which are in the blood hardly merit that name being purely naturall and destitute of all perception and that in our life time as being common to us with plants and specifically differing from animall spirits as might bee shown by the different actions wherein nature employes them In the next degree above these naturall ones are the vitall spirits which vanish with the life which they conserved so that then the arteries which contained them become empty And lastly those that were sensitive cannot remain in a dead man because they are easily dissipated and have need of continual reparation as we see in swoonings the senses saile as soone as the heart ceaseth to furnish them with matter to uphold the continuity of their generation Or if they did remaine in the body after death they could performe no action for want of necessary disposures in their organs as we see in those that are blinde dease paralytick and others But because the refutation of the reasons given of this effect is a thing very easie and may be done in many other subjects It is better to shew that this bleeding cannot come from any naturall cause no not of such as are unknown to us which is easily done if we presuppose that all naturall causes are necessary and do act without liberty at all times when their objects are presented to them Which falls not out so heere for it hath oftentimes beene seene that murtherers for feare of being accused of murder have made more and neerer approaches round about the dead body than any other which hath beene used as a presumption against them though the body did not bleed in their presence and oftentimes nurses overlie their children which notwithstanding bleed not after death though they hold them in their armes as a signe of their great affection and innocence And had this signe been naturall Salomon that was very skilfull in nature would have used this rather than a morall triall wherein was much lesse certainty nor would Moses have forgotten it Besides we see every day the executioners come to take from the gallows or the wheel those persons whom the day before they executed with their owne hands out of whose wounds comes not a drop of blood although all the causes of such bleeding doe concurre in this example and ought to produce their effect unlesse you think they were hindered by some morall reason as the consideration that this execution was by the order of justice But then beasts being uncapable of this consideration and having none of this wisedome should bleed in the presence of those butchers which are not very exact in their trade with which the Jewes doe every day upbraid them And such as have killed Hares and Partridges should cause their bodies to bleed when they come neere them Moreover they which have beene set upon by some assasin finde it not alwayes easie to know him againe when they see him though they be in perfect health and awake much lesse can a man that is asleep or very neere death by any signe discover the approching assasin that mortally wounded him and yet it is hard to imagine that we have lesse perception and knowledge during the remainders of our life than after our death and that a wounded man must die that he may become more sensible Lastly it is easie to make it appeare that it is not in this effect as in other marvels which have a naturall cause because though many effects are so hidden from us that wee are not able to assigne their particular causes yet they may be all proved by some reasons if not demonstrative yet at least probable even the magneticall cure by sympathy and antipathy which are the onely principles of all naturall motions Which motions are but of two sorts that is to say Approach and Remotion it being naturall to all bodies to joine themselves to their like and to fly from the objects from which they have some naturall aversenesse And indeed if the blood issued naturally it would be to joyne it selfe with blood of the same nature as the blood of the dead mans kindred for sympathy is onely betweene bodies joined in amity Nor can antipathy produce this effect for it is not its property to joine and bring-neerer-together two bodies which are enemies but on the contrary in the presence of the murtherer it should concentrate all the blood and cause it to retire to the inner parts And these are the grounds which perswade me not only that the causes of this miracle are not yet found but also that it is impossible that it should have any that is naturall The fifth said that this bleeding may be caused by the imagination if according to the opinion of Avicenna it doth act even out of its owne subject the phantasie of the guilty with the remembrance of the blood spilt by him in the killing of the dead there lying before his eyes which stirres all his powers may be able to cause this haemorrhagie or issuing of blood Some nitrous vapours also of the earth may help this ebullition of the blood in the carkasse when it is taken up out of the earth or the water having insinuated it selfe into the veines of a drowned carkasse may make the blood more fluid Hereunto also the aire may contribute by its heat which is greater than that of the earth or water and is increased by the concourse of the multitudes which use to run to such spectacles Also the fermentation which after death happens to the blood serves very much to this heat which makes it boile in the veines as syrups in the time of their sermentation boile and fill up the vessels which before were not full till at length they make them run over at the top in the same manner the blood which before did not fill the veines yet after it is fermented doth so puffe them up that they can no longer hold it all and having withall gotten a tarmesse which corrodes the orifices of the vessels it makes its way out some dayes after death as we see in the bodies reserved for anatomies where the rope having caused the blood to rise to the braine where it could not be contained it runs out at the nose Also the sympathy of the spirits once friendly and afterward become enemies may help toward this effect which should not be thought more strange than many other like motions as the paine felt by the Nurse in her breasts when her nurse-child cries the fury which the red colour stirres up in the Lion and the Turky-cock the falling-sicknesse whose fits are augmented or advanced in those that hold in their hand the plant called Virga sanguinea or a twig of the Cornill tree a kind of Jasper stayes bleeding by a contrary reason Lapis Nephriticus makes the gravell come out of the kidneyes the Weapon-salve cures a wound being applied to the sword which made it 100. leagues off and many other Talismanick effects of which
