[Page 1] IN the eighth year of this age, there came to my hands an Oration declamatory, made at Mar­purge of the Catti, wherein Rodulphus Gocle­nius (to whom the publick profession of Phi­losophy was lately committed) paying his first fruits to the University, endevours to make good, that the cure of wounds, by the Sympathetick, and Armarie Unguent, first invented by Paracelsus, is meerly natural. Which Oration I wholly read, and sighed, that the history of natural things had faln under the protection of so weak a Patron. The Author, nevertheless, highly pleased him­self with that argument of writing, and with a continued barrenness of probation, in the year 1613. published the same work, with some enlargement. Not long since, I also met with a succinct anatome of the fore-mentioned Book, compiled by a certain Divine, savoring more of a fine-witted Censure, then a solid Disputation. Whereupon my judgment, what ever it were, was much desired; at least, in that relation, that the thing invented by Paracelsus, neerly concerned him, and my self, his disciple. I shall therefore declare, what I conceive of the Physician Goclenius, and what of the Divine, the Censor. The Physician in the first place, proposes, and with ostentation promises to prove, the magnetical cure of wounds to be pure­ly natural; but I found the undertaker insufficient, to per­form so weighty a task; in regard he no where, or at best but [Page 2] very slenderly, makes good the title, or his own large pro­mises. Collecting, hence and thence from divers Authors, many rhapsodies or gleanings, by which he conceives he hath, to ample satisfaction, proved, that in the inventory of created natures, there are certain formal or essential vertues, which men term Sympathy and Antipathy; and also that from the concession of these, the Magnetical Cure is meerly natural. Many things, I say, borrowed from the Egyptians, Chaldeans, Persians, Conjurers, and Impostors, he hath amassed together into this one discourse, that thereby he might evidence and confirm that Magnetism, which notwithstanding, himself was wholly ignorant of. With design, partly, that by a delightful entertainment of those mindes that are eager in the quest of novelties, he might seduce them from a direct progression to the mark; and partly to raise them to an admiration of the Author, who seemed to have read, and ransacked not onely vulgar, but also all other more rare and antique writers.

For which consideration, the Physician does very absurdly confound Sympathy (which erroneously, and under various notions he very often introduces) with Magnetism; and from that concludes this to be natural: For I have observed this Vulnerary Unguent to cure, not onely men, but horses also; with which our Nature holds not so neer an affinity (unless we grant our selves to be Asses) that from thence the Sympa­thetick Unguent should deserve to be accounted common to horses, as well as to us.

With the same absurd indistinction, he also confounds Sym­pathy with Fascination and Ligation, and both with Magne­tism; namely, with great anxiety and travel of minde, he crouds together upon the Stage, in one Scene, without any distinction, all secret, and more abstruse effects what ever; that being de­stitute of reasons, he might thereby support his own Magne­tism. I will by an example difference Fascination from Sym­pathy, and both from Magnetism. A Dog holds an Antipathy 1. (for Sympathy and Antipathy are both daughters of the same Mother) with a Hen; for he preys upon her, and she flies from him; but when she hath newly hatched her Chickens, and excluded them from the protection of their shells, she boldly [Page 3] assaults, and puts to flight a dog; though of himself very courageous; to wit, the soul of the Hen, by fascination, chaining up the soul of the dog; the former Antipathy, dis­parity of weapons for guard, and great ods of strength afford­ing no hinderance to the action: But in this, Magnetism is no where to be found.

Moreover, what other instances the Physician inserts, con­cerning Impresses, Characters, Gamaheu, or Magical Images, Ceremonies, and such like, for the most part, vain observances, are but random shots, wholly impertinent to the present scope, and rather stagger the doctrine of Magnetism, by rendring it suspected, then support or advance it. But of these positively to determine any thing, is a task not sutable to my wit.

Goclenius furthermore wanders from truth, and indeed with no less temerity then ignorance; fondly dreaming from the pre­script of Paracelsus, that the weapon, wherewith the wound was inflicted, if rolled up in the weapon salve, did work the cure on the wound. For in vain is the weapon, or point of the sword anointed with the Armary Unguent, prescribed by him, unless it be distained with blood, and that blood be first dried upon the sword. For to Paracelsus, the Sympathetick Unguent 2. is one thing, in respect of the blood effluxed out of the wound; and that Unguent, wherewith arms, which have re­ceived no tincture of blood, are to be emplastrated, clearly an­other; and for this reason, he Christens the former, the Mag­netick, and Sympathetick, the latter, the Armary Magnetick Unguent: Which therefore (and to good purpose) receives into its confection, besides the ingredients essential to the for­mer, Honey, and Bulls fat.

In fine, Goclenius, to humor his own genius, hath altered the prescription of Paracelsus; affirming, that the Usnea, or moss, is to be selected onely from the skulls of such, as have been hanged. Of which his own, and grosly erroneous inven­tion enquiring a reason, he blushes not foolishly to imagine, that in strangulation the Vital spirits violently retreat into the skull, and there constantly shroud themselves for some time, until the moss shall, under the open canopy of the Air, grow up, and periwig the Cranium. Paracelsus hath expresly taught [Page 4] the contrary, and by multiplied experience we are confirmed, that Usnea gathered from the skulls of such, who have been broken on the wheel, is in virtue no whit inferior to that of men strangled with a halter. For truly from Animals there is not drawn the Quint Essence (in regard the principal, and pa­ramont 3. essence perisheth together with the influent spirit, and life) but onely the virtue mumial, that is, the originary, im­plantate, and confermentate spirit, safely remaining, and in an obscure vitality surviving, in bodies extinct by violence.

What other things Goclenius hath delivered, of remedies to repair a ruinous memory, as we cannot but declare them, in no relation, congruent to the scope intended; so also we nothing doubt to prove them meer pageants and impertinent flourishes.

Betwixt our Divine and Physician, there is at all no dispute de facto, about the verity of the fact; for both unanimously concede the cure to be wrought upon the wounded person: The contention lies onely in this, that the Physician asserts this Magnetical Cure to be purely Natural, but the Divine will needs have it Satanical, and that from a compact of the first inventor. Of which censure, in his Anatome of our Physicians discourse, he alledges no positive reason; conceiving it suffi­ciently satisfactory, if he, on the score of his own solitary judgment, abolish it, though he subjoyn no grounds for the abolition; that is, acquiescing onely in this, that he hath re­moved the feeble and invalid arguments of the Assertor; which, in sober truth, is a matter of no diligence, no learning, and of no authority to erect or establish beleif. For what a­vails it, to the procurement of faith, from no stronger evi­dence, then the futility of specious reasons, urged by some ignorant head, to give a definite judgment on the thing it self? and to declare it impious, if himself hath not so much as in a dream thought upon any one petty reason, for the support of his sentence? What if I, being a Laick, should with course and untrimmed arguments, commend Presbytery, and another re­ject my reasons as unworthy and insufficient, will the order of Priesthood it self be therefore rejected? Of what concern­ment, I pray, is the ignorance, or temerity of any one to [Page 5] realities themselves? In the Court of Truth, Philosophy sub­mits 4. not it self to naked and single censures, unless there also concur a considerable gravity of the Censors, fortified with firm and convincible reasons.

Wherefore I, who have undertaken, in opposition to our Divine, to make good, that the Magnetick Cure of wounds, is the single, and ordinary effect of Nature; in the first place, think Goclenius worthy to be excused, if without success he hath sweat in the indagation of the grand and approximate Cause of this rare effect. What wonder, when our Divine makes publick confession, that himself is utterly ignorant of that cause, and onely for that reason refers it to Satan, as to the Author and master-wheel in this abstruse motion: For such is the infirmity of our delapsed nature, that we are destitute of the knowledg of the most, and most excellent things. And there­fore, to palliate this defect of our understanding, we, though not without some tacite reluctancy within, obliquely wrest many effects, whose efficients are beyond the ken of our blear­eyed reason, to the sanctuary of ignorance, and refer them to the Catalogue of Occult Qualities. For who, among Divines, ever had a plenary and demonstrative knowledg of the true and proper cause of Risibility, or any other Formal propriety: For example, of the heat of fire. Dost not thou fall upon that Fallacy, Petitio Principii, an absurd begging of the question, if thou answer, that extreme heat belongs to fire, because it is of the essence of fire? In truth, the Essences of Forms, in regard they are unknown to us, à priori, from their Causalities; there­fore also is the original, or pedigree of Formal proprieties, wholly abstruse, jejune, and undiscovered; and where we per­ceive any Formal passion subjoyned, the minde, as if tired with vain scrutiny, soon ceaseth from the disquisition of it, and re­poseth it self, sitting down contented with the empty notion, and bare name of Occult proprieties. Go to, I beseech thee, does the Anatomist, our Censor, happily know the reason why a Dog swings his tayl when he rejoyces, but a Lyon when he is angry; and a Cat, when pleased, advances hers in an erect posture? What therefore, when himself cannot give a reason for the motion of a tayl, will he so much wonder, that Gocle­nius [Page 6] hath given an improper and insolid reason of Magnetism? and from the refutation of that, presume that he hath more then sufficiently demonstrated that sanation of wounds to be Satanical, which is the genuine effect of Magnetism? Far from us be so great temerity of censure.

Come on then; why dost thou call that cure Dibolical? 5. Insooth, thou oughtest to have annexed the reason of thy cen­sure, unless thou expectest it should be denied by others, with the same facility, wherewith thou affirmest it to be diabolical. Lawyers require onely the affirmative confirmed; but Philoso­phers both parts, that the ignorance or protervity of the No­gant party, may not appear greater then that of the Affirmant. Dost thou happily maintain the Cure to be Diabolical, because it cannot be clearly understood (by thee) that there is any natural reason for it? I will not beleeve, that from thy own infirmity, thou mayst deliver so idle and stupid a sentence of the vertue of it. For thou well knowest, that the imbecillity of our understanding, in not comprehending the more abstruse and retired causes of things, is not to be ascribed to any defect in their nature, but in our own hoodwinkt intellectual [...].

Proceed therefore; whence hast thou assurance, that God, in his primitive intention, hath not directed this vertue Mag­netical to the benefit of the wounded? Shew us your Com­mission; hath God elected you the Secretary of his Councel? Certainly, however you may waver in your belief, you shall in conclusion finde, that amongst you Divines, the Magnetick 6. cure can be accounted Diabolical for no other reason then that the shallowness of your judgment cannot comprehend, nor your Function admit it to be natural. What wonder, that no Divine hath ever scented these subtilities? for after the Priest 7. and the Levite had both passed on to Jericho, there succeeded a Samaritan, a Lay man, who deprived the Priests of all right of disquisition into the secret causes of things. Whereupon Nature from thenceforth summoned not Divines to be the In­terpreters 8. of her nicer operations, but adopted Physicians onely to be her darlings, and none but such, who instructed by Py­rotechny, examine the proprieties of things, by sequestring the impediments or clogs of vertues ambuscadoed in their grosser [Page 7] materials, such are their crudity, venenosities, and impurities; that is those bryars and thorns every where, from the first Malediction, inoculated into the creatures in their spring or virgin estate. For since Dame Nature (the Proto-Chymist) her self doth every day sublime, calcine, ferment, dissolve, coagulate, fix, &c. Certainly we also, the onely faithful inter­preters of Natures Oracles, do by the same helps and advan­tages draw forth the Essential qualities of things from the dark prison of their materials, and bring them to the Meridian light of reason.

But the Divine, that he may be able to discern what is pre­stigious, from what is natural; it is requisite, that he first bor­row the definition from us, lest the Cobler shamefully adven­ture beyond his Last: Let the Divine enquire onely concern­ing God, but the Naturalist concerning Nature.

Assuredly the goodness of the Creator was largely diffused on all the works of his hands, who created all things for the 9. use and benefit of ingrateful man: neither admitted any of our Divines as an Assessor in his Councel, how many, and how excellent vertues he should endow his Creatures withal. In the interim, I am wholly unsatisfied how he can be excused from the sin of Pride, who because he comprehends not the natural cause, as measuring all the immense works of God by the narrow extent of his own head, does therefore audaciously deny, that God hath bestowed any such vertue on the Crea­ture; as if man, a vile worm, had fathom'd the power of God, and were privy to the designes of his Councel. He esti­mates the mindes of all men by his own, who thinks that can­not be done which he cannot understand.

To me, seriously, it appears a wonder in no respect that God hath, besides a body perfectly resembling the Loadstone, be­stowed upon his Creatures a noble vertue also, which our rea­son can explicate by no other term then that of Magnetism. Ought it not to suffice, to the indubitate concession of Mag­netism, that onely one single example (I shall hereafter bring in others, numerous and apposite) be introduced, of the natural efficiency of that stone, according to the model or pattern whereof, even other endowments, variously distributed [Page 8] amongst the creatures, may be clearly understood? What, because the thing is new, paradoxical, and above the reach of your understanding, must it therefore be Satanical also? Far be it from us to conceive so unworthily of the Divine Majesty of the Creator; nor indeed ought we thus to court or gratifie the Devil, by transferring this honor upon him; for what can 10. ever affect him with a more full delight, then that the glory of good works be ascribed to him, as if he had been the grand Author of them?

That material nature does uncessantly by its secret Magne­tism, suck down forms from the brests of the superior Orbs, 11. and greedily thirst after the favor and benign influence of the celestial Luminaries, you willingly concede; and moreover, that the stars in exchange attract some tribute from inferior bodies, so that there is a free commerce, and reciprocal return from each to other, and one harmonious concord, and conspi­racy of all parts with the whole universe: And thus Magne­tism, in regard it is vigorous and pregnant in every thing, hath nothing new in it but the name, nor is it paradoxical, but to those who deride all things, and refer to the dominion of Satan, whatsoever falls not within the narrow circle of their own understanding. In good truth, this kinde of wisdom is never to be found by him that seeks it with derision.

But I beseech you, what of Superstition hath the Armary Unguent? whether because it is compounded of the moss, 12. blood, mumy, and fat of man? Alas! the Physician uses these inoffensively, and to this purpose the Apothecary is licensed to sell them. Or perchance, because the manner of using and applying the Medicine is new to you, unaccustomed to the vulgar, but admirable to both; must the effect therefore be Satanical? Sub due your passion, and calm your rage, ere long you shall be more fully satisfied.

For the manner of its application, contains in it nothing of evil. First, the intention is good and pious, and directed one­ly 13. to a good and charitable end; namely, the healing of our sick, languishing neighbor, without pain, without danger, and without the consumption of his purse: And do you call this diabolical? In fine, the remedies themselves are all meer natural [Page 9] means, to which we shall in the progress of our dispute, by convincing arguments demonstrate, that this generous faculty was peculiarly given by God himself. Our wishes are that your self had, by so firm evidence, ratified your negative posi­tion, viz. that God, the supreme Good, did not, in the Creation, confer upon the ingredients of the Unguent, any such natural vertue, and mumial Magnetism.

This Magnetical remedy can, on no side, be laid open to the 14. encroachment of suspect; since, both in the confection and use, it hath no superstitious rites performed, it requires no mysterious words, no characters, or impresses, no prestigious ceremo [...]ies, or vain observances conjoyned: It presupposes no planetary hours, or punctilioes of constellations, it pro­phanes not sacred things; and what is more, it forestals not 15. the imagination, requires not a confidence, or implicit faith, nay not so much as bare leave or consent from the wounded party; all which are ever annexed to superstitious cures.

For we account that properly to be Superstition, when men 16. relie upon the single power of an implicit faith, or imaginati­on, or both concurring, above any particular vertue, which of it self is not sufficient, or by the primitive intention of the Creator, not destined to the production of that particular effect. By which it is clearly manifest, that our Magnetick cure hath none the smallest tincture of Superstition. Do thou therefore, O Divine! great with a sarcasm, with design at least to detect and deride the Devil, make an experiment of the Unguent, that so thou mayest destroy and totally abolish that implicit compact with him; nevertheless thou shalt, vo­lent or nolent, without either direction from, or obedience to thy will, finde the same effect result from thy application of it, that usually does upon ours; which does not at all succeed upon the conjunction of superstitious causes.

Whoever reputes the Magnetical Sanation of Wounds to 17. be Diabolical, not because it is performed by unlawful means, or directed to an unwarrantable end; but because in the manner of its operation, it progresses in a path, which his reason cannot trace: He also convicted by the same argument, shall either give the quidditative and peculiarly express causes [Page 10] of all those admirable effects of the Loadstone, which in the sequel of my discourse I am to mention; or confess, that those 18. rare operations of the Loadstone, are the impostures and the legerdemain of Satan; or shall compulsively concede with us, (which indeed will be the safer way) that in nature there is a Magnetism, that is, a certain hidden property, by this ap­pellation, in reference to the conspicuous and confest prero­gative of that stone, distinguisht from all other abstruse, and to common heads unknown, qualities.

A Loadstone placed upon a thin small Trencher of wood, floating on water, does instantly in one determinate point au­stralize, 19. and in the other septentrionate. That extreme, which by its verticity regards the Southern Pole, when by touch it hath impregnated a piece of steel or iron, will immediately steer it to the North; and the other extreme which looks up­on the Northern Pole, having invigorated a needle of steel, will incline it to the South. By its Septentrional point, which is its belly, it attracts iron or steel to it; and by its Australe end, which is its back, it thrusts iron or steel from it. The Aqui­lonary side, by friction of the point of a Compass needle, posi­tionally from the right hand to the left, endows it with a ver­tical or polary faculty, whereby it is directed to the South: But if the friction be ordered in a quite contrary position, from the left hand to the right, the direction of the point of the needle will also be contrary, and neer to the North. Thus also the Australe side of the Loadstone, according to the variety of locality, or position in friction, varies the polarity. Nay, what carrieth a neerer face of miracle, if a Loadstone by its affriction hath invigorated and excited a piece of iron, with a magnetical activity, that is, a power to attract another piece of iron; the same new made Magnetical iron, if inverted upside down, and in that Antipodean position, a second time, rub'd upon the Loadstone, will, in the same moment, be devested of its magnetical infusion, and clean forget its lately acquired power of attraction. All which various and admirable effects of the Loadstone, thou mayest, if thy judgment relish them, finde made good by multiplied observations, by William Guil­bert, not many yeers past, a Physician in London, in his Book [Page 11] De Magnete: Of which subject no man ever writ more judi­ciously or experimentally; and by whose industry, the variati­on of the Compass may be restored. The needle, which now points directly upon the North, coming under the Equinoctial Line, staggers to and fro, hovers from Pole to Pole, and in a trembling unconstancy fixes on neither: But once brought over the Meridian, nimbly wheels about, and fixedly applies it self to the South. I shall annex this Medical vertue of it: the back of the Loadstone, as it repulseth iron, so also it retrudeth the gut, by reason of too wide an expansion of the process of the Peritonaeum, prolapsed into the Scrotum, cureth the Entero­cele or intestine rupture, and likewise all Catarrhes or destil­ments, that have a private affinity, or analogy with the nature of iron. The iron-attracting faculty, if in a composition, married to the mumy of a woman, then the back of the Load­stone applied to her thigh, on the inside, and the belly of an­other imposed upon her loyns, about the lowest spondil of the back, will safely prevent an abortion threatned; but on the contrary, the belly of one Loadstone applied to her thigh, and the back of another to her back, will both wonderfully facili­tate her travail, and expedite her delivery. All which various operations of the Loadstone, our Anatomist is obliged to il­lustrate, by reasons, drawn ae priori, from the fountain of their distinct and determinate efficiencies, and expound to us the subtile manner of the progress of each cause, in the producti­on of each several effect: otherwise, I shall by a parile argu­ment of ignorance, conclude, that these in like manner, are also meer illusions of Satan, and no effects of Nature.

