“Hayl you (admired Heydon) whose great parts
Shine above envy; and the common Arts,
You kin to Angels, and Superiour Lights,
(A spark of the first fire) whose Eagle flights
Trade not with Earth, and grossness, but do pass
To the pure Heavens, and make your God your Glass,
In whom you see all forms, and so do give
These rare discov’ries, how things move and live,
Proceed to make your great designs compleat,
And let not this rude world our hopes defeat.
Oh let me but by this the dawning light
Which streams upon me through your three pil’d night,
Pass to the East of truth, ’till I may see
Man’s first fair state; when sage Simplicity
The Dove and Serpent, Innocent and Wise
Dwell in his brest, and he in Paradise.
These from the Tree of knowledge his best boughs
I’le pluck a Garland from this Author’s brows,
Which to succeeding times Fame shall bequeath,
With this most just Applause, Great Heyden’s wreath.
Fred. Talbot, Esquire.”
In the opening pages of the “Holy Guide,” we find the following:—
“Renowned Eugenius! Famous above all!
A Prince in Physiques! Most Seraphicall!
The Art’s Great Archer! Never shooting wide;
Yet Hitt’st the White best, in thy Holy Guide.
Good God! What Pains have learn’d Physitians
For cleansing Physiques [strange perturbed] Brook?
But as their crooked labours did destroy
Our hopes, Thy Guide directs the Ready Way.
Hippocrates, Great Galen, and Senertus,
Rhenvoleus, Paracelsus, and Albertus,
Grave Gerrard, and Ingenious Parkinson,
Dead Culpeper, and living Thomlinson,
Have all done well. But ah! they miss the Road,
Thou Chalked out, Thou Dear Servant of God;
And therefore ’tis no wonder, if they vary
From thee; Great Nature (High born) Secretary!
’Tis thou alone, hast taught the way to bliss:
’Tis thou alone, that knowest what it is:
’Tis thou hast raked fruitful Egypt o’er
For Medicines; and Italy for more;
And in Arabia thy collecting Braines,
To doe us good, hath taken wondrous Paines
This having done, if Critiques will not bow
To thy Great Learning Petra scandalou,
It shall unto them surely prove: And this
Essay of thy Sublimer Misteryes,
Shall make them sure unto the Wise Minerva
Yet still be ignorant of thy Pantarva.
But hold! Where am I? Sure th’ hast set a spell
On me, cause I can’t praise thy doings well:
Release me, Good Eugenius! and the Crowne
Shall stand on no browes but thy learned Owne.
Poets, no more lay Claime unto the Bayes!
’Tis Heydon shines alone with splendid Rayes!
Follow his Guide, he teaches you most sure;
Let any make the Wound; ’Tis he must cure.
For he directs the Welgrowne; Old, and Young,
To live Rich, Happy, Healthy, Noble, Strong.
John Gadbury.”
“To the Reader on the behalf of my much honoured Friend the Author Mr. John Heydon.”
“A Labyrinth doth need a clew to find
The passage out, and a Dædalian mind
May doe strange works, beyond the Vulgar’s reach,
And in their understandings make a breach.
It’s often seene, when men of pregnant parts
Study, Invent, and promulgate rare Arts,
Or unknown secrets, now they puzzle those
That understand them not; their Yea’s, their No’s,
Are put to Non-plus; Tutors then they lack
To drive them forward, or to bring them back.
How many learned men (in former ages)
In all the sciences were counted Sages?
And yet are scarcely understood by men,
Who daily read them o’re and o’re again!
Some can recount things past, and present some,
And some would know of things that are to come.
Some study pleasure, some would faine live long;
Some that are old, would faine again be young.
This Man doth toyle, and moile, to purchase wealth,
That man gets sickness studying for his health;
This man would happy bee, that Wisdom have;
All are at loss, and every man doth crave;
None is content, But each man wants a Guide
Them to direct when they do step aside.
Since this is thus, Our Author hath took paine
To lead us in, and bring us out again;
Now who is pleas’d in him for to confide
In these Discoveries, Here’s his Holy Guide.
