minde There is an error on both hands either when every new-discovered truth is laid upon the asses pack-saddle the occult Synerasy or when impertinent and ridiculous reasons are derived from the Elements to produce an effect transcending their nature For these properties are a mystery to modest mindes and to the curious an imposture The mean is the safest So in Scripture an allowable reason may be given excusing Abraham from Pilicide The Egyptian Jews from theft and Sampson from Suicide the two latter whereof here below are vindicated from crime and prove acquitted If there be an hostile exercise between two Creatures for the conservation either of its species or individual i. e. for propagation as between Cocks or lively-hood as Kite and Chicken the last whereof is more durable the former more violent in the latter kinde to speak justly there is no hatred but a love unto and a necessity of its own preservation Rats though friends at their setting out put into a great viall a spectacle worthy of a second Nero will make a banckquet one of another yea to kill a home-bred beast to furnish a dish will cause a regret This latter I can hardly call an Antipathy except I involve man into an Antipathy with almost the whole nether-world whose beasts fouls fishes he doth destroy and they him again yea the same species as so many Cadmean teeth will stand in Antipathy to its own kind But to survey two untoucht examples That a man helpeth a woman to breed that Doubt 1. is is sick in the time of her gestation is a currant opinion with many and among our Commeres applauded as an infallible token of kindnesse That sicknesse unto both at the same time Exam. may often concurre casually though not causally I confesse But that an excretion or part of man being separated should affect at a distance its former remainder cannot to me be made out either by digitall experience or solid reason though much of late hath been written both learnedly and largely concerning such subjects But touching this point That the retention of the Lunary evacuations may as it doth the woman by a diaphoreticall way cloud and staine the spirits of an accompanying man which soon will produce a dyscrasy in natural actions I can without difficulty conceive As also that a strict continence which some other-wise after their wives known impregnation do scrupulously and unadvisedly vow to themselvs where use hath met with fit temperature to the contrary may often sensibly annoy the male our daily experience teacheth Some indeed are like the Hebrew women who can passe it over with a groan or two which the Husband tender and pusillanimous hearing falleth into pangs of fears and contristation But that this should be an abatement to the wife were to invert the curse layd upon the woman as my unmatched fellow-Practitioner sheweth in another case of the Viper But if it were true it would with the Dr. Browni spurious Father of the doubtfull issue bewray the disloyalty of suspected women There are Writers that speak concerning Doubt 2. Sympathy of a woman newly engravidated and a Bear and for experimtnt remitt us into England which yet I could never see nor fully be satisfied in But upon supposition of its truth it is Exam. worth the inquiry whether it be out of lust towards the woman through salaciousnesse which would produce a strange Paradox A Serpentine malice in the Beare to superaddde such an inmate unto the fruit despoiling it of its allotted aliment Or whether by a cruel and immature mid-wiving of the embryon to satiate the immensity of its hunger which would betray a dainty tooth in the Beares head Howsoever if it were certainly true one might without danger use it in discovery of impregnation and by that meanes often save the lives of two at once It is the most provident husbandry of man to turn the stream of impetuous enormities in brute Beasts into the Channell of humane accommodation CHAP. VII Of an Egge SEveral Creatures continue the Linage of their Descent by Eggs as Fowls Fishes Insects The Tortoise I take for a mixt kind of the two latter But here I speak of our ordinary Eggs which if not addle are in proximâ potentiâ but once removed from flesh and being eaten become the lightest purest and fullest nutriment and soonest converted into our substance because we see a moderate heat either Natural or Artificial will produce Incarnation Now though the yoalk seemeth the nobler part according unto Analogie of other natural Situations for it is seated in the inner-Room and Abditory for its defence envelloped with the white which rather were in order to the food of man Adam in Innocency eating Milk and Eggs because all things were exempted from Death and nothing frustraneous than for propagation Seeing a Hen without the inition of a Cock will not lessen her daily task and that almost the whole year through For even yet Sin having impaired Fertility more Eggs are excluded than the Hen yea adde the Cock into the bargain for in coupled Fowls that is not unusual is able to set yet that the tread of the Cock cannot reach the yoalk but that the White is nourished by it as having its Menstruum within it self is both wonderful and by daily Autopsie uncontrolable But here layeth the knot which is not so Doubt easily dissolved By what Vessels the nourishment is attracted and where they are inserted I know after two or three days incubation Exam. that there is