also to you seem far fetched truly the book of Genesis teacheth us that the Soule of every living creature dwels in the bloud of it as in its proper mansion For in the bloud there inhabite certaine noble and vital powers which as if they were endowed with animation cry loud to heaven for revenge yea from the hands of Judges here below demand vindictive justice to be done upon the homicide which since they cannot be denyed to be naturall Citizens of the blood I see no reason why any man should reject the magnetism of the bloud and unjustly reckon its rare admirable effects among the ridiculous acts of satan I wil say this further that men which walk in their sleep do by the conduct of no other Motor or guide then that of the Spirit of the Bloud that is of the outward man walk up and downe clime wals and praecipices and performe many other actions difficult and impossible to men awake I say by a magicall virtue naturall to the outward man That Saint Ambrose was visibly present at the exsequies of Saint Martin though corporally at home in his owne Chamber many Leagues distant Yet he was visibly present at the celebration of his holy brothers funerall in the visible spirit of the exteriour man and no otherwise for when many holy Fathers of the Church have seen the transaction of many secret and distant things this hath been performed without the circumscription of time and place in that ecstasy which is only of the internall man by the superiour powers of the soule collected and twisted into unity and by an intellectuall vision but not by a visible presence For otherwise the soule is never divorced from the body unless in earnest once and ever and then is not capable of a reunion until the resurrection which reconnexion notwithstanding is otherwise familiar and naturall to the spirit of the outward man divorced pro tempore in some ecstasy In so great a Paradox it can hardly suffice to erect a firme building of belief upon one single pillar of reason wherefore we conceive it our duty to frame a second basis for the more substantiall supportment of our doctrine of Magnetisme and to advance to the explanation of that mysterious cause by which this Magneticall alliciency is performed also betwixt bodies devoid of animation not by any Animall but a certaine Naturall sensasion Which that we may more seriously enterprise and solidly performe we are obliged by way of praeparation to praemise an enquiry what Satan can of his own power contribute to and by what meanes he can coopeperate in the meerly nefarious and impious actions of Witches and Conjurators for from hence will it clearly appear to what particular and just cause whether Naturall or Diabolicall every effect arising from abstruse originals ought properly to be ascribed And finally what kinde of spirituall power that is which tends to and arrives at an object removed at large distance or what is the action passion and velitation or reactive encounter betwixt Naturall Spirits or wherein consists the superiority and praerogative of man above other inferiour Creatures and by consequence why our Unguent compounded of human Mumies should also cure the wounds of horses I shall explain the matter by an example Let us therefore grant a witch who can vigorously torment an absent man by an image of wax by imprecation incantation or onely by some praevious touch for in this place we have nothing to doe with Veneficious Witches properly called Sorcerers in regard they execute their malice and destroy onely by poyson which every common Seplasiarie and petty Apothecary can imitate that this action is Diabolicall no man will doubt However it pleaseth us to distinguish how much Satan and how much the Witch can contribute to this mischiefe The first Supposition First you shall take notice that Satan is the sworne and irreconcileable enemy of mankinde and so accounted by all unlesse any please to esteem him a friend and therefore that he doth most readily without any the least haesitancy or negligence attempt and procure what mischief soever lies within the reach of his malice or power against us The second supposition Next you shall observe that although he be a mortall adversary to Witches also in so much as 't is essentiall to him to maintain a most destructive hostility against all the Sons of Adam yet in respect they are his confest slaves and sworn Subjects of his own black Kingdome he never unlesse against his will and by compulsion detects them never betrays them into the hands of the Magistrate nor exposes them to the scorne and reproches of other persons and that for three reasons 1 Since he is the Grand-father of pride he very well knowes that by the detection of his favorites there is much detracted from his reputation authority and dominion 2 Since he is an insatiate Nimrod an implacable persecutor of soules he is not ignorant that by the punishment and flames which justice inflicts upon his Zanies many other men else willing and prompt to list themselves in his regiment and fall under his jurisdiction are discouraged deterred and quite averted 3 Because he often observes many a Witch whom with an obtorsion or wresting round of her neck and secret stopping of her breath he could heartily wish to destroy converted by her punishment to become an Apostate from him and repenting at sight of the flames and by this meanes snatched out of his clutches From the former of our propositions I conclude that Satan if he were able singly by his own power to destroy man whom the guilt of mortall sinne hath made obnoxious to the tyranny of death would upon no motive whatever be induced to suspend and procrastinate the execution or his destructive malice but he doth not therefore he cannot destroy him But yet the Witch doth very frequently murder man and hence also it is clear that the Witch hath a power to destroy him no otherwise then an assassine hath a power at the liberty of his own will to cut the throat of him that is fallen into his hands and therefore in this detestable action there is a certain power peculiarly belonging to the Witch which depends not upon Satan and by consequence Satan is not the principall efficient and grand executor of the homicide for otherwise if he were the prime executor he could in no respect stand in need of the Witch for a Coadjutrix and Assistant but would ere this time by his own single power have cut off and swept into the grave the greatest part of mankinde Most miserable and deplorable indeed were the condition of the posterity of Adam which should lie in subjection to so horrid a tyranny and stand obnoxious to the fate of his arbitrary cruelty but we have the Almighty Preserver of men more faithfull in his mercies towards us then to subject the workes of his own hands to the arbitrary dominion of Satan Therefore
in the body onely per nutum magically 99. In the body the Soule operateth onely by a drowsie soâ—…olent beck or restrained intuition but out of the body by a nimble and vehement The knowledge of the Apple eclipseth the knowledge magicall 100. The beginning of the Cabal drawn from dreams divinely infused 101. The defect of understanding in the outward man 102. How far the power of atan extends in Witches 103. What are the true and proper works of Satan 104. Sin took away the endowments of Grace and obscured those of Nature 105. The end of the pious exercises of Catholikes 106. The grand effect of the Cabal 107. Two subjects of all things 108. Man hath a power of acting as well by spirit as body 109. What kind of ray or effluvium is transmitted from a witch to a bruite 110. How a Witch may be discovered 111. How the spirit of a Witch may be captived and bound fast in the heart of a horse 112. The intention depraves a good work 113. The Virtue seminall is Naturally Magicall 114. The cause of the Cruentation of a murdered Carcase in the praesence of the homicide 115. Why the Plague a frequent concomitant of seidges 116. Works of mercy to be done upon the distressed though only in order to the avoydance of the Plague 117. Plagues arising from revenge and exsecrations of men dying under oppression most fatall 118. Why the carcases of malefactors were to be removed from the gibbet 119. Why excrements can be no authors of a Plague 120. Why the blood of a bull is venemous 121. Why the fat of a bulis made an ingredient into the Sympathetick unguent namely that it may be made an Armary Unguent 122. Why Satan cannot concur to the Unguent 123. The basis of Magick 124. When vanities and impostures are reputed for magick 125. A good magick in holy Writ 126. What may be called true magick 127. The cause of the idolatry of Witches 128. The Excitators of magick 129. Satan excites it imperfectly 130. Whence beasts are also magicall 131. The dominion of Spirits fostereth contention and love 132. Man why a microcosm 133. The mind generateth reall Entities 134. That reall Entity of an ambiguous or midle nature betwixt a body and a spirit 135. The descension of the Soul causeth a conformative Will 136. The cause of the fertility of seeds 137. Why lust doth in a manner alienate us from our mind 138. A Father by the spirit of his seed doth generate extra se beyond the limits of his own body in a subject suddainly removed to distance 139. What spirit that is which is the Patron of Magnetism 140. The will doth transmit a spirit to the object Unlesse the will did produce some reality the Devill could have no knowledge of it and unlesse it sent this produced reality forth from it self toward the object the devil being absent could never be provok'd thereby Where therefore the treasure is thither doth the heart of man tend 141. Magnetisme done by sensation 142. There is a plurality of sensations in one single subject 143. From the superiour phansy commanding it 144. Why glasse-makers use the powder of Loadstone 145. The Phansy of Attrahents changed 146. Inanimate creatures endowed with Phansy 147. Why some things eaten introduce madness 148. Why a mad dog biting a man causeth madnesse 149. The sting of the Tarantula causeth an alienation of the mind from reason 150. Why beasts defend not themselves against the biting of a mad dog 15â—… The sympathy betwixt objects removed at distance each from other is