CHAP.  IV.

Therefore, now to compleat my promise, I will forthwith betake my self to the Dialogue or, Colloque between Elias the Artist, and me the Physician.

Elias the Artist.

God save you, Master Helvetius!  If I may not be too troublesome, I desire to have the freedom of Discoursing with you for a little time, because I have heard, that you are a curious Indagator of natural things.  For I have perused your Books, and among them, especially that whole Treatise, which you write against the effect of Sir Kenelm Digbies Sympathetick Powder, where it is gloried, that the same, can at distance cure all Wounds.  Assuredly I am incredibly delighted in those things, which are beheld in this Speculum, whether Sympathetick, or Antipathetick, naturally implanted in Creatures.  For the inexhausted Treasures of the Divine Light and Deity, no less abundantly, than liberally granted to us, may best of all be known from all the Creatures, which are produced either under the AEtherial Heaven, or in the belly of the Earth, or in the Womb of the Sea, to the end, that by their potentially insited virtues, they should restore health to the Mortal Body of Men.

Helvetius the Physician

O Sir!  The presence of such a new Guest shall never be troublesome to me, but rather I receive you as one of my best Friends.  For Philosophick Discourse, touching the Secrets cf Nature, is the only recreation of my Mind, also it is such convenient Salutiferous Nutriment, as no man can be worthy to taste of, before he shall be rightly disposed for that Banquet.  Enter, I pray, Friend, into the House.

Artist

Indeed Sir!  Here, as it seems to to me, you have a compleat Vulcanian Shop, and perhaps all these things Spagyrically and exactly drawn from, the Mineral Kingdom; but I pray, to what end so many Medicaments?  I believe, that God in the things of Nature, naturally gives such Medicines, with a very few of which, we may much sooner, and more safely re-integrate the decayed, and languishing Health of Man, unless the Disease be Mortal, from a deficiency of Nature, or from the putrefaction of some noble internal part hurt, or by reason of a total absumption of the radical humidity in which desperate Cases, no Galenick Cure, or Paracelsick Tincture can yeild releif.  But in ordinary Diseases it is not so; and yet here, very many Men, before the fatal term of Life be expired (abfit Nemesis dicto) are enforced to pass out of this fair Kingdom of pleasing Light, into the Shadowed Land of the Dead, whilst, either they neglect the health of their own Body, or commit the same to the Faith of Physicians, unskilful of the Remedy they have in their hand.

Physician.