the solid Parts Therefore it must needs be that the true radical Moisture seeing it doth now no longer co-here to the Root therefore also the sound Parts do by degrees wax dry and so that the Fodder of the Heat failing the same Heat dyeth But first of all from hence is drawn that the Death of Old Age doth not happen but by reason of the dryness of the similar Parts When as a Stag of one Year old is dryer than a Man of
eighty Year old and yet he easily extends his Life unto one or two Ages In the next if the Moisture ceaseth to be radical because it reacheth not the end or Application unto the Root That indeed is to the moisture by accident and therefore it doth not change the Essence thereof For neither doth the Heat of the Fire cease to be propagated in the Neighboriag Wood although the burning Wood shall not receive a fewel of fatness from without Neither in the next place doth the aforesaid excuse subsist For truly for every Event the solid Parts shall have themselves in manner of a Lamp or Torch which is sufficiently able to burn in what part Oyl is supplyed unto it and so that Oyl being supplied from without the Fire should be able to live for ever For they teach that the Heat of the solid Parts is from the Element of Fire the which they think to be for the mixture of Bodies and to be enflamed in the fatness of the radical moisture or humour First of all that Moisture is spermatick and muscilaginous but not Oylie And then if the Fire passeth out of the solid Parts unto the Moisture which it enflameth it shall be sufficient for the Moisture to be consumed and alwayes to be applyed from without nor to be incorporated in the Root throughout the whole Because if it pass out of the solid Parts unto the unsolid Parts applyed unto it during the whole life time it shall alwayes be able to pass thorow the un-solid Parts applyed unto it neither doth that excuse availe that it ceaseth to be radical while it is no longer United unto the innermost Root Because then prefently after growth the vital Vigour should be extinguished because the Moisture doth not then any longer receive a Union with the solid or sound Parts But why do I stay any longer in refuting of Absurdities It hath been so sufficiently and over-shewn that the Fire is not an Element that the mixture of the same for the Subsistence of all Bodies whatsoever is false because those of mixt Bodies are meer and antient Fables The Fire therefore if there were any in us should be primarily in the vital Spirit for the which enough Moisture doth alwayes supply it self out of the venal Blood Wherefore indeed I grieve that they have hitherto so sloathfully stumbled in the Subject of Life and Doctrine of Integrity or Health For I after the time of my Youth conjectured that there was an Errour altogether shamefully committed and omitted in the Consideration of Defects and Diseases Because none truly knows that which is crooked who hath not first known that which is right This therefore is the feigned Doctrine of the Schools concerning Life which they endeavour to establish by the supposed Authority of a little Book feigned on Hippocrates concerning humane Nature Which saith That we on the first day of our Birth are most hot and likewise at length on the last day most Cold As if there should be a different Condition of our Heat from that of any other things For whatsoever things do arise from elsewhere do presently after assume an increase and that without ceasing and at length decline and fail Wherefore if according to the Mind of the Old-man Heat should most greatly abound on the first day yet neither is the Life tied up to Heat For truly I have demonstrated that Heat is rather an Effect of Life in hot living Creatures than the Life it self or the Cause of Lise and therefore Fishes can most safely want Heat and now for that very Cause it commits an Errour in arguing of not the Cause as for the Cause Truly I am alwayes wont to behold search into believe and measure Heat as Heat and as a Quality neither also to implore any other Witnesses or Judges besides the Sense of Touching and an Instrument of Glasse which I have afore taught for the searching out of Degrees and Moments of Heat in the encompassing Air In which Sense I have found a Man of thirty Years of Age to be hotter than any Child however in the mean time they may doat about the diverse particular Kinds of Heat For let them dispute of Qualities known by Sense as of Fables and under potential Considerations but I have accustomed my self to divide open look into and esteem of things even as they are in themselves But moreover Paracelsus being ignorant of the radical Moisture of the Schools doth now and then confound that with the Mummy of our Body but elsewhere he reputes it to be as it were the inward shadow of our Body from whence he would have shadowie Flames to shine round about us To wit that the radical Moisture is the Image of the Man extended throughout the whole Man and deferring or prolonging his Life In another place also he judgeth the radical Moisture to be the Mercury or one of his three Beginnings not divideable in living Persons which is equally participated of throughout the whole For the Life being extinguished by the Plague for Death takes away the Mummial Goodness the Mummy indeed hath very cunningly failed or forsaken the same Moisture in the Body At length although the Schools confess that younger People are oft-times extinguished the radical Moisture being not yet consumed as neither through Penury of Heat and in this respect they are not very careful for their own Position whereby they may equally measure the Life by Heat and radical Moisture yet they remain in the Bounds of their Ancestours by reason of a custom of Assenting a sloath of diligent Searching and despair of Learning For indeed they have been ignorant of lightsome Lights of Life but that they are indifferent by reason of the distinction of the two greater Lights For that they may be hot like as also cold That is they have not Learned that Forms and Lives are Synonymals But I have alwayes greatly pitied the confused Tradition of this Moisture which is of so great Moment although in the Moisture of the Root they confess both the Hinges of Medicine to be rouled I bestowed much Iabout in my younger Years by the Resolutions of Bodies that I might find some certain Messenger of the radical Moisture And at length through the Favour of God I was at last more assured that not any of those things were in Nature which with a lofty Brow are promised by the Schooles in this respect I acknowledge indeed that there is a seminal Original Moisture which is the constitutive Moisture of us but altogether of the same Species Property and Identity with that whereby we grow and are afterwards uncessantly nourished And so that the Bones Bowels Nerves Tendons of Children do consist of an un-different and do increase from a like Moisture whereby young Folks their Increase being now finished are nourished According to the Maxime of the Schools We are nourished by the same thing whereof we consist But we consist of Original or first-born Moisture therefore we
Quick-sighted and provident Nature comes to meet or prevent this same Dryness with a more large Nourishment of Marrow and She would have it to be Fat and less discussable or dispersable by Heates that it may vindicate the Old Age of the Bones from Dryness by its Unctuous Moisture For therefore there is a greater plenty or Marrow in four-footed Beasts that are Aged than in the little Young Ones because there is a greater necessity thereof I therefore do no longer highly esteem of the irrepairable radical Moisture for the Foundation of Life as neither being astonished at Dryness in as much as it is such neither also am I wont to measure out the Life according to the Pleasure of the first Qualities Because I knew that the Life did not wax dry as neither was it to be drawn from the Bosom of the Elements after that I beheld the interchangeable Courses of a long and short Life to be in the Center of Life CHAP. CV The Vital Air. THe Schools have not performed enough in teaching that Nourishments are transchanged first into Chyle and then from hence into the Digested Juice of Venal Blood and so that in the Liver a natural Spirit is made which by a repeated Digestion in the Heart is formed into vital Spirit and at length that in the Brain it is made animal So as that the natural Spirit should be fit for using the Parts but the Vital for quickning and conserving the same as also lastly that the Animal Spirit should be appointed for the Functions of Sense Motion and of the Mind But moreover in my Judgment it had behoved them more largely to discover the Thingliness and History of the Deed in so long a race of Studies and Repetition of Writers Indeed they know that there is a certain Spirit that Maker of the Assault according to Hippocrates which holds the Stern of Life in its Hand It was to be sought for and pronounced in what Organs or Instruments that Spirit should be made or what it should act and also they ought to have explained every Disposition the Substance thereof and the Properties of its Substance and also the manner of its making I therefore will declare what I may meet with in this respect That therefore we may be led into the Knowledge of the Vital Spirit the Blas of Man should first of all be repeated in this place but least I be tedious I will here omit it and refer the Reader elsewhere unto the Volume of the rise of Medicine I have elsewhere also delivered a Mean or Manner whereby through instilled Ferments an Aqua Vitae may be made of every Plant and Fruit whatsoever Which manner the vulgar Sort hath known and doth exercise while it frameth an Aqua Vitae or Liquor of Life out of Grains Fruits Ale or Beer Hydromel or honied Water no less than out of Juice of the Vine But an Aqua Vitae is a volatile Liquor Oylie indeed as it is wholly enflamed and likewise wholly Salt for as much as being an Air it biteth yea and being but a little while detained in the Mouth it burns and embladders the upper skin of the Gums I in this place taking notice by the way that two Beginnings of Chymistry are one only and an undivideable Simple thing I have shewn also elsewhere after what manner one Pound of Aqua Vitae being combibed in the dryed Salt of Tartar scarce half an Ounce of Salt can be made but that the whole Body may be made an Elementary Water as it was before And so that from hence it is easie to be seen that Water is by Nature a more formerly and simple Body that the Chymical Beginnings themselves While as the Water which at first was not in act in the most expurging or refined Aqua Vitae is nevertheless by its reducement thereby made its first Element of Water The which handicraft Operation moreover by transferring unto the Speculation of Life I find that the Wine in its winy Parts containeth the Aqua Vitae the Water of Life and therefore that is easily quickly and without the digested Maturities of the Liver and Gaul snatched through the Arteries of the Stomack unto the Heart or to be called unto it immediately for the supply and defect of the vital Spirit and in this respect to delude the Opinion of the Schools which presupposeth that the Spirit of the Liver ought to precede For if there be more of the Spirit of Wine in the Stomack than is meet Drunkenness follows to wit as the Spirit of Wine is more largely attracted than can in a fit Interval be changed into Vital Spirit Which thing surely proveth first of all a changing of and also the Operations of a Digestion and Ferment In the next place that also is remarkable To wit that there is a certain more mild Spirit in the Wine a Partaker of another and more noble Quality than that Spirit which is immediately drawn out by Distillation and is called refined or expurged Aqua Vitae The which is easily beheld by the Sight in the simple Oyl of Olives because Oyl being Distilled without the Additaments of Bricks or Tiles and the which therefore is called Oleum Philosophorum differs much from its Oyliness which is extracted the simple Oyl being first reduced into unlike Parts only by the Digestion and Application of the circulated Salt of Paracelsus For truly the circulated Salt is separated the same in weight and antient Qualities from the Oyl after that the Oyl of Olives is disposed into its diverse kinds of Parts For then by this means a sweet Oyl is separated from the Oyl of Olives even as also a most sweet Spirit of Wine from the Wine and that far distinct from the tartness of Aqua Vitae But in us although the meat together with the Drink do after some sort putrifie for that Purefaction is a manner and mean of transchanging a thing into a thing yet in our Digestions the Spirit of Aqua Vitae is not by such a Putrefaction and action of the Ferment of the Spleen drawn out of Potherbs Pulses Bread-Corns or Apples For truly it is not the Intention of our Nature to procreate an Aqua Vitae for it self but there is a far different Ferment in us whereby things are resolved into Chyle And a far different one whereby things do putrifie and are separated into an Aqua Vitae For this Ferment is introduced by many Mediums but that is not attained but by a specifical fermental Property of any Species For while Herbs through a long steeping in Water are made to putrifie by their Ferment or Vicar for the extracting of an Aqua Vitae the stalke branches and entire Leaves remaine in their Figure and Hardness the which notwithstanding being chewed swallowed and well concocted within do in a few hours depart into Chyle and loose the first Nature of Herbs Wherefore I have also elsewhere pressed to wit that there are as many specifical digestive
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
the Tree of Life doth not heal these Diseases being now admitted For if Hippocrates hath dictated that Natures themselves are the Physitianesses of Diseases that is to be pardoned in his Age and beginning Art After another manner Arcanums which had not then as yet been made known and do at this day lay in a manner hid do exceed the Powers of Nature even as Art doth very often overcome Nature And that is not only true in Secrets which heal Diseases but also in the Tree of Life which restores defective Nature Therefore the Ordination of that tree is the Preservation of Life with a certain kind of renewing of Youth but with the Remedy of the Tree the Leprosie Stone c. continues Therefore there is plainly one Consideration of the Secrets of Paracelsus and another of the Tree of Life The which I thus confirm Let a young man be considered with some of the aforesaid Diseases For his flourishing and lively youth doth not cure these Diseases therefore neither also the Tree of Life Because this hath respect onely to the Fewel of that flourishing Life the which surely is as yet received after the manner of the receiver Therefore there always remains in the part receiving a diseasie disproportion of strength in respect of the parts that are in good health which was before the Medicine of the Tree of Life was taken For although all particular parts should equally participate of that Medicine yet they should not be re-amended with an equal strength First therefore the impediments of Long Life are universally to be removed But among impediments some do shorten the Life actively such as are Diseases Inordinacies of living c. But other impediments do limit and curtail the Tree of Life in its goodness that it cannot attain the ultimate end of its appointment This indeed concerning our Tree of Life but not concerning that of Paradise and concerning a corrupted Life not of the Life of Adam before the Fall Those are therefore some Diseases and likewise much profound strong speculation and that not pleasant and perturbations yea and enchantment Even as in its place Happy therefore are they and for the most part long-lived who being far from the cares usuries busie affaires and stormes of their age can Till their fathers lands with their own Oxen in peace and live cheerfully Whatsoever therefore is to be thought of for the obtainment of Long Life is to be thought of in a peace void of care with a full resignation unto the most pleasing will of God For that cause we must think how much ridiculous thoughts do weary in Fevers how much serious studies do weaken the strength and how much anguishes do overthrow the number of Daies Because thus the Spirit is lessened and the Dayes are abreviated Furthermore Venus or carnal Lust obtains its chiefdom among the impediments of Long Life because it doth abundantly exhaust the Life Much and unseasonable Gluttony or Drunkenness succeeds Venus and the rather if the Drink be hurtful Also Tobacco and Mushroomes do hurt and what things by reason of a hidden poyson largely creeping do prostrate the vital faculties For Tobacco doth not allay hunger as if it did satisfie the defect but inasmuch as it takes away the sence of the defect and also the exercises of the functions In the next place the impediments of Life are frequent Baths Blood-lettings Wounds also the frequent use of loosening Medicines To wit which things make the generation of the begetter to be the less flourishing and therefore also do hasten Old Age. Lastly As Climates do make for Long Life so also some do hinder it For there are some with which an Old Man is rare Others with whom Old Age is in honour For Endemicks of Arsenick which are under the Earth do mow down a flourishing Life being as yet in its Flower There are some Climates also whereunto there is a nearness of overflowed Countries For whatsoever hath of its own accord waxed hot and was resolved in water from putrefaction ought also to be brought to be brought to us together with the Vapour and to be supped up by us Therefore pernicious are the Vapours of the Fens which breath forth a putrified matter and then those Vapours which puffe out a semi-putrified Salt together with the filths of a dissolved Clay or Mud. For I have seen at Antwerp after the Field of Austerweele conceived of Waters the leaves of the Teil-Trees in the Walls to be dryed from August and that as it were with a gnawn rottenness the which before the Inundation were kept green in the Tree even unto October The same thing is seen at Amsterdam whenas the leaves of the Trees of Leidon do as yet counterfeit the Moneth of May For the leaves do suffer this destruction from a Semi-salt-Vapour What at length is not to be thought to be done on the tender coat of the Lungs and the sponge of its Substance Truly so many Enemies do on every side lye in wait for our Life that unless we shall depart far from the hurtful contagion of the Air there will scarce under a full grant of the Tree of Life be awished for participation of Long Life For the original Tree of Life in Eden was for its own Inhabitants but not for the Natives of the Vale of Miseries Therefore whosoever will enjoy the Goodness of the Tree of Life and profit by the labour of Wisdom let him make choice of a Region which in all places nourisheth many Old Men and wherein Diseases do in all places seldome rage Then Lastly Let him begin to make use of the Tree of Life from a Child the more rightly if the Child begin first in both parents presently afterwards also in the Nurse while the nourishment is snatched away for the increase of the solid stems But those things which hinder and diminish the Medicine of the Tree of Life that it cannot ascend unto its height are hereditary and inbred weaknesses total or in part and in whom attained weaknesses drawn in through inordinacy do succeed and the which have happened through the undue torments of the paines of Diseases and Labours For whosoever hath suffered a notable injury of Life let him despair to be fully renewed by the Tree of Life But he who being a Child hath admixed the Medicine with the first constitutives of Life and hath thus waxed of ripe years for truly the Tree of Life is not more perfect as that it is able to restore decrepit Bodies into their former state let him hope that he shall attain that which the Court Physitians of Kings can scarce believe CHAP. CXII Of the Magnetick or Attractive Curing of Wounds A Disputation concerning the Attractive Natural and Lawful Curing of Wounds against R. P. John Roberti Doctor of Divinity an Elder of the Society of Jesus no less than also against Rodolph Goclenius Professor of Medicine 1. Witchcraft Sympathy or Co-suffering and Magnetism or Attraction do differ 2. One
