soul being purely spiritual should reside as in its Throne in the principal part or faculty of it to wit in the imagination framed of a small portion of the animal spirits being most subtile and seated in the very middle or center of the brain 6. Another chief argument that he useth to prove these two souls in man is the strife and disagreements that are within man Because he saith the intellect and imagination are not wont to agree in so many things but that also the sensitive appetite doth dissent in more things From whose litigations moreover it shall be lawful to argue that the moodes of the aforesaid souls both in respect of subsisting and operating are distinct For as there is in man a double cognitive power to wit the intellect and imagination so there is a double appetite the Will proceeding from the Intellect which is the Page or servant of the rational soul and the sensitive Appetite which cohering to the imagination is said to be the hands or procuratrix of the corporeal soul. 7. To these we shall add that when the understanding is truly enlightened with the spirit of God and led by the true light of the Gospel in the ways of Christ then is man said to be spiritual because the carnal mind and the sensitive appetite are subdued and brought under to the obedience of Christ by his grace So also when the understanding is darkned as saith the Apostle Having the understanding darkened being alienated from the life of God thorow the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of their hearts Then man becomes wholly led with the carnal and sensual appetite and is therefore called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the natural animal or soully man And in both these conditions the organical body is led and acted according to the ruling power either of the Spirit of God and so it is yielded up a living sacrifice to God or of the spirit of darkness corruption and the sensitive appetite and so is an instrument of all unrighteousness By all which it is most manifest that there are in man these three parts of Body Soul and Spirit which was the thing undertaken to be proved 8. Lastly as to this point it is a certain truth that two extreams cannot be joined or coupled together but by some middle thing that participateth or cometh near to the nature of both So the Soul which by the unanimous consent of all men is a spiritual and pure immaterial and incorporeal substance cannot be united to the body which is a most gross thick and corporeal substance without the intervention of some middle nature fit to conjoin and unite those extreams together which is this sensitive and corporeal Soul or Astral Spirit which is respect of the one extream is corporeal yet of the most pure sort of bodies that are in nature and that which approacheth most near to a spiritual and immaterial substance and therefore most fit to be the immediate receptacle of the incorporeal Soul And also it being truly body doth easily join with the gross body as indeed being congenerate with it and so becomes vinculum nexus of the immaterial Soul and the more gross body that without it could not be united Now having as we conceive sufficiently proved that there are in man these three distinct parts of Body Soul and Spirit in the next place we are to shew that these three may and do separately exist and that we shall endeavour by these reasons 1. It is manifest by Divine Authority that the spirit that is the rational immortal and incorporeal soul doth return to God that gave it That is not to be annihilated or to vanish into nothing but to abide and remain for ever or eviternally For the Apostle saith For we know that if our earthly tabernacle or house were dissolved we have a building of God an house not made with hands eternal in the heavens By which it is manifest that the immaterial Soul doth exist eternally ex parte post as the Schools say and also the gross body being separated from the immortal Soul doth by it self exist until it be consumed in the grave or by corruption be changed into earth or some other things or that the Atomes be dispersed and joined unto or figurated into some other bodies So it is most highly rational that this sensitive Soul or Astral Spirit which is corporeal should also exist by it self for some time until it be dissipated and wasted in which time it may and doubtlesly doth make these apparitions motions and bleedings of the murthered bodies 2. Upon the supposition that the rational Soul be not ex traduce but be infused after the bodily organs be fitted and prepared which is the firm Tenent of all Divines Ancient middle and Modern and must upon the granting of it to be simply and absolutely immaterial and incorporeal which is indisputable of necessity be infused because no immaterial substance can be produced or generated by the motion of any agent that is meerly material or forth of any material substance whatsoever And therefore I say that the Soul being infused it must of necessity follow the organized body that could not exist except as a lump of flesh without the corporeal sensitive soul which must of necessity demonstrate that as they did separately exist before the union of the Soul and Body so they also do exist distinctly after their separation by death and so the Astral Spirit may effect the things we have asserted 3. And if the experiment be certainly true that is averred by Borellus Kircher Gaffarel and others who might be ashamed to affirm it as their own trial or as ocular witnesses if not true that the figures and colours of a plant may be perfectly represented and seen in glasses being by a little heat raised forth of the ashes Then if this be true it is not only possible but rational that animals as well as plants have their Ideas or Figures existing after the gross body or parts be destroyed and so these apparitions are but only those Astral shapes and figures But also there are shapes and apparitions of Men that must of necessity prove that these corporeal Souls or Astral Spirits do exist apart and attend upon or are near the blood or bodies of which Borellus Physician to the King of France gives us these two relations 1. N. de Richier a Soap-maker he saith and Beruardus Germanus from the relation of the Lord of Gerzan and others distilling mans blood at Paris which they thought to be the true matter of the Philosophers-stone they saw in the cucurbit or glass body the Phantasm or shape of a Man from whom bloody rayes did seem to proceed and the glass being broken they found the figure as though of a skull in the remaining faeces 2. There were three curious persons also at Paris that taking the Church earth-mould from S. Innocents Church
needs have an Internum and externum as the learned and Christian Philosopher Dr Fludd doth affirm in these words Certum est igitur inesse ipsis scilicet Angelis aliud quod agit aliud autem quod patitur nec verò illud secundùm quod agunt aliud quam actus esse poterit qui forma dicitur neque etiam illud secundum quod patiuntur est quicquam praeter potentiam haec autem materia appellatur 6. Therefore to conclude these arguments do sufficiently and evidently prove that Angels are either Corporeal or have bodies united unto them which is all one to our purpose whether way soever it be taken To which only we shall add these authorities and first S. Bernard tells us thus much rendered into English Therefore he saith as we render unto God alone true immortality so also incorporeity because he alone doth so far transcend the universal Corporeal nature of spirits that he doth not stand need of any body whatsoever in any operation whatsoever being content with only a spiritual nodd or motion when he will to perform whatsoever he pleaseth Therefore only that majesty of his is that which neither for himself nor for another hath need of the help of a Corporeal instrument by which omnipotent will he is immediately present at every work And that of Damascen is full to the purpose which is this That Angels quantum ad nos are said to be incorporeal and immaterial but compared to God are found to be Corporeal and material And of this opinion besides were Tertullian S. Augustin Nazianzen Beda and many others as may be seen in the learned Writings of Zanchy upon this subject with whose words we shall shut up this particular Certum enim est ex iis quae scripturae tradunt de Angelis probabiliorem esse Patrum sententiam quà m Scholasticorum utram tamen sequaris non multum peccaveris nec proptereà inter Haereticos haberi poteris And on the otherside if they be holden to be simply and absolutely incorporeal then these absurdities must of necessity follow 1. If Angels be simply incorporeal then they can cause no Physical or local motion at all because nothing can be moved but by contact and that must either be by immediate or virtual contact for the Maxime is certain Quicquid agit agit vel mediatione suppositi as when ones hand doth immediately touch a thing and so move it vel mediatione virtutis as when a man with a rod or a line doth draw a thing forth of the water both of these do require a Corporeal contact that is that the superficies of the body moveing or drawing must either mediately or immediately touch the superficies of the body to be moved or drawn But that which is absolutely incorporeal hath no superficies at all and therefore can make no contact either mediate or immediate and therefore Angels if simply incorporeal can cause no Physical or local motion at all 2. If Angels be absolutely incorporeal then they cannot be contained or circumscribed in place and consequently can perform no operation in Physical things To which if they answer with Thomas Aquinas Quod circumscribi terminis localibus est proprium Corporum sed circumscribi terminis essentialibus est commune cuilibet Creaturae tam corporali quam spirituali This aiery distinction might have taken place if Aquinas had shewed us what essential terms and limitations are but of this we have no proof at all and what was never proved may justly be denied For what a definitive place is was never yet defined neither can we possibly conceive an Idea or notion of any such thing but only as we may make a Chimaera or figment of that which never was nor is For though we may apprehend that they are not circumscribed in place as gross bodies are yet it is not to be doubted but that they move from place to place and do so consist in some place that they occupy a certain space of place and this is most certain if we believe as we ought those things which the Scriptures do declare concerning the mission and motion of Angels And therefore notwithstanding this frivolous and feigned distinction we may conclude with Theodoret Angelorum naturam esse finitam circumscriptam eóque opus habere loco Neither doth that avail to solve the business and make this a good distinction which is brought by D r Moore to wit that there are two acceptions of place the one being imaginary space the other that place is the concave superficies of one body immediately environing another body and that therefore there being these two acceptions of place he concludeth that the distinction of being there Circumscriptivè definitivè is an allowable distinction But by the Doctors leave we must affirm that what he saith is not allowable and that for these reasons 1. Because imaginary space hath no existence in nature but only in the fancy of the Imaginant entia rationalia non sunt entia naturalia ex parte rerum existentia 2. Because it is a certain truth which Des Cartes hath taught us to wit That the names of place or space do not signifie any thing different from a body that is said to be in a place but only do design the magnitude figure and site of it amongst other bodies And that this fite may be determined we ought to have respect unto some other bodies which we may consider as immoveable And as we respect divers bodies we may say that the same thing at the same time doth change place and not change place As when a Ship is carried in the Sea he who sitteth in the Ship doth alwayes remain in one place if respect be had to the parts of the Ship betwixt which parts he keepeth the same site And the same person doth continually change place if respect be had to the shores because he continually receedeth from some shores and cometh more near unto other 3. Neither is this distinction good because as the same Author tells us Non etiam in re differunt spatium sive locus internus substantia corporea in eo contenta sed tantùm in modo quo à nobis concipi soleat 4. D r Moore granteth that spirits are substances and have extension and we affirm that nothing can be so but what is Corporeal and consequently must be in place circumscriptively and therefore the fancy of a definitive place is meerly a fictitious foppery without ground or reason And now let us examine the objections that are usually brought against this opinion the strongest of which is to this purpose that if Angels be Corporeal then of necessity they must be mortal alterable and destructible to which I answer 1. Because no Creaturely nature is or can be immortal per se ab intrinsecâ propriâ naturâ for God only is so as saith the Text 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Who only hath
are by their offices all but ministring spirits sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of Salvation By which it is manifest that this place is to be understood of their ministration and offices and not of their nature or substances 2. They can no more be meerly and literally said to be spirits understanding spirit to intend an absolute incorporeal substance than his ministers can be literally understood to be flaming-fire they must either be both literally true which is absolutely absurd or else those words must have a metaphorical interpretation as they may and must have and there is no inconvenience in that exposition For as the winds which is but a strong motion of the air and the shining or flaming fire are two of the most quick agile and operative agents that are known unto us in nature so the Angels and Christs Ministers are strong quick and most nimble and powerful in performing their offices and administrations Therefore we shall conclude this as Scheibler doth from S. Augustine Nihil enim invisibile incorporeum naturâ credendum est praeter solum Deum qui ex eo incorporeus invisibilis dicitur quia infinitus incircumscriptus est simplex sibi omnibus modis sufficiens se ipso per seipsum omnis verò rationalis creatura corporea est Angeli omnes Virtutes corporeae sunt licet non subsistunt in carne Now though we have sufficiently proved that they are corporeal that is that they have bodies naturally united unto them and so have an internum or moving power and an externum or a part moved that is as Dr. Moore confesseth a spiritual and incorporeal part and a corporeal part or vehicle yet to assign what kind of bodies they have or what proper difference there is betwixt their substance and other corporeal substances is no easie matter to determine Only we shall give two differences whereby they are distinguished from other substances that are corporeal and that as the Scripture holdeth them forth unto us 1. The first differential distinction is that their bodies do not suffer or are altered or dissipated by the most strong and operative sublunary agent that is known unto us Amongst which we have none of greater force and activity than our culinary fire yet it is manifest that that Element did not work upon nor burn the Angel that appeared to Manoah and his Wife who ascended in the flame of the altar and was not touched or altered at all which plainly sheweth that his body was not to be wrought upon by the fierce flame of sublunary fire and he is there called the Angel of Jehovah This also is confirmed by that which Nebuchadnezzar saw and confessed that though there were three men only cast into the fiery furnace yet he saw a fourth which by all the learned is judged to be an Angel and they had no hurt upon them that is the fire did not work upon their bodies to burn alter or consume them So that in this the bodies of Angels differ from the most of other bodies because they do not suffer by sublunary fire the most violent agent that we know And this must needs rationally be taken to be proper unto Angels in regard of their created natures and not as superadded by a Divine and Almighty Power as in some other cases it may be granted 2. A second difference is that what bodies soever spirits or Angels have or appear in they have not flesh and bones such as Christ had in his true and numerical body in which he did appear after his resurrection which was the same individual body which he had before he was crucified But though they have bodies yet to feeling and tangibility they have not flesh and bones as humane bodies have which have a renitency and resistibility to our touch which their bodies have not being as it were ethereal airy and shadowy and yielding and giving way to the touch and though to be divided and separated yet may be do as soon close by counition and so suffer nothing at all by that division Concerning the properties of their bodies it seems to have been the opinion of Tertullian as I find him quoted by Mr. Baxter that they had thin pure and aereal bodies which they could dilate and expand condense and contract at their pleasures and so frame them into diverse and sundry shapes his words are these Daemones sua haec corpora contrahunt dilatant ut volunt sicut etiam lumbrici alia quaedam insecta So we see that some worms and insects will extend themselves into a vast length and smallness that they can pass through a very small hole or passage and again contract themselves into a great bulk drawing in the length and increasing the breadth and thickness which though it still be the same corporeal substance and in general doth in what figure soever it be brought into but retain the same dimensions in respect of place yet in regard of accidental shape or figure it may change the dimensions in respect of one another as one while to be more in longitude and less inbreadth and depth and sometimes more in breadth and depth and less in length So may the bodies of Angels by contraction and dilatation sundry wayes alter their dimensions and consequently their shapes and figures and all this according to the motion and act of their own wills so that still there must be limits to these acts of distention and contraction that they can do neither in an infinite degree as either to become an insensible and indivisible prick nor to be infinitely expanded or dilated and this opinion hath sufficiency of rationality and intelligibility in it Of this very point S. Bernard speaketh thus modestly Videntur Patres de hujusmodi diversa sensisse nec mihi perspicuum est undè alterutrum doceam nescire me faâ—or And though we cannot punctually enumerate nor assign the certain properties of their bodies yet we may rationally conclude thus much 1. That they being creatures ordained for high and noble ends must needs have their bodies and organs fitted and suitably proportioned to fulfil and accomplish those ends as doth most manifestly appear by the bodies and organs of all other creatures which are most wisely and fitly framed by the Almighty according to the several ends and uses they were created and ordained for 2. It is most probable that considering there are creatures that as their wills are moved by their passions and affections can alter the colours and figures of their own bodies as is manifest in worms and in the colours of the Chameleon as it is asserted by the experience of the learned Physician Dominicâ— Panarolus so from the less to the more that Angels have bodies of far more excellency to perform their ministrations in than those gross and terrestrial bodies have that are here below And it is no small wonder