Pray what can more improve the Commonwealth,
Than the discovery of the way to Health?
The Paradox is made a certain truth,
An Ancient man may dye it ’h prime of ’s youth.
What wonder is it if he goe aside
The Path, which will not take the Holy Guide!
John Booker.”
“To his Ingenuous Friend Mr. John Heydon, on his Book Intituled The Holy Guide.”
“The Antient Magi, Druids, Cabbalists,
The Brachmans, Sybils, and Gymnosophists
With all that Occult Arts haberdash
And make so many mancies, doe but trash
By retaile vend, and may for Pedlars goe:
Your richer merchandise doth make them soe.
The Stagarite must with his Murnival
Of Elements, Galen of Humours call
In all their suit, or your new Art,
Without them, makes their good old cause to smart.
Vulgar Physitians cannot look for more
Patients, then such which doe need hellibore:
When Rosie Crucian Power can revive
The dead, and keep old men in youth alive.
Had you not call’d your work the Holy Guide,
It would have puzzled all the world beside
To have Baptized it with a name so fit
And Adæquate to what’s contain’d in it;
Should it be styled the Encyclopædy
Of Curious Arts, or term’d a Mystery
In folio, or be named the Vatican
Reduc’d unto an Enchiridion,
Or all the Hermæ in a Senary,
The Urim and Thummim of Philosophy,
The Art of Hieroglyphicks so revealed
And like the Apocalyps they are conceal’d
Or th’ Orthodoxall Parodox, or all
Discover’d, which men still a wonder call;
Or th’ Magna Charta of all Sciences,
And he that names it cannot call it less,
The Book and Title might have well agreed;
Yet men have questioned if into their Creed
They should have put your Article, but Now
The name of holy none dare disallow
When so much learning doth in one exist
Heydon, not Hermes, shall be Trismegist.
And if the Right Reverend of Levi’s Tribe
Do Hallow it, I cannot but subscribe.
Myself your Friend and Servant,
Thos. Fyge.”
“Now there are,” says John Heydon, “a kind of men as they themselves report, named Rosie Crucians; a divine Fraternity that inhabite the suburbs of Heaven, and these are the Officers of the Generalissimo of the world, that are as the eyes and eares of the great King, seeing and hearing all things; they say these R. C. are seraphically illuminated, as Moses was, according to this Order of the Elements; Earth refyn’d to Water, Water to Air, Air to Fire. So if a man be one of the Heroes, of a Heros, a Damon, or good Genius, if a Genius, a partaker of divine things, and a Companion of the holy Company of unbodied Souls and immortall Angells, and according to their vehicles, a versatile life, turning themselves Proteus-like into any shape.
“But the richest happiness they esteem, is the gift of healing and medicine. It was a long time great labour and travell before they could arrive to this Blisse above set, they were at first poor gentlemen, that studied God and nature, as they themselves confesse: (saying) Seeing the only wise and mercifull God in these latter dayes hath poured out so richly his mercy and goodness to mankind, whereby wee do attain more and more to the perfect knowledge of his Son Jesus Christ and Nature: that justly we may boast of the happy time wherein there is not only discovered unto us the half part of the world which was heretofore unknown and hidden; but he hath also made manifest unto us many wonderfull and never heretofore seen works and Creatures of nature, and moreover hath raised men, indued with great wisdome, which might partly renew and reduce all Arts (in this our age, spotted and imperfect) to perfection.
“Although in Theologie, Physick, and the Mathematick, the truth doth oppose itself, nevertheless the old enemy by his subtilty and craft doth shew himself in hindering every good purpose by his instruments and contentious (wavering people) to such an intent of a generall Reformation, the most Godly and Seraphically illuminated Father, our Brother C. R., a German, the chief and originall of our Fraternity, hath much and long time laboured, who by reason of his poverty (although a gentleman born, and descended of noble parents) in the 5th year of his age was placed in a Cloister, where he had learned indifferently the Greek and Latin tongues (who upon his earnest desire and request being yet in his growing years, was associated to a Brother P. A. L., who had determined to go to Apamia).