I shall now infer some certain examples of another Magne­tism, cousin-german to the former; that so with our judgment better informed we may at length come to the positive reason, and clear refutation of all the objections of our adversaries. What can I do more? I my self will contrive reasons for you, which you have not at all urged. You may argue thus; Every effect either immediately proceeds from God, the sole Opera­tor, and so is a miracle; or from Satan, and so is prodigious; or from natural and ordinary causes, and so is meerly natural; but Magnetism is neither a miracle, nor a natural effect; and [Page 12] therefore Satanical. I answer; Though I might, with great facility, declare this enumeration delivered, to be invalid, in regard the inward man hath a power of activity, by none of the forementioned ways, (which, in the pursuit of our debate, we shall largely, and to ample satisfaction, treat of) yet how­ever we now with a dry foot, pass by the assumption, making it our chief task to deny and subvert the inference, namely in that part, whereby it is asserted, that the effect is not natural. For, by the rules of orderly and artificial disputation, that was first to be made good, that we might not fall foul upon that elench, Petitio principii, a precarious concession of that Thesis, which is yet questionable and undetermined; but in this point, our Censor hath yet been, and ever will be defective, to affirm the effect not to be natural; unless he thought, that a bare affirmation is equivalent to a confirmation, and that to have sub­stituted his single authority in the room of reason, was evi­dence strong enough to silence doubt, and procure credence. For there are many effects natural, which yet do not ordinarily happen; namely, such as are rarely incident. Wherefore to gratifie our Anatomist, I shall all along the tract of this exer­cise, not onely maintain the affirmative part, but also perspi­cuously commonstrate it by reasons, and ratifie it by examples. For so the mighty argument, even now urged, will fall by its own weight.

There is a Book, imprinted at Franekera, in the year 1611. 20. by Uldericus Dominicus Balck, of the Lamp of life. In which you shall finde, out of Paracelsus, the true Magnetical cure of most diseases, as of the Dropsie, Gout, Jaundies, &c. by inclu­ding the warm blood of the Patient in the shell and white of an Egg, which exposed to a gentle heat, and mixt with a bait of flesh, you shall give, together with the blood, to a hungry dog, or swine, and the disease shall instantly pass from you in­to the dog, and utterly leave you; no otherwise then the Leprosie of Naaman did, by the exsecration of the Prophet, transmigrate into Gehazi. What, do you account this also Diabolical, thus to have restored our languishing neighbor, by the Magnetism onely of the mumial blood? however, he is perfectly and undoubtedly recovered. ¶

[Page 13] A woman weaning her childe, to the end her brests may the 21. sooner dry up, strokes her milk into a fire of glowing coals, and thereupon her paps suddenly grow flaccid, and the foun­tain of her milk, is stopped. What, doth the devil suck and drain them?

Hath any one with his excrements defiled the threshold of thy door, and thou intendest to prohibit that nastiness for the future, do but lay a red-hot iron upon the excrement, and the immodest sloven shall, in a very short space, grow scabby on his buttocks; the fire torrifying the excrement, and by dorsal Magnetism driving the acrimony of the burning, into his impudent anus. Perchance, you will object, that this action is Satanical, in regard the end of it is revenge, and the laesion of the party, which offended us; but assuredly, the abuse of such powers depends on the liberty of mans will, and yet the use is no whit the less natural.

Make a small table of Bismuthum Consule sup­plementum insra., and on the one ex­treme, 22. place a piece of Amber, on the other, a piece of green Vitriol; the Vitriol will in a moment lose both its colour and acidity. Both which are familiarly observable in the prepara­tion of Amber.

This one experiment, of all others, cannot but be free from 23. all suspect of imposture, and illusion of the Devil. A certain inhabitant of Bruxels, in a combat had his nose mowed off, addressed himself to Tagliacozzus Alii scribunt Taliacotius., a famous Chirurgeon, living at Bononia, that he might procure a new one; and when he feared the incision of his own arm, he hired a Porter to admit it, out of whose arm, having first given the reward agreed upon, at length he dig'd a new nose. About thirteen moneths after his return to his own Countrey, on a sudden the ingrafted nose grew cold, putrified, and within few days, dropt off. To those of his friends, that were curious in the exploration of the cause of this unexpected misfortune, it was discovered, that the Porter expired, neer about the same punctilio of time, wherein the nose grew frigid and cadave­rous. There are at Bruxels yet surviving, some of good re­pute, that were eye-witnesses of these occurrences. Is not this Magnetism of manifest affinity with mumy, whereby the [Page 14] nose, enjoying, by title and right of inoculation, a commu­nity of life, sense and vegetation, for so many moneths, on a sudden mortified on the other side of the Alpes? I pray, what is there in this of Superstition? what of attent and ex­alted Imagination?

The root of the Carline Thistle (which is the White Cha­maeleon 24. of D [...]oscorides) pluckt up when full of juice and vigor, and contemporate with Humane Mumy, does, as it were by an operative ferment, exhaust all the natural strength and courage of a man, on whose shadow thou treadest, and in­fuse it into thee. But you may account this praestigious, be­cause Paradoxical; as if the same identical Leprosie were not traduced from Naaman to Gehazi; and the same numerical Jaundies transplanted from the patient to a dog. For a disease 25. is not under the Predicament of Quality; but all the Pre­dicaments are found in every particular disease. Since indeed, it may be lawful to accommodate names to things, but not things to names.

The Heliotropian or Solisequous Flowers are wheeled about 26. after the Sun, by a certain Magnetism; not for his heat, whose comfort they may long after; for in a cloudy and cold day they imitate the rhythme of the Sun; nor for his light, are they the Lacqueis of the Sun; for in the dark night, when they have deserted him, they face about from the West, to the East. You will not account this Diabolical, in regard you have another subterfuge at hand; namely the harmony of superior bodies, with inferior, and a faculty at­tractive, purely celestial, and no way communicable to sub­lunaries. As though the Microcosm, unworthy this heavenly prerogative, could in his blood and moss observe, and cor­respond to no revolution of the Planets.

I might here, with pertinence, discourse of Philters, or amorous Medicines, which require a Mumial Confermentati­on, 27. that the affection and desire of the minde may be forcibly drawn, and rapt on to one determinate object. But on a sober consult with thought, it seems more advised, to supersede that theme, when I shall first have mentioned this one obser­vation; I know an Herb, commonly obvious, which if it be [Page 15] rubbed, and cherished in thy hand, until it wax warm, you may hold fast the hand of another person, until that also grow warm, and he shall continually burn with an ardent love, and fixt dilection of thy person, for many days toge­ther. I held in my hand, first bathed in the steam of this love­procuring plant the foot of a Dog, for some few minutes: The Dog, wholly renouncing his old Mistress, instantly fol­lowed me, and courted me so hotly, that in the night he la­mentably howled at my Chamber door, that I should open and admit him. There are some now living in Bruxels, who are witnesses to me, and can attest the truth of this fact. For the heat of a mans hand warming and resolving the plant, I say not a bare, simple and solitary heat, but excited and im­pregnate with a certain effluvium, or emanation of spirits natural, doth peculiarly determine and individuate the ver­tue of the plant to himself; and by this ferment communi­cated to a second person, doth by Magnetism allect the spirit of that person, and subdue him to love.

I omit the cures of many diseases, which the Arcanum, the 28. mystery of humane blood, doth Magnetically perform: For unless the blood, yea the very sanies or purulent effluxions from Wounds and Ulcers, the Urine, and that subtle effluvi­um, which by insensible transpiration evaporates through the pores of the skin, did continually exhaust, and carry with them some part of the vital spirit; and unless these had also some participation of vitality, and conspiracy with the whole body, after their remove from the whole concretum: Un­doubtedly the life of man could not be so short. For indeed this is the cause of our intestine calamity, and that principle of death we carry about us, ambuscadoed in the very princi­ples of life.

The Herbs Arsemart or Water Pepper, Cumfry, Chirur­geons Sophia or Flixweed, Adders tongue, and many other 29. of the Vulnerary tribe, have this peculiar endowment; that if, when cold they are steept in water (for an Oke felled, when the North wind blows, will grow verminous and rot­ten, if not instantly sunk under water) and then applied to a Wound or Ulcer, until they grow warm, and after buried in a [Page 16] muddy uliginous Earth; when they begin to putrifie, they then operate upon, and draw from the Patient, whatever is evil, superfluous, and hurtful to him. And this the Herbs per­form, not while they grow in the earth, nor so long as they remain in their primitive and pristine form (for necessary it is that the grain be mortified, that it may bring forth fruit) but in the putrefaction of their Corporeities, for the Essential vir­tues being then as it were released from the prison and impedi­ments of the corporeal matter, do put forth and freely execute that Magnetism, which otherwise had lain dormant and en­chained, and according to the contagion and impression re­ceived from the wounded or ulcerated part, powerfully suck out much of the remaining evil, though seated deeply and at great distance in the body.

If any one in gathering the leaves of Asarabecca, shall 30. pluck them upward, they will perform their operation re­spectively, and purge any third person, that is wholly ignorant of that positional traction, by vomit onely; but if in gathering they be wrested downward, they then will purge onely by stool. Here at least can be no suspect of superstition; for what need I here to mention any thing of Imagination; when your selves concede, that by the power of imagination nothing can be acted upon a third object, especially where that third object is utterly ignorant of the position, which the decerpent used? Will you again take hold of the sacred anchor of ignorance, 31. and accuse this secret of an implicite Compact with Satan? But herein lurks no vain observance; chiefly when the de­cerptor shall have, the assument being wholly inscious of the position, pluckt off the leaves, either upward or downward. Doubtless, besides Asarum and the extremities or clusters of Elder, no other Cathartick Medicines are enriched with this propriety; for they, in what position soever collected from the plant, do ever operate univocally: that is, either constant­ly upwards, or constantly downwards, according to the desti­nation of their gifts. But in Asarum, in the integral plant, there sensibly appears a Magnetical propriety; and so it doth variously endow its leaves, according to the sense of their de­cerption. That not onely plants, but also almost all created 32. [Page 17] Entities, have a certain adumbration of sense, or obscure sen­sibility, they largely declare as well by Sympathy, as Antipa­thy (which presuppose, and cannot consist without sense) maintained amongst themselves; which satisfactorily to mani­fest, shall be the subject of some succeeding lines.

A second Fit of the Gout surprized a Noble Matron, of my 33. acquaintance, after the first paroxysm had gone off, and left her; and thenceforward the Gout, by an unwonted recidi­vation, and periodical recourse, infested her without remissi­on, for many moneths together. But she not apprehending whence so violent and unexpected a return of the disease had happened to her; at length she rising from her bed, as often as the fury of the fit, by intervals, somewhat remitted, re­posed her self in a Chair, wherein a brother of hers, many years past, and in another City, cruelly tortured with the Gout, was wont to sit, she instantly found that from thence the disease did awake, and afresh invade her. This effect like­wise is, on no pretence whatever, to be ascribed to Imagina­tion or doubt; since both these were much yonger then the effect. But if it hapned that any third person subject to the Gout sate in the same Chair, to him there succeeded not any reincrudation of the disease. For which reason, the mumy of her dead brother deservedly rendred the Chair suspected of contagion; which penetrating through all her cloaths, did to the sister onely, and not to any other podagrical person, excite those frequent refluxes and paroxysms, which otherwise had slept, and not invaded her. The cause truly was the Magnetism of the brothers mumy, infected with a prodagrical miasm or tincture, effluxed from him, and impressed upon the Chair, determinately operating on the uterine mumy of the sister; and that a long tract of time after his funeral. I beseech you, what can you discover in this of any implicite Compact, with our grand adversary Satan?

A Saphire enobled with a deep coerule tincture, if it be ap­plied to, and a small time rub'd upon a Carbuncle, whereby 34. the Plague pathognomonically discovers it self, and after a while be removed, the absent Jewel then ceaseth not Magne­tically to allect and extract all the pestilential virulency, and [Page 18] contagious poyson from the infected party; provided that this be done, before the Patient hath suffered too great a prosternation of spirits, and decay of strength. Physicians therefore use (which to us much advances the reputation of Magnetism) gently and slowly to draw a circle with a Saphire, round about a pestilential tumor: To this end, lest the venome exhaling, should in that part, where it insensibly evaporates, exspatiate and dilate it self to a wider range, and so in that circumferential expansion infect some noble part adjacent. For in that place where the virulency exhales, magnetically attracted from the infected body as it were through a trunck, or conduit-pipe, all the round or circle instantly grows black, and at length torrified into an Eschar falls of: the heart, in the interim, being preserved from the fatal contagion. Nor is there any postern door left open to evasion, by objecting, that we are to conceive the poyson attracted to the Carbuncle, in the same moment, when the round was drawn about the place, or at least then critically conquer'd by the internal champion of life, the heart; and not to attribute it to any Magnetism of the Saphire removed at distance. But however, the sick will give in their testimony, that they did not perceive any relief in the instant of the Saphires touch; but a good while after: The poyson indeed, gradually, by little and little, departing from the body, by the Magnetical attraction. Yea, the place it self will afford a more certain and satisfactory e­vidence on the behalf of Magnetism; for it grows not black and torrid in the minute of, or by the affriction of the Sa­phire; but many minutes after, being immediately combust by the pestiferous, that is Arsenical, vapor, in that one path, and no other, expiring from the Centrals. For where the ve­nome does continually exhale, the venemous radii being con­gregated and bound up into one Gone or pyramidal point, there it is of necessity that the part suffer extreme violence, grow black, and be torrified; which effects, as they are per­formed in successive motions of time, so also they inform us, that the virulency does successively breathe forth, in obedience to the Magnetical alliciency of the absent Gem.

Your reply perchance will be, that every Agent doth require [Page 19] a certain, and limited duration of its impression: that the Saphire did not benefit the Patient in the present, but left be­hinde it an impression, which was by degrees to subdue the remainder of the Plague; but not that the Saphire did attract any thing at all, after its remove from the Carbuncle. Here you shall observe, that every Agent of Nature does act in an instant in the first moment of congression, unless there be some obstacle or remora of disobedience in the Patient; but in the body infected there can be no impediment from re­luctancy, or stop of reaction, since it longs for a relief with all expedition, and in expectation of it, uncessantly pants and labors in all veins of the body.

It would be clear another thing, if the Saphire were first to suffer preparation, concoction, or alteration, that so from the concretion there might be educed the imprisoned Agent, which should afterwards diffuse and spread it self through all parts of the body. But when the Saphire conserves its native integrity, and continues undissolved and incorrupt, it requires onely a certain determinate time for this, that it may, by the touch and mediation of the mumy, associate and unite its own influential ray to the pestilential vapor, and so captive it, that afterwards being withdrawn, it may forcibly command it from the heart. To this association and marriage, I say, that there be a convenient alligation of the virtue Saphirical to, and as it were a Conglomeration with the venome, there is required a determinate measure of time (grant the eighth part of an hour) wherein the Compass line may be drawn about the pestilential Bubo. For if there were onely some bare, single impression of the Saphire, which constantly adhering to the place after the touch, should by little and little conquer and eradicate the venome, within the precincts of the body; and no Magnetical alliciency of the absent stone: There could no reason be found out, why that particular place of the circle, should be benegroed and torrified, nor why the virulent ex­halation should not range in a larger circumference then the cicumdate line. What is more, if many Carbuncles freshly shew themselves in divers places at once; yet that onely Car­buncle, 35. which was circumscribed with the Saphire, undergoes [Page 20] combustion and denigration, all the other sinking down again, and vanishing insensibly. And therefore, I beseech you, what impression attractive can the Saphire leave behinde it, after its remove, if not a Magnetical one? Principally, when the Attractum doth imply an inseparable relation to the Attra­hent; and so transpositively.

Yea, if the Saphire should from its self transmit any virtue into the sick body, after twice or thrice using, it would inevita­bly be subject to diminution and decay of power, (for so the hoof of the Elk, by often use of it, to suspend and resist the invasion of Epileptick paroxysms, by degrees becomes evirate and despoiled of all activity) that faculty, which is imprest upon the Carbuncle, being exhaust and spent; which mani­festly in the Saphire falls not out alike; for so much the more excellent and efficacious a Saphire is esteemed, by how much the more frequently it has suckt out the venome of the pesti­lence. It may be you'l answer, that the Saphire does generate a new third quality in the Patient, by reason whereof it begins to attract and drain the poyson, that way onely; and that al­though the Saphire be then removed, yet that nature never­theless, once encouraged and invited into action, ceases not to persevere in the expulsion, and maintains that Crisis, through that passage onely, where the poyson first began to be expell'd. First, we enquire, whether the Saphire does attract by a first, manifest quality (imagine heat) or by a formal magnetical pro­priety? But this Magnetical essential faculty requires not any previous generation, or result, of a new quality, within the body; but onely the conjunction of its virtue attractive, to the pestilential aer, so that it may perform its office of at­traction. From whence the inference is; that the attraction is performed by the absent Saphire. This assumption holds clearly good, because every natural Attrahent does attract adse, to it self; for to this end onely does it attract. For which reason, a new third quality, generated in the body, would rather attract the virulent exhalation concentrically and inwards, and could by no means be invited outwards, by an excentrical attraction.