done by the mediation of an Universall Spirit which governing the Sun and other coelestiall orbs is endued with exquisite sense 152. The imagination in Creatures enriched with an Elective Faculty is various arbitrary and unconfined but in others of the same determinate identity alwayes 153. The first degree of power magicall dwelleth in the formes of the three grand Principles viz. Sal Sulphur and Mercury 154. The second is by the Phansies of the Forms of the Mixtum or integrall Composition which being destroyed the Principles yet remaine 155. The third ariseth from the Phansy of the Soule 156. What beasts are endowed with magicall power and can act beyond the circumference of themselves per nutum onely 157. The fourth degree of power magicall is from the excited intellect of man 158. The word Magick is analogous and appliable to many things in a third relation 159. Every magicall power stands in need of and is improved by Excitation 160. What may be said a subject capable of Magnetism 161. How Magnetism differs from other Formall Proprieties 162. The superfluous humours Excrements of the body have also their Phansy 163. Why Holy Writ doth give the attribute of life rather to the blood then to any other humor in the body 164. The seed inhaeriteth the Phansy of the Father by traduction Whence Nobility hath its originall 165. The skins of the Wolfe and sheep retain a Phantastique enmity of their former life 166. What the Phansy of the blood freshly added to the Unguent can doe The manner of the Magnetisme in the Unguent 167. The difference betwixt a magneticall cure done by the Unguent and that done by a rotten egg 168. The grand mystery of humane Imagination the foundation of Naturall Magick 169. The Intellect impresseth the Entity it selfe created upon the externall object and there it really perseveres 170. How to make powerfull pentacles or magicall Characters 171. The Phansy by a naile as by a medium holds captive the spirit of the Witch 172. If Satan can move a body without any corporeall extremity why cannot the inward man doe the same and why not rather the spirit of the Witch 173. The virtue of the Unguent not from the imagination of its Compounder but from diverse simples married into one Composition 174. The Author makes profession of his Faith IN the eighth year of this age there came to my hands an Oration declamatory made at Marpurge of the Catti wherein Rodulphus Goclenius to whom the publick profession of Philosophy was lately committed paying his first fruits to the University endevours to make good that the cure of wounds by the Sympathetick and Armarie Unguent first invented by Paracelsus is meerly natural Which Oration I wholly read and sighed that the history of natural things had faln under the protection of so weak a Patron The Author nevertheless highly pleased himself with that argument of writing and with a continued barrenness of probation in the year 1613. published the same work with some enlargement Not long since I also met with a succinct anatome of the fore-mentioned Book compiled by a certain Divine savoring more of a fine-witted Censure then a solid Disputation Whereupon my judgment what ever it were was much desired at least in that relation that the thing invented by Paracelsus neerly concerned him and my self his disciple I shall therefore declare what I conceive of the Physician Goclenius
since then you would implicitely confess the effect not to be ascribed to Satan So the Unguent would not be magnetical from any innate and natural phansie peculiar to it self but from an external adventitious inspiration namely the phansie of the Compounder impressed upon it since there can be no neerer medium of the foresaid Magnetism then humane blood with humane blood truly the blood alone as the most proportionate and predisposed subject would suffice to the composition of the Unguent and all the other simples ingredient into the confection would be frustraneous and unnecessary especially the blood of a Bull and hony where the cure is to be performed by applying the salve to weapons not distained with the blood of the Patient which is manifestly false by experiment Finally the Magnetism of the Unguent would then be general in respect the Confectioner may by the wilde and universal range of his Phansie intend to make the impression uncertain undeterminate and extensive to the wounds not onely of man but of all beasts whatever What if the Compounders phansie were not fixed upon a dog must the Unguent therefore have no virtue to cure the wound of a dog Away with such idiotism such ridiculous dotage What hath Bole Armeniake what Line seed oyl what Hony and in fine what hath the blood of a Bull of peculiar disposition or determinate respect to the wound of a horse or man that upon them onely as upon the most proper medium and not upon any other things the Phansie of the Confectioner should be impressed and yet if these were secluded the Composition the Unguent would be barren and devoid of all power and vulnerary efficacy The Natural phansie therefore of the Unguent is the sole and grand cause of the Magnetism and the immediate and proper cause of the Cure but not the imagination of the Component Behold you have our understand true Christian Philosophy not the frantick sophisms or idle dreams of Ethnicks Be cautious I beseech you that you bring not me into censure who have been your self more forward and rash in censuring others I am yours and a Roman Catholick who have cordially and firmly determined in my self to mediate or write nothing that may be contrary to the Word of God or the fundamental Articles of the Church I well understand the constellation of my own genius and know my self born not to allow or foment contentious debates not to write Comments on or defensive Apologies for the pens of other men wherefore what I knew I desired with a freedom becoming a Philosopher to communicate to the world I shall annex onely this one clause Whoever attributeth to the Devil an effect arising from Natural Causes so created by God and so conferred upon the Creatures he doth alienate the honor due to the Creator and ignominiously others might say blasphemously apply it unto Satan which under your favor if you shall strictly call under the test of your Anatome you will finde to be express idolatry My earnest prayer to the fountain of all Clemency our God and Father of Mercies is now and ever shall be that he would be pleased to look with the eye of compassion and forgiveness upon those errors and lapses of our understanding which from our native not stubborn ignorance and humane fragility we have contracted Amen THere are three that bear record in Heaven the Father the Word and the Holy Ghost and these three are one And anon speaking of the Humanity of Christ there are three which bear record in Earth the Blood the Spirit and the Water and these three are one To us therefore who have the like Humanity it is no wonder that we contain Blood and a Spirit of the like unity and that the action of the Blood is meerly Spiritual Yea for this reason in Genesis it is not called by the name of Blood but dignified with the appellation of a Red Spirit Withdraw therefore whoever thou art from thy incredulous pertinacy and ingenuously acknowledg another Spirit in the blood besides the Devil unless thou wilt dare to oppose thy mis-informed Faith to the Book of Truth The Translators Supplement NEmo hûc Geometriae expers ingrediatur was the Motto which the semi-christian Philosopher Plato caused to be engraven on the porch of his Academy implying not onely the exact measure of lines but also the Geometry of a mans self the dimensions and just extent of the passions and affections of the minde to be the previous qualification necessary to any that should hope to benefit by his Lectures And Nemo hûc Philosophiae expers ingrediatur shall be our inscription in the front of this Translation understanding by Philosophy the ample knowledg not onely of the Elemental and visible World but also of the Intellectual and Spiritual not onely of the more plain and obvious tracts wherein Nature progresseth to the production of ordinary effects but even those obscure and unfrequented paths she walks in when she advanceth to Abstrusities and more mysterious Magnalities together with that acquired Candor of judgment and habitual Equanimity which as well emancipateth the understanding from the pedantick tyranny of subscription to all that 's read if but disguised in the specious dress of probability and ushered in by Antique Authority as it inclineth the reason to a sober assent and modest conformity to such Assertions which carry the face of judicious Enquiries and serious majesty of Truth though they be presented at disadvantage under a cloud of Novelties or Paradoxes Nor can we fear that this our device or impress will be suspected of impertinency by any that shall do so much right to their own judgments as to conced that a Reader thus qualified must be the onely he that can survey understand censure and enrich his head with the subtler speculations and profound Dihoties of our more then ingenious Helmont while it is of confessed necessity that the gross ignorance of some must obscure and the prevarication of others pervert the prospect of these splendid though Heterodoxical Notions and Natural though spiritual or magical Causalities which his finer pen hath drawn in landskip upon this tablet The Magnetically-Natural cure of Wounds Now though the pensive Consideration of the incapacity some would have said Barbarity of the numerous multitude on one side and of the deplorable inflexibility of the leading part of learning more then a moity of Schollers being swallowed up in a deluge of Presumption and Prejudice on the other might in some measure excuse our despair of finding many heads of this soveraign temper wherein sufficiency in knowledg ought to have received the just allay of Candor and non-adherence to Antiquity yet may we not incur the odious premunire of singularity so far as not confidently to hope that our worthy Author will fall into the hands of some whose unbyassed intellectuals will smoothly run him over and gather so full satisfaction from many of his Experiments that Gratitude her self
