It will perhaps be said here that the
cause of their deceptiveness is that their nature is corrupt,
but that does not remove the difficulty, because a sick man is
none the less truly God's creature than he who is in health;
and it is therefore as repugnant to God's goodness for the one
to have a deceitful nature as it is for the other. And as a
clock composed of wheels and counter-weights no less exactly
observes the laws of nature when it is badly made, and does
not show the time properly, than when it entirely satisfies
the wishes of its maker, and as, if I consider the body of a
man as being a sort of machine so built up and composed of
nerves, muscles, veins, blood and skin, that though there were
no mind in it at all, it would not cease to have the same
motions as at present, exception being made of those movements
which are due to the direction of the will, and in consequence
depend upon the mind [as apposed to those which operate by the
disposition of its organs], I easily recognise that it would
be as natural to this body, supposing it to be, for example,
dropsical, to suffer the parchedness of the throat which
usually signifies to the mind the feeling of thirst, and to be
disposed by this parched feeling to move the nerves and other
parts in the way requisite for drinking, and thus to augment
its malady and do harm to itself, as it is natural to it, when
it has no indisposition, to be impelled to drink for its good
by a similar cause.
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