receiving strength from the menstrual blood for the
space of nine months, overpowers the man’s in
that particular, for the menstrual blood rather cherishes
the one than the other; from which it is plain the
woman affords both matter to make and force and virtue
to perfect the conception; though the female’s
be fit nutriment for the male’s by reason of
the thinness of it, being more adapted to make up
conception thereby. For as of soft wax or moist
clay, the artificer can frame what he intends, so,
say they, the man’s seed mixing with the woman’s
and also with the menstrual blood, helps to make the
form and perfect part of man.
But, with all imaginary deference to the wisdom of
our fathers, give me leave to say that their ignorance
of the anatomy of man’s body have led them into
the paths of error and ran them into great mistakes.
For their hypothesis of the formation of the embryo
from commixture of blood being wholly false, their
opinion in this case must of necessity be likewise.
I shall therefore conclude this chapter by observing
that although a strong imagination of the mother may
often determine the sex, yet the main agent in this
case is the plastic or formative principle, according
to those rules and laws given us by the great Creator,
who makes and fashions it, and therein determines
the sex, according to the council of his will.
* * * *
*
That Man’s
Soul is not propagated by their parents, but is infused
by its Creator, and
can neither die nor corrupt. At what time it is
infused. Of its
immortality and certainty of its resurrection.
Man’s soul is of so divine a nature and excellency
that man himself cannot comprehend it, being the infused
breath of the Almighty, of an immortal nature, and
not to be comprehended but by Him that gave it.
For Moses, relating the history of man, tells us that
“God breathed into his nostrils the breath of
life, and he became a living soul.” Now,
as for all other creatures, at His word they were
made and had life, but the creature that God had set
over His works was His peculiar workmanship, formed
by Him out of the dust of the earth, and He condescended
to breathe into his nostrils the breath of life, which
seems to denote both care and, if we may so term it,
labour, used about man more than about all other living
creatures, he only partaking and participating of the
blessed divine nature, bearing God’s image in
innocence and purity, whilst he stood firm; and when,
by his fall, that lively image was defaced, yet such
was the love of the Creator towards him that he found
out a way to restore him, the only begotten son of
the Eternal Father coming into the world to destroy
the works of the devil, and to raise up man from that
low condition to which sin and his fall had reduced
him, to a state above that of the angels.
If, therefore, man would understand the excellency
of his soul, let him turn his eyes inwardly and look
unto himself and search diligently his own mind, and
there he shall see many admirable gifts and excellent
ornaments, that must needs fill him with wonder and
amazement; as reason, understanding, freedom of will,
memory, etc., that clearly show the soul to be
descended from a heavenly original, and that therefore
it is of infinite duration and not subject to annihilation.
