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Now, reason having evidently demonstrated the soul's immortality, the Holy Scriptures do abundantly give testimony of the truth of the resurrection, as the reader may see by perusing the 14th and 19th chapters of Job and 5th of John. I shall, therefore, leave the further discussion of this matter to divines, whose province it is, and return to treat of the works of nature.
Of Monsters and Monstrous Births; and the several reasons thereof, according to the opinions of the Ancients. Also, whether the Monsters are endowed with reasonable Souls; and whether the Devils can engender; is here briefly discussed.
By the ancients, monsters are ascribed to depraved conceptions, and are designated as being excursions of nature, which are vicious in one of these four ways: either in figure, magnitude, situation, or number.
In figure, when a man bears the character of a beast, as did the beast in Saxony. In magnitude, when one part does not equalise with another; as when one part is too big or too little for the other parts of the body. But this is so common among us that I need not produce a testimony.
There was a Monster at Ravenna in Italy of this kind, in the year 1512.
I now proceed to explain the cause of their generation, which is either divine or natural. The divine cause proceeds from God's permissive will, suffering parents to bring forth abominations for their filthy and corrupt affections, which are let loose unto wickedness like brute beasts which have no understanding. Wherefore it was enacted among the ancient Romans that those who were in any way deformed, should not be admitted into religious houses. And St. Jerome was grieved in his time to see the lame and the deformed offering up spiritual sacrifices to God in religious houses. And Keckerman, by way of inference, excludes all that are ill-shapen from this presbyterian function in the church. And that which is of more force than all, God himself commanded Moses not to receive such to offer sacrifice among his people; and he also renders the reason Leviticus, xxii. 28, "Lest he pollute my sanctuaries." Because of the outward deformity, the body is often a sign of the pollution of the heart, as a curse laid on the child for the incontinency of its parents. Yet it is not always so. Let us therefore duly examine and search out the natural cause of their generation, which (according to the ancients who have dived into the secrets of nature) is either in the mother or in the agent, in the seed, or in the womb.
The matter may be in default two ways—by defect or by excess: by defect, when the child has only one arm; by excess, when it has four hands or two heads. Some monsters are begotten by a woman's unnatural lying with beasts; as in the year 1603, there was a monster begotten by a woman's generating with a dog; which from the navel upwards had the perfect resemblance of its mother: but from its navel downwards it resembled a dog.
The agent or womb may be in fault three ways; firstly, the formative faculty, which may be too strong or too weak, by which is procured a depraved figure; secondly, to the instrument or place of conception, the evil confirmation or the disposition whereof will cause a monstrous birth; thirdly, in the imaginative power at the time of conception; which is of such a force that it stamps the character of the thing imagined on the child. Thus the children of an adulteress may be like her husband, though begotten by another man, which is caused through the force of imagination that the woman has of her own husband at the act of coition. And I have heard of a woman, who, at the time of conception, beholding the picture of a blackamoor, conceived and brought forth an Ethiopian. I will not trouble you with more human testimonies, but conclude with a stronger warrant. We read (Gen. xxx. 31) how Jacob having agreed with Laban to have all the spotted sheep for keeping his flock to augment his wages, took hazel rods and peeled white streaks on them, and laid them before the sheep when they came to drink, which coupling together there, whilst they beheld the rods, conceived and brought forth young.
Another monster representing a hairy child. It was all covered with hair like a beast. That which made it more frightful was, that its navel was in the place where its nose should stand, and its eyes placed where the mouth should have been, and its mouth placed in the chin. It was of the male kind, and was born in France, in the year 1597, at a town called Arles in Provence, and lived a few days, frightening all that beheld it. It was looked upon as a forerunner of desolations which soon after happened to that kingdom, in which men to each other were more like brutes than human creatures.
There was a monster born at Nazara in the year 1530. It had four arms and four legs.
The imagination also works on the child, after conception, of which we have a pregnant instance.
A worthy gentlewoman in Suffolk, who being with child and passing by a butcher who was killing his meat, a drop of blood sprung on her face, whereupon she said her child would have a blemish on its face, and at the birth it was found marked with a red spot.
Likewise in the reign of Henry III, there was a woman delivered of a child having two heads and four arms, and the bodies were joined at the back; the heads were so placed that they looked contrary ways; each had two distinct arms and hands. They would both laugh, both speak, and both cry, and be hungry together; sometimes the one would speak and the other keep silence, and sometimes both speak together. They lived several years, but one outlived the other three years, carrying the dead one (for there was no parting them) till the survivor fainted with the burden, and more with the stench of the dead carcase.
It is certain that monstrous births often happen by means of undue copulation; for some there are, who, having been long absent from one another, and having an eager desire for enjoyment, consider not as they ought, to do as their circumstances demand. And if it happen that they come together when the woman's menses are flowing, and notwithstanding, proceed to the act of copulation, which is both unclean and unnatural, the issue of such copulation does often prove monstrous, as a just punishment for doing what nature forbids. And, therefore, though men should be ever so eager for it, yet women, knowing their own condition, should at such times positively refuse their company. And though such copulations do not always produce monstrous birth, yet the children, thus begotten, are generally heavy, dull, and sluggish, besides defective in their understandings, lacking the vivacity and loveliness with which children begotten in proper season are endowed.
