and are something but by a distinction. And herein is divinity conformant unto philosophy, and not only generation 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.5 SECT. 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 3 by a distinction.] MSS. W. & R. and Edts. 1642 read, "by distinction." The rest of the section is omitted in these and in MS. W. 2.-Ed. informed.] In the sense of animated.-Ed. 5 God being all things, &c.] The following remarks on this passage have been pointed out to me, by my obliging friend, E. H. Barker, Esq., of Thetford. "That celebrated philosopher, shall I call him, or atheist? who said that the assemblage of all existence constituted the divine essence, who would have us to consider all corporeal beings as the body of the divinity, published a great extravagance, if he meant that the divine essence consisted of this assemblage. But there is a very just sense, in which it may be said that the whole universe is the body of the Deity. As I call this portion of matter my body, which I move, act, and direct as I please, so God actuates by his will every part of the universe-he obscures the sun-he calms the winds-he commands the sea. But this very notion excludes all corporeity from God, and proves that God is a spirit. If God sometimes represents himself with feet, with hands, with eyes, he means in the portraits rather to give us emblems of his attributes, than images (properly speaking) of any parts, which he possesseth; therefore when he attributes these to himself, he gives to them so vast an extent, that we easily perceive that they are not to be grossly understood. Hath he hands? They are hands, which 'weigh the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance,' which measure the waters in the hollow of his hand, and mete out the heavens with a span.' (Isai. xl. 12.) Hath he eyes? They are eyes, which penetrate the most unmeasurable distances. Hath he feet? They are feet which reach from heaven to earth; for the heaven is his throne, and the earth is his footstool.' (xlvi. 1.) Hath he a voice? It is as 'the sound of many waters, breaking the cedars of Lebanon, making Mount Sirion skip like an unicorn, and the hinds to calve.' (Ps. xxix. 3, 5, 6, 9.)"-Saurin's Discourses, transl. by Robert Robinson. In MSS. R. & W. 2, the next sentence is omitted, ("For these two, &c.")-Ed. a form and soul; but, having raised the walls of man, he was driven to a second and harder creation,-of a substance like himself, an incorruptible and immortal soul.6 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 2 and equality of arguments, as leave the controversy undetermined.3 I am not of Paracelsus's mind, that boldly delivers a receipt to make a man without conjunction; yet cannot but wonder at the 6 and harder creation, &c.] Vide Augustinum, De Animæ Immortalitate.-M. 7 affections.] In the sense of properties, qualities; "proprietates," in the Latin translation. 8 For these two, &c.] MS. W. & Edts. 1642 read, "For the two assertions we have in Philosophie, &c." The two qualities alluded to are incorruptibility and immortality.—Ed. 9 the flat affirmative of Plato.] In Phædone, Opera, tom. i. p. 183, Ed. Bipont.; Timao, Ib. t. ix. p. 431, 432; Phædro, lb. t. x. p. 318, 319, 321.-Ed. 1 not a negative from Aristotle.] Vide Aristotel. De Anima, 1. ii. text. 4 et 19, 21, 22. De Generatione Animal. ii. c. 3, dicit, "Solam mentem extrinsecus advenire, divinam esse solam, neque cum ejus actione actionem corporis ullam habere communionem."-M. 2 indifferency.] In the sense of equipoise.-Ed. 3 There is another scruple, &c.] Namely, "An ex traduce sint animæ sicut et corpora?" Augustin. Quæstion. Vet. Test. qu. 23. Vide Tolet. lib. iii.; Aristot. De Anima, c. 5, qu. 17; Burgesdicium, in Coll. Phys. Disputat. 29.-M. 4 that boldly delivers a receipt, &c.] "Paracelsus has revealed to us one of the grandest secrets of nature. When the world began to dispute on the very existence of the elementary folk, it was then he boldly offered to give birth to a fairy, and has sent down to posterity the recipe. He describes the impurity which is to be transmuted into such purity, the gross elements of a delicate fairy, which, fixed in a phial in fuming dung, will in due time settle into a full-grown fairy, bursting through its vitreous prison-on the vivifying principle by which the ancient Egyptians hatched their eggs in ovens. I recollect at Dr. Farmer's sale the leaf which preserved this recipe for making a fairy, forcibly folded down by the learned commentator; from which we must infer the credit he gave to the experiment. There was a greatness of mind in Paracelsus, who, having furnished a recipe to make a fairy, had the delicacy to refrain. Even Baptista Porta, one of the most enlightened philosophers, does not deny the possibility of engendering creatures, which 'at their full growth shall not exceed the size of a mouse:' but he adds 6 multitude of heads that do deny traduction, having no other argument to confirm their belief than that rhetorical sentence and antimetathesis 5* 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 subtleties, but from common sense and observation; not pick'd from the leaves of any author, but bred amongst the weeds and tares of my own brain. And this is a conclusion from the equivocal and monstrous productions in the copulation of a man with a beast:7 for if the soul of man 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 * Antanaclasis.-A figure in rhetoric, where one word is inserted upon another.