Our second enquiry is; whether the Saphire may not have generated, and emitted a virtue from it self, and imprest that [Page 21] virtue on the skin onely? For neither can this stand; since then, it would not be necessary, that a circle should be drawn about the Carbuncle, with the Saphire; but it would be suffi­cient, that any other more remote and commodious part of the skin be toucht; which, by the suffrage of experience, is ab­solutely false. Our third query is, whether the Saphire haply can unlock and expand the pores of the skin? and whether Nature, on the single stock of its power, could not have made use of its own expulsive faculty, without the attraction of the Saphire? If we say, not; then the Saphire cannot be allowed to attract, but onely to have assisted and corroborated the expulsive faculty. But this opinion is soon subverted by the effect; in that no place suffers combustion, either without or beyond the round; and also because the other Carbuncles, be­ginning to bud forth, do at the same time sink away and vanish, though never toucht by the Saphire. Since indeed, if onely the expulsive faculty were corroborated, that would expel the venemous fumes every way round, and could not be restrained to any one certain and elect place.

Fourthly, Nature had already, before the admotion and affriction of the Saphire, giving sufficient testimony of its own valor and ability, in expelling the Carbuncle singly and of its own accord. Whence also it appears a gross falsity, that Nature once excited and rouzed up to expulsion, by the saphi­rical infusion, does afterward persevere in, and stoutly main­tain that critical motion; since observation assures us, that frequently the Saphire is but slowly applied, and comes too late, to assist the beginning of the expulsion. For which con­siderations, notwithstanding any thing you shall be able to oppose, it is of absolute necessity, that the pestilential venome is magnetically attracted by the absent Saphire.

Will you therefore, that the natural magnetism of the Ar­mary Unguent be more plainly and amply discovered unto you? or will you disparage and calumniate the noble allici­ency of the Saphire; and also write to the Calumniator? you will (I suppose) judg it to have much more of reason and solid truth to comply with our faith; that as death, wounds, diseases, slaughters crept in, and made encroachments on [Page 22] humane nature, by means of the Devil, from whom nothing proceeds but mischief: So also that every good gift comes down from the Father of lights. It being a position universally assented unto by all men: That that must be good, which nei­ther the subject, nor the object, nor the means, nor the end proposed, can accuse and convict of evil.

Hence was it, that the antient Prelates of the Church were 36. wont heretofore to wear rings enricht with a Saphire; the use and excellent virtue of that precious stone being, for the major part, hardly understood among them. For to whomsoever the charge of souls is committed, to them also of equity, and duty, it belongs to visit and be assistant to the infected with the plague; the dark mist of ignorance, in our days, obnubilating and eclipsing the knowledg of the most excellent pieces of Nature; in whose room have succeeded, an affected spruce­ness of language, a vain-glorious trimness of the windy and dead letter, and a confident, presument garrulity. Which may be the subject of our serious sorrow, but more of our wonder; that all mechanique Arts do daily receive advancement, and ascend by the degrees of new discoveries, neerer towards their perfection; but the study of Philosophy onely stands ever per­plext and discouraged with unjust censures, and now is in its Apogaeo, or retrogradation. I have dwelt the longer upon this subject, the Saphire, in respect it contains a case, in all points alike, and wholly quadrant to that of the Armary Unguent.

In this particular, therefore, Man also hath his magnes, or domestick power of alliciency; whereby, in time of the plague, 37. he draws in, through the invisible pores of the skin, the pesti­lential Atomes exhaling from the infected. For Nature, which at all other times is wont to admit nothing but wholsome and alimentary juice and with great diligence and exactness to sequester that juice, from the inalimentary and excrementiti­ous parts of it; at this time, yeelding and wholly submitting to its magnes, greedily sucks in the pestiferous aer, and invites death into the inmost closet of life. Ediametro contrary to this intestine magnes, Providence has furnisht us with another peculiar, antagonistical magnes (this we insert, that our dis­pute may not become barren and fruitless, in any one part of [Page 23] it, namely the Saphire, or a translucid piece of Amber; which rubbed to calefaction upon the seven planetary pulses, (those on the jugular Arteries, on the handwrists, neer the instep, and on the throne of the heart) and hung about the neck in­stead of a Periapt or Amulet, are too hard for the humane magnes, conquer and destroy his attraction, and by that supe­riority of attraction, become the most certain Amulets and Counterpoysons to the fatal contagion of this plague: Other­wise, if there precede not a requisite confriction of the Pulses, they are altogether invalid, and of no efficacy. For those things, which in their primitive constitution were a Saphire and Am­ber, having from the affriction changed their family, first lose their originary appellations, and are afterwards called a Ze­nexton, 38. or preservatory Amulet against the pestilence.

Will any man, think you, account these effects Diabolical; and attribute them to a covenant made with Satan?

It is sufficient, that we have introduced a few, but select, satisfactory, and pertinent examples, whose case holds a per­fect analogy, and even proportion with that of the Armary Unguent; we shall now seasonably turn our selves to your Arguments.

You argue Goclenius of ignorance of the doctrine of A­ristotle, in that he insinuates that the same numerical Accident can pass from one subject to another (my wish is, you had been as able at probation, as you are at refutation) namely, that this also is an assertion of huge pertinacity, to conceive, that a Cicatrice or scar in a dead body is not identically the same, it was in the man yesterday living. For in vain do we honor, and pay an humble and fiducial veneration unto the 39. reliques of Saints; if nothing but that simple, impossible matter, which the disciples of Aristotle dream of, can remain, and not some accidents constantly continue in the corrupted body, which were heretofore in the living. Behold! whither a paganical error may precipitate those, who improvidently carp at others. I say, to imagine that to be absolutely im­possible, which is absolutely necessary, is the part of the most absurd and grossest ignorance: For example, that light, from the body of the Sun even down to the earth, in a more swift [Page 24] motion then the twinkling of an eye, through all the smallest Atomes of the air, does produce new species, and those species produce another stock and supply of species of light. This properly is to be blinde in Sunshine; for if we had not diffused upon us the identical light and vigorous influence of the Sun, but onely the thousand, of thousands of millions, species of light and virtue solary; no sublunary could have growth or vegetation, nor could ever any fire be kindled by the refraction and union of its beams. For the species of species of light, since in reality of essence they are no more light, then the spe­cies of colours are really colours, they can never be of activity strong enough to produce fire. For my part, seriously I cherish and applaud my self for that ignorance of Aristotles doctrine, of which Goclenius is accused as rude and illiterate. Doth not the needle of the Mariners compass, through a firm glass, closely sealed up with melted soder (in which there can be no pore or crany discovered) steer it self to the Artick pole? and is it not attracted to a piece of iron placed within the orb of attraction, the pole during that seduction, wholly neglected? Wherefore the same numerical Accident, streaming in one con­tinued radius from the Loadstone into the aer, passes through the glass, and perhaps goes as far, as to touch the pole it self. And Magnetism likewise is a Celestial quality, of neer affinity 40. to the sidereal influences; neither is it confin'd to any deter­minate distance of place; as neither is the Magnetical Un­guent, of which our dispute.

You smile, because Goclenius chooses for an ingredient into the Unguent, that moss onely, which is gathered off the scull 41. of a man of three letters Fur..

Nor in this truly is there any ground for your conjecture, that in the herb there lies a snake in ambush, any vain touch of superstition couch't. For if a Jesuite, put to death by strangulation, or any other kinde of martyrdom, be left sub dio, in an obedient position to receive the influence of the stars; yet his head will yeeld the same crop of Moss, equivalent in use, and equally ripe, with the head of a Thief: since the Se­minality of the moss drops down from Heaven upon Mount Calvary. For sometimes there distils a frothy dew, which is [Page 25] called Aurora; and after that, a more tenacious Viscid Muci­lage descends, which is called Sperma siderum, the seminal e­mission of the stars; sometimes the Heavens have shower'd down clouds of Frogs, Spiders, Locusts, and other such in­sects, which in their descent became solid, tangible, and vital 42. substances: in other mountainous places the prodigious clouds have rained milk and also blood; frequently also there is found lying upon stones and bones a white bituminous mat­ter, sweat from the celestial orbs, which turns into moss. This candid substance, in some places, where it petrifies and is 43. changed into stone, induces a crustaceous surface, or parget upon stones; in other places it degenerates into a moss.

To this Classis of Meteors we are also to refer, the Dew, 44. Manna, Throni, Thereniabin, Nostoch, Nebulgea, Laudanum Quid velit Author per haec nova & inaudi­ta nomina, ex cabalistico. Para­celsi vocabulario mutuata▪ expli­catum invenies infra, in nostro supplemento., and other such aëreal productions. Though these partake more largely of the substance of aër; while, in the interim, the ori­ginary principles of the moss, growing upon sculls, are of a higher and more noble pedigree, the seminary excretions of the stars; and are called by Hermetical Philosophers the flowers or fruits of the Celestial Orbs. By these the prudent have at­tempted and atchieved many notable designes; and indeed, they being enriched with the favor and continual influence of the Heavens, want not the ground and foundation of excellent and generous faculties. The moss therefore of a scull, since it hath received its seminality from the celestial orbs, but its Ma­trix, conception, and increment from the mumial and medul­lary substance of the scull of man; it is no miracle, that it hath obtained excellent Astral, and Magnetical virtues, far transcending the common lot of Vegetables; although herbs 45. also, in the capacity of herbs, have their peculiar Magnetisms: I will insert an observation of my own; A certain Souldier of a noble extraction, wore a little lock of the moss of a mans scull, finely enclosed betwixt the skin and flesh of his head; who in friendship interceding betwixt two brothers, that were fighting a mortal duel, unfortunately received so violent a blow with a sword on his head, that he immediately fell to the earth. With which blow his hat, and hair were cut through, as with an incision knife, even to the skin; but he escaped [Page 26] without the smallest wound, or penetration of the skin. I need not anticipate, your selves may without much difficulty guess, to what cause the guard of the skin may be justly ascri­bed. It hath not been the custome of my genius, to perplex and rack my minde, with uncertain conjectures; since indeed lightning, of far greater violence then a sword, if it ever touch a Bay tree, does yet never discharge it self upon a Sea Calf, or Horse, whose snafle is anointed with the fat of a Sea Calf, nor ever falls upon that stable, whose dore posts are emplastered with the same fat. The experience is trivial and frequent. But I pass lightly over this scene, and resigne it to others; so soon as I shall have mentioned one other example, like the former. In Arduenna Est stola S. Huburti, in arca, sex diversis cla­vibus obserata, a diversis quo­que clavigeris custodita. Quo­tamus autem praescindunt stolae illius par­tem, remanente interim stolâ semper integrâ, ab octingent is jam & amplius annis. Nec est imposturae locus, quod nesciatur bodie, an stola sit ex bysso, lana, lino, vel bom­bace, adeoque nec posset quo­tannis nova sub­stitui. Praescindunt autem de stola partem, ut filamentum singulis demorsis à rabido, intra cutim frontis incarnent. Inde enim aliud miraculum. Quod qui semel suscepto filamento è stola, per ritus suos convaluit, potest alteri demorso differe terminum, & sopire rabiem adventantem, per quadra­genarias, idque in annos aliquot, dum tandem suo commodo adire queat S. Hubertum. Ea tamen sub conditione, ut tantillum si quis supra 40 dies expectet, nec prorogationem termini ante impetra­verit, confestim in rabiem incidal deploratam. Haec Mystagogus omnibus, quotquot devotionis ergô peregrè sunt prosecti, hospitibus; elat [...] supercili [...], praedicat. Sed viris emunctioribus potius olent fraudem, quam veritatem Christianismo dignam. Saint Hubert is worshiped with solemn and publick veneration, whither all people bitten by any mad dog speedily address themselves (as elsewhere others flock to the shrines of Saint Domirus and Bellinus:) there the Flamen or Priest burles a small lock of wool, from the stole or upper garment of the Saint, which is artificially inclosed within the skin of the forehead of the patient, bitten by a mad dog; and from thenceforth for ever he can be no more wounded or smitten, by any mad, or wilde beasts whatever; for the sa­cred magick of the lock is the shield, that secures from the violence of enraged teeth, and renders the wearer invulnera­ble. 46. Your answer will be, that this extraordinary effect is done by an immediate miracle of God, cooperating with sacred reliques. Well, grant it be a miracle; yet that God in the pro­duction of miracles, does, for the most part, walk hand in hand with Nature, and in a manner oblige himself to an ob­servance of, and conformity with her customs and rules, these Patients of Saint Hubert do plainly evidence by their lock of wooll. For that uncircumscribed Omnipotence, whose power is [Page 27] limited by no law but that of his will, who can do all things by the single efficiency of a Fiat, does sometimes make use also of natural means.

Thus let the sweat in the Sudary, or Stove of Saint Paul, be also a Magnetical Unguent; but the sweat of the sick persons, or the insensible effluvium exhaling from them, be the blood of the wounded, sprinkled upon a piece of wood, and put into the box of Unguent; immediately all harm and evil depend­ing on the wound, is from all parts of the body attracted magnetically. And this effect is by so much the more power­fully 47. wrought, by how much more efficacy the supernatural magnes is endowed withal. For in both, truly, there is the same reason, and the same manner of the causes operation; the difference lies onely in this, that in the material world, the effect succeeds upon a requisite conjunction and co-efficiency of corporal means, the blood and the Unguent; but in the supernatural, by a holy magnetism, arising from the sacred re­liques of the Friends of God, which in this relation, undoubt­edly deserve our venerable esteem. That these miracle-pro­ducing 48. reliques might in the manner of their operations, by a neerer similitude approach to the nature of the Magnetical Unguent, God, the soul of mercy, moved with compassion to­wards our frail and calamitous estate, hath in some of them called up a fountain of oyl, perpetually pouring forth streams of Balsam: To this end, that every where relieved and sup­ported by magnetical remedies we might for certain be assured, that the Magnetical cure of wounds is received from God, and both in the supernatural and natural world doth proceed in an equal order of causes, in an equal pace and manner of operations, and by the conduct of the same Director and Guide. Hence is it, that fresh and new reliques work more, and more noble miracles when they are carried about, or applied to the Patient by the touch; because it is of unexcusable necessity▪ that the magnes be first rub'd, touch't, and stir'd, if we will have it to attract.

I return to thee, O Usnea! the noble issue of celestial seed: 49. for whoso hath enjoyed a convalescence from the Hydrophobia, by the lock of wooll, and other pious rites observed, is not [Page 28] onely himself for ever after protected from a rabid dog; but, what is far more noble, he can grant to any other person bit­ten by a mad dog, a supersedeas to prorogue the time of the Venoms energy, for many moneths, until the Patient can, with convenience, take a journey to the shrine of St. Hubert; the poyson in the mean time charmed into an inactivity, and 50. the fermentation of the humors suspended. Nature hath also granted another magnetical magnale, cozen german to the former. The Zinzilla (which is an excrement of the Dia­phragma or Midriff, degenerating into an inflammation and Apostem) when once it hath like a Zone In exemplari Elzeviriano legit [...]r, instar Jonae: sed ex incuria typogra­phi literam I pro zmutatam esse conjeci; eo quòd metaphora Jo­nae, civitatem Niniven cir­cumambient is, è nimis longin­quo esset pe­tenda., environed the chest of the Patient, becomes fatally destructive; but it is safely and with great celerity cured, if the place be outwardly, though but slenderly, anointed with the blood of another, who has once recovered from the same disease. For he who hath once recovered from that disease, hath not onely ob­tained a pure, balsamical blood, whereby, for the future, he is rendered secure and free from any recidivation of the same evil; but also infallibly cures the same affection in his neigh­bor, and by the cutany external contact of his own blood, by the mysterious power of Magnetism, transplants that bal­sam, and conserving quality into the blood of another.

You may object; if the Magnetism, or grand magnetical arcanum, lie onely in the Usnea; then all other ingredients of the composition are fruitless, vain, and unnecessary. Physici­ans soon salve this doubt, by replying; that some of the in­gredients are efficients paramont, and principal; others of inferior virtue and subordinate; some are conjoyned as impe­diments, to obtund and refract the violence of contrary in­tense qualities; others as spurs, to excite the dormant; and others to advance and promote the weaker and less active Magnetism, to a higher and more noble entelechy. And that these reasons support the necessity of a multiplicity of simples, in the confection of the unguent. On this consideration, as it was a flat impertinency to argue, that if the usnea, chiefly com­prehend the magnetism, then is man, to no purpose, exentera­ted to furnish the Unguent with some other ingredients; so also would it be a direct absurdity to plead, that if the usnea, [Page 29] on the single stock of its own endowment, be not enriched with sufficient magnetism; nor the fat, nor the blood, &c. therefore will not that magnetism, which we attribute to the unguent, also be found in the whole composition; since single ingredients cannot impart that virtue to a composition, which they formerly did not contain in their primitive constitutions and simple natures. I must ever now and then be compelled to act your part, and contrive arguments and cavillations for you, against my self. But however, it had been your duty, formerly to have been instructed from vulgar and rustick ex­periments, that in a compound medicine there doth frequently emerge and result a new third quality, which was never before, in Mores etiam animalium pro locorum quali­tate differ [...]e, ve­nenaque serpen­tum, vel mitio­ra, vel asperiora effici, asserit Stagyrita, de hist. Animal. lib. 8. cap. 29. the least measure, couched in the single essences of the ingredients. For example, it would become you to have observed, that neither Vitriol nor Galls are sejunctively black; but married in the composition of Ink, they immediately beget a perfect deep black.

You may again object; if the Usnea hath acquired its magnetism from the mumial virtue of the bones, and the se­minal influence of celestial orbs: then, of consequence, may the same be gathered, not onely from sculls, but from all 51. other bones of the sceleton. But this illation is also ridicu­lous; for Nature her self confesseth a subjection and con­formity to the condition of the soyl; and for that reason, Pepper new gathered transplanted into Italian ground, dege­nerates into Ivy: Hellebore set in the Tridentine The City Trent, on the North side of Italy. fields, quite looseth its purging faculty; and Poppies with us are wholly devoid of any deleterious or deadly quality, however our Countrey be ten times colder then Thebes The Metro­polis of Boeotia, in our age cal­led Stibes or Stiber, situate in longitude 50. in latitude 38. it self. Therefore the usnea varies in its efficacy, according to the various soyl, or matrix of bones, wherein it is conceived and nourished. For if lightniug melt money, the purse remaining untouched, and of ten companions sitting close together, choose one out of the middle, and strike him into ashes; and this happen not casually, or by chance, but by the permission of that Providence, which will not have so much as one leaf drop uncommanded from the tree; and by whose onely power, all virtues are founded and established; it can seem no [Page 30] wonder also, that one distinct magnetical seminality of usnea be, from the celestial sphears, distilled upon the scull; and a second seminality, of another peculiar classis, upon the other bones of the Sceleton. Onely the bone of the head is of ex­cellent use against the Epilepsie; but so are not any of the other bones. Then, to conclude, all the brain is consumed and dissolved in the scull, by the continual irroration and im­bibing of which precious liquor (I mean that of the brain) the scull acquires such virtues, which we have discovered to be wanting to the other bones

I have sufficiently known the customes of contradicents. For when they have nothing more of moment to alleage against the thing disputed of, they become the more contumelious, break forth into reproaches, and fall foul upon the person of him, that is their adversary in opinion. Wherefore it may be, some or other will exclaim, that Magnetism is some new fan­gle, invented onely by Paracelsus; but that he was a lewd, dissolute, and ignorant fellow. And again, if there had been any such excellent virtue in nature, it could not have remain­ed in darkness, and undiscovered to so many ages, and its revealment have been suspended till the advent of Para­celsus.