there is another way more extraordinary wherein as an instrument he may be said to cause diseases and sometimes death as in that case of Davids numbring of the people where there died of the Pestilence seventy thousand and though this Pestilence was sent by Jehovah yet was a destroying Angel the instrument and minister in the execution of it for the Text saith And when the Angel of the Lord stretched forth his hand upon Jerusalem to destroy it the Lord repented him of the evil and said to the Angel that destroyed the people It is enough now stay thy hand And Herod for assuming to himself that honour that was only proper to God was immediately smitten by the Angel of the Lord and was eaten up of worms and gave up the Ghost And the Psalmist saith He cast upon them the fierceness of his anger wrath indignation and trouble by sending evil Angels among them the Hebrew giveth it the emission or sending out of evil Angels From whence it is manifest that evil Angels are the organs and instruments of Gods wrath and as Ministers cause Plague Pestilence and other diseases 3. Thirdly there is another great question whether or not the Devil by his vassals to wit Sorcerers and Witches doth not cause diseases and death as is believed by those vomiting up of strange things exceeding the bigness of the Gullet to get either up or down of which we shall speak largely where we handle the opinion of Van Helmont concerning the actions of Witches Here only we shall say thus much that the Devil is author and causer of that hatred malice revenge and envy that is often abounding in those that are accounted Witches which desire of revenge doth stimulate them to seek for all means by which they may accomplish their intended wickedness and so they learn all the wicked and secret wayes of hurting poysoning killing but yet we affirm that what evil soever they perform it is by causes and means that work naturally and so the evil is only in the use and application and not in the efficients or means And whereas he holdeth that Devils as they can cause Diseases so they can cure them and take them away we must crave to be excused if we cannot subscribe to his opinion and that for these reasons 1. Because of their causing of Diseases we have sufficient evidence in the Scriptures but of their curing of any we have not any mention at all and though some will think this but weak because it is negative yet it is not probable but as it expresseth the one fully so it would have given some hint of the other if there had been any such matter 2. But the Scriptures do inform us that the gift of healing or curing Diseases is not in the power of Devils by their Creation much less since as a gift bestowed upon them but floweth solely from God by the Ministry of good Angels of whom Raphael that is the Medicine or health of God is the chief And that it is reckoned amongst the gifts of the Holy Ghost is most plain For to one is given by the spirit the word of wisdom to another the word of knowledge by the same spirit To another saith by the same spirit to another the gifts of healing by the same spirit but these gifts of healing are not given to Devils but to the chosen ones of God And the Psalmist where he is speaking how God afflicted and brought low the people of Israel by reason of their sins saith Their soul abhorred all manner of meat and they drew near unto the gates of death but he sent his word and healed them And God declareth that if his people Israel would keep his Statutes he would bring none of those Diseases upon them that he had threatned for he saith I am the Lord that healeth thee and this he doth by the ministry of good Angels or by natural means and not by Devils 3. That Devils are no causers or instruments in curing Diseases is manifest because that were to make him act contrary to his original destination after his fall wherein in his own propriety he is a murderer from the beginning and that both of souls and bodies and never did nor doth any good to mankind either spiritual or natural either real or apparent for that were to act contrary to his will nature and disposition and contrary to the Ordinance and appointment of God who hath Created the destroyer to destroy Therefore-Satan after his fall was not ordained of God to be an healer preserver or sanator of diseases but to be a destroyer a wounder and murderer for his nature is be come so wicked and malignant that his whole endeavour is the destruction of mankind both in souls and bodies and so no healer no not of the least infirmity 4. But he is that grand Impostor that by lying cheating and delusion laboureth to make his Vassals and others believe that he can cure and heal Diseases when he can do no such thing and therefore hath and still doth amongst the Pagans by the wicked Priests his Slaves make the people believe that if the sick persons be brought before their Idols and there worship and pray that they shall be Cured when there is not any jot performed in the way of sanation but what is by natural means fancy and imagination or what is pretended to be done so by cheating counterfeiting and imposture And the very same thing is practised by the Papists unto this day in the pretence of their false and lying Miracles fathered upon their Saints and Images which are nothing else but lying cheats and Impostures as we shall fully make manifest hereafter 5. The Devil internally deludeth the minds of men in making them believe that Pictures Charms Amulets and such other inefficacious and ridiculous means have power to Cure these and these Diseases when indeed they are meerly inoperative and effect nothing at all but yet the Witchmongers will needs have them to be media operativa when they are utterly inefficacious and are only means of seduction and delusion to alter change or fortifie the imagination by which alone the Cures if any such be effected are brought to pass and not by any power of the Devil at all and he operateth nothing at all in them except a mental and internal delusion in making the Witchmongers and others believe that those things are wrought by a Diabolical Power which are only performed by the force of imagination and a natural agency and virtue 6. Again where there are many occult and wonderful effects wrought by natural causes and agents as by appensions of vegetables animals or their parts and minerals by magnetism as the Hoplochrism Sympathetic Powder by Transplantation and many other very abstruse and secret wayes and means the Devil laboureth to take away the glory of these sanative effects both from God and his Instrument which is Nature and to have it
and that it was poured again into the Soul of the world either immediately or at the last mediately after its transmigration into other bodies The other suffrage he saith upon this matter is of the most learned Divine Dr. Hamond our Countryman who opening the Text Epist. Thessalo 1. c. 5. v. 23. to wit your whole spirit and soul and body c. He saith that Man is divided into three parts 1. To wit into the body by which is denoted the flesh and the members 2. Into the vital soul which in like manner being animal and sensitive is common to man with the bruits 3. Into the spirit by which the rational soul that was first created of God is signified which also being immortal doth return unto God Annot. in Nov. Testam lib. p. 711. This his exposition he confirmeth by Testimonies brought from Ethnick Authors and also from the ancient Fathers From all which the learned Dr. doth make this conclusion And from the things above he saith it is most evidently manifest that man being as it were an Amphibious animal or of a middle nature and order betwixt the Angels and bruits with these he doth communicate by a corporeal soul framed of the vital blood and the stock of animal spirit joyned likewise in one and with the other he communicates by an intelligent soul immaterial and immortal And thus much for arguments brought from humane authority which are prevalent if they be brought affirmatively as these are from learned men or Artificers and so we shall proceed to further kind of proofs 3. But an argument arising from Divine Authority is of the most force of all and therefore let us a little survey the Text it self which in our English Translation is thus And the very God of peace sanctifie you wholly And I pray God your whole Spirit and Soul and Body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Apostle having given the believing Thessalonians all the spiritual counsel that could be necessary to bring them to the perfection of sanctification doth pray for them that the God of peace would sanctifie them wholly or as the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifieth as Arias Montanus hath rendered it omninò persectos altogether perfect And that the whole 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is the whole part portion or lot for so the word properly signifieth which he nameth by Spirit Soul and Body to be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. And therefore to this doth learned Beza add this note Tum demùm igitur ait homo integer sanctificatus fuerit quum nihil cogitabit spiritus nihil appetet anima nihil exequetur corpus quod cum Dei voluntate non consentiat And before he had said Therefore Paul by the appellation of spirit doth signifie the mind in which the principal stain lieth and by the Soul the rest of the inferior faculties and by the body the domicile of the Soul And in another place he saith The mind is become vain the cogitation obscured the appetite hardened And to the same purpose doth learned Rollock upon the place say thus much Sanctification or transformation is not of any one part but of all the parts and of the whole man For there is no part or particle in man which was not deformed in that first fall and made as it were monstrous Therefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or transformation ought to be of the whole man and of every singular part of him And further he saith For the whole man the Apostle hath here the enumeration of his principal parts And they are three in number Spirit Soul and Body By the spirit he saith I understand the mind which the Apostle Eph. 4. 24. calleth the spirit of the mind and this is no other thing than the faculty of the rational mind which is discerned in invention and in judging of things found out By the name of soul he saith I understand all those inferior faculties of the mind as are the animal which are also called natural The body doth follow these parts to wit that gross part which is the instrument by which the spirit and soul do exert their functions and operations By all which it is most clear that though they call them faculties yet they are distinct essential parts of the whole man which is most manifest in that the body though one of these three cannot be a faculty but a meer instrument and yet is one of the essential parts that doth integrate the whole man But whosoever shall seriously consider how little satisfaction the definition of a faculty given by either Philosophers or Physicians will bring to a clear understanding may easily perceive that distinct parts are commonly taken to be faculties 4. The first argument that this learned Physician urgeth to prove that there are two Souls in man the one sensitive and corporeal the other rational immortal and incorporeal is in this order But he saith whereas it is said that the rational soul doth by it self exercise every of the animal faculties it is most of all improbable because the actions and passions of all the animal senses and motions are corporeal divided and extended to various parts to perform which immediately the incorporeal and indivisible soul if so be it be finite seemeth unfit or unable Further he saith what belongeth unto that vulgar opinion that the sensitive soul is subordinate to the rational and as it were swallowed up of it that that which is the soul in brutes in man becomes a meer power these are the trifles of the Schools For how should the sensitive soul of man which before hath been in act a subsistent material and extended substance losing its essence at the advent of the rational soul degenerate into a meer qualitie But if it be asserted that the rational soul by its advent also doth introduce life and sensation then man doth not generate an animated man but only a formless body or a rude heap of flesh 5. Another argument he useth to prove these two souls in man is this Therefore he saith it being supposed that the rational soul doth come to the body before animated of the other corporeal soul we may inquire by what band or tye seeing it is a pure spirit can it be united to this seeing it hath not parts by which it might be tied or adhere to the whole or any of the parts And therefore he thinketh that concerning this point it is to be said with most learned Gassendus That the corporeal soul is the immediate subject of the rational soul of which seeing it is the act perfection complement and form also by it the rational soul is made or becometh the form and act of the humane body But seeing that it doth scarce seem like or necessary that the whole corporeal soul should be possessed of the whole rational soul Therefore it is lawful to determine that this rational
