Selected quad for the lemma: blood_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
blood_n	artery_n	heart_n	vein_n	9,504	5	10.0908	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A44683	The living temple, or, A designed improvement of that notion that a good man is the temple of God by John Howe ...	Howe, John, 1630-1705.	1675 (1675)	Wing H3032; ESTC R4554	157,616	292

numerous and so various engines and instruments for sundry purposes in it as that it is become an art and a very laudable one but to discover and find out the art and skill that is shewn in the contrivance and formation of them It is in the mean time strange to consider from how different and contrary causes it proceeds that the wise contriver of this fabrick hath not his due acknowledgments on the account of it For with some it proceeds from their supine and drowsie ignorance and that they little know or think what prints and foot-steps of a Deity they carry about them in their bone and flesh in every part and vein and limb With others as if too much learning had made them mad or an excess of light had struck them into a mopish blindness these things are so well known and seem so common and obvious that they are the less regarded And because they can give a very punctual account that things are so they think it now not worth the considering how they come to be so They can trace all these hidden paths and footsteps and therefore all seems very easie and they give over wondering As they that would detract from Columbus's acquist of glory by the discovery he had made of America by pretending the atchievement was easie whom he ingeniously rebuk'd by challenging them to make an egg stand erect alone upon a plain table which when none of them could do he only by a gentle bruising of one end of it makes it stand on the table without other support and then tells them this was more easie than his Voyage into America now they had seen it done before they knew not how to go about it Some may think the contrivance of the body of a man or other animal easie now they know it but had they been to project such a model without a pattern or any thing leading thereto how miserable a loss had they been at How easie a confession had been drawn from them of the finger of God and how silent a submission to his just triumph over their and all humane wit when as the most admired performances in this kind by any mortal have been only faint and infinitely distant imitations of the works of God As is to be seen in the so much celebrated exploits of Posidonius Regiomontanus and others of this sort And now if any should be either so incurably blind as not to perceive or so perversly wilful as not to acknowledge an appearance of Wisdom in the frame and figuration of the body of an animal peculiarly of man more than equal to what appears in any the most exquisite piece of humane artifice and which no wit of man can ever fully imitate although as hath been said an acknowledg'd equality would suffice to evince a wise maker thereof yet because it is the existence of God we are now speaking of and that it is therefore not enough to evince but to magnifie the wisdom we would ascribe to him we shall pass from the parts and frame to the consideration of the more principal powers and functions of terrestrial creatures ascending from such as agree to the less perfect orders of these to those of the more perfect viz. of man himself And surely to have been the Author of faculties that shall enable to such functions will evidence a wisdom that defies our imitation and will dismay the attempt of it We begin with that of growth Many sorts of rare engines we acknowledge contrived by the wit of man but who hath ever made one that could grow or that had in it a self-improving power A tree an herb a pile of grass may upon this account challenge all the world to make such a thing That is to implant the power of growing into any thing to which it doth not natively belong or to make a thing to which it doth By what art would they make a seed and which way would they inspire it with a seminal form And they that think this whole globe of the earth was compacted by the casual or fatal coalition of particles of matter by what magick would they conjure so many to come together as should make one clod we vainly hunt with a lingering mind after Miracles if we did not more vainly mean by them nothing else but novelties we are compass'd about with such And the greatest miracle is that we see them not You with whom the daily productions of nature as you call it are so cheap see if you can do the like Try your skill upon a Rose Yea but you must have pre-existent matter But can you ever prove the Maker of the world had so or even defend the possibility of uncreated matter And suppose they had the free grant of all the matter between the crown of their head and the Moon could they tell what to do with it or how to manage it so as to make it yield them one single flower that they might glory in as their own production And what mortal man that hath reason enough about him to be serious and to think a while would not even be amaz'd at the Miracle of Nutrition or that there are things in the world capable of nourishment or who would attempt an imitation here or not despair to perform any thing like it That is to make any nourishable thing Are we not here infinitely out-done Do not we see our selves compass'd about with wonders and are we not cur selves such in that we see and are creatures from all whose parts there is a continual defluxion and yet that receive a constant gradual supply and renovation by which they are continued in the same state As the Bush burning but not consumed 'T is easie to give an artificial frame to a thing that shall gradually decay and wast till it quite be gone and disappear You can raise a structure of Snow that would soon do that But can your manual skill compose a thing that like our bodies shall be continually melting away and be continually repaired through so long a tract of time Nay but you can tell how it is done you know in what method and by what instruments food is received concocted separated and so much as must serve for nourishment turned into chyle and that into bloud first grosser and then more refined and that distributed into all parts for this purpose Yea and what then therefore you are as wise as your Maker could you have made such a thing as the stomach a liver an heart a vein an artery or are you so very sure what the digestive quality is or if you are and know what things best serve to maintain to repair or strengthen it who implanted that quality both where it is so immediately useful or in the other things you would use for the service of that or how if such things had not been prepared to your hand would you have devised to perswade the particles of

