unprofitable in other kind of madnesses Therefore it happened at Antwerp that a Carpenter perswading himself that in the night-timehe had seen horrid appearances or ghosts became wholly mad with the terrour thereof And he was sent unto the Tomb of St. Dympna the Virgin where those who are possessed by an evil spirit are wont to be freed the matter being thereby wrested into an abuse that all mad men should indifferently be sent thither As if the condition of those that are possessed and mad were the same The Carpenter therefore is nourished a whole year and mad however the wonted remedies were implored and when as moneys were not sent from Antwerp for the last half year they sent back the mad man bound in a waggon who when he had loosed his bonds he leapt out of the Wain into a deep and neighbouring pool He being at length drawn out was laid up into the Waggon for a dead Carcasse but he lived for eighteen years after free from madnesse By which example I being raised unto an hope knew that not only the madnesse from a mad dog but also that an inveterate or ancient Mania or madness might be cured And that thing I afterwards often tried neither hath the event deceived me but as oft as through fear I drew these mad persons over-hastily out of the water I likewise learned by the example of the Carpenter that it would be all one whether the aforesaid plunging or choaking of the mad Idea should happen to be in fresh water or salt A certain woman to me known commendable for her much honesty in the moneth November in a dark evening rushed head-long from a bridg into a small River or Brook with a Carr of two wheels And when they were intent about the horse they neglected the poor â—id woman but she remained under the water until they had unloaded the Carr of some wares At length being mindful of that poor old woman they brought her to a neighbouring Village as it were a drowned dead carcasse wherein the wife of the Inn laid that woman on a table with her face placed downwards and her head hanging downwards And it came to pass that she thus dismissed the water drawn into the lungs It seemed to me like a fable until mat in the mountains of Hannonia or Hungarie a young man drowned in swimming is brought unto a noble Matron a companion of my journey who bad the mother bewailing the death of her son to be of good cheer Therefore she stretched the young man with his face placed downward upon his knees and when the feeble young man thus hung being altogether naked he at length the water being cast back began to breath again and revived in our sight Again I remember that in the year 1606. I returning in the evening from the Castle of Perla two leagues distant from Antwerp found a company on the bank of the Rotomagian Channel because they complained that a young man the only son of a rich widdow was drowned who was sent for and found his dead carcass laying on the ground in the stubble or straw she took him up into her lap and kissed him weeping bitterly I bad that she should turn his body with his head and shoulders hanging downwards and his back upwards and the young man began after a quarter of an hour to breath again I have learned therefore that drowned persons do not easily die seeing both the aforesaid young men lurked perhaps for the space of half an hour under the water Neither must there be a cessation from prayer as soon as he which is believed to be dead doth cease to take breath Galen for madnesse of the biting of a mad dog before the fear of waters hath arose gives Cray-fishes or Crabs calcined to drink for fourty dayes Yet if that Calx be not given presently after the beginning it profiteth nothing and so also thus the use thereof hath remained unaccustomed In the mean time it is ridiculous that in burning of Crabs they add myrrhe c. or when they melt silver for to make a cup or flagon for a Perfuming-shop that they add Triacle The antidote whereof the devouring flame consumes before the living creature be roasted But Paracelsus affirms that the Hydrophobia is cured by sharp loosening medicines but surely the event hath not answered his promises Therefore Catholiques despairing nor trusting to these remedies of the Universities our Country-men flee to St. Hubbert where by some Rites performed they are cured Yet this is remarkable therein That if the Rites be not precisely observed the madness which otherwise did hitherto long lay hid doth forthwith arise and the Hydrophobians are left without hope There is a robe or gown of S. Hubbert locked up in a chest with six divers keys and also kept by six divers Key-keepers but they do every year cut off part of that garment the garment the while remaining always whole for eight hundred years now and more Neither is it a place of jugling deceit because it is not known at this day whether the Robe be of fine flax wool hemp or cotton and so neither could a new one be yearly substituted in its room But they cut off part of the garment that they may incarnate a thread or rag thereof within the skin of the forehead of every one that is bitten by a mad dog For from hence there is another miracle That he who hath once recovered by his rites through the thread or rag taken out of the robe may delay the time for another that is bitten and stupifie the prevailing madnesse for fourty dayes and that for some years until they to their own profit can at length come to Saint Hubbert yet with that condition that if any one do tarry never so little above fourty dayes and hath not as was said before obtained by request a prolonging of the limited time he presently falls into a desperate madness For the Lombards do thus run to the Saints Belline and Donine and so do request preservation And they require the healing to be from a madnesse arising from a deed done But for foolish madness or being out of ones mind they do not hitherto as I know of invoke any heavenly Patron CHAP. XXXVII The Seat of the Soul 1. The matter is as yet before the Judge 2. A third opinion 3. The head being dead a certain Bride hath over-lived for eight hours at least 4. The mouth of the Stomach being smitten hath brought a sudden and total death 5. A Paradox of the Authour concerning the Seat of the Soul 6. The Creation teacheth this seat 7. Physitians do occultly consent to those very things unwittingly 8. The Lord confirmeth the Paradox of the Authour 9. Some reasons 10. Against the existence of the Vegetative Soul 11. The Heart is a servant to the Stomach 12. The seat remains fixt 13. That the first powers of conceptions are felt in the mouth of the Stomach 14. They unwillingly place
mind if the essences of things from a former thing their causes be known only to God Therefore it is simply false that the knowing of the mind is more difficult than the naked knowing of things or therefore to be put after them Because all things are alike unknown to us because the essence of all Beings whatsoever is their precise Truth shut up to us-ward and laying open unto that which is infinite Therefore the knowledge of things is to be measured at the ballance all corporeal things are primarily strangers and forreigners to our mind and therefore more remote from the mind than the mind from it self And moreover other things are not to be known but by the mind and first in the mind for therefore the knowledge of any things whatsoever is only a certain observation from whence we frame discourses according to every ones capacity Wherefore also every such observation and discourse fetched from hence how polished soever is only from a latter thing or the effect far less illustrated than is the observation which is had from the mind For who ever of mortals knew what the water may be The which notwithstanding is the most obvious manifest visible and transparent of created things for a Country-man or Idiot knows as much of it as a Phylosopher For they do equally conceive of it by the observation of the senses that it is a Body weighty liquid moist giving place to ones finger fluid and reclosing it self upon the removing of the finger a receiver of Heat and extenuable into a vapour yet none hath known the internal thingliness of the Water or why it is liquid or moist even as indeed we know the circumstances both vital and intellectual of the mind and what things do dispose this its own prison unto various alterations and which do oft-times produce something seminally out of its concrete or composed Body So as when the appetite of a Woman with Child doth produce a Cherry on her young which flourisheth every Year Also in that we do moreover know more of the Soul than of the Water it is that which is known by the Revelation of Faith To wit That the mind is a Spiritual substance also subsisting by it self without a Body Immortal Living made after the Image or likeness of God immediately by God himself giving Sense as also motion to the Organs and the which being seperated from the Body doth perceive without Organs at its beck or pleasure being able also to move out of it self and the Body being bridled or restrained is able to produce a Being out of it self as hath been already shewn concerning a Woman with Child it understanding also willing and remembring c. The Observations of which Properties and Functions are far more strong than is the knowledge of the Water otherwise all things and every of things by an intrinsecal understanding are equally unknown and unpassable to us But that which hath Seduced Predecessours by thinking that the knowing of the Water was easier than that of the mind hath proceeded from an Opinion That a visible thing is of necessity more known than an invisible thing But they have not distinguished the Knowledge of Observation from the Internal Knowledge of essence or thingliness according to which all things are equally unknown unto us They have not known I say that the knowledge of Observation doth not introduce an understanding into the essential thingliness of a thing but erecteth only a thinkative knowledge For otherwise the understanding should perceive causes that are before in essence Then also they have been deceived by the simplicity of the Water which simpleness they have confounded with the unity of knowledge to us unknown In the mean time seeing the observations of the mind are many and the more plentiful the property of every one whereof denyeth a knowing from a former thing therefore they have thought that they did undergo more impossibilities in the knowing of the mind than in that of a simple Body And so as well the number only in the mind as a visual frequency of Bodies hath brought forth in them that difficulty when as notwithstanding after another manner in the Beingness of a Being that which is visible is as well unknown intellectually as that which is invisible For I intended to deliver an intellective Doctrine of the mind that man might originally as much as he can know or acknowledge his own self and that afterwards he might learn from the Image of the Divinity to contemplate of things more inferiour than himself But when I endeavoured to explain that by the mental acts of Prayer I had not freedom in that thing because they were judged to exceed the Square of my own contempt or meanness I willingly omitted that Treatise Let it therefore be sufficient for me to have plainly demonstrated to others more abounding then my self that the Christian Phylosophy of nature doth not admit of nor will mortal strange far remote things and the causes whereof are hidden from a former cause and not to know in the mean time who I the contemplater may be what the understanding may be how an intellectual act may be formed and subsist Especially because any thing is not conceived as it is in it self but aâ—ter the manner of the receiver that is of the conceiver Therefore before all the receiving understanding which affecteth the understanding of things who or what and after what manner it is disposed in the act of comprehension seemed to me to be weighed Next what the sheath of the understanding may be and the capacity vigour and manner thereof After what manner in the next place a power indeed undistinct from it self may be drawn and descend into the Functions and Organs tied and Subjected unto it Lastly before I can know whether a thing it self understood be true good or whether in me or for me it is not to be changed in its Beingness by conceiving or alienated from its own essence from whence the Truth of Entity or beingness it self had assumed a strange mask I altogether judged that those things ought to be cleered up by intellectuall acts tho which I determined could not be more readily or successfully begged by any other thing than by practise that is from the mental Prayer of Silence But that thing others shall discern or judge of and weigh more justly or equally than I And therefore I would not willingly descend into this labarinth CHAP. XLV The Distinction of the mind from the Sensitive Soul 1. The Treatise of the Entrance of death into Humane nature is commended as necessary for obtaining a knowledge of the mind 2. The Reader is also sent back unto the Treatise Touching the Birth of Forms 3. The Immortality of the Mind is proved from the Gospel 4. It prepares a Weapon against the Atheism at this day 5. Leonard Lessius describing or Coppying out hath re-delivered only out of Augustine concerning the Immortality of the Soul FIrst
