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THE STRUGGLE OF

WISDOM WITH

BOOK ONE.

The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth of God in unrighteousness. Romans 1:18.

CHAPTER I.

After Marin Mersenne had made mention of the opinions of Paracelsus and Campanella Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639), an Italian philosopher known for his work "The City of the Sun." by name in Columns 707 and 708 regarding the structure of the world, he then fell upon the Macrocosmic subject of Robert Fludd in Columns 708, 709, and 710. But he is so far from attributing to Robert the honor of his own opinion that, in his entire recapitulation of the history of Robert's worldly structure, he did not even deign to mention him—perhaps thinking that by doing so he would bring too much honor to him. Instead, in the margin after the mention of Campanella, he puts The opinion of others original: "Aliorum sententia.", when in truth whatever he wrote at the end of Column 708 and throughout the whole of 709 and 710, he took almost word for word from my Physics of the History of the Macrocosm. We thought it worthwhile to transcribe all of this from Mersenne's aforementioned columns in this place, so that benevolent readers may more rightly understand the malevolence—not to say envy—of that man toward me. Inasmuch as it is his way, on the one hand, for the sake of disparaging me as much as he can, to publish things which are truly mine under an uncertain plurality i.e., referring to Fludd as "others" rather than by name. while suppressing my name; and on the other hand, instead of a refutation, to afflict me by name with injuries and slanders for no evident reason; as will be shown more clearly in the following passages.

Col. 708.

Others confess that matter was created in the likeness of darkness, which the Chemists Alchemists sometimes signify by the name of the black crow original: "corui nigri," a reference to the 'nigredo' or initial stage of the alchemical process involving decomposition and darkness.. But they believe that whatever we have seen afterward was enclosed within it, which the Sun brought forth by its most powerful heat; to explain this by force, they use certain examples and believe that if the heat of the sun ceased, all things would return to their original state. Moreover, some of them think that the light which God made constituted the empyrean heaven, and then communicated itself to all things, especially the sun; others think the light was placed in that matter, which afterward produced our fire, by the power of which the elements were distinguished. Truly, they call the Fiery Spirit the origin of forms and the most lively effect of light. Thus he [Mersenne] says.