from Angels in respect it is framed in the similitude and representative figure of the eternal God for the soul hath that light and luminous substance from the gift of her Creation since she her self is that vital light but an Angel is not that substantial light nor hath he any light genial and inherent to his essence but is onely a mirror of the increated light and so in this particular falls short of the excellence and perfection of the Divine Image Otherwise an Angel since he is an incorporeal spirit were he luminous from the right of his own essence would express the Image of God more perfectly then man Moreover whatever God doth bestow more love upon that is more noble but he hath loved man much more then the Angels for not to the redemption of the Angelical nature did he assume the figure of a Cacodaemon as the thrice glorious Lamb of God the Saviour of the world assumed the nature of a Servant Nor can this Doctrine be staggered by the opposition of that The meanest in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater then John the Baptist For the Son of Man is not inferior in dignity of essence to the Angels though he was pleased to become a little lower then the Angels for in the calamitous condition of his life he was made a little lower then the Angels as also was John the Baptist. And for this reason an Angel is constantly called a ministring Spirit but is no where read a friend of God the Son of the Father the delight of the Son of Man or the Temple of the Holy Spirit wherein the thrice glorious Trinity takes up his Mansion For that is the majestick prerogative of the Divine Image which the Light Eternal doth impress upon every man that comes into this world In the year 1610 after a long weariness of contemplation that I might acquire some gradual knowledg of my own minde since I was then of opinion that self-cognition was the complement of wisdom faln by chance into a calm sleep and rapt beyond the limits of reason I seemed to be in a Hall sufficiently obscure On my left hand was a table and on it a fair large Vial wherein was a small quantity of Liquor and a voice from that Liquor spake unto me Wilt thou Honor and Riches At this unwonted voice I became surprized with extream amazement I walked up and down seriously considering with my self what this should design By and by on my right hand appeared a chink in the wall through which a light invaded my eyes with unwonted splendor which made me wholly forgetful of the Liquor voice and former counsel Then pensively returning to the Vial I took it away with me and attempted to taste the Liquor but with tedious labor I opened the Vial and assaulted with extream horror I awakened But my ancient intense desire of knowing the nature of my soul in which I had panted uncessantly for thirteen whole yeers together constantly remained with me At length amidst the anxious afflictions of various fortunes when yet I hoped a Sabbath of tranquillity from the security of an innocent life transacted in a vision I had the sight of my soul. It was a transcendent light in the figure of a man whose whole was homogeneous actively discerning a substance spiritual Crystalline and lucent by its own native splendor But enshrined it was in a second nubilous part as the husk or exterior cortex of it self which whether it did emit any splendor from it self I could hardly distinguish by reason of the superlative fulgor of the Crystalline spirit inshrowded within it Yet this I could easily discern that there was no sexual impress but onely in the cortex or shrine But the mark of the Crystal was light ineffable so reflexed that the Crystal Image it self became incomprehensible and that not by negation or privation since these are terms onely accommodate to our imbecillity otherwise then this that it presented a majestick Ens which cannot be expressed by words yet so finely that you could not have comprehended the quiddity of the thing beheld And then was it revealed unto me that this light was the same which I had a glimpse of twenty three yeers before And these things I saw by an intellectual vision in my minde for had the eye of my body once beheld this resplendent excessive object it would for ever after have ceased from vision and constaâ—…ly have celebrated a blinde mans holy day And thus my dream discovered unto me that the beauty of the humane Soul doth far transcend all conception of thought At that instant I comprehended thus much that my long desire of seeing my soul was vain and fruitless and thereupon I did acquiesce For however beautiful the Crystalline spirit did appear yet my soul retained nothing of perfection from that vision as at other times she was wont to do after an intellectual vision And so I came to be instructed that my minde in this somnial vision had as it were acted the part of a third person nor was the discovery sufficiently satisfactory to compensate so earnest and insatiate a desire of exploration But as to the Image of God impressed upon the Soul according to my slender capacity I confess I could never conceive any thing whether a body or spirit whether in my phansie or the most pure and abstracted speculation of my intellect which in the same act of meditation did not represent some certain figure under which it stood objected to my conceptions For whether I apprehended it by imagining an Idea probably correspondent to its essence or whether by conceiving that the intellect did transmute it self into the object understood still it occurred unto my thought invested in some figure For although I could familiarly understand the minde under the notion of an incorporeal and immortal substance yet could I not while I meditated upon the individual existence of it consider the same devoid of all figure yea nor so truly but it would respond to the figure of a man Since when ever the soul being sequestred doth see another Soul Angel or Cacodaemon requisite it must be that she perfectly know that these are presented to her to the end she may distinguish a Soul from an Angel and the Soul of Peter from the Soul of Judas Which distinction cannot be made by the sense of tasting smelling hearing touching but onely by the proper vision of the Soul which vision necessarily implieth an alterity or difference of figure Since an Angel is so far restrained to locality that at once he cannot possess two different places in that also there is included as well a figural as a local circumscription Thence I considered the minde of man figurated after this manner The body of man accepted under that distinct notion cannot give to itself the figure of a man and therefore hath need of an external Sculptor or Delineator which should be secretly ambuscadoed in
Volatility is a Saline Fixative Spirit as I have in that discourse sufficiently proved and therefore I should rather derive the pedigree of Tartar after this manner When the Acid Spirit immersed in an excessive quantity of Terrenity becomes evirate languid and insufficient to the volatilization of the more gross ponderous and fixt parts of the Faeces it is wholly overcome by the predominant power of the Saline Gorgon ambuscadoed in the terrestrial Residence and so immediately upon this conquest all the Terrestrial Atomes are fixed coagmentated and ferruminated into a solid Concretion which is the Tartar adhering to the sides of Wine Casks Here also doth my constant Fidelity to Truth make me to observe that if Vineger be made of Wine whose spirits are all Exhausted by the destructive embraces of Heat surrounding the vessel and so insensibly extracting all radical vigor and essential vitality from the mass of liquor propter 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be united to a consimilar substance as seemeth most consonant to Experience then doubtless that great Privy Counsellor to Nature Sennertus hath deserved the refuge of that Proverb Bernhardus non videt omnia in his mistake That Vineger should be made of Wine wherein the spirits are fixed or congelated by reason of an oppressive quantity of Fixative Salt arising from the immaturity austerity and defective Fermentation of the Must and not out of Wine whose spirits are separated by Exhaustion and by consequence must have miscarried in his design of drawing Spirit of Wine out of Vineger which project he mentioned both in his Chymical Operations and in his incomparable Tract De Consensu Chymicorum cum Galenicis My last unwilling task is the delivery of my suffrage upon that inscrutable Paradox asserted by Helmont in his Discourse of The Image of God in Man as the main point he drives at in all that Meditation namely that Reason is no radical primitive essential part of the Human soul but a caduce spurious Faculty accidentally Advenient upon the Degradation of our Nature by eating the poysonous Fruit of the forbidden Tree and by consequence separable from the soul at the instant of her emancipation from her prison of Clay and wholly useless to her in her state of restitution to the Clarity of Abstracted and Intuitive Intellection To this opinion I blush not to profess I have formerly leaned as well by reason of a propensity thereunto kindled in me by a short passage in S. Augustine as by finding in my solitary speculations a readiness in my beleif to submit to the conviction of these ensuing Arguments 1. The Soul layeth hold on her hopes of future Beatitude with her right hand of Faith which is a firm and unalterable Apprehension of objects to which her left hand of Reason can never be extended yea so far short doth our most advanced and illuminated Reason come of the true Cognition of the essence of Omnipotence Infinity Eternity c. that in every step of our journey towards the true Elizium we must quit the dark Lanthorn of Reason and wholly throw our selves upon the implicit conduct of Faith For a deplorable truth it is that the unconstant variable and seductive imposture of Reason hath been the onely unhappy cause to which Religion doth ow all those wide irreconcileable and numerous rents and schisms in the seamless and indivisible Coat of Faith made by men of the greatest Logick and even such whose intenser flames of Devotion had rendred their mindes the whitest and most