a Sanguine-like string from the treading or Cock-sperm but that that should be the Umbilicality of the Chicken is not by sight demonstrable neither is there any Mark or least Vestigium thereof remaining in a new-hatched deplumed Chicken Neither is it like it should be inserted at the Bill for then the Bill as the deferring Organ should be formed first Nor doth any perfect creature attract nourishment mouth-wise before its eruption into the World though Hippocrates 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be very plain for it affirming That both Breath and Nutriment within the Wombe are suckt in by the Lips but this place is suspected to be spurious And if aliment should be conveyed by the vent besides the preposterousness in Nature the Entrals must suffer a great perturbation before the turning of the wonred peristaltick motion then is there likewise no place assigned to the Exrements or to speak ad amussim rather remainders of the thickest and impurest blood then the superfluous dregs of the first concoction Or if by a Diaphoresis or Transpiration it would encourage us to administer such Aliments topically as might afford solid nourishment and so become the easiest and safest remedy in many deplorable Diseases At last upon second review neither is it a shame to recant an errour I found the Navel with some part of the yoalk adhering to the belly CHAP. VIII Of Swimming HEre give me leave to write an ocular Experiment
on tip-toes at the threshall of the body can take a surer and further survey then being close immured that the separated soul doth understand more then being united to the body I take it to be not from a quicker apprehension but from more glorious objects Some referre this which I took unto the spoilo gotten from the Sichemites by the sons of Jacob but that seemeth very harsh For their Father Gen. 34. 30. reproved them for their perfidious dealing with them and Gen. 49. 6. he curseth them for it Now that goods treacherously gotten should be their portion is somewhat absurd It will run more smooth prophetically that I have taken for that I shall take besides the trope of the Father for the Sons And so by faith he triumphs before the victory Such a spirit there was in David who blazoned the trophees before the conquest Gilead is mine and Manassch is mine c. Psal 60. But why Joseph should have that of the Amorite taken by sword and bow more then the rest my conjecture is he doth for the preservativation of his Brethren in Egypt assigne him this surplus above his Brethren among whom he had besides his portion equally divided by lot Ezek. 47. 13. For to none of his remaining Sons did he bequeath a determinate residence That he doth confine the Sea-coast unto Zebulon Gen. 49. 13. is rather a presage of his nautick profession then a supernumerary grant above his equalls Levit. 13. 13. Then the Priest shall consider and behold if the Leprosie hath covered all his flesh he shall pronounce him clean that hath the plague it is turned white he is clean FOr the clearing of this because vulgar reason would conclude the contrary I must premise a few words The Ceremonies of the Jews were either typicall having reference to Christ or Symbolicall by which as Gods Hieroglyplicks they were tutored in some morall homages Or more plainly thus They were either of Priviledges and so Evangelical or of duties Of which latter sort were Not to assimilate the mselves according to the superstitious fashions of the Sabeans or Ghaldeans their Neighbours Of the like nature was seething the kid in the milk of the dam the cutting of corners in the hair which with them were appurtenances unto fascination In several of these Laws the thing it self was no sin though there did cleave a legal uncleannesse unto it Sometime it was commanded as laying forth and burying of the dead yea the interring of corpses the Politicians Grotius make a law of nature being a preservation of the living Sometime naturall as sicknesse and issues Now and then defective as Eunuchs Note by the way God took away in an advantagous substitute in the Gospel their barrennesse by baptizing the Eunuch according to his promise Esa 56. 3. Now for the explaining of this text Why being spread over he should be clean two reasons may be given Physicall and Ceremoniall Physicall when a disease is spread all over the body as in that soon cured kind of Dropsy called Leucophlegmatia Nature will easily recover that because every part hath an innate heat to preserve it self and expell that which is noxious and so the discrimen certaminis the maine body of the enemy doth not lay upon one part except it be in a raw crisis where after a battle conquering nature doth ablegate its adversary to the vilest and remotest emunctories The Ceremoniall reason I take from the severall Laws given to the Jews forbidding mixture either of themselves with others or of things of severall kinds as of making linsey-wolsey plowing with an oxe and an asse sowing of mesling c. into which primitive institution the Rabbins have shuffled burdensome and ridiculous devices of their own whereas either of these without any tesellation or checker-work single were lawfull So this Symbolizing with the former if it were all over of one colour viz. white because void of heterogeneous mixture it was pronounced clean If the Allegory were not strained the overspread Leprosy an Embleme of our sins and the whitenesse of righteousnesse might have an aspect unto Christ Levit. 