coct neither doth coct any thing but for a single end and after a single manner to wit that she may reduce it into her own noruishment and for no other end but the ferments to whom only it belongs to transchange things being now restored will subdue the matter of the disease under the Ferule in the Inns of digestion and root it out at pleasure For I have taught concerning digestions that sharpnesse in the stomach is not from the brackishnesse of things being recieved into the body but from the sharp or sout specifical ferment of the stomach it self But even as it is the property of sharpnesse to coagulate milky substances therefore whatsoever of the Cream of the stomach is in it self milky cannot be so exactly seperated in the Liver as that a smal quantity thereof is not snatched with the urine and there doth not make a little cloud The little cloud therefore is a signe of the ferment its returning into the stomach For neither is that swim in the urine from the nature or matter of the Fever neither doth it accuse or excuse the same Neither at length is that little cloud a sign of the proper Ferment of the Gaul for this is not sharp but salt and of the tast of the vital spirit even as elsewhere concerning long life but of the Ferment of the spleen to wit that which the spleen breaths into the stomach the patronage whereof it undertaketh For therefore in a Quartan ague that smal cloud oft-times appeareth and again oft-times dispesreth while as the appetite and digestion are restored and again departeth the same Quartan in the mean time always remayning otherwise if that little cloud should signify the mater of the disease as its object or efficient certainly it should constantly persevcte being once bred Since the matter being once cocted doth not regularly wax crude again Therefore for its own family-administration and the proper digestion of that bowel the spleen hath obtained a vital ferment from a spirit implanted in and proper to it self For therefore it is of the property odour and cast of the vital spirit The which seeing it is saltish and balsamical even as concerning long life it ought also to subdue and overcome the matter of a Quartan But a care of the stomach is committed to this bowel and for this cause it sits president over the digestion thereof and therefore it hath obtained another acide Ferment to this end the which unlesse it be inspired into the stomach in a due dose lack of appetites crudities yea and an inordinate hunger or appetite it self do arise Therefore if this comely ferment of the defence of the stomach be exorbitant in the spleen there are made bloody and black spittings out into the stomach which the Schools have judged to be black Choler when as otherwise it is nothing but an expurging and renewing of nourishable blood from the spleen it self Therefore the sharp ferment of the stomach although it be the cause of the little cloud and the whole soure cream be ordinarily turned into salt under the dominion of the Gaul as concerning digestions elsewhere yet the little cloud remayneth being bred from sharpnesse By reason whereof we must note that the cause being removed the effect is taken away for time to come but not for the time past Because the effect for the time past is a product now subsisting by it self oftentimes also having no longer need of the accompanying of former causes It being that which hath never been hitherto considered as neither distinguished of in the Schools Therefore a confused urine is oftentimes pissed forth by those that have the stone and likewise in the beating of the heart and otherwise But another urine although it be cleer yet it is of its own accord voluntarily disturbed in the air And indeed every troubled urine conteineth an hidden sharpnesse and the lesse thereof if it hath been once cleered at the fire and is not troubled afterwards At leastwise it betokeneth a defect of the ferment of the Gaul Because there is denoted that a very smal quantity of lukewarmth shall coct and overcome the sharpnesse that is left For so apples not yet ripe wax sweet with the Sun As oft also as the ferment of the little bag or bowel of the Gawl tramples one the ferment of the stomach and vitiateth the Pylorus so often there is a crudity of digestion and so also the urine is without a swim In the stomach also there is now and then a bitternesse from its digestion erring which brings forth such a superfluity But if the ferment of that bowel be supplanted there is a grosse and white sediment of the urine nor ever without the strangury or pissing by drops the which therefore in old people is difficult to be cured But that sharpnesse of the urine in stranguries although it be not manifest to the tast yet in how smal a quantity soever it be it is sufficient for the aforesaid effects of pain which is manifest in the urine of new Ale as yet unpercieveably participating of the brackishnesse of its Ale But while the ferment of the Liver doth too much exceed the activities of the stomach and Gaul there is a Bolar orlump-like sediment in a troubled and red-yellow urine As if that did wish to be made blood which is unfit for that appoyntment But a red sediment in a yellow urine and that which easily melteth through the heat of the fire denots the ferment of the Liver to be exasperated by a forreign impediment Which historie of ferments is inserted in the treatise of digestions There are also last of all manifold errours sluggishnesses about the original contents which in the treatise concerning the disease of the stone I have profesly weighed There is in the mean time a safe method of examining urines by their weight To wit anounce weigheth 600. grains But I had a glassen vessel of a narow neck weighing 1354. grains But it was filled with rain water weighing besides 4670. grains the urine of an old man was found to weigh in the same vessel 4720. grains or to exceed the weight of the rain water 50. grains But the urine of an healthy woman of 55. years old weighed 4745. grains The urine of an healthy young man of 19. years old weighed 4766. grains But that of another young man of a like age being abstinentious from drink weighed 4800. grains The urine a young man of 36. years old undergoing a tertian ague with a cough weighed 4763. grains But the aforesaid youth of 19. years old with a double Tertian had drunk little in the night aforegoing but his urine weighed 4848. grains which was 82. grains more than while he was healthy A maid having suffered the beating or passion of the heart made a water like unto rain water and the which therefore was of equal weight with rain water A luke-warm urine is alwayes a few graines lighter as also more extended than
Degrees of Simples he hath not attempted it by the discretion of his Tongue and so he divined that more of the fire had concurred to a mixture where he found the more sharpness and bitterness Which thing the Schooles even till now hold as authenticall although Opium being bitter hinders it although Flammula or Scarrewort the Glasse being close shut layeth aside its tartness as also Water-Pepper and the like And what things are moyst do burn or sting but dried things do binde Neither shall the Galenists easily finde out a way whereby they may bring fire for water-Pepper under dirt For it hath been unknown in the Schooles that all properties not onely those which they call occult or hidden but also that any other properties do flow out of the lap of seeds and all those which it pleaseth the Schooles themselves also to call formall ones Surely I do experience four Elementary qualities to be as in the outward bark of things the second qualities to be more dangerous or destructive but the most inward ones to be immediately pressed in the Archeus Yet all of them to be from the bosom of the seede and forms But no quality to come forth from the first matter as neither from the Wedlock of the Elements because they are both feigned Mothers But because the water which is brought into a vapour by cold is of another condition than a vapour raised by heat therefore by the Licence of a Paradox for want of a name I have called that vapour Gas being not far severed from the Chaos of the â—â—untients In the mean time it is sufficient for me to know that Gas is a far more subtile or fine thing than a vapour mist or distilled Oylinesses although as yet it be many times thicker than Air. But Gas it self materially taken is water as yet masked with the Ferment of composed Bodies Moreover Paracelsus was altogether earnest in seperating four Elements out of Earth Water Air and Fire and so from his very own Elements which seperation notwithstanding he denieth to be from the three first things possible as if those three first things were more simple and before the Elements Being unmindefull of the Doctrine many times repeated by him To wit that every kinde of Body doth consist onely of three principles but not of Elements because Elements were not bodies but places and empty wombs of bodies or principles void of all body For although the Elements are among us commonly not believed to be undefiled yet Paracelsus calls them so the which he teacheth are by art to be seperated from pollutions But this description receiveth the air in one Glasse common water in another but the Earth either of the Garden or the Field in a third and at length the flame of the fire in a fourth But he shuts the Vessels with Hermes's Seal by melting of the neck And the water for a moneth continually to boyl in its Vessel As though that thing could possibly be done and the Glasse not the sooner leap asunder especially because he commands the water to be shut up without air unto the highest brim of the Vessel and the Glasse to be melted to wit with the water Lastly he conceives a flame in the Glasse and in the very moment wherein it ceaseth it is no more fire but an aiery smoak nor is the fire a substance Last of all nor can the fire be detained within the compass of the Vessel In another place he denieth any Element of fire besides the Heaven but now he calls the fire the Gas of the thing burnt up And he exalts these his trifles for causes of great moment the which notwithstanding he dared not to name Because the doubtful man hath exposed his Dreams to the World in hope of deserving thereby the name of the Monarch of Secrets CHAP. XIII The Gas of the Water 1. The Gas of the water differs from a Vapour 2. A Demonstration from Creation 3. That the Air in Genesis is signified by the Heaven 4. That in the Firmament is the operative Principle of dividing of the Waters 5. The seperating Powers of Waters in the air 6. A History of a Vapour 7. Gas differs from the exhalation of the auntients 8. A supposition of Principles 9. The manner of making in a Vapour 10. The Gas of the Water 11. An example in Gold 12. The Gas of the Water is shewne to the young beginner 13. The incrusting of the Water 14. The heat of the Alps is great yet not to be felt 15. That Gold is not the absence or privation of heat 16. Why Gas is an invisible thing 17. Why the Stars do twinckle 18. Why the Heaven is of an Azure colour 19. The Air knowes not the motion of snatching 20. Above all Clouds the Air is not voyd of all motion 21. What quietness there may be in that place 22. Gas is the Mother of a Meteor 23. Gas and Blas do constitute the whole re-publick of a Meteor 24. The Sun is hot by it self 25. The soils of the Air are the folding doores of Heaven 26. Why some are side-windes but others perpendicular or down-right ones 27. From whence the Blas of the air is originally stirred up 28. Two Causes of every Meteor 29. The water is in the same manner that it was from the beginning 30. From whence there is a stability in the quiet Perolede or Soil of the Air. 31. Peroledes are proved 32. A solving of an objection 33. The water is frozen of it self occasionally but not effectively by cold 34. Why Ice is lighter than water 35. The proportion of lightness in Ice by Handicraft-operation 36. The constancy and simplicity of the water 37. That all Beings do after some sort feel or perceive 38. A Vapour doth sooner return into water than into Gas 39. The changing into a Vapour in respect of the air the seperater is oblique or crooked 40. The air is dry and cold by it self 41. In an elementated Body there is not a simple and an every way sameliness of kinde 42. The rarefying of the Sulphur of water gives smoothness to Ice but not the immixing of a strange air 43. In the Patient or sufferer re-acting differs from resistance 44. It is proved by 17 Reasons that air is never transchanged into water nor this into that GAS and Blas are indeed new names brought in by me because the knowledge of them hath been unknown to the Antients notwithstanding Gas and Blas do obtain a necessary place among natural Beginnings Therefore this Paradox is the more largely to be explained And first after what sort Gas may be made of water and how different a manner it is from that wherein heat doth elevate water into a Vapour And likewise we must know after what sort these things do happen by the dissection of the water I will therefore repeat That the thrice glorious God in the beginning created the Heaven and the Earth and the great deep of waters But the