purified from the lees of Temporal interest every Faction alleadging a rational induction or ground for its peculiar Defâ—…ection from the unity of Truth Reason having in their judgments erected the rotten and fragil reed of meer Futation in the room of the sound and inflexible Pillar of certain and fiduciary Cognition 2. The Minde of man squared by the rule of Faith stands ascertained that the form or essence of Verity is unical single and devoid of all Alterity and that the Intellect in its abstracted simplicity apprehendeth onely the unity of verity but Reason is unavoidably obnoxious to the delusion of Multiplicity and distraction of Alterity and therefore unfit to steer the Will in the act of Election Quippe quae as Helmont most significantly facilè per linguas nunc ad unum nunc verò ad alterum extremorum nutabunda flecteretur rationésque ubique inveniret fingeret substerneret juxta placita desideriorum 3. The Minde having once fathomed the extent of her wings in Metaphysical speculations becomes assured that after her delivery from the Dungeon of Flesh and Blood she shall have all her knowledg full entire abstracted in one single act not successive not extorted by the oblique violence of premises not erroneous controvertible or dubious that she shall no longer groan under the perplexity of framing Demonstrations by wrâ—…sting deducing inferring concluding one proposition from another whether in order to her act of Conception or Notification 4. Where precedeth no Discourse no Composition nor Connexion of Premises there doubtless can succeed no Conclusion Consecution or Reason but the Science of the Premises is always more certain then the Science of the Conclusion since the certitude of the Inference is extracted out of and doth necessarily depend upon the Certitude of the proposition conceded and that Science is radically seated in the Intellect without the concurrence of Reason because we finde it elder then the Demonstration And questionless this were a fair ground for any able pen to contend upon that Reason doth not generate in the Understanding any more then a Caliginous or Spurious Cognition which we may call a specious Putation as also that the indubitate Science of the Verity of Essences of the simplicity of things abstracted and of first Propositions or leading notions in Syllogisms doth not flow from the polluted and tempestuous stream of Reason but indeed from a more divine serene luminous Fountain the Intellect which I may with Solomon adventure thus to describe It is The breath of the power of God and a pure influence flowing from the Glory of the Almighty the brightness of the everlasting Light the unspotted Mirror of the Power of God and the Image of his Goodness and being but one she can do all things and remaining in her self she maketh all things new c. 5. Let any Probleme in Philosophy be propounded to ten or twenty the number is of no concernment the most sage Oedipuse's in the World and a reason demanded from each apart and I dare promise you shall observe the variety of opinions will stand in aequilibrio with the number of Persons every single head being deluded by the imposture of specious Reason and so contumaciously adhering to its particular Apprehension that the most modest of them all will be ready to swear that his Solution hath touched the white and Centre of Truth when peradventure not one among them hath ever shot neer
in this impious act there is a certaine power clearly peculiar and naturall to the Witch which proceeds not from Satan Moreover what the nature extent and quality of this Magicall yet naturall power of the Witch may be we must exactly explore and gravely consider It is manifest in the first place that it is not any Corporeall strength of the masculine sex for there concurres not any forcible attraction of the members of the body and Witches are for the most part old feeble and impotent women Wherefore of necessity to the production of this notable mischiefe there must concurre some other power of farre more vigour and activity then the strength of the body and yet purely naturall to man This power therefore must be ambuscadoed in that part wherein we most nearly resemble the Image of God And although all pieces of the hexameron Creation doe in some relation or other repraesent that most sacred and venerable image of the Creator yet in regard man doth most elegantly most properly and most exactly reflect that shadow of Divinity therefore doth the image of God shine more transcendent in man and as Lord Paramount beare rule and exercise dominion over the repraesentative Divinity of all other Creatures For haply by this praerogative all created Sublunaries are made subordinate to his royaltie and prostituted at the feet of his Soveraign will Wherefore if God execute his will and produce reall effects per nutum intuitively and by the single efficacy of his word then man also to make good his title of being the true mirrour or repraesentative of the Deity ought to enjoy a power of doing some actions per nutum For neither is that new paradoxicall or troublesome to our faith nor peculiar onely to God himself since Satan the most vile and abject of all Creatures can also move solid and ponderous bodies from place to place at pleasure onely per nutum for he hath no corporeall organs no extremities wherewith to touch locally move or assume any new body to himself No lesse therefore ought this priviledge to belong to the inward man in his spirituall capacity if we allow him to beare the image of God and that no idle and unactive one If we name this faculty magicall and this appellation sound harsh and terrible in the eares of your ignorance I shall not quarrel with you if you please to denominate it a spirituall vigour or energie of the inward man for wee are not at all sollicitous about names but ever with as direct an eye of reason as I can I look upon the reality of the thing it self This magicall power therefore naturally resides in the inward man whether by this title you understand the soule or vitall spirit of man is now indifferent to us since the inward man doth hold a certain correspondence with the outward in all things which commerciall influx thriving and as it were glowing with a fervour of activity in a peculiar manner is an appropriate disposition and proportionate propriety On which ground it is necessary that this active faculty be disseminated and diffused through the whole compositum of man but indeed in the soule more intense and vigorous and in flesh and blood far more remisse and languid The Vitall Spirit in the throne of flesh and blood that is the outward man sits Viceroy to the Soule and acts by her commission and is the same plastick spirit which in the seed comprehends contrives and models the whole figure of man that Magnificent structure limms out all the lineaments and accurate adumbration of the parts and understands the praedestinate ends of all its designes and undertakings which as Praesident and guardian accompanies the infant from the first moment of its conception to the last of its dissolution and which although together with the life it bid adieu to the body yet some little remaines as if strongly united unto and confermentated with the corporeall masse for a while sojourn in a Carcase extinct by violence But out of a dead body whose lamp of life languished and went out of its owne accord both the implantate and influent spirit depart hand in hand together For which reason Physicians distinguish this spirit into the originary implantate and inhaerent or Mumiall and the influent or acquisite vanishing together with the former life and afterwards they againe dichotomize or subdivide the influxive spirit into the naturall vitall and animall but we in this notion bind them all up together in this one terme the vitall spirit or inward man The Soule therefore by essence wholly spirituall could by no meanes move inform and actuate the vitall spirit which truely carries something of corporeity and bulk much lesse excite and give locomotion to flesh and bloud unlesse some naturall yet magicall and spirituall power inhaerent in the soule did streame down from the soule as from the first motor upon the spirit and so descend to the body I beseech you by what way could the corporeall Spirit obey and execute the command of the Soul unlesse it first receive commission and ability from her to move the Spirit and afterwards the body But against this Magicall Motrix you will instantly object that indeed there is such a naturall power but her wings are clipt she is restrained and confined within the walls of her owne tabernacle the body so that she cannot extend her authority and influence beyond the circumference of it and therefore although we give her the proud name of Magicall yet we cannot escape the guilt of wresting and abusively applying that Epithite since the true genuine and superstitious Magicall power desumes not her basis from the Soule in regard the Soule her self is devoyd of all ability to move alter or excite any the least thing at all without her own orbe of activity the body I answer that this Vigour and naturall Magick of the Soule which acts extra se beyond the dimensions of her selfe by virtue of the image of God doth now lye raked up and obscured in man and being impoverished in its force of excitation is grown unactive somnolent and stupid ever since the praevarication of Adam all which particulars we shall hereafter in convenient place and order commonstrate which power however it be charmed into a lethargick inactivity by the opium of originall sin and drunk with the narcoticall fumes of concupiscence within us yet it retaines force sufficient to performe all its requisite offices in the body This science therefore and Magicall power in man acting only per nutum intuitively grew dormant and evirate from that minute the Science or rather nescience of the Aple was drunk in and while this malignant Counter-science of the forbidden fruit that is of flesh and bloud of the outward man and darknesse growes up and flourishes the more noble Magical power withers is ploughed up and buryed in the rubbish of sensuality But in regard ever now and then