in the Soul indeed more vigorous but in the Flesh and Blood far more remiss The vital Spirit in the Flesh and Blood performes the office of the Soul that is it is that same Spirit in the outward man which in the seed formes the whole figure that magnificent Structure and perfect delineation of Man and which hath known the ends of things to be done because it contains them and the which as President accompanies the now framed Young even unto the period of its Life and the which although it depart therewith some smatch or small quantity at least thereof remains in a Carcass slain by violence being as it were most exactly co-fermented with the same But from a dead Carcass that was extinct of its own accord and from nature failing as well the implanted as inflowing Spirit passed forth at once For which reason Physitians divide this Spirit into the implanted or Mumial and inflowing or acquired Spirit which departs to wit with the former Life And this influxing Spirit they afterwards sub-divide into the natural vital and animal Spirit But we likewise do here comprehend them all at once in one single Word The soul therefore being wholly a Spirit could never move or stir up the vital Spirit being indeed corporeal much less flesh and bones unless a certain natural power yet Magical and Spiritual did descend from the Soul into the Spirit and Body After what sort I pray could the corporeal Spirit obey the commands of the Soul unless there should be a command from her for moving of the Spirit and afterwards the Body But against this Magical motive faculty thou wilt forthwith Object That that power is limited within her composed Body and her own natural Inn Therefore although we call this Soul a Magitianess yet it shall be only a wresting and abuse of the Name for truly the true and superstitious Magick draws not its foundation from the Soul Seeing this same Soul is not able to move alter or excite any thing out of its own Body I Answer That this Power and that natural Magick of the Soul which she exerciseth out of her self by virtue of the Image of God doth now lye hid as obscure in Man and as it were lay asleep since the Fall or corruption of Adam and stands in need of stirring up all which particulars we shall anon in their proper place prove which same power how drowsie and as it were drunk soever it otherwise remains daily in us yet it is sufficient to perform its offices in its own Body Therefore the knowledge and power Magical and that faculty in Man which acteth only per nutum sleeps since the knowledge of the Apple was eaten and as long as this knowledge which is of the flesh and blood outward man and darkness flourisheth the more noble Magical power is trampled under foot But because in sleep the whole knowledge of the Apple doth sometimes sleep Hence also it is that our dreams are sometimes Prophetical and God himself is thereofre the nearer unto Man in Dreams through that effect To wit when as the more inward Magick of the Soul not being now interrupted by the knowledge of the Apple doth even on every side diffuse it self in Understanding to wit even as when it sinks it self into the inferiour Powers thereof it safely leads those that walk in their sleep by moving or conducting them whither those that were awake could not climb Therefore the chief Rabbies of the Cabal affirm that it was learnt or conceived in time of sleep to wit when the knowledge of the Apple was consopited or lull'd asleep The intellectual act of the Soul is alwayes clear and unshaken and after some sort perpetual yet as long as the principal agent hath not transferred its power so far as the limits of sense that kind of action is not yet propagated throughout the whole man For we who are only conversant with the virtue or faculty of thinking or of the senses and with our carnal intelligence are perpetually drawn away Alas for grief by the same from the more superiour and Magical Science or Knowledge and are retained in the shadow of Knowledge rather than in the Light of Truth For neither do we the Inhabitants of darkness observe that we do understand but when there is made a certain mutual traduction or passing over of faculties and till as it were the angles or corners of actions being prorogued or propagated by divers Agents are folded together about the middle Satan therefore stirs up this Magical power otherwise sleeping and hindred by the knowledge of the more outward man in his bond-slaves and the same readily serves them in stead of a sword in the hand of a potent Adversary that is the Witch Neither doth Satan contribute any thing to the murtherer at all besides an exciting of the said drowsie power and consent of the Will which is for the most part compelled in Witches by reason of which two contributions the mocking Scurre as if the whole office or performance were due to himself requires by a compact a continual firm and irrevocable submissive engagement a perpetual homage and devout worshipping of himself if also nothing more When as otherwise that kind of power was freely conferred by God the workman being plainly natural to Man For indeed juggling Impostures bewitchings by the emission of the sight or eyes and how falsely soever disguises of Witches may appear and such like delusive acts they are only from Satan and are his proper acts For therefore his works are onely ridiculous ones and false apparitions because our merciful God suffers not the same miscreant to have any longer power but keeps him bound When as otherwise the Witch displaies real and wicked acts from her own natural faculty For truly through sin not the gifts of Nature but those of Grace were obliterated in Adam And moreover that the same natural gifts although they were not taken away yet that they have remained as it were restrained and benummed with sleep For even as Man from that time became subject to mortality after the manner of his fellow creatures so also were the Heroick or excelling powers in Man obscured which therefore have need of a stirring up and drawing out of darkness For hitherto have contemplations continued prayers watchings fastings and acts of mortifications regard to wit that the drowsiness of the flesh being vanquished men may obtain that nimble active heavenly and ready power toward God and may sweetly confer with him in his presence who importunately desires not to be worshipped but in the Spirit that is in the profundity or bottom of the more inward man Hitherto I say hath the art of the Cabal regard which as it were by sleep shaken off may restore that Natural and Magical power of the Soul I will after the manner of Mathematicians yet further explain my self by Examples and will assume the very works of Witches the which although they are wickedly mischievous and
was presently cold they thought that those in-blown Spirits were the beginning Center and primitive sunny point and that of heat not regarding that the Spirits themselves are of themselves cold and that their heat doth perish in an instant as soon as they are snatcht away from the beam and aid of the heart A very great wonder it is that it hath been hitherto unknown and undetermined unto what heats the whole Tragedy of things vital and not vital is ascribed Whether of the two may prevail over the other in the original and support of heat For seeing neither the heart nor vital spirit of the same are from their own nature and substance originally hot for this cause it hath not been so much as once thought from whence our heat comes or from what original it is in every one of us For seeing the knowledge of ones self is the chief of Sciences as well in Moral as Natural things the Schools ought never to have been ashamed to have enquired into the Fountain of Heat and Life in things How great darkness hath from thence remained in Healing and in preserving of the Life God hath known This controversie therefore I have discussed with my self from my youth after this manner First I knew that fire even as in the Chapter of Forms was not an Accident nor a Substance and much less an Element The which I have elsewhere demonstrated with a full sail of Phylosophy And then that the Sun was hot from a proper endowment and that the fire of the Kitchin was likewise given although for the workman and a death subjected to the hands of Artificers But when as both of them forsake us that we have a Flint and a Steel from whence we make a fire To wit we strike fire out of two cold or dead things So also the waters of hot Baths under the earth are enflamed by Salt and Sulphur which are volatile things and that the arterial blood is partly Salt and partly fat and Sulphurous Then in the next place that there ought to be a smiting of Pulses together not indeed for a cooling refreshment as the Schools do otherwise dream but indeed that as butter is made of Milk by charming or shaking of it together So a vital Sulphur of the arterial Blood The which afterwards by a smiting of the same endeavour conceives a Light in the volatile Spirit and a formal or vital Light is propagated as it were Light being taken from Light To wit the salt Spirits and Sulphur of the arterial Blood do by the Pulse rub themselves together in the Sheath of the Heart and a formal Light together with Heat is kindled in the vital Spirit from the Light I say of the most inward and implanted sunny Spirit in which is the Tabernacle of the specifical Sun even unto the Worlds end In this Sun of Man the Aimighty hath placed his Tabernacle and his delights his Kingdom together with all his free gifts But the Light which is conceived by smiting together is not indeed made a new as from a Flint and Iron but it is propagated by the obtainment of matter from the sunny specifical and humane Light or is kindled and enlarged by it It is there indeed universal and vital consisting in the points of a tempered Light and it is in Nature indeed specifical in respect of its production and limited for the Life of Man but it is every way made individual by him who hath placed his vital Tabernacle in the Sun of the Species Out of which Tabernacle he thereby enlightneth every Man that cometh into this World Because the Lord Jesus is after an incomprehensible manner the Light Life Beginning Way Truth and the All of all Things For as the Life cannot subsist for a moment without the lightsome Spirit by which it is enlightned and soulified in the habitation of the Sun So neither can the Soul nor Life in any wise subsist for one only moment without the Grace of the same eternal Light But I have conceived of the quality and intension of Heat resulting from the Light as a whole humane Body weighing perhaps 200 Pounds is hot with an actual warmth and the which without that Light of Life should presently be cold and be a dead Carcass There is therefore so much Heat in the Heart as is sufficient for diffusing warmth through so many Pounds of Water otherwise cold The Life therefore of Species as it consisteth in a simple and ununited Light containes a mystery of divine providence For a fiery Light however by reason of distance it be mitigated and reduced into a nourishing luke-warmth Yet naturally it cannot stop as that it cannot conspire for the top of a connexed Light and so contend for its own ruine or destruction Therefore the Father and dispenser of Lights hath provided who sitting in the Tabernacle of the Sun hath constrained or tied up Lights by Species or particular kindes and bolts Here it is sufficient to have shewn that they are the Reliques and plainly the Blasphemies of Paganish Errour to have said A Man and the Sun doth generate a Man Seeing Life belongs not to the Sun but the Fewels Excitements of sublunary Actions alone as also the necessary supplies readily serviceable to the Life CHAP. CXIV The nourishing of an Infant for Long Life IT is already manifest that Life is not from the Stars but that from a seminary Faculty of the Parents Life is short Diseasie Healthy and Growing For it is limited according to the Disposition of the Seed and Truncks of the Body no less also according to the goodness of Nourishments and Climates Among the Impediments of Long Life is an infirm Constitution of the Young and a bad nourishing of the Infant The Young therefore being generated and brought forth the quantity and quality of the Nourishment is to be regarded seeing its little Body ought to be nourished and to wax great and so to be setled or confirmed And it is now chiefly known that the nourishable Juice in a Child is adopted into the Inheritance of the radical Moisture For Nature hath appointed Milk in the Dugs for the Meat and Drink of the little Infant which Nourishment hath rendred it self common unto him with Bruit-beasts It might be thought by some that it would be injurious unto God if we should think of any other Nourishment as if he had not alwayes chosen out of Means that which should be most exceeding good But surely shall not the God of Nature be a Step-father and Nature her self a Step-mother because he made not Bread not Wine but Grain and Grapes only Nature is governed by the Finger of God It is thus Milk therefore as an ordinary Nourishment hath afforded a sufficiency for living but not that it should be serviceable for long Life For Nature no longer meditated of long Life after that she knew her Author had cut short the Life nor would have every one to be long lived But he
hath given Milk for Food unto every one alike For he hath sent an Army of Diseases into Nature that a thousand fore-ripenesses of Death might bend unto the Foundations of Life for Ruine Nature therefore by Milk satisfies the ends of her Author and hath afforded a beast-like Nourishment But the Doctrine of long Life is exceeding diverse in its unfolding and I know that it hath remained in secret even among those that have been divinely chosen the Sons of Art The present Doctrine therefore hath not regard unto the ordinary course of Nature but unto a new mark Therefore I do not think that I am injurious to Nature if I shall prefer an unwonted Nourishment before Milk For truly in Milk very many Discommodities do invade First of all Milk waxing clotty very often produceth frequent Vomitings Wormes Wringings of the Bowels Fevers Fluxes Falling-sicknesses Convulsions and contains many unthought of Occasions of Death For Milk in the Stomack obeying the proper Ferment of the place doth of necessity wax sour before that it turn into Nourishment whereunto if a new sucking of milk succeedeth an hard clot of milk lays on the little tender Stomack which becoming callous or brawny hard into small clods counterfeits tough Cheese not much otherwise than as milk doth oft-times grow together within the Dugs and breakes not forth but with an Apostem the which seeing it stubbornly resists Digestion if it shall not also be exceeding hurtful at least-wise it presently putrifies growes bitter waxes yellow becomes green contracts a burntishness and estrangeth the Pylorus or lower Mouth of the Stomack from whence the aforesaid Slaughters of Diseases are often stirred up For an Infant sucks long and frequently repeats it The first Milk is curdled another new milk is sent in the third and sixth time and there is made a co-mixture of them all and a strange one being sharp or four besides Nature is stirred up with howlings and a common curd is made of them all In which are the manifestations of Heterogeneity or diversity of kind and a co-resemblance of a cheesed burntish and putrified matter follows the new Milk These Vices are almost unavoidable and they are the material offences of the milk which the new Young being brought forth begins from the beginning to expiate as though from the birth the Mother doth frame snares and the threatnings of Death for her little Infant There are moreover other faults of the milk pernicious by a more hidden gore For not only the Pox Leprosie Plagues and Fevers infamous through contagion are sucked from the Nurses but also a diseasie Inclination of the Nurses is stamped on the Child from his Cradle no otherwise than as if it were hereditary Surely it is a Character to be bewailed from his Life time I knew a certain Governour blessed with a Sixth and sound Off-spring whose seventh because he was nourished by a Nurse who was subjected to the Stone of the Kidneys with a mournful Disease of the Stone finished his Life on the 13th Year of his Age under cutting for the Stone at the third cutting In the next place it is not sufficient for the material Diseases of the Milk the hidden Consumptions of Diseases and their hereditary Roots to be transplanted by the milk into the sucking Infant and to be most stubbornly incorporated into the Life But also the morral Seminaries of any kinde of Vices do pierce inwardly