As concerning the reproaches, and scurrilous subsannations of many, shower'd down upon the head of a man, that was the Ornament of Germany: I answer, that they are empty, vain, and below a sober thought, and do no more, then ren­der the assertor of them more indign and contemptible then before; as one that earnestly endevours to condemn, not onely the living, but the dead also. For there is no reason why I an unequal Orator, who have undertaken the Encomium of no man, should fall upon the praise of him for those things, which his own monuments hold forth to the world, concerning his learning, wisdom, and divinely infused endow­ments; but I come directly to ballance the invective arguments themselves. This Objection therefore is barren of any thing but pride, since it insolently dares to assume the condemnation, not onely of the living and dead, but even of God himself; namely, that he ought not to have infused the knowledg of [Page 31] so divine a secret into Paracelsus, but some other person (some Jesuite perhaps;) nor to have manifested so great a consonan­cy and harmony of Nature, in the days of Paracelsus, but much earlier, in the infancy of the world. But I beseech you, why came Ignatius Loyola so late, and in the evening of the world, to be the founder and establisher of a Society, so useful and profitable to the whole world? Why did he not spring up, and appear many ages sooner? Alas! wretched man, whither doest thou hurry thy self by presumption? Is not God the free and unconstrained giver of his own benefit? and doth not he delight himself in an undeserved donation of it? Himself has vouchsafed to bequeath us a touch-stone, 52. by which we may give infallible judgment of the persons of men; namely, that we shall know them by their works. But what the works of Paracelsus were, and how much greater then all expectation of Nature, and the mordacity of male­volent tongues, his own Epitaph, by the most illustrious, and most reverend Prelate, the Bishop Principe Sa­lisburgensi. of Saltzburg, appensed to that well deserved Monument of his, doth in despite of envy, sufficiently declare.

Paracelsus, therefore, is so far from having deserved ill, in 53. that he hath revealed Magnetism, unknown to Antiquity; and in the room of that study of Natural wisdom, which with great barrenness is taught abroad in publick Schools, intro­duced another more solid and real one, which by the Analysis and Synthesis, the diacritical resolution of heterogeneal, and syncritical conjunction of homogeneal bodies, is made pro­bable, and brought home to a familiarity with our sense, and yeelds a more wealthy harvest of knowledg; that thence he hath rather, by a just title, won the denomination of the Monarch of secrets, from all his predecessors; unless with [Page 33] those that malign him, we, as ignorant Judges, discommend all his good actions, and disparage those benefits, he accumu­lated upon pious uses. I am thus a man, (i. e.) this is the pre­rogative of my humanity; all things appear cheap and light in the ballance of my reason, that pretend to a dominion over my belief, by no stronger title, then that of Custom onely. Since there is nothing, that enshrowds our mindes in a greater mist of error and seduction, then that we are conformed to Custom, out of an easie and ungenerous credulity, submitting our assent to rumor, and the dreams of the multitude. We are therefore gallantly to attempt the emancipation of our faith from the tyranny and pedantism of popular tradition, to pursue the liberty of our intellectuals, and to enjoy, not enslave the ha­bilities of our judgment.

You may again plead, that in Sublunaries there is no influ­ential virtue, that can be paralleld to the impressions of Su­perlunaries; but if you shall stumble at this stone, you will at the same instant fall upon the reprehension of all those learned men, who have taken the direct path to Philosophy; since they have rightly observed to us, that in inferior bodies there is an inference or tribute delivered down from superior, and reciprocally an analogy or resemblance of inferior in celestial bodies. Do not Herbs, Animals, and diseased men foreknow and presage the future mutations of times and seasons? Are we not to expect so much the harder Winter, by how much the deeper cave or lodging the Frog hath scra­ped in the earth, to harbor himself in the succeeding Winter? For from this ground proceed the Meteorical Auguries; not indeed, that those prophesies of weather arise from the too early and yet future motion of the stars; in regard, it would then follow, that that motion must cause this presagous sensa­tion, long before its own contingency.

Far be it from a sober head to dream so palpable an absur­dity, For the firmament does onely denounce future events; but has no hand in their Causation. But indeed, every single created nature contains its peculiar heaven within the sphear of its 54. own dimensions, and holds within it self the rotation or re­volution of that heaven, dependent on its seminal Entity, in [Page 34] whose spirit (which comprehends the Caelature or Idea of the whose, in landskip) there is comprised its own peculiar heaven, and moreover its own ascendents. Nor is there, why you should conceive, that we by this doctrine, stagger and demolish the Fabrick of Astrology; but rather that we elucidate, and render it more bright to the prospect of our understanding; since truly every single seminal ens contains its own heaven, and by that relation holds a Syzygia, or conjunctive interest of the other sidereal heavens. But the motion of the universal heavens, in regard it is the most known and most common, does govern, and according to the rule of it self direct the particular heavens (suffer me to borrow that name, since I want another more proper and convenient) of single inferior Creatures. This properly is the cause of every natural incli­nation; and when the single creature, by the perswasion and seduction of its own domestick heaven, becomes exorbitant from the motion of the universal heaven, as the most common rule, immediately there succeed irregularity, acrasie, confusi­on and defects. For a sheep without a guide, looses himself 56. in the devious paths of error. And from this conspiracy and conjugation of the motion of the universal, with that of eve­ry 57. particular heaven, is it, that diseased men carry an Alma­nack 58. in their bones, presage foul weather, and the future mu­tations 59. of seasons; but not those that are sound. For if the 60. Sea did flow and re-flow by the direction of the Celestial, that is the pyromantical, or fiery Moon onely, and not of its own hydromantical, or watry Moon; and if the windes were stirred up by the command of the Celestial Mercury onely, and not of their own Chaomantical star; truly there could be no Provincial Venti regiona­les. sunt enim [...], Venti communes, & [...], par­ticulares seu Vernaculi; ut Hippocrat. lib. de Aere & lo­cis. winds in any quarter of the earth, but (since there is but one single Mercury, and one single Moon in the whole Arch of heaven) the same wind would constant­ly blow alike through all the world; and the Sea would in all places flow, if not at the same time, yet in the same rhythme, or interval of tides, which our modern Navigation disproves. It is enough therefore, that we have here, by way of digression, made it appear, that in every single seminal en­tity there is comprehended a virtue celestial, & enormantical Depending upon a forain motor, for a regularlty of motion., [Page 35] which doth yet excite it self, and is regulated by the orderly motion of the celestial orbs, distilling an impression upon it; so long as it will not be accounted refractory and exorbitant. And that the Firmament also doth not cause future accidents, unless by a remote interest, and that too but by first qualities 61. onely, as it were acting the part of a Cook; but otherwise doth signifie and loudly proclaim the handy works of God. But that every particular Creature doth in its seminal Entity, 62. possess a particular firmament; by the mediation of which, superior bodies symboliz [...], and hold a reciprocal correspon­dence with inferior, obliged thereto by the law of friendship and philanty or desire of self-conservation. From all which we may now at least collect, that there is a Magnetism, and powers influential, every where implantate in, and proper to natural bodies; which powers who so excludes from the scene of Sublunaries, does seek to shelter himself in a rotten San­ctuary.

You will further urge, that we are to come yet neerer to the main point, nor is it yet placed above doubt, that in Sublu­naries there is a quality that holds a parity to the impression of Superlunaries, and such a one truly, which can transmit it self to an object removed at large distance; which notwith­standing is presupposed in the Armary Unguent; and so that Magnetism is indeed a virtue celestial, but yet in no degree of emulation, to be ascribed to Sublunaries, much less to the counterfeit weapon-salvo. But what else, in the main, is this (I beseech you) then to deny Magnetism, without or besides Magnetism? For if, in an universal notion, we call every in­fluence of sublunaries reciprocally transmitted from each to other, a Magnetism; and if in defect of a more proper and distinctive Etym [...]n, or adaequate denominative, we christon that occult coaptation and requisite connexion of Active and Passive, whereby an absent Agent does operate upon an ab­sent Patient, by influence, by an invisible emanation and enter­course of virtues, whether it be done by attraction or impul­sion, a Magnetism: Seriously, whoever denies the influential power of Sublunaries mutually transmitted and entertained each by other, to be performed by Magnetism; and requires [Page 36] an instance to be given him to the contrary; in sober truth he requires a flat absurdity, a Magnetism (forsooth) without Magnetism, and knows not well, what he would deny, or what demand.

Since in earnest I have held forth examples of the Fact, in Sublunaries, and brought upon the stage very many and very apposite instances, as that of the insititious or engrafted Nose, of the Saphire, of Arsmarte, Asarum, and most other Herbs. But you deny (I sufficiently know, because you know it not) either that those effects, mentioned in the list of examples, do not at all succeed upon the coaptation and marriage of such and such causes; or else you will affirm those effects to be caused by the sole power of the Devil. And that it is not agreeable to the custom of Naturalists, to argue from bare Authorities; but that it becomes us Defendants, to come up, with those that strive against us to handy-blows, namely to experience. Do you make tryal therefore, and call any of the recited examples to the touchstone of experiment, that so you prove us guilty of falshood; if you cannot, then at least come over to our side and believe them. For it is an action of insolent petulancy for any, therefore to deny the contingence of that fact, which is every where so trivial and frequent, that it can hardly escape the observation of any, because (forsooth) himself never found, nor indeed ever endevoured to finde it good upon experiment; and of a far more unpar­donable insolence, to ascribe that effect to the Devil, which in most pieces of the Creation is purely consonant to Nature, as shall hereafter be made good; and that too, for one single fault, because (in faith) the secret manner of its production from the confederacy and co-efficiency of natural causes, can by no means sink into the head of our Censor. A Censor, who presumes, that by the subtilty of his own vast intellectu­als, and the study of Aristotles Physicks, he hath exactly sur­veyed the great round of Nature, fathomed the Moon, and to a hair taken the just dimensions of all pieces of the Uni­verse. A Censor, I say, who though upon a severe scrutiny he can discover nothing of superstition, and nothing of un­conformity to any divine or humane laws in the Unguent; [...] [...] [Page 37] doth yet, onely because the manner of its application to the weapon seems paradoxical to him, highly cry it down as un­lawful, condemn and detest it as impious, and accuse it to con­tain some strange and horrid interest of the Devil. But what in the manner of its application (I beseech you) do you stum­ble at? Verily because the sword, or splinter of the weapon distained with the blood, is emplastered over with the mumi­al and Magnetical unguent; because the blood once extra­venated, or effluxed out of its proper conservatory, the veins, looseth its interest of vitality, and can observe no concordance with that blood, which is yet conserved and cherished in the veins; and because he doth not believe, that the action of the unguent can be extended to an object at large distance re­moved. But return to your self, good Sir, for ere long you shall both understand; and firmly believe it, unless your per­tinacity render you uncapable of instruction. For we will make it our business now, for your information, to call the action of Magnetism to the bar, and by the evidence of Me­ridian truths, convince the ignorance and stupidity of its ad­versaries.

For I will now shew, that there is, without that Classis of things and herbs, which you have undeservedly suspected, a mutual influence and commerce of some certain pieces of Nature, by effluvium or emanation of spirits; and that this concordance is observed between objects at very great distance removed each from other. The Vine, when it is in the flower, 63. perturbs and causes a kinde of sickness (for so Vintners term it) in the Wine. You will excuse that this conturbation is not caused by any violence or impression of the Stars; when we solidly prove the contrary. For if the Stars did immediately occasion the germination and efflorescence of the Vine, and also the turbulency and sickly fermentation of Wines in their Vessels; it would of necessity be, that both those effects should happen every yeer, in one determinate, appointed, and definite moment; which observation concludes to be false. For sometimes the Vine emits her flowers, and the Wine is troubled before the solstice, and in the same Country, not un­til another yeer, long after; but the Sun and all the Chorus [Page 38] of fixed Stars constantly, onely some few minutes of difference allowed, return to the same point of heaven, once every year; therefore would the Vine flower, and Wines suffer a contur­bation always at one and the same set time. But if you seek an evasion, and shall rejoyn, that other Planets, beside the Sun, which possess not annually, about the solstice, one constant and equal position or situation in heaven, are the causers of this languor in Wines; onely in this relation, that the motion of the superior Orbs is most common, as to which all subor­dinate and particular heavens are to conform, all Vines would for the plurality of them flower in the same yeer, in all places at once; which is false upon the testimony of experience. For as there is a Nature Astral conferred upon, and implan­tate in the ground, so also the same particular Nature is in­serted into the Vine; which particular Nature doth per se, by its own domestick power (no otherwise then the Earth hath, from the fructifying benediction of the Creator, re­ceived a power of germinating per se) produce the flower, fruit, and seed, and conform and dispose it self to the rhythme of the most general motion of the Celestial Orbs. Men posi­tively affirm further, that Wines are never perturbed in those Regions, in which no Vines grow; wherefore the flower of the Vine, and not the motion of the Celestial Spheres, doth perturb Wines, and that many hundreds of miles from thence; but truly, so much the more powerfully, by how much the neerer the Wines are to the Vine, that produced them.

I gratefully applaud those studies, that contribute towards the advancement of the Common-wealth of learning; and 64. highly honor him, who discovered, that vulgar Antimony, in its preparation, doth, though in an obscure manner, con­form it self to an influence.

I expect no more, but to have the same measure returned to me, which I deliver to others; when I shall to plenary sa­tisfaction make good, that there is a certain influential power ordinary and familiar to sublunaries, which knows no con­finement or restraint to any local distance; and in order to the more vigorous and substantial support of Magnetism 65. [Page 39] declare, that the Loadstone doth of its own accord, by the swinge of a native inherent verticity or polary directive fa­culty, steer it self to the Pole, but is by no means attracted by the Pole. For one Loadstone in a lateral variation defects to three, another to six, seven, and eleven degrees from the Pole; but none (for what I could ever discover) doth in a direct line lie parallel to the Axis of heaven, and punctually point upon the Pole. Therefore if the Loadstone were at­tracted by the Pole, it must receive that convulsive influence, either from the Pole it self, or from some other Star adjacent to the Pole; but not from the Pole it self, in respect every Attrahent does attract towards it self by a direct, and not by an oblique line: wherefore if the Loadstone were attracted by the Pole, it would in a just level point upon the Pole; and so the result is, that Loadstones (at least according to what solid and multiplied observations have taught me) suffer no attractive force, or vertical invitement from the North-star, nor from any other neighboring Star. For since the whole Asterism of Charls his Wain knows no Sabbath, but is ever wheel'd about by a perpetual circumrotation; if it did at all attract, it would occasion a perpetual inquietude, and uncessant revolution of the Loadstone, by reducing it one while many degrees towards the East, and another while as many degrees towards the West, and every twenty four hours sometimes elevate it towards the Zenith, and anon depress it towards the Nadir; which experience positively contradicts: Wherefore the Loadstone ows its polarity to a natural inherent faoulty, flowing from its own seminal Entity, and not to any forain alliciency, or attractive influx transmitted from the North-star. But that otherwise the Loadstone may, by its own instinct, be elevated towards the Zenith, we have upon ocular demonstration found it true, by a certain Instrument invented by Guilielme Guilbert (the glory of which excellent Diagramma hujus instru­ments extat in lib 4. de Mag­nete. invention Lodovicus Fonseca hath lately endevoured [...]o ravish and arrogate to himself, in the presence of his Catholique Majesty) which, by the spontaneous elevation of the Load­stone in a brass Ring suspended by a thred or small wier, shews not onely the latitude, but also the altitude of the Pole, in all places of the Earth.

[Page 40] Laboring your reason to finde out a way of evasion you will thus contend for the prerogative of the Pole; that the Pole doth indeed attract the Loadstone, but according to the various and certain material disposition of several Loadstones, it doth allect them not in a right line towards it self (for such is the condition and will of the Attrahent) but to some other place situate in vicinity. The substance of which is; the Pole truly invites the Loadstone to it self in a direct line, but the Loadstone becomes refractary, and comes not in a direct line, by reason of some unknown impediment, (which you term a certain peculiar disposition of it) existent in the Load­stone, which is superior in power to, and vigorously resists that traction of the Pole; although the influential alliciency of the Star, at the distance of so many thousand miles, arrive at the body of the Loadstone entire, and without the least de­cay or diminution of vigor. You perceive, how much truth you have granted to your subterfuge? and how, though by compulsion, you affirm that in the Loadstone there dwells a certain (you call it certain, which indeed to you is purely ima­ginary, and to all men else wholly uncertain) motive disposi­tion, besides, and superior to the attraction of the Pole; which yet at the same time, you peremptorily deny the Loadstone to possess? which in the ballance of reason carries this weight: the Loadstone is endued with a domestick Pilot, a directive faculty, which guides it to some determinate place, but is not at all attracted by the Pole.

Driven from this starting hole, you flie for refuge to some other Celestial Attrahent; seated in vicinity to the Pole; by replying, that the Loadstone is attracted, and doth not direct it self, by any internal polary virtue; attracted not by any one particular and determinate Star, or point of Heaven, but by a certain Circle or Zone, at a neer distance, environing the Pole. I answer, That this evasion is far fetched, for this imaginary Circle must be extended to the latitude of eight degrees at least; namely, from three to eleven degrees▪ for I have observed some Loadstones to fufill that large variation. Wherefore if there were a power of attraction equally in­herent in all parts of this Circle, one and the same Loadstone [Page 41] would continually vary, and in the same hour deflect, now to three, and anon to eight or eleven degrees from the Pole, or Central Star; which is a falshood manifested upon frequent experiment. Therefore, to help out this Chimera, there must be conceived many lesser Orbites or rounds one within an­other, in a Circle of so great latitude; every one of which subalternate Zones must select and attract its particular Load­stone. Which being conceded, you inevitably fall again into the same pitfal; namely, that the Loadstone contains within it self a certain disposition or elective power, whereby it should conform to the traction of one round, rather then of an­other; and by consequence, when you have stretched your absurd conceptions to the highest pin of phansie, there will be nevertheless a motive virtue, or native verticity in the Load­stone.