frailties we shall finde no ground left us to erect any structure of pride upon The act therefore of the praevious touch of the Witch is purely naturall although the excitation of this magicall virtue depend upon the auxiliary concurrence of Satan in as near an interest as if the Witch had cut the throat of the horse with a sword which Satan had put into her hands This act of the Witch is naturall and corporeall as the other praecedent act is naturall and sprituall For indeed man doth naturally consist no lesse of a spirit then a body nor is there reason why one act should be accounted more naturall then the other or why the body the courser part of man should be allowed a power of action but the spirit the more noble and coelestiall part in its relation of being the Image of God accounted idle unoperative and altogether devoid of any activity peculiar to it self yea the Vitall spirits in most exact propriety of language are the immediate actors of sensation motion memory c. but the body and dead carkasse cannot in any respect whatever owne those faculties wherefore every action stands more relatively and properly regardant to its Agent then to the body which at best is no more then the transitory lodging of the Agent And thus it is evidenced that there passeth a spirituall radius or gleame of magicall virtue from the Witch to the man or horse appointed for destruction according to that Axiome That no action can be done without a due approximation of the Agent to the Patient and a reciprocal unition or marriage of the virtues of each whether the admotion or approximation be corporeall or spirituall which by an example ready provided to our hand we can both prove and illustrate For if the heart which is the presence-chamber of the vitall spirit of a horse slain by a witch taken out of the yet warme and reaking carcase be empaled upon an arrow and roasted upon a broach or carbonadoed immediately the vitall spirit of the witch without the intervention of any other medium and anon the whole witch since not the body but onely the spirit is capable of sensation becomes tormented with the unsufferable pains and cruelty of the fire which truly could by no meanes happen unlesse there praeceded a conjunction or reciprocall intercourse of the spirit of the Witch with the spirit of the horse For the horse after strangulation retaines a certain mumiall virtue so I call it whenever the virtue of the vitall nectar or blood is confermentate with the flesh which is the originary implantate spirit such as is never found resident in bodies that are extinct by voluntary deaths in any chronique disease or other ataxy irregularity or disruption of the inferiour harmony that is the temperament of the body to which the spirit of the Witch is associated as joynt commissioner In the reaking and yet panting heart therefore the spirit of the Witch before it shall by the dissolution of the praecedent conspiracie or divorce of the united spirits by putrefaction have returned backe into her bosome is imprisoned and held captive and the retreat of it praevented by the arrow transfixed and by the torrefaction of both spirits together and hence comes it to passe that the witch is afflicted and throwne into a horrid agony in her sensative spirit This effect admits a change or double construction from the intention of the experiment For if revenge be the motive or incitement to the experimentator then is the effect unwarrantable and inconsistent with the charitable rules of Christianity but if an honest and conscientious designe to compell the Witch to detect her self to betray her to the justice of the Magistrate to procure security to our neighbour and our selves by the remove of so impious blasphemous and nocuous a vassall of Satan that the greater glory to God and peace and benevolence to men may redound from the discovery then undoubtedly the effect cannot be disallowed or condemned by the most rigid precise or puritanicall judgement We are not to conceive that all the spirit of the Witch sallyed forth and transmigrated into the heart of the Horse for so the Witch her selfe had perished falne into an eternall swoune but that there is a certaine univocall participation or identicall traduction of the spirit and vitall light of the Witch in an equall analogie to the Plastique spirit or sole delineator and architect of the most curious and magnificent fabrick of man which in every distinct emission of the geniture or seed is covertly ambuscadoed and propagated sufficient to the procreation of a numerous issue the originary spirit of the father yet remaining unimpaired and conserving its individuall integrity For in sooth that participation and inheritance of the vitall light is magical and a rich and fruitfull communication of the specificall essence by the fertill virtue of that benediction delivered by the Protoplast of all seminall formes Let all Animalls and Vegetalls bring forth seed and hence is it that one individuall seed produceth ten myriads of other seeds aequivalent and as many seminall spirits comprehending the whole specificall essence by the same mysterious way of traduction whereby one Tapor is lighted by the flame of another But what the proper nature of this Magneticall spirit and what the Magicall entity begotten in the wombe of phansie may be I shall more largely declare in the processe of our discourse For it becomes me to retreat from my digression and now to progresse in that path which directly leads to our intended scope Nor is there any pretence of reason why any should conjecture that this reaction or rebound of magicall power upon the heart of the Witch is only imaginary and a chimaera of licentious phanfie or a plainly superstitious and damnable imposture and delusion of Satan since by this token the witch is infallibly detected and volent nolent compelled to appear in publick which in one of our praecedent suppositions we have sufficiently demonstrated to be è diametro opposed to the intention of Satan for the effect holds constantly good and never failes to succeed upon experiment as having its fundamentall causalities laid in reason and the spirituall nature of the inward man but not at all built upon superstitious supporters Hath not many a murdered carcase by the operation of the same magneticall spirit suffered a fresh cruentation upon the Coroners inquest in the presence of the Homicide and very often directed the Magistrate to a just and infallible judgement of the crime although the blood before that minute stood congealed and frozen in its cold rivulets The reason of this life in death this plea of the grave and loud language of silent corruption which hath empuzled the anxious disquisitions of many subtile heads we conceive to be thus in a man dying of a wound the inferiour virtues which are mumiall for these are not subject to the restrint of
the Exotick Tincture from whence in excess of time comes a Binsical Death i. e. from the sole disease and exorbitancy of the minde the Magical virtue of the Dog being excited and exalted above the non-excited but somnolent Phansie of the Animal By the same mysterious traduction in all respects is the Phansie of the Tarantula impressed upon man by a slender thrust of his sting and the wounded suffering an immediate alienation of their reason fall into a violent fit of dancing and capering high levoltoes onely the poyson of the Tarantula differs from that of the mad dog in this particular that this operateth by a magical power excited and so by magick truly and without the favor of a metaphor so called but that acteth by a magical power non-excited and somnolent as the same difference is undeniably manifest in Monkshood Aconite c. deleterious plants which are speedy and inevitably destructive in very small quantity in regard no Animal endevours to secure or defend it self against the biting of a mad dog since the magical power of his excited phansie being diffused is binding and obligatury against which neither the teeth nor horns of any beast can make the least prevalent resistance which cannot be affirmed of the Venome of the Tarantula In the outward man therefore as also in all his fellow Animals the Magical power is latitant and as it were consopited nor is it capable of excitation onely in man though we confess with greater facility and to higher atchievements but even in many other Animals consorted with man at the Creation Again it sufficeth not that the Spirit of one individual maintain and observe this law of concord and monomachy or duello with the Spirit of another individual but moreover there dwells a certain universal or mundan spirit in the whole world i. e. in all things within Trismegistus Circle which we Christen the Magnum magnale which exsisteth the universal Pander of all sympathy and dyspathy the invisible Mercury or common Intelligencer and the Promotor of all natural actions and by whose mediation or convoy the Magnetism is as by the most convenient vehicle transported and wafted to an object at vast distance This is made good by an autoptical demonstration for if upon the miniking of a tuned Lute you place a slender straw hanging with a doubtful extremity i. e. equilibrated in the aër and at convenient distance in the same room strike the minikin of another Lute when there succeeds a consonance in the eighth note you shall see the straw to tremble but when the notes concord in an unison then the minikin of the untouched Lute impatient of delay will quaver caper for joy echo the same aër and by a nimble subsultation throw off the offensive straw What will you impute this effect to Satan and make him the Fidler Now you shall never observe the straw to rebound from the string though all the strings of the other Lute be unanimously strongly and neer at hand plaid upon for it is not the bare and simple tone that compels the untouched string to quaver for then every tone would cause the same effect but it is onely the universal spirit the Common Mercury inhabiting in the middle of the universe and being the faithful executor and adjutor of all natural actions transports promotes and causes the Sympathy But why tremble we at the name of Magick since the whole action is Magical nor hath any natural Agent a power of