HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE, - Horntip

52 I
thee with a clean heart. The divines, too, in general,
underftand by the precept in Exodus, to thofe who
eat the Pafchal Lamb, to bind up their reins, an ab-
ftinence from luft. Aufonius has expreffed the in-
dulgence of luft by the ufe of the reins-
Utere rene Euo. Epig. XIII.
Go, exercife thy reins.
And it is a common jeft among the vulgar to fay,
That thofe who facrifice to Venus purge their reins,
which is the reafon that Hippocrates, Ariftotle, Galen,
lEtius, Avicenna, and abundance of other phyficians
affert, that an intemperate ufe of venery is prejudicial
to the reins. Hence it is that the reins were dedicated
to Venus by the ancients : for Fulgentius, in his
mythology, in the fable of Peleus and Thetis, cites
Democritus's phyfiology to prove that the Heathens
thought that every part of the human body was under
the influence of a peculiar deity ; fo they affigned the
head to Jupiter, the arms to Juno, the eyes to Minerva,
the breaft to Neptune, the waill to Mars, the reins to
Venus, and the feet to Mercury. But laftly, if we
enquire into the etymology and derivation of the
word