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.
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