Yet we have not a clear prospect into the nature of this abstrusity. If the Pole did attract the Loadstone, the attracti­on must depend either upon the elemental and material tem­per, or upon the specifical form of the Loadstone; but a Glass; 66. wherein the Magistery of Loadstone hath been prepared, though never so much washed, and cleansed by often rubbing, doth acquire a polarity, and for ever after conform it self positionally to the two Cardinal points of Heaven; by reason of an impression, by invisible aporrhoeas or emission of mag­netical atomes, without any corporeal remains, communica­ted to [...]he Glass. Steel also once excited and invigorated by the contact of the Loadstone, how often soever rinsed and polished, doth yet inherit the Magnetical infusion, and point out the Pole. Which two distinct bodies, since they neither have a parity of temper, or homogeneity of forms betwixt themselves; nor hold any proportionate analogy of temper, or identity of form, with the Loadstone: carry with them evi­dence clear enough to satisfie a rational belief, that the Pole can attract the Loadstone for neither of those two ends; namely, affinity of temperament, or cognation of essence. You may rejoyn, that immediately upon affriction, there succeeds a participation of the substance of the Loadstone in the poro­sities, or atomical incontiguities of the steel, or spondils of the [Page 42] glass. A miserable excuse! for the rosin of the Fir tree, is of 67. it self, by an internal Gorgon, coagulated into the hardness and solidity of a stone, which having undergone this petrification or lapidescence, doth allect iron to it self, no otherwise then the Loadstone. Here your dream of the corporeal participati­on of the Loadstone vanisheth.

The Loadstone onely by the affriction of, Garlick amits its 68. verticity, and neglects the Pole, conserving to it self, in the Haec de Allecti­vae virtutis Magnetis, ex allio ei affricto, consopitione, a­liorum potius ex relatione, quam side autoptica, scripsisse, meritò censeatur Hel­montius. Sie­nim experienti­am [...]ac de re semelsalem con­suluisset, primo iindubitanter re­perisset aspectu, quod nedum ferrum, igne re­verberiicandens, & mox succo allii extinctum, haud obscuram nihilominus ver­ticitatem, ex terra, acquirat, australemque versorii, magnete invigorati, ex­tremitatem strc­ [...]è sat suos in amplexus rapere possit: ast etiam, quod dens mag­netus, succo allii altè imbutus, ferreos acus, codem succo, usque dum crassiorem rubiginem contraxcrint, inebriatos, promptè se [...] allicere valeat. mean time, its peculiar form, material constitution, and all other dependent proprieties. The reason, because Garlick is the Loadstones proper Opium, and by it that spiritual sensa­tion in the Magnet is consopited and laid asleep; which sen­sation, we have in our precedent discourse, manifested to be the sole and cardinal cause of the act of all formal proprieties. Verily, that alliciency of the Pole must be extreme weak and of inconsiderable energy, which passing through so many and so immense orbs of heaven, and striking through great and firm buildings, and thick walls, cannot yet be of power suffi­cient to pierce the thin juice of Garlick, or the fume of Mer­cury: the material radix, or temperamental foundation, and also the specifical form of the stone, remaining unimpaired and inviolate.

A Magnet swimming freely upon a calm water, in a small boat of cork, hoiseth sail, and gives one broad side to the North, and the other to the South. Therefore if this positio­nal conversion were occasioned immediately by the solicitati­on of the Pole, onely the Northern side of the Stone would be constantly courted and drawn by the North Pole; which is apparently false upon the test of experiment. For if a Magnet hath impregnated and magnetified a gad of iron with its North side, it doth not, according to the law of its own propriety, dispose and incline that iron to the North, but to the South, although the atomical powder or dust of the stone adhere to the iron; but on the contrary, if it hath ex­cited and spirited iron with its South side, then it converts that iron to the North. Again, the Magnet with that part, where­by [Page 43] it formerly applied it self to the North, on t'th [...]r side the Equinoctial line tackes about, and faceth the South.

Yet further let us purs [...]e this Argument. A Magnet float­ing in a skif or shallop of Cork, on a quiet pond, if the Bo­real quarter of it be violently ravished from its own beloved position, and turned about to the South; immediately, as if wheeld about by some counter-violence, it readdresseth to its old mistress the North. For which reason, if the Magnet were by an influential line from the Pole, drawn back again to the Pole, and this return did not proceed immediately from the spontaneous direction of the stone; of necessity, by that convulsion of the Pole, the whole skif would be towed and haled to the North bank of the Pond, which never happens; for both the Magnet, and its Shallop, by the acquisite directi­on of the Septrentrional side, stand still upon the water and remain unmoved. There is therefore inherent in the Magnet an influential virtue, which being not obliged to the propin­quity or contiguous admotion of its object, is, after the nobler manner of celestial influences, freely and without in­terruption or languor transmitted so far as to the Pole it self; since there is a spontaneous eradiation, or emission of atomical radii from the body of the Magnet to the Pole. And thus, when there hath been found and presented to the view of reason, onely one influential virtue in sublunaries (conced it 69. in the Loadstone) diradiating, and in one continued thread of atomes arriving at an object seated at remote distance, which cannot upon any pretence be ascribed to Satan; it will also be sufficiently demonstrated, that there may be many other influential proprieties equivalent to this of the Magnet, wholly and purely natural, as in the forecited examples, and the Armary Unguent.

Now since the Magnet or Iron excited by the Magnet, do by instinct of their own pilot, and the spontaneous direction of themselves convert to the Pole; there must of necessity be conceded some certain▪ Quality eradiated and extended from the body of the Magnet to the Pole; which, in regard we assuredly know it to be done without any Corporeal efflu­vium, [Page 44] we denominate a spiritual quality; in this particular dissenting from our Divine, who places a Spirit in irrecon­cilable difference to all corporeal nature, as an essence wholly preternatural. But Physicians oppose a Spirit against the more gross compage, or more material and less rarified substance of a hody. And in this distinctive notion we say, that the light of the Sun, the influx of celestial bodies, the narcotical ejaculation of the Torpedo, the fatal optick emission of the Basilisk, &c. are qualities purely and wholly spiritual; why, because they are darted at and strike upon an object at great distance, not by the communion or association of substantial evaporation; but are, as by a medium of imperceptible light, deradiated and shot from their Subject to a fit and determinate object.

These things thus conceded and made indubitate by argu­ments of reason and experiment, it is sufficiently manifest, that our Divine, when yet he understood not Goclenius, hath nevertheless carped at him, and indeed many times when he deserved it not. (1) Because Goclenius placed a spiritual qua­lity in so course a lodging, as a corporeal unguent. (2) That he affirmed the influential alliciency of a magnetick body to be derived to its appropriate object, through a medium or vehicle, as light is deradiated from the globe of the Sun. (3) That such spiritual qualities are, by the mediation of a certain sensation of the universal or mundane spirit (the grand and sole causant of all sympathy) transmitted to a remote and determinate object. This Archeus or universal Spirit our Di­vine interprets to be some Cacodaemon, some cursed genius, but by no law, that I understand, except that of his own licenti­ous judgment; since in real verity, it is a more pure and vital breath of Heaven, a Spirit which comprehends and cherishes within it self the Sun, and all the herd of lesser Stars, a minde or intelligence which diffused through all the limbs or parts of this great Animal, the World, doth inform and regulate the whole; and so by a certain commerce, communion, and conspiracy of otherwise-discordant parts, and an harmonious marriage of the distinct virtues of single essences, doth order and govern the vast engine of the Universe, according to the [Page 45] unanimous consent of all, who have read and commented on the true History of Nature. To example, the Solissequous 70. flowers sensibly observe the travel of the Sun: and the Sea conforms to either Lunestice, and swells her obsequious tides high in the full, but shrinks them low again in the Wane of the Moon. In sum; all Creatures by their life, (let us, the master-piece, and abridgment of all, do homage to the Majesty of that King, to whom all things live) essence, existence and sensation visibly attest the majesty, liberality, and presence of the great Creator. For which consideration, our Divine is deservedly to be checked, in that he hath, with insufferable audacity, thrown rebukes at our Physician, whom yet he understood not, writing in a philosophical stile. For such a piece of difficulty was it to observe a mean in all things.

You enquire of us what can be attracted from the body of the wounded party? and how any attraction can be per­formed by the absent Unguent? But in troth I might, with­out injury to the modest rules of disputation, return, that when your self shall fully resolve us, for what reason the Loadstone doth attract iron, and convert it self to the Pole; then shall I also satisfie you, how and by what means Mumy can, by the mediate efficiency of Mumy, work a cure upon another Mumy, which it hath touched upon: but in regard we have substituted our selves to relieve the insufficiency of Goclenius in this particular abstrusity, we shall, in the sequence of our discourse, by a didactical or scientifical Analogism Ratio que ab evidenti rei ob­scurae cognitio­nem affert. Haec ratiocinatio fit comparatione & praeceptione cau­sarum efficienti­um per similitu­dines. ut Galen. in lib. ad Thra­sybulum. demonstrate unto you, by what means the Magnetical at­traction of the Unguent is performed, if at least I shall to satisfaction inform you, what can be by the Vnguent attracted from the Wound. We are to observe therefore, that in a Wound, there succeeds not onely a bare solution of continuity, or disunion of the part; but also that there is an exotick or forain quality, whereby the lips of the Wound being enraged and provoked to a certain excandescence, by and by grow tu­mid and apostemate, yea, the whole body from thence be­comes afflicted with Fevers, and a grievous syndrome or con­curse of dangerous symptomes: for thus an Eg, whose shell 71. [Page 46] is but slenderly crackt, soon putrefies and turns adle, when otherwise it might have been a long time conserved. Now this extraneous and peregrine quality the Armary Vnguent im­mediately sucks out of the Wound, whereupon the lips of the Wound, being at length oppressed and impeded by no Accident, are delivered from all pain and sickly aestuation of spirits, and suddenly hasten to accretion, incarnation, and con­solidation. Nature her self is the sole Chiron, that by the Soveraign balsam of the vital blood doth reunite the severed parts, and soder up the incontiguity: the Physician is onely her servant to be assistant to her in the remove of those im­pediments, which otherwise might oppose and infringe the power of her action: nor does the Medicine deserve the at­tribute of Sarcotical, or by its own virtue regenerate flesh in a Wound, but then to full satisfaction of our hopes executes the commission of its faculty, when it hath removed those accidental remoraes that did retard and hinder the operation of Nature: all which impediments the Armary Vnguent, up­on its own single stock of power, doth securely and effectual­ly take off and banish.

Your rejoynder will be, that the Armary Unguent, in pro­bability of reason, ought not to exhaust the forementioned quality, rather then the natural vigor of the body, and strength of the veins: and that the blood, since it continues uncorrupt in the Unguent, ought to procure health, and not any indisposition, to the wounded party: according to the example of the Carline Thistle above mentioned. I respond, that there is a plurality and variety of Magnetisms: for some attract Iron, some Straws, some Lead, others Flesh, the purulent effluxion of Wounds, &c. and the Magnetick en­dowment of some consists onely in this that they can onely extract the pestilential Atomes from the centrals of an in­fected body, &c. Yea, if you shall annex the sanation in our Unguent to your own Argument, your own weapon will wound you.

For from thence, that the genuine effect of the Unguent is to cure perfectly, speedily without pain, without cost, dan­ger, and decay of strength: Hence, I say, it results a manifest [Page 47] truth, that the Magnetical virtue of the Unguent is simply natural, and proceeds from God, and not from Satan. The reason thus; if Satan did cooperate to this Cure (according to your assertion) the chr [...] [...]ould of necessity be imperfect, attended with great amission of strength, an universal languor and enervation of the body, manifest hazard of life, a diffi­cil, and at best a tedious convalescence, an alienation of the 72. minde, a laesion of some more noble faculty, and success of some notable misfortune. All which events as they are ever annexed to Diabolical cures: so are they never observed to follow upon a cure wrought by our Unguent. Our appeal lies to Experience, for so many as ever received a cure by the Unguent will freely give in their testimony on our side. Now Satan is no Oracle that delivers truths, no Counsellor to good, unless with design to insinuate his delusions the smooth­er, and cannot but betray himself by this, that he never long continues in the truth, he so speciously pretended: for always, when he has been an instrument of any good, con­stant to the hostility of his nature, he in the close tempers his favor with a larger allay of evil. And introth the same method would he according to the custom of his malicious friendship, have observed in the Unguent had he been in­teressed as an Author or Fautor, either as Principall or Ac­cessory: at least this remedy would then have failed and be­come 73. evirate, when the wounded patient is rescued from the jaws of death, and reprieved from the Gates of Hell, who otherwise, tainted with the mortal contagion of sin, would by reason of his dangerous wound have poured forth his soul together with his blood; unless perchance you seek to evade by saying, that Satan in that Crisis, that punctilio of danger, suffered a change of his cruelty into compassion, de­vested himself of his essential and inveterate enmity, and put on the good Samaritan, nay, fell not onely to commiserate, but even dress the wounds of humanity; and that he hath ac­quired some interest, some jurisdiction over the wounded patient, himself leaves doubtful and open to dispute, in that he preserves him by the Magnetical Unguent, whom he had rather should perish. It may be that Satan is in your esteem [Page 48] now held a strict and punctual observer of his word and bargain, and no longer a turncoate, fraudulent dissembler and perjured impostor. Besides, we positively deny, that your supposition can carry weight in the ballance of truth, that the blood once extravenated continues uncorrupt, and conserves its interest of vitality; but rather that it is deprived of all community, and participation of life, and immediately undergoes some degree of corruption; but that it obtains onely a Mumial vitality. To this purpose conduces the cor­rupted, and yet magnetical blood in an Eg. Wherefore I pass by the absurdity of your objection, since it hath been so bold as to wrest the Magnet of the Unguent to another intention, then that which the wise bounty of God, in the primitive decree of his counsel, ordained it unto.

BEfore I attempt the explosion of that necessity, which Paracelsus vainly imagined to himself, of the constitution of Tartar in all aliment, for the discovery of the causes of most chronick diseases; and that the folly of that fiction may be more clearly demonstrated, I have thought good, to premise an Enquiry into the original of Tartar in Wine: Since from thence (according to the new belief of vulgarity) most diseases derive their Causes, and borrow their Appellations.

[Page 112] The Cantabi (now Biscons) natives of a Province in Spain, 1. before their conversation with the Hollander, in a voyage for the fishing of Whales, being on the coasts of Groenland (which Modern Travellers conceive lost) among the vast Quicksands, called Atalayae, surprised by intense cold, had their decocted Wines, of themselves generous and excellent, frozen to Ice. Instructed by this exigent, they beat off their hoops from their vessels, and exposed, to the open aër, the naked conglaciated Wines; with design, that the residue of Liquor might be totally frozen: This accordingly succeed­ing, they boared the Ice, and at the Centre of it found a clear, transparent Liquor, of the colour of an Amethyst, be­ing the pure spirit of Wine, a fiery and vital essence, un­capable of conglaciation. This discovery taught them under­standing; for they drank the Ice, melted at the fire, restoring to it a small quantity of this essential vital Nectar. The story is introduced for this end, that hence it may be observed, That the spirit of Wine, by a natural tendency, flies from cold, as from his proper enemy; and gently withdraws itself, from its former mansion, into the Centre of the Wine. But on the con­trary, Wines are therefore exposed to the heat of the Sun, that they may grow Acide, and the spirit exhaling, leaves be­hinde it a flat, cadaverous substance, devoid of spirit and life, which is Vineger. But since it is far more noble and useful, that the spirit of Wine should retreat into the Centre, then perish by exhalation, therefore hath necessity, for the con­servation of Wines, hinted the invention of cold, deep Cellers. The Austrian Wines still operating on themselves by an uncessant, tumultuous heat of Fermentation, are, for the most part, gross and viscid. For which reason, the Cellers at Vienna are ordinarily digged to no less then a [...]undred foot in depth. The Spanish Wines also, would suffer the same restless ebullition, and conflict betwixt their Hetero­geneities, were they not prevented by the admixture of a Lime, which the Spaniard calls Hiesco, at the very instant of their flowing from the Wine Press. Whence results it a clear and unquestionable truth, that the spirit of Wine, in cold 2. Cellers, retreating from its adversary, cold, returns to the [Page 113] heart of the Liquor, as to a safe refuge, and there conceals it self. Wine, therefore, in the cortex, or outward circum­ference of it self, is less generous, as having fewer spirits, then in the middle, or inmost retiring room. Hence it is a 3. necessary consequent, that as, by reason of the exhalation of spirits, Wines set in the Sun, grow acide, and phlegmatick; so also, proportionably, the exterior Cortex of Wine in a cold Celler, must be more acide, then the Centrals. And thus, when the musts of Wines are freshly brought in from 4. the Press, lodged in Store-houses, and have suffered Fermen­tation, the spirit by and by flying from cold, concentres it self; and therefore the superficies of Wine, having already entred some degree of Acidity, immediately begins to ope­rate on the dregs, floating on the yet troubled and unclarified mass of Liquor. For an absolute impossibility it is, that there can be any the least Acidity; which having once met with a proportionate object, does not immediately begin to operate on it. This really is the Law, and unavoidable necessity of Na­turals. By example. Vineger, how flat and weak soever, having once touched upon the stone concreted in the head of a Creafish, vulgarly (but erroneously) called Crabs eye, can by no means contain it self, but must immediately act, to the dissolution of it, and resolve it into a clear, diaphanous Liquor. The Acidity of Wine, having once sated it self on the dregs, and spent much of its activity, by degrees, inclines 5. it self to coagulation. But coagulate it cannot, without a conspiracy with, and assistance from the Fracid Odor of the vessel, impregnate with a spirit, or power of Fermentation; whereby it may, in some measure, admit of putrefaction. And for this onely reason, is the Coagulation made at the sides of the vessel, to which it affixes it self; according to that familiar Chymick Axiome: Omnis spiritus dissolvens, eddem actione quâ corpora dissolvit, coagulatur: Every dissol­vent spirit is it self coagulated, in the same action, wherein it dissolves other concreted bodies. The more acide Wine, there­fore, in the extremities of it self, dissolves the dregs; and 6. at the same instant, the acide dissolvent spirit is coagulated, together with the newly dissolved faeces, and soon applies it [Page 114] self to the neerest side, or concave of the vessel. And this, lest both (the dissolvent and dissolved) might not be hindred from coagulating; but on one side, at least, they might not be invironed by Liquor: And thus, by this progress and succession of natural motions, there is affixed a new pro­duction 7. of Coagulation, Tartar. Observe also, that before the compleat act of Coagulation, there is no existent Coagu­latum; and therefore the acide spirit in the verge of the mass of Wine, having newly dissolved the dregs, in a moment, before the act of coagulation finisht, seazes on the vessel, and by a Cement, or glue, native and proper to it self, there fixes, and constantly adheres. Otherwise depressed by gravity, it would immediately sink to the bottom. And this new Entity, thus coagulated, is the Tartar of Wine; of which our Discourse.