first appeared for a sign of the Covenant Wherefore mortalls were amazed at that unwonted Being and being otherwise incredulous gave credit Secondly From hence I learn that the Rain-bow was given for a meer sign wherefore neither that it hath even to this day any reason of a cause with relation to any effect Thirdly seeing now the World before the floud had been about two thousand years old and yet there had been causes in nature which to this day the Schooles do attribute to the Rain-bow yet there was no Rain-bow Surely that convinceth of the falshood of those causes Whence at length in the fourth place it followes That unless the Rainbow be also at this day for a sign of the Covenant and for the sake of its first appointment it otherwise appeares for a frustrated purpose Therefore also the Rain-bow doth now and then remember us of the Covenant once stricken that we may believe and alway be mindfull that God the avenger on sinners sometimes sent the waters that they might destroy every soul living on the Earth that the same God might be a conscious or fellow-knowing revenger and Judge of our sin For all flesh had corrupted its way by luxurie which ought to be choaked by waters By the Rain-bow therefore God will alway have us mindefull of threatned punishments who by this sign doth signifie that he is the continuall President or chief Ruler the Revenger of nature But that the Rainbow might signifie that the World should be no more drowned with waters it was meet that it should bear before it not indeed a certain unwonted spectacle in the air without difference to any other thing but the mystery of the promised Covenant ought to lay hid in the Rainbow which might declare the promlse and belief of the thing promised by a signe Surely I seem to my self to admire with Noah three colours in the Rainbow and the pleasing splendours of three Sulphurs shining forth in co-burnt Mineralls And so the Colours do give testimony that the Earth being the womb of Mineralls is at length to satisfie the wrath of God by the extream melting of the burning of her Sulphurs Therefore the Rainbow doth not henceforth presage water but fire I wonder at the Schooles who will not hearken to the truth of the holy Scriptures delivered but that they even to this day proceed to make young men drunk with heathenish toyes or dotages For they hand forth that the Rainbow consisteth of a twofold Cloud to wit one being deeper and thicker but the other being thinner and moreover extended over that other that in manner of a Glasse it may resemble the Sun from the contrary part Verily it is a vain devise like unto an old Wives Dream For I have sometimes kicked the lower part of a Rainbow with my feet and have touched it with my hands and that not onely in Cloudy Mountains but in an open and Sunnie-field And so I have certainly known by my eyes hands and feet the falshood of that supposition Seeing that not so much as a simple Cloud was in the place of the Rainbow For neither although in the morning I did cleave the Rainbow and drew it by the colours of the Rainbow have I perceived any thing which is not every where on every side in the neighbouring Air. Yea therefore were not the colours of the Rainbow troubled nor suffered confusion The Schooles ought at least to declare why it should have alwayes the figure of a Bow or Semi-circle but never the resemblance of a Glasse Why if it be the Image of the Sun reflex doth it not shine in the middle of it self seeing the Parelia shines like the Sun with an undistinct and ruddie light Why should those two Clowds be alwayes folded together with the equall form of a Bow and variety of Colours Why doth not the Glasse that is against the Sun represent those Colours if that double Cloud be in the room of a Glasse Why doth not that doubled Cloud at least in its more outward and conjoyned part change the wandring Latitude of the Clouds if its hollow part be pierced with an abounding light of the Sun declining or going down Why doth a Rainbow also appear the Sun being hid under the Clouds and no where shining Why doth the Sun I say paint out alwayes those uniform and various Colours and so neerly placed together and not one onely Colour according to the simplicity of its own light Wherefore do many Rainbowes now and then appear together in one field For truly in so vast a Circle of the Air of the Horizon the reflexion falls not in one or two miles but the Cloud opposite to the Sun hath not its reflexion directly unless on the opposite part answering to it self in the Horizon but not on the part near to its side Lastly it is absurd that the upper and thinner Cloud which is void of Colour and which the light of the Sun doth easily pierce should fashion Colours in the other thicker Cloud which neither the Sun nor either of those Clouds have in themselves Surely I have very much admired at these vain positions of the Schooles while as I should handle a Rainbow with my hand and should see no Cloud at all round about Wherefore I have noted that the Rainbow by a peculiar priviledge hath its Colours immediately in a place but in the Air by the place mediating And so I have taken notice that those Colours and the figure of the Rainbow in their manner of existing are of the nature of light That is the Winde blowing the Colours which are immediately in a medium or mean do walk together with the mean and are dispersed according as the mean in which they are is but the Colours or Lights which are immediately in place are not changed although the Air or Mean in which they appear may change its place and flow So neither the winde blowing doth the Rainbow perish or walk For from hence it is that the object of sight is at one onely instant brought to the Eye but the object of hearing because it is not immediately in place but in an Air placed doth presuppose a durance of time and motion Wherefore the Rainbow not onely is not in a Cloud but moreover not indeed in the Air but immediately in place but in the Air immediately to wit as this is in a place For so the light of the Sun doth the more swiftly strike it self in an instant even unto the Earth because it is immediately in place but in the Air mediately to wit as this is in a place But that the Sun is the cause of the Rainbow that I believe is naturall but that a Bow immediately in place is appointed to be so coloured by the Sun but in no wise in the Air that hath the force of a sign For the Schooles have hitherto been ignorant that Light and Colours can subsist unless they do inherit or stick in some certain
whereby they might provoke their minde to studies whereunto when Satan had joyned his hidden deceits the art of perfumes being first suspected straightway after remained wholly rude or untilled They had learned in the Law that sweet smelling Sacrifices were pleasing to the Gods above and the Israelite was enjoyned in the Camps daily to cover his excrements in the ground least it should grieve the Angel to go over or compass the night Camps For I remember that a certain man was well nigh consumed with a grievous pain of the stomach For four houres after meat he wailed howled and was drawn together unless he laying on a Table did strongly presse the place For I being deceived with an aptness of belief then thought with Paracelsus a Canker of the stomach to be incurable for it was the place where the bastard ribs do approach the mouth of the stomach This man I say I saw cured in a few houres by a fragrant emplaister extended scarce to the breadth of the palm of ones hand After what manner the ferment is the parent of transmutations I have not better found out than by the art of the fire for I have known that as often as a Body is divided into finer Atomes than the necessity of its substance doth bear a transmutation of that Body doth also continually follow in an Element As the ferment being drawn and snatching to it the aforesaid Atomes doth season or besmear them with the strange character of it self in the receiving whereof there are made divisions of the parts which diversities of kindes and divisions of parts a resolving of the matter doth follow for this cause indeed Chymistry doth digest and send putrefactions before hand that a ferment being received the parts may cleave asunder into the smallest things And so meats in the stomach are resolved through the ferment of the place being seasoned with a sharpish quality but in the liver and other places continually by other ferments For so although people are fed with much Sugar yet straightway they sometimes vomit up that which is soure yet neither is the ferment of the Stomach as it is sharp the ferment For neither do therefore Vinegar or Raspes Leaven although they are soure and harsh but the sharpness of the Stomach is the proper specificall mean thereof But yet also in one particular kinde or Species it undergoes much latitude for this man beares grievously Potherbs another pulse some one Fishes or Wine because he doth not digest them Very many do not eat Cheese not indeed because it is a meer Tartar or a meer Salt both by course so Paracelsus willeth but the new waxeth breachily sharp which doth easily stir up torments or wringings in a soure stomach But the old casts a smell of rottenness or corruption which it hath from the dead curd being before excrementious in it self Therefore it breedeth worms and easily putrifieth because it hides part of a stinking or Dunghilly ferment under the soureness of the milk in many it is manifested and ariseth into a degree And therefore it displeaseth many onely with its smell therefore the latitude of a sharp ferment although specificall happeneth to be in the stomach because there are divers alterations of the framer and receiver in acting but in this a sharp fermentall thing differs from soure things That what things that pierceth it doth also make volatile by the same endeavour but every sharp Spirit in dissolving is it self coagulated according to that Chymicall maxime The bread of one is broken small by a Man a Dog Horse Cow Sheep Bird Fish and so by as many specificall and soure ferments being distant in kinde Boyes say that Sparrowes wax wondrous sharp in the throat and therefore they are also devouring for it happens that a Sparrow hath snatched at the tongue of a Boy put out and hath endeavoured to swallow by which meanes they say that they have tasted the sharpness of his throat For so many living creatures are constrained for the asswaging of sharpness sake to eat Chalk Lime Bricks or white Earth Therefore the more fine and the volatile Atomes of meats are easily changed by the ferment of the Stomach into a windy Gas when as the other part is content to be resolved onely into a juyce For Chymistry is carefull in searching for a body which should play together with us by a harmony of such purity that it cannot be dispersed by that which corrupteth And at length religion is amazed or astonished at the finding of a latex or liquor which being reduced to the least Atomes possible to nature as loving a single life would despise the Wedlocks of every ferment therefore desperate or without hope is the transmutation of that it not finding a body more worthy than it self which it might marry But the labour of wisdom hath caused an irregular thing in nature which hath arisen without a ferment diverse from it self that may be mixed with it That the Serpent hath bitten himself hath revived from the poyson and knowes not hereafter to die And indeed because the Schooles have been ignorant of ferments they ought also to have been ignorant that solid bodies are framed onely of water and a ferment for I have taught that Vegetables and grain and whatsoever bodies are nourished by those do proceed onely from water for the Fisherman never found any thing of food in the Stomach of a Salmon If therefore the Salmon be made of water onely even that of Rivers he is also nourished by it So the Sturgeon wants a mouth and appeares onely with a little hole beneath in his throat whereby the whole Fish draweth nothing besides water therefore every Fish is nourished and likewise made of water if not immediately yet at least by seeds and ferments if it be great with young From the Salt Sea almost every sweet Fish is drawn Therefore it turneth Salt into not Salt or at leastwise water into it self not into water Lastly Shell-fishes do form to themselves stony shells of water instead of bones even as also all kinde of Snails therefore the Salt of the Sea which scarce yieldeth to bright burning fire waxeth sweet by the ferment in fishes and their flesh is made volatile and at the time of nourishing it is also wholly dispersed without a residence or dreg So also Salt passeth over into its original Element of water and so the Sea although it receiveth salt streams yet it is not every day the salter For the purest water although it be free from all defilement nevertheless under the Equinoctial-line it waxeth filthy or hoary stinketh straightway it becomes of the colour of a Brick half burned and then it waxeth green and lastly it waxeth red with a notable horrour or quaking Which afterwards of its own accord returns entirely into it self again Truly these things happen by the conceived ferment of the place and that being consumed they cease So the most pure Fountain-water waxeth filthy through a ferment of the