imposture 2. If they be run up to their first Author or Venter of the Tale he will but be found a single Witness which is utterly insufficient in evidencing truly a matter of fact 3. The Relaters of them did publish them for interest sake and upon design to advance false Doctrine Worship Superstition and Idolatry and therefore are not of validity and credit 4. In themselves if strictly considered they will appear to be lying ridiculous contradictory in themselves and contrary to the authority of Divine Writ and dissonant to sound and right reason and therefore ought to have no other entertainment but as abominable lyes and forgeries 3. But if matters of fact be witnessed and attested by many or divers persons that were ear and eye-witnesses yet may their testimony bear no weight in the balance of Justice or right Reason because they may be corrupt in point of interest and so have their judgments mis-guided and biassed by the corruption of their desires and affections or relate things out of spleen envy and malice and so may not in these mysterious matters be fit authority to rely upon nor competent evidence in these particulars as Dr. Casaubon is forced to confess in these words In the relation of strange things whether natural or supernatural to know the temper of the Relator if it can be known and what interest he had or might probably be supposed to have had in the relation to have it believed And again whether he profess to have seen it himself or taken it upon the credit of others And whether a man by his profession in a capacity probable to judge of the truth of those things to which he doth bear witness Every one of these particulars would require a particular consideration For if there be interest in point of Religion then all authorities all colour of reason is drawn in to make good this interest and verity is commonly stifled in this contest for selfness and interest and the adverse parties stigmatized with all the filthy lyes and enormous crimes that can be invented as is most manifest in these instances The Popish party finding themselves hindred and opposed in point of the highest interest have forged a thousand false stories and tales to make good the interest of their Party and have left no dirt and dung unscraped up to throw in the faces of their Opponents and so have each Party done against other where religious interest was the quarrel as Bishop Hall hath truly observed in this passage where he is shewing the abominable corruptions of the Church of Rome A Religion that cares not by what wilful falshoods it maintains a part as Wickliffs blasphemy Luthers advice from the Devil Tindals Community Calvins feigned Miracle and blasphemous death Bucers neck broken Beza's Revolt the blasting of Huguenots Englands want of Churches and Christendom Queen Elizabeths unwomanliness her Episcopal Jurisdiction her secret fruitfulness English Catholicks cast in Bears skins to Dogs Plesses shameful overthrow Garnats straw the Lutherans obscene Night-Revels Scories drunken Ordination in a Tavern the Edict of our gracious King James An. 87. for the establishment of Popery our casting the crusts of our Sacrament to Dogs and ten thousand of this nature maliciously raised against knowledge and conscience for the disgrace of those whom they would have hated e're known The rise of this opinion that we are disputing against that the Devil makes a visible and corporeal League with the Witches that he sucks upon their bodies hath carnal Copulation with them and that they are changed into Hares Dogs Cats or Wolves and the like was soon after the thirteenth hundred year of Christ when as Frederick the Second had made a Law temporal for the burning of Hereticks And not long after that was the Inquisition set up in Rome and Spain and then did the Inquisitors and their Adherents draw in from the Heathen Poets and all other Authors whatsoever might carry any colour of authority or reason the better to countenance their bloody and unjust proceedings where they drew thousands of people into the snare of the Inquisition for pretended Witchcraft which they made to be Heresie And whatsoever these have written concerning these things such as Delrio Bodinus Romigius Springerus Niderus Spineus Grillandus and a whole rabble besides not necessary to be named are nothing but lyes and forgeries and deserve no credit at all for these reasons 1. Because as many of them as either were Inquisitors themselves or those that had any dependence upon them or received benefit by their proceedings are all unjust and corrupt Authors and Witnesses as writing and bearing witness for their own ends interest and profit having a share in the Goods and Estates of all that were convicted and condemned and the Wolf and Raven will be sure to give judgment on the Serpents side that he may devour the man though never so innocent because they hope to have a share of his flesh or at least to pick the bones 2. These Authors that were the first Broachers of these monstrous stories of Apparitions and Witches and are so frequently quoted by others that ought to have been more wary and might have seen reason enough to have rejected all their feigned lyes and delusions were not only sharers in the spoil of the Goods of the condemned who were judged per fas nefas but also had another base end and interest to wit to advance the opinion of Purgatory praying for the dead setting up the vain Superstitions of the virtue of the sign of the Cross holy Water and the like And therefore they did forge so many stories of Apparitions and Souls coming forth of Purgatory and recorded so many false lying and impossible things from the forced extorted and pretended confessions of the Witches themselves which were nothing else but an Hotch-potch of horrid and abominable lyes not to be credited because the Authors only invented them to promote their own base ends and wretched interests Again where Authors are engaged for interest sake they fall into heat passion malice and envy and what they cannot make out by strength of arguments they labour to make good by lyes and scandals as is most apparent in this one Example we shall here give Henricus Cornelius Agrippa a person in his time well known to most of the Learned in Europe and admired for his general and universal skill in all kind of Learning having published a Piece which he styled A Declaration of the incertitude and vanity of Sciences and Arts and the excellency of the Word of God wherein amongst other things he had sharply taxed the Monks and Fryars and other Orders of their ignorance idleness and many other crimes and misdemeanors whereby certain Theologasters of Lovain netled with their own guilt did in bitter malice draw up certain Articles against him therein accusing him of Errour Impiety and Heresie and had so far incensed Charles the Fifth then Emperour against him that
Fascination and then diabolical is but in vain and needless 7. How can the Witches if not maniacal in the highest degree believe that the Devil who is a Lyar and the Father of lyes and whom they cannot but know hath in the like cases deceived many that have in their opinion made contracts with him will prove true in the performance of his promise Or that he who is the enemy of all truth and goodness and laboureth to deceive all Mankind will be faithful to perform his promise or to do them any good either real or apparent Or if the Witches be not incredibly mad can they believe that he will perform without Hostages Bonds-men or Sureties when we find that the weakest and maddest of Mortals if he make a Covenant with another of known loosness and deceit though for a thing of a far less value than either soul or body will he not require sufficient Bonds-men and Security Now what Bonds-men or Security can the Witches have 8. And if the Witches be not beyond measure deluded and mad must they not rationally know that if the Devil deceive them as he is sure to do there is no recompence to be had nor any that can compel him to perform bargains Before what Judicature before what Judges by what Law must they call him to an account or have him punished So that in all reason and sound judgment we must conclude the Witches to be absolutely mad and then all these things also madness lyes and folly or that there is not nor ever was any such League or Covenant 9. But if all this were granted yet who are the Witnesses to this visible League or Covenant can the Witches name or find any The things that cannot be proved by sufficient Witnesses are never to be believed and we have proved the nullity impossibility and falsity of the pretended Confessions of Witches themselves and therefore that no credit at all ought to be given unto them and however no Law nor Equity ought to allow the Evidence of a Party as in these cases all Witches are And though some few of them have been so exceedingly mad to make such false and absurd Confessions yet if the Records of all Ages and Courts were sought it will be found that many hundreds of them have suffered that never confessed the least tittle of any such matter and the supposed Witches of Salmesbury in the County of Lancaster the tenth year of the Raign of King James were so far from this confession that they were cleared and the accusation found to be false and all acted by the imposture of one Thompson or Christopher Southworth And I my self have known two supposed Witches to have been put to death at Lancaster within these eighteen years that did utterly deny any such League or ever to have seen any visible Devil at all and may not the confession of these who both dyed penitently be as well credited as the confessions of those that were brought to such confessions by force fraud or cunning perswasion and allurements But if there be any such League or Covenant betwixt the Witches and the Devil how cometh the truth of this matter of fact if ever there were or could be any such thing to be certainly known and revealed Have any of the Pen-men of the holy Scriptures recorded that there ever was is or can be any such League or Contract Or was it ever attested by any honest rational men that were ear or eye-witnesses of such a bargain and contract Therefore we must once again conclude De non apparentibus non existentibus eadem est ratio 10. As for the Witches either Males or Females having carnal Copulation with Devils either as an Incubus or Succubus and their stealing of seed from a man and conveying it into the vessels of the woman it is in it self so horrid monstrous and incredible that I cannot well believe him to be a rational person or sanae mentis that believes it as a truth and therefore cannot but think the rehearsal of it a sufficient confutation Also herein I do appeal to all learned Physicians who do know the way that Nature breeds humane seed the causes that make it prolifical and the members fit for its generation and reception who I doubt not will deride this Tenent and condemn it as false and abominable Moreover the horrid absurdity of it hath been sufficiently demonstrated by Wierus Dr. Tandlerus Mr. Scot Mr. Wagstaff and others and therefore all we shall say is this That Devils whether conceived to be corporeal or incorporeal and to assume bodies for the one it must of necessity be were not created of God to generate neither have they nor can have any seed or members fit for generation and therefore to copulate or generate is derogatory from the glory of Nature and blasphemous against God and his Power As for the Devils sucking the Teats Warts or such like excrescences of the Witches bodies we should have passed it over as easily as the former but only that Mr. Glanvil hath taken up the Cudgels to defend it to confute which we shall give these satisfactory Reasons 1. There can be no rational end assigned why the Devil should perform this action for we must tell Mr. Glanvil that supposals are no proofs and ex suppositis supposita consequuntur and in a thing of this nature arguments to prove it probable are insufficient And if as he confesseth for their being suckt by the Familiar I say he saith We know so little of the Nature of Demons and Spirits that 't is no wonder we cannot certainly divine the reason of so strange an action Now if he knew so little of their Nature it must needs be vanity and arrogance to take upon him to declare so much and if he could not certainly divine the reason of so strange an act it was extreme folly and pride in him to bring in idle and vain conjectures and probability where verity and certainty are expected One while he supposeth them corporeal which if granted will not prove that they are recreated by the reeks and vapours of humane blood because their bodies are of a more pure Nature than to be nourished with gross and sometimes especially in melancholick old men and women corrupted blood for if every thing be nourished by its like then they cannot be fed with humane blood for they have no flesh nor bones such as ours that have need to be nourished with blood And for his next perhaps and may be that it is a diabolical Sacrament we shall believe it when he proves it and not before But he hath a third supposal which to him seemeth most probable viz. That the Familiar doth not only suck the Witch but in the action infuseth some poysonous ferment into her If this had been most probable why did he bring in the other two that are less probable surely he might have known that srustra fit per
saith these men that come to infuse false Doctrines into you behave themselves as cunningly as they can and do labour to imitate and seem to do those very things that we true Apostles do And 't is no unusual matter for Deceivers and Seducers to do so for Satan himself pretends to do those things that the good Angels do makes as if he meant you all kindness when he comes to destroy you And therefore 't is not any thing strange if seducing Hereticks imployed by him do imitate the actions of the Apostles of Christ but according to the hypocrisie of their actions so shall their ends be See Theophylact and Calvin upon the place So that we positively conclude that from this place of Scripture no real or essential transformations of Devils can be proved at all 6. There are natural Transformations by progression to perfection as is manifest in Insects which at the first to our view do appear to be Worms Maggots Creepers or Caterpillers and yet afterwards do become several sorts of winged Creatures as Butterflies of many and various kinds Flies and the like as that Creature which here in the North Fishers do call a May-Fly is first but a little Creeper inclosed in an Hull as of pieces of straws or the like and so that which they call a Cod-bait is like a yellow Maggot with a black head inclosed in a sandy crustaceous Husk and yet towards the middle of August or the beginning of September becometh a fine yellowish Fly which the Fishers use to bait withal and these are but gradual progressions towards the perfection of the Animalcle as the learned Author Johannes Swammerdanus hath declared in these words as we find it laid down in the Philosophical Transactions First it lays down the ground of all natural changes in Insects declaring that by the word Change is nothing else to be understood but a gradual and natural evolution and growth of the parts not any Metamorphosis or Transformation of them and a great deal more of notable observations concerning the most sorts of Insects as may be seen in the piece quoted in the Margent So likewise there are very many strange transformations wrought by petrifactions both of Vegetables and Animals or their parts as may be seen by the Writings of many learned Authors especially those noted in the Margent to whom we refer the curious Inquirer These being natural Transfigurations for so they may be properly called we cannot rationally suppose that any man of judgment will imagine that any such can be produced by Devils or Witches because they are brought forth by natural Principles and Agents which Devils or Witches cannot over-rule alter nor hinder else the whole and certain course that the Creator hath set in the order of the production and generation of natural things might be suspended which is not possible to be performed without an omnipotent Power which the Devils and Witches have not Besides the most of these require a suitable time for their production and perfection which must only be performed by the internal operation of Nature or by Art accelerating the works of Nature which Devils and Witches cannot bring to pass 7. There are divers other Transformations at least so accounted and called which because they are not absolutely pertinent to our purpose we shall only mention slightly 1. External changes of the body in respect of diseases and some by an extraordinary power as that of Moses to whom the Lord said Put now thine hand into thy bosom And he put his hand into his bosom And when he took it out behold his hand was leprous as snow And he said Put thine hand into thy bosom again And he put his hand into his bosom again and plucked it out of his bosom and behold it was turned again as his other flesh Here we see that the same hand was made leprous white as snow and was again restored as his other flesh And this was done by a divine Power such as neither Devils nor Witches can perform So Gehazi of whom it is said The leprosie therefore of Naaman shall cleave unto thee and unto thy seed for ever And he went out from his presence a leper as white as snow And here the judgment was permanent and no restauration and was a great Miracle which Devils and Witches cannot perform 2. There is feigned and artificial transfigurations So of David of whom it is said And he changed his behaviour before them and feigned himself mad in their hands and scrambled on the doors of the gate and let his spittle fall down upon his beard And all this he prudently feigned that he might escape from Achish the King of Gath of whom he was sore afraid So many Persons of Worth have disguised themselves strangely that they might escape the hands of their enemies or not fall into their power and yet these were not done by the Devils Art nor by Witchcraft So a Stage-player transfigureth himself sometimes to personate one person and sometimes another and though his outward habit speech and action be changed yet he remaineth the same in Nature and Person that he was before those changes and so maketh nothing for Witcheraft at all 3. There are knavish Transfigurations and Counterfeiting for deceitful and wicked ends as in those we call Gypsies that discolour their faces and skins to be more fit to cheat and cozen So likewise do many other vile and wicked persons counterfeit Sores Ulcers Leprosie Dropsie and such like diseases as may be seen at large in Ambrose Paraeus Book of Monsters and we have seen and detected divers and all this done only to deceive and abuse mens goodness and charity But no more of Devil in any of these but the wickedness of the mind and the evil of the end and intention Of a more wicked grain and temper are those that for wicked and devilish ends counterfeit themselves to be possessed and labour to make the World believe that the Devil doth move in divers parts of their bodies and doth speak in them when it is nothing but only their own devilish cunning in lying and counterfeiting as we shall have occasion to shew more fully hereafter 4. There are also divers kinds of sportive and delusive Transformations performed by those that use the Art of Leger-de-main or Juggling wherein they pretend and seem to transubstantiate one thing into another when by the agility of their hands and the gesture of their face and body they do but draw your eyes and attention another way while they do but nimbly convey another thing in its place And he that taketh these for Conjurers or Witches and their Tricks for diabolical or Witchcraft are surely under a devilish delusion and are most strangely bewitched And as for the changes wrought by Pharaohs Magicians we shall particularly handle it in another place 8. There are other Transformations mentioned in the Scripture of which we shall now speak 1.