That these are sober, solid truths, we have clear and demon­strable 8. evidence from Vineger it self. For Wine insolated to a calefaction of the vessel, may produce Tartar; but Vineger never. And yet Wine and Vineger are one and the same matter, differing onely in those qualifications, heat and cold; in the former, indeed, with Tartar, in the latter with­out it.

From the premisses, there breaks forth a considerable truth; that our forementioned Axiome, by Chymicks concluded of 9. eternal verity, grosly fails in that it makes the dissolution of any concreted body, to be done in the instant of time, and numerical action, with the coagulation of the spirit dissol­vent. For if there intervened not, in some short interval of time, a diversity, and succession of motions, the Coagulation could not soder it self to the circumambient planks of the vessel, as is there affused by liquefaction; but would of ne­cessity, if it were coagulated at the instant of dissolution, sink down to the lowest region, in the form of a simple coagula­tion, and not cement it self to the walls of the hogshead. But on the other side, in the bottom, the peculiar region of the Lees, there is never found any Tartar. Here also accurs to our serious consideration, a second and more weighty verity: 10. that the Analogy, or resemblance, which the vulgarity of [Page 115] Physicians conceives, betwixt the Tartar in Wine, and those preter-natural Coagulations in the body of man, is erroneous, vain, and altogether impertinent; and therefore the name, history, manner and end of Coagulation of Tartar in Wine, are foolishly and unfitly accommodated to the causes of diseases. All which I shall demonstrate to ample satisfaction, when I come to discover that grand and popular delusion of the Existence of Tartar in our meat and drink. Allowing to Wine onely a fertility of Tartar. For that we acknowledg to be no Alien, no son of an exotick mother, from the concur­rence of forein principles, intruded into Wine, having its production contrary to, or besides the ordinary and simple nature of Wines: neither owing its original to the adjuncts of the primitive Malediction delivered in Paradise, by divine providence, for the expiation of those Crimes committed by man, in the heat and distraction of Wine. Again, neither is the Tartar of Wine ever coagulated by any originary activity, or power of coagulation, proper to its own nature (though Paracelsus dreamt so:) but then undergoes Coagmentation, when the circumferential Acidity of the Wine, hath newly exhausted much of its Energy, and wasted it self, by a pro­fuse operation on the dregs. That is, the Active being swal­lowed 11. up in the embraces of the Passive: the Acide spirit im­bibed, and subdued to obedience, by the freshly dissolved Faeces; then, and not till then, contrives and sets about the act of Coagulation, not with design or power to make a real, true stone, but a counterfeit, such as afterwards may be again dissolved in hot water, as an Acide salt in liquor, which for that reason, the vulgar call Cremor Tartari. All which do very ill correspond with those preter-natural Coagulations in the bodies of men: and yet they are, in a drunken fiction of Paracelsus, by an imaginary analogy of essence and identity with Tartar, in all meat and drink, grosly obtruded on the faith of vulgar Physicians, wholly over-run by that epidemick, lazy, evil, subscription. Here also we are fallen on a third Magnale or Violentum. That Tartar is not an excrement of 12. Wine, unless on one part, which is the dregs dissolved: which truly Paracelsus was not ignorant of, who does very [Page 116] frequently extol the Medicinal faculties of Tartar, far above those of Wine it self, as inheriting many more and nobler en­dowments. Wherefore he very absurdly refers Tartar of Wine, by an identity of essence, and formation, to the same 13. Classis of Entities, with those solid Concretions in diseased bodies; which yet, in many other places, himself concludes to be a meer excrement, yea, the sorrowful fruit of that curse of the Earth, pronounced by God, in Paradise, Bryers and thorns shalt thou bring forth, and calls, Ens Cacedonium, in puro saphyrico ente rerum. The Tartar of Wine therefore, and that which is erected in the Schools, for the material cause, and foundation of most Chronick diseases, if any such were in reality of Entity, can keep no concord in their Original Forms, even according to the doctrine of Paracelsus himself, if we accept the former, as a preternatural production, di­rected, by the destiny of its being, to the generating diseases, as to its proper end. And thus also, hath he most impertinent­ly, and at best, but by the favor of a Metaphor, reduced the 14. causes of diseases to Tartar: Since they no way agree, either in their matter, efficient, manner, or cause of Coagulation, in the term of the Coagulatum, Object, or Originals. For nei­ther gravel, nor the stone is capable of dissolution in boiling water; as the Tartar of Wine is. This usurpation therefore, of name and propriety, is wholly metaphorical, rash, and fri­volous; and an assertion tacitely injurious to divine wisdom and providence, by polluting the purity of all sublunary crea­tures, 15. with the bold imputation of a Curse, as if in the to­tality of their natures, they were nothing but Compositions, amassed out of the seeds of Tartar. And to so high a pitch of impudence hath this error flown, that men dare imagine Tartar in the very marrow of Animals; which yet they allow incoagulable, nor did ever Paracelsus finde any where, but in his own wilde imagination. And so the result of all is, that he falls upon a manifest contradiction, making Tartar to be no Tartar, that is uncapable of Coagulation: so that, not onely every coagulable and solid body, but also every liquid substance, that is every created nature, subject to the influence of the lower orbs, would be nothing but Tartar, by [Page] [Page] [Page 117] divine Vengeance, destined to the punishment of the first sin. No sooner hath the Must suffered Fermentation, parted with its former sweetness, and assumed the perfection and digni­ties of Wine, but the whole Mass of Terrenity, the Lees, falls to the bottom of the vessel; and then begins the new made Acidity of the Wine, in the circumference, to execute its power dissolutive, on the earthly residence in the bot­tome.

For the more essential portion of the Wine, the spiritual Nectar, by a gentle and gradual concentration, crowding in­to the middle, forsakes the protection of the superficial round of the Liquor: This done, and the extremity of the Wine thus destitute of Vitality and radical heat, soon grows acide, and not meeting with any fit object neer it, whereon to dis­charge its activity, but onely the dregs in the lowest region of the Wine, immediately assaults them, and by degrees dissolves them: And thus the Acidity is both confirmed and inlarged.

But since every Acidum, by reason of its corroding Energy, doth operate in a perpetual Ebullition: hence is it, that that Acidity, which had dived to the bottom, when it hath opera­ted on the Lees, doth reascend from thence, and fix it self in a higher mansion, the circumstance of the vessel. And for this 16. cause, is the generation of Tartar done, by successive, gradual, and slow motions. For the same reason also cannot Tartar be concreted and affixed to the bottom; hindered by that in­quietude, and tumultuation of perpetual Ebullition. Hence is it, that rich and generous Wines, being not easily subject to 17. this destitution of spirits, unless on an assault of intense cold, do not soon grow acide, nor yeeld any considerable quantity of Tartar.

But old Rhenish Wines easily pall, grow sick, and loose their grateful and vigorous taste; in regard their activity of eagerness is, for the most part, devoured by their Lees; and yet they continue wholsom and friendly to the stomach, in that their spirits are not exhausted to an equal proportion of their dregs and acidity. But red French Wines, unless nourisht by their Lees, (which for this effect, Vintners call, the [Page 118] Mother, or Nurse of Claret) dissolve their own Tincture, continually preying on it by their subtilty and eagerness. And this is the cause, why Claret Wines, if not very rich, and ex­cellently vigorous, at the age of two yeers grow pale and dis­coloured. For the Tincture of Wines, is a substance fami­liarly subject to separation. But strong, generous, and spiri­tual red Wines, in that they more slowly grow acide, hold good to the age of many yeers. On the contrary, small White Wines, if not sequestred from their Lees, in short time, grow flat and cadaverous. For their Lees drawn off, their Acidity wanting a proportionate matter, to imploy its corro­sive faculty upon, the Wine continues good, sprightful, firm, and in its primitive integrity. From these experiments, we 18. naturally collect, That Tartar, in the acception of its entire nature, is no longer either Wine, or the dregs of Wine; but a Neutral, or third Nature, resulting from the conjunction, and coëfficiency of both. That this is thus, is demonstrable from the Mechanick experiment, that a greater quantity of Tartar may be dissolved in ten ounces of Rain water, then in two hundred of Wine, though never so much stirred in boyling. The reason belongs to the Acidity of Wine to which the Tar­tar ows its Coagulation.

To conclude; six ounces of the salt of Tartar, will dis­solve seven ounces of crude Tartar; because the Lixivium, or 19. Lee of that Salt imbibes and sucks up the Acidity of Tartar. That Tartar consists of the Lees of Wine, and not Wine one­ly, we need no other eviction, but that experiment of Printers, 20. who indifferently use Tartar or the Lees of Wine, for the Master ingredient in their Composition of Ink: the same effect arising from either, on good reason, preventing the election of either, and confessing a plain consanguinity, if not an identity of the Causes. Again, in distillation, they both belch up one and the same Acide Odor, and yeeld one and the same Oyl. Onely Tartar is not dissolved in cold water: because the [...]aeulent and earthy substance of the dregs does so closly environ and shroud the Salt, that the cold water is not of force sufficient, to transfix that counterscarfe, or penetrate the atomical parts of the Concretion, and by consequence, not to dissolve it.

[Page 119] Now since Tartar hath its originary principles and nativi­ty, 21. no where but in Wines, grown lightly Acide, by a de­sertion of spirits, flying from circumstant cold, to the Centrals of the Liquor: Hence let the so much illuminated (that is infatuated) Disciples of Paracelsus be instructed, how ill the speculation of Tartar does quadrate, even with those diseases, for whose sake chiefly it was first invented and embraced. For plain it is, the stone concreted in the body of man, can never be dissolved in boyling water; as Tartar commonly is. For which consideration, Tartar is more justly to be listed in 22. the number of Salts, or Juices coagulated by Salt, then of Stones: è diametro, contrary to the doctrine of Paracelsus.

WIsdom begins at the Fear of God; and the Fear of God begins at the meditation of death, and eternal life. But the end of Wisdom many conceive, with 1. the Stoicks, to be the knowledg of a mans self; but I account the ultimate end of wisdom, and the Crown of the whole course of our life, Charity, which alone will faithfully accompany us, when all other things shall have de­serted us. And although self-cognition, in our opinion, be onely a medium to the fear of God; yet from that, must our Tractate concerning long life, assume its beginning; in this relation, that the cognition of life presupposeth the cognition of the Soul, since the life and soul (which we have more then once intimated) are Synonymaes. Tis of Faith, that man was created, of nothing, after the Image of God, into a 2. living Creature; and that his minde shall never perish; while, in the mean time, the Souls of Bruits suffer annihilation, so soon as they cease to live. The weighty reasons of which difference I have declared, in my discourse of the Original of Forms. But hitherto is it not manifested, beyond dispute, wherein that similitude of Man with God, our Archtype, or prime exemplar, doth consist. For in the Soul alone, many determine this majestick Pourtraicture. I shall deliver what I conceive; yet under an humble protestation and subjection [Page 123] to the censure of the Church. Thus it is. The Original of Forms being, in some degree of comprehension, already known; it is just we make a grand enquiry concerning the Minde of Man. But, seriously, no cognition is more weighty then that, whereby the soul comprehends her self: Yea, and hardly is any more profitable; in this interest, that Faith doth establish her foundation upon the unperishable, and in­delible substance of the Soul. I have found, indeed, many demonstrations, concerning this verity, divulged in Books: but none at all propter quid, touching the Cardinal Quiddity, in relation to Atheists, denying one single, and from all Eter­nity constant, Deity. Plato, insooth, hath decreed three or­ders of Atheists. (1.) A first, which beleeveth no gods at all. (2.) A second, which indeed doth admit of gods; but such as 3. are incurious of our condition here below, and idle contemn­ers of the trifling affairs of Mortals. (3.) A third, which although it beleeve, that there are gods, and such as are both knowing and observant of the smallest occurences in the World; yet imagineth them so exceeding merciful, that they are flexile, by the finger of the weakest prayer. And this kinde is most frequent among Christians, and even such, who pro­fess themselves the most perfect in our days: and on this presumption, they dare any thing, and beleeve Religion to be no more but an engine of mature policy, to coerce the peo­ple, with the terror of Laws, the obligation of Faith, and the penalty of Hell. For these impose heavy burthens on the shoulders of others, which themselves touch not with one of their fingers; drain the purses of their disciples, prostitute Heaven for money to dying men, and continually intrude themselves into secular affairs, in regard they opinion, that Religion cannot subsist without State-policy. My highest wish should be, that they had once, though but in a moment, tasted what it is to understand intellectually; that so they might perceive sensibly, as it were by the touch, the immortality of 4. the Minde. I confess, I have not invented rules or a method, whereby I might be able to illustrate the intellect of another man. I protest therefore justly, that such who ever study, making disquisitions concerning truth, but can never attain [Page 124] the knowledg of it, in respect, being puffed up with Learn­ing, they have no Charity, do foster secret Atheism. But this one mystery I have learned, That the minde doth not at 5. all understand by the mediation of the Phansie, nor by figures and images; unless the miserable, and afflicting discourse of Reason be annexed; but when the Soul comprehends her own nature, Reason falls off from her, and the image of her self fails her, by which she might represent her self to her self: therefore the Soul can, by no means, apprehend her self by the discourse of Reason, nor by Images. For after that I had known, that the verity of an Essence, and the verity of the Intellect were one and the same: I certainly knew that the intellect was a certain immortal Entity, far removed from all frail and perishable things. The Soul, indeed, is not per­ceived; yet we firmly beleeve her to dwell within us, not to be idle, not to be weary, nor afflicted with diseases. Therefore sleep, madness, and ebriety, are not symptomes of the immortal 6. soul suffering exorbitancy; but the attendants of life and onely passions of the sensitive Faculty; since bruits also fre­quently endure the same passions. For just it is that the im­mortal Being owe these disturbances to her adligement to ca­duce and mortal things. For as the minde inhabiteth within us, and yet is not perceived by us: So neither are her con­tinual and uninterrupted operations subject to sensation; because if they were sensible, verily they could not have been spiritual and meerly abstracted. And although it appear to us, that we understand nothing by the total sequestration and abstraction of discourses from all things corporeal, which can fall under the comprehension of our sense, minde, and intel­lect; and that in the very beginnings of our Contemplations: yet really, the Soul doth, all that while, act by her own in­sensible way, and by an efficacy wholly spiritual: which I thus understood. The penitentiary very often doth not sensi­bly perceive the effects of his contrition, and with groans de­ploreth 7. that his insensility: yet being asked whether he would willingly commit a sin, would perchance answer, that he had much rather die. Insensible therefore is the operation of the soul in penitence and confession, being the supernatural [Page 125] effect of Faith: because the intellectual actions are derived from a higher principle, and are clients of a more noble and indesinent Magistracy. And on this ground Mystical Divines lay their Doctrine, That the soul doth more effectually ope­rate, and in her operations more benefit her self, in faith alone, without discourse and cogitation; then he who pray­eth in a multitude of words, and by tedious discourses ex­citeth compunction in himself. But happy he, who hath ob­tained that excellent endowment, to perceive these insensile operations of the soul, and by secret emanation to reflect them upon the operations and powers of the sensitive Soul; since such frequently leave their impresses upon the whole after life, and excite the memory, in faith operating together with grace, for the future.

The Libertines of Christianity, and Atheists of the first 8. Classis deride this Article of our Creed, as if the Image of God, in us were onely imaginary, and it a meer traditional fiction that man was fashioned after the similitude of the Deity. But other Atheists of the second and third sort beleeve, not onely that we are created in the Image of God; but feign also that in our nature there is an identity with the essence of the im­mense, 9. uncreated Divinity; and that man doth differ from God in substance no otherwise, then a part doth from the whole, or that which had beginning from that which is non­principiate; but not at all in point of Essence, or internal propriety. Which besides the Blasphemy, doth comprehend very many and gross absurdities. Since whatever once began is in that very notion a Creature; and it doth tacitely involve 10. an imperfection in God, to be able to create extra se, without the limits of his own nature, any thing in substance equal to himself: Since truly from Philosophy it is evident beyond doubt, that all the parts of an infinite are infinite, of necessity. The Creature therefore cannot be in substance more infinite, then it hath been in duration equal to its eternal principle: and much less is the Soul of man a part of the Divine substance, or essentially like unto it; which in power, magnitude, dura­tion, glory, wisdom, &c. in her self, and of her self, is a meer nothing. If therefore she was not made out of God, [Page 126] much less out of her self; but out of nothing. Infinitely therefore do they wander from truth, who beleeve a quiddity of the Divine Image implanted in the Soul, by an identity of substance: when they are distinguished each from other by infinite disparity; yea, the soul would at length, of her own accord, be again resolved into that nothing, from whence she began, unless she were constantly conserved in being, by the Divine goodness. Seriously, the damned souls might wish to be resolved into their primitive nothing, which the Divine Justice doth conserve in Being. The Soul, indeed, from the minute of her creation forwards to the future, hath an eternal permanence; not from her own essence, but from her native eternity, freely conferred upon her by the bounty, and con­stantly conserved by the providence of her Maker.

Suffice it therefore, that the Soul be a spiritual and vital substance; and a luminous Creature. And since there are many 11. kindes and species of vital lights, this light of the minde dif­fers from all other vital lights, in this, that it is a spiritual and immortal substance; but all other vital lights are not sub­stances Formal, though they be Forms substantial; and there­fore, by the Chymistry of Death, they are reduced into their ancient nothing, no otherwise then is the flame of a Tapor extinct. But the Minde differs from Angels; in respect it is framed in the similitude and representative figure of the eter­nal 12. God, for the soul hath that light and luminous substance from the gift of her Creation, since she her self is that vital light: but an Angel is not that substantial light, nor hath he any light genial and inherent to his essence, but is onely a mirror of the increated light; and so in this particular falls short of the excellence and perfection of the Divine Image. Otherwise an Angel, since he is an incorporeal spirit, were he luminous from the right of his own essence, would express the Image of God more perfectly then man. Moreover, what­ever God doth bestow more love upon, that is more noble: but he hath loved man, much more then the Angels; for not to the redemption of the Angelical nature did he assume the figure of a Cacodaemon, as the thrice glorious Lamb of God, the Saviour of the world, assumed the nature of a Servant. [Page 127] Nor can this Doctrine be staggered by the opposition of that, The meanest in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater then John the Baptist: For the Son of Man is not inferior, in dignity of essence, to the Angels, though he was pleased to become a little lower then the Angels; for in the calamitous condition of his life, he was made a little lower then the Angels, as also was John the Baptist. And for this reason, an Angel is con­stantly called a ministring Spirit: but is no where read a friend of God, the Son of the Father, the delight of the Son of Man, or the Temple of the Holy Spirit, wherein the thrice glorious Trinity takes up his Mansion. For that is the maje­stick prerogative of the Divine Image, which the Light Eter­nal doth impress upon every man that comes into this world.

