others by Pimping and Pandarism others by Poyson others by Parricide Many by Treason have been advanc'd to Grandeur and great Power as we observe in the Histories of Euthierates Philocrates Euphorbus and Philager Many more by Flattery Detraction Calumny and Sycophantry many by prostituting their Wives and Daughters to Kings many by Hunting Rapine Murther and Witchcraft have attain'd the highest degrees of Honour But let us return to Joseph He growing great in the house of Pharaob and having begat his eldest Son Manasseh pufft up with his unexpected Nobility not without blame spake too severely in contempt of his Father's house and his own Family God said he hath made me forget all my labours and my fathers houshold For which cause when Jacob blessed the two Sons of Joseph he set Ephraim before Manasseh Joseph also although he were the Son of Jacob yet by reason of his Nobility contemptible in the sight of God was not honour'd to have any one of the Tribes bear his name which was given to his two Sons Ephraim and Manasseh After this the people of Israel liv'd in Egypt and kept Sheep in the Land of Goshen but when they grew numerous and populous they grew also suspected and envi'd by the Potentates and Kings of Egypt who thereupon thought to oppress 'um with continual hard labour and servitude They also slew their Male-children thinking to have quite extirpated them from the Earth But one of those Children because of his Beauty was preserv'd by the Daughter of Pharaoh who adopted him for her Son and call'd him Moses because she had preserv'd him out of the Water Moses therefore grew up in the house of the King and being bred up in all the Learning of the Egyptians was accounted as the King's Son was made a great man and Captain of Pharaoh's Army against the AEthiopians but having married the King of AEthiopia's Daughter he got the ill will of the Egyptian Lords and being banish'd out of Egypt fled into Midian where at a certain Well taking part with certain Damsels against the Shepherds of that Country for that kindness he had bestow'd on him for a Wise one of those Virgins the Daughter of the Priest of Midian At length increasing in Age and Wisdome and remembring himself to be an Hebrew he return'd into Egypt and renouncing his Egyptian Honours encouraged by God he undertook to be Captain of the Children of Israel and by the assistance of many Miracles carried them out of Egypt and when the people had sinned against God in making a golden Calf Moses being angry calling to his aid the strong men of the Sons of Levi commanded 'um saying Put every man his sword to his side go to and fro from gate to gate through the host and slay every man his brother and every man his companion and every man his Neighbour Now after he had made this memorable Slaughter of about three some say three and twenty thousand persons he bless'd 'um saying Consecrate your hands or ye have consecrated your hands this day unto the Lord every man upon his son and upon his brother that there may be given you a blessing this day fulfilling what was said by Jacob of his Sons Simeon and Levi calling them Instruments of Cruelty in their habitations cursing their wrath for it was fierce and their rage for it was cruel And thus we finde this signal Slaughter to be the first Original of Nobility in Israel For after that did Moses appoint Princes and Captains among 'um Captains of hundreds Captains of fifties and tens famous Warriors stout Fighters through their Tribes and Families Among whom if there were any that excell'd in valour and strength him they made their Chief giving him the power of Judgment and Command For they had no King but were govern'd by Judges among whom Joshua a Nobleman strong warlike a vanquisher of Kings not fearing any man after Moses was dead held the most Supream Command after whose death they liv'd under a Democracie without any Prince or Leader But growing seditious fell out one among another and had almost totally extirpated the Tribe of Benjamin insomuch that there were not above six hundred men remaining And when they had forsworn to given 'um their own Daughters they contriv'd a way to let 'um have four hundred of the Virgins of Jabesh-Gilead and for the other two hundred they were permitted to take 'um by force from the men of Silo. And thus was fulfill'd the Blessing of Benjamin's Nobility like unto a Wolf seizing his Prey in the morning and diving his Prey in the evening After this they return'd to Aristocracie and the Government of Princes among whom Abimelech the natural Son of Gideon of the Tribe of Manasseh having slain seventy of his legitimate Brethren upon one stone obtain'd the Kingdom and rul'd in Sichem After this the people universally clamouring for a King God gave them Kings in his wrath very few good very many wicked For the Lord was angry with them forewarning them of the high Prerogative of Kings and the subjection they must suffer under 'um affirming that Kings would take their Sons and their Daughters and would make Carters and inferiour Servants of 'um that they would at their own pleasure take their Lands their Farms their Men-servants and their Maid-servants and employ 