Vessel putrified by continuance it conceiveth Worms it brings sorth Gnats yea is covered with a skin Fens putrifie from the bottom through continuance hence arise Frogs Shell-fishes Snails Horse-leeches Herbs c. And moreover swimming-herbs do cover the water being contented onely with the drinking of water putrified through continuance And even as stones are from Fountains wherein there is a stony seed and ferment existing So the Earth stinking with metally ferments doth make out of water a metally or Mineral Bur. But the water being elsewhere shut up in the Earth if it be nigh the Air and stirred by a little heat it putrifieth by continuance which is no more water but the juyce Leffas or of Plants by the force of which hoary ferment a power is conferred on the Earth of budding forth Herbs for that putrified juyce by the prick of a little heat doth ascend into a smoak is made spongie and encompassed with a skin by reason of the requirance of the ferments therein laying hid Therefore that putrefaction by continuance hath the office of a ferment and the virtues of a seed hastening by degrees into the Archeusses through its seminall virtues into a quantity of life Therefore the juyce of the Earth putrified through continuance is Leffas From whence ariseth every kinde of Plant wanting a visible seed and from whence seeds that are sown are promoted into their appointments therefore there are as many rank or stinking smells of putrefactions by continuance as there are proper savours of things for that odours are not onely the messengers of savours but also their promiscuous parents The smoak Leffas being now gathered together doth at first wax pale afterwards wax yellowish straightway it waxeth a little whitishly green And at length it is fully green And the power of the Species or particular kinde being unfolded it assumeth divers Colours and Signates In which flowing it imitatets the leading of the water under the Equinoctial-line yet in this it differs that these waters have borrowed too Spiritual a ferment from the Star and place without a corporeal hoary putrefaction and therefore through their too frail seed they straightway return into themselves but Leffas is constrained to perfect the Tragedy of the conceived seed Therefore Rain conceiving a hoary ferment and being made Leffas is drawn into the lustfull roots by a certain sucking And it is experienced that within this Kitchin there is a new hoary putrefaction of the Ferment the Tenant by and by it is brought from thence to the Bark or Liver where it is enriched with a new ferment of that bowel and is made an Herby or woody juyce and at length a ripeness being conceived it becommeth Wood becometh an Herb or departs into fruit but the Trunk or Stem if it sooner putrifies under the Earth than the Bark or Rhine becomes dry it cleaves asunder by its own ferment sends forth a smoak thorow the Bark which in its beginning is spongie and at length hardens into a true root and so planted branches become Trees by the abridgement of art Therefore it is now evident that there is no mixture of the Elements that all bodies primitively and materially are made onely of water through a seed being attained by a ferment and that the seeds being exhausted or overcome with pains Bodies do at length return into their antient Inne of water yea that ferments do sometimes work more strongly than fire because great Stones are turned into Lime and Woods indeed into ashes and there the fire makes a stop the which notwithstanding a ferment in the Earth being assumed do of their own accord return into the juyce of Leffas and so also at length into simple water For otherwise Stones and Bricks do of their own accord decline into Salt-peter Lastly Glasse which is unconquered by the fire uncorrupted by the Air in a few years putrifieth by continuance rots under the Earth and undergoes the lawes of water for whatsoever things may be melted in water do forthwith return into water but other things are made volatile by the ferments and what things soever were compacted and not to be thorowly mingled being brought by the ferments of putrefactions by continuance into a necessity of transmutation are opened and do hastily consult of seperating But the most clear Fountains although they climbe thorow the Rocks and Sand out of the un-savoury soil of nature or the Quellem are purified far from the contagion of Clay a ferment and corruption neither do they also fall down by chance but are appointed for great uses yet seeing they contract at least the hidden Odours of the Rockie Stone unperceivable by us they hasten into other bounds Therefore Streams Springs Rivers Fens Pooles Seas and whatsoever things are contained in the belly of the water do likewise even from the very birth of the Fountains conceive their seeds and in wantonizing do ripen them by their course Also great storms of Rain being struck down through the putrefaction of Thunder are fruitfull but sober rains are great with young of dew or a conceived exhalation For I have perfectly learned by the fire that the dew is rich in a sweet Sugar They deliver that in Snow Northern worms are bred therefore the Mountains to be covered over with a long Snow and although their Grass be sparing yet that it is most apt for the fatting of lesser Cattel so that unless they are driven away in time they will be choaked with fat But the waters which contain a melting Paracelsus doth call corporeall ones and he ignorantly denieth that they contain an Element in them Therefore Ferments do by seeds play their universall part in the World under the one Element of water CHAP. XV. The Stars do necessitate not incline nor signifie of the life the body or fortunes of him that is born 1. Naturall Philosophy without Medicine wants its end 2. The objects of the Stars 3. By what Argument the admittings of Ephemerides or Dayes-books may be supported 4. The errour in admitting them 5. However influences may be taken they do alwayes include a necessity 6. What the Works of the Lord in Psal 14. are 7. The fore-knowledge of God is infallible as well in things freely happening as in those of necessity 8. Death is foretold to Hannibal 9. How the Devil foreknoweth things to come 10. The Confession of the Authour 11. How much and from whence an evill Spirit hath a foreknowledge of things to come 12. Which way foreshewing Signes may be made which scarce any one understands 13. The foreshewings of the Stars determined out of the holy Scriptures 14. In what manner or what thing the Stars may act 15. The action of government 16. A diversity of government is shewen from their motion and from their light 17. Sick persons foreshew things to come 18. Why Insects have better known things to come than men 19. VVhy diseased persons do fore-perceive Tempests 20. Foreshewing doth not take away a liberty of
they have attributed all things to heats and colds being by degrees wearied by the re-acting of Patients should be extinguished which two Maxims of Aristotle having more place in the Mathematicks than in nature have deceived the Schools which thing I shall elsewhere abundantly prove In returning to our purpose I conclude that the Gaul and the Liver do perfect their own offices not indeed by a corporeal co-touching congress or co-mingling of themselves nor lastly by embracing or receiving within their own bosom But the Gaul dismisseth its own Fermental Blas into the bowels and the Liver his into the veins of the Mesentery which actions although unaccustomed in the Schools I will demonstrate in its place Furthermore the Schools stand amazed why windes cannot passe thorow the Coats of the intestines in wringings of the Bowels while notwithstanding so great a glut of Liquor is every day abundantly snatched into the meseraick veins and yet Pores are not seen in the intestine thorow which so much Liquor may daily hasten into the veins yea neither indeed although after death the Bowel being swollen with winde is strongly and even unto its bursture pressed together Truly as oft as by heats and colds figures and similitudes of artificial things which are of the Schools Instruments and sacred Anchor they do not attain the thing they presently fly to miracles or at least to the hidden Mysteries of things being frighted away by the greatness or unwontedness of the astonished matter they with the sloath of a narrow search acquiesce in the admiring of hidden properties Paracelsus for the framing of Medicinal Vitriol out of Brasse bids old or decayed Salt to be hanged up in a Brasse Kettle of hot water in the bladder of a Swine and so that the whole Salt will presently be dissolved wherewith he dids the Plates of Brasse to be anointed and promiseth that Vitriol will be bred in the Air. I was indeed as yet in my young beginnings yet I knew from Phylosophy that Salt could not be resolved into Water in its own weight without its substantial transmutation yet on the other hand the authority of Paracelsus perswaded the contrary to wit That without the adjoyning of water for else the Bladder should be in vain the salt should melt into water Wherefore I being a young Beginner decreed to try the rash monstrous assertion of so great a man But presently by a slow or gentle heat I found the water in the Kettle to be not much less salt than that which was in the Bladder whose neck was tied fast to the handle of the Kettle appearing above the water from whence I knew that the water did pierce within and without the Bladder to wit That the Bladder was passable by Salt and hot water but not by air For seventy seven parts of rain water do resolve twenty three parts of dryed salt But whereas one of the seventy seven parts of the water flies away a crust of salt swims on the brine Therefore Paracelsus doth vainly command by a Bladder those things which are commodiously done without it And that besides the supposition of a falshood hitherto Therefore I observed that a Bladder is Porie in a degree of heat but not in the heat of our family-administration Hence therefore I gathered that throughout the Conduit of the Veins the Bowels do abound with more and very small Pores than elsewhere to which Pores others should answer being passable throughout the Conduit of the veins Therefore the Cream doth pass thorow the bowels partly by its imbibing of them even as Salt water doth a Bladder and partly by a proper sucking of Sympathy thorow the aforesaid Pores open indeed in our life time even as also in heat waters do pierce a Bladder but shut in the time of death But wind is not imbibed by the Bowels by moistening neither is it sucked by the Veins and therefore neither doth it for this cause pierce the Bowels And that especially because it wanteth the drawings of agreement and a motive Blas whereby the wind the severer of things to be drawn may be drawn and doth resist The Veins therefore that are dispersed between the double Coat of the stomack do want the aforesaid Pores but the porous ones with which outer Coat they being encompassed do sweat thorow them the elementary venal bloud And so the proper Kitchin or Digestion of the stomack is from without to within But the Kitchin which is made universal in its hollowness is there also wholly composed and enclosed And that least the digestion of them both should breed confusion Indeed there is a twofold Cook in the Stomack one from the Spleen and the other being proper to it self sends forth divers digestions Moreover the sharp ferment in the Stomack dissolves the meats into juice but the ferment of the Gaul by saleing the sour Chyle doth seperate the juice for venal bloud and from thence doth with-draw the Liquor Latex Urine Sweat Dung being yellow and liquid and the parts of a thicker Ballast Neither therefore is Digestion in the Stomack a formal transmutation of meats For example for Magisterials among Chymists do indeed melt the body of a thing and do open it with a seperating of some certain dregs also Yet they do not therefore include a transmutation of it even as neither doth Salt being resolved differ substantially from it self being dried Because the same seminal Archeus is as yet on both sides chief Ruler So neither in an egge is there a formall transmutation although at the time of nourishing heat the yolk doth melt and contract a stink but they are onely material disposures required unto a formal transmutation resulting at length from thence again Neither is the Digestion of the Gaul in respect of the lively Cream as yet reckoned a formall transmutation although in respect of excrements it doth formally transchange For the unlike parts of the Cream of which an elementary application is not intended for them do putrifie through a dungie ferment and are deprived of their middle life as also of an Archeus But there is onely pretended a transmutation of the Homogeneal Cream as also an enjoyment of the same Therefore meats are not truly and essentially changed unlesse when the venal bloud is made in one part and the dung in the other part is fully become putrified Also the bowel deputed for the making of venal bloud cannot be at leisure for preparing of yellow dungs in the Ileos and Colon And the dung differs from the eaten meat essentially but it must not be believed to be putrified in a few hours by heat onely the which neither is it turned by heat into a certain kind of Cream but by the proper ferments of the Kitchins Therefore the meat is not yet fully transchanged unless when its own Archeus being subdued our vital one is introduced with a full vassallizing of the former For so wine is wholly changed into Vinegar Quick-silver wholly into Gold an Egge