In the year 1610, after a long weariness of contemplation, 13. that I might acquire some gradual knowledg of my own minde, since I was then of opinion, that self-cognition was the complement of wisdom, faln by chance into a calm sleep, and rapt beyond the limits of reason, I seemed to be in a Hall sufficiently obscure. On my left hand was a table, and on it a fair large Vial, wherein was a small quantity of Liquor: and a voice from that Liquor spake unto me: Wilt thou Honor and Riches? At this unwonted voice, I became surprized with extream amazement. I walked up and down, seriously con­sidering with my self, what this should design. By and by, on my right hand, appeared a chink in the wall, through which a light invaded my eyes with unwonted splendor: which made me wholly forgetful of the Liquor, voice, and former counsel. Then pensively returning to the Vial, I took it away with me; and attempted to taste the Liquor, but with tedious labor I opened the Vial, and assaulted with extream horror I awakened. But my ancient intense desire of knowing the nature of my soul, in which I had panted uncessantly for thirteen whole yeers together, constantly remained with me. At length, amidst the anxious afflictions of various for­tunes, when yet I hoped a Sabbath of tranquillity from the se­curity of an innocent life transacted, in a vision I had the sight of my soul. It was a transcendent light, in the figure of a man, [Page 128] whose whole was homogeneous, actively discerning, a substance spiritual, Crystalline, and lucent by its own native splendor. But enshrined it was in a second nubilous part, as the husk or ex­terior cortex of it self, which whether it did emit any splen­dor from it self, I could hardly distinguish, by reason of the superlative fulgor of the Crystalline spirit inshrowded within it. Yet this I could easily discern, that there was no sexual impress, but onely in the cortex or shrine. But the mark of the Crystal was light ineffable, so reflexed, that the Crystal Image it self became incomprehensible: and that not by nega­tion or privation (since these are terms onely accommodate to our imbecillity) otherwise then this, that it presented a ma­jestick Ens, which cannot be expressed by words; yet so fine­ly, that you could not have comprehended the quiddity of the thing beheld. And then was it revealed unto me, that this light was the same, which I had a glimpse of twenty three yeers before. And these things I saw by an intellectual vision; in my minde; for had the eye of my body once beheld this resplendent excessive object, it would for ever after have ceased from vision, and consta [...]ly have celebrated a blinde mans holy day. And thus my dream discovered unto me, that the beauty of the humane Soul doth far transcend all conception of thought. At that instant I comprehended thus much, that my long desire of seeing my soul was vain and fruitless; and thereupon I did acquiesce. For however beautiful the Cry­stalline 14. spirit did appear; yet my soul retained nothing of perfection from that vision, as at other times she was wont to do after an intellectual vision. And so I came to be instructed, that my minde, in this somnial vision, had as it were acted the part of a third person; nor was the discovery sufficiently satisfactory to compensate so earnest and insatiate a desire of exploration.

But as to the Image of God impressed upon the Soul; accord­ing to my slender capacity, I confess, I could never conceive 15. any thing, whether a body, or spirit, whether in my phansie, or the most pure, and abstracted speculation of my intellect, which in the same act of meditation, did not represent some certain figure, under which it stood objected to my concep­tions. [Page 129] For whether I apprehended it by imagining an Idea probably correspondent to its essence, or whether by concei­ving that the intellect did transmute it self into the object un­derstood; still it occurred unto my thought invested in some figure. For although I could familiarly understand the minde under the notion of an incorporeal and immortal substance: yet could I not, while I meditated upon the individual exi­stence of it, consider the same devoid of all figure; yea, nor so, truly, but it would respond to the figure of a man. Since when ever the soul being sequestred doth see another Soul, 16. Angel, or Cacodaemon, requisite it must be, that she perfectly know, that these are presented to her, to the end she may distinguish a Soul from an Angel, and the Soul of Peter from the Soul of Judas. Which distinction cannot be made by the sense of tasting, smelling, hearing, touching; but onely by the proper vision of the Soul; which vision necessarily impli­eth an alterity or difference of figure. Since an Angel is so far restrained to locality, that at once he cannot possess two different places: in that also there is included as well a figu­ral, as a local circumscription. Thence I considered the minde of man figurated after this manner.

The body of man, accepted under that distinct notion, 17. cannot give to itself the figure of a man; and therefore hath need of an external Sculptor or Delineator, which should be secretly ambuscadoed in the material mass of the seed, and descend upon it from above. Yet this, in so much as it is of a material condition, and far below the fineness of a spiritual nature, cannot derive the plastick or conformative virtue no more from it self, then from the gross mass of the body: necessary it is therefore, that there be some precedent or elder principle, which must be wholly and purely immaterial, yet real, and operative, to which may be justly attributed the power of figuration or delineation, by a sigillary impression upon the Archeus, or Regent Spirit of the Seed. The Soul of the Genitor, therefore, when it descends to visit and relieve the inferior faculties, and makes a progress to survey the Seed, in a paroxysm of carnality, doth upon the mass of seed, en­grave and adumbrate the impress and figure of it self, (which; [Page 130] in sober truth, is the onely cause of the foecundity of seeds) and thence is that comely and magnificent structure of the Infant. Otherwise if the Soul were not figurated, but the figure of the body did arise spontaneously: a father maimed in any one member could not beget a son but maimed in the same member; in regard the body of the Generant hath lost its primitive integrity, and is become imperfect, at least in the implantate spirit of that member. If therefore the figure be impressed upon the seed; undoubtedly it must receive that image or model from some other more vital and elder principle, alien to it self. But if the soul impress that figure upon the seed, she will not counterfeit an exotick, or strange image; but accurately pourtray the similitude of her self. For by this means also Beasts, by the souls modelling of her own picture, constantly maintain their species. And although the minde of man, if we relate to its original, far transcend the Laws of Nature; yet by the same method or way, whereby it first entred the portal of Nature, was incorporated and as­sociated to her, it is constrained to progress in traduction, and is constantly adliged to the observance of her rules and pre­scriptions; in this respect, That the progress and end of vital generations is always univocal.

Nor otherwise could it want many and gross absurdities, that so excellent an operation, as is the generation of man, should be performed without the consent and cooperation of the Soul. Which if it be thus, it is also of inevitable necessi­ty, that the foecundity be given to the seed by the Soul, by the communication of its figure, and other vital determina­tions requisite to specification. Which verily doth not come to pass otherwise, then by the sigillation or engravement of the Soul upon the seed, whereby the matter of the seed doth obtain a requisite maturity and adumbrated figure: that at length it may acquire from the Creator the formal light of life, or soul of its species, whose similitude is expressed in the figure.

Moreover, we apprehend it as matter of Faith, that our soul is a spiritual substance, that shall never know annihilati­on: 18. the fabrication of which substance out of nothing be­longeth [Page 131] to the Almighty God alone. Who since he hath vouchsafed to adopt onely the soul of man to the Image of himself: it appears also a genuine consequence, that the im­mense and ineffable God is also of humane figure; and that by an argument drawn à posteriori, if arguments be of any vali­dity in this incomprehensible subject. Since the body is like wax, whereupon the impression of the image of the Soul is imprinted: but the Soul hath her image and essential per­fection from him, whose stamp or similitude she wears. But on consideration that the body of man doth frequently be­come 19. subject to mutilation and monstrosity; hence have most Divines conceived that the glorious Image of the Deity is wholly consistent in the Rational Faculty: not at all consider­ing, that the representative Divinity of man doth in a more perfect and proxime relation consist in the Soul, and so in the Body formed after the exemplary character of the Soul; nor perpending, that the Rational Faculty is but Handmaid and subservient to the Intellect, no part at all of its essence, nor adliged to it by the inseparability of union, or identity: which we have to satisfaction demonstrated in our Treatise, of the Venation of Sciences. Now if any error be in the confirma­tion of the body, in the womb of the Conceptrix: that error is not adscriptive to any imperfection of the Image of God; but to the incapacity of the material principles, and other ex­ternal causes, invading the Plastick virtue of the seed, and perverting its exact delineation of the parts. But the more Learned number of Christians doth hold it of Faith, that the Soul doth proximly express the Image of the Trin-une God, in the univocal simplicity of her substance, and the Trinity of her Faculties, namely, the Intellect, Will, and Memory. Which analogy ever sounded, in the ears of my reason, so ridiculous 20. and empty as an old wives dream; and improper to make good the proxime, singular, and excellent reflex of the God­head in the Soul: since the term, Image, doth include a simi­litude of Essence and Figure, and not onely a bare parity of numbers. Again, if the Soul, in her substance, represent the thrice sacred Deity; but the Intellect, Will, and Memory re­flect the Trinity of Persons: necessary it is that these three [Page 132] faculties are not proprieties, or accidents of the Soul; but the very univocal substance of the minde; or else, that the pour­tracture doth ill quadrate and respond to the Prototype, or prime exemplar, whose image it is beleeved to be. I consider­ed moreover, that not onely the minde of man, but even the whole man was framed after the Image of God; and that it was a bloody absurdity to compare the persons of the Trinity to the Memory, or Will: since no person of the most Holy Godhead, can in any latitude of resemblance, represent the Will, nor the Will the Person, none the Memory, or the Me­mory none; as also that no one, separated from the other two, can hold any analogy to the Intellect. And then, that the three faculties of the Soul are ever accepted under the notion of Accidents: but, insooth, Accidents fall short of expres­sing the Image, in any neerer relation, then the naked Ternary of Qualifications, heaped together upon the substance of the Soul. In which sense, the Soul doth express the Image of God far less, then any the smallest piece of wood: which by retro­grade Analysis or resolution of it self into its primitive En­tities, holdeth forth, Sal, Sulphure, and Mercury: and not onely (as the Minde in the forementioned similitude, credited by the vulgar) three diverse proprieties, or a naked Ternary of accidents. For every Wood hath three several substances, comprised under the unity of the concretion, distinct in the supposed Essences of their principles; but concurring in the composition of the whole, they make onely the single sub­stance of Wood.

Taulerus hath divided the Soul, not into three faculties, but two distinct parts, viz. the inferior or outward, which by 21. peculiarity of appellation he denominates the Soul; and the Superior or inward, which he entitleth the profundity of the Soul, or Spirit; in which he affirmeth the Image of God to be comprehended, since therein is seated the King­dom of Heaven, and therefore the Devil can obtain no ac­cess unto it. And to each of these parts he hath assigned several acts and proprieties mutually distinct each from other. But alas! this holy man expungeth that simple homogeneity of the Soul, wherein she ought principally to express the [Page 133] similitude of the Deity: or at least hath hitherto denied the Image of God to be propagated and diffused through, not onely the whole man, but even through the whole Soul. Verily, the ears of my Faith are not easily open to this Doctrine of the Duality of the immortal Soul; nor the alterity of those two parts: especially when in her essence, the Soul ought to resemble the Image of the most simple Divine Nature. I should much rather assent, that the minde of man doth carry the resemblance of the most immense Godhead, in the most simple unity, and indivisible Homogeneity of spirit, under the symbol of immortality, of indissolution, and identity, beyond all connexion or alterity. Wherefore my assertion is, that the glo­rious 22. Image of God is neither separate, nor separable from the Soul; but the very minde is the very Image of God, fully so intimate to the Soul, as the Soul is to her self, that is, the Image of God is the Soul of the Souls essence: and for that reason, that no sober head can conceive or express any the least analogy essential betwixt the supream increated Ens, and the soul of man; since the nature of Divinity is wholly incomprehen­sible, and the most subtile thought can never finde any cha­racter of identity and unity with God, impressed upon the minde, whereon the similitude should be founded. Sufficient it is, that the minde is a spirit, dearly beloved of God, homo­geneous, simple, immortal, created after the Image of the immense Deity, a single Ens, to which death can adde, and from which Death can detract nothing that is proper and ge­nial unto it in the essence of its simplicity. And in regard the 23. Soul, in the primitive constitution and destination of its es­sence, is participant of beatitude: therefore is damnation su­pervenient to it by accident, besides the originary decree of Creation, by reason of a succeeding defection.

This Semideity, the Soul, thus nobly enriched with science, 24. when once enfranchized from her prison, the body, doth then for ever suspend all use of memory, and no longer makes use of the tedious induction of Reminiscence, intuition of place, or duration; but being single, in that homogeneal simplicity comprehendeth all things. For which reason, should any Memory remain to the Soul, after her flight from Earth, it [Page 134] would of necessity be not onely frustraneous and useless, but burdensom: when it must eclipse her transcendent actual in­tellection. And from Reminiscence must arise the same incon­venience; since that can never be invited into act, but by the circumambages and complex discourse of Reason; and there­fore it possesseth no room in Eternity; where in the full pro­spect of verity, without being subject to declination, defati­gation or defect, the soul standeth exalted far above the neces­sity of Recognition. The inference is, that the Soul must be constituted in beatitude (understand, in her primitive destina­tion) without the conjunction of the forementioned Ternary of Faculties; and so in that analogy cannot resemble the Image of the incomprehensible Deity, for the sole representa­tion whereof she was created. Yea, upon a more intimate scrutiny, I do not finde the Memory to be any singular and distinct power of the Soul: but onely the bare manner of recognition. For such, who have shallow memories, to relieve this infirmity do, by the help of the imagination (Vicegerent to the intellect) contrive for themselves an artificial memory, and that far more retentive then otherwise their natural me­mory could have been.

Moreover, the Will also taketh an eternal farewel of the Soul in death: why, because it is not essential, but acci­dentally 25. advenient to the Soul. Since God, so soon as he had finished his Creation of man, constituted him in the absolute power of his own Free Will; which in sober truth, accord­ing to my apprehension, doth plainly import, that the Will is not, by any peculiar manner, essential to the Soul, from the first of her Creation: but onely annexed to her, by way of concession, or trust, as a talent to the hand of a servant; to this end, that man might have free power to choose what path best liked him, to unravel his life in. Otherwise I deny not, but in the whole scene of things, there can be no one more pernicious then a free and unregulated will, as being that onely, which introduceth all variance and discord betwixt God and man. This faculty, therefore, must be for ever exiled from the beatitude of Eternity: for the liberty of willing being taken away, the will it self doth also of necessity perish; [Page 135] and of what use can the power of Volition be, when there is no longer remaining any occasion to will? And on this basis the Schoolmen found their doctrine, that in Heaven the will is confirmed, or rather wholly evacuated by death: that is, the beatified Souls in Paradise, have no power to will, nor will to will, but what is conform to the will of the highest; and those who are compleat in Charity and Glory, retain no power of willing any thing which is not of Charity. The Will there­fore expires, when the liberty of Volition is dissolved; and by sequel, the Will can be no essential, but temporary and caduce power of the Soul; since it cannot be of use or ad­vantage to that Soul, which in the consummation of beati­tude and highest fruition, hath suffered an utter evacuation of desire and hope: when it can no more be deduced into act, but must be a bare optation, which cannot be admitted in the 26. state of bliss, where is a full satiety and abundant possession of all desiderable good. Sufficient let it be for us; by the power of Volition in this life, to thesaurize, or make provision for the life to come.

Now after this transitory power of Volition is abolished, 27. in the next life there springeth up, and manifesteth it self, a substantial Will, in no respect an alien to the intellect and essence of the minde; and therefore having a being absolute­ly distinct from the accidental and variable Will. For as the Imagination is aliened in Phrensies, distracted in perturbations of the Animal Faculty, and eternally suspended at the disunion of the Soul and body: even so is the power of Free Will for ever abrogated by death. And thus I came to beleeve, that the Image of God in man is seated in the spiritual substance of the Soul; and not in the ternary of its Faculties. In a word, the Analogy stands thus. God is an Ens increate, single, incomprehensible, eternal, infinite, omnipotent, good, a supersub­stantial Light and Spirit. But the Soul is a Creature, single, indivisible, dependent, immortal, simple, and from the date of her creation eternal, a substance spiritual and lucid. Finally, in God 28. there can be no accidents: but all and every one of his Attri­butes are the very indistinct and most simple essence of the Divine Spirit: which Plato his Parmenides in some measure [Page 136] understood. And so the Soul, since she is the representative of God, doth also admit no accident in her nature: but her whole substance must be a simple light, and the very intellect. For as smoak ascending from flame, is in figure and matter the same thing with flame: even so the Soul is the naked, pure, and simple intellect, and the luminous shadow of the increated light. So that as the eye doth behold nothing more truly, and more 29. neerly then the Sun, and all other objects by the Sun: even so the beatified Soul understandeth nothing more neerly then that light, by whose eradiation she is illuminated, and upon which she doth totally and immediately depend. And as the eye of our body cannot endure to gaze upon the excessive lustre of the Sun: so cannot the Soul by intellection com­prehend the glorious Essence of God, much less while, in this vale of ignorance, she stands obliged to the obscure mediati­on of her transitory Faculties. Otherwise the intellect, eman­cipated from the thraldom of flesh, doth by the act of intel­lection acquire the figure of the object understood; in so much as it transformeth it self, by commigration, to that unity of Light, which penetrateth, and by penetrating invigorateth it with beatitude. And thus the Soul doth principally and primarily contemplate the immense Nature of God, in the act of intellection; and for this end was she created the true and real representative of the Divine Essence.

They who opinion the Image of God to be seated in the rational faculty of man, depend upon this Argument. The 30. Law is the Image of God; but this Law is engraven upon our Souls, by Reason: therefore, is the Soul the Image of God, as she is onely rational. But such consider not, that according to the intent of this Sophism, the Soul, indeed, would contain the Image of God; but yet the Soul her self would be the Law it self essentially. Which absurdity is too palpable to escape the observation of any, who shall but perpend, how much the Law and the Soul differ in the suppositionality of Essence: and that the constitution and engravement of the Law succeeded the Creation of the Soul. Verily, I abhor me­taphorical locutions in serious and abstruse subjects. As if these words, God created man in his own likeness, would [Page 137] naturally bear this onely interpretation, that God gave man the use of reason: and that such who enter this scene of mor­tality, with native idiotism, or a durable infatuation of rea­son, about them, have forfeited their plea to this grand prero­gative of mankinde, the Image of the immense Deity. Again, to impute the Image of God to Reason, is to prophane and blaspheme the Sacred Majesty of God, as I have amply de­clared in my discourse of the Venation of Sciences: When there is no adequation of reason to God, no comparison be­twixt a transitory and uncertain faculty, and an eternal omni­scient substance. But omitting the opinions of other men, I shall presume the liberty to declare my own.