activity which is not emergent from the phansie of its peculiar form and that magically too But in regard this phansie in bodies devoid of voluntary election is onely of a determinate and limited identity therefore have some vulgar heads erroneously and dully imputed the effects of such restrained bodies not to the phansie of them but a Natural propriety out of an ignorance of Causes substituting the effect in the room of the Cause When indeed every Agent doth operate on its proper object by a praesensation or distinctive foreknowledg of it whereby it is directed not to discharge its activity rashly and at random but onely on its own peculiar object For the diffusion or emission of activity necessarily succeeds the sensation of the object and the effect results from an excitement of the phansie by transmitting of the ideal entity and conjoyning it with the radius or gleam of the passive entity And this in our dialect hath ever been the Magical action of natural bodies yet in most accommodate language and just propriety of denomination this Magical and phantastique activity belongs principally if not solely to Creatures ennobled with a power of election I shall muster up the Creatures and guide our disquisition through every Classis of them All formal proprieties flowing from the forms of the three universal principles Sal Sulphur and Mercury or the salt Unctuous fat and liquor whereof every body is composed and into which it is by corruption of the corporeal harmony again resolved and the Mercury or liquor is so often diverse and differently qualified as there are different species of compound bodies which same variety of impregnation we are to conceive also of the other two Sal and Sulphur All specifical proprieties I say are derivatory from the phansies of these forms which in regard they are very corporeal and deeply immersed in the bosome of Elements therefore are they called Formal and occult proprieties out of a gross ignorance of the forms which in another and introth more Philosophical acceptation are Magical effects produced by the phansie of the said forms but we confess less noble and more corporeal yet abundantly satisfactory to those ends which by the primitive destiny of their Creation they regard To this series belongs the subductive virtue of Cathartick or Purgative the somniferous faculty of Hypnotick or dormitive medicaments c. Besides these there are other nobler Proprieties taking their original from the phansie of the forms of the whole Compositum and these are diffused through and inherent in the whole Compositum by reason of the Form of it such are the Magnetism of the Loadstone the virtue of Tinctures and all specifical and appropriate Medicaments which are occasioned by reason either of the whole homogeneous neixture or the particular form of some integral part but not of any single or divided principle such as these are naturally inherent in the trunck leaves root and fruit of plants and not in any one of the three principles diacritically separated from the compage or conjuncture Thus also Antimony while it remains in its primitive form and native integrity is enriched with noble and excellent qualities which it could never aspire unto in its solitary and divided principles But these are also closely enshrowded in Corporeity and therefore the natural magick lies covertly ambuscadoed and obscure in them and hath been thought wholly attributary to Nature by an unjust and unadvised distinction of Nature from Magick opposing the
Animal pervicaciously surviving death is impressed not onely upon the blood but also whoever sleeps under the coverture of a blanket made of the skin of a Gulo or Glutten a beast of incredible because insatiate voracity very common in Swedland is forced continually to dream of feasting hunger voracity and the ensnaring of wilde beasts according to the natural condition of that animal while it was living and thus onely by an external coverlet the phansie of the beast which during life so journed in the skin is devolved and traduced unto a man that sleeps beneath it And thus also by the ministery of the Phansie of the blood comes it to pass that the blood extravenated being received upon the sword or weapon is introduced into the Magnetick Unguent For then the phansie of the blood before unactive and somnolent being by the virtue of the magnetical unguent excited and there finding the balsamical and medical virtue of the unguent earnestly covets the newly-induced quality to be communicated to it self throughout and from thence by spiritual magnetism to exhaust and drain out all the forein quality that had invaded the wound which when it cannot sufficiently perform upon the single stock of its own strength it implores the aid of the most of the blood fat and mumy which by coalition degenerate into such balsam that by no other means but it s own phansie becomes medical magnetical and also attractive of all the forein quality out of the body whose fresh blood abounding with spirits is applied unto it whether it be the blood of a man or any other Animated Creature The phansie therefore is reducible and ecstatical from part of the blood freshly and immediately after the effusion brought unto the unguent but the magnetical attraction begun in the blood is perfected by the medical virtue of the unguent But the unguent doth not attract the evil and depraved tincture or inquinament of the wound unto it self and so put on as much contagion as was enclosed in Pandoraes box but onely works a salutiferous alteration on the spirit of the newly effused and freshly applied blood makes it medical balsamical and rouzeth up its dormant virtue whence there results to it a certain medical and magnetical virtue which makes a speedy return to the body from which the blood issued forth with full commission and power to cure its cousin german the spirit of the blood yet flowing in its proper conduits throughout the whole man For it sucks out of the wounded party the exotick and dolorous impression diminisheth it by a medical power exileth it which medical virtue being the puissant conqueress of the evil is partly excited in the blood and partly ingenerated in the same by the unguent that is by the spirit of the unguent upon the magick of its phansie i. e. its created endowment thus exercising imperial power and efficacious soveraignty over the spirit of the blood In another case the blood enclosed in an egge shell putrefying with all its vigor about it and so as it were redeemed from the bondoge of corporeity and the spirit delivered from all impediments by previous putrefaction becomes attractive by the mediation of the mumy of a dog and really transfers that disease which was before seated in the phansie and astrality of the excrementitious impurities in the patient into the dog that devours it for no other reason but this that the magnetism cannot be advanced to perfection of operation without the intercession of the balsam of the unguent We have observed if it happen that the wounded party hath received many wounds at once that it sufficeth to have the blood effused out of any one of the wounds and that by the single application of that blood all the other wounds are cured together because that blood observes a correspondence and sympathetical concordance with the spirit of the whole man and from the same educeth the offensive extraneous quality communicated not onely to the lips of the wound but also to the whole body for from one wound there ordinarily is kindled an universal fever throughout the whole body of man Hitherto have I suspended the revealment of a grand mystery namely to bring it home to the hand of reason that in man there sits enthroned a noble energy whereby he is endowed with a capacity to act extra se without and beyond the narrow territories of himself onely per nutum by his single beck and by the natural magick of his phansie and to transmit a subtil and invisible virtue a certain influence that doth afterward subsist and persevere per se and operate upon an object removed at very large distance by the discovery of which sole mystery all that we have hitherto treated concerning the ideal entity conveyed in the arms of a spiritual emanation and sallying abroad to execute the mandates of the will concerning the magnetism of all Creatures proceeding as well from humane phansie as from the native and peculiar phansie of every thing and also concerning the magical superiority of man over all other sublunary bodies will receive illustration and shine bright in the eye of our understanding T is a meridian truth too clear to be eclipsed by controversie that of steel there may be made a needle which invigorated by the confriction of a loadstone doth point out the pole to Seamen but in vain is the steel hammered into a needle and placed at free range in the navigatory Compass to level at the north Star unless there hath preceded a fit and requisite affriction of the loadstone Which assertions since they sound loud enough to pierce the ears of the deafest incredulity it remains convenient that we frame and qualifie a Mariners needle solo nutu onely by the magnetism of our phansie and magick of intuition On the anvil therefore whereon the steel is hammered into a figure of a needle let the north point be chalked out and that in a strait line then stand you when you play the Vulcan with your back to the north that so when the steel is beating under the hammer you may draw it out into a needle towards your self and the north I say therefore that such a needle thus positionally and intuitively framed will acquire a vigorous polarity and punctually observe the north Star without any forein impregnation or magnetical infusion and indeed without any variation to which the ordinary needles invigorated by the loadstone are subject which carries with it a very great mystery Moreover that needle which is made upon the foresaid line by chance and without the knowledg or intention of the Fabricator continues bare steel devoid of all verticity and directs not to the pole Hence is it a natural Consequence that the imagination of the Fabricator in the very moment of the needles nativity when the glowing heat of the fire is somewhat abated and the steel but obscurely red doth impress this magnetical faculty into the steel needle as a