that disguise to fright Travellers and Passengers that thereby they might for without doubt the old man had other Companions more securely rob them and so escape and not be discovered or apprehended which might make him afraid to be seen or to seek it again 2. We may note the curiosity of the young man and the strength of his fancy being moved to see himself so fitly to appearance to be so like a Wolf and not to the steams flowing from the Wolfes skin to work upon his imagination which we leave to the inquisition of Naturalists that live in Countries where Wolves are to make tryal of So having sufficiently disproved their supposition or assumption that Nebuchadnezzar was essentially transformed into a beast we shall also shew the consequence that if it had been true they would draw from it to wit that if Nebuchadnezzar were really transformed into a beast much more may the Devil transform himself into the shape of any Creature and may change Witches into Cats Dogs Hares and the like which can by no true Rules of Argument be good because it stands upon divers or rather contrary efficients namely God and the Devil The one having of himself an absolute and indeterminate power and therefore of himself able to work what he will where when and howsoever best pleaseth himself And so by consequence he might if it had so seemed good in his wisdom have essentially transformed Nebuchadnezzar into an ox The other the Devil I mean he hath only a finite and limited power and therefore utterly unable of himself to accomplish any one work beyond the bounds of that power and so by consequence he cannot possibly transform himself essentially into any Creature whatsoever without a special power from God Lastly we shall conclude all with this binding Argument what transubstantiations soever are wrought the thing transformed ceases to be what it was before both in nature and properties as Lots Wife being transubstantiated into a Pillar of Salt did cease to be flesh blood and bones as she was before and lost all the properties of humane Nature So if Devils or Witches be transubstantiated into other Creatures they cease to be what they were before both in Nature and Properties And then by consequence the Devil should cease to be a Devil in Nature and Properties and the Witches should cease to have humane Nature and Properties in them Having laid down these positive Arguments we shall in the next place shew the horrid absurdities of these Tenents to wit of holding a visible Contract that the Devil sucks upon the Witches bodies that they have carnal Copulation together or that they are essentially changed into Cats Dogs or Hares or that they can flye in the air or raise storms or tempests and kill men or Cattel and the like and that in this order 1. These Tenents do derogate from the Wisdom and Power of God in his Government of the World by divine Providence because by these it is supposed that the Devils and Witches do operate what when and howsoever it pleaseth them and so the life and estate of all Creatures should be in their power to afflict torment or to destroy when they please which is both false and blasphemous For the Devils and wicked men are enemies and rebels against God but yet conquered and imprisoned and chained close up by his Almighty Power that they are not able to act any thing at all except the evil of their own wills nor put that into execution but as far as God doth license and order them which we shall make plain in these two particulars 1. The Devils are kept in chains of darkness unto the judgment of the great day that is though their wills be corrupt wicked and evil and that they have a continual desire like a roaring lion to seek whom they may devour yet are they restrained from acting this evil by the mighty Power of God and can execute nothing at all but only as far as God doth order and command them so the Devils could not by their own power enter into the herd of Swine until Christ gave them leave neither could Satan hurt Job either in his goods or body though he strongly and earnestly desired it until he had leave and commission given him from God No more can Devils or Witches perform these things that are pretended for it can never be proved that ever God did or will give them order or leave to perform any such filthy or wicked thing for which there can be no reason or end assigned why God should order such things to be done so far different and opposite to the rules of his Justice Wisdom and Providence 2. Nor can wicked persons act what they please but God doth bridle and restrain them as he pleaseth for though Pilate proudly thought and boasted that he had power to condemn Christ or to let him loose yet our Saviour tells him Thou couldst have no power at all against me except it were given thee from aboâ—e Upon which place learned Dr. Hammond saith thus So that thou hast neither right nor power to inflict any punishment one me were it not that God who is my Father hath in his great Wisdom and divine Counsels for most glorious ends for the good of the World determined to deliver me up into thy power to suffer death under thee Of which another saith thus Verba haec duobus modis accipi possunt partim quia omnis potestas est à Deo divinâ ordinatione partim quia qui cum potestate est nihil planè potest nisi ex Dei efficaci dispensatione ac providentia So this is manifest in the excessive pride and boasting of Sennacherib of his own power and taking no notice of Gods inevitable Decree in his Providence that it was he even the Lord of Hosts that had done it and of ancient times had formed it without which Sennacherib could have done nothing but because he despised Gods Power and Providence therefore saith the Lord Therefore will I put my hook in thy nose and my bridle in thy lips and I will turn thee back by the way by which thou camest which was performed by the slaughter of his Army and the sending him back into his own Country so little do mens purposes and counsels prevail when the Lords will and purpose are against them 2. These Tenents do divert and obstruct the power and practice of Godliness For while the Saints of God are taught that they are to fight the good sight of Faith and if they intend to be crowned they must fight stoutly and gain the victory knowing that they fight not against flesh and blood but against spiritual wickedness in high places and that therefore they are to take unto them the whole Armour of God Therefore they knowing that this warfare is spiritual and against spiritual enemies and that the weapons both offensive and defensive are also spiritual
these particulars 1. He doth not at all deny the existence or beings of Spirits neither that Spirits do not or cannot make visible apparitions but doth grant both 2. But he restrains these apparitions to those inseparable properties that belong to Bodies and Spirits that is a body that is to say an humane body hath flesh and bones but a Spirit hath neither as Christs or humane bodies have and therefore saith a learned Person upon the place Docet se non esse Spiritum hoc modo Spiritus inquit non habet carnem ossa Ego verò ut conspicitis habeo carnem ossa Ergo ego non sum Spiritus Vide igitur ex sensu sensibilibus sensu nimirum visus sensu tactus ex visibilibus tractabilibus se corpus esse non autem Spiritum edocet Per sensum enim fides gignitur confirmatur So that whether Spirits be taken to be corporeal and so appear in their own bodies or to be incorporeal and so to appear in assumed bodies yet are they both to sight and especially to feeling not as humane bodies are that have flesh and bones So that however they do may or can appear for it must be considered in that latitude else our Saviours argument would not be irrefragable and convincing they to the resistibility of touching cannot be as flesh and bones are for they to the sense of touching do resist and are solid but so the bodies of Spirits in what appearance soever have not nor can have otherwise our Saviours argument falls to the ground and proves nothing 3. He confirmeth this by the Disciples own proof of feeling and touching the prints or scars of the nails in his hands and the print of the wound in his side and thereby manifesteth that it was he himself and the very same individual body in which he suffered by which Thomas his great unbelief and doubting was unanswerably satisfied by putting his fingers into or upon the very prints of the nails and by putting his hand into or upon the wound or scar upon his side And therefore though the same power that raised him from the dead and rouled the sealed stone from the Sepulchre could have perfected his body to be without prints or scars of the wounds yet did the divine Wisdom reserve them thereby to cure the infidelity of his Disciples and undeniably to confirm the truth of his Resurrection to which purpose one said well Ibi ad dubitantium corda sananda vulnerum sunt servata vestigia And the further to establish and settle their Faith he took a piece of a broiled fish and of an honey-comb and eat before them all which concluded him to have a true body and that he was not a Spirit from whence we draw these conclusions 1. That howsoever Spirits do or may appear they have not or can have such a body that in respect of tangibility is as flesh and bones For flesh and bones are dense solid and make sensible resistance to the touch but the bodies of Spirits in their apparitions are not nor can be so For as we deny not but there are and may be apparitions in any figure or shape yet they can but be as the figures and shapes in the Clouds which are often seen and cause much wonder though we suppose many of them may be rather attributed to the assimilation made in mens fancies than to their real existence in those forms or shapes So they may be as shadows or the species of bodies that we see near or afar off or as the images that we behold of our selves and other things in Mirrours or Looking-glasses which though without doubt they be not non-entities for nullius entis nulla est operatio but these affect the senses which is an operation or action yet do they all easily yield to the touch and have no firmness nor solidity as flesh and bones have and this is all that can be justly deduced from our Saviours argumentation 2. Either we must believe that our Saviours argument is of no force and validity which is blasphemous and horrid to affirm or imagine he being the way the truth and the life and in whose mouth there was found no guile and thereby overthrow the whole foundation of the Christian Religion or else we must for certain believe that Spirits whensoever they appear have no such solidity or resistibility as to touch as flesh and bones have And consequently that what strange things soever we may by sight and touch take to be the apparitions of Spirits that to touch have the solidity of flesh and bones we must conclude that they are not Spirits but must be some other kind of Creatures of whose nature and properties we are to inquire for doubtless as we shall manifest hereafter there are many strange Creatures that for their rarity or strange qualities have been and are mistaken for the apparition of Spirits For the Disciples doubts must still have remained unsatisfied if Spirits could appear to have bodies to touch of that solidity that flesh and bones are of and then the truth of our Saviours Resurrection falls to the ground and the Christian Faith is vain 3. Therefore that Demons do appear in the shape of Dogs Cats and the like and do carry the heavy bodies of Witches in the air do suck upon their bodies and have carnal copulation with them must suppose them to have bodies as solid and tangible as flesh and bones and so overthrow the main proof of our Saviours Resurrection and consequently the very foundation of the Christian Religion For if Christ be not risen our faith is vain we are yet in our sins and are of all men most miserable as having only hope in this life and no further And this is sufficient to shew the horrid and execrable absurdity of these opinions which objection Mr. Glanvil calls spiteful and mischievous but durst not undertake the solution but with a plain shuffle leaves and over-runs it as indeed being too hard a morsel for his tender teeth And if any do object as we have heard some do that three Angels did appear unto Abraham in the Plains of Mamre as he sate in the Tent-door and did eat and drink and washed their feet and therefore that they had flesh and bones to that we return this responsion 1. It is a very froward and perverse way of arguing to make one place of Scripture to clash with another when they ought all to be expounded according to the Analogy of Faith and it is a perfect Harmony which we ought to labour to find out and rejoyce in 2. It is no perfect way of arguing from the Dispensations in the time of the Patriarchs and Prophets to those that God useth now in the time of the Gospel for so they might argue that God should answer by Urim and Thummim because he did so in the time of the Levitical Priesthood but that is now ceased
yea the Devils in the infernal pit and in the air do perform but without voice in a spiritual manner 3. If this opinion were true then the blessed Souls being divested from their Bodies should not have a communion one with another nor should jointly praise and glorifie God together which were false and absurd and therefore the learned Father said well It is to be holden stedfastly that the offices of the Heavenly Hoast are by no means performed in silence seeing we may read that the Angelical powers before the Throne of the Lord do sound forth his praise with unwearied voices 4. The sleights and subtil machinations for he hath his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or devices of Satans Kingdom could not be carried on if he had not a way and means to communicate them to the rest of the Crew of his inferiour Fiends and therefore doth plainly prove that there is a way of hidden Mystical and Spiritual discourse which the Devil might and did represent to the mind and understanding of Evah whereby she was seduced and that there was no need of a vocal and audible interlocution and so much in answer to his objection The next place of Scripture that is commonly brought and urged thereby to prove the great power of Devils and Witches is that of Pharaohs Magicians from whence they argue thus If the Magicians of Pharaoh were able by the power and assistance of the Devil to change their Rods into Serpents the Water into Blood and to produce Frogs Why may not Witches by the power and assistance of the Devil change themselves and other things into strange and several shapes and do the rest of the feats that are ascribed unto them But though this be but petitio principii a begging of the question that by the assistance of the Devil they did these things which is neither supposed nor granted but ought first to have been proved And though in the case of hardening Pharaohs heart there might be and was a peculiar dispensation from God at that time yet it will not follow that God doth always dispense with and give the Devil leave to operate the like things and so nothing firmly can be concluded from hence Yet I say though these be so we shall pretermit them and come to the full opening and discussion of the matter and that in these two particulars 1. How far the Devils power and assistance did concurr with the actions and performances 2. And wherein he did not concurr nor act at all 1. We shall grant that Pharaoh and the Magicians being Idolaters and worshippers of false gods their ends were principally to magnifie the power of their Idols and to manifest that their supposed gods could work and bring to pass as strange miracles or wonders as Moses and Aaron could perform by the assistance of the God of the Hebrews and in respect of this end they had all the assistance that Satan and his dark kingdom of Angels could afford them in a spiritual and hellish way for he is the Prince of the power of the air that worketh in the children of disobedience for such were both Pharaoh and his Magicians And to this purpose doth the Apostle tell us speaking of false and seducing teachers That they were like Jannes and Jaâ—bres that withstood Moses in their resisting of the truth so that the Magicians of Pharaoh were condemned for resisting the truth of that message that Moses and Aaron brought and of those real miracles that they performed and so in respect of the wicked end they aimed at they were assisted with the power and concurrence of the Devil and in that respect only were his servants and instruments But as for the second particular namely the efficient causes and â—eans of the producing of those thing that the Magicians did we affirm they were performed by the power of nature and art and that the Devil was no efficient cause of their production and that by these irrefragable arguments 1. Those that affirm that the Devil did or can produce such strange effects do also acknowledge that what he performeth in natural and elementary Bodies is done by applying natural agents to natural and fit patients which dotruly bring to pass such strange effects and that he doth no more but only make the local application of them From whence it must necessarily follow that the effects flow from natural agents and so no causality at all can be ascribed unto him except that fictitious one of being causa sine qua non which is as much as no cause And besides that there is no proof that he maketh this local application for if he be incorporeal then it is simply impossible that he should perform any such matter and however a man by natural power and means if he know the fit and apt actives and passives may perform them himself and so his assistance is needless and we have never yet met with any argument that bore any convincing force that might induce us to believe that he is so great a Naturalist 2. There are many persons that think themselves no mean sharers in the most sorts of learning and others that are very strait laced in their pretended zeal for godliness and in detesting the works of Satan that even startle and shew an abhorrency at the word Magick if it be but once named as though there were no Magick but what is diabolical or that which they call diabolical were any other way evil but only in the end and use for there are many plants and minerals that though poysonous are yet notwithstanding good in respect of their Creation and the good uses that may be made of them as to kill noxious animals that are hurtful unto man But if any forth of malice and wickedness should use them to poyson and destroy Men and Women it were wicked and diabolical in the end and use yet were the means lawful and natural So whatsoever the Devil may do by wicked Men his instruments in leading and drawing them to make use of the great magnalia naturae to work strange wonders by thereby to confirm Idolatry and Superstition or to resist the truth and such devilish ends though the end and use may be wicked and diabolical yet the efficient cause is natural and lawful And therefore we can find no other ground or reason of dividing Magick into natural and Diabolical but only that they differ in the end and use for otherwise they both work by a natural agency and means seeing the Devil can do nothing above or contrary to that course that God hath set in nature Therefore may men do without the aid of Devils whatsoever they can do seeing they have no advantage over us but operate only by applying active things to passive like as Men do And therefore said that most learned Philosopher Chymist and Mathematician our Countreyman Roger Bacon excellent well in these words non igitur oportet nos
