_humble Servant._ [1] Of the disease of the Stone, _c._ 9. [2] Of the subject of inhering of diseases in the point of life. [3] Of the Spirit of Life. XLII. _MADAM,_ Your _Author_[1] is inquiring whether some cures of diseases may be effected by bare co-touchings; and I am of his opinion, they may; for co-touchings of some exterior objects may cause alterations of some particular motions in some particular parts of matter, without either transferring their own motions into those parts, (for that this is impossible, I have heretofore declared) or without any corporeal departing from their own parts of matter into them, and alterations may be produced both in the motions and figures of the affected parts: but these cures are not so frequent as those that are made by the entring of medicines into the diseased parts, and either expel the malignant matter, or rectifie the irregular and disordered motions, or strengthen the weak, or reduce the straying, or work any other ways according to the nature and propriety of their own substance, and the disposition of the distempered parts: Nevertheless, those cures which are performed exteriously, as to heal inward affects by an outward bare co-touching, are all made by natural motions in natural substances, and not by _Non_-beings, substancelesse Ideas, or spiritual Rays; for those that will cure diseases by _Non_-beings, will effect little or nothing; for a disease is corporeal or material, and so must the remedies be, there being no cure made but by a conflict of the remedy with the disease; and certainly, if a _non_-being fight against a being, or a corporeal disease, I doubt it will do no great effect; for the being will be too strong for the _non_-being: Wherefore my constant opinion is, that all cures whatsoever, are perfected by the power of corporeal motions, working upon the affected parts either interiously or exteriously, either by applying external remedies to external wounds, or by curing internal distempers, either by medicines taken internally, or by bare external co-touchings. And such a remedy, I suppose, has been that which your _Author_ speaks of, a stone of a certain Irish-man, which by a meer external contact hath cured all kinds of diseases, either by touching outwardly the affected parts, or by licking it but with the tip of the Tongue, if the disease was Internal: But if the vertue of the Stone was such, as your _Author_ describes, certainly, what man soever he was that possessed such a jewel, I say, he was rather of the nature of the Devil, then of man, that would not divulge it to the general benefit of all mankind; and I wonder much, that your _Author_, who otherwise pretends such extraordinary Devotion, Piety, and Religiousness, as also Charity, _viz._ that all his works he has written, are for the benefit of his neighbour, and to detect the errors of the Schools meerly for the good of man, doth yet plead his cause,