16. How could the Scape-goat be a type of Christs Resurrection as generally it is expounded since Quest it never dyed BEcause its fellow which was chosen by Answ lot did die And for that Resurrection was not competent unto beasts that one offering was sown up and patcht of two individualls whereof one died and the other escaped and being one continued act did conjunctim resemble the death and resurrection of Christ. The uncapablenesse of the Subject in one distributed this type into two and because no remission of sin without blood the latter died in the former and the former revived in the latter So the escape of one of the represented was an adumbration of the Resurrection since it was reprieved from death by the immediate oracle of God in the lot Numb 36. 7. None were to marry out of their own Family TWo sorts of persons were exempted First the Levites and that upon good ground because they had no inheritance among their bretheren And secondly the Royall family was not obliged thereunto their portion being assigned them out of the Kings Exchequer I And this well considered answereth many objections and without this Latitude severall difficulties and Remora's will arise in the Old Testament casting as it were a suspicion of levity by a transgression of this precept among the most eminent of the Jews But the poor though they had passed away their inheritance were not exempted from this law because either their near kinsman might redeem it or at the year of Jubile it was restored gratis The accomplishing of the presage of the linage of the Messiah was a Cardinall cause of this edict As far as it is grounded upon equity it bindeth us analogically though not in eodem puncto Deut. 21. ult He that is hanged on a tree is accursed of God BOth former and latter Expositors run for the nativity of this back unto Paradise to the first sin which was brought forth between the knees of a tree and therefore hanging on a tree is become a malediction But that I think is too far fetcht for a Gibbet is and may be made variously of any other substance This sentence is not to be taken in a moral signification reaching any sorts of people but in a Judicial sense proper to the Jews and therefore the reasons must not be common to all the Universe of mankind but drawn from their Political constitution This capital punishment was no curse of it self no more then the lapidation precipitation sword or fire was Two probable reasons may be given First that this kind of death was without effusion of blood which strangulation even in beasts and that otherwise clean-ones was an abhorred thing among the Jews and so Ceremonially accursed Many both godly and wise Expositors hold this reason to be moral But 2dly as in some creatures their own entrails
prove the properest sauce so in this place the reason which Moses giveth in the text well pondered will be most genuine That the Land be not defiled which the Lord thy God giveth thee In all Israel no unclean thing was to be left uncovered Ch. 23. 19. In all capital punishments there was a removing of the offenders dead body out of sight in this there was a continued and publick shew of that which nature it self doth shrink at See Gen. 23. 4. All dead corpses were Legally unclean Their defilement was prevented by burying which is over and over commanded in this verse lest by hanging on a tree there be a curse or rather an execration of God then would strangers have exprobrated God's people Lo there hangeth an Israelite So that the sense may be He that remaineth hanging on a tree is ceremonially an execration unto the Lord. God in the death of Christ to shew his displeasure against sin did by this Judicial proceeding point at the Moral curse due unto us translated upon his Son An Evangelical malediction His elevation above the earth prefigured by lifting up of the Serpent in the wilderness was rather an emblem of his obvious and expanse conspicuousness then of eminent detestation The Holy Ghost seemeth to point at this Heb. 6. 6. Deut. 25. 3. Forty stripes he may give him and not exceed THe Rabbins are here as uncertain as various Let us see what can be drawn from text or equity God might have commanded man several duties without alledging any cause for them yet in most where nature is silent as in the Sabbath which not having any dependency upon the Law of Nature God doth annex more then one reason for the observation of it the rest of the commandements are bare and naked because their justice may be readd by the Lamp of reason Where God accosteth a reason to his precept there he doth perswade rather then compel First then that this was a particular Law proper unto the Jews may be evinced from the last words of this verse lest thy brother should seem vile unto thee strengthned by the example of Paul 2 Cor. 11. 