and incorporeal 4. There is nothing that is more undoubtedly true than what the Lord Verulam hath told us in these words Causa vero radix ferè omnium malorum in scientiis ea una est quod dum ment is humanae vires falso miramur extollimus vera ejus auxilia non quaeramus And again Subtilit as naturae subtilitatem sensûs intellectûs multis partibus superat the which may be proved from many undeniable instances which need not here be mentioned only we shall add what the aforesaid learned Lord speaks to the same purpose which is this The fault of sense is twofold For it either forsaketh or deceiveth us For first there are many things that escape the sense though rightly disposed and no way impeded either by the subtilty of the whole body or by the minuteness of the parts or by the distance of place or tardity and velocity of motion or by the familiarity of the object or by reason of other causes Neither again where the sense doth apprehend the thing are those apprehensions sufficiently firm For the testimony and information of sense is always from the Analogie of Man not from the Analogie of the Universe And it is altogether asserted with great error that sense is the measure of things Neither can these notions the Doctor would make so clear be had or gathered without some intimation from some of the senses 2. Further the Doctor tells us that the Idea of a Spirit is as easie a notion as of any other substance whatsoever And he also saith Nevertheless I shall not at all stick to affirm that his Idea or notion speaking of God is as easy as any notion else whatsoever and that we may know as much of him as of any thing else in the World This later he speaketh concerning God But that these assertions are unsound these following reasons will sufficiently evince 1. He doth define a Spirit thus A Spirit is a substance penetrable and indiscerpible Now if it be true that he affirms before that the subject or naked essence or substance of a thing is utterly unconceiveable to any of our faculties and that if we take away aptitudes operations properties and modifications from a subject that then the conception vanisheth into nothing but into the Idea of a meer undiversificated substance so that one substance is not then distinguishable from another but only from accidents or modes to which properly belongs no subsistence So then if we take away penetrability and indiscerpibility which are but the modes and properties of a Spirit whose genus he maketh substance to be then it vanisheth into an indistinguishable notion and so his definition comes to nothing 2. For if substances be known by their properties and modifications as we grant they are the modifications and properties must of necessity be some ways known unto us but there are no ways either by common notions evidence of the senses or sound deductions of reason that can certainly inform us of these properties or modifications of penetrability and indiscerpibility and the Doctor yet never proved either but is only a bare supposition and a melancholy figment 3. He tells us that all substance has dimensions that is length breadth and depth but all has not impenetrability and boldly saith It is not the Characteristical of a body to have dimensions but to be impenetrable to which we answer It is strongly asserted by learned Helmont that by the ultimate strength of nature bodies do sometimes penetrate themselves and one another and to that purpose he giveth convincing examples and concludeth thus from them Invenio equidem naturae contiguam dimensionum penetrationem licet non ordinariam And after saith thus Quibus constat corpora solida satis magna penetrasse stomachum intestina uterum omentum abdomen pleuram vesicam membranas inquam tanti vulneris impatientes Id est absque vulnere cultros per istas membranas transmissos Quod aequivalet penetrationi dimensionum factae in natura absque ope Diaboli And to the same purpose that most acute person Dr. Glisson handling this very point saith Verum enimverò si sola quantitas actualis sit causa impenetrabilitatis corporum ut ex supra dictis liquet eaque sit naturaliter mutabilis quid impedit ne substantia materialis aliam substantiam mutatâ quantitate novâque simul assumptâ utrisque communi penetret And therefore we may as confidently deny his assumption that Impenetrability is the Characteristical of body as he affirm it without proof and must with all the whole company of the learned assign Extension to be the true and Genuine Character of Body And further he granting that substance hath length breadth and depth we must of necessity conclude that whatsoever hath those properties must needs be material and corporeal and so that which he would make to be Spirit is meerly Body 4. Whereas he saith that the notion of Spirit is as easy a notion as any other whatsoever it is granted but is not at all to the purpose for our inquiry need not be of the facility of a notion but of the verity of it that is of the congruity and adequation of the notion and the thing from whence it is taken otherwise though the notion be easy yet without an adequate congruity to the thing it is meerly false As for instance when a melancholy person doth verily imagine himself to be changed into a Wolf or Dog it is not only an easy notion but also it is truly a notion and yet a false notion because there is no true congruity betwixt it and the thing from whence it is taken the Body of the person so conceiving being not at all changed into Wolf or Dog but still retaining its humane shape and figure And therefore the Lord Verulam doth to this point speak truly and clearly in these words Itaque si notiones ipsae mentis quae verborum quasi anima sunt totius hujusmodi structurae ac fabricae basis malè ac temere à rebus abstractae vagae nec satis definitae circumscriptae denique multis modis vitiosae fuerint omniaruunt And therefore the Doctor might very well have considered whether these his new notions had been fitly and rightly drawn from the things to which he doth so confidently affix them before he had so boldly asserted them which though they be truly his notions that is that he did think conceive and frame them yet they are not truly abstracted from the things And so he may be rather judged to be led by speculative and Philosophick Euthusiasm than by the clear light of a sound understanding 5. And concerning his Tenent that the Idea or Notion of God is a◠easy as the notion of any thing else whatsoever that the notion may be easy we grant but whether it be true and adequate there lies the question For those
old Hereticks that held that God had Eyes Ears Head Hands and Feet and the like had an easie notion of it conceiving him to have humane members but I hope the Doctor will not say that this notion of theirs was a notion truly drawn from the nature and being of God because there is no corporeity in him at all And it is and hath been the Tenent of all Orthodox Divines Ancient Middle and Modern that God in his own nature and being is infinite and incomprehensible and therefore there can no true and adequate notion of him as being so be duly and rightly gathered in the understanding of creatures and so the Doctors position or notion must needs be Phantastry and imaginary Enthusiasm For as there are many things in nature that in themselves are finite and comprehensible that as he grants of naked essence or substance are utterly unconceivable to any of our faculties much more must the being of God that is infinite and incomprehensible which are attributes that are incommunicable be utterly unconceivable to any of our faculties And it is but the vain pride of Mans Head and Heart thereby to magnifie his own abilities whereas the Text doth pronounce this of him For vain man would be wise though he be born like a wild ass colt that lifts him up to conceit that he can fathom and comprehend the Infinite and Almighty whom the Heaven of Heavens cannot contain and therefore cannot frame a true notion of him whom perfectly he doth not understand nor comprehend and the attributes of God are matters of Faith and not the weak deductions of humane reason 3. Those that seem to idolize humane abilities and carnal reason have not only applied those so much magnified Engines to the discovery of created things wherein they have effected so little that sufficiently proclaims the invalidity of the instruments or the inauspicious application of them or both all the several sorts of Natural Philosophy hitherto found out or used being examined coming far short of solving the Phaenomena of nature when even the least animal or vegetable affords matter enough to puzle and non-plus the greatest Philosopher so that we may justly complain with Seneca that the greatest part of those things we know are the least part of those things we know not These engines I say though proving ineffectual to find out the true notions and knowledge of natural things have also like the fiction of the Gyants notwithstanding invaded Heaven and taken upon them to discover and determine of Celestials wherein it is in a manner totally blind or sees but with an Owl-like vision For indeed the deciding of this point must be taken from the Divine authority of the Scriptures and the clear deductions that may be drawn from thence for this is that clear light that we ought to follow and not the Dark-lanthorn of Mans blind frail and weak reason for it is a sure word of Prophecie whereunto it is good to take heed and not to vain Philosophy old Wives Fables or opposition of Sciences falsly so called And therefore we shall conclude this point here concerning the corporeity or incorporeity of Angels with that Christian and learned position of Dr. Stillingfleet in these words But although Christianity be a Religion which comes in the highest way of credibility to the minds of Men although we are not bound to believe any thing but what we have sufficient reason to make it appear that it is revealed by God yet that any thing should be questioned whether it be of Divine revelation meerly because our reason is to seek as to the full and adequate conception of it is a most absurd and unreasonable pretence 4. In handling this point of the corporeity or incorporeity of Angels we do here once for all exclude and except forth of our discourse and arguments the humane and rational Soul as not at all to be comprised in these limits and that especially for these reasons 1. Because the humane Soul had a peculiar kind of Creation differing from the Creation of other things as appeareth in the words of the Text. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul. Upon which the note of Tremellius and Junius is anima verò hominis spiritale quiddam est divinum 2. Because I find Solomon the wisest of Men making this question who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth 3. Because it is safer to believe the nature of the Soul to be according to the Analogy of Faith and the concurrent opinion of the learned than to sift such a deep question by our weak understanding and reason So having premised these things and left this as a general exception and caution we shall proceed to the matter intended in this order 1. We lay it down for a most certain and granted truth that God simply and absolutely is only a most simple spirit in whom there is no corporeity or composition at all and what other things soever that are called or accounted spirits are but so in a relative and respective consideration and not in a simple and absolute acceptation And this is the unanimous Tenent of the Fathers Schoolmen and all other Orthodox Divines agreeing with the plain and clear words of the Scripture as God is a spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth And again Now the Lord is that spirit and where the spirit of the Lord is there is liberty Therefore we shall lay down this following proposition 2. That Angels being created substances are not simply and absolutely incorporeal but if they be by any called or accounted spirits it can but be in a relative and respective sense but that really and truly they are corporeal And this we shall labour to make good not only by shewing the absurdities of that opinion of their being simply spiritual but in laying open the unintelligibility of that opinion and by answering the most material objections 1. And first to begin at the lowest step Body is a thing that affecteth the senses most plainly and feelingly for though many bodies are so pure as the air aether steams of the Load-stone and many other steams of bodies that they escape the sight of our eyes yet are they either manifest to our feeling or otherwise made manifest by some sensible effect operation or the like yet for all this the intrinsick nature of body as such is utterly unknown unto us for when we speak of the extension of body as its Characteristical property we do but conceive of its superficial dimensions its internal nature quatenus Corpus being utterly unknown unto us it being a certain truth that Quidditates rerum non sunt cognoscibiles and as Dr Moore granteth the naked essence or substance of a thing
is utterly unconceiveable to any of our faculties From whence we argue à minori ad majus that if the substance of a body whose affections and modifications do fully incur into and work upon our senses be utterly unconceiveable to any of our senses much more of necessity must the substance of a Created spirit conceived as immaterial and incorporeal be utterly unconceiveable to any of our faculties because it hath no effects operations or modifications that can or do operate upon our senses 2. And as we know not the intrinsick nature of body so also we are ignorant of the highest degree of the purity and spiritualness of bodies nor do we know where they end and therefore cannot tell where to fix the beginning of a meer spiritual and immaterial being For there are of Created bodies in the Universe so great a diversity and of so many sorts and degrees of purity and fineness one exceeding another that we cannot assign which of them cometh nearest to incorporeity or the nature of spirit And many of these being compared with other more gross and palpable bodies may be and are called and accounted spirits though notwithstanding they be all Corporeal and but under a gradual difference So the vital part in the bodies of men are by Physicians called Spirits in relation to the bones ligaments musculous flesh and the like nay even in respect of the blood lymphatick humor lacteal juyce or the succus nutritius nervosus and yet still are contained within the limits of body and are as really Corporeal as any of the rest and so are the air and aether And those visible species of other bodies that are carried in the air and represented unto our Eyes by which we distinguish the shape colour site and similitude of one body from another though by the Schools passed over with that sleight title of qualities as though they were either simply nothing or incorporeal things are notwithstanding really Corporeal else they could not incur into nor affect the visive sensories And these do in the air intersect and pass through one another as may be optically demonstrated without Confusion Commixion or discerpsion and may comparatively be accounted spirital and incorporeal though really they be not so But what shall we say to that wonderful body Image or Idolum of our selves and other things that we behold in a mirrour or looking-glass must this be a meer nothing or an absolute incorporeal thing surely not For it is as really a body as any in the Universe though of the greatest purity and fineness of any that we know and how near it approaches to the nature of spirit is very difficult if not impossible to determine for if it did exist when the body or subject from whence it floweth were removed it might rationally be taken for a Spirit and with far more probable ground than many things else that have been vainly supposed to be Spirits And that these visible shapes of things and this Image in the glass are not meerly imaginary nothings but Corporeal Figures and steams is most manifest because they vanish when the body or subject is removed because that nullius entis nulla est operatio Incorporeum non incurrit in sensus and because they would pass through the glass but only for the foil or Bractea laid on the otherside by which the Image is reflected So that if we have bodies of so great purity and near approach unto the nature of spirit we cannot tell where spirit must begin because we know not where the purest bodies end 3. D r Moore maketh substance to be the genus and spirit and body to be the two species so that body and spirit are of one generical Identity and so there must of necessity some certain specific difference betwixt them be assigned and proved or else the division is vitious and the property of spirit not proved and so their opinion of spirit falls totally to the ground For we affirm and shall prove that though a difference be imagined and supposed yet it was never yet sufficiently proved for omnia supposita non sunt vera otherwise all the impossible figments and vain Chimaera's of melancholy and doting persons might pass for true Oracles but it is one thing truly to understand and another thing to imagine and fancy what indeed is not nor ever was And though the supposition seem never so probable and like yet it will but at the best infer the possibility of such an imagined difference but not prove it really to be so and therefore here we shall retort the Doctors Axiom against him which is this Whatsoever is unknown to us or is known but as meerly possible is not to move us or determine us any way or make us undetermined but we are to rest in the present light and plain determination of our own faculties Now that a spirit is penetrable and indiscerpible may be imagined as possible to the fancies of some but cannot be clearly intelligible to any sober mind for to imagine and to understand are faculties that are very different and however if such a difference be conceived as possible which cannot enter the narrow gate of my Intellect yet the difference of being penetrable and indiscerpible is not to move us to determine that a spirit hath those distinct properties from bodies because they are but known to us as meerly possible And therefore that these two differences of penetrability and indiscerpibility assigned by D r Moore are not sufficiently proved to be so we shall give these reasons 1. If bodies in the ultimate act of nature can penetrate themselves and one another as Helmont and D r Glisson do strongly labour to prove then penetrability is not the proper difference of spirit from body because then common to them both 2. But if it be taken for a truth and the one of necessity must be true that bodies do not or can possibly penetrate themselves or one another as the common tenent holdeth and seemeth most agreeable to verity for it is simply unintelligible and impossible to conceive that two Cubes suppose of Marble or Metal should penetrate one another and yet but to have the dimensions of one and to possess no greater space than the one did formerly fill And if this be impossible and unintelligible in respect of bodies whose properties aptitudes affections and modifications are apparent to our senses then must it be more impossible and unintelligible in substances supposed to be meerly incorporeal because they must needs be more pure and perfect and therefore less subject to such unconceiveable affections and however it can be no wayes known to our faculties or cognitive powers that they have any such specifical property or affection 3. As it is not any way manifest to any of our senses nor can be proved by any sound deductions of reason so it cannot be manifested to be any innate notion shining from the Intellect it self and