that it is written that Abraham carried the Messiah in his Loyns That is unaptly withdrawn from the spleen unto the Reins from a bowel I say chiefly vital unto an excrementous shop and sieve I have noted also very many who from a Quartane Ague had retained their spleen ill affected to have been very much curtail'd in the provocation to leachery I have also observed Women in a difficult labour for some dayes an adventurous or experienced draught being offered them to have brought forth at furthest within the space of half an hour And that thing hath been proved 200 times and more For surely the Medicine being as yet in the stomach the mouth of the share is opened and the folding-doores of the Ossacrum are opened in the loins and the Young is presently expelled Indeed I have noted the Stomach to keep the Keyes of the Womb And this medicine I have divulged willingly for the good of my Neighbour that she who is in labour may not hence-forward undergo the danger of her life But it is the Liver together with the Gaul of an Eele being dried and powdered and drunk in Wine to the quantity of a Filburd-Nut The gift of God is in this Simple That seeing the Woman ought to bring forth in pain by reason of the envy of the Serpent God whose Spirit was carried upon the waters hath filled them with his blessing He would have the Eele or water-Serpent by his bowels of a sanguifying power to appease the rigour of that curse The Liver of Serpents would effect the same and perhaps better but in the experiment of the Eele the event hath never deceived From this time likewise the Judiciary divination by the Stars Hermes his scale and whatsoever is supported by the point of Nativity falls to the ground But upon occasion hereof I shall a little digress in what part the Young is knit to the womb by the Navil-strings and without the coat of the Secundines or the swadling-band of the Young it hath a substance in form of a Spleen as Vesalius witnesseth And so it hath as it were an external spleen to wit wherein as it were the venal bloud of the Kitchin and the Arterial bloud of the Mother is re-cocted the Spleen in this respect stirs up in me a suspition of a more exact sanguification than that of the Liver to wit as the venal bloud being there re-cocted by so manifold a winding of Arteries doth go back as it were from the stomach to the heart Even so as Birds and Beasts that chew the Cud do rejoyce in a double stomach At least it is manifest that that external milt doth command the conceits of her that is with child For the mothers themselves do wonder that they are then affected with such unaccustomed conceits longings furious frights and storms of troubles But it is no wonder to me seeing nothing is milty or like to the milt if it do not swell with the properties of the milt But that is a wonder that this flesh of the milt is not informed by the soul of the Mother or Young but that it enjoyes a life of its own being communicared on both sides For it hath not a sensitive Soul seeing that it is also long before quickning but it possesseth it self in manner of a Zoophyte or a Plant alive such as are Sponges and also the thicker muscilages swimming in our Sea which do enlarge embrace strain suck and shew forth rare testimonies of life being present with them Moreover if the poyson of a mad Dog or a Tarantula do make a madness limited and that like unto it self it is now wonder also that this milty lump is enlightned participatively doth live balsamically and move the minde of the woman with childe with a diverse passion As well because it performs the office of a Kitchin as because there are in the things themselves their own vain visions or apparitions as is manifest in a mad Dog But besides the minde of man being the near Image of the most high wholly immortal doateth indeed with the sensitive soul but is not capable of suffering by a little Liquor Because the passions of the sensitive soul do affect the minde which they cover within themselves do roul up and co-knit in a bond The minde indeed properly is not sick although it hearken to the frailty of the sensitive soul whence it is made manifest that the sensitive thoughts or cogitations are from flesh and bloud according to that saying For flesh and bloud have not revealed these things unto thee Therefore discourse and conceit is from the milt or spleen as being a bowel most sanguine of all and rich in very many Arteries But I have proved elsewhere that the conceit of a woman although it be formed in the spleen yet that it is brought down for the most part with a straight line unto the womb whether there be a Young within it or not and therefore the principality of the womb doth war under banners of its own neither therefore is it evidently seen in its own rest but onely while according to a wicked pleasure and fury it strains wrings blunts choaks resolves and looseneth its Clients poureth forth bloud c. But the Duumvirate doth on every side keep a due proportion of life and that with so sweet a pleasant tuning or musical measure of the life that therefore it hath hitherto been passed by by the Schools But as soon as it withdrawes its government the strengths of the parts how chief soever they are are eclipsed For so there are faintings Apoplexies Epilepsies heart-beatings or tremblings giddinesses of the the Head and madnesses And so indeed that as the occasional root of which defects is voluntarily consumed and the circuits and durations of the same do vanish away even as in the milder Fevers So also they may be voluntarily silent that they may forget to return however the boastings of Physitians do differ in this thing For those whose Roots do the more stubbornly cleave unto them they are the more fully con-tempered therefore after another manner they altogether resist a voluntary resolving and therefore they wax old together with it together with the nourishments of the stomach and do expect their own relapsing fruits unto the end of life And therefore an Epitaph of uncurableness of these defects not voluntarily ceasing is now every where read to be subscribed because they have hitherto wanted a meet Secret whereby they may be rooted out But the Roots of these Diseases as long as they do affect onely the inflowing Spirit they produce off-springs proper to their own seed and Inn For so the falling-sickness because it besiegeth both Spirits it dashneth together as well the faculties of the body as of the sensitive Soul And so that hath distinguished a great Apoplexie from a little one that the lesse hath besieged the inflowing Spirit but the greater the implanted Spirit Likewise there are in Simples those faculties which make drunk
of the Stomack But as a defect of Blood is restored by the more meer or pure meats and drinks So the defect of the Latex is recompenced by watery things it being that which experience teacheth Thirst therefore proceedeth from the governour of the Latex and not from the Bowel of sanguification for there is as much necessity of the Latex as there hath been hitherto dulness in the passing it by Some Authors do commend live Toads being fast bound to both Kidneys to lose the Dropsie by the Urine At leastwise I have seen a Country-man that had a Dropsie cured by an Adder tyed about his Belly and Reins For an Idea of fear is brought on the Reins whereby they loose their indignation Indeed by the same title thirst doth stir up an Idea of sorrow or of a denyed appetite whence the Kidney forgets its wroth From what therefore hath been said before the ignorance of Causes in the Dropsie is sufficient manifest and next with what great obscurity they have laboured about the distemperature of the Liver and emptying of waters how vainly they have thought of provokers of Urine of Vesicatories and of solutive Medicines and it is to be observed in this place that purgative Cholagogals or movers of Cholar have been wickedly given to drink to Dropsical People because they are such things which trans-change the Flesh and venal Blood into a stinking and yellow ballast without the help of a Dropsie But with the destruction of the a Hydropsical person But a hydragogal or mover of water differs from a Cholagogal because that being drunk down the Belly asswageth neither doth it expurge stinking things or excrements unless the force of a Cholagogal be adjoyned to an Hydragogall Therefore Mercury precipitated according to the prescription of Paracelsus cures every Dropsie not as it purgeth but forasmuch as it material passing through the Bowels dissolues the out-hunted Blood But if it together with that do provoke Vomit or Stool that is to the Dropsie by accident Take notice therefore of this that white Briony or white Vine being scraped or filed and laid on a bruise wherein the blood looketh black under the skin doth in few hours resolve that blood into water the which it likewise fetcheth through the skin Wherefore take notice that there is the profitable virtue of an Hydragogal or mover of water in Briony if thou shalt take away the solutive poyson from the same But surely I have observed if Antimony be turned into a liquor and afterwards into a pouder which purgeth only by sweat a remedy is procured which modestly takes away every Dropsie whithout fear of a relaps for truly it removeth as well the occasional Cause as the distemper of the raging Archeus it self For such remedies as are carried through the intestines their natural endowment remaining and being secure and the which are therefore apt to resolve the occasional Cause do free Nature of her impediments whence the Archeus of the Kidney percieving the proper madness of his fore-past fury doth open the veines suck to him and strain the water through according to his due and wonted manner and recompenceth with diligence the stubbornness of his fore-past fury by an excentrical and opposite motion of the Latex grieving that through disorder he intended his own destruction whence it is plain to be seen that the government of the Kidney over the Abdomen and Veins hath hitherto been unknown The Dropsie therefore is a Disease occasionally arisen from a bloody depraved matter as it were from a fermental Beginning at whose incitements the Archeus of the Reins formeth an Idea of indignation through the power whereof he shuts up the Urine-pipes and Veins corrupts and diverts the abounding Latex and transmits this Latex into the compass of the Abdomen or nether part of the Belly in the mean time he so straitens the pores of these Membranes of the Abdomen that they can let nothing of all thorow them even until Death But the Tympany doth very much differ from the Dropsie For there is unto it a different occasional Cause a different manner of making in the next place a different matter and also a different efficient Cause Therefore a different Disposition and a different Product For Water is not generated but Wind And then neither is a Tympany made through the Arbitration of the Kidney but onely by a poysonsom ferment of the spermatick or seedie nourishment sticking and defiled in the crooked bought of the Intestine sitting as President Neither also hath Anatomy hitherto viewed the veines to be swollen with wind neither ought the Liver to suffer punishment by reason of the wringings of the Bowels although aswel the Dropsie as Tympany may follow wringings or gripings Also if the Flatus's of the Intestine should be made by the Liver a Remedy is to be applied to the Liver but not a carminative Medicine to the Intestine or the Schooles make themselves guilty through a different manner of curing For if they were mindfull of their own Theorem that of the same faculty there is a found and infirm Action they had known that Belching and Flatus's are generated by the Bowels and Stomack And so that the crooked bought of the Intestine is no lesse apt for generating of Flatus's than the concave or hollowness thereof A Tympany molesteth from Liquors which were to be assimilated but are become degenerate For a Windinesse or Flatus is made in the Intestine from a certain indisposition of the Archeus of the place who then doth forthwith change meats which are nothing flatulent into a flatus Seeing therefore in the Tympany it is in the out-side or in the crooked bought of the Intestine the same flatulent indisposition is to be considered to be with-out-side as is within in the Intestine To wit it is made from a similar nourishment degenerating whereby a dungy ferment happening the very Archeus of the place being wroth and ill affected doth turn not indeed the aforesaid occasional Cause but the proper nourishment of the Membranes into Flatus's But for this purpose a part of the dungy-ferment doth passe from the inward cavity unto the outward bought of the Intestine And therefore that is not the unsavoury or four flatus of Belchings as neither doth it smel of dung because it is not of a dungy-matter but of a degenerated and cadaverous or mortified nourishment A certain man by the perswasion of Physitians sustaining an Incision on the side of his Navel who was judged to have the Dropsie and that they might draw out the water I being a Young Man and looking on the Chyrurgions Lancet or Fleam being drawn out his Abdomen presently pitched and he by and by died But a Flatus which hugely stank uttered it self and his dead Carcass smelt It is manifest therefore that the occasional matter and next the true matter and inward effecter with all the knowledge which credits a Physitian have remained unknown The vanity also of Remedies appeareth and