24. Forty save one stripes did I suffer five times of the Jews Neither actively nor passively binding the stranger That there should no cruelty be used among Gods people is certain yet doth not answer the reason of the exact and defined number The Text saith lest he be contemned Either it may be as forty years are the full strength of man the third year being the prime of Infancy of Child-hood the 14th the 21 of Adolescency of Youth the 30th and of Virility the fourtieth so the highest degree of punishment should not exceed fourty stripes But that because Natural is common to all Humane kind Or rather alluding to the fourty years travel in the Wilderness lest now being in Canaan your promised Rest you use him harder then you were entertained in the contemptible Wilderness and by the number of stripes do renew the memory of his pristine equal years servitude The Feast of Tabernacles that God instituted was with rejoycing for deliverance Just fourty stripes was too near the extream and so far Moral The Whip of three Cords in Maimonides by whose 13 blows there amounted 39 stripes seemeth a Rabbinical Legend Judg. 16. 30. The dead that he slew at his death were more then those that he slew in his life I Love not to act over Origen or the Venetian who beyond the intention of the Holy Ghost do by force press an Allegorical and that often not very decent to bear the genuine sense of the Scripture But where there are so manifest Lineaments of the prefiguration of Christ no man can deny a type In the beginning of this Chapter Sampson was compassed about with his enemies he arose at Midnight carryed away their Gates and Bars unto the top of the Hill Every circumstance doth quadrate with his and our Saviour The Question will be Whether his death by Quest conquering more at it then in his life time may not as aptly resemble the death of Christ Some make a stand here because an evil Answ act say they as is self-assassine cannot be any type of good But I question whether the act were condemnable that is either whether this fact were not rather a laying down of his life then a destroying of it or this being granted whether rebus sic stantibus it were not lawful The general Reasons are these He before his death prayed the Lord to renew his strength This was accepted and answered yea He is registred by the Test of God's Approbation to die in Faith Heb. 11. 32 39. But more particularly to justifie his end We must have Recourse unto the Custome which in time became a Law of the Zelotes among the Jewes where a private man kindled by Zeal for Blasphemy or Adultery if it were publick in the sight of ten say the ancient Masters might beat or slay the Offender taken in the Fact The first Example we have in Phineas who appeased the wrath of Gods Psal 106. 31. by killing Zimri and Cozbi Upon the same ground of zeal Christ was suffered to purge the Temple Neither did the Jews so much question this though it be generally so interpreted as the Miracle in the Fig-tree and his Teaching See Mark 11. 27. As He walked in the Temple and Luc. 22. 1. As He taught the People c. Of this Rank was Simon the Zelote Luc. 6. 15. not the Cananite as our Translation hath it Math. 10. 4. Mark 3. 18. being deceived 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by the affinity of the Word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifying a Zelote as our far and near honoured Mr. Selden observeth Now Sampson being no mans subject might without injustice in open Blaspheny take vengeance of the Offenders without a Warrant from the Magistrate For he himself by right was Judge of Israel and had power as of others so of himself in this case Neither was he a subject of the Philistines his life depending on the Will of the Conquerours Whosoevers body is bound in chains is discharged from all civil obligation and thus he may be acquitted from the crime of murder or sui-cide The Antitype Joh. 10. 18. is very significant No man taketh my life from me but I lay it down of my self 2 Sam. 6. 3 4. And they brought the Ark of God out of the house of Abinadab that was in Gibeah THE ordinary Translations have it as if Gibeah had been a City and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 were a proper name which cannot conveniently here have a place But appellatively it signifieth a Hill and so it is used Jerem. 2. 20. 1 Sam. 10. 5. Sometime indeed it signifieth a City of Benjamin and so is the right Interpretation of Judg. 19. 16. 1 Sam. 22. 6. 7. Hos 5. 8. But at this time the Ark was in a City afterward called Kiriath-jeharim in the Tribe of Judah Jos
as the learned Author doth rationally deliver § 12. of this Chapter And if their poison cease I should scarce trust their antipoison yet the plague after many years sleep in linnen or wollen will awaken and rage by the testimony of our predecessours backt with our own experience Chap. 27. The yellownesse of the stomack and gutts in the chicken doth not necessarily argue its nourishment on the yolke though I believe the thing yet not the reason For the same colour is apparent in all new-born babes except with some Omnia ex ovo which in a Metaphorical and florid sense may be admitted with a Rhetoricall strain but in a Physicall demonstration in strict termes is hard to be understood BOOK IIII. CH. 1. That sitting is not proper to Man only the several kinds of Apes by their untaught Mimicks and Dogs by teaching will draw it into question If sitting upon the ground or flat may come under that denomination Man can do no more than these beasts and will make a cute Angles between Back Thigh and Leg bone though inverted as do irrational animals And beasts will upon seats make as right Angles two lines to an Angle as doth man Ch. 5. The uncertainty of generating males by a ligature of the left testicle may more solidly be refuted because in congress the males right is the females left which left