with the milk and preseveres for the term of Life So I have observed that a leacherous theevish covetous and wrothful Nurse hath transferred her Frailty on the Children So an unwonted blockishnesse anger madnesse and many Passions of the Mind also beside moral Defects sleeping a long while and at length being under the maturity of Dayes unfolded do bewray themselves on Families they being begged from Nurses and propagated by the Milk Then in the next place the Milk being as yet in the Nurse is in danger to be mortified or wax stinking if the Nurse be privily gotten with Child doth partake of Fevers and Maladies which are after some manner bred for the infecting of the Milk Lastly the Milk undergoes diverse Impressions every hour from all the disturbances of the Mind from whence it not only waxeth clotty and putrifies or stinks but also by an unsensible quality it puts on Deformities which the guiltless Infant drinks and is held to pay the punishment of For the Nurse doth not alwayes bridle her Mind with one tenor but she failes being sore smitten with a thousand Apprehensions of Anger Sorrow Agony Envy Wantonness Theft Covetousness c. all whereof there is no doubt but that they badly dispose the Milk as well in respect of the Body as the Soul For they are most of them unavoidable yet dangerous Whosoever therefore would study long Life from the Birth let him not expose his Children unto this sort of voluntary unthought of and certain Dangers By how much the rather because a Medicine for Long Life as it is dayly from the Cradle extended for a long and healthy Life by drops cannot be digested as neither Penetrate if it be burred within the gross clots of Milk Because so also Poysons in the Milk do well nigh become unhurtful and being as it were gelded become barren I therefore have hated the oft extended nourishing of an Infant by Milk For this Cause I am not wont to eat milk unless it be meer or unmixt alone without other Meat and Drink until that it being fully digested hath slidden out of the Stomack I praise for our Child Nourishments which are made of Bread boyled so long in thin Ale with clarified Honey if not with Sugar until they shall come together into the likeness of a Museilage or Glew or Jelly Then as much thin Ale is mingled with and washed on this Jelly as is sufficient for it to serve instead of Drink Nevertheless he must abstain from Rye-bread if he be nourished with Honey because it breedeth Wormes Yea a piece of that Bread being cast into a Vessel of Honey it passeth into Ants. After this manner I bad among others the Son of an Earle to he nourished from his Birth who far exceeded his three Brethren in Strength Health Stature Wit and all Valour and so that if he had not died in war as being pierced thorow with a Bullet by a warlick Hand he had been of great hope For indeed as the aforesaid Meat and Drink is harmless not putrifying not coagulable not stubborn against Digestion for whatsoever things are fetch'd from living Creatures do easily putrifie in the more tender Stomacks as neither a partaker of Malignity or of a forreign unstable Disturbance or the Heir of an induced vitious Impression So it is alwayes equal like and constant to it self becomes most familiar to Nature not wormy not sharp not stinking or of a burntish Savour in the next place not tart acute feverish yea nor ever hurtful although it shall exceed in quantity for more or
great an heap neither doth he rain down Fountains nor lastly hath poured forth Fruits worthy of so great Borders but that he hath exalted it above all Turbulences of Air and Clouds whirlings of Windes and monstrous omens of Thunder-bolts into a most pleasing rest of Air Surely that thing seems to me to be dedicated unto a famous Mystery For the promised blessing did of old for the most part respect long Life and the Commodities thereof and the fruitfulness of off-springs that thou mayest be long lived upon the Earth c. Blessing therefore unto those that ascend into the Mountain of the Lord according to the Letter seems in Nature to have respect unto the Endowments of long Life For he who is alone and wholly the Life and Prince of Life doth likewise give long Life unto none not so much as by natural Means who hath betaken his Soul to Vanity Therefore the blessing of ascending into the Mountain of the Lord seemes to contain a long continuance of Life Therefore those most high Mountains which are read to be endowed by Nature for no Fruits sake and the which pertain unto the sweetness of a not much disturbed Air seem to promise a singular 〈…〉 or Likeness of the Mountain of the Lord and of a long Life And that thing is from a certain singular prerogative before other Mountains and that they may as it were by that right have the surname of the Mountain of the Lord for if it reach beyond all the incidencies of inferiour things it after a singular manner promiseth unto me that God is there after a peculiar manner For he that was not in the Whirle-wind but in the sweet Air was perceived by Elias He he I say hath his Mansion in the same place that is the Prince of Life doth there give his blessing Not indeed that which may be communicated in a few houres but being signified to Moses in Mount Sinai in the revolution of forty dayes to wit by two full Moons For he who could every year continually stay for forty dayes in the Mountain of Rest about the Feast of the building of Tabernacles the Commodities of living being called unto him from elsewhere I divine that he might much profit himself for long Life especially if he were there daily refreshed with a Medicine prepared of the Tree of Life because that in such a Mountain by reason of a notable Purity of the Air there is a greater co-mixture of the Nourishment with the Body nourished and a more piercing access unto the first constitutive parts Lastly although the highest Mountains do bear before them the priviledge of long Life Yet those that are less high promise some singular thing from the sense perceived in the Alpes Nevertheless I alwayes reject Mountains which breath forth some Mineral Gas For therefore in Chymical things Arsenick hath obtained the name of the fume of Mettals But unto whom the Commidity of living in a healthy Mountain should be granted and that not great with Child with the Fruits of Minerals they certainly should rejoyce in the benefit of long Life so far as the Nature of the place hath bestowed CHAP. CXVI The Tree of Life I Am constrained to believe that there is the Stone which makes Gold and which makes Silver because I have at distinct turns made projection with my hand of one grain of the Powder upon some thousand grains of hot Quick-silver and the buisiness succeeded in the Fire even as Books do promise a Circle of many People standing by together with a tickling Admiration of us all But it was not a thing extracted out of Gold because it should change as many weights of Quick-silver as there were of Gold from whence it had been extracted First of all that being granted as yet at least-wise a true transmutation of one thing into another and that indeed a manifold one should stand Secondly those that work on Gold and Money-makers have known that nothing which is not Mercurial can enter by flowing into Mettals or be co-melted with them but swims a-top in the flowing Therefore thirdly that Extraction should be fatter than any Mettal is if it ought to tinge so many thousand Parts Fourthly that Extraction should be no longer a Mettal seeing it should exceed the perfection of the purest Mettal so many thousand times For a Mettal doth not suffer so many degrees of largeness in its perfection by how many times the Powder which maketh Gold converts an inferiour Mettal into true Gold Fifthly He who first gave me the Gold-making Powder had likewise also at least as much of it as might be sufficient for changing two hundred thousand Pounds of Gold But there is none who may have more than a tenfold quantity of Gold and if he should have it he should destroy it that he might at length make as much Gold from thence For he gave me perhaps half a grain of that Powder and nine ounces and three quarters of Quick-silver were thereby transchanged But that Gold a strange Man being a Friend of one evenings acquaintance gave me However therefore the Phylosophers Stone be in the Nature of things yet I have alwayes supposed for the reasons aforesaid that no Metallick Remedy contains the blessing of the Tree of Life I willingly confess in the mean time that that Stone is in its Beginnings partaker of the Life of a Zoophyte or Plant-animal and that it hath that Life distinct from a vegetative and sensitive Life the which for this Cause is an un-named Life For according to the unanimous Writings of wise Men The Principles of the Stone being once conjoyned to a glassen Egg if through the Vice of interrupted Warmth it once happen that they are even but a little while plainly cooled they so die that there is no remaining hope of a future Stone the which likewise happens also in the nourishing warmth of Eggs And therefore I have judged that it is to be believed that these do live also in a like Life with the Beginnings of the Stone And that is a true Life which a true Death testifies because that that errour is never to be corrected by any Paines it being thus once dead there is no hope of restitution left for the future I know in the next place that the Tree of Life is in vain to be â—ought from Animals how long lived soever In all which I have found a voluntary Death a frail Body and slideable every hour or the way of all Flesh For how shall they give a long Life the which they contain not in themselves Seeing if they are long lived at least-wise they have put off their own Life while they are taken into use I have sometimes beheld Stones that they did contain sometimes live Creatures within them that they live for the space of five Years and are preserved from Death without Nourishments Paracelsus thinks that the whole heap of Stones and the whole World was at sometime one only Stone or at
excel as for long Life For so the Sweat of some Persons smells of the Goat or Rank but that of others doth not far differ from a Fragrancy That one thing I say in long Life is only to be procured least the nourishable Humor after that it hath ceased from its Offices being dismissed by transpiration looseth its Grace through defect whereof I have described a short Life For I have taught elsewhere that a Sow or a Goose being nourished only by Fishes do yield Fleshes which tastingly resemble the detestable Grease of Fishes Wherefore let the Medicine of the Tree of Life be an odoriferous Balsam Spicie grateful to Nature seasoning the Blood with an excelling goodness and a nourishment now applyed after the manner of a Dew Even so that through the vigour of its uncorruptibleness its balsamical Faculty may be continued even unto the utmost Limits of its exhalation out of the Body Wherefore we must beware of this one only thing that the fire do not alter this Fruit by a seperating distillation but that a proper division of that which is heterogeneal be appointed as being sequestred into its bottoms for a greater subtilizing of Purity and Simplicity and sealing of its Virtues For in Eden the Stomack subdued the Food from a proper vigour or force for all things willingly obeyed the Stomack without the strife of a middle Life it being that which they through the decision of the Stomack kept after some sort sase even until the deluge of Waters till that through a succession of Years and Propagations all things by degrees went to ruine Then the seminal Being was no longer drawn out of Meats after that the term of Life was restrained unto 120 and afterwards unto 80 Years For the Being of Essence which before was fetcht out of Meats bewrayed it self no longer because the Stomack had enough to do only to draw forth the Being of Nourishment From hence it is manifest that although the Tree of Life was present with us from Eden yet that it will not profit us as it did the first of the Fathers By consequence also that the Balsam of our vital Tree is not so profitable unto Persons of ripe years as unto Children For he that hath almost run out the stage of Life every such one perceives an help according to a Model or after a small manner Seeing all things in Nature are received after the manner of the Persons and place receiving and of circumstances For the Friends of Job wept with him seven dayes and nights without eating drinking and difference of health The which is now at this day scarce possible for any mortal Man to do Therefore the strengths of such a life should more profit by our Tree than I an old Man who almost worn out with the offences and labours of Chymistry and the injuries of Tribulations and Persecutions So we Bees do not provide Honey for our selves Whereunto is added that Eden was of it self a preserver of Long Life through the wholesomness of the place but that but a few Paces from thence there was the command of Death Corruption and Infirmities For if Credit be to be given to Histories there are also places at this day whereunto a Life of three hindred years is ordinary For where long-lived Persons are born they are also nourished But there are other places near at hand where a renewed tyranny of interchanges shortens the Life for so some Provincial Diseases are accustomed Therefore mountainous Places which have not the Gas of Minerals as the Forrest of Arden Asturia or the Pyrenean Mountains c. nor those subjected unto the natural Moisture of Lakes because the bountiful Communications of the Stars do reflect and breath a pure Air and do make for Long Life Even as also a plain Field which knowes not the Incitements of the Throat adds as much to long Life as fulness is an enemy to long Life for the stuffings of Meats do weary the miserable Powers to wit that they being as it were worn out with labour die or go to ruine before their time which things being thus revolved with my self for full three dayes space from whence a Medicine for long Life was to be fetched Opobalsamum notably smiled on me not indeed that of Peru or the Gums of Capaida of Brasile But the true Aegyptian opobalsamum noted in the Scriptures and primitive it being the Queen-tear of a low Shrub scarce saleable to Kings For I confess I have worthily attributed very much perfection to this Being And although there were enough of it to be found yet it doth as yet decline from the perfection of the Tree of Life because that Shrub is so frail or mortal And while I variously wandred in Nature that I might view the Tree of Life at length without the day and beyond the beginning of the night I saw in a dream the whole Face of the Earth even as it stood forsaken and empty or void at the beginning of the Creation then afterwards how it was while as it being fresh waxed on every side green with its Plants Again also as it lay hid under the Floud For I saw all the Species of Plants to be kept under the Waters Yet presently after the Floud that they all did enter into the way of interchanges enjoyned to them which was to be continued by their Species and Seeds I saw I say in the top of Mount Libanus the Cedars to have remained whole under the Deluge by the Word of the most Glorious God and that they in a certain number did as yet there remain And presently afterwards I returned to my self But I afterwards considered at leisure that the Ark which ought to save Mankind from destruction was commanded to be framed of the incorrupitble Wood Cetim For the World had endured perhaps 1652 Years but Noah proceeded slowly in its building for an hundred solary years And therefore he took Wood and Rafters which were not to undergo any dammage in all that time A leprous Person being separated from the People coming to the Priest bare the Wood Cetim in his hand that he might be cleansed In the feast of the building of Tabernacles every Hebrew carried Cedar and Branches of Myrrh that God might be mindful in the rain of the whole Earth that he appointed the manners of the Times and the Stars I therefore understood by the Cedar long Life likewise the blessings of the Times or Seasons and of the Stars and also that in a mystical sense cleansing was denoted but that in this Age it was also to be obtained For other vital things do soon wither with Old Age but the one only Cedar in number by a famous mistery through the uncorrupted substance of its Wood and its vegetative Faculty surviving promiseth long Life because it containeth it For the folding Doors of the Temple of Salomon were commanded to be framed of the Wood Cetim with Gold as it were a more vile covering or involvement