The Intellect hath a Will coequal, and substantially united to itself; not such as may be accounted a power or accident: 31. but the very light intellectual, a substance spiritual, an essence spiritual and indivisible, onely distinguished from the intellect by suppositionality, not reality of essence. Beside these, I finde also in the Soul a third native propriety, which in defect of a more proper appellation, I name Love, or constant Desire; not of acquisition, possession, or fruition: but of Complacency: which is equally essential to the Soul with the other two, the Intellect, and the intellectual Will, and equally simple in unity of substance. Which Ternary of proprieties meet in the sin­gle and indivisible substance of the Soul, and make one perfect unity. But this Love is no act of the will singly; but pro­ceedeth from the intellect and substantial will together, as a distinct and glorious act: for even in this life, we may love those things, which our understanding concludeth not to be amiable, and which our will adviseth us not to love: and fre­quently we love objects, that transcend the comprehension of the understanding, and will, as in an Ecstasie both the intellect, and will are suspended, and consopited, during the abstraction of the minde, for so long have they resigned their scepter to Love. Nor is this Love a passion: but an Essence dominant, and an Act glorificant. The Will therefore, and Love, of this 32. place, hold no community at all with the sensual and transi­tory will of man, or of flesh and blood: in regard they are essential titles, by which (in our great poverty of words) we [Page 138] endevour to demonstrate, wherein the minde of man doth represent the Image of God: forasmuch as the intellect en­franchised from the body doth intuitively understand, intend, and from the abyss of the minde, love God, in one entire and never-discontinued act of love, or desire of complacency, ac­cording to the simplicity of her substance. But so long as we sojourn in walls of flesh, we come not so neer beatitude, as once to use our substantial and purely Intellectual intellect; but most of our obscure cognition of any Entity is derived from the information of Phansie, which, as Viceroy, usurpeth the throne of the intellect. For (as before) in an ecstatical rapture, the intellect, will, and memory keep holiday, and are as it were lost in a somnolent inactivity; the ardent act of Love onely remaining vigorous and operative: yet so distinct from the three former, that it cannot subsist without the in­tellect, and substantial will; since, when the Soul is totally homogeneous in her substance, she would plainly lose that her absolute simplicity, if any one of the three could subsist without essential dependance on the other. Love therefore, while the other two proprieties continue bound up in an Ec­statical slumber, doth as it were ascend to the superficies: or rather, in terms of neerer similitude, the other two are as it were imbibed and overwhelmed in Love. While we sojourn in the Tents of Kedar, in this vale of misery, Love is elder then Desire; because it is a passion of the Amatory Faculty, which proceedeth from that suppositionality of the Soul (which is true love indeed) and representeth the idea or resemblance of the corporeal Faculty: and hence is it, that all the affections are, by invincible propensity, rapt on to irregularity and con­fusion. But in the Citizens of New Jerusalem, this Love knows no priority, or distinction from Desire: neither is it a Faculty, nor Habit, nor Act of willing, nor subsisteth with­out the Intellect.

And thus the Intellect is a formal Light, and the very sub­stance of the Soul, whose Cognition is perfect by intuition, with­out 34. the help of eyes, which discerneth, willeth, and desireth, in the unity of it self, whatever it comprehendeth within it self, and judgeth by volition. Nor doth it then any longer remember by [Page 139] a repetition of the species, or in age of the object once known; nor is it any more induced to the cognition of an Essence, by circumstances: but then becometh the onely and exact cog­nition of all intelligible objects, and the intuitive aspect, with­in it self. Yet so, that it knows one object more presentially then another, while the Intellect reflecteth it self upon the objects understood, in the distinct Unity of Verity: even as it frequently happens in the artifical Memory, where that re­cordative memory is no distinct act from the inductive judg­ment of the intellect. And will this not be more genial and proper to the minde, when once delivered from the tedious, turbulent, and complex way of understanding by the imagi­nation? Nor can the stability of these our assertions be shaken by this objection, that frequently in exorbitances of 35. the Brain, the Memory doth perish, and yet the Judgment con­tinue firm and sound; and on the contrary, the Judgment doth suffer impairment and desolation, and yet the Memory con­serve its integrity and tenor, as many Drunkards perfectly remember all passages as well before, as in and after their Wine: in regard these are Heterogeneal Faculties of the sensitive Soul, seated in distinct provinces of the body, and subject to intension and remission according to the exact and irregular temperament of the Organs. And to inanimate Creatures also, according to our observation, there undenia­bly 36. belongeth a kinde of imperfect and obscure cognition of their particular objects: as also a blinde sense and dull affecti­on of the most convenient and adaequate; which Creatures have, for this determinate election of their determinate ob­jects, lately acquired the name of Sympathetical: and this dark perception of the most accommodate objects, serveth them in stead of the sense of Vision, and faculty of reason. Besides this, there is also implanted in these inanimate sympa­thetical Creatures a certain Virtue, or Vital endowment, of infallible valor, and energy; as to those ends ordained by the Creator. There is also a third power conferred upon Crea­tures of this qualification, resulting from the conspiracy, and coefficiency of the two former: which sitteth as a silent Counsellor, and dispenseth commands to them, either to ad­vance [Page 140] towards the amiable and [...]eneficial, or retreat from the offensive and harmful object. In which the most blear-ey'd reason cannot but behold a certain natural sensation, or affecti­on of determinate objects: yea, and what is more, a dislike and aversation. Which Climax, or threefold degree of non­intellectual cognition, is more manifest in the most stupid sorts of Insects, as also in Fools and Mad men; who are no sub­jects to the prudent scepter of the Intellect, but subordinate to the doller advisoes of sense, and conform to the provoca­tions of onely visual light. And yet in these there is moreover a second power, or act of their virtues specifical and functions vital: for the onely exercise whereof they were ordained. And thirdly, there is comprehended in them a far more con­spicuous act of Address or Application, and Aversation or Avoidance: which ariseth from the instinct of their Forms. All which natural proprieties do yet more powerfully declare themselves in sensitive Creatures: for to these belongeth a certain sensitive Imagination, with a gradual discourse of ob­scure reason, which supplieth their defect of an Intellect, and is more or less resplendent and conspicuous in every single species: so that sagacity, voluntary election, and memory in such fall under the apprehension of a comparative intellect: their objects being yet changed, according to the variety of matter, propense to variations, distinctions, and singularities. Moreover, in such there is an emanative or effluxive power collaterally annexed to their virtues; whereby their Souls are more or less propense to the exercises of their element, be­nign, and wholsom, or wilde and destructive endowments, or qualities essential. And finally, they are enriched with a native desire of complacency, of abhorrence or dislike, and of concupi­scence, immediately ensuing upon their consideration of the good or evil of the object: which power or propensity is so firmly counited to the sensitive soul, that it seems almost im­possible to observation, that any man should at once see two strange persons together, and not instantly become more affected to one then the other. And these things, which are sufficiently operative even in meerly Corporeal and inanimate natures, of confessed efficacy in sensitive, and in both admit [Page 141] of more or less acuteness, according to the obedient or re­fractary predisposition of the recipient: cannot but be, for the same reason, of more clarified and sublime energy in man.

Finally, it is not the sense of our thoughts, that the Image of God in man should fall under such gross disparagement, as 37. to be considered as dependent on any Ternary of Faculties; which naturally belongeth also to other inferior natures in this scene of the world. Because the dignity of the Image of the most glorious Jehovah is not, in any the largest latitude of Analogy, participated by any other Creature whatever: since the Divine Image is peculiarly radicated in the humane Soul, and equally proper to it with its very essence: but all other proprieties of the Soul are not of the essence of the Minde; but productions and subsequent acts. Nor can it stand with the Majesty of the Divine Image, to be desumed from so poor an original as qualities; for the proprieties and excellencies of all other created forms concur, and are as it were colli­quated or melted together into the essence of the Soul, by virtue of the Divine Image. But if these be accounted as at­tributes and productions: that must be charged upon the mise­rable manner, and customary abuse of understanding, ac­cording to the capacity of the Vulgar. For in equitable truth, 38. the minde is one single act, pure, simple, formal, homogeneous, and indivisible; in which the Image of God doth subsist proximely and essentially. So that in this Image, all faculties do not onely lay aside the nature of Attributes: but also col­lect and binde up their suppositionalities into an unity in­distinct. Why, because the Soul is a certain substantial light within her self; or a substance so lucid, that in suppositiona­lity of essence, it cannot be distinguished from the very light: and her intellect is so the light of the Minde, that the very Minde is the meer lucid intellect. And in this self-light the 39. Minde, once uncaptived from the opacity of flesh and blood, doth wholly and intimately survey it self, and understand its own nature: and therefore hath no need either of brain or heart; in which material Organs, the substance of the Minde doth seem to stoop unto the assumption of the progeny or stock of proprieties; that is, the Soul is diffused or emissively [Page 142] expansed into several transitory Faculties. To speak more plain­ly; in the body, when the Intellect is abstracted in speculati­on, it makes use of corporeal Organs, to which it is obliged: and assumes a certain Virtue qualitative, called Imagination; which from the conjunction or society of the power phanta­stical, and concurrent splendor of the intellect, suffering some 40. degradation in the Organs, springeth up, by a certain com­bination, into the forementioned qualitative Faculty. And hence comes it to pass, that this Faculty groweth weary by long and intense Imagination, seemeth wholly vanquished by difficult, knotty, and abstruse meditation, and frequently sub­mits to dementation or madness: nay, as the observation of Physicians telleth us, with one nights pensive study, and anxi­ety of thought, the hair of young heads hath put on the silver Livery of old age. But the minde, once emancipated from the pedantism of flesh and blood, is never weary with continued intellection. Moreover, the Imagination in this life is not onely subject to lassation: but from the magazine of it self hath not any intellective species, which it hath not drawn in from sensible objects. And therefore the Intellective Faculty, which concurreth and cooperateth with the phan­tastical function of the Sensitive Soul, followeth the consti­tution or temperamental disposition of the Organ, and arbi­trary dictates of the Sensitive Life: no otherwise then in Naturals the effect followeth the weaker part of their Causes. But the Soul, whatsoever is requisite for Cognition, Com­memoration, or Volition, either for one single act, or many, 41. hath wholly from it self, and borroweth it from no other forein Causality concurrent. For the good substantial Will of a Soul advanced to beatitude, ariseth not from the object understood: but from the radical goodness of her own For­mal love, which is, indeed, no proper passion of the soul, no habit, no propension, nor any quality; but a substantial act of goodness, by which the blessed Soul is substantially, uni­vocally, and homogeneally, not qualitatively good. And this prerogative it enjoyeth, because it is the Typical Image of Di­vinity. 42. But bodies, of their own accord, perpetually fall into the attributes of forms, heterogeneity, vicissitudes, and at [Page 143] length into dissolution. Therefore Love or Desire of the Minde, is no function of the Appetitive faculty: but is a part 43. of the substantial Minde, or rather the very Minde it self, flowing from the Intellect and Will. Which three are, by the hand of the Creator, married indissolubly into an eternal unity, in the purest and most absolute identity and simplicity of substance. Yet in Mortals they are separate and distinct, as well in respect of the necessity of Organs, and disparity of functions; as the collateral society and conjunctive operation of the Sensitive Soul: Since now we frequently desire those things, which the Intellect judgeth not desiderable, and the 44. Will would wish never to enjoy. But necessary it is that such things, whose operations are different, should be also different in the root of their Beings, by a manner of distinction, where­by each single nature is separated from others: in the Minde truly by a Suppositionality relative: in the Sensitive Soul, ac­cording to the corporeal and qualitative nature. And there­fore that amorous desire of the Minde, is the radical essence 45. of the Soul, consubstantial and coaevous to it. So though in Heaven be a satiety and perpetual fruition of all desiderable good: yet doth not this desire of the Soul therefore cease, which is a constant study of Complacency: nor doth it more infer a passion into the Minde, then Charity it self; since Love and Charity are in the Soul radically one and the same thing. Otherwise should this desire cease, and the ardor of Love suffer extinction, either a satiety or insensility of fruition would instantly spring up; which cannot consist with a state of full beatitude, and would infer discord upon the calm and con­stant harmony of a Soul once admitted into the Chorus of Saints triumphant. And thus this Desire is the incendiary that doth both kindle and maintain the flames of interminable de­lectation, 46. and joyes insatiate and inextinguishible; in which consideration the Soul wears the resemblance of the Holy Ghost the Comforter. Now manifest it is, that in the Minde, the Intellect, Will, and Love are substantially counited: but in the sensitive Soul, their operations are distinguished, ac­cording to the determinate alterity of Faculties and their Organs; when we understanding many objects, we do not [Page 144] desire, and desire many we hardly understand, and such in­deed as our will, if let to the swinge of its own native pro­pensity, would decline the enjoyment of; as in example, we will what we desire not, when we willingly submit to the 47. stroke of the Executioner: and desire what our will abhors, when we call for the dismembring sawe of the Chirurgeon, and gladly embrace the horror of amputation. Whence it comes to pass, that sometimes the Will giveth laws to the desire; and on the contrary, frequently the desire usurpeth the scepter and commands the Will: So that these two Lords mutually vanquish and succeed each the other, by vicissitudes. Which Civil War must so long continue in these our walls of flesh, as the sensitive Soul draweth and engageth the Intellect, and the body draweth and engageth the sensitive Soul, into a multiplex and various ataxy or irregularity of division. And from this intestine Duello arise those absurd desires of objects impossible to be obtained, and wishes of things in the present tense, which the unalterable Grammar of Time hath made in the preterperfect, and excepted from ever being declined in the future.

But this Desire, enshrined in the substance of the Soul, must be of the essence of the Minde: Otherwise he could not commit a sin, who looked upon a woman to lust after her, before the plenary consent of the Will. Our desires therefore are elemented and coyned in the mint of mortal and caduce faculties; which seated in the Sensitive Soul, rival the opera­tions of the immortal and rational: whose objects are many times rejected by the Will as inconvenient and ungrateful. As to the manner also, the desire, in this life, operateth one way, and the Will another: and in the narrow circle of a day, sometimes the desire precedeth the Will, and anon again the Will getteth the start of the Desire, and one subdueth the other successively, that the victor may restrain and coerce something distinct from it self: and this wholly in the transi­tory faculties; because each ariseth from the concupiscence of the Sensitive Soul. But in the glorious denizens of Paradise, 48. this excellent Love, or amorous Desire, feeleth a resurrection and brighter ascension, as being the luminous substance of [Page 145] the Soul: for there is nothing desired, which is not also the full object of the Will: and that is collected into an unity, as well in regard of the act, as of the substance: although Volition and Optation seem two diverse branches expansed from one root; which far transcendeth the manner and method of intellection in those, who have not yet confessed their dust.

Lastly, in man is situate the Kingdom of God, that is the very Deity it self, by whose perpetual splendor all things are collected into the unity of verity. The Image of God therefore is primarily in the minde of man, whose very essence is no other then the very Image of God. Which Image falleth not under the comprehension of the most subtile thought, nor can be expressed by any the most significant words, in this vale of ignorance: in regard it is the mirror of the incomprehensible Divinity; and hence also is it, that the soul while immured in this cloyster of flesh, cannot reach the knowledg of her own nature, but must remain a stranger to it self.

But in the Cortex or shrine of the Minde, the sensitive and vital Form, this Image of Divinity is visible by reflexion, as 49. being relucent in the Faculties: yet suffering a great allay of splendor from the opacity of the body; because obumbrated by the cloud of brutal generation, and infected with morta­lity and pollution by the inquination of our nature faln from its primitive purity: by reason whereof the body hath not received the Image, but at second hand borrowed onely the Figure of the Deity. But alas! the miserable Minde, de­volved into outward darkness, as it hath divorced it self from 50. an unity with the Light uncreate, and infringed the originary energy of this Image of Divinity: so also hath it lost the primitive light of that Image, by the bold appropriation of it as justly proper to it self by the title of merit; so that ever since the fall it can understand, will, or love no object besides it self, and in order to it self. For the damned shall arise from the dead unchanged: because their bodies, in the resurrecti­on, shall receive their determinations from their souls, which since they appear with all their depraved affections, reflected onely on themselves, after a corporeal manner; they shall not, in the resurrection, represent the Image of God, being [Page 146] as it were suffocated within them, unless in that corporeal similitude derived from Adam, the Protoplast, by the means of generation; that is, they shall have no more of the Image of God, then what is weakly and darkly reflected in the figure of the body. Lastly, the Soul (understand onely such, as is excluded the New Jerusalem) being once faln, by the horrid Cataract of death, upon the privation of those assistant Fa­culties, the Imagination, Memory, and Will; doth for ever after understand, will, and love all objects, by a blinde ap­prehension, addicted onely to it self. For it knoweth its own immortality, becometh sensible of its damnation, and with secret murmurs complaineth of it, as an act of high injustice done upon it. Because all the bent and scope of its love is one­ly to defend its excuses for sins, secretly to recriminate upon the hand of Justice, by palliating the guilt of Crimes, as if committed in the days of ignorance and innocence, with great fragility of nature, many crafty wiles and treacherous invitements of our three Adversaries, the World, Flesh, and Devil, and the defect of Grace sufficient to encounter such forcible temptations: and that an eternal punishment (as far beyond all patience to endure, as all flux of time to end) can­not according to the laws of Justice be due for a momentany transgression. And at this it burneth with blasphemous rage and furious hatred against God: chiefly because it is too well ascertained, that the judgment can never be reversed by any replea of error, nor the arrest taken off by any reprieve, till the impossible period of eternity; all hopes of evading the uncessant scourge of Gods wrath being for ever cut off in despair. Thus the impossibility either of evasion or cessation being as long lived as Eternity, the Caitiff soul, plunged in a deluge of desperation that shall never know an ebbe, from the first minute of her disunion from the body, passeth into an abyss of horror; where shall be no piety, no compassion, no consolation, no relaxation, and no redemption or revoca­tion. To which sad truth we may adde, that since the intellect doth naturally transform it self into the idea of the object understood (which the ancient Ethnick Philosophers well knew, and elegantly blended under the parabolical fiction of [Page 147] Proteus) that is, into the full similitude of those cursed Devils and Spirits created for revenge, that are ever objected unto it: Hence is the Soul contiually possessed with an high hatred of God, and his blessed Army of Saints and Angels; together with desperation, malediction, damnation, and the vindictive tortures of those infernal executioners. O may the Mercy of Omnipotence, upon the sole motive of his own infinite goodness and clemency, vouchsafe to break those snares laid in all the paths of our life, to precipitate us into this misery, that must finde neither remedy, release, nor end.

Amen.