side is not thought the proper place for masculine conception so that this conceit falleth by its own weight Neither was this arrow full drawn home to the head Some probability there might be in those creatures which ingender by infilition There are three kinds of Being Real Rational and Modal the latter is neither of the former but more then Rational yet lesse then Real Such is this relative site The want of which accurate distinction bringeth one into a maze of confusion Ch. 6. That fat bodies do soonest float there is an errour à non causâ ad causam The true reason is that they have lesse proportionable weight depressing them then lean bodies If the whole body were fat it would never sinke Not that fat is under water more prone unto fermentation which is the cause alledged We besprinkle our almonds in beating with Rose-water to preserve them from restiness To speak properly Oyly or fat bodies scarce grow rotten but rancid Neither doth fat so readily symbolize with air as the Schools teach Let oyl grease or tallow be boyled unto vapours and I will believe super-infused it will preserve liquours fresh excluding all allien air By the same reason it defendeth iron from rust and locketh up faithfully whatsoever it is intrusted withall To say it will soon conceive a flame is no satisfactory argument for the same happeneth unto chalk-coal which yieldeth no smoak the product of kindled fatness Besides when the acme of fermentation is over except there be at the very height of it a fixation from some external cause the subject will fall into a more compacted gravity Ch. 7. There may be a mistake in a blown bladder about the weight of it if either the bladder be moist and then with extension it dryeth or if it be blown up with the breath of man which containeth some water Further Gold foliated and feathers expansed will not weigh so much nor fall so swiftly as the same will being contracted Smoak rarified doth ascend but being condensated into soot its nature is to descend The common road of conception and production of rain is an ancient and sufficient testimony Ch. 10. If the Small-pox have their Original from some quality in the Menstruum imprinted upon the child in time of gestation It must needs follow that this disease is endemical to the whole world because of the universality of its cause The truth whereof is worthy examination and unto mine as far as travellers report is to be credited the assertion is seconded That others undergo them never others often is according to the disposition of the receiver Ch. 12. The measuring of the motion of bodies doth teach us their duration No duration then to the center either of earth or heavens because destitute of motion If it be replyed the motion need not to be in the thing but either in the Sun or Earth neither is that absolutely true For a motion of either up-upon its own axis if the body be homogeneous which is questioned concerning the Sun will be no rule of measure A loco-motion will be requisite How far shall Saturn out-dure the Moon A step higher There may be a time of duration without motion as were the three first days before the Creation of Sun or Stars There was a flux of time in the dayes of Joshua when the Sun stood still This Philosophers call interval time Ch. 13. If since the world began Syrius arose in ♉ and before its end may have its ascent in ♠by that compute the world's glass should run yet 12000 years And where are then the last times wherein the Apostles lived Sed meliora spero BOOK V. CH. 4. Might not these words have been spared In Paradise there was no creature hurtful Since there was none the Devil excepted all the world over It might with better reason have been questioned Whether there were any Medical Plants I think to say any Therapeutick Medicines were existent before a disease be in nature is frustraneous But that they had then a Prophylactick vertue to prevent all seminaries of maladies may easily be understood The Botanicks comprehend corn trees and fruit within the tome of their Herbals Rosins might be a preservation against rain and darkness As other Physical Plants so Rubarb might serve for food to some creature Many things stand for symmetry and complement of the Universe But to speak with the Schools there were remedies in Innocency radically and potentially but not actually and formally So was repentance and commiseration in sinless Adam Ib. There was a natural ability in Eve after impregnation with a boy without imperfecting the Creation as she had killed the soul so to destroy the body of Adam without the abolishment of a Species But this would I confess have ushered in many moral absurdities Ch. 5. That Adam should be created without a Navel because he was not nourished that way I see no necessary consequence For it is of all sides granted that to the same part of the body do appertain several offices Now if for the Navel be taken the out-side only it serveth to the Umbo of the belly for a Center in way of ornament or for an emunctory Nature many times curing Dropsies that way Of like use are Paps to men If for the Navel be understood the Vasa umbilicalia the inward Ligaments Adam could not spare them they serving to hold up the Liver and Blather the excision of them bringeth sudden death which kind of punishment is according to the Historians in use with the Egyptians A Skar is a defect in the skin But the outward