A44683:117
The Living Temple
The living temple, or, A designed improvement of that notion that a good man is the temple of God by John Howe ...
London: printed for John Starkey, 1675
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
As what if there had not been such a receptacle prepared as the stomach is, and so formed, and placed as it is, to receive and digest necessary nutriment? Had not the whole frame of man 1besides been in vain? Or what if the passage from it downward, had not been made somewhat, a little way, ascending, so as to detain a convenient time what is received, but that what was taken in were suddenly transmitted? it is evident the whole structure had been ruined as soon as made. What (to instance in what seems so small a matter) if that little cover had been wanting at the entrance of that passage through which we breath? (the depression whereof by the weight of what we eat or drink shuts it, and prevents meat and drink from going down that way) had not unavoidable suffocation ⟨p. 69⟩ensued? And who can number the instances that might be given besides? Now when there is a concurrence of so many things absolutely necessary (concerning which the common saying is as applicable, more frequently wont to be applied to matters of morality, Goodness is from the concurrence of all causes, evil from any defect) each so aptly and opportunely serving its own proper use, and all, one common end: Certainly to say that so manifold, so regular, and stated a subserviency to that end, and the end it self were undesigned, and things casually fell out thus, is to say we know or care not what.
As what if there had not been such a receptacle prepared as the stomach is, and so formed, and placed as it is, to receive and digest necessary nutriment? Had not the whole frame of man 1besides been in vain? Or what if the passage from it downward, had not been made somewhat, a little way, ascending, so as to detain a convenient time what is received, but that what was taken in were suddenly transmitted? it is evident the whole structure had been ruin'd as soon as made. What (to instance in what seems so small a matter) if that little cover had been wanting at the entrance of that passage through which we breath? (the depression whereof by the weight of what we eat or drink shuts it, and prevents meat and drink from going down that way) had not unavoidable suffocation ⟨p. 69⟩