Van Helmont's works containing his most excellent philosophy, physick, chirurgery, anatomy : wherein the philosophy of the schools is examined, their errors refuted, and the whole body of physick reformed and rectified : being a new rise and progresse of philosophy and medicine, for the cure of diseases, and lengthening of life / made English by J.C. ...

יהוה TO THE Unutterable WORD, THE AUTHOR Offers up a SACRIFICE in his Mother Tongue.

O Omnipotent, Eternal, and Incomprehensible Being! the Original of all Good. Thou hast committed unto me a Ta∣lent, the which I expose to open Usury: But I acknowledge and confess my nothing impotency, my vile and abusive un∣profitableness. Thus being overwhelmed in the Abyss of my own nothingness; I pray thee, O thou All-providing Good, that thou wouldest clementiously accept of this Book, O thou Eternal Beginning, and End of all Wisdom: Let thy sa∣ving Will be done, O Lord, in the grace of thy Love, by this dry tree, this meat for wormes; this fewel for the flame, thy unprofitable servant, the son of thy hand-maid. Unless at length thou perfect me, and preserve all thy gifts they shall perish in me for ever. This I ingeniously confess, from the knowledge of my very innermost part, before thee, O Lord, unto whom all things are thorowly known in truth; and before the World, unto whom most of the most excellent truths lay hid: I am amazed at the largeness and greatness of thy benefits towards my nothingness. So being prostrated I celebrate thy most glorious Name, and that Name I invoke from above, O Jebovah, thou most faithful lover of Men! O holy and incomprehensible Name! at all times and alone to be sanctified, and the onely free Sanctifier of his Saints alone. Favourably behold from the Throne of thy Omnipotency, the miseries of the living, help the sons of men, seeing it is thy delight to be present with them. Re∣member the word of thy Promise, no longer to be the God of our Fathers, as in times past, but now as a God declared to be our Father: No longer the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Israel; but as God, Jesus, the God of Mary our Mother,

and who art made our Brother in the love of thy grace. All the end and scope of my desires tendeth to this, that thy incomprehensible Name may be sanctified, not on∣ly because thou art called the Thrice most Great and Excellent; but also, because thou onely art All, unto whom every wish of sanctifying Love doth properly belong; seeing that thou standest in no need of us, neither can we devote unto thee any thing else. The Prophet did accept, A, A, A, Lord, I cannot speak, behold I am an Infant: but I reply to this Prophet, O, O, O, Lord, my thoughts fail me, and do melt in a naked wish of Love, of the sanctifying of thy Name; For loe, O Lord, I am nought but no∣thing, nor any thing besides, but as it hath pleased thee, that I may pertain unto thee. O All, of All, and All my Desire; I deservedly seem to offer unto thee in my Mother Tongue, and also to vow the Feude or Fee-farm of my Essence and Property, where∣with I being invested by thee, I enjoy the use of them for the help of my Neighbour. For although the first conception of the Soul consisteth out of Words, and so is without a pro∣per tongue: Yet I perceive that it is as yet crude, and not sequestred, as long as it is not polished, and not being joyned to the mind, doth depart into Cogitations, Words, and Writing. This crudity, I perceive doth make an infirm and unstable object of my first Conception, and soon darkens it again: Therefore thy Eternal Wisdom hath granted that it should be carried further, even unto my Mind.

Tis true indeed, that thou wilt be worshipped by men in the Spirit, but not in such a manner that it may remain in the undistinction of the first object: But moreover, the Angels, and pure simple Spirits, although they nakedly adore thee in Cogitation, as Spirits; yet they are busied by a certain, and unknown Song to us, in sanctifying thy Sanctifying Name without intermission. Wherefore also, thou commandest to be loved, not onely from the whole Soul, and whole Spirit, but also from the whole Heart, and with all our Strength: So that the Prayer that is Spiritually framed, and naked Worship, do even exclude that which is Verbal, which is unexperienced of the attention of the Mind.