Life abundance of Fat c. For the Gout and those Diseases which are thought to be the bastard births of Catarrhs do withdraw themselves from this order Because that they have a Seed of their own and therefore also do oft-times rage under the penury of venal Blood But in this case an unequal strength flourisheth seeing that the more weak Organs are quickly filled loaded nor do desire to be abundantly nourished according as the more stronger Organs do For from hence the Archeus of the more weak Organs is sadned doth through delay and impatience wax wroth and stamps on himself diverse Diseases Wherein while Issues weep a plentiful Pus and Liquor the Ancles do swell in the evening a more plentiful Snivel is dashed out of the Head and unthought of Phlegms out of the Lungs under a consent of the wandring Keeper To wit a total deluge of the Archeus and prone Excrements do grow or spring up according to the weaknesse of every part For the term of the Moon as a Law doth prescribe to the quantity of the Blood that it may be wasted in both Sexes nor may make a longer delay For from hence it is that because there is little transpiration under cold there are the more frequent Spittings Also under cold more of meat is Injected yet there is not therefore more of Blood composed In brief in Diseases of strength a Vice of the Distributive Faculty is alwayes present At least-wise it is manifest from what had been said before that the force of Appetite is not to be measured from sanguification as neither from a consuming of the Blood But things of the sixth Digestion that are transchanged have been neglected by the Schooles and dedicated to their own Humours and Catarrhs As if all Diseases should arise from the Vice of the Liver and a defluxing Phlegm of the Head They have moreover neglected the primary Offences of the Members containing which are to be attributed unto the inordinate enforcements of the Archeus but not unto things retained For I have seen the Liver in a temperate Duke of Catafractum to have weighed 16 Brabant Pounds For he complained of the swelling of his Belly he had drunk of sharpish Fountains and at length of Wine steelified who when he was variously disturbed or handled by his Physitians as for an Hydropical Man and but the day before had walked thorow the Streets suddenly died I have seen a Woman who lived a single Life alwayes thirsty and pressed with a diseasie thirst for she was thought to be Hydropical and being tormented with many solutive Medicines died But when after Death her broached Belly did not afford Water she being unbowelled appeared sound within but that her Liver harmless to the sight did weigh 21 pounds and a little more I have seen a Man who after a long torment of his Belly voided many Membranes the which being dryed and affixed to a Board with Nailes did dissemble Parchment We have seen a little Pouch grown to the Stomack of a certain Governour filled with small Stones Likewise a new Sack to have grown to the Abdomen of a Woman wherein were fourteen Pounds or Pints of Water and more So very often another of the Kidneys being stopped up with Stones to have monstrously voyded them forth Which primary Diseases are to be attributed unto the local Spirit of the parts containing I sometimes believed that growth ceasing the growing Power was extinguished because all things did stop from increasing But after that I saw many things to increase through Errour which were of the first Constitution I thought that the growing Faculty was detained from its progress only through the disobedience of the bony Matter But Pores are bred in Broken-bones and the Ribs do become longer through an enlarging of the Breast long after the cessation of growth A swollen burstness of the Veins is bred anew and becomes by degrees like a Sinew A Lobe growing every year unto the Liver of an Wolf bewrayes his age Wherefore I refer the Excrescences of Flesh of a remarkable bigness troublesome through Pain and endowed with a beating Motion among the Diseases of the patrs containing which have been neglected by the Schooles As also new Fibers having arisen on the Muscles I have observed to have brought the Palsey and those being taken away this to have been Cured For in the Grease not only fatness alone is bred but also Fibers or the Honey-combs thereof which are of the condition of solid things So there are notable Super-crescences of the Gristles and Ligaments which are subject to the Chyrurgion not as the occasional Causes of Diseases but as erroneous Products which are to be taken away they being sometimes annexed unto their primary Diseases For from an injured Bone a nourishable Liquor doth oftentimes distil which dissembles the hardness of a Bone Yet with rottenness as being a partaker of a bony curd Therefore if I shall reckon up the Diseases of the part containing among Retents think thou that that is done because they are nourished by a Root of their own nor are taken away but by Mortification Unto these Diseases voluntary Excrescences Bunchinesses Strainings and Disjoyntings have also regard The which because they follow an inbred unequality of Strength they for the most part shew a receit from the seed of the Parents or from the Defects of Nurses For from hence whole Families are inclined unto an Hectick Fever Asthma Gout affect of the Stone Jaundise Dropsie and Madnesses For if they are not drawn from the Parents they are drawn from Nurses For the Young doth easily drink some Defects with the Milk and derives them into the similar Parts For seeing our Powers do uncessantly operate hence Retents cannot make a long stay in their former state and place but that the term of their motion being finished they do revolt from their fomer Disposition and being estranged do decline into a worse For so things retained do degenerate into things transmitted as well because they offend through an inordinacy of their own vitiated matter as through an exorbitancy of distribution caused from the Archeus being provoked For among things transmitted the Carrier Latex first offers it self which by floating up and down doth manifoldly erre For seeing that is ordained to wash off the filths of the parts it first offends by a strange Vice which it hath contracted on it self From whence are some Vices of the Skin which at length a Ferment being called to it do frequently persevere But if the attractive Faculty labours Oedema's are made and the Latex overflowes into the Liver and Veins Whence are Disuries or Difficulties of Pissing Pissing-evils and a various houshold-stuff of Diseases As also in Squinances the Toothach and elsewhere is oftentimes easie to be seen especially if by a singular adulterous Allurement the Latex be derived 〈…〉 certain part So also Poses Cataracts and Pins and Webs in the Eyes Defects 〈…〉 Eares and Teeth do arise if the Latex finds
which b. also denies for their Bodies after the Resurrection Therefore it behoves that we are Born again of Water and of the holy Spirit For as from the Beginning man was created and had not proceeded from a being born of Flesh So whatsoever is afterwards born of the Flesh is Flesh But the Water the Blood and the Spirit are one and the same in Christ John 5. and these three do denote an indifferent and one only Baptism in valour or effect Wherefore the only new Birth unto Life Is by Water and the Spirit in the participation of the virginal Body of Christ alone For truly it is alike impossible for Flesh to enter into and see the Kingdom of God as for to ascend into Heaven by a Motion of ones own and that is granted to none but to the Son of the Virgin who for that end descended from Heaven who was in Heaven while the same Son spake these things to Nicodemus and the which a little while after ought moreover for the same Cause to be exalted in the Cross The same therefore which descended from Heaven that he might be incarnated of the Matter of the Virgin is he in whom the Water the Virginal Blood and the holy Spirit are one The Spirit therefore which maketh the Corrupted and Adamical Man to be renewed by Water doth so regenerate the inward man from a new Generation in the Spirit that it becomes a true Spirit to be glorified by rising again whose Voice the Sons of Adam shall hear yet shall they not know from whence it may come or whither it may go because the Spirit the Regenerater is the glorious God himself who breatheth where he will and thou now hearest his Voice by Faith and the Sacrament Thus every one who is born again of the holy Spirit is made Spirit and united to him who is not known from whence he may come or whither he may go I call these earthly things although they touch at a spiritual Generation and new Birth because they have some things like unto them in a sublunary Nature which things every one hath not indeed every where known and therefore neither doth he believe them For the Generations of Bruits do happen from a watery Liquor and a seminal Spirit Notwithstanding those things are not therefore plainly terrene or earthly and naturally intelligible by the Vulgar which the Lord speaks to Nicodemus because the reason of the Love of God is no more conceived in this New-Birth than of his infinite goodness To wit it remains unpassable why he would adopt Man for a Son and Co-heir of his Kingdom yea reduce him into a Spirit of a God-like Form who shall materially be born again of Water For that mystery of love exceedeth all the understanding of Angels Yea to believe and contemplate of the actual Person of Christ in an old Man a Woman a young Man a poor diseased Man a miserable and naked poor or little esteemed Man or Woman none can naturally understand it unless he being compelled by Faith hath subjected his understanding unto Faith So neither are we able to conceive what one thing all are made by that new Birth of Baptism in Christ without a difference of Sexes or Nations unless we are holpen by Faith At length it was not enough for the Love of Christ to be born in the form of a Servant and so to be exposed unto Scorn But moreover he ought to suffer a most sharp and most exceeding reproachful Death the which so cruel and disgraceful Death himself in the abounding goodness of his Love cals his Exaltation But he brings it into the similitude of the exaltation of the Serpent Nehushtan Not indeed because the Serpent did any more represent the form of the Son of Man than the Fork did the Cross but only the likeness of impure Man slidden into Death through the perswasion of the Serpent the likeness of whose Servant the Lord was to assume Therefore the Son of Man ought to be exalted not indeed as being unhurtful in the Fork or as it were an unsensible brazen Serpent and the which otherwise being a live one was perceivable enough to be most fit to hang up But the Son of Man must be exalted alive he being full of Love and also at length to die in that Cross that the deserved New-Birth or Regeneration might be made effectual by his Death For truly else without the Death and Exaltation of him Crucified a Participation of the new Birth by Water and the Spirit had not succeeded neither had Death Perished So that plainly from a deep mystery the similitude of the Fork Cross and Saviour was fetched for a similitude of an incarnated Servant and him compared with the brazen Serpent Neither also did Israel Worship God in the Serpent otherwise Moses by the Command of God had been the Author of Idolatry Neither therefore is a live Serpent bound to the Fork as neither likewise his dead Carcass but his brazen Image only as being uncapable of Life that by this mystery it might be manifest that the whole similitude in that the exaltation of the Fork or Pole and Cross did manifest and clearly hold forth unto us the Flesh of Sin which the Son of Man by way of similitude represented was plainly uncapable of Life and of the Kingdom of God no otherwise than as the brazen Serpent was Therefore it is simply and absolutely true That unless Man be born again of God and doth partake of the unspotted Virginity which the Lord Jesus drew in his most glorious Incarnation from the material substance of the Virgin his Mother the hope of Salvation is for ever cut off Wherefore also from thence it is manifest that from the intent of Creation nothing but a Virginal Generation was afterwards required And by consequence that a Seminal Impure Beast-like and Adamical Generation was by the Craft of the Devil drawn and exhausted from the Apple wherein the Fewel of Lust was Therefore unless the Adamical Flesh doth again die and an unspotted Virgin-Flesh be restored in us in its stead by the favour of the holy Spirit who saveth those that are to be saved freely it is certain that the first intent of our Creator should be frustrate whatsoever may be otherwise done or hoped for For in the Beginning it was sufficient to be born because also then they had been born of God But after the Fall it thenceforth behoveth the Adamical Flesh to die and perish and to be again renewed or re-born of Virgin-Flesh which the holy Spirit by Water stirs up in us while we wish or desire to be Members of that Head and Branches of that Vine We are therefore regenerated in the Lords Body by Grace unto the immortal Life of the Age to come and that we may be raised up again in the Participation of Virginity Death must interpose and whatsoever is Adamical in us be blotted out We all indeed shall rise but we shall not all be
