"

hath not been able to prove it, and as weakly that the world was eternal; that dispute much troubled the pen of the ancient philosophers, but Moses decided that question, and all is salved with the new term of a creation, that is, a production of something out of nothing; and what is that? Whatsoever is opposite to something; or more exactly, that which is truly contrary unto God; for he only is, all others have an existence with dependency, and are something but by a distinction: and herein is divinity conformant unto philosophy, and generation not only founded on contrarieties, but also creation; God being all things, is contrary unto nothing, out of which were made all things, and so nothing became something, and omneity informed nullity into an essence.

XXXVI. The whole creation is a mystery, and particularly that of man; at the blast of his mouth were the rest of the creatures made, and at his bare word they started out of nothing; but in the frame of man (as the text describes it) he played the sensible operator, and seemed not so much to create, as make him; when he had separated the materials of other creatures there consequently resulted a form and soul; but having raised the walls

K

of man, he was driven to a second and harder creation of a substance like himself, an incorruptible and immortal soul. For these two affections we have the philosophy and opinion of the heathens; the flat affirmative of Plato, and not a negative from Aristotle. There is another scruple cast in by divinity (concerning its production) much disputed in the German auditories, and with that indifferency and equality of argument as leave the controversy undetermined. I am not of Paracelsus' mind, that boldly delivers a receipt to make a man without conjunction; yet cannot but wonder at the multitude of heads that do deny traduction, having no other argument to confirm their belief than that rhetorical sentence and antimetathesis of Augustine, creando infunditur, infundendo creatur: either opinion will consist well enough with religion; yet I should rather incline to this, did not one objection haunt me, not wrung from speculations and subtilties but from common sense, and observation; not pickt from the leaves of any author, but bred amongst the weeds and tares of mine own brain. And this is a conclusion from the equivocal and monstrous productions in the copulation of a man with a beast; for if the soul of man

1

be not transmitted and transfused in the seed of the parents, why are not those productions merely beasts, but have also an impression and tincture of reason in as high a measure as it can evidence itself in those improper organs? Nor truly can I peremptorily deny that the soul, in this her sublunary estate, is wholly and in all acceptions inorganical, but that for the performance of her ordinary actions is required not only a symmetry and proper disposition of organs, but a crasis and temper correspondent to its operations: yet is not this mass of flesh and visible structure the instrument and proper corps of the soul, but rather of sense, and that the hand of reason. In our study of anatomy there is a mass of mysterious philosophy, and such as reduced the very heathens to divinity: yet amongst all those rare discoveries and curious pieces I find in the fabrick of man, I do not so much content myself as in that I find not; that is, no organ or instrument for the rational soul; for in the brain, which we term the seat of reason, there is not any thing of moment more than I can discover in the crany of a beast; and this is a sensible and no inconsiderable argument of the inorganity of the soul, at least in that sense we usually so receive it.

Thus we are men, and we know not how; there is something in us that can be without us, and will be after us, though it is strange that it hath no history what it was before us, nor cannot tell how it entered in us.

XXXVII. Now for these walls of flesh, wherein the soul doth seem to be immured before the resurrection, it is nothing but an elemental composition, and a fabrick that must fall to ashes. All flesh is grass, is not only metaphorically but literally true; for all those creatures we behold are but the herbs of the field, digested into flesh in them, or more remotely carnified in ourselves. Nay further, we are what we all abhor, anthropophagi and cannibals, devourers not only of men, but of ourselves; and that not in an allegory, but a positive truth; for all this mass of flesh which we behold, came in at our mouths; this frame we look upon, hath been upon our trenchers; in brief, we have devoured ourselves. I cannot believe the wisdom of Pythagoras did ever positively, and in a literal sense, affirm his metempsuchosis, or impossible transmigration of the souls of men into beasts: of all metamorphoses or transmigrations I believe only one, that is of Lot's wife, for that of Nebuchodonosor

proceeded not so far; in all others I conceive there is no further verity than is contained in their implicit sense and morality. I believe that the whole frame of a beast doth perish, and is left in the same state after death as before it was materialled unto life; that the souls of men know neither contrary nor corruption; that they subsist beyond the body, and outlive death by the privilege of their proper natures, and without a miracle; that the souls of the faithful, as they leave earth, take possession of heaven; that those apparitions and ghosts of departed persons are not the wandering souls of men, but the unquiet walks of devils, prompting and suggesting us unto mischief, blood, and villany, instilling, and stealing into our hearts; that the blessed spirits are not at rest in their graves, but wander solicitous of the affairs of the world: that those phantasms appear often and do frequent cemeteries, charnel-houses, and churches, it is because those are the dormitories of the dead, where the devil like an insolent champion beholds with pride the spoils and trophies of his victory in Adam.

XXXVIII. This is that dismal conquest we all deplore, that makes us so often cry (0) Adam quid fecisti! I thank God I have not those strait