inations derived hence, of which read Tartalea and
others. Ernestus Burgravius, a disciple of Paracelsus, hath published a
discourse, in which he specifies a lamp to be made of man's blood, _Lucerna
vitae et mortis index_, so he terms it, which chemically prepared forty
days, and afterwards kept in a glass, shall show all the accidents of this
life; _si lampus hic clarus, tunc homo hilaris et sanus corpore et animo;
si nebulosus et depressus, male afficitur, et sic pro statu hominis
variatur, unde sumptus sanguis_; [3365]and which is most wonderful, it dies
with the party, _cum homine perit, et evanescit_, the lamp and the man
whence the blood was taken, are extinguished together. The same author hath
another tract of Mumia (all out as vain and prodigious as the first) by
which he will cure most diseases, and transfer them from a man to a beast,
by drawing blood from one, and applying it to the other, _vel in plantam
derivare_, and an Alexi-pharmacum, of which Roger Bacon of old in his
_Tract. de retardanda senectute_, to make a man young again, live three or
four hundred years. Besides panaceas, martial amulets, _unguentum
armarium_, balsams, strange extracts, elixirs, and such like
magico-magnetical cures. Now what so pleasing can there be as the
speculation of these things, to read and examine such experiments, or if a
man be more mathematically given, to calculate, or peruse Napier's
Logarithms, or those tables of artificial [3366]sines and tangents, not
long since set out by mine old collegiate, good friend, and late
fellow-student of Christ Church in Oxford, [3367]Mr. Edmund Gunter, which
will perform that by addition and subtraction only, which heretofore
Regiomontanus's tables did by multiplication and division, or those
elaborate conclusions of his [3368]sector, quadrant, and cross-staff. Or
let him that is melancholy calculate spherical triangles, square a circle,
cast a nativity, which howsoever some tax, I say with [3369]Garcaeus,
_dabimus hoc petulantibus ingeniis_, we will in some cases allow: or let
him make an _ephemerides_, read Suisset the calculator's works, Scaliger
_de emendatione temporum_, and Petavius his adversary, till he understand
them, peruse subtle Scotus and Suarez's metaphysics, or school divinity,
Occam, Thomas, Entisberus, Durand, &c. If those other do not affect him,
and his means be great, to employ his purse and fill his head, he may go
find the philosopher's stone; he may apply his min