to be restrained from putting us into motion and against a reluctant act of our will we are not moved but with great difficulty to them that will give themselves and us the trouble This being I say the case with us and it being also obvious to our observation that it is so very much alike in these mentioned respects with brute creatures how unconceivable is it that the directive principle of their motions and ours should be so vastly and altogether unlike whatsoever greater perfection is required with us as to those more noble and perfect functions and operations which are found to belong to us That is that in us an act of will should signifie so very much and be for the most part necessary to the beginning the continuing the stopping or the varying of our motions and in them nothing like it nor any thing else besides only that corporal principle which he assigns as common to them and us the continual heat in the heart which he calls a sort of fire nourished by the bloud of the veins the instruments of motion already mention'd and the various representations and impressions of external objects as there and elsewhere he expresses himself upon which last though much is undoubtedly to be attributed to it that so main a stress should be laid as to the diversifying of motion seems strange when we may observe so various motions of some silly creatures as of a fly in our window while we cannot perceive and can scarce imagine any change in external objects about them yea a swarm of flies so variously frisking and plying to and fro some this way others that with a thousand diversities and interferings in their motion and some resting while things are in the same state externally to them all So that what should cause or cease or so strangely vary such motions is from thence or any thing else he hath said left unimaginable As it is much more how in creatures of much strength as a Bear or a Lion a paw should be moved sometimes so gently and sometimes with so mighty force only by meer mechanism without any directive principle that is not altogether corporal But most of all how the strange regularity of motion in some creatures as of the Spider in making its web and the like should be owing to no other than such causes as he hath assigned of the motions in general of brute creatures And what though some motions of our own seem wholly involuntary as that of our eye-lids in the case which he supposes doth it therefore follow they must proceed from a principle only corporal as if our soul had no other act belonging to it but that of willing which he doth not down-right say but that it is its only or its chief act and if it be its chief act only what hinders but that such a motion may proceed from an act that is not chief or that it may have a power that may sometimes step forth into act and in greater matters than that without any formal deliberated command or direction of our will So little reason is there to conclude that all our motions common to us with beasts or even their motions themselves depend on nothing else than the conformation of the members and the course which the spirits excited by the heat of the heart do naturally follow in the brain the nerves and the muscles after the same manner with the motion of an automation c. But as to the matter of sensation his account seems much more defective and unintelligible that is how it should be performed as he supposes every thing common to us with beasts may be without a soul. For admit that it be as who doubts but it is by the instruments which he assigns we are still to seek what is the sentient or what useth these instruments and doth sentire or exercise sense by them That is suppose it be performed in the brain and that as he says by the help of the nerves which from thence like small strings are stretcht forth unto all the other members suppose we have the three things to consider in the nerves which he recites Their interiour substance which extends it self like very slender threds from the brain to the extremities of all the other members into which they are knit The very thin little skins which inclose these and which being continued with those that inwrap the brain do compose the little pipes which contain these threds and lastly the animal spirits which are convey'd down from the brain through these pipes Yet which of these is most subservient unto sense That he undertakes elsewhere to declare viz. that we are not to think which we also suppose some nerves to serve for sense others for motion only as some have thought but that the inclosed spirits serve for the motion of the members and those little threds also inclosed for sense Are we yet any nearer our purpose Do these small threds sentire are these the things that ultimately receive and discern the various impressions of objects And since they are all of one sort of substance how comes it to pass that some of them are seeing threds others hearing threds others tasting c. Is it from the divers and commodious figuration of the organs unto which these descend from the brain But though we acknowledge and admire the curious and exquisite formation of those organs and their most apt usefulness as organs or instruments to the purposes for which they are designed yet what do they signifie without a proportionably apt and able agent to use them or percipient to entertain and judge of the several notices which by them are only transmitted from external things That is suppose we a drop of never so pure and transparent liquor or let it be three diversly tinctured or coloured and lest they mingle kept asunder by their distinct infolding coats let these encompass one the other and together compose one little shining globe are we satisfied that now this curious pretty ball can see nay suppose we it never so conveniently situate suppose we the forementioned strings fastned to it and these being hollow well replenisht with as pure air or wind or gentle flame as you can imagine yea and all the before described little threds to boot can it yet do the feat nay suppose we all things else to concur that we can suppose except a living principle call that by what name you will and is it not still as uncapable of the act of seeing as a ball of clay or a pebble stone or can the substance of the brain it self perform that or any other act of sense for it is superfluous to speak distinctly of the rest any more than the pulp of an apple or a dish of curds So that trace this matter whither you will within the compass of your assigned limits and you are still at the same loss range through the whole