Moreover it is without controversie in the Church of God that the Cedar in Libanus in the Temple in the Figure of the Ark in the cleansing of the Leprosie and in the feast of the building of Tabernacles did represent the Mother of God the Virgin Queen of Heaven an incorruptible Vessel a Tree which brought forth for us Eternal Life in the Flesh the Patroness I say of the Poor and Mine But the place of the Cedar in Libanus exceeding the coldest folding door of the Air covered with Snowes denotes the unspotted Integrity of the God-bearing Virgin And so if the Tree denotes the holy Virgin especially conjoyntly with so many mysteries it s no wonder that the Cedar doth signifie the Tree of this Life also in the world For indeed there was in the dayes of David an aged Cedar in Libanus because it was that which by reason of its excellent taleness was from that time worthy of a mystical sense Wherefore either it being there planted after the Floud doth as yet hitherto continue the same in number safe or a good while before and perhaps from the cradles of the World according to the Vision of the Dream Which thing after what manner soever it may be taken at least-wise it shews that the Cedar despiseth the discommodities of Old Age But he is not from a Cedar his Parent planted after the Floud because that Parent also of the Cedar was preserved under the Deluge and much more easily afterwards than that which remains from the daies of David even until this time Let those laugh that will at that age of the Cedar in Libanus and let them say that Modern ones were raised up by a new Branch or by Seed falling down But that being supposed at this day also new ones had dayly come forth into a great Wood where notwithstanding no new Cedar growes But moreover from thence I gather that the same Cedar in number doth now persist which was even before the Floud yea even from the Creation of the World Because it was given for a Mark of resemblance to the blessed Virgin But moreover for our Magistery the Fruit of the Cedar is not to be taken for that the end thereof is not for a simple Being in the appointment of the Properties of the Cedar but only for a propagation of the Species which contradicteth long Life from the Foundation The Wood Cetim it self therefore is to be taken which is so much exalted in the holy Scripture Therefore not the Bark not the Fruit not the Root nor the Leaves are the ultimate end whither Nature hath had respect for long Life And so that the Cedar perhaps also is herein distinct from the Tree of Life in Eden A matter therefore of a Tree which knowes not how to die is found whose unputrifiable Wood and by reason of its many Properties being in a mystical Sense designed to the holy Virgin is that which brings forth Life to the World that it may redeem Death But the preparation thereof is the most exceeding difficult of all those things which fall under the Labour of Wisdom For this Cause indeed Monarchs want a long Life because there is none which hath known how to prepare it For none who is truly a Phylosopher is a Minstrel neither doth he follow Princes and flatter them for because he stands in need of nothing he despiseth whatsoever a Prince can give The Tree of Life therefore alone refresheth the decayed Faculties and for some time detaineth the Life in its flowing But the difficulty of preparing it consisteth in this that the Wood ought to be resolved without a dissolution of its Faculties by a luke-warmth such as is that of the Sun in March even unto its first Being In which Being only is granted unto it a fermental Power of preserving and seasoning with an ingress unto the first constitutives of us and of insinuaring it self into the familiarity of the Spirits implanted throughout all the Organs But there is in the Juice of this kind of resolving the entire Virtue of the Cedar to wit a vital one together with every seminal and formal Property of long Life For the whole lump of the Wood is dissolved into a Juice which being otherwise distilled is transchanged and made a certain new Creature the which Aqua Vitae being distilled out of Graines or Ales doth also prove likewise the Oyl that is distilled out of Woods yea out of the very Oyl of Olives it self The practise thereof is this Resolve the pieces of the Wood Cetim with a like weight of the Liquor Alkahest in a sealed Glass under a nourishing luke-warmth and within seven dayes thou shalt see the whole Wood to have passed over into a milky Liquor But presently about the fifteenth day a twofold Oyl distinctly swims a top the which is increased even for a Month and is more clearly separated But then let the Oyl be separated from the Water by manual Operation Then distil thou the Water in a Bath and the Liquor Alkahest remains in the bottom in its own original weight but let the Oyl be nourished with the Water for full three months space with a slow luke-warmth and the whole Oyl assumes the Nature of a Salt and shall thorowly mingle it self with the Water and it is the first Being of the Cedar But as yet a few things concerning the length of Life because I being an old Man do pursue these things and I my self am about to die My Mind breathed some unheard of thing within but I as unprofitable for this Life shall be buried Because the Spirit the Porter withdrew the Bottle by the command of him before whom the whole World is as a Mushrom Let the praise be to him who hath given and who hath taken away that which was his own The Schools therefore may deservedly upbraid me Thou miserable Man a Man of small note a Man of great ambition an old Man hast paradoxally come to late that with thy Song in the commendation of Cedar thou shouldst over-spread the World with mists The Histories and Virtues of Plants are known to our Herbarists But thou that thou maiest vaunt of an unheard of devise concerning long Life as a Paradoxal Man proceedest to be mad with thy Cedar Go to if there be so great Power in the Cedar for Life why are not all Kings long-lived From whence dost thou as a new guest come produce thy Learning and experience whereby thou wilt be believed For as a Lawier blusheth to speak without Law so doth a Physitian without Experience For thou canst not deny but that the decoctions of the Leaves Kernels Wood Bark Root or Rosin of Cedar had long since produced a continued Life But nothing of these things is manifest by our Herbarists Thou there fore dost deter or fright us away through an hidden manner of preparation and by a crabbed Style of a smoak-selling Art desirest to involve a feigned mistery of Cedar Which thing the Alkahestical
from that time that the â—â—â—icine of the Universities was a thing of no worth to which end they afforded me their votes since Diseases were incurable and moreover the vanity of Experiments and at length succours abounded on every side because I saw Physitians every where exposed to a mock and also the Phylosophy it self afore chosen in my youth assented unto this my Errour To wit that the Logick natural Phylosophy and Metaphysicks of the Schooles were not that Phylosophy for which Pythagoras in times past took unto himself only a few Schollars of the better towardness to be instructed by him they being bound by the silence of many years and by a secret Oath that they should never declare to any one any of those things which they had there heard for I supposed rather that the Essayes of the Art of the Fire were there delivered than of that Science which Galen layes open by much Greek tattle For truly also long before Pythagoras every one had accustomed faithfully to note by Hieroglyphicks in Temples whatsoever things had profited his own People for that thing so great a necessity and so intestine a Calamity had convinced of that they were thus delivered to Posterity without envy When therefore the Art of Medicine fell into disesteem with me I lighted on a Text of holy Scripture having been often read yet never understood To wit That the most high had created the Physitian and had commanded him to be honoured by reason of the necessity there is of him Wherein I presently discerned 1. That he who created all things doth notwithstanding particularly glory that he is the Creator of the Physitian 2. That for his own glory sake for the issuing forth of his goodness for the necessities helping and succours of the Sick and so by the Physitian the Almighty will be appeased in restoring health that was taken away 3. That he to whom all honour and glory is due hath commanded that Parents and Physitians onely created by him be honoured as if a Physitian had something of a fatherly Nature 4. And then in my manhood I not a little carefully inquired day and night what happy Man he should be whom the Almighty from Eternity ordained chose and created for a Physitian and from hence also commanded to be honoured Whether happy it were he who having read over Institutions and some classical or renowned Authors and having spent full three Years in the University and at length who by disputations and examinations by Professors having laboured for Preferment was sent forth being admitted as well by Secular as Ecclesiastical authority Or indeed whether it were he who with the same Title of a Physitian had waxed old under anothers mourning being in the mean time full of Years Experiments and Moneys Then straightway I with pity considered that the Sick stood in need of a Physitian whom the Almighty hath created he being furnished with full abilities and that an healthy Person wanted not a Physitian standing by him who should be chief over the Kitchin should number the Morsels and prescribe rules of Diet. Thou shalt hereafter find more things concerning the honour due to Physitians under the History of Duelech I considered on the other hand That the Maker of sweet Oyles should compose the Varnishes of Sweetness neither that his Works should be consummated or come to an end Neither that there should be a Medicine of destruction in the Earth Which soundeth that a true Physitian should mow down all Diseases with an equal Sithe nor that Diseases were with him uncurable Surely a notable difference between a Physitian which the most high hath created and him whom Universities have created by the Doctrine of the Heathen A huge Catalogue of uncurable Diseases presently offered it self unto me as if the most high had been nothing careful for these or as if such sick Persons were not diseasie Because that for the necessity of whom he had neither created a Physitian nor a Medicine in the Universities For truly they not only cast such Sick folks into despair but also as many Diseases as are not silent of their own accord they reckon up for desperate ones Yea a Quartane Ague and those which take fast roots for Years and which are for the most part finished through a voluntary tiresomeness of Nature they reckon to be uncurable And but that other Diseases do at the last hasten to a bound or limit truly all Diseases should be equally added to uncurable ones For most Physitians know not how to take away the pain of a Tooth but by pulling of it out So perhaps they would command the same thing for health in an inveterate Head-ach to wit a â—aking away of the Head if the Life could remain safe After the notable Labours of some Years therefore it grieved me that I knew or had learned nothing else but that which was of no worth For although I believed the Physitian to be created of God even as also simple Medicines Yet I wholly stuck in the knowledge of that Physitian and of the things subservient unto him For I wished many times Ah! I would to God I might sometime at length become the Disciple of such a Physitiâ—â— In the mean time I knew clearly that the Art of healing garnished forth as well by the Greeks as by the Arabians and that which the Jews feign to have been delivered unto themby hand from their Rabbins under the Cabal did very far differ from that which the sacred Text decyphereth At length therefore I inferred in my mind That the Science of Medicine had a good beginning from the mean intention and end thereof To wit that it was a good gift descending from the Father of Lights and therefore this gift had never long since descended into the Heathens and Jews however they were blown up with our rashness of belief because they are those whom the Lord hath not created Physitians nor for our necessity as neither hath he commanded them to be honoured but to be seriously avoided For a Physitian created of God is not defectuous given to Gain and an Enemy of Christians but full of Charity But first I have noted this rarity of that good Gift from Diascorides who from the dayes of Plato wherein he lived hath indeed described the Histories of Herbs yet unto this day scarce any thing hath been added unto him but very much detracted from him And so scarce any Light hath shined forth from above into Herbarism for two thousand and three hundred Years although it be a most plain or easie and necessary Science Wherefore I have consectured that that Light from above hath soberly enough sâ—idden down into other orders of more abstruse Knowledges Yet least of all into Heathens Atheists and perfidious Jews they being secluded from the Truth and Charity and for that Cause forsaken of God And as the Nativities of things are banished into the fulnesse of times covered from us so that the Gift of the
although that action of spirits be made with the suffering and losse of their own powers yet they do not therefore transchange Bodyes into their own nature For they onely gnaw them and grind them into pouder the which also they interpret to be a calcining by water By way of example joyn thou a pound of Crocus martis to a sixfold quantity of Oyl of Vitriol then distill thou whatsoever shall be watery Thou shalt find the Vitriol of Iron or Mars Take from thence the Iron and thou hast the Vitriol of Iron A Salt I say like Vitriol whose tast is of Iron Yet retaining nothing of the Mars or Iron For thou hast a limitation from the Mars as to its efficacy but not in respect of its matter And the former spirit of Vitriol or Oyl of the vitriol of Copper shall be fixed into a certain salt onely by the odour of the Iron Again Take the same and more clear example Conjoyn thou a pound of running Mercury or Quick-silver unto a four fold quantity of Oyl of Vitriol Take away its flegme by distilling and a white precipitate shall remain in the bottom like snow Likewise If thou shalt pour on it more Oyl than is meet the Mercury will unsensibly surmount together with the Oyl Furthermore If by a Liver thou shalt take away the tartnesse from the aforesaid snow there will be a pouder of a Citron colour in the bottom which being revived or unto Life recovered shall be of equal weight with the former Mercury But the water which in washing off the salt drinks it up into it self affords a true Alum For so one onely pound of Quick-silver onely by its touch should be able by degrees to change many thousands of pounds of the sharpest Oyl of Vitriol into an Alum without any losse of its substance which same Oyl by the touch of the Iron is in like manner changed into the vitriolated salt of Mars being a noble Medicine for healing Let the action of the Mercury without an essential â—â— suffering of its substance be taken notice of And it is a Contemplation of great moment For truly a great rout of Alchymists are deluded by their own hope thinking that fixed Bodyes being solved in Corrosives gave unto these Corrosives their properties at leastwise if those dissolving Corrosives have from a voluntary motion of activity coagulated in their possession They know not I say that Spirits being wearied by acting do degenerate into a new Being To wit while they descend unto the limit of their power in acting And then we must know that every operation which tendeth unto a transmutation of both namely the Agent and Patient consisteth onely between meer Spirits But that the operation of a Body with a spirit of things without Life begins from the spiritual odour of a certain putrifaction by continuance because seeds and fermental dispositions depend thereupon and according to their own will or arbitration do command Liquors appointed for Generation Wherefore the Antients have not unfitly advertised us That the rise and continuation of the visible world is from an invisible and incorporeal Essence such as are Odours and Ferments And in our own borders Duelech growes together from an incredible Spirit the Coagulater and from an invisible Beginning For neither hath it stood in need for its nativity of Tartar brought from without of the Son of a more inward muckinesse or of the feigned curdlings of drying It is a far more calamitous thing that we carry the very vulcan of the Stone about us in our urine unto the importunate command whereof the properties of a volatile spirit do hearken For God had seemed to have loved Bruits before us if he had not directed Diseases unto a Reward and so unto good whereof a temporal punishment is not worthy But besides where a fore-seen end of punishment is present he hath from the Gift of his Bounty erected the powers of Medicines In Beasts also stones are bred but not given for a punishment nor for a Reward which grow in them for Medicines to us And therefore they also arise from a far different Root Moreover before that I proceed unto the History of the Stone I will premise some exercises First therefore In the Salt-pits of Burgundy there are at this day no more than two pits the pit of Brine and the pit of Gray But if indeed an hundred measures of both pits are boyled apart they yield far lesse salt than if they are boyled in the same quantity being conjoyned The Inhabitants admire at the Experiment and therefore they henceforward confound both Brines together For indeed the one of them containes more of a vapory or volatile salt which being boyled apart by it self with a flaming fire flyes away before its coagulation Notwithstanding meeting with another more fixed salt it is imbibed and constrained into a solid salt The example teacheth this That Bodyes of Salts do drink up their own Spirits and that their spirits in like manner do gnaw their Bodyes For truly the Brine of Burgundy being clearer than Crystal doth notwithstanding through its vapory salt spirit drink up into it self a great part of a rocky stone which therefore in time of boyling To wit while the spirits are coagulated in the more solid body of the salt settles and is scummed off with difficulty Therefore that spirit of salt although it dissolved the stone yet it therefore contracted not wedlock with the earth as that either this should stonifie or the other be made salt Yea it even from thence is manifest that although the Sea-salt had vapory or volatile parts yet it could not come unto the stone as neither to the spirit of urine for an increase Because it is that which consists of far different principles even as elsewhere concerning Digestions but the Sea-salt by how much it is a stranger with the Urine by so much it shall stir up consultations of dissolving Duelech For whatsoever dissolveth the stone of a Rock and doth hide it invisibly in it self that at least shall not perswade the original of the stone Thus far concerning a fixed Earth dissolved by the spirit of salt and of the vapory and coagulated spirit of Salt Now concerning a volatile salt decaying into a solid body Sublime thou Stibium with an equal part of Sal Armoniack by a gentle or indifferent fire thou shalt see the salt to arise tinged with divers colours Separate the colour from the salt by water and thou shalt have a pouder which with Salt-peter flyes away almost wholly into a flame But if that which is left with the Sal Armoniac be as yet twice sublimed by it self and freed from its salt thou shalt have a pouder of Stibium voyd of salt wherewith if thou shalt then mix Salt-peter it shall be no longer inflamed but as much Salt-peter as thou shalt mix with it is changed into an earth and neglects the nature of a salt For the odour of the Sulphur pierceth