rusticalnesse of which is ordinarily excused by clownes with the name of truth though truth be no more incompatible with good grace than pills are with leafe-gold by which the one is taken in better part and the other with lesse paine to the sick The fifth said that truth being the expression of the species of something and we taking pleasure to see a coppy well representing its originall it cannot beget hatred Things of themselves do not displease us at least there are more that please than that displease and of these a good part is sweetned by the manner of speaking of them as we see in jesting no man hindring us to speak truth laughing so that the denomination being not to be taken from the lesser and the lesse sound part truth cannot be said to beget hatred Also truth not being able to produce any thing but its like in an univocall generation it must be an equivocall one when it begets hatred the ignorant vulgar in this as they do often in other cases taking that for a cause which is none Otherwise the difficulty that we meet withall in seeking of truth increases the love of it and begets not hate of it Which love is no lesse universall than the hate of untruth as may appeare by that story of two Roman Citizens one of which was banished by a generall consent after it was known that he was so given to lying that he had never been heard speak truth the other received great and publick honours because he had never been heard speak any untruth no not in jest And we have nowadayes store of examples of the bad entertainment which all lyars finde which our ancient Gaules well knowing did account it the utmost degree of offence to give one the lie FINIS Of the Cock and whether his crowing doe affright the Lion THe first man said thus The Germans going to the warrs had reason to take a Cock with them to serve them for a spurre and an example of watchfulnesse whence came a custome to this day used by the Mule-drivers some of which tie a Cock upon their foremost carriage and others that will not trouble themselves with him provide only a plume of his feathers Upon the same ground Phidias made a statue of Minerva bearing a Cock upon her helmet unlesse you will rather think his reason to be because this Goddesse is as well president of warre as of study both which have need of much vigilancy Though this bird for other causes may be well enough said to pertaine to her as for his being so warlike and couragious as that he will not part with his desire of vanquishing though it cost him his life And this desire he prosecutes with such fury that Caelius Aurelian reports that a man fell mad having only been pecked by a Cock in the heat of his fighting For the passion of choler being a short madnesse is able exceedingly to raise the degree of heat in a temper already so extremely cholerick that in time the body of a Cock becomes nitrous and in this consideration it is prescribed to sick persons to make them laxative and it is the better if hee were first well beaten and plucked alive and then boiled And this courage of the Cock moved Artaxerxes King of Persia when a souldier of Caria had slaine Prince Cyrus to grant him leave to beare a little Cock of gold upon his Javelin as a singular badge of his great valour In imitation whereof all the souldiers of the same Province fell to weare the like upon the crests of their helmets and were thence called Alectryons that is in Latine Galli a name afterward given to our Nation and it may be for the like reason The Cock is also the Hieroglyphick of victory because he crows when he hath beaten his adversary which gave occasion to the Lacedaemonians to sacrifice a Cock when they had over come their enimies He was also dedicated to Mars and the Poets feigne that he was a young souldier and placed for a sentinell by this God of warre when he went to lie with Venus but feared the returne of her husband but this watchman sleeping till after Sun-rising Mars and she were taken napping by Vulcan Mars being very angry transformed this sleeper into a Cock for his negligence whence say they it comes to passe that well remembring the cause of his transformation he now gives warning when the Sun draws neere to our horizon Which fable is as tolerable as that of the Alcoran which attributes the crowing of our Cocks to one that as hee saith stands upon the first Heaven and is of so immense a hugenesse that his head toucheth the second which Cock crows so loud that he awakens all the Cocks upon the earth that immediately they fall a provoking one another to do the like as if there were one and the same instant of Cock-crowing all over the face of the whole earth The Cock was also dedicated to the Sun to the Moon and to the Goddesses Latona Ceresâ— and Proserpina which was the cause that the novices or those that were initiated in their mysteries must not eat of a Cock He was also dedicated to Mercury because vigilancy and earely rising is necessary for merchants and therefore they painted him in the forme of a man sitting having a crest upon his head with Eagles feet and holding a Cock upon his fist But particularly he was consecrated to Esculapius which made Socrates at the point of death to will his friends to sacrifice a Cock to him because his hemlock had wrought well And Pyrrhus curing men of the Spleen caused them to offer a white Cock whereas Pythagoras forbade his followers to meddle with the life or nourishing of