So likewise the ordinances in the ceremonial
law, interdicting the eating of the blood and the fat,
distinguishing between beasts clean and unclean for meat, are many
and strict; nay, the faith itself being clear and serene from all
clouds of ceremony, yet retaineth the use of fastlings, abstinences,
and other macerations and humiliations of the body, as things real,
and not figurative. The root and life of all which prescripts is
(besides the ceremony) the consideration of that dependency which
the affections of the mind are submitted unto upon the state and
disposition of the body. And if any man of weak judgment do
conceive that this suffering of the mind from the body doth either
question the immortality, or derogate from the sovereignty of the
soul, he may be taught, in easy instances, that the infant in the
mother's womb is compatible with the mother, and yet separable; and
the most absolute monarch is sometimes led by his servants, and yet
without subjection. As for the reciprocal knowledge, which is the
operation of the conceits and passions of the mind upon the body, we
see all wise physicians, in the prescriptions of their regiments to
their patients, do ever consider accidentia animi, as of great force
to further or hinder remedies or recoveries: and more specially it
is an inquiry of great depth and worth concerning imagination, how
and how far it altereth the body proper of the imaginant; for
although it hath a manifest power to hurt, it followeth not it hath
the same degree of power to help.
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