immortality Therefore the Angels whether corporeal or incorporeal are not immortal neither by themselves or their intrinsick nature either as the Schools speak à parte ante vel à parte post because God only is so exclusively considered in regard of any Creature and so the objection is of no force 2. The Corporeity of Angels doth not at all hinder their immortality à parte post for as God is only immortal in respect of Essence Eternity Infinity and Independency so Angels nor any Creatures are immortal in that point or respect but only in regard of their dependency upon God who by his conservative power doth keep them by Christ that for the time or duration to come they shall not die perish or be annihilated and this he can and doth as well perform if they be corporeal as spiritual even as he doth preserve and conserve the bodies of the Saints in their Graves until the general Resurrection and in the World to come doth keep them in immortality though they be changed and made spiritual bodies yet they remain bodies still For it is he that sustaineth all things by the power of his word And it is he that doth vivifie or quicken all things and if he gather unto himself his spirit and his breath all flesh shall perish together and man shall turn again unto dust So that the objection is of no validity because no Creature is kept in perpetual duration à parte post ab intrinsecâ naturâ sed ex causis conservantibus which is the good will benignity and blessed influence of Jehovah and not from any internal creaturely power 3. Every spiritual and incorporeal substance that is created is as annihilable by the prime power that created it as is a Corporeal created substance And on the contrary a Corporeal or material substance is no more capable of annihilation by any power or efficiency of second Causes than an incorporeal and spiritual substance is and therefore whether Angels be simply incorporeal or that they be Corporeal it neither maketh for nor against their immortality which consists only in the benign emanation of the Divine conservative power of the Almighty And therefore doth profound Bradwardine draw that invincible and undeniable Corollary of verity Quod necesse est Deum servare quamlibet Creaturam immediatiùs quacunque causa creata 4. Though the most of the bodies that are known unto us be divisible alterable and discerpible or dissipable in respect of our conceptions of them yet actually we may find many bodies in nature that are not nor ever were dissipated or dissevered secundum totum though there may be alteration in their superficial parts as the Earth the Sun Moon the rest of the Planets and those great and glorious bodies that we call Stars so that for the duration of bodies à parte post we can conclude little of certainty And as there are bodies that secundum suum totum are not severed or dissipated so there are some bodies that though they may suffer division and dissipation into smaller parts yet do those parts though most minute suffer no real transmutation but remain of the same Homogeneous nature they were before as is most manifest in Silver dissolved in Aqua fortis wherein though it be so severed and dispersed that it appear not at all unto the eye yet may it be from thence recovered and redintegrated into its own nature as it was before And also the Masters of the more abstruse Philosophy affirm to us upon their own certain experience that though metallick Mercury may be divided into insensible and invisible Atomes yet still it retains the nature of metallic Mercury and that thus Helmont tells us Si non vidissem argentum vivum eludere quamcunque artificum operam adeò quod aut totum avolet adhuc integrum aut totum in igne permaneat atque utrolibet modo servet impermutabilem sui ac primitivam identitatem identitatisque homogeneitatem anaticam dicerem artem non esse veram quae vera est sine mendacio atque longe verissima So also there are bodies which although they suffer division and separation by some other bodies dissevering of them yet by motion of coition they soon close and redintegrate themselves having thereby suffered no detriment at all as is most apparent in the pure body of the Aether the visible species of things the images in a Looking-glass and in shadows which are all bodies So that seeing bodies no more than Spirits to be annihilable by second causes and that there are some bodies that are not dissipated secundum totum and that there are others that though they are separable into more minute particles yet do they remain in Anatical and Homogeneous Identity and that there are others that though they be actually for a small moment divided yet they do instantaneously coalesce and by coition unite themselves yet we may therefore rationally conclude that corporeity quatenus such doth not at all take away immortality à parte post because bodies as well as spirits may be kept in immortality by the conservative concourse of Divine Power and so the objection utterly falls to the ground 2. There is only another argument that the persons of the other opinion have urged such as Aquinas and the rest of the Scholastick rabble to wit the Text in the Psalm which is this Who maketh his Angels spirits his ministers a flaming fire From whence they would positively conclude that they are spirits and absolutely incorporeal but fail of their purpose for these clear reasons 1. The Text there cannot be rationally understood of their creation or of their creaturely nature but of their offices and administrations because the word used there is not from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to create or form forth of nothing but from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fecit that is by ordering them in their offices and ministrations And again the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 doth not alwaies or of necessity signifie an incorporeal thing but that which is a body as the winds and so doth Luther and diverse others render it and it is commonly attributed to beasts as well as Men as in that of Solomon Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth Where the word spirit which is all one in the Hebrew is attributed to beasts as well as to men but no man I suppose will believe that the spirit of a beast is simply incorporeal and therefore by the word spirit in the Psalm cannot necessarily be understood a simple incorporeal substance and therefore the consequence is not necessary But the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews must needs be taken for the best Expositor of these words of the Psalmist who doth quote them only for this purpose to prove that Christ in dignity and office is far above-the Angels who are all ordered to serve and obey him and
should so often be turned into small powder and again restored into their former condition For he saith I have seen at Bruxells in the year 1599. that an Oxe having taken three Herbs did vomit a Dragon with a tail like an Eele a body as of leather a Serpentine Head and not less than a Partridge There is he saith an History of a Polonish Countryman seen lately of the Son of the Lord Ericius Puteanus A certain rustick did attempt himself to cut the Squinsie that he had in his throat with a short Knife which at unawares he swallowed and that at the length he did void the same at the right side of the Abdomen or lower belly with much rotten matter after great tortures and survived in health Also at Vilvordia in the year 1636. a Countryman known unto me he saith intending to feed a Cow did daily give her a bowl in which he had boiled Pot-Herbs with bran At last she waxeth leaner more and more every day and begun to halt upon the right thigh The Cow being killed the short Knife of his Wives bended back into the haft of Box is found hid betwixt the ribs and the shoulder blade For the Country Woman in cutting the rape root had left her Knife amongst the Pot-Herbs and the Cow by drinking had swallowed it Also he saith Ambrosius Paraeus relateth a story of a certain man whom Thieves had compelled to swallow a Knife which he afterwards being sound did void by an Apostume of the side Alexander Benedictus he saith doth mention another to whom an Arrow had penetrated into his back the hook of which of the breadth of three fingers he did void by stool without hurt The same Author relateth of a certain Girl of Venice who had swallowed a Needle and that after two years she voided it by urine crusted over with a stony substance Also he saith Antonius Benevenius doth relate that an Hetruscan Woman had swallowed a Copper Needle or Pin which three years after she voided at the Navil and was sound Valesius de Taranta he saith mentioneth a Girl of Venice perhaps the same who voided by urine a Pin of three fingers long A certain Capucine at Eburum called Bullonius by Sirname Hamptean did with much aversion of mind drink up an huge living Spider which he had seen fall into the Chalice in the time of the Sacrifice of the Mass. Within a few days he had a Phlegmon or bile that did arise in his right thigh and with much rotten matter from thence he voided the whole Spider but being dead A young Merchant of Antwerp being playing at Venice in his mouth with an unripe Ear of Barley did swallow the same with an huge fear of suffocation From thence after three Weeks in the left side above the Girdle an Apostume appeared and at the length with the rotten matter the same Ear of a yellow colour is extracted whole And he escaped sound With Fernelius a Student is related to be cured by him who had voided an Ear of Corn by the ribs Also Writers do commemorate that the young one sometimes dead and wasted in the Womb hath voided the bones through the Womb the belly by the na vil and sometimes by the fundament More things of this nature do every where occur amongst Authors worthy of credit 4. From which matters of fact he thus concludeth By which he saith it is manifest that solid bodies sufficiently great have penetrated the Stomach the Bowels the Womb the Caul the lower Belly the skin upon the inside of the Ribs the Bladder Membranes he saith impatient of so great a wound That is to say that Knives have been transmitted through these Membranes without wound which is equivalent to the penetration of dimensions made in nature without the help of the Devil And that an human body may be drawn through a small hole through which a Cat might only pass but not through a Wall Verily that the Devil cannot break a paper Window without the consent of his Master is he saith manifest by the process and arrest of Ludovicus Godfredus the Witch pronounced at Aix in Narbona the last of April 1611. I pray you where have the three pounds of brass of the Cannon of War marked with its letters laid hid how for so many months hath the dross shined in what part was the piece of brass greater than the intestine contained While I was he saith shewing a necessary vacuity in the air I promised that I would declare that although the penetration of bodies by the primary law of nature and by the common way of Artificers be forbidden notwithstanding that while a body doth totally pass over into the dominion of the spirit and is carried over and is by that as it were weakened then bodies do naturally and mutually penetrate one another at least in that part that is porous Because that the spirit then doth inclose the body under it self and therefore as it were taketh away the dimensions 5. And to confirm and open this point more fully he saith I will premise some things The desire of eating Muscles did invade a Woman with Child And she eateth some of them so very hastily that she did devour the raw shells twice or thrice broken with her teeth Thereupon by and by within an hour she bringeth forth a sound and adult Child with the same half-chewed shells and wounded in the belly Therefore the shells without the aperture of the membranes had forthwith penetrated the Stomach Womb and Secundines or else there were new shells generated upon the young Child Neither could this later be true For they were the true fragments of the Muscles and not figuratively framed to the imitation of them Furthermore the appetite is not carried to a thing unknown Therefore the appetite of eating the Muscles was not of the Child but of the Woman Therefore it was not necessary that new Muscles should be generated about the Child for they were desired by the Mother that they might become nutriment to her not the Child Otherwise by the same argument of Identity what things soever should by the appetite be desired should be generated about the young Child of whom when they could not be digested they should be always either left remaining about the Child or should there putrefie Which is false both ways for if it should putrefie that which is desired would cause abortion or if it were conserved there it would be found regularly For the Child is only nourished by the Navil Therefore those external Muscles could neither be wished by the Child nor could be profitable unto it and by consequence were neither for an end made anew but sent to the young one by reason that it was an uterine appetite The appetite is always directed from the end but the Woman with Child desired the Muscles not the shells neither that the Muscle being a living animal might remain in its former state
in which it was unprofitable to the Mother nor could satisfie her appetite and therefore much less hath had occasion of generating new and unprofitable shells about the young one But however it be taken the appetite was not to the shells twice or thrice broken For if the Fishes had been taken forth of the shells she had eaten the fish the shells being left Therefore the concomitance and concision of the shells were accidental to the appetite I suppose truly he saith that as the desire terrour c. do generate seminal Idea's which the hand of the Woman with Child doth send down to the young one and doth depinge or figurate it in a set time So the joy of finding that which the appetite did desire doth bring that very thing to the Child So verily the heaviness of heart of him that swallowed the Knife the horror of having drunk the Spider and of the Ear of Barley devoured did repel or drive back those things beyond the membranes not able to suffer a wound without death And these things he saith of things injected entring by the ordinary power of nature without the suspicion of Diabolical cooperation 6. Now he proceedeth to prove penetration of dimensions by natural power in another way Something like to these he saith appeareth in things that from within are to without taken away which I will dispatch he saith in one or two examples The Wife of a Taylor of Mechlinia seeth a Souldier before the doors to lose his hand in a conflict Forthwith being stricken with horror she brought forth a Daughter with one hand the other awanting with the stump all bloody which hand of hers could not be found and the flux of blood killed the Child The Wife of Marke de Vogeler a Merchant of Antwerpe in the year 1602. seeing a Souldier begging whose right Arm an Iron Bullet in the Siege of Ostend had taken away and which he carried about as â—et bloody by and by after that she brought forth a Daughter â—anting an Arm and that the right one too the shoulder of whom â—eing yet bloody the Chirurgion ought to consolidate She hath Married to a Merchant of Amsterdam by name Hoochcamer and is yet living this year 1638. But the right Arm was no where to be found neither the bones or any corruption did appear into which the Arm might be wasted in a little hour But the Souldier not being seen the Child had two Arms neither could the Arm that was torn off be annihilated Therefore the Womb being shut the Arm was taken away But who tore it away naturally and whither was it taken certainly trivial reasons do not square or agree in so great a portent or Paradox I am not he that will say these things I will say this at the least That the Arm was not taken away or torn off by Satan Furthermore it was of less weight to carry away elsewhere the Arm torn off than to have torn the Arm from the whole body without death The Wife of a Merchant he saith known unto us as soon as she heard that thirteen were to be beheaded it happened at Antwerpe in the time of the Duke of Alva and Women with Child are led with inordinate appetites she determined to see the decollations Thereupon she ascends the Chamber of a Widdow that was a familiar friend to her that lived in the Market-place And the spectacle being seen forthwith the pain of Child-birth took her and she brought forth a full grown infant with a bloody neck whose head did no where appear 7. From these most stupendious and almost incredible stories he draweth these conclusions I do not find he saith that human nature doth abominate the penetration of dimensions seeing it is most frequent to the seeds of things For in the seeds of things that primevous Energie of penetrating bodies doth yet consist but not subject to force art or human arbitrement For there are many bodies many times more ponderous than the matter of which they are framed It is necessary he saith that more than fifteen parts of water do fall in together into one that one part of gold may from thence be made For weight is not made of nothing but argueth the ponderating matter in the ballance Therefore water doth naturally penetrate its body so often as the gold doth overweigh the water Therefore the domestick and daily progress of seeds in Generations doth require that the body doth penetrate it self by condensation which is altogether impossible to an Artificer We grant he saith that there are pores in the water these notwithstanding cannot contain so much as fourteen times the quantity of its whole Therefore it is ordinary that some parts of the water do penetrate themselves into one place 8. And to illustrate this going before he saith By an example Aqua fortis doth by its spirit make Brass Iron or Silver remaining opacous in their natures so transparent that they cannot be seen and doth pass the metal thorough filtring paper which otherwise will not transmit no not the most small powder which metal doth essentially remain still a metal in specie or kind But not that the similitude of penetration of dimensions doth uniformly square with the propounded example of the metal Because reasons do not agree to so great a Paradox wherein he saith I willingly acknowledge the manner to be indemonstrable à priori Even as no man can know by what means the Idea impressed in the seeds doth figurate direct and dispose the things that it hath framed And therefore we are forced to hunt forth the same à posteriori 9. From all which he draweth this Conclusion There is therefore another far different power of incantation besides the Devils And therefore natural and free He hath no Dominion over the just But if the power of inchanting were free to the Devil also it would be equally free to him to kill by a Knife or a Maul And so none should be free Therefore the Witch he saith doth per ens naturale form imaginatively a free Idea which is natural and noxious Which Idea Satan cannot form Because that the formation of Idea's do require the Image of God and a free power And therefore the Witches do operate by a natural force no less against the just and innocent than against wicked men Seeing that inchantments do more easily infect Children than those of ripe age sooner Women than stout Men A certain natural power is signified to be limited to the inchantment to which it is easily resisted by a stout and couragious mind The Devil therefore offereth filth and poysons to his Clients that he may knit fermentally Idea's formed in the Imagination of the Witches unto them And he preserveth that Ideal poyson that it may not be blown away with the wind or being covered in the earth it be not destroyed by putrefaction But he carrieth that poison locally near to the object to be inchanted