'um in his own service and that as often as the King was wicked and did evil the people would suffer for his sake The first King he gave them was a young man of the Tribe of Benjamin named Saul a man of great strength tall of Stature insomuch that he was higher than any of the rest of the people from the shoulders upwards and God struck such an awe upon the peoples Spirits that they esteem'd and reverenc'd him as a sacred Minister of God This man before he began to raign was as innocent as a Childe of one year old but having obtain'd the Kingdom he became a wicked man and a Son of Belial Therefore God took the Kingdom from Saul and gave it to David the Son of Jesse of the Tribe of Judah He from a Shepherd was advanc'd to be King but then being infected with the contagion of Nobility he also became a man of sin Sacrilegious an Adulterer a Murtherer though God in his mercy did not quite forsake him He raign'd at first in Hebron Ishbosheth the Son of Saul raigning beyong Jordan after which he raign'd over all Israel in Jerusalem Nor could he raign in peace neither for while he was yet alive his Son Absalon invaded the Kingdom in Hebron who being slain Siba the Son of Bochra rebell'd again After that Adoniah his other Son attempted to gain the Crown at what time David on his death-bed appointed Solomon his younger Son born of Bathsheba the Adulteress to inherit his Throne He being the first absolute Monarch of the Hebrews confirm'd himself therein by the Murther of his Brother Adoniah but being once establish'd he forsook the
many other ridiculous fancies and idle stories not worth repeating Arithmeticians having nothing to boast of but an insipid inanimate and sensless Number though they think themselves Gods because they can only cast a Figure or can tell how to reckon But such honours the Musicians will scarce allow them who think them rather due to their Musick CHAP. XVII Of Musick LET us now discourse a little concerning Musick of which among the Grecians Aristoxenus hath written very largely asserting that Musick was the Soul of Man whose Writings Boetius hath Translated into Latine Now by Musick I understand that part of Musick which relates to the knowledge of Sounds and manages either the Voice or Hand not that part which teaches the Laws and Rules of Meter and Rythm more properly term'd Poesie which as Alpharabises saith is carried on not by any method of Speculation or Reason but with a certain frenzy and madness as we have before discoursed Now that part of Musick which consists in Sound and is the consort of Strings or Voices agreeing in Sounds inoffensive to the Ear treats more particularly of Sounds Intervals Changes of Mood and variety of Notes This the Antients have divided into Enharmonick Chromatick and Diatonick The first that is to say the Enharmonick by reason of its profound abstruseness the impossibility of discovery they altogether laid aside The second by reason of its wanton measures they contemn'd and utterly refused The last as agreeing best with the composition of the world they onely admitted Others there are who have distinguish'd the Moods of Musick as deriv'd from sundry Countries for whose particular Genius they seem'd at first to have been more properly contriv'd of which there are three nam'd the Phrygian the Lydian and the Dorick which according to the opinion of Polimestres and Saccadas a native of Argos are said to be of greatest Antiquity To these Sappho the Lesbian added a fourth term'd the Mixolydian of which others take Tersander others Pythoclides the Piper to have been the Authors though Lisias makes Lamprocles the Athenian inventer thereof These four Moods pass currant under the Seal of Authority This whole Structure or Fabrick they call Encyclopedie or the Sphere of Sciences as if Musick did comprehend all Sciences seeing as Plato observes in his first Book of Laws that Musick cannot be understood without the knowledge of all the other Sciences Among these four Moods they approve not the Phrygian for that it distracts and ravishes the Mind therefore Porphyrius gives it the name of Barbarous as exciting and stirring up men to fury and battel Others give it the appellation of Bacchick furious impetuous turbulent which being generally us'd in Anapesticks were those Charms which as we read formerly incited the Lacedaemonians and Cretans to War With this sort of Harmony Timotheus incited King Alexander to Arms and Boetius relates how Taurominitianus a young man was mov'd by sound of this Phrygian Harmony to burn a house where he knew a certain Curtisan lay concealed The Lydian Mood Plato refuses as too sharp and shrill and coming short of the modesty of the Dorian being most proper for Lamentation though as others will have it most agreeable to merry and Jolly dispositions This made the Lydians a Merry and Jocund people to be very much affected with that sort of Musick which afterwards the Tuscans the Off-spring of the Lydians were wont to make use of in their dancing The Dorick as being more grave honest and every way modest consequently most congruous and agreeable to the more serious affections of the Mind and graver gestures of the Body they