Divine Dialogues

1 Maccabees 5 original: Macch. 5. Let him consider how clearly illustrated that passage is from the last section of the seventh chapter of Descartes' Meteors, and from the conclusion of that entire treatise.

Isaiah 1:3 Fifthly, consider that passage of the Prophet: “The ox knows his owner, and the donkey his master's feeding trough.” Consider also that Proverbs 12:10 of Solomon: “The righteous man regards the life of his beast, but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.” Anyone may easily foresee what an excellent interpretation original: "Gloss" Descartes' conceit—that brutes animals are merely senseless machines original: "Machina's"—will produce upon these biblical texts.

And, lastly, consider Galatians 5:17, where that enmity and conflict between the Flesh and the Spirit is mentioned. This is indeed as serious and solemn an argument as any that occurs in all theology. What light the Cartesian philosophy will contribute toward a plainer understanding of this important mystery may easily be guessed from the 47th Article of his Treatise on the Passions. There, the combat between the superior and inferior parts of the soul—the Flesh and the Spirit, as they are termed in Scripture and divinity—is at last reduced to the ridiculous noddings and joggings of a small glandular button in the middle of the brain, which is struck by the animal spirits In early medicine, "animal spirits" were thought to be fluids that carried sensation and motion through the nerves. rudely flitting against it. This little, brisk champion, called the Conarion (or the pineal gland original: "Nux pinea"), within which the soul is entirely cooped up, acts the part of the Spirit, while the animal spirits act as the Flesh. And thus, by the soul being garrisoned in this pine-kernel, and bracing herself against the battering rams original: "Arietations" or jarrings of the spirits in the ventricles of the brain, must that solemn combat be performed which the holy Apostle calls the “war between the law of our members and the law of our mind.”
Romans 7:23

Would not such a trivial and ludicrous account of temptation and sin justify Bodin's Jean Bodin (1530–1596), a French jurist and political philosopher....