to the Oaken pin that it had not by nature for in probability it will constantly by a natural power produce the same effect only thus far the Devil had a hand in the action to draw some wicked person to fix the pin there where the Man was accustomed to make water thereby to hurt and torture him and so was only evil in respect of the end 3. We observe and affirm that whatsoever effects are brought to pass by that which is commonly called and accounted Witchcraft if they be not brought to pass by jugling confederacy delusion and imposture as the most of them are if not all then they are performed either by meer natural causes or the strength of the Witches fancy and most vehement desire of doing of mischief to those she hateth or by both joined together and that Satan is no further an author or actor but as he leadeth and draweth the minds of the Witches to do such mischievous actions and pusheth on to seek about to learn of others such secret poysons charms images and other hidden things that being used so or so may produce such destructive ends as their wicked and diabolical purposes are led to and in this sense they are his clients and bounden vassals and not otherwise 4. The stories that he relateth are either all to be taken to be true or none of them and if they be all alike equally to be credited then it will undeniably follow that they were all alike produced by natural causes and so no need at all of the Devils assistance in performing of them no more than by working upon the minds of such as used those natural means to a wicked and mischievous end For first he giveth these instances of things that were very strange that were voided either by vomit or stool by the ordinary power of nature without suspicion of diabolical cooperation as the voiding of the piece of the brass Cannon with its letters with the Eele wrapped in its secundines The Dragon that the Oxe voided by taking three herbs with a tail like an Eele a body like or of leather with a Serpentine head and not less than a Partridge The knife that the Thieves forced a man to swallow which he voided by an Apostume in the side and was after sound also the arrow head of three fingers broad strucken into the back and after voided by stool with diverse such which we recited before And that these being solid bodies should have penetrated and passed through parts that are impatient of wounds and in which a wound is mortal must of necessity be very wonderful and might as soon and upon as rational grounds be taken to be diabolical as those that he enumerateth to be so For from these it is manifest that either nature put to her last pinch doth make penetration of dimensions or else so inlarge the pores that those solid bodies may pass without wound which if seriously considered is a stupendious operation and effect And as there needeth no cooperation of a diabolical power for the performing of these no more needeth there any concurrence of Devils to the others that to that purpose he relateth Only here is all the difference these are wrought by the ultimate endeavour of the Archaeus to save life without the concurrence of external causes the others that are therefore called diabolical are commonly wrought for a bad end namely to hurt or to take away life and have an external cause to wit the force of the Witches imagination and strong desire of doing of mischief which is stirred up to that end by Satan and therefore in regard of the end are devilish though they be both wrought by the agency of nature the one in the body of the imaginant the other in the body that the Witch intendeth to hurt by the force of her imagination and vehement desire whereby a seminal Idea is created or formed which is sufficiently operative to accomplish the end intended 5. The arguments that he bringeth to prove penetration of dimensions to be in nature or something equivalent thereunto seem to be strong and convincing For in the generation of things whosoever shall seriously and strictly mark shall find as he alledgeth that the spirit of the Archeus though not altogether incorporeal doth in the seeds of things penetrate it self and their parts one another which he further maketh good by the instance of Gold generated of water for it must of necessity be that more than fifteen parts of water must fall in or penetrate one another that from thence one part of Gold may be made for weight is not of nothing but argueth the matter ponderous in the Ballance Therefore naturally the water must so oft penetrate its body as the Gold doth preponderate the water And though it be granted that the water hath pores yet notwithstanding it cannot contain so much as fourteen times it whole And therefore he irrefragably concludeth Est ergo ordinarium in natura quod aliquae partes aquae se penetrent in unicum locum And this he backs with an unanswerable story of a Woman that longing for Muscles did in greediness eat some of them with the shells twice or thrice broken with her teeth and that she brought forth a child with the same half eaten shells and a wound in the belly therefore those shells had penetrated the stomach womb and secundines or otherwise the force of the Archeus had opened the pores and letten them pass in an unconceiveable manner So that if these things be granted to be true and we confess we know not how they can be answered then there need no diabolical power be brought to solve the injecting of strange things into mens bodies seeing nature is sufficient of it self and therefore we can allow no power at all unto Devils in effecting these things if they be truly done and be not delusions but only in drawing the minds of the Witches to these wicked and mischievous courses and therefore the Lord Bacon said profoundly and wisely these words Ut in operationibus illis earumque causis error cavendus est ita quoque danda vel imprimis opera est ne effecta nobis imponant temere judicantibus talia esse quae eousque nondum processerunt Sic prudentes judices praescripta velut norma fidem haberi temere nolunt confessionibus sagarum nec etiam factorum contra illas probationi Sagas enim turbat imaginationis vertigo ut putent se illud facere quod non faciunt populumque hîc ludit credulitas ut naturae opera imputent fascino 6. And to confirm this point he addeth far more stupendious matters of fact than the former of things that were within being taken to without or invisibly conveyed away as the woman at Mechlin that saw the Souldier in a conflict lose his hand and forthwith brought forth a Daughter wanting an hand which was never found and the wench died of the Haemorrhage
Another at Antwerpe seeing a Souldier begging with his right arm shot off and bloody forthwith brought forth a Daughter wanting the right arm whose bloody shoulder the Chirurgeon cured and she was married after and that the arm was never found neither did there appear any bones or putrefied matter into which the arm might waste Also another Woman going to see the Decollation of thirteen men did soon after bring forth a mature Child with a bloody neck the head no where appearing I confess it would rack the judgment even of the most credulous to the highest pitch to believe these unparallel'd Stories but the Author relating them as of his own knowledge and being a person of unquestionable veracity I cannot conceive how they can rationally be denied especially finding M r Boyle to affirm that in those experiments much more relations of matters of fact that Helmont avouched upon his own knowledge he durst be his Compurgator Who would not believe but that these things could never have been done but by a supernatural and Diabolical power but that this Author to which all judicious persons in reason may adhere doth utterly deny that the arm was either pull'd away or conveyed none can tell whither by Satan and therefore that in such a strange Paradox trivial reasons are not to be allowed and it were too much sloathfulness to ascribe all effects unto Satan of which we are ignorant And therefore if an hand an arm nay an whole head could be separated from the rest of the body and conveyed forth of the Womb by the Archeus or natural spirit thereunto excited by the impression of horror and terror in the Women In like manner by the same power of the natural spirit of man or woman excited by a vehement and fierce imagination to revenge and to do mischief may strange things be injected if there can be any sound proof of such a matter of fact into the bodies of such men or women as the Witches intend to do hurt unto and yet Satan hath no more hand in it but only as a spiritual agent to move the wills of those wicked and malicious people to do mischief unto those that they hate though without cause And the great secret of that which may be called Witching is the learning of others who likewise have had it by tradition the great force of imagination and the natural spirit with the ways and means how to excite it and exalt it herein stands the mystery of all Magick and it becomes only evil in the use and application and they are to be condemned that use it to such devillish ends even as those that use those good Creatures that nature doth produce to poysonous wicked and destructive purposes And lastly here we may note that if things or bodies that are without may be injected into the bodies of others by the force of exalted imagination and a vehement desire then the same power that doth inject them through skin flesh and bones must also be able to bring them near to the place and need not at all the assistance of Satan because it is far easier to carry them near the place than to thrust them into the body and so this Author hath here introduced the Devils aid to bring them to the place to no purpose and never yet proved either by reason or matter of fact that ever Satan did any such thing and so is a meer supposition without proof 7. The other matters of fact that he relateth are prodigious and are brought to prove that Satan is an actor to convey these strange things into the bodies of men and are these A piece of an Oxe Hide taken forth of a mans Arm so also that Equuleum a Wood-Horse or a four-footed board with a wheel and ropes twice as broad as the gullet Another that vomited up perhaps two thousand pins conglomerated together with filth and hairs another that vomited up he being present wooden Chips that had been cut off with the Hatchet in smoothing of wood with much slime to the bigness of two fists of which we shall note these Conclusions 1. It doth no way appear if these things be granted to be true both for matter and manner neither doth he offer to prove it that these are any more than the former Diabolical but only in the end because they are for the hurt and destruction of mankind and not otherwise and there being no proof of the Devils Cooperation any further but in working upon the minds of those that are agents and instruments to bring these things to pass we may very well reject those things that are supposed but not proved 2. The ejecting or voiding of such strange things as here he hath related doth not necessarily suppose their injection or thrusting in because they may be bred there by natural Causes so Worms of many sorts and strange Figures also Frogs Dracunculos and Askers have been voided and doubtlesly bred there by natural causes and were not injected or thrust in and for proof of this I refer the Reader to the relations of learned Schenchius lib. 3. p. 363. of those strange sorts of Worms and other Creatures that he from divers Authors sheweth have been vomited up which without all scruple were not injected but bred there To confirm this and to prove what strange things are sometimes bred in Apostumes and Tumors we shall translate a passage or two and first take this from Levinus Lemnius that learned and famous Physician of Zeland who writeth thus Also forth of sordid Ulcers and Impostures he saith we have known that the fragments of nails hairs shells little bones and stones have been taken forth which were concreted and grown together forth of putrid humours As also little creatures worms with tails and little beasts of an unaccustomed form cast up by vomiting especially in those who were oppressed with contagious diseases in whose urines I have often discerned to swim little Animalcles like to Pismires or to those creatures we observe in the estival months to move in the celestial dew here in England we call it Woodsoar or Cuckow-spittle Take another from that learned and expert Chirurgeon Ambrosius Paraeus where he is speaking of strange tumors in these words Also in these tumors being opened thou maist see bodies of all kinds and far differing from the common matter of Tumors as stones chalk sand coals cockles ears of corn hay horn hairs flesh as well hard as spongious grisles bones and whole Animalcles as well living as dead The generation of which things by the corruption and alteration of the humors will not much astonish us if we consider that even as nature hath framed Man as a Microcosm forth of all the seeds and elements of the whole great world that he might be as it were the lively image of that great world So in that Microcosm nature hath willed that all the species of all motions and actions might be manifest nature being
never idle in us as long as matter is not a wanting to work upon So that it is most plain that these strange things may be bred within and so the opinion of injecting them is but a meer figment 3. Neither can the vomiting up of such strange things as he relateth conclude necessarily that they were injected either by the power of Satan or the Witch because they may be performed by jugling sleight of hand confederacy and the like as was manifest in the Boy of Bilson and diverse that we have known that had made some numbers of others to believe that they had voided strange things as pins needles crooked-knitting-pricks moss nails and the like but upon a strickt search have but proved delusions and sleight such as our common Hocus Pocus Men use when they make the people believe they swallow a long pudding of white tinn and again pull it forth of their mouths or in pulling ribbins or laces of diverse colours forth of their throats 4. And again the most of these relations are but commonly taken upon trust from the affirmations of the by-standers who might be confederate parties or ignorant persons and so easily deceived and it appeareth not that Helmont was by at the very instant when the children vomited up the wooden horse or fourfooted board but that it was the by-standers that drew it forth who might be parties to the cheat or be themselves deluded and so aver it pertinaciously to others For I have in my practice known a young Wench about 9 or 10 years old who that she might be pittied and have an idle life had made her Father and Mother believe that quick worms came forth at her ear and also I taking her into mine own house she had perswaded all the family that it was true and did often open her head-cloaths and holding down her ear a quick worm would drop forth of the hair who notwithstanding by diligent watching was found out to get them privately from under stones or wood and so did cunningly convey them into her hair but being discovered was by due correction reclaimed and so the wonder ceased And it is as common to mistake things either by absolute judging them to be such a thing indeed when it hath but some slender resemblance of it or by judging a thing to be really so because of such a name but metaphorically given unto it so it is usual to call a Carcinoma in the highest degree Lupus or a Wolf because as a Wolf is a most voracious creature so this ulcer is the most devouring of all others and therefore have we known after that such have been by incision eradicated by our selves and others and exposed to the view of the vulgar people they would presently most earnestly affirm to others that they had seen it and that it was a living creature and had mouth eyes and ears so far will ignorant mistake induce credulity 8. That the force of imagination accompanied with the passions of horror fear envy malice earnest desire of revenge and the like is great upon the body imaginant as also upon the foetus in the womb is acknowledged by all But that it can at distance work upon another body though denied by Fienus and the whole rabble of the Schoolmen yet is strongly proved by this learned Author and allowed of by all others that truly understood the operations of nature which we also take to be a certain truth and do assert that if those people that are esteemed Witches do really and truly of which we utterly doubt inject any of these strange things into the bodies of men that they are brought to pass meerly by the imagination of the Witch and the Devil acteth nothing in it at all but the setting of his will upon that mischief As for the handling the dispute concerning the manner of the injecting of these strange things so strongly pursued by this Author Sennertus and others we shall totally supersede and suspend our judgment until the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be sufficiently proved which yet lies under water and unseen and then it will be time enough to dispute the manner when the matter is certainly made evident Therefore we will shut up this with that modest and grave advice of the Lord Bacon in these words Ideo cogemur in hac inquisitione ad nova experimenta confugere ubi directiones tantùm eorum praescribi possunt non ulla positiva in medium adferri Si quis putet subsistendum nobis fuisse donec tentamentis res penitus innotuisset ut fecisse nos ubique probant alii tituli sciat dubia nos fide amplecti quaecunque imaginationis effecta circumferuntur animum tamen esse illa per otium exigere ad Lydium veritatis lapidem id est experimentorum lucem CHAP. XIII That the ignorance of the power of Art and Nature and such like things hath much advanced these foolish and impious opinions THE opinions that we reject as foolish and impious are those we have often named before to wit that those that are vulgarly accounted Witches make a visible and corporeal contract with the Devil that he sucks upon their bodies that he hath carnal copulation with them that they are transubstantiated into Cats Dogs Squirrels and the like or that they raise tempests and fly in the air Other powers we grant unto them to operate and effect whatsoever the force of natural imagination joyned with envy malice and vehement desire of revenge can perform or perpetrate or whatsoever hurt may be done by secret poysons and such like wayes that work by meer natural means And here we are to shew the chief causes that do and have advanced these opinions and this principally we ascribe to mens ignorance of the power of Nature and Art as we shall manifest in these following particulars 1. There is nothing more certain than that how great soever the knowledge of Men be taken to be yet the ultimate Sphere of natures activity or ability is not perfectly known which is made most manifest in this that every day there are made new discoveries of her secrets which prove plainly that her store is not yet totally exhausted nor her utmost efficiency known And therefore those Men must needs be precipicious and build upon a sandy foundation that will ascribe corporeal effects unto Devils and yet know not the extent of nature for no Man can rationally assign a beginning for supernatural agents and actions that does not certainly know where the power and operation of nature ends 2. And as it is thus in general so in many particulars as especially in being ignorant of many natural agents that do work at a great distance and very occultly both to help and to hurt as in the weapon salve the Sympathetick powder the curing of diseases by mumial applications by Amulets Appensions and Transplantions which all have been and commonly are ascribed unto Satan when they are truly wrought