his custom in the corner of a Floor presently lay down as being afflicted with a bloudy and cruel strangury but any Remedies of Physitians were in vain except that as oft as he drank of the aforesaid Ale he perceived a notable ease but as oft as he arising out of the Bed-cloathes walked up and down and pissed in his wonted place he presently suffered Relapses At length there was seen a pin made of old and black Oaken wood fastened or thrust into the place whereat his accustomed urine issued out That pin therefore being pulled out and burnt by the drinking of that Ale he remained altogether free from that bloudy strangury And then I remember that Karichterus writeth that he had loosed the like sort of Enchantments onely by pissing through Birchâ—â—â—â—oomes CHAP. IX Sensation or feeling unsensiblenesse pain lack of pain motion and unmooveablenesse through diseases of their own rank the Leprosie Falling-evil Apoplexy Palsey Convulsion Coma or Sleeping-evil c. 1. Grating or fretting only is reputed the cause of the pain of him that hath the Stone in the Reines 2. The opposite is prooved 3. For so the Urine-pipes should want a feeling 4. The definition of pain according to the Schooles 5. The opinion of the Antients and Moderns concerning the first or cheif organ of the senses 6. But it teacheth nothing besides vain words 7. The implicite Blasphemies of the Schooles 8. That the braine is not the immediate organ of sense and motion 9. What hath deceived the Schooles about these things 10. A better attention or heed of some 11. From whence they have so perswaded themselves 12. The Authours meditation about sense and motion 13. A speculation about the solution in a wound of that which held together 14. A solide part doth not feel of it self 15. Three organs subordinate to motion 16. The Schooles go back from their former supposition 17. That the sinew is not the proper instrument of all sense 18. A consideration of tho Leprousie â—9 All sinewes dedicated to motion are also sensible 20. The errours of the Schooles about the Leprousie 21. The errour of Paracelsus 22. The unconstancy of Paracelsus 23. The unsensiblenesse of the Leprosie from whence it is 24. Manginesse and the Pox or fowle disease how they differ from the Leprosie 25. Scabbednesse requires not internal remedies 26. The Reader is admonished 27. Wherein the difficulty of curing the Leprousie is seated 28. Hipocrates had not as yet known the immediate subject of sence 29. Life what it is 30. A nearer Doctrine concerning sense 31. The immediate subject of sense 32. A deaf or dull definition concerning the Sensitive soul 33. How Sensation or the act of feeling happens 34. Why for sensation there is no need of recourse unto the Braine 35. The seate of the Mind 36. What pain is 37. In what sense paine may be action and passion 38. Paine and a disease by what Beginning they may be made 39. Of what sort anger and fury are in this place 40. Pain what sort of passion it is 41. Concerning the Apoplexy 42. The manner delivered of making the Apoplexy is ridiculous 43. Paracelsus about this place is a like frivolous and unconstant to himself 44. The meditation of the Authour 45. Some absurdities accompanying the Schooles 46. A new distinction of causes 47. A stopping up of the arteries in the throate what it may argue 48. That a positive Apoplexy is hitherto unknown by the Schooles and practitioners 49. That the Apoplexy and Palsie are not made from the afflux or flowing of phlegm into the bosome of the Braine 50. Galen is ridiculous in the neâ—like contexture of the brain 51. An examination of some remedies 52. That an Apoplexy is not the primary affect of the braine 53. That there is a tasting in the midriffs 54. A secondary passion is prooved to be from below 55. The properties of the head how far they may ascend in themselves 56. A true Apoplexy is positive not privitive and that the Schooles are ignorant of 57. The astonishment or unsensiblenesse of the Schooles is noted by the astonishment of the fingers 58. The manifold impossibility of the Schooles which followes upon a privative Apoplexy 59. The Schooles are astonished in the astonishment of the touching 60. A history of the astonishment of the hands from a Quartane Ague 61. The rise or original of a positive Apoplexy 62. The Palsie is a contracture or convulsion of the sinewy marrow 63. The Palsie is oftentimes without the Apoplexy 64. The shortnesse of the neck what it may argue 65. From whence frictions or rubbings in an Apoplexy were instituted 66. Why they are ridiculous 67. The anguishes of the Schooles 68. The rubbing of the skinne contradicts the phlegme of the Cerebellum or little brain of the hinder part of the head 69. The generation of the stupefactive or sleepifying matter of an Apoplexy 70. Why the Apoplexy is called by the Germans a stroak 71. The place of an Apoplexy is proved to be in the Duumvirate 72. The stumbling of the Schooles about the examination of the property of simples 73. Against the position of the Schooles concerning the phlegme of the fourth bosome of the braine 74. The perplexities of the Schooles concerning the hurting of the sense motion remayning safe and on the other hand 75. It is explained by some positions why sense may be hurt motion remayning safe 76. The Apoplexy after the manner of hereditary diseases lurks in the formative faculty of the seed 77 Against the cause of the Schooles for an Apoplexy 78. Against the cause of the Schooles for a Palsey 79. The causes of the Apoplexy 80. That the Apoplexy doth not consist of a privative cause 81. The definition of an Apoplexy 82. What a true Palsie is 83. Diverse stupefactive remedies 84. That sleepifying medicines as such do not cure madnesses 85. What hath deceived the Schooles herein 86. A sweet Anodine orpain-ceasing medicine is harmlesse 87. Why Anodines as such do not presuppose cold 88. What a sleepifying medicine is 89. An Anodine pertaining to the Falling-sicknesse differs from that of the Apoplexy 90. A returne unto paine 91. There is a forreigne consent for paine 92. From whence paines are con-centrall with the stars 93. Whether the venal blood be informed by the soul 94. Sense and pain wherein the may subsist 95. What may cause paine and after what sort 96. Whether sense or seeling be made passively 97. The primary cause of paine and sense 98. The Schooles stay behind 99. The consideration of life hath regard hitherto 100. A vainprivy shift of the Schooles 101. A demonstration of the fire that pain and sensation may from thence cleerly appear 102. That these things have layen hid to the Schooles 103. What is to be considered for searching into the proper agent of paine 104. The rules of the Schooles concerning the activity of simples is reproved by the way 105. From whence the Schooles have been deluded
is present that is while that formal Animal and Sensitive Light is kindled even as elsewhere concerning the Birth of Formes believe also that the immortal mind is present and that it doth wholly sit immediately in the Sensitive Soul as being associated or joyned thereunto Not indeed that it sits in a certain corner bowel prison of the Body or shop of the spirits But I conceive that the mind is throughout the whole Sensitive Soul and that it pierceth this Soul nor that it doth exceed the Sphear thereof as long as it lives and in this respect that it is subject unto many importunities of circumstances But in death the mind is separated because the Sensitive Soul it self departs into nothing as it were the light of a Candle which things surely were here to be fore-tasted of before the explication of Sensation Pain therefore as that which is chiefly to be felt shall open unto us the way For it is a hurtful and sorrowful Sensation or act of feeling conceived in the vital Spirit being by life implanted in the sensitive soul And in speaking most nearly Sense or Feeling is a Possion of the sensitive soul conceived in the spirit of Life For nothing can be glad sorrowful or in pain besides the soul it self And so that Sense seeing it is the first conception of Pain or well-pleasing it is by all means made primarily in the Soul And therefore Sense represents unto me nothing besides that power of the Soul of conceiving and judging passively of external Objects rushing on it Therefore seeing that these Acts do depend on the Soul the whole History whereof is blind unto us it is no wonder that it hath been hitherto nought but carelesly treated by the Schools concerning the Soul and Sensation Because they are those who have skipt over the Enquiries of far more manifest things as untouched yea through sloath they have neglected them by subscribing to the dreams of Heathens In Pain therefore the irrational Sensitive Soul is first or chiefly sorrowful is mad is angry is perplexed doth itch or fear and as it is in the fountainous root of all vital actions it naturally moves and contracts not only the Muscles but also any of the parts unto the tone of its own passions Sense therefore is the action of external Objects that are to be perceived the which while they are conceived in the Soul it self also suffers no less than life its companion than the animal spirit and the rest of the guard But the immortal mind suffers not any of these things in its own substance but only in its Subject Seat Inn to wit the Sensitive Soul Otherwise all voluntary things at once are too invalid so as to be able to affect an immortal Being which is Eternal in its future duration But it is as yet a very small matter that the Sensitive Soul doth suffer by sensible Objects unless it self be made as it were hostile to it self while aâ— impatient it is exorbitant or disorderly For it begins to act while it is provoked and doth suffer by sensible Objects For truly it shakes the vital Spirit and the whole body and at length as prodigal it disperseth the vital furniture and breeds diseases on it self and hastens its own death That even from hence also the Proverb may be verified That none is more hurt than by himself as the Sensitive soul is a meer act And so that it being once spurred up by sensible conceptions for it is wholly irrational brutal wrongful and greedy of desire it leaps over into furies and symptomatically or furiously shakes all things Therefore sensible Objects are the occasions of hurts and diseases But the sensitive Soul well perceiving the same occasions nor being willing to suffer them diversly stirs up its own Ministers and by Idea's imprinted on them estrangeth them from their Scope or Purpose From whence afterwards proceed various seeds and Off-springs of Diseases The Soul therefore undergoes and suffers the aforesaid affects from the Object that is to be felt from whence it being disturbed or tossed by the pricks of Sensations doth act and suffer lastly as being prodigal it in a rage disperseth its own family-order of Administration And while it perceiveth sweet plausible helpful Objects and those things which are grateful unto it self it is not in this its acts of feeling differing from the Judgement whereby it feeleth hurtful corrosive pricking rending brusing Objects not but by accident which is plainly external to the life it self From whence it is easily discerned that Sense is made by the Judgement of the sensitive Soul being brought upon a conceived sensible object it altering at first by it self according to the Sensation conceived and then it conveigheth it further unto another imaginative Judgement which is separated from the sensitive Judgement no otherwise than as Sense and Phantasie or Imagination do disagree in their Faculties but not in their Subject Spare me ye Readers if I attribute all material perturbations and affections immediately to the sensitive soul and to the spirits its guardians but not unto the organs of those For there are some tickling things which by their itching and itch-gumme do stir up laughter and a small leaping in some which in others do not move the least of these For oft-times the Soul is inwardly overclouded with a natural Sensation and is also sadned the Subject thereof being scarce known yea it elsewhere doates And elsewhere the sensitive soul becomes unsensitive as in those that have the Falling Sicknesse for a time but in the Palsey oft-times for Life at leastwise in Organs that are hurt although as yet alive But in many without Sense Judgement and Reason although the animal spirits do issue forth and being diffused into the habit of the body do move and in the mean time do otherwise draw hurtful impressions So the life and that sensitive soul have their own drowsinesse madnesse and trouble within although nothing shake and burden them from without because seeing that in sleep also there is its own foolish Lust or Desire Hunger Thirst Fear Agony and a wondrous dissolute liberty of irrational vain dreams And moreover friendly things are presently changed into mixt neutral or hostile ones as the Archeus which never keeps Holiday or is idle doth of sweet things make bitter and corroding ones For the Soul as I have said conceiveth of sensible things by the means of a Guard and Clients unto whom she her self as present is an an Assistant and by applying those objects unto her self stirs up Sorrow Love Fear c. To wit of which Idea's she sealingly forms the Characters or Impressions in her own Archeus whereby she changeth all things acording to the Image seminally proposed unto her self Which Character being through a bedewing of the Sensitive Soul made partakers of Life and Sense do first cloath the seminal body of the Archeus from whence at length most prompt faculties or abilities for action do spring And there is
also disturb the imaginative power because they actually proceeded through the arteries upwards as forreigners and strangers to wit by be-giddyng things whereby indeed whirlines only how cruel ones soever were presented the understanding remayning fafe For the occasional causes also of these whirlings do remaine in the places about the short ribs from whence they by the power of government vitiate the Brain it self but not the abstracted faculties of the mind which are immediatly sealed in the spirits Even so as the Elf's hoofe being bound to the finger restraines the same rigour of the Duumvirate in those that have the falling sicknesse I also well weighed as it were by an Optical inspection after what manner the first conceptions might be formed the midriffs and from thence being sent unto the head polished And at length after what sort these midriffs might be diversly tossed in dotages and Hypochondriacal madnesses without any running round of the head And how in drunken persons a whirling might accompany their foolish madnesse But elsewhere after what sort a whirling 〈…〉 of the head might induce no stumbling of the minde Even as otherwise how the memory might stumble the man remayning safe and sound Truly as I seriously and with much leisure weighed these things with my self I found that qualities do follow their own Idea's and by course act their own tragedies in the excrement themselves to wit which diverse properties of qualities I then at first cleerly apprehended to be as it were seminal endowments and true formal Idea's whereby indeed the strength of the sensitive soul for why they are companions of the same formal order was vitiated and variously subdued and yielded to the importunities of active Idea's Alasse for grief then the bottome of the soul so called by Taulerus manifested it self unto me which was nothing else but the immortal minde it self to wit in what great utter darknesses it might be involved as it were in coates of skin as it was fast tied to and entertained in the Inne of the very sensitive soul while the terme of life endures And so from hence I clearly knew him whom I have also therefore concerning Long Life by an unheard word explained to the honour of God the contempt of Satan and the Magnificence or great Atchievement of the whole Perigrination of man I have also taught concerning Long Life that the Head is the fountain of the growth of the parts placed under it which thing Crump-backed persons do also confirm and so that from the head the State and Duration of Growth is limited That bounds also are described by the hairs and therefore that heads void of care do scarce wax gray I profess therefore with the Schools That a vital Light is indeed diffused from the Brain as from a fountain and dispersed through the sinews and that that Light being absent the faculties that are silent in their proper Inns are also straightway silent through a priâ—ative occasion For although Sense and Motion do after some sort depend as well perceptively as executively on the implanted spirit of the parts yet because all particular parts are vitally nourished by a besprinkled light of the Brain The Thred also or Beam of this Light being intercepted Sense and Motion likewise are as soon as may be intercepted But these things do shew only a privative Apoplexie not indeed so truly a Disease as an accidental one even as I have shewn above in the Strayning of the Turning-Joyuts But not that therefore the fountainons cause of the Senses and Motions in the spirit dieth with that privation although the functions thereof be suspended while that Light from above is suspended For a Fly doth sometimes frequently flie when his head is taken off Also the Head of a man being cut off his joynts do oftentimes for a good while leap a little and are contracted and do as yet afford the signes of an in-bred motion But of a positive and diseasie Apoplexie there is a far different cause and property For now and then a depriving of Sense and Astonishment straightway lights into the palm of the hand or into the one only finger the motion thereof notwithstanding remaining safe Doth therefore Phlegm a forreigner to that finger fall into the middle or pith of the sinew To wit by a pipe wherewith the small Nerve is throughout bored thorow and conspirable with the Brain Or perhaps doth an unwonted Vapour of Phlegm run down thither and the which otherwise was wont or ought to climb upwards the nature of Vapours so determining and by a vital violent force obeying But at leastwise one only Nerve extended into the Tendon of the Palm bestowes Sense and Motion on the four fingers alike Why therefore is the Feeling alone stupified in one finger only Again What Vapour being ever lifted up even from the most tough snivel was grosser or not equal to that which ascends from the water Let as many as have been Distillers in the Universe answer Why therefore shall a gross Vapour of Phlegm the which I have sufficiently demonstrated elsewhere to be a non-being be required for an astonishment and not that of simple water or of the blood But if indeed a Vapour of the latex or blood shall effect that thing then also there shall be a necessary ordinary and continual general stupefaction of all parts without intermission And then if some forreign or exerementous humour or vapour be the ocasional cause of such an astonishment to wit the privative and stoppifying one of a nerve surely it is sent oâ— runs down thither of its own accord If it be sent yet at least not from the Brain or the marrow its Vicaress For so it should not straightway affect as neither at leastwise strike at one only finger and the utmost part of the finger which was but presently before healthy Neither is that Vapour sent from the spirit the Family-administrater of Life because it is that which should more willingly and readily go forth as being banished by transpiration Therefore that thing manifestly contradicteth providence and a natural care of diligence which alwayes dispenseth all things foâ— the best end Because nature as too injurious to her self should dash against the sinewes those things which she according to her wonted manner had more easily better and more nearly commanded away unto the natural and ordinary emunctory of the skin And so that vaporal Fable of the Schools which is to be scourged contains a manifold impossibility For the Pipe of the Sinews ends into the thorny marrow with a straight thred and a continued passage neither hath it any transverse trunks through which it should transmit that phlegmatish vapour sidewayes for otherwise there would be made a total loss of the spirits before they could come down unto the Muscle the Executer of Motion so far is it that it should suck the same vapour that way That Humour or Vapour therefore cannot be transmitted or descend unto one only finger and much