that Paracelsus was ignorant of the Root of long Life as well from his Writings and Medicines as by his Death For truly the renovations and restorations whereof he deservedly in many Places and much oft-times glorieth in are only the purgings of the Parts containing with a correcting and banishing of those contained and thus far he was the revenger and healer of almost all Diseases yet his secret Medicines do not so much respect a long Life as an healthy one and the Commodities hereof For the Haires Nailes and Teeth are renewed and although these are most hard yet they first feel the Flesh And therefore it is not written in vain That Moses had all his Teeth at the 120th Year of his Age For as they live obscurely they have their Kitchin out of themselves also they most easily putrifie For perhaps Egypt and the neighbouring Places have that thing unto themselves from a Property For truly I remember that Prince Radzvil the Poloman hath thus written of the Mummy of Aegypt For those Bodies are preserved entire with the least putrefaction of any Member even unto this Day But so great is the multitude of these dead Carcases that there are few who are able to endure with Patience the disdainfulness of seeing them all They are so condensed with the Fat of Spices and Oyntments that they shine as being hardened after the manner of Pitch Especially their Brain Muscles and Shoulder-blades which are the more fleshy Parts for the Breast Hands and Feet seeing they have little Flesh and are extended after the manner of a Membrane they do not provide for with Mummy It may be collected from the Judgment of their Nostrils how much Myrrhe ought to have been admixed with these Unguents Likewise those Oyntments preserve a wonderful Whiteness in the Bones About the Caues or Vaults without a great Power of Bones layes cast aside from which the Mummy was withdrawn among which we did not by the way nor in a short time contemplate of the Skuls and the neather Cheek-bones where the Teeth were fastened we found none at all which might have so much as one rotten Tooth or any mark of plucking out So in all the Cheek-bones they were full sincere and somewhat white For among so many hundreds of Cheek-bones there were also those of old People whose Teeth were short and worn such as are seen in old Folks but there was none which had any putrified hollow holey Tooth or sign of a Tooth slidden out From whence I collect first That Moses might naturally have all his Teeth 2. That as cold things do hurt the Teeth So also the cold Air of our Country is hostile to the Teeth 3. That therefore the Aethiopian and Spaniard have white Teeth 4. I take comfort for the Dutch from the Words of the same Prince In Caire of those commonly reckoned up they are reported to ascend to the number of seven Millions of the Jews unto the number of one Million and six hundred thousand Women and children being computed But in so great a multitude of Men scarce a third part of them have their full Sight All do in many places labour in their Eyes from the eating of Fruits and the Drink of Water being over-added But 5. Paracelsus put confidence in himself not altogether in vain touching his Elixir of Propriety prepared of Saffron Myrrhe and Aloes so he had not erred in the preparation of the same but had composed that Medicine after the manner of the Tree of Life For as Myrrh keeps Mummy from an aptness of putrifying if a passage of Myrrhe unto our constitutive Parts be granted the authority of Myrrhe for long Life shall not be vain But as to a renovation so greatly praised by Paracelsus which reneweth the Haires Nailes and Teeth together with an excluding of all Diseases Surely the Haires and Nailes as they do sometimes fall off of their own accord So also in any Age they do easily grow and their renewing is of little moment I have seen also an old Man and old Woman whose Teeth having been once lost were of their own accord renewed in the 63d Year of their Age also with childish Pains Yet it denoted no long continuance of Life because both of them died the same Year For the promise of Paracelsus concerning the renewing again of Child-hood hath raised up many unto a hope of long Life To wit they have thought that from a renewing of the Teeth and Nailes there would of necessity be a renewing of Child-hood Chiefly because they should put off grayness the token of Old Age and the former colour of hairiness should return But their errour was from an undistinction For Alexander makes mention that he saw a Man of eighty Years of Age in whom as many Teeth as failed new ones grew up but he doth not therefore mention also his length of Life And although he might also by accident have been long lived Yet seeing one doth not contain another in the Root or necessary Causes it was a faulty Argument to derive from the one the other by a sequel Because Nature hath often attempted such kind of Renovations under which in the mean time she hath cut off the Thred of long Life For it is not unlike that the Pear-Tree is every year renewed with Leaves Yet not that therefore that Tree is long lived the Turpentine Tree or Cedar or Firr Tree of a short Life Yea neither doth the Pear borrow any virtue of Long Life because its Tree is renewed every Year Therefore the renewing of Medicines hath deceived Paracelsus because it is that which proves health only by reason of an intimate and supream cleansing of the similar Parts but not the renewing Root of Life or a prolonging of Life thereupon For they have been deceived because the Stag puts off his Hornes and the Snake his old Skin and are long-lived Bruits And therefore they have abusively referred that Renovation unto the Cause of a Life of long continuance For Crabs Spiders Grashoppers and Insects of a shorter Life do oftentimes happen to put off their Skin But on the opposite Part a gelded Stag changeth not his Horns because neither doth he make new ones Yet he ceaseth not therefore to be alike long-lived For the Stag casts not away his Horns in time of Autumne or Winter while as great Beasts compose themselves unto a greater rest but while he is fed with a new bud of Branches wherein a renewing Faculty of his Bud is as also it is transferred on Stags but not on Oxen because the Stomack of the Stag by a proper and specifical Ferment preserves the budding Faculty or Virtue of young Sprouts and derives it into the middle Life of the Stag Which thing happens not unto a gelded one wanting Horns as a Beard is denyed to Eunuchs This sort of renewing therefore is an Effect indeed of a more flourishing oâ— growing Life yet not an unseparable token as neither a conjoyned Cause of long
Earth may be without and besides minerals I have demonstrated in my Treatises of Natural Philosophy But the most rich seed of this Store-house and Treasury seemes to be profesly neglected by Moses least Israel by attributing divine and immortal Powers to Fountains and Mountains should sacrifice unto them But besides the sand or earth being on every side con-tinual to its self having received a seed arose into Hills and Rocks and divided the Pavements of Stones For as the Rise of things began from a Miracle so now it adhereth to its second Causes that the invisible Archeus's of things and the hidden seeds thereof may testifie that they are likewise Governed by the intelligible World For from hence it is that the waters have remained gotten with Child through the desire of the seeds and the Almighty hath disposed the Idea's of his pleasure or Precept through the Water Yet these seminal desires of the water do not fructifie through a successive propagation of one thing by another after the manner of plants but a seminal vertue lurking in the Treasures of the water doth peculiarly stir up its own Of-springs from it self and successively perfect them For a seed or seminal and mineral Idea is included in the water which never goes out of it but locks up and incloseth it self in that matter until at length under the maturity of dayes that be made thereof which was born to be made of it The operative Image therefore in the waters doth receive a sensible and presently a fermentaceous odour from the flinty Mountain But the flinty Mountain is a Plantafle Pavement or space of earth wherein great stones small stones and all minerals draw their original out of the water even as elsewhere concerning the original of Fountains And moreover that Odour is the Ferment from whence a complete mineral seed doth at length issue From thence also is every Rocky stone But this seed is not in minerals by way of a Metaphor a certain Equivocal thing or proportionable resemblance under the licentious allusion of Similitude For new flints and stones do grow in Fountains and Rivers But whatsoever is made and so long as it is in making neither is as yet in its perfection intended by the Archeus hath a seed in it self so as that I may understand an Univocal or simple Nature to be in its own constituted parts For the water being purely clear having in it the seed and Ferment of a stone becomes the Crystal of all Gemes But if besides the pure colour of a certain mettal or Fire-stone shall concur it is made a Gemme following the hardnesse and properties of its owne coagulated Body For just even as Tinne which affords to Painters a yellow colour which they call Masticot makes every mettall its lead being taken away brickle So also it tingeth the hardnesse of Gemmes or precious Stones Therefore the Adamant or Diamond alone affords a yellow powder or dust and the powder of other Gemmes is white But if water not being purely transparent doth incorporate it self with a mettalick colour there is made a thick or dark stone a Jasper Agate Flint red Marble Marble c. and that according to the rerequirance of the mixed seed In the mean time Rocky stones are more easily dissolved than small flinty-stones and do again of their own accord or by Art return into water who converteth Rocks into pooles of waters But I say that Rocky stones are convertible into a lime and they sometimes perish of their own accord into the nourishing juyce of Fields and into Corny Beings or substances In Quarries of stones also a nitrous salt doth oftentimes voluntarily drop with a perpetual distillation to wit that Rocky stones may return into their first matter Even as on the other hand through a Rocky odour of the Ferment the whole water passeth into a Rocky stone or at least as to a part thereof wherein that odour radically grew together in it And that as well in time of flowing as of standing still in a pool But it was not as yet sufficient for the Divine Bounty to have made from the Beginning Rocks great stones and small stones and to have conferred a seed for propagating a new Of-spring whereby small or flinty and rocky stones should afterwards be made of waters But moreover he would have it that a stonifying seed should in many things exceed their own vegetables and should testifie that those seeds were more powerfull in these than themselves For neither doth the seed stonifie only with the water subjected unto it but moreover through the odour of the stonifying seed it makes the Body that co-toucheth with it become a rocky stone onely by touching upon it For so the Glove of Frederick the Emperour was stonified in one part thereof to wit in that part which he had for some time moistened beneath the water but in the other half or moity being fenced by a graven Impression it remained leather So that not onely Herbs Woods Breads Iron Egges Fishes Birds and four-footed Beasts are by a wonderfull Metamorphosis made a Rocky stone But also as Ambrose Pareus witnesseth there was at Paris a humane Young cut out of the Womb of a mature bignesse that was turned into a Rocky stone His Toe was broken and the Tendons and joynts of his Bones appeared within And likewise his Gum being broken for he was of a gaping and as it were howling mouth shewed a Tooth underneath in the sheath of the Cheek-bone The which a Friend testified to me who for the sharpening of Instruments in preparing Instruments designed for Mathematical demonstration is wont oftentimes to make a Whetstone in the back of this Young So likewise Histories makes mention that in Vaults nigh the City Pergamum now called Pergamo or Bargamo there were some dead Carcasses found to wit of those whom the fear of War had forced into hidden places that they were I say stonified from their superficies even to their Center From whence many particulars worthy of note do arise 1. That rocky stones are generated of their owne and proper seed and that they afterwards consist also of another stonifying seed that is such kind of seeds do not onely transchange the water as it were their proper and immediate Object but and also other strange Bodies which have drawn in the aforesaid seed onely in way of an Odour 2. And that therefore those strange Bodies ought at the least to bear a co-resemblance in something even in their remote matter Seeing they have nothing common at all besides that principating matter which in rocky stones is meer water For neither otherwise could the Fruits of divers Elements differing at least in the whole kind light together into one 3. But that rocky stones are not composed of a coagulable Tartar as of their proper and near matter but that they arise from a proper seed which was bred to stonifie any thing even of a matter not disposed unto a rocky stone 4. That