President of a National Synod in those parts to whom also the said Perreaud was well known who was a religious well poised venerable Divine And M r Boyle saith that he had had converse with this pious Author at Geneva and had inquired after the Writer and some passages of the Book which overcame all his setled indisposedness to believe strange things The Character given of this Author and the assent of such learned persons to the things related have gained an ample suffrage to give credit to them also But notwithstanding all this there are many passages in the relation that a quick-sighted Critick would find to be either contradictory or inconsistent and it cannot rationally be thought that he was a Cacodemon his actions were so harmless civil and ludicrous and if he were to be believed and in some things he did speak truth and the Minister himself M r Perreaud did in some things give credit to him he was no Devil but hoped to be saved by Jesus Christ. But whether a Devil or not yet the story for substance doth sufficiently prove the existence of such kind of Demons that can work strange and odd feats 4. M r Baxter a person of great learning and piety whose judgment bears great sway with me speaking of Apparitions saith thus I know many are very incredulous herein and will hardly believe that there have been such Apparitions For my own part he saith though I am as suspicious as most in such reports and do believe that most of them are conceits or delusions yet having been very diligently inquisitive in such Cases I have received undoubted testimony of the truth of such Apparitions some from the mouths of men of undoubted honesty and godliness and some from the report of multitudes of persons who heard or saw Were it fit here to name the persons I could send you to them yet living by whom you would be as fully satisfied as I Houses that have been so frequently haunted with such terrors that the inhabitants successively have been witnesses of it 7. Though some of these last recited testimonies might sufficiently convince the most obstinate and incredulous that there are Apparitions and some other such strange accidents that cannot be solved by the supposed principles of matter and motion but that do necessarily require some other causes that are above or different from the visible and ordinary course of nature yet because it is a point dark and mystical and of great concern and weight we shall add some unquestionable testimonies either from our own Annals or matters of fact that we know to be true of our own certain knowledge that thereby it may undoubtedly appear that there are effects that exceed the ordinary power of natural causes and may for ever convince all Atheistical minds of which in this order 1. In the first year of Edward the Sixth Anno Domini 1551. on St. Valentines day at Feversham in Kent one Arden a Gentleman was murthered by procurement of his own Wife for the which fact she was the fourteenth of March burnt at Canterbury Michael M r Arden's Man was hang'd in Chains at Feversham and a Maiden burnt Mosbie and his Sister were hanged in Smithfield at London Greene which had fled came again certain years after and was hanged in Chains in the High-way against Feversham and black Will the Ruffian that was hired to do that act after his first escape was apprehended and burnt on a Scaffold at Flushing in Zealand The same horrid murther is more at large related by Hollingshead who lived at that time and had information of all the particulars who saith thus much more This one thing he faith seemeth very strange and notable touching M r Arden that in the place he was laid being dead all the proportion of his body might be seen two years after and more so plain as could be for the grass did not grow where his body had touched but between his legs between his arms and about the hollowness of his neck and round about his body And where his legs arms head or any part of his body had touched no grass growed at all of all that time So that many strangers came in that mean time beside the Townsmen to see the print of his body there on the ground in that Field which Field he had as some have reported cruelly taken from a Woman that had been a Widdow to one Cooke and after Married to one Richard Read a Marriner to the great hinderance of her and her Husband the said Read for they had long enjoyed it by a Lease which they had of it for many years not then expired Nevertheless he got it from them for the which the said Reads Wife not only exclaimed against him in shedding many 〈◊〉 salt tear but also cursed him most bitterly even to his face wishing many a vengeance to light upon him and that all the World might wonder on him which was thought then to come to pass when he was thus murthered and lay in that Field from midnight till the morning and so all that day being the Fair-day till night all the which day there were many hundreds of people came wondring about him From whence we may take this Observation As it is most certain that this is a true and punctual relation given us by Hollingshead as being a publick thing done in the face of a Nation the print of his body remaining so long after and viewed and wondered at by so many so that it hath not left the least starting hole for the most incredulous Atheist to get out at So likewise it may dare the most deep-sighted Naturalist or unbelieving Atheist that would exalt and so far deifie Nature as to deny and take away the existence of the God of Nature to shew a reason of the long remaining of the print of his body or the not growing of the grass in those places where his body had touched for two years and more after Could it be the steams or Atoms that flowed from his body then are why not such prints left by other murthered bodies which we are sure by sight and experience not to be so And therefore we can attribute it justly to no other cause but only to the power of God and divine vengeance who is a righter of the oppressed fatherless and Widdows and hears their cries and regardeth their tears 2. In the second year of the Reign of King James of famous memory a strange accident happened to the terror of all bloody murtherers which was this One Anne Waters enticed by a lover of hers consented to have her Husband strangled and then buried him secretly under the Dunghil in a Cow-house Whereupon the man being missing by his Neighbours and the Wife making shew of a wondering what was become of him it pleased God that one of the inhabitants of the Town dreamed one night that his Neighbour Waters was strangled and buried under the
these observations 1. Though Mr. Hotham seem to judge that this person accused had the white powder from some Spirit and that one also of the evil sort and upon a contract by the ingaging of his Soul we have before sufficiently proved the nullity of a visible and corporeal contract with the Devil neither was it yet ever proved that the Devil did any good either real or apparent but is the sworn enemy of all mankind both in their Souls and in their Bodies but this powder wrought that which was really good namely the curing of diseases and therefore rationally cannot be thought to be given from an evil spirit 2. Some there were that thought that the simple man told a plain and true story and that he had the powder from those people we call Fairies and there are many that do believe and affirm that there are such people of whom Paracelsus hath a Treatise of purpose holding that they are not of the seed of Adam and therefore he calls them non-Adamicks and that they have flesh and bones and so differ from spirits and yet that they can glide through walls and rocks which he calleth their Chaos as easily as we through the air and that they get children and are mortal like those that Hieronynus Cardanus relateth that appeared to his Father Facius Cardanus and these he calleth Pygmaei Silvestres Gnomi and Umbratiles but his proof of their existence to me doth not seem satisfactory what others may think of it I leave to their demonstrations if they have any 3. Some there were and those not of the meer ignorant sort that did judge that though the Man was simple yet that the story that he told was but framed and taught him the better to conceal the person from whom he received the white powder For they thought that some notable Chymist or rather an Adeptist had in charity bestowed that powder upon him for the relief of himself and family as we know it hath often happened to other persons at other times and places And this last opinion seems most consonant to reason and I the rather believe it because not many years after it was certainly known that there was an Adeptist in that Countrey and we ought not to fetch in supernatural causes to solve effects when natural causes may serve the turn 6. The last thing of this strange nature that we shall instance in is concerning the bleeding or cruentation of the bodies of those that have been murthered I mean of such as have been murthered by prepense malice and upon premeditated purpose for the bodies of others that are killed by chance-medley and by man-slaughter we do not read nor find any examples that ever their bodies did bleed And though we have not been ocular witness of any such bleeding yet are there records of such accidents given us by many learned and credible authors that a man might almost be accounted an Infidel not to give credit to them and that both of those that have bled when the murtherer hath not been present and also of those that have bled the murtherer being present And first of those bodies that have issued blood when the murtherer was not by Gregorius Horstius a Physician of great experience and learning and of no less integrity recordeth this story thus Englished In the year of our Lord 1604. the twenty sixth day of December a young Nobleman of twenty five years old was shot at with a Gun in the night time about nine a clock from an high window of an house in the Town of Blindmarck in lower Austria and the bullet entring his left breast went forth at his right side and so forthwith died in the place The dead body being viewed again and the wound considered the same quantity or bigness both of the entrance and out-going are found with great plenty of blood issuing The following day being the twenty seventh of December in the morning the body of the murthered young man hath other cloaths put upon it and so is kept quiet for the space of two days Furthermore upon the thirtieth of December he is laid upon the Bier and kept in the Church and that without any further motion where nevertheless from the upper wound the fresh blood did daily flow until the eighth of January 1605. from which time the Hemorrhage ceased But again the thirteenth of February about noon the flux of blood by the lower wound for an hour or two was observed to issue as though the slaughter had been newly done In the mean time the habit of the whole body was such as did most easily agree to what it was living the colour of his face remained even unto his burial ruddy and florid the vein appearing in his forehead filled with good blood no sign of an incipient putrefaction appearing for so many weeks no stink or ungrateful odour which otherwise doth accompany dead bodies within a few days was here found at all The fingers of the hands remained soft moveable or flexible without any wast the natural colour being not very much changed except that in process of time about the last week before burial they begun in a certain manner to wax livid in the extremities 7. This following he giveth to prove that as cold constringeth and shuteth up the veins so heat doth open them and cause the blood to flow and saith This is proved a few years since by experience in an infant slain by a most wicked Mother forthwith after it was born and thrown from the Tower of a Noble Baron of upper Austria into a ditch that was full with water which after five weeks by good fortune was found and taken out And forthwith he saith the Mother not present it being then not known who was the Mother when it felt the force of the external air it begun to distil forth very fresh blood because the pores which by reason of the cold were shut that the blood could not flow were then unlockt and opened by the heat of the ambient air And thus much of those that have bled the murtherers not being present 8. Next we shall give some examples of those that have bled when the murtherers have been brought into the presence of the body murthered or caused to touch it and this Franciscus Valeriola doth attest with an ample faith that he himself saw When he saith James of Aqueria a Senator of Arles was found dead of a wound that he that gave that wound was apprehended by the Magistrate and brought into the view of the dead body that he might acknowledge the person murthered and confess the fact by and by the bubling blood all the by standers looking on begun to come forth with much fervour and bubbles from the wound and the nostrils 9. Take this other as it is cited by Gothofredus Voigtius in this manner In the year 1607 the 25. of April a certain Shepherd in Spain
great hater of superstition did cause it to be broken into small pieces and so with the Silk in which it was wrapped threw it into the sink of the House I confess I have heard strange stories of things that have been revealed by these supposed apparitions from persons both of great worth and learning but seeking more narrowly into the matter I found them all to be superstitious delusions fancies mistakes cheats and impostures For the most part the child tells any thing that comes into his fancy or doth frame and invent things upon purpose that he never seeth at all and the inquirers do presently assimilate them to their own thoughts and suspicions Some that pretended to shew and foretel strange things thereby to get money have been discovered to have had confederates that conveied away mens goods into secret places and gave the cunning Man notice where they were hid and then was the child taught a straight framed tale to describe what a like Man took them away and where they were which being found brought credit enough to the couzeners and this I knew was practised by one Brooke and Bolton Some have had artificial glasses whereinto they would convey little pictures as Dr. Lambe had It being manifest by what we have laid down that there are apparitions and some such other strange effects whereby murthers are often made known and discovered and also having mentioned that it may be most rationally probable that they are caused by the Astral or Sydereal Spirit it will be necessary to open and explain that point and to shew what grounds it hath upon which it may be settled which we shall do in this order 1. There are many especially Popish Authors thereby to uphold their Doctrine of Purgatory that maintain that they are the Souls of the persons murthered and deceased and this opinion though unanswerably confuted by the whole company of reformed Divines is notwithstanding revived by Dr. Henry Moore but by no arguments either brought from Scripture or grounded upon any solid reasons but only some weak conjectures seeming absurdities and Platonick whimsies which indeed merit no responsion And we have by positive and unwrested Scriptures in this Treatise afore proved that the Souls of the righteous are in Abrahams bosom with Christ at peace and rest and that the Souls of the wicked are in Hell in torments so that neither of them do wander here or make any apparitions for as S. Augustine taught us Duo sunt habitacula unum in igne aeterno alterum in regno aeterno And in another place Nec est ulli ullus medius locus ut possit esse nisi cum Diabolo qui non est cum Christo. And Tertullian and Justin Martyr two most ancient writers do tell us That Souls being separated from their Bodies do not stay or linger upon the earth And after they be descended into the infernal pit they do neither wander here upon their own accord nor by the power and command of others But that wicked spirits may counterfeit by craft that they are the Souls of the dead Vid. Lavaterum de Spectris secunda parte c. 5. 2. We have also shewed that these apparitions that discover murther and murtherers and brings them to condign punishment cannot be the evil Angels because they are only Ministers of torture sin horror and punishment but are not Authors of any good either Corporeal or Spiritual apparent or real So that it must of necessity be left either to be acted by a Divine Power and that either by the immediate power of the Almighty for which we have no proof but only may acknowledge the possibility of it or mediate by the ministery of good Angels which is hard to prove there being no one instance or the least intimation of any such matter in all the Scriptures and therefore in most rational probability either relations of matters of fact of this nature are utterly false or they are effected by the Astral spirit 3. Concerning the description of this Astral Spirit or Sydereal Body for though it be as a spirit or the image in the looking-glass yet it is truly corporeal we shall give the sum of it as Paracelsus in his magisterial way without proof doth lay down He positively holdeth that there are three essential parts in Man which he calleth the three great substances and that at death every one of these being separated doth return into or unto the Womb from whence it came as The Soul that was breathed in by God doth at death return unto God that gave it And that the Body that is to say that gross part that seems to be composed of the two inferior Elements of Earth and Water doth return unto the Earth and there in time consume away some bodies in a longer time some in a shorter But the third part which he calleth the Astral Spirit or Sydereal Body as being firmamental and consisting of the two superior Elements of Air and Fire it he saith returneth into its Sepulcher of the Air where in time it is also consumed but requireth a longer time than the body in regard it consisteth of more pure Elements than the other and that one of these Astral Spirits or Bodies doth consume sooner than another as they are more impure or pure And that it is this spirit that carrieth along with it the thoughts cogitations desires and imaginations that were impressed upon the mind at the time of death with the sensitive faculties of concupiscibility and irascibility And that it is this spirit or body and not the Soul that resteth in the hands of the Lord that appeareth and is most usually conversant in those places and those negotiations that the mind of the person living whose spirit it was did most earnestly follow and especially those things that at the very point of death were most strongly impressed upon this spirit as in the case of the person murthered whose mind in the very minute of the murther receiveth a most deep impression of detestation and revenge against the murtherer which this spirit bearing with it doth by all means possible seek the accomplishment of that revenge and therefore doth cause dreams of discovery bleedings and strange motions of the body murthered and sometimes plain apparitions of the persons murthered in their usual shape and habit and doth vocally and audibly reveal the murther with all the circumstances as is apparent in the two forementioned Histories of the apparition of Fletcher to Raynard and of the Woman murthered by Mark Sharp to the Miller Grimes 4. And this Astral Spirit is no more than that part in Man that is commonly called the sensitive Soul and by the Schools is commonly defined thus Anima sentiens est vis quae apprehendit percipit ea quae extra ipsam sunt And this is corporeal and as Dr. Willis holdeth mortal and coextended with the Body and that it hath the power of imagination appetite desire and