to be from the errour of a convulsive Retraction and not rather from that of both the supposed causes To wit as well through a stoppage of the netve from Phlegm filling it as they say as by a pressing together of the dryed sinew and as if so great a sudden drying up thereof were credible or possible to be in a live body Yea after what manner doth a nerve being now once withered suppose thou by too much insolency as they say of laxative Hellebour presently again admit of a restauration of its own radical moisture being dryed up Why hath it been necessary to feign and admit of a filling or emptying of a sinew if a poysonous quality can afford the Convulsion without either of them The received opinion therefore of the Schooles concerning the causes of the Convulsion or Cramp registred to be from the emptinesse and fulnesse of the sinewes is ridiculous For although they with Galen acknowledge also a third Cause which is that of a malignant quality Neverthelesse they stick as convicted in the two former Causes For they err in the Matter Object Efficient and manner of making That is in the whole As if a small Nerve being extended unto a Muscle which oft-times scarce equalizeth the grossenesse of a threefold thred being moistened more than is meet and dryeâ— than is fit to be should be made by so much shorter than it self by how much a muscle drawes the members together perhaps to to the length of a span Yea as though as well the be dashing of an hostile Humour as the emptying of a Nerve should cause the paines of a Convulsion They bring hither the ridiculous Example of dryed Clay when as in live Bodies drynesses are impossible and they also afford impossible Restaurations While as notwithstanding those Cramps do oft-times cease of their own accord The Schooles have thought that those feigned Moistnesses and Drynesses of a little sinew which could scarce effect the latitude of a straw do contract the Muscle even into the Convulsion of a foot-length Neither likewise is that Example of value That the string of a Lute being wet with the Rain of Heaven leaps assunder as broken in regard that it is cut short by the imbibed Liquor For first of all it might have been extended longer by twofold than the feigned extension thereof in its breadth had shortened the same The Schooles do not take notice that a moist membrane is brickle as also a dry one and therefore also that Lute-strings are kept fat in oyl lest they should become wet or wax dry Away with their examples which have no place in a live body For in a living body the sinews cannot be so dryed that their witheredness can cause any abbreviation 2. They being once dryed can never afterwards receive a moistening any more than drie old age it self 3. They deny a Convulsion arisen from a laxatâ—ve medicine to be made by a poyson For if they should acknowledge a poyson to be in a solutive medicine they should cut off their own purse A Convulsion therefore arising from a solutive Medicine as from only an emptying but not from a poysonous Medicine should be indeed from an emptiness or dryness of the sinews But a Convulsion or Cramp arisen from a loosening Medicine is oft-times restored Therefore it is not bred from a dryness of the sinews 4. Every lean old person should be drawn back by a perpetual and universal Convulsion 5. Seeing a sinew is not the executive member of motion therefore the shortening of at sinew proves not a Convulsion of the joynts as though an arm or leg ought to follow upon the cutting short of a sinew 6. Seeing that a nerve being moistened so that it were made by so much the shorter by how much through a forreign humour being imbibed it should be extended on its breadth such a humour should be plainly contrary to nature it should effect a Palsey rather then a Convulsion But a Palsey is Diametrically opposite to a Convulsion it self as well in Sense as in Motion 7. How could a stroak of the Scull presently at one moment dry up the sinews of one side but by moistening the other sinews opposite unto them forthwith enlarge them on their breadth that they may cause the Convulsion and Palsey at once And seeing as well Emptying as Filling are feigned for the cause of the Convulsion the stroak of the Scul ought to produce the Cramp on both sides 8. It is no wonder therefore that so unsuccesful remedies have been applied to the Convulsion if the Universities are hitherto ignorant of all the Requisites of Diseases For they ought to have known that every Convulsion is a vital Blas of the Muscles stirred up from the in bred Archeus The occasion whereof is a certain Malignant matter rushing on the Archeus as laying in wait for the life of the Muscles What if Hippocrates hath referred the cause of a Convulsion unto emptiness and fulness he hath had respect unto the occasions of the foregoing life To wit that there was a frequent Convulsion to riotous persons and likewise through much emptying of the Veins And Galen not apprehending the mind of the old man hath waxed lean at the humoural filling and emptying of the sinews by a succeeding and that his own device Such old wives fictions therefore which have been perswaded by the Schools unto credulous youth being despised I say that there is in the Muscles a twofold motion to wit one as it is the Organ of a voluntary motion and another as being proper to it self whereby although it draw back it self towards its head yet it nothing hinders but that the spirit implanted in those motive parts doth retract or draw back and move those parts even as was already said before concerning the â—od For neither is it repugnant to nature for the parts to leap a little by a local motion of their own the soul being absent to wit for the parts which are moveable by another Commander to be furiously contracted through a sorrowful sensation seeing that another conspicuous motion is singularly wanting to the Muscles whereby it may denote the hurt brought on them besides that whereby it executes the voluntary motion of the Soul And moreover it is altogether natural to all the members and proper to the common endeavour of the parts for those to be drawn together by reason of the sorrowfull sense of an injury brought on them which place the Schooles have left untouched Wherefore I have accounted it an erroneous thing to believe with the Schooles That the Convulsion is an affection of the Head For now they depart herein from their own Positions whereby they suppose the Cramp to be from filling or emptying or from a poysonous quality of the Nerves unlesse they had rather the Case being now altered that the Convulsion should arise from the filling or emptying of the Head But the Cramp is an accident of the sensitive Spirit Which thing first
life it self is entertained and sits and so it hath an immediate and plenipotentiary power on the life which is con-nexed unto it in the resembling mark of uniformity for otherwise it should be an inconvenient thing for the mad or raging life of a Fever to bring forth a disease or to conceive effect and nourish a formal and essential Beginning foundation and seed out of it self For the life is not able to establish a disease which is a seminal Being in the forreign and external subject of excrements For if the life ought to suffer by a disease to be vexed and killed thereby surely it being now defiled ought to suffer all the injury from its own self according to the Proverb None is hurt but from himself Hippocrates in times past after a rustical manner perceived that thing the first called that vital spirit The maker of the Assault as well for life as for death For God made not death for man the which began from sin But I do not deny that the life is provoked into its own injury by occasional causes yet at leastwise I could wish that the Antients had divided as is meet to be the internal cause essentially from the external occasional ones But I take not the internal and external matter for a respect of the body but that which is radically and essentially proper to the disease that I call the Internal and unseparable matter But otherwise if if it be only accidentally adjacent thereunto Therefore before all it is seriously and only to be noted in what manner the very essential thingliness of Fevers may be formed by the Essence of the efficient life That not only the very local thingliness of principiating a Disease may be hereby conceived but that moreover an essential limitation thereof essentially issuing from the life it self may be known Which things therefore are more deeply to be peirced Wherefore let it be instead of a Proposition that Mortality Death and a Disease seeing they entered with sin they corrupted the life and defiled the whole humanity with impurity Not indeed that the entrance of all particular Fevers is therefore from a new sin as neither immediately from original sin although they have originally defluxed from thence But in the state of Purity there was Immortality no Death no Disease because then the immortal mind immediately governed the body and therefore it suffered not any thing by frail things which are altogether inferiour to it self therefore it deserveedly freed its own Mansion united unto it self from death and corruption But after the departure out of the right way the mind delivered up its government to the sensitive soul whence the life became subject to a thousand inconvenient necessities of death The Sensitive soul therefore afterwards stirred up the Vital air which after that began to be called by Hippocrates 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the Maker of the Assault and the chief Work-man of Diseases But the power of the same was badly understood by his followers and that Maker of the Assault remained neglected by Successours it being also unknown that the differences of diseases did issue immediately from the life And therefore the whole buisiness of Diseases was falsely committed unto occasional and never existing Humours For I have concerning the Original and Principles of Healing delivered the manner whereby that Maker of the Assault produceth an Ideal Being from whence Fevers and all Diseases borrow their Original The which generation of Idea's or shapie likenesses being there professly handled I will only touch at by the way First therefore it is confessed that the madness of a dog is stirred up by or in his conception through the effective Idea of that mad poyson The which is not in any healthy dog even as in a mad one And from thence it is manifest that that poyson which strikes our imagination after the biting is framed by an Idea caused by the conception of the mad dog The same thing ptoffers it self in the Tarantula in Serpents and things sore moved with fury So in the Plague-grave I have demonstrated that this Idea is made not only by the fear of the man but also of the vital air Wherefore also it is very equally necessary that for a Fever which is stirred up from the assaulting spirit and vital Beginning not which ariseth is moved or increaseth of its own accord or of nothing a motive Idea or effective cause springs up in the same vital Beginning being indeed poysonsome in it self and varying according to the signatures or impressions which this tree of a feverish Idea utters for its fruits For since of nothing nothing is made but of something alwayes something As well the Antients as the Moderns have supposed that any Fevers whatsoever do of necessity arise from the strife of the Elements or at least of feigned Humours Neither have they till now cleerly defined of which of these two the texture of Fevers might be But since the Elements are but three in number neither do these flow together unto the constitution of bodies because I shall elsewhere shew the connexion of these to be impossible they cannot produce any strange Beginning from themselves But Humours since they never have hitherto any where been and since Fevers are of a more aiery and abstracted body than that which a liquid excrement is thought to be I have discerned that from nothing nothing is indeed materially made but that most things are efficiently effectively and formally made from a conceived Idea which do forthwith after cloath themselves with bodies Indeed by the conception active Ideas are made and the formal Beginnings of seeds which presently cloath themselves with the coat of the vital spirit wherewith they then in the next place come upon the stage and are made that Maker of the Assault which is known by the Schools only by its name alone and therefore neglected by practical Physitians For that Fevers do now and then arise from the disturbances of the mind that is very well known to persons of no reputation and Barbers But that the Archeus or the spirit which violently assaileth doth suffer its own perturbations and conceive the Off-springs of these the Idea's stirred up in it self hath indeed been even hitherto unthought of and unheard of in the Schools Notwithstanding nothing is more certaine than that the spittle of a mad dog doth a good while after the death of the dog produce its madness in whom he bit it being plainly very like to its own dog from whence it issued Wherefore there was in the spittle a forming seminal Idea of that madness produced being like unto that from whence the first infection flowed For such an infection presupposeth an active vital and potent propagative power of its seed because it can cause death and madness in us But that power never acteth as a naked accident but as it inhabites in a formal subject of inhesion Neither also that the visible matter or Inn of its
and rare stink of Caves accompanies an Earthquake or an unaccustomed stink happens in Lâ—kes then endemiâ—al signs have occasional powers These things of a future plague But as to what concerns a plague being present truly I could never by the pulse or urine even although it were distilled know the plague to be present Paracelsus indeed ridiculously enough numbers it among the diseases of the Liver and among Tartarous ones even as elsewhere in a Treatise and in overthrowing the fiction of Tartars I have profesly prosecuted This man attributes an unnamed pulse to the Pest which he calls a fourth But I although I have seriously and often heeded yet I acknowledge my own unaptness that I never found such a pulse But I have well noted about the end of life an unequally inordinate creeping and at length an intermitting pulse But I have never found a fourth or a sixth pulse diverse from the rest from a peculiar bewraying of the plague but a pestilent pulse different from continual malignant Fevers hath never offered it self unto me The urine therefore and the pulse have never according to my unskilfulness discovered the plague yea while I more narrowly rowled over the writings of Paracelsus I knew that he was never present with one infected with or about to die of the plague In the mean time the judgement of the plague loads the conscience as well in respect of the party afflicted as of the family of the same because the Pest doth by a certain similitude resemble a Pretor or chief Officer in a crime who requires a loss both of life and goâ—ds and so a rash judgement of the Pest contains a crime For to have known the plague by the shape of an unwonted Fever may be easie to another surely unto me it hath been very difficult Thou wilt say the Pest is with a Fever and headach but that is fâ—miliar unto other Fevers Vomiting and the drowsie evil doth oft-times accompany the plague but that is not altogether unwonted elsewhere There are in the Pest Buboes in the groyn Parotides or little Bladders behind the ears those signs are not unfrequently proper to Fevers that are free from the plague There are also black spots in the plague the which I have seen in women that have been strangled by their womb There is also a Purple Fever and likewise leaden Pustules or Wheals without the Pest as also a Carbuncle doth oftentimes happen without the plague But as oft as many of those signs do concur there is no difficult judgement concerning the Pest for a Bubo in the groyn little bladders or spots from the beginning before much cruelty of the plague do denounce the plague So also a Carbuncle or Bubo and a very small tumour is far more painful in the pest than any where else and they are present almost before the increase of the Fever and they prevent the suspition that they sprang from the Fever so that those miseries of the skin do go before in the Pest which in other Fevers happen more late as it were the products thereof a pestilent Bubo being as yet small persently and out of hand existeth as cruel without pain of the member and lessening of the Fever and paineth greatly But if a Bubo issue forth after a fore-going pain of the member it carries the judgement of an unfit remedy Therefore they are the ordinary signs of the Pest being already entertained if before or presently after the beginning of the Fever a Glandule Parotis behind the ear Carbuncle Bladder Pustule or spot shall suddenly invade and that with the greatest pain For in other Fevers they do not so notably pain the place indeed is red and swells before the malady be bred which hath not it self in such a manner in the plague And