Bestow on me, O most beloved Lord, that I may suggest that thing to my Neighbours thy Servants by similitudes. An Organist hearing a new Tune or Song, doth not pre∣sently, at first, play it without difficulty: his Soul doth in part indeed perceive the Sound, but his Fingers (which are as it were the Framers of Sounds, even as his other Members are the Formers of Words) do not so fitly follow, neither is it granted unto them to attain an absolute perfection of the Song, so speedily, quickly, and distinctly. He beholding indeed the Organ Table or Book, doth presently play it; to wit, his Ca∣pacity being wont to carry his Fingers towards it at the first sight of the Book; but that Song being composed according to the Laws of Musick, but not turned into a Table, he as less accustomed thereunto, doth the more difficulty play it; seeing a Table is ac∣customed to be first composed out of the Musick, for his Spirit before he plays: But as yet with a greater difficulty and rarity, the Table and Plat-form of a Lute, is extem∣porarily expressed in the Organ, or that of the Organ in the Lute. There hath not seemed unto me to be an unlike reason of the first conception of the Soul, as of a sound as yet crude or raw; and the Mind desires to have it reduced into Words or Writings, through defect whereof, not a few do stick in a good object, the which by reason of an un∣distinct Mind, vanisheth without fruit. But moreover, I perceive, that the first Idea of the Soul doth follow an accustomed instinct of the Mind, whereby it being even there polished or corrected, is perceived by Words or Writings: but indeed, whereas man being from the beginning, seasoned with the property of his Mother Tongue, doth obtain it as incorporated or inspired; and besides is wont to communicate unto his Mind and Mother Tongue, his Cogitations which depart into Meditations, Languages, or Writings; it seems an inconvenient thing, and a Wonder to the Soul, to endow an object of the first conception (being decyphored in the Mind by Words in the Mother Tongue) besides the inbred Custom, with a forreign Idiome or Dialect; wherein the

Understanding labouring by changing the Dialect, it over-shadows, weakens, and wea∣ries it self, and also doth alienate the pure and plainly Spiritual Conception of the first object. But in very deed, the object of every first Cogitation, departing into Words, I have certainly found to be alwaies first had in the Mother Tongue; even in a man using none but tbe Spanish Dialect, who also heard a Spaniard; he being mortally wounded, and weak of Mind, spake many things, but in Italian, and heing called on in Spanish, scarce understood.

I have likewise seen a Germane that was sick, sitting, or lying, (even as they pla∣ced him) like an Image, who never was capable of replying unto things asked him, nei∣ther did he understand what Words either his Wife, or any one of his Sons did pronounce; in any other than in his own proper Germane tongue; when as notwithstanding, with∣in the Walls of his House, he alwaies used the Italian and French Tongues: Yea, and which more is, he being a little after freed from this waking Coma or Sleep, was scarce perswaded to believe the same.

And so, O Lord, I have cast down this poor Dedication of my Book in my Mother Tongue, before thy most high Throne, to wit, the Song of my object, which dammage of my Neighbour, thou hast not disdained to let down into me. Unto Thee be all the Honour!

I now proceed to signifie to my Neighbour the wretched ignorance of the Heathens, whereby thy sick People have been hitherto seduced by the Universities, and so, miserably slain, the Precept of the Prophet uttered in thy Name, nothing hindring it; Thus saith the Lord, do not ye teach like unto the Gentiles.

Wherefore, O Lord, grant that my Soul may retain the gifts granted unto it, unto thine Honour, whereby I may imprint thy Goodness, a part of my Debt, in this Path of Death, on my Neighbour. Be thou unto me every Hinge, who alone art the Way, the Truth, and the Life: This is the one onely thing which it becometh us to love. Thou my Angel, Defender, and Intercessor, who beholdest the Omnipotent Good; Beg in my name, that which is wanting unto me, insist thou in the steps of Raphael (the Divine Physitian) who carried the Works of burial of the dead, performed by night, unto God; thou diligent Curer, carry thou the present Work, performed in the night of my darkness, unto God, that man may not hereafter, be thus killed, nor so soon undergo Death: Offer up this my Work, before the holy sacred Trinity, whereunto I dedicate it! So act thou for the Glory of God.