long since blinde ignorance of my presumption cast away Books and bestowed perhaps two hundred Crownes in Books as a Gift upon studious persons I wish I had burned them being altogether resolved with my self to forsake a Profession that was so ignorant if not also full of deceit At length in a certain night being awaked out of my sleep I meditated that no Schollat was above his Master yet I resolved in my mind that many of my School-fellowes had exceeded their Teachers but the truth of that Text was brought unto me namely That a man did watch and build in vain unlesse the Lord did co-operate I knew therefore likewise that we do teach any one in vain unlesse the Master of all Truth shall also teach us within whom none of his Disciples hath ever surpassed Therefore I long and seriously searched after what manner I might attain the knowledge of the Stone from this Master For truly I most perfectly knew that Authors had not so much as the least light and that therefore neither could they give me that Knowledge But I confessed my self to be a great Sea of ignorance and an Abysse of manifold darknesses and to want all light unless it were one onely Spark that so piercing my self I might acknowledge that nothing was left unto me And so although I frequently prayed yet presently after I despaired in my mind At length making a thorow search of my own self I found that I was my self free from the stone For I had never felt any pain of my Reines or had taken notice of one onely sand therein Yet I had now and then beheld that sand adhering in the Urinal yet without any sliminess or disturbance of heat or local pain For I wondered that having powred out my urine a sand should stick to the sides of the Urinal and be so fastened thereto at so great a distance of equality that it denyed all fore-existence of matter falling down It once happened that I was conversant with some noble Women the Wives of Noblemen and so also with the Queen her self from the third hour after noon even to the third hour after midnight at London in the Court of Whitehall For they were the Holy-day-Evens of Feastings in the Twelfdayes But I made water when those Women first drew me along with them to the Kings Palace wherefore for civility sake I with-held my urine for at least 12 houres space And then having returned home I could not even by the most exact viewing find so much as the least mote of sand in my urine For I feared least my urine having been long detained and cocted beyond measure would now be of a sandy grain Wherefore I made water the more curiously through a Napkin but my urine was free from all sand Therefore the next day after in the morning I pissed new urine through a Towel and detained it in a Glass-Vrinal as many houres to wit twelve And at length I manifestly saw the adhering sand to be equally dispersed round about where the urine had stood lastly pouring forth the urine I touched that sand with my finger And being perfectly instructed by my owne experience I concluded with my self That forasmuch as the urine was by me the pisser detained for 12 houres space and yet it contained no sand neither that I had cast it forth and that otherwise in the lesser space of a day sand had been condensed in my urine and fastened to the Glazen-shell in the encompassing ayr of the Month called J January I knew more certainly than certainty it self that a sliminess of matter was no way required for that sand and that the heat of the member did in no wise effect the coagulation of the Stone I thereupon taking my progress home cast from me the Doctrine of the Schooles and presently the Truth took hold of me For I being confirmed and no longer staggering by reason of doubt believed as being certainly confirmed that the internal and seminal cause of the stones in men was unknown to Mortals With a great courage therefore I again disdaining all the Books of Writers cast them away and expelled them far from me Neither determined I to expect the ayd of my Calling from any other way than from the Father of Lights the one onely Master of Truth And presently I gave a divorce to all accidental occasions and mockeries of Tartar and also to any whatsoever Artifices more than those which more shew forth the course of Nature Because I knew that Nature doth no where primarily work out seminal transmutations by heat or cold as such although she be oft-times constrained to make use of those for the excitements or impediments of inward Agents I knew therefore that vain were the devices of Paracelsus concerning Tartar to this end at least invented by him that he as the first might be reckoned to have thrust in the Generation of the Stone into the universal nature of Bodies and Diseases by the history of stones feigned from the Similitude of the Tartar of Wine For although he perfectly cured Duelech as his Epitaph doth premonish yet he obtained not the speculative knowledge thereof in the like measure as he did the most powerfull use of an Arcanum For so very many experiments wander about amongst Idiots the causes whereof they notwithstanding know not Therefore the help of Books forsook me and the voyce of the living forsook me which might teach me while present yet I knew that wo was to the man that trusted in man Good God the Comforter of the poor in spirit who art nearer to none than to him who with a full freedome resignes up himself and his Endowments into thy most pleasing Will and seeing thou enlightnest none more bountifully Oh Father of Lights than him who acknowledging the lowliness of his owne nothingness puts confidence onely in the good pleasure of thy Clemency Grant thou Oh thou profound Master of Sciences that I may rather be poor in spirit than great with Child or swollen through knowledge Grant me freely an understanding that may purely seek thee and a will that may purely adhere unto thee Enlighten thou my nothing-darknesses as much as thou wilt and no more than that I may suffer my self to be directed according to length breadth and Depth unto the Reward of the Race proposed be thee unto me nor that I may ever in any thing decline from thee to my self Because I am in very deed evil Neither of my self have I am I can I be know I or am I able to do any thing else Unto thee be the glory which hath taught me to acknowledge my owne nothingness CHAP. III. The Con-tent of Urine 1. The Art of the Fire is commended 2. An Analysis or resolution of the Vrine 3. The Author disappointed of his hope 4. A second handicraft Operation 5. A third which hath taught the coagulum or Runnet of the Stone and some other remarkable things 6. Some wayes or manners of
as in the water of the Spaw in Duelech c. a new and neutral Being is constituted such as is Oker of the spirit of Sulphur and the volatile vein of Iron But in the Tartar of Wine onely the tart spirit or sour liquor of the Wine is changed into a Salt and the Lee remaineth such as it was before And therefore the matter constituted thereby is again dissolvable For a metal stone or solid Body is not unbodyed changed or volatilized by reason of the corroding of spirits That is manifest For Silver Pearls Corâ—als Spongy-stones Crabstones Snails-stones c. although by Aqua fortis and other sharp Liquors they vanish out of our fight yet they are stones as before even as concerning Fevers indeed the spirit did what it could but it operated as it wore in vain upon the body while in corroding that body it coagulated it self For indeed there is in the whole nature of the Universe one onely fire the burning Vulcan So also there is none but one onely Liquor which dissolveth all solid bodyes into their first matter without any changing or diminishment of their faculties which thing Adeptists have known and will testifie but in all other faculties of Liquors a body can never radically co-mingle it self with the solving Liquor And therefore it is corroded indeed but is not intimately solved or loosened even as otherwise is required for a formal transmutation For every sharp gnawing spirit in gnawing of another body is coagulated and well nigh fixed and passeth over into the form of a thickned salt yet the body that hath suffered the wil of the gnawing spirit to be done upon it doth not act any thing on that spirit which in gnawing by its own proper action coagulated it self the which indeed comes to passe while two active spirits run together on each other For then there is a double action whereby both of them do mutually act on both For therefore such an action of theirs is made with a thorow radical mixture and there is constituted of them both an of-spring of unseparable mixture and this transchanged body is a neutral product from them both But if Paracelsus bad timely of fitly contemplated instead of his Tartar of Wine he had taken the Oker of the water of the Spaw and had spoken something more probable than that there were Liquors in all things which were coagulated after the manner of Tartar in Wine and that they were the common mother and matter of any Diseases whatsoever Oker indeed the daughter of the Spaw is not again resolved like as Tartar of Wine is and yet it differs from Duelech as much as a Mineral stonifying doth from the stone in man For in this the Spirit the Coagulater existing in the urine operates by vertue of its own and of a different salt upon a hoary and putrifying spirit of earth without the boyling up or belching forth of a wild Gas and so it finisheth its operation and coagulates it self with the spirit of Wine that is proper to the urine in a moment even as I have above declared in the handicraft Operation of the spirit of urine and Wine or of a burning water But the acide spirit of the water of the Spaw having sprung up from an Embryonated or non-shaped Sulphur do operate first in a long Tract do stir up bubbles and a wild Gas and at length affix themselves to the Vessel For otherwise if that Gas cannot be belched forth the waters of the Spaw remain safe being fit for healing For if the Gas be hindered from going forth it hinders whereby the subsequent effect cannot follow and the spirits are rendred feeble and barren in acting But the lee of Wine seeing it hath its own coagulation and that which is proper to it self it hath no need to attain it from elsewhere But since the sharpish spirit of Wine hath gnawn the lee there is no reason that it should give that in gnawing which it self hath not in it self Therefore in the generation of the Tartar of Wine that sharpish saltish spirit shall be coagulated indeed by reason of the earth of dreg but it shall remain in the shape of a dissolvable salt and not in the form of a rocky stone By reason of that Rule that a transmutation of the essence presupposeth a transmutation of the matter Therefore the earthy body whether it be dissolved by a Corrosive or not keeps its own antient Being Because that Dissolver doth not pierce the matter dissolved in the radical bond of connexion The which notwithstanding in things that are essentially to be transchanged is exceeding necessary to be done Therefore let the young beginners in Chymistry learn that bodies are not resolved by the calcinations of Corrosives although they are also often repeated unlesse a fermental impression through putrifaction whichgoes before every radical dissolution doth interpose Camphor indeed in Aqua fortis assumeth the nature of a swimming Oyl but that Corrosive being washed away by common water the Camphor is presently what it was before whether that be once done or lastly a thousand times For in my young beginnings I rejoyced that by a Retort at the seventh Repetition I had dispatched Gold into the shape of a Pomegranate-coloured Oyle As being mindfull that he who knew how to destroy Gold hath known likewise how to make or build it up But the Corrosive its Companion being taken away the Gold returned into its self and my vain joy ceased He labouring in vain to extract that which is not in it They also labour in vain who do not operate by due meanes The generation of Duelech therefore is not the imaginary stonifying of a cocted muscilage or of a feigned phlegme dryed by the heat of the place or confirmed or hardened by drying for so a Bole or clod onely should be resolvable but not Duelech but there is a passing over of three spirits at once into Duelech by a true essential transmutation Truly Bodyes do not act on Bodyes by a natural action of Composition but whatsoever Bodyes do perform on each other that is done by reason of weight greatnesse or magnitude hardnesse figures and motions And truly those are serviceable for Science Mathematical but scarce for Science Natural But if corporeal salts do operate it comes to pass either because they after some sort contain a volatile spirit or do find that spirit in a Body Let young Beginners at least remember that Bodyes after whatsoever manner they shall be once intermingled by co-melting do notwithstanding remain in their antient essence unlesse they are transchanged by the fire or a ferment Lastly that Bodies do operate nothing on Spirits but do onely limit these by suffering Which operation of Bodyes therefore is not a true re-acting but father a meet effect of spirits resulting from the proper activity of the same For therefore Spirits when their faculties are woren out and exhausted do voluntarily decay in the end of their motion And