the Pest is confirmed by vomiting by an excelling pain of the head by a deep drowsiness by a doating delusion and by a dejected appetite if they shall suddenly invade For the Pest that comes unto one from far being drawn in through a contracting of the poyson enters as it were the pain of a pricking Bodkin and presently with the greatest pain marks the part which it strikes with a swelling with a wheal with a little bladder or with a spot Even as also that which enters in by an odour strikes the stomach and head with a suddain pain or sleepiâ—ying anguish or stirs up the stomach it self as it were a spur unto vomiting But if it springs from an internal poyson it hath a fore-going Fever upon which some of the aforesaid signs do straightway succeed But that Pest which invades from a snatched terrour is speedy and is discerned by the testimony of the sick But that which hath arisen from some kâ—nd of terrour of the Archeus but not of the man and which lurks in the Tartar of the blood is indeed in a degâ—ee unto the plague and breaks forth more slowly than is wont and is easily overcome unlesse the negligence of the sick shall hinder yet its delay is the longer in the journey for for the most part the accompanying signs of the Pest are known timely enough that the remedy which shall be prompt and which shall be peremptory may rightly perform its office Nevertheless it should be my wish to know the Pest in its making For that which produceth its signates only after death takes away a great number from amongst us and destroys many families because it hath already become mortal before it makes it self manifest or be known because it hath first finished its task with the hicket fainting and an Escharre in some Noble place For they call this the Tragedy of one day therefore a Diary or Ephemeral Fever Not that the Pest hath the Spirit of Life for its proper seat although there was never any plague which hath not also infected the Archeus and so also by that title every plague ought always to be a Diary Fever But whatsoever of the Archeus is conquered by the Pest that consequently is by and by separated by that vital Archeus At length that also brings most speedy death which besieged the Archeus of some bowel because the birds of death do continually fly from thence which trample the rest of the Archeus under their feet For I wish and wish again that we may not know the Pest too late nor from the event For a speedy death although it may produce its own signs yet it rather profits for the future but nothing those that are gone and past For some to this end anoint the soals of the feet with fresh Lard they apply a Puppy which if he lick they perswade themselves that the chance is free from the plague But others heat a piece of Lard at the feet of the sick party and cherish it for sometime under his arm-pits or in his groyn and they say that this will not be devoured by a dog if the plague be present which thing deserves no credit for the
Country I say raging with heats imitating of and co-bordering on Africa Nor also because their great men do cool their drink with snow because at least the Rusticks and Citizens should pay the punishment of their own sins with the plague But Aegypt useth waters and fruits from whence there is a fermental putrefaction in their flesh but Spain useth wine and indeed that which is pitcht because seeing for the most part they want Hogsheads they keep their wines in pitched Hides or Leathern Jacks Italy hath wooden vessels therefore it doth not as constrained make use of pitch and it is more frequently violently taken with the Pest For pitch being applyed to Carbuncles is for an ease or comfort and they are quickly opened for pitch imitates the blackness of an Eschar Among known trees the pitch-tree alone is made a torch and by reason of its fatness it presently dies if but a little earth be added to its Trunk for God is liberal in his remedies and that is proper to his goodness For death happening by a tree it hath seemed to be ordained for a remedy against death unto man that was made mortal by a tree The smell of pitch is familiar for a suffumigation unto very many Provinces infected with the Plague For so Petus affirmeth that Hippocrates had not one only remedy against the Pest and that he was sacrificed unto by the Athenians as it were unto a protecting starry God When as therefore the Greeks saw Hipocrates to use a remedy known only to himself unto whom therefore they attributed their life health and whole preservation they by degrees despairing the use of salt and sulphur went more and more into oblivion especially if some years that were free from the plague interposed And afterwards every Physitian began to select divers medicines hoping that his own was the Antidote of Hippocrates From whence there was afterwards a standing crop of remedies collected without number for the most part with empty ears At length from a slender senting of the praise of the Viper the composition of Triacle arose it being partly loaded with a confounding of simples and their odours being partly dispersed in time of preparation and they cast away the better properties of the Viper in the broaths At this day the Antidote of Orvietanus is made of great account for thplague because he first dated to swallow any poyson unknown unto him in the open market place which thing the Germans at this day perform only by the use of the Snake For they little distinguish the Pest from other poysons and have â—aken little notice that against the will of the Electuary of Orvictaâ—â—s the plague notwithstanding hath lately raged throughout all Lumbardy For I omit that the Pest doth radically differ from other poysons Quercetanus and the Writers of this sort in their Caco-Alexiteries or bad medicines against poyson and in their young beginnings do dictaâ—e very many remedies whether boldly or sottishly let others judge from the roots of the Pest supposed every one whereof is framed not indeed from knowledge but from thinking alone and the Author of them is worthy of pity if not of punishment For Ranzovius concerning defending health describes a Saxenian Antidote for his Son it being tryed divers times by me but always in vain because the poyson consisting in a spiritual image of terrour hath nothing in the aforesaid Antidote which can radically overcome the same image and therefore by reason of the ignorance of the causes of the Pestâ— any one hath devised many remedies and also hath connexed many things unharmoniously together against the poyson forreignly entring Indeed all of them confused without a method experience reason and knowledge of the causes And nothing having been at all devised against the Pest arisen from the foolish image of terrour and the perswaâ—ion of fearâ—ulness afterwards from the age of Hipocrates every Physitian began at pleasure to select divers remedies and to connex many things together and much more than many hoping that his own invention was that of Hippocrates In the mean time the number of compositions increased and by degrees uncertainty supplanted the antient truth And although an Antidote which operateth about the effects of the poyson produced in the body be to be greatly esteemed yet while it operateth not on the terrours of the Archeus and the image produced from thence truly neither can it bring help to the pestilent contagion or if any one do revive from the plague with those Antidotes that is not done but with an unfaithful succour For in the plague the Archeus himself is well nigh bewiâ—ched with terrour and grief and stamps a pernicious image on himself which is the true Pest from which neither doth he voluntarily re-arise unless by a singular power of nature and divine grace Moreover as I have elsewhere demonstrated in a particular Treatise that the first assaults of conceptions do not stand in a free disposition of the will but that they are framed in the midriffs So by arguments drawn from thence I have fitly or exactly beheld that the image of terrour and indeed the plague it self is formed about the Jurisdiction of the stomach and spleen and that thing I seriously and by long leisure discerned and have exactly confirmed from observation by very many histories one or two whereof to have repeated shall not be besides our purpose A certain young man beholding his little Sister to be be-spotted with a black mark and to be dead being sore smitten with terrour presently felt a load about the mouth of his stomach the admonitress of continual sighing He daily used Triacle Myrrhe and the root of Butterbur being adjoyned thereunto he ate and drank even unto merriment At length on the twelfth day after the death of his Sister a Fever and deep drowsiness laid hold on him and on the third day after he died A Noble Virgin having suffered a colike burden and anguish of terrour at length passed over restless nights with a dejected appetite with sighs and oppressions of her stomach and a panting heart a slow and continual Fever took hold on her with an uncessant strugling of fear and hope For as many deliberations of animosity or courage and of free resignation as she could make with her self were in vain Meats also being despised there at length remained place foâ— strong wine and that also she soon disdained neither also was she so greatly afraid of death as of future doating delusions In the mean time she laughed at her foolish perplexities or mournful vanities and it grieved her self of her own â—olly But the Physitians had sent their own Antidotes unto her under which the Duel of her mind increased no otherwise than as in those that are bitten by a mad dog with their disease of the fear of water and at length through the mortal â—orrow of the pestiferous terrour she now plainly despaired in mind because she was she who for three weeks space had admitted
of no sleep with a perpetuak Agony and despairing of life and yet was vexed with her self through la full remembrance or knowledge of her own foolish strugling and Opiates being administred she found her self worse At length between the fear and desiring of death she plainly recovered by the remedy of Hippocrates in six hours space In the mean time I confess and admonish by way of protestation that I have plainly enough manifested the bosom of the remedy of Hippocrates that it may be sufficiently plain only unto the Sons of Art and true Physitians and covered for the future only to sloathful Physitians that are enslaved to gain and to the envious haters of the truth But I have declared 1. The aforesaid histories that plagues beginning may be manifest not to be as yet seasoned with the pestilent poyson and not yet to be accompanyed with a sufficient image of terrour 2. And that the virtue of the remedy of Hippocrates may from thence be made manifest 3. That the first violent motions of confusion terrour and imagination do happen in the midriff about the mouth of the stomach To wit in the Spleen whose emunctory is nigh the mouth of the stomach and so that it is the mark of that Archer For in a healthy young man whom the plague had snatched away in seven hours time a dissection of his body being begun I found a long eschar now made to be as at first the mover of vomit and afterwards the Authour of continual swoonings so also to have given an occasion of sudden death even as in others I have noted a threefold eschar to have been made in the stomach â—n sixteen hours space 4. That the master of Animal subtilty hath with his white wand of sleep chosen the Inn of drowsie sleep and watchings in the same place 5. And that the seat of all madnesse and doatage is in the same place And that thing I have elswhere profesly founded by a long demonstration 6. That purging likewise as also myrrâ—ed Antidotes for the Pest are not safe enough or worthy of confidence 7. And that all reason deliberation animosity resignation consolation argumentation and all the subtilty of man on the contrary do but wash the Aeâ—hiopian in the Pest even as also in the disease Hydrophobia 8. That the endeavour of preservatives is sluggish as oft and as long as the seal of the image framed by terrour remayneth 9. That such an image stirs up from it self continual sorrows and spurns at the phantasie it self and drawes it captive to it self no lesse than the biting of a mad dog brings forth an unwilling fear of water or the sting of a Tarantula the doâ—tage of a tripping dance 10. That the comfort of sweating alone is loose in such terrours 11. That the Idea of fear not being vanquished in the bowel nor the dreg wherein that image sits banished it is in vain whatsoever the magistrals or compositions of the shops do attempt For Hydrophobial persons although now and then between while they speak discreetly fore-feel and fore-tel a madnesse coming upon them yet they cannot but be driven into the madnesse of their own image 12. That swimming is destructive and whatsoever restraineth sweat 13. That Barley broaths pulses syrupes and Juleps are loose and frivolous remedies for so great a malady 14. That it comes from a bastard plague unto a true or Legitimate one yet that the sick do often fail under the beginning thereof before it sends forth its tokens The which traiterous signes do notwithstanding presently after death issue forth 15. That grateful odours the perfumes of spices feathers or shooes do bring no defence or succour for the plague For by way of example if thou seasonest an hogshead of wine putrified through continuance with the odour of spices or with any other odour except that of Sulphur it remaines fermentally putrified and it soon defiles the new wine which thou shalt pour in as the former Wherefore sweet-smelling things do in no wise take away the terrour and the poysonous Idea of terrour from the Archeus being once terrified Because they take not away the maâ—ter of the poyson and much lesse do they kill that poyson or remove the terrour from the Archeus as neither do they refresh the seat thereof or comfort the part affected For Paracelsus commends unto the City of Stertzing that was bountiful unto him myrrhe being by degrees melted under the tongue before any other remedies and boldly promiseth it unto the younger sort for a preservation for 24. houres space which doctrine notwithstanding I have experienced to be false For I have seen young folks with the much use of myrrhe to have been killed by the plague Myrrhe indeed although it may preserved dead cracases from putrefaction instead of a blasam yet the Pest far differs from putrefaction No otherwise than as the eschar of a bright burning iron differs from putrified blood And although corruption succeedeth in a carcass now dead yet the poysonous image of terrour doth not properly putrify as it doth most properly slay the vital Archeus and tranchange him into a poyson with it self For he bids that myrrhe be held in the mouth As if the plague knew not how to to enter but by way of the mouth Therefore far more advisedly to have shut up the mouth in silence Truly the Pest will abhor myrrhe nor will it daâ—e to enter in through the nostrils if myrrhe being detained in the mouth doth dissolve shall perhaps the odour of myrrhe hinder whereby the poysonous image is the lesse poysonsom is not poysonsom Is not hurtful For shall myrrhe in the mouth repulse the plague from the Archeus The same reason is alike frivolous and foolish for Triacle vinegar c. perfumed with odours At length let mortals know that in healing nothing is alike hurtful as a rash belief given without a pledge and truth Truly the accusations of the sick will at sometime thunder against the negligence falshood decietful juggles rashnesses and false wares of Physitians whereby people have been spoyled of their life But I have discerned by the books of Paracelsus that he was a man rash in promising unexpert in the plague unconstant in its remedies ignorant in its causes as also ungrateful toward the bountiful City of Stertzing Let his honourers spare me that I am constrained to speak candidly or plainly for the truth in a matter of so great moment least any one in the plague should put confidence in his succours CHAP. XVIII The image of terrour sifted I Have hitherto produced the unheard of poyson of the Pest To wit that the soul and the vital Archeus thereof are powerful in an imagination proper to themselves But that that power of the a foresaid imagination is to form Idea's not indeed those which may be any longer a Being of Reason or a non-being but that they have altogether actually the true Entity of a subsisting image which imagination surely seeing it is a