melted at the fire restoring to it a small quantity of this essential vital Nectar The story is introduced for this end that hence it may be observed That the spirit of Wine by a natural tendency flies from cold as from his proper enemy and gently withdraws itself from its former mansion into the Centre of the Wine But on the contrary Wines are therefore exposed to the heat of the Sun that they may grow Acide and the spirit exhaling leaves behinde it a flat cadaverous substance devoid of spirit and life which is Vineger But since it is far more noble and useful that the spirit of Wine should retreat into the Centre then perish by exhalation therefore hath necessity for the conservation of Wines hinted the invention of cold deep Cellers The Austrian Wines still operating on themselves by an uncessant tumultuous heat of Fermentation are for the most part gross and viscid For which reason the Cellers at Vienna are ordinarily digged to no less then aâ—…undred foot in depth The Spanish Wines also would suffer the same restless ebullition and conflict betwixt their Heterogeneities were they not prevented by the admixture of a Lime which the Spaniard calls Hiesco at the very instant of their flowing from the Wine Press Whence results it a clear and unquestionable truth that the spirit of Wine in cold Cellers retreating from its adversary cold returns to the heart of the Liquor as to a safe refuge and there conceals it self Wine therefore in the cortex or outward circumference of it self is less generous as having fewer spirits then in the middle or inmost retiring room Hence it is a necessary consequent that as by reason of the exhalation of spirits Wines set in the Sun grow acide and phlegmatick so also proportionably the exterior Cortex of Wine in a cold Celler must be more acide then the Centrals And thus when the musts of Wines are freshly brought in from the Press lodged in Store-houses and have suffered Fermentation the spirit by and by flying from cold concentres it self and therefore the superficies of Wine having already entred some degree of Acidity immediately begins to operate on the dregs floating on the yet troubled and unclarified mass of Liquor For an absolute impossibility it is that there can be any the least Acidity which having once met with a proportionate object does not immediately begin to operate on it This really is the Law and unavoidable necessity of Naturals By example Vineger how flat and weak soever having once touched upon the stone concreted in the head of a Creafish vulgarly but erroneously called Crabs eye can by no means contain it self but must immediately act to the dissolution of it and resolve it into a clear diaphanous Liquor The Acidity of Wine having once sated it self on the dregs and spent much of its activity by degrees inclines it self to coagulation But coagulate it cannot without a conspiracy with and assistance from the Fracid Odor of the vessel impregnate with a spirit or power of Fermentation whereby it may in some measure admit of putrefaction And for this onely reason is the Coagulation made at the sides of the vessel to which it affixes it self according to that familiar Chymick Axiome Omnis spiritus dissolvens eddem actione quâ corpora dissolvit coagulatur Every dissolvent spirit is it self coagulated in the same action wherein it dissolves other concreted bodies The more acide Wine therefore in the extremities of it self dissolves the dregs and at the same instant the acide dissolvent spirit is coagulated together with the newly dissolved faeces and soon applies it self to the neerest side or concave of the vessel And this lest both the dissolvent and dissolved might not be hindred from coagulating but on one side at least they might not be invironed by Liquor And thus by this progress and succession of natural motions there is affixed a new production of Coagulation Tartar Observe also that before the compleat act of Coagulation there is no existent Coagulatum and therefore the acide spirit in the verge of the mass of Wine having newly dissolved the dregs in a moment before the act of coagulation finisht seazes on the vessel and by a Cement or glue native and proper to it self there fixes and constantly adheres Otherwise depressed by gravity it would immediately sink to the bottom And this new Entity thus coagulated is the Tartar of Wine of which our Discourse That these are sober solid truths we have clear and demonstrable evidence from Vineger it self For Wine insolated to a calefaction of the vessel may produce Tartar but Vineger never And yet Wine and Vineger are one and the same matter differing onely in those qualifications heat and cold in the former indeed with Tartar in the latter without it From the premisses there breaks forth a considerable truth that our forementioned Axiome by Chymicks concluded of eternal verity grosly fails in that it makes the dissolution of any concreted body to be done in the instant of time and numerical action with the coagulation of the spirit dissolvent For if there intervened not in some short interval of time a diversity and succession of motions the Coagulation could not soder it self to the circumambient planks of the vessel as is there affused by liquefaction but would of necessity if it were coagulated at the instant of dissolution sink down to the lowest region in the form of a simple coagulation and not cement it self to the walls of the hogshead But on the other side in the bottom the peculiar region of the Lees there is never found any Tartar Here also accurs to our serious consideration a second and more weighty verity that the Analogy or resemblance which the vulgarity of Physicians conceives betwixt the Tartar in Wine and those preter-natural Coagulations in the body of man is erroneous vain and altogether impertinent and therefore the name history manner and end of Coagulation of Tartar in Wine are foolishly and unfitly accommodated to the causes of diseases All which I shall demonstrate to ample satisfaction when I come to discover that grand and popular delusion of the Existence of Tartar in our meat and drink Allowing to Wine onely a fertility of Tartar For that we acknowledg to be no Alien no son of an exotick mother from the concurrence of forein principles intruded into Wine having its production contrary to or besides the ordinary and simple nature of Wines neither owing its original to the adjuncts of the primitive Malediction delivered in Paradise by divine providence for the expiation of those Crimes committed by man in the heat and distraction of Wine Again neither is the Tartar of Wine ever coagulated by any originary activity or power of coagulation proper to its own nature though Paracelsus dreamt so but then undergoes Coagmentation when the circumferential Acidity of the Wine hath newly exhausted much of its Energy
and wasted it self by a profuse operation on the dregs That is the Active being swallowed up in the embraces of the Passive the Acide spirit imbibed and subdued to obedience by the freshly dissolved Faeces then and not till then contrives and sets about the act of Coagulation not with design or power to make a real true stone but a counterfeit such as afterwards may be again dissolved in hot water as an Acide salt in liquor which for that reason the vulgar call Cremor Tartari All which do very ill correspond with those preter-natural Coagulations in the bodies of men and yet they are in a drunken fiction of Paracelsus by an imaginary analogy of essence and identity with Tartar in all meat and drink grosly obtruded on the faith of vulgar Physicians wholly over-run by that epidemick lazy evil subscription Here also we are fallen on a third Magnale or Violentum That Tartar is not an excrement of Wine unless on one part which is the dregs dissolved which truly Paracelsus was not ignorant of who does very frequently extol the Medicinal faculties of Tartar far above those of Wine it self as inheriting many more and nobler endowments Wherefore he very absurdly refers Tartar of Wine by an identity of essence and formation to the same Classis of Entities with those solid Concretions in diseased bodies which yet in many other places himself concludes to be a meer excrement yea the sorrowful fruit of that curse of the Earth pronounced by God in Paradise Bryers and thorns shalt thou bring forth and calls Ens Cacedonium in puro saphyrico ente rerum The Tartar of Wine therefore and that which is erected in the Schools for the material cause and foundation of most Chronick diseases if any such were in reality of Entity can keep no concord in their Original Forms even according to the doctrine of Paracelsus himself if we accept the former as a preternatural production directed by the destiny of its being to the generating diseases as to its proper end And thus also hath he most impertinently and at best but by the favor of a Metaphor reduced the causes of diseases to Tartar Since they no way agree either in their matter efficient manner or cause of Coagulation in the term of the Coagulatum Object or Originals For neither gravel nor the stone is capable of dissolution in boiling water as the Tartar of Wine is This usurpation therefore of name and propriety is wholly metaphorical rash and frivolous and an assertion tacitely injurious to divine wisdom and providence by polluting the purity of all sublunary creatures with the bold imputation of a Curse as if in the totality of their natures they were nothing but Compositions amassed out of the seeds of Tartar And to so high a pitch of impudence hath this error flown that men dare imagine Tartar in the very marrow of Animals which yet they allow incoagulable nor did ever Paracelsus finde any where but in his own wilde imagination And so the result of all is that he falls upon a manifest contradiction making Tartar to be no Tartar that is uncapable of Coagulation so that not onely every coagulable and solid body but also every liquid substance that is every created nature subject to the influence of the lower orbs would be nothing but Tartar by divine Vengeance destined to the punishment of the first