any of that calour The Inhabitants of Calecuth sacrifice a Cock to their deity whom they conceive in the shape of a he-goat and Acosta out of Lucian assures us that anciently they worshipped a Cock for a God Which Christianity not suffering hath put them upon Churches the spires of steeples and high buildings calling them weather-cocks because as fanns they shew the coast whence the winde comes unlesse you rather think they are set up in remembrance of St. Peters repentance at the second crowing of a Cock. The cause of his crowing is commonly attributed to his heat which makes him rejoyce at the approach of the Sun as being of his own temper of which approach he is sooner sensible than others because hee more easily than any other creature receives the impressions of the aire as appears by that harsh voyce which he sometimes useth in crowing when he hath been newly moistened by the vapours and therefore the Countrey-men count it an ordinary signe of raine And forasmuch as the whole species of birds is more hot dry and light than the species of foure-footed beasts therefore the Lion though he be a solar creature as well as the Cock yet is so in a lesser degree than he Whence it
we do no more see their connection with their causes than of this of the spirits of the murtherer and the murthered which notwithstanding are no lesse effectuall in this occurrence than the spirits which come out of a bleare eye are able to hurt the eye that lookes on it or the eyes of a Witch to bewitch lambs and to produce all other marvellous effects whereof their histories are full The sixth said It would be hard to perswade most men that there is sense in all lifelesse bodies much more that there remaines any after death because sense is given to all bodies for no other cause but to enable them to discerne their objects to carry them toward their likes and to make them fly from subjects worthy of their eschewing Which cannot be said of dead bodies for whom nature hath no longer any care or providence So that she which doth nothing in vaine and gives not to bodies qualities of which they have no use hath not taken care to put into or preserve in carkasses a passion which might serve to uphold them in that estate For that were against the intention of Nature her selfe who strives to ruine such bodies and to resolve them into their elements to the end that thereof she may make new mixts and so augment some of her species But if we grant Campanella that dead bodies have some remainder of sense yet will it not thereupon follow that they have enough of it to cause the motions of trembling and anger to which he attributes this bleeding for anger requires too many sorts of reciprocall motions and too much mixt to be compatible with the cold which freezeth the spirits of dead bodies whatsoever the Historians say to the contrary for they write that anger might be seene in the sterne visages of divers men slaine in battaile which hath no likelihood of truth And forasmuch as plants which according to the opinion of this author have a greater measure of sense than carkasses have witnesse the attractions and expulsions which they make yet are not at all capaple of anger and having seene some men so stupid as to be displeased with nothing in their life time I cannot beleeve that they become more sensible after their death Such bodies are then past trembling either for apprehension or memory both which are fled away with their life and they are in an estate of having no further apprehension of their murderers And if they would tremble for feare it were time for them so to do at the approach of the Anatomists who without all pity pull them in as many pieces as they can imagine any way to differ from one another and besides feare would not make the blood to issue forasmuch as this passion is not caused but by the concentration of the spirits and their abandoning of the outer-parts that they may retire inward Another unlikely consequent is that these spirits separated from the soule should be more able to discern the murderer than when they were joyned to it for a living man is not able to know him that hurt him in the night or as a high-way-robber with a vizor and silence preventing all discovery of him by his face or voyce Furthermore the spirits are of the nature of the Sun-beams which give heat and light so long as they are continued from the body of the Sun to the object on which they fall but the Sun is no sooner hidden but that the beames cease to be Even so as long as the rete admirabile of the brain which is the spring and forge of the animall spirits which are only capable of knowledge does continue an influence of spirits into the nerves and through them into the other organs of the sense so long are they able to discern and no longer though they could subsist longer So that this opinion cannot stand no not with the opinion of the Pagan Philosophers who teach that the soule after death quits not the body but only the operations of the inward and outward senses the ceasing of the actions whereof the spirits are instruments being sufficient to shew that the spirits themselves are ceased The seventh said that this extraordinary motion cannot be referred but to a light supernaturally sent from God to the Judges for the discovery of the blackest crimes which otherwise would escape unpunished which is also the cause why this miracle though it sometimes happen yet is not alwayes observable as the effects of naturall causes which are necessary and thereby are distinguished from contingents it being no lesse impiety to deny that the divine justice doth sometimes send succour to the justice of men than it is ignorant rusticity in all things to content our selves with universall causes without seeking the particular ones which indeed God commonly employes for the producing of effects but yet hath not so enchained his power to the necessity of their order as that hecannot break it when he pleaseth even to the giving unto moystened clay a vertue to restore sight to the eyes of one borne blinde FINIS