Predicaments through the ignorance of which or one only point heathenisme hath overwhelmed the Schooles of Medicine with the contagion of blindness And all curing hath been believed to be subject unto naked qualities excesses of degrees relative respects and actions For from hence they have feigned Contraries to be Remedies of Contraries and no Disease to be mitigated by the goodness of Nature the mildness of Medicines and by the appeasing and repentance of the Archeus that was first disturbed but only by fighting skirmishing and war to be reduced into a mean or temperature of the first qualities So that seeing they think every Disease to be a Disposition likewise that all Remedies ought to be a naked Disposition or they are deceived in their position whence it follows that the taking away of the stone out of the Bladder shall never be able of it self to import a cure of the sick For truly seeing it is a Remedy onely privative whereunto an appeasing of the Archeus belongs but it is not a Disposition contrary to the Stone And much lesse a prohibitive of the foregoing matter which they suppose of necessity to be supplied from elsewhere uncessantly to flow thither nor to cease the Stone being taken away by the knife to wit if the Disposition generating the matter whereof shall not first cease Therefore according to the Schooles He that is cut for the Stone should be cured onely for a little space to wit as the Impediments of Functions are taken away otherwise produced and cherished by the Stone being present and also as the disposition mentally interposing is secondarily casually and by accident obliterated But the mattter is far otherwise For truly a seminal Disease is a creature which made and found out its own matters and its own Idea's in us after sin by an hereditary right of the Archeus neither had he it originally in Nature And therefore the root of Diseases ought totally to be unknown to all Heathenisme And seeing an essential definition is not to be fetched from the Genus of the thing defined and its constitutive difference even as I have taught in the Book of Feavers by reason of the manifold perplexities of Errors and ridiculous positions but altogether from a connexion of both Causes which are Beings in Nature and therefore that the primitive and Ideal cause of Diseases hath stood neglected hitherto It follows also that the definition knowledge essence and roots of a Disease have remained unknown And finally that curings have been instituted by accident with an ignorance of the universal disposition of internal properties their efficacie and interchangable course Truly I know as a Christian that a Disease is not a Creature of the first Constitution because it is that which hath taken its rootes from sin in the impurity of Nature which afterwards in their own spring have at length budded in Individuals For neither were created poysons Diseases as long as they were without us but then when the Archeus of the same was made domestical unto us through the forreign disposition of its middle life it raised up seminal Idea's in our Archeus even as Fire is struck out of a Flint Then I say Diseases are made unto us the fore-runners of Death from an occasional poyson Diseases therefore do continue with us when they have their provoking occasions subsisting in our Nature until neither their occasional matter be wasted away or at least until the Archeus be rid of his own perturbations or of his office For Diseases indeed came on us by Sin and afterwards in Nature now corrupted by Sin the ferments and ready obediences of matter waxed strong and so they pierced into the number and catalogue of Nature and even unto this day do most inwardly persevere with us after a singular manner Yet alwayes distinct from other created things in this that the created things of the first constitution have a proper existence in themselves but diseases neither are nor are able to subsist without us Because they proceed as it were from a formal light and the vital constitutive Beginning of us And therefore the natural Archeus and a Disease do pierce each other because they have a material co-resemblance But the Schooles when they heeded that Diseases do never exist without us supposed that our Body was the subject of Inhaesion of Diseases and consequently that Diseases were only accidents and therefore to be stirred up from an elementary distemperature because they apprehended them in a most prompt and rustical sence also for that cause they hoped that they should sufficiently and over vanquish Diseases by Heats and Colds And therefore they likewise decreed that every refreshment aid and help which nature being informed did require of the Physitian was not to be administred in shew of a refreshment in peace and tranquility but herein onely to prevail and that wars strifes contraries and discords were to be appointed whereby the hostile elementary qualities being cobroken in us they might by constraint return into a mediocrity of temperature that so they may restrain the injuries of Nature now corrupted by contrary injuries and subdue them by revenging Which thing surely they have thus judged nor have otherwise understood because that they knew no other action than that which from a superiority of the agent rules over the patient But surely those things do not savour of an help neither is the Law of Christ by whom all things were made conformable to those Lawes of the Schooles And so as elsewhere more largely either Christ is not the parent of Nature or an adversary to himself in Nature or such Heathenish speculations of healing are rotten The Schooles therefore have not considered that the matters of many Beings do not consist but in a strange Inne whereunto they were appointed Wherefore by reason of their different kind of manner of existing they thought a Disease to be a meer accident but predicamentally seperating the matter which a Disease might carry before it from a Disease As if an Embryo should be an accident because it is no where but in the womb Indeed it pleased the revenger of sin that Diseases with their matters as well that occasional as that equal and inward unto them should not subsist but in those whose the Diseases and offence should be and that without respect of the Being of one unto another For neither have the Heathenish Schooles ever considered as neither the Moderns who have been established on Paganish Beginnings that this relation of existence came unto them from the condition of sin and the procreation thereof from the Archeus sore shaken with perturbations Because such thoughts never entred into Heathenisme neither is it a wonder that the Gentiles knew not the force of Transgression although they do deliver by the Fable of Promotheus and Pandora that they learned something from the Hebrews Yet it is a wonder that they were ignorant that a Disease before it should be made ours ought to proceed from the
most inward Beginning of Life and to be incorporated in us neither therefore that occasional Causes can be the connexed and constitutive Causes of Diseases for truly those Causes do as yet remain after life and yet Diseases cease But we must in no wise indulge Christians who are thorowly instructed by the Scriptures that they have even until now esteemed it for an honour to have delivered their minds bound unto the hurtful stupidities of Heathens They took notice indeed that there was that affinity of some Diseases with us that they were so connexed unto our Body in respect of an occasional matter that they could scarce be divided from a consent of the mind or be seperated from a hurt action as in Wounds instrumentary Diseases those deprived of the strength of Seeds For the Haw upon the Coat Cornea is that which immediately hurteth the sight as also the Stone doth without a medium stop up the passage of the Urine But the obstruction flowing from thence is a relation and Being of Reason the which as it acteth nothing so neither hath it the reason nor consideration of a Disease in Nature Nevertheless the Modern Schooles had rather to commit the Essences of Diseases unto Elementary discords than that they would confess the Bodies of Nature to bespeak nothing else besides a connexion of both constitutive Causes to them unknown For that reason miserable mortals have hitherto groaned under this burden of blindness expecting Cure from those who were fully ignorant of the constitutive Causes of Diseases Wherefore seeing a Disease ought to contain its own efficient Cause and its own matter within it self Hence it easily appears that hunger although like a very sharp Disease it kills in very few dayes yet is not a Disease because it doth not consist of Diseasie Causes whether it be considered as a sorrowful sense of the number of Symptomes or next as it consisteth of real defects Because for as much as the soure ferment of the Stomack even as in the Treatise concerning Digestions wanting an Object whereon it may act yet cannot therefore take rest it attempts by resolving the secondary humour and immediate nourishment of the Stomack for the Archeus is as well in hunger as in fullnesse the cause not onely of a Disease but of Health it self But a want of the matter of Food bespeakes a privation but not a Disease Wherefore we must altogether exactly note that Hunger although it doth cruelly slay as if it were a Disease yet that it is not a Disease in that respect to wit because the Archeus is in no wise diseasie in hunger From whence it ought to be clearly manifest that every Disease doth primarily and essentially respect its efficient Archeus For that cause it was rightly decreed by Hippocrates to the carelesnesse of the Schooles that hot cold moist or dry not indeed as such and concrete or composed are not Diseases or the causes of these but sharp bitter salt brackish c. For peradventure in the age of Hippocrates the occasional cause was not yet distinguished from a true Disease Indeed he knew a twofold excrement to be in us One indeed natural and ordinary and so ours but the other a diseasie one from its mother errour and a hostile propagation and the which we Christians know to have proceeded from the vigour of sin For when the oldman had distinguished this by forreign savours he supposed that if it were not a Disease it self at leastwise it was the adequate or suitable occasion of Diseases not yet then distinguished from a Disease The removal whereof at least should open both the folding doors of Healing But it is matter of amazement that he whom the Schooles do boast to follow as their Captain they have skipped over this his Text through sluggishness as also another Standard-defender of the same Captain wherein he hath declared that every motion unto a Disease Death and Health is efficiently made by the Spirit which maketh an assault And likewise wherein he saith that Natures themselves are the Physitianesses of Diseases and by consequence the makers also of Diseases if that assaulting spirit by its disturbance doth work all things whatsoever are done or made in living Bodies Indeed the Schooles have passed by many such things which did deserve to be accounted like Oracles because they being deluded and bewitched by four feigned Humors being traduced by the deep shipwrack of sleepiness drousiness and sluggishness have neglected the liquors which he himself nameth secondary ones as if a Disease might not be as equally possible in those as in the four feigned primary humours Therefore have they also neglected the Diseases arising from the retents or things retained of Digestions and transplantations because also they have been utterly ignorant of the Digestions and Fermentations themselves even as I have taught in its place Alas How penurious a knowledge hath graced Physitians hitherto whom otherwise if they had been true Physitians the most High had commanded to be honoured For they have considered a Disease to flow forth as an accident produced by its Agent a diseasifying matter wherein therefore that its own efficient is they have in the enterance been ignorant and the patient which they say is the Body of Man First of all They do not distinguish the Agent from the Matter which is most intimate hereunto Secondly Then They deny a Disease to be material because it is that which they suppose to be a meer Quality Thirdly Neither do they distinguish provoking Occasions from the internal Efficient because with Aristotle they suppose every Efficient Cause to be External Fourthly They separate the constitutive Causes from the thing constituted Fifthly They know not the Chain of Efficient Causes with their Products Sixthly They for the most part confound Occasional Causes with their Diseases and Symptomes Seventhly They somtimes look upon a Disease as a Disposition skirmishing between the Orders of Causes and the Body of Man Eighthly They had rather have that very later disposition arisen as they say from the fight of Causes to be a Disease the which to wit should immediately so they say hurt the actions whether in the mean time it be contrary unto a vital action or indeed it be the effect of that contrariety which shall offend the functions But I do not heed the hurtings of Functions for the Essence of a Disease but the operative disturbances extended on the Archeus do I contemplate of in Diseases For he doth often die without a sense of action being hurt who indeed suddainly falls down being in the mean time long diseasie or he that perisheth only by a defect of Nature Wherefore also I reckon it among other impertinencies to have tied up the Essence of Diseases unto the hurtings of the functions seeing that is accidental and latter to Diseases but not alwayes a concomitant Yea truly because a voluntary restoring of the enfeebled faculties doth follow health hence the Schooles have measured the Essence
out the Stain of Ignorance yet the Integrity and Sincerity of my Intention deserves pardon For truly in healing the truth of every thing comes to be judged or esteemed from the Work which it leaves behind it For neither ought those to be accounted Calumnies if the Errours of Predecessors are discovered their names being suppressed A publick humane affair is treated of by me for the sake of Charity alone If therefore I shall say that the first of those who fetch the Fundamentals of Medicine from the Heathens who hath known not only the root of Fevers but also of any Diseases whatsoever and their just Remedies is as yet desired and I shall demonstrate that thing I am void of blame neither shall I seem to be injurious But if not I pray let those who take pitty of my Ignorance instruct me even as I suppose my self to have been moved only from a compassion on mankind lest any one should hereafter entrust his Life in the hands of unfaithful Helpers who hitherto have made none free from a Disease from a certain knowledge but as many as have escaped that they have recovered through the bounty of God alone and the goodness of their Nature For this is that Paradox which I promise that I will demonstrate and in promising to stand to my Promises But I had said in the aforesaid Book of Fevers that I owed to the Stone also it s own Treatise because the Disease of the Stone is like unto a Monster and therefore that it was to be separated in a fold or section by it self For other Diseases are no where bred but in our possession but the Stone alone doth also grow together in the Urinal It becomes stony indeed as it were the product of Universal Nature but it growes in-as-much as it is the product of Nature changed to another use and that it may be made a Stone in Man but not a rockie Stone it requires a matter disposed by Man By this entrance therefore the Universities will see that they have not touched at the Causes of the Disease of the Stone so much as in its utmost coasts and they who grieve that they are blamed for their Ignorance of Fevers will acknowledge that they have more Companions of their Calamity For I would never be injurious to all that went before me and it is sufficient for me to protest that I want a mind of doing injury For far be it from me to be ignorant that an unknown matter demonstrated for the uses of ones Neighbour should want reproach especially while the ignorance of Physitians hath it self in manner of a crime and Man is at sometime to render Skin for Skin No otherwise than as a Preâ—or or judicial Officer accusing any one of a Crime is excused from Calumny I have alwayes greatly grieved that in the devout Profession of Medicine alone it hath been subscribed to so 〈◊〉 fluggish and â—rivolous Principles But that in other Professions they have so ingeniously laboured For indeed what of subtilty hath not been attempted about the five Words of 〈…〉 which they name Predicables and what subtile wiles have they 〈…〉 about 〈◊〉 things Prattles I say the witnesses of a discursive industry Raymand 〈…〉 not contented with these invented nine other most Universal Words and afterwards added unto these same nine twenty eight other Words less Universal and lastly he at length subjoyned seventy two other Universal Words whereby any things may seventeen thousand four hundred forty six times be described predicated of and distinguished Those unprofitable pratlings are the great Husks of Sciences without a Kernel Surely humane Wits are of their own accord prone to subtilties without Spurs if the ends of those subtilties are vain But in things that regard Life and Health they have snorted with a continual Lethargy The Law also is so incumbent on subtilties about the Explications of Decrees as the Sublimities wherewith the Wit of Man is snatch'd away with so wonderful an Admiration and beholds it self in its own delight that by a singular Prerogative they are called the Subtilties of the Law These indeed are less vain than talkative Faculties because that they are provided to attain and defend right But in matters of Divinity what famous things do not the Chairs hope for by their accute discussings of Questions I would to God that Mans necessity might want all these things that meum and tuum or mine and thine might be rendered to every one without any false Paint that the Faith also as in Mahometism might stand without disputation that every subtilty may depart whereof an account will not be required in the last day for so Apostolical Sincerity should return So I have received and so I have delivered unto you At least-wise they shall undergo the milder Judgment who in their Life time have been most estranged from these Subtilties But in Medicinal Affaires alass for grife where a diligent feâ—rch is most necessary profitable and commended for charity almost all things have remained untouched because careless sloath is on every side readily inclined to subscribe unto the antient blockishnesses of the ignorant it is also more damnable among those who wander through the Streets and run thorow them from house to house that they may prostitute Health to Sale and put a Disease unknown unto themselves to flight For it hath not been once by the way doubted by the Universities hitherto about the belief of the Speculations delivered by the heathens which otherwise vail a folly even with their facility alone and at the first view ought to stir up a suspition of themselves because nothing in humane Affaires hath been now for so many ages received which is more hardened in shame and blockishness nothing more full of lying and deceit nothing more wonderful in cruelty and also in credulity than a profession which maketh Experiments dayly by the Deaths of Men under a con-centrical subscription unto the Wills of the Heathens For the Nations who live without a Physitian do confess that thing with me by what a Life they lead That thing I say the more refined Physitians also do confess For a godly and sober Man but a very famous Physitian Doctor Johannes Vander Wegen being not so long since asked by me Why for truly he dwelt at Lovain and had Friends in the Court and Potentates which he cured and he was most fit for the Chair He did not desire some Lecture He ingeniously answered It was not lawful to give a tast of any other kind of Doctrin unto Youth besides that of Galen and so said he I should knowingly damn my Soul I knowing better things and teaching worse Therefore others know what I discover that I know but they dare not to discover what they know Good Jesus how long shall the drowsiness of Physitians remain and so great cruelty against the Works of thy Hands Grant grant thou oh Infinite Goodness that mortal mankind may know that the Devil Moloch envieth
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