sin No sooner hath the Must suffered Fermentation parted with its former sweetness and assumed the perfection and dignities of Wine but the whole Mass of Terrenity the Lees falls to the bottom of the vessel and then begins the new made Acidity of the Wine in the circumference to execute its power dissolutive on the earthly residence in the bottome For the more essential portion of the Wine the spiritual Nectar by a gentle and gradual concentration crowding into the middle forsakes the protection of the superficial round of the Liquor This done and the extremity of the Wine thus destitute of Vitality and radical heat soon grows acide and not meeting with any fit object neer it whereon to discharge its activity but onely the dregs in the lowest region of the Wine immediately assaults them and by degrees dissolves them And thus the Acidity is both confirmed and inlarged But since every Acidum by reason of its corroding Energy doth operate in a perpetual Ebullition hence is it that that Acidity which had dived to the bottom when it hath operated on the Lees doth reascend from thence and fix it self in a higher mansion the circumstance of the vessel And for this cause is the generation of Tartar done by successive gradual and slow motions For the same reason also cannot Tartar be concreted and affixed to the bottom hindered by that inquietude and tumultuation of perpetual Ebullition Hence is it that rich and generous Wines being not easily subject to this destitution of spirits unless on an assault of intense cold do not soon grow acide nor yeeld any considerable quantity of Tartar But old Rhenish Wines easily pall grow sick and loose their grateful and vigorous taste in regard their activity of eagerness is for the most part devoured by their Lees and yet they continue wholsom and friendly to the stomach in that their spirits are not exhausted to an equal proportion of their dregs and acidity But red French Wines unless nourisht by their Lees which for this effect Vintners call the Mother or Nurse of Claret dissolve their own Tincture continually preying on it by their subtilty and eagerness And this is the cause why Claret Wines if not very rich and excellently vigorous at the age of two yeers grow pale and discoloured For the Tincture of Wines is a substance familiarly subject to separation But strong generous and spiritual red Wines in that they more slowly grow acide hold good to the age of many yeers On the contrary small White Wines if not sequestred from their Lees in short time grow flat and cadaverous For their Lees drawn off their Acidity wanting a proportionate matter to imploy its corrosive faculty upon the Wine continues good sprightful firm and in its primitive integrity From these experiments we naturally collect That Tartar in the acception of its entire nature is no longer either Wine or the dregs of Wine but a Neutral or third Nature resulting from the conjunction and coëfficiency of both That this is thus is demonstrable from the Mechanick experiment that a greater quantity of Tartar may be dissolved in ten ounces of Rain water then in two hundred of Wine though never so much stirred in boyling The reason belongs to the Acidity of Wine to which the Tartar ows its Coagulation To conclude six ounces of the salt of Tartar will dissolve seven ounces of crude Tartar because the Lixivium or Lee of that Salt imbibes and sucks up the Acidity of Tartar That Tartar consists of the Lees of Wine and not Wine
the material mass of the seed and descend upon it from above Yet this in so much as it is of a material condition and far below the fineness of a spiritual nature cannot derive the plastick or conformative virtue no more from it self then from the gross mass of the body necessary it is therefore that there be some precedent or elder principle which must be wholly and purely immaterial yet real and operative to which may be justly attributed the power of figuration or delineation by a sigillary impression upon the Archeus or Regent Spirit of the Seed The Soul of the Genitor therefore when it descends to visit and relieve the inferior faculties and makes a progress to survey the Seed in a paroxysm of carnality doth upon the mass of seed engrave and adumbrate the impress and figure of it self which in sober truth is the onely cause of the foecundity of seeds and thence is that comely and magnificent structure of the Infant Otherwise if the Soul were not figurated but the figure of the body did arise spontaneously a father maimed in any one member could not beget a son but maimed in the same member in regard the body of the Generant hath lost its primitive integrity and is become imperfect at least in the implantate spirit of that member If therefore the figure be impressed upon the seed undoubtedly it must receive that image or model from some other more vital and elder principle alien to it self But if the soul impress that figure upon the seed she will not counterfeit an exotick or strange image but accurately pourtray the similitude of her self For by this means also Beasts by the souls modelling of her own picture constantly maintain their species And although the minde of man if we relate to its original far transcend the Laws of Nature yet by the same method or way whereby it first entred the portal of Nature was incorporated and associated to her it is constrained to progress in traduction and is constantly adliged to the observance of her rules and prescriptions in this respect That the progress and end of vital generations is always univocal Nor otherwise could it want many and gross absurdities that so excellent an operation as is the generation of man should be performed without the consent and cooperation of the Soul Which if it be thus it is also of inevitable necessity that the foecundity be given to the seed by the Soul by the communication of its figure and other vital determinations requisite to specification Which verily doth not come to pass otherwise then by the sigillation or engravement of the Soul upon the seed whereby the matter of the seed doth obtain a requisite maturity and adumbrated figure that at length it may acquire from the Creator the formal light of life or soul of its species whose similitude is expressed in the figure Moreover we apprehend it as matter of Faith that our soul is a spiritual substance that shall never know annihilation the fabrication of which substance out of nothing belongeth to the Almighty God alone Who since he hath vouchsafed to adopt onely the soul of man to the Image of himself it appears also a genuine consequence that the immense and ineffable God is also of humane figure and that by an argument drawn à posteriori if arguments be of any validity in this incomprehensible subject Since the body is like wax whereupon the impression of the image of the Soul is imprinted but the Soul hath her image and essential perfection from him whose stamp or similitude she wears But on consideration that the body of man doth frequently become subject to mutilation and monstrosity hence have most Divines conceived that the glorious Image of the Deity is wholly consistent in the Rational Faculty not at all considering that the representative Divinity of man doth in a more perfect and proxime relation consist in the Soul and so in the Body formed after the exemplary character of the Soul nor perpending that the Rational Faculty is but Handmaid and subservient to the Intellect no part at all of its essence nor adliged to it by the inseparability of union or identity which we have to satisfaction demonstrated in our Treatise of the Venation of Sciences Now if any error be in the confirmation of the body in the womb of the Conceptrix that error is not adscriptive to any imperfection of the Image of God but to the incapacity of the material principles and other external causes invading the Plastick virtue of the seed and perverting its exact delineation of the parts But the more Learned number of Christians doth hold it of Faith that the Soul doth proximly express the Image of the Trin-une God in the univocal simplicity of her substance and the Trinity of her Faculties namely the Intellect Will and Memory Which analogy ever sounded in the ears of my reason so ridiculous and empty as an old wives dream and improper to make good the proxime singular and excellent reflex of the Godhead in the Soul since the term Image doth include a similitude of Essence and Figure and not onely a bare parity of numbers Again if the Soul in her substance represent the thrice sacred Deity but the Intellect Will and Memory reflect the Trinity of Persons necessary it is that these three faculties are not proprieties or accidents of the Soul but the very univocal substance of the minde or else that the pourtracture doth ill quadrate and respond to the Prototype or prime exemplar whose image it is beleeved to be I considered moreover that not onely the minde of man but even the whole man was framed after the Image of God and that it was a bloody absurdity to compare the persons of the Trinity to the Memory or Will since no person of the most Holy Godhead can in any latitude of resemblance represent the Will nor the Will the Person none the Memory or the Memory none as also that no one separated from the other two can hold any analogy to the Intellect And then that the three faculties of the Soul are ever accepted under the notion of Accidents but insooth Accidents fall short of expressing the Image in any neerer relation then the naked Ternary of Qualifications heaped together upon the substance of the Soul In which sense the Soul doth express the Image of God far less then any the smallest piece of wood which by retrograde Analysis or resolution of it self into its primitive Entities holdeth forth Sal Sulphure and Mercury and not onely as the Minde in the forementioned similitude credited by the vulgar three diverse proprieties or a naked Ternary of accidents For every Wood hath three several substances comprised under the unity of the concretion distinct in the supposed Essences of their principles but concurring in the composition of the whole they make onely the single substance of Wood. Taulerus hath divided the Soul not into three