-MS. W. that they are only pretty little dogs to play with.' Were these akin to the fairies of Paracelsus ?"-D'Isracli's Second Series of Curiosities of Literature, vol. iii. p. 14, 15.-Ed. 5 antimetathesis.] All the MSS. and Edts. 1642 read, "antanaclasis."*-Ed. 6 author.] Edts. 1642 read, other.-Ed. 7 from the equivocal, &c.] The French translator not only refers to several authorities for the existence of such things, but asserts that he had seen one himself. "Touchant cette affaire, Jean Baptiste, Mag. Nat. lib. ii. cap. 12, raconte ou rapporte quelques exemples, qu'il a prises, ou tirées de Plinius, Plutarchus, Ælianus, et autres. écrivains ou auteurs témoignent, que cela arrive encore aux Indes en plusieurs endroits; et moimême en ai vu un à Leyden." Les Blumenbach however rejects such stories, as fabulous tales which do not need contradiction.-Ed. 8 peremptorily.] So in MSS. R. & W. 2; MS. W. and Edts. 1642 read, reasonably.-Ed. 9 and in all acceptions.] 1642.-Ed. Omitted in all the MSS. and Edts. corpse of the soul, but rather of sense, and that the hand1 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 anything 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.2 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.3 SECT. XXXVII.-Now, for these walls of flesh, wherein the the hand.] ubi."-Ed. All the MSS. and Edts. 1642 read, "the nearer 2 and this is a sensible, &c.] This concluding part of the sentence is omitted in all the MSS. and Edts. 1642.-Ed. 3 In our study of anatomy, &c.] "What a contrast," says Dr. Drake, after quoting this and several other similar passages, "do these admirable quotations form, when opposed to the scepticism of the present day, to the doctrines of the physiological materialists of the school of Bichat! A system of philosophy, if so it may be called, which, should it ever unhappily prevail in the medical world, would render the often-repeated, though hitherto ill-founded, sarcasm against the profession, ubi tres medici, duo Athei, no longer a matter of calumny. "It is, however, with pride and pleasure that, at a period when scepticism has been obtruded upon us as a topic of distinction and triumph, and even taught in our public schools, we can point to a roll of illustrious names, the most consummate for their talent among those who have made the study of life, and health and disease their peculiar profession, who have publicly borne testimony to their firm belief in the existence of their God, and in the immortality of the human soul. When Galen, meditating on the structure and functions of the body, broke forth into that celebrated declaration, Compono hic profecto Canticum in Creatoris nostri laudem, he but led the way to similar but still more important avowals from the mighty names of Boerhaave and of Haller, of Sydenham and of Browne, and of Mead: men unrivalled for their professional sagacity, and alike impressed with the deepest conviction of one great first cause of future being and of eternity, that ancient source as well as universal sepulchre of worlds and ages, in which the duration of this globe is lost as that of a day, and the life of man as a moment."" Drake's Evenings in Autumn, vol. ii. p. 71-73.-Ed. soul doth seem to be immured before the resurrection, it is nothing but an elemental composition, and a fabrick that must4 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.5 I cannot believe the wisdom of Pythagoras did ever positively, and in a literal sense, affirm his metempsychosis, or impossible transmigration of the souls of men into beasts. Of all metamorphoses or trans 4 must.] Edts. 1642 read, may.-Ed. He 5 Nay, further, &c.] The Latin annotator is not content to receive this singular passage literally, as the author clearly intended it. gives the following notes: 66 Ipsi anthropophagi sumus.] Ut embryones in utero matris; nam mater ex proprio corpore nutrimentum illis præbet: nutriuntur etiam postea ex utero matris egressi lacte fœminino. "Sed et nos ipsos devorare soliti.] Nam mosti et invidi proprium cor comedere dicuntur."--Ed. 6 I cannot believe, &c.] The metempsychosis may perhaps be supposed to have arisen out of the belief which the early philosophers adopted of the immortality of the soul. It has been said that Pythagoras not only believed in the doctrine of the transmigration of souls literally; but even went so far as to assert his recollection of the various bodies which his own soul had inhabited; attributing his remembrance to the special grace of Mercury. "The opinion of the metempsychosis spread in almost every region of the earth; and it continues even to the present time, in all its force amongst those nations who have not yet embraced Christianity. The people of Arracan, Peru, Siam, Camboya, Tonquin, Cochin-China, Japan, Java, and Ceylon, still entertain that fancy, which also forms the chief article of the Chinese religion. The Druids believed in transmigration. The bardic triads of the Welsh are full of this belief; and a Welsh antiquary insists that by an emigration which formerly took place, it was conveyed to the Bramins of India from Wales! It is on this system of transmigration that Taliessin the Welsh bard, who wrote in the sixth century, gives a recital of his pretended transmigrations. He tells how he had been a serpent, a wild ass, a buck, or a crane, &c. ; and this kind of reminiscence of his former state, this recovery of memory, was a proof of the mortal's advances to the happier circle. For |