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Thus, he uses the facts of embryonic development, alchemy, and insect metamorphosis as a part of his argument for the immortality of the human soul: ...for we live, move, have a being, and are subject to the actions of the elements, and the malice of diseases in that other world, the truest Microcosme, the wombe of our mother; for besides that generall and common existence wee are conceived to hold in our Chaos, and whilst wee sleepe within the bosome of our causes, wee enjoy a being and life in three distinct worlds, wherin we receive most manifest graduations: In that obscure world and wombe of our mother, our time is short, computed by the Moone, yet longer than the dayes of many creatures that behold the Sunne; our selves being yet not without life, sense, and reason; though for the manifestation of its actions it awaits the opportunity of objects; and seemes to live there but in its roote and soule of vegetation; entring afterwards upon the scene of the world, wee arise up and become another creature, performing the reasonable actions of man, and obscurely manifesting that part of Divinity in us, but not in complement and perfection, till we have once more cast our secondine, that is, this slough of flesh, and are delivered into the last world, that ineffable place of Paul, that proper ubi of spirits.

We find also that in the first Creation, which was performed of nothing, three things arose; to wit, a Soulish, Spiritual, Invisible Essence, which represented a Mercurial Water, a Sulphurous Vapour, and a Terrene Salt; these three gave a compleat and perfect, a tangible and formal Body to all things wherein especially all the four Elements are contained, as I have already mentioned in my Writing where I treat of the Microcosme.