preferr'd above all the rest and was therefore held in great esteem among the Cretans Lacedaemonians and Arcadians Agamemnon being to go to the Trojan War left behinde him at home a Dorick Musitian to the end he might by his grave Spondaick Songs preserve the Chastity of his Wife Clytemnestra so that it was impossible for Aegysthus to obtain his desires of her until he had first murder'd the said Musitian As for the Mixolydian onely fit for Tragedies and to move Pity and Compassion they were of opinion that it had a great power either to quicken or put a damp upon the Spirits either to raise or depress the Affection and that it had an absolute dominion over Grief and Sadness To these four Moods some there are who have added others which they call Collateral the Hypodorian the Hypolydian and the Hypophrygian to the end there might be seven correspondent to the number of the Planets to all which Ptolomy adds an eighth the Hypermixolydian the sharpest and shrillest of all But Lucius Apuleius onely names five the Aeolian Hyastian Varian shrill Lydian warlike Phrygian and Religious Dorick Marcian according to the tradition of Aristoxenus numbers five principal Moods and ten Collateral Now though they confess this Art to contain very much of sweetness and delight yet the common Opinion is verifi'd by general experience that Musick is an Art professed onely by men of deprav'd and loose inclinations who neither know when to begin nor when to make an end as is reported of Archabius the Fidler to whom they were wont to give more money to leave off than to continue his play Of which impertinent Musitians we finde this Character in Horace Among their Friends all Singers have this vice That begg'd to sing none are more coy or nice Vnbid they 'll never cease Musick has been always a Vagrant wandring up and down after sordid hire an Art which no grave modest chast magnanimous and truly valiant person ever profess'd therefore the Greeks generally term them Father Bacchus's Artificers Bacchanal or lewd Artists generally of loose behaviour incontinent in their lives and for the most part in great poverty and want which is not onely the Mother but Nurse of Vice The Kings of the Medes and Persians reckon'd Musitians 〈…〉 of their Jesters Parasites and Players pleasing themselves with their Songs but contemning their persons And the wise Antisthenes hearing that one Ismenias kept an incomparable Musitian in his house quoth he He is a bad man for he would not be a Fidler if he were honest for that is not an Art becoming a good and vertuous man but onely the lazy Epicure This made Scipio Aemylius and Cato utterly to despise this Science as being contrary to the Majesty of the Roman Manners Therefore were Augustus and Nero so much condemn'd for giving their minds so much to Musick 'T is true Augustus being reprehended gave it over but Nero more eagerly pursuing it was for that cause hated and derided King Philip when he heard that his Son had sung very finely at a certain Entertainment burst into a passion reproaching him in these words Art thou not asham'd to sing handsomely for it is enough that a Prince will vouchsafe to be present while others sing Jupiter is never said to sing or play on the Harp by any one of the Poets But the learned
makes interpretations of Thunder and Lightning and other Airy Meteors as also of Monsters and Prodigies but no otherwise than by Conjecture and Comparison which how false and erronious it is is notoriously manifest CHAP. XXXIX Of Interpretation of Dreams HEre we may usher in the Interpretation of Dreams call'd Onirocritica whose Interpreters are properly call'd Conjecturers according to that Verse in Euripides He that Conjectures least amiss Of all the best of Prophets is To this Delusion not a few great Philosophers have given not a little credit especially Democritus Aristotle and his follower Themistius Sinesius also the Platonick so far building upon Examples of Dreams which some accident hath made to be true that thence they endeavour to perswade Men that there are no Dreams but what are real For say they as the Celestial Influences produce divers Forms in Corporeal Matter so out of certain Influences predominating over the power of the Fancy the impression of Visions is made being Consentaneous through the disposition of the Heavens to the Effect which is to be produc'd more especially in Dreams because the mind being then at liberty from all corporeal Cares and Exercises more freely receives the Divine Influences therefore it happens that many things are reveal'd in Dreams to them that are asleep which are conceal'd from them that wake With these reasons they pretend to beget a good Opinion of the Truth of Dreams But as to the Causes of Dreams both External and Internal they do not all agree in one judgment For the Platonicks reckon them among the specifick and concrete Notions of the Soul Avicen makes the Cause of Dreams to be an Vltimate Intelligence moving the Moon in the middle of that Light with which the Fancies of men are Illuminate while they sleep Aristotle refers the Cause thereof to Common Sence but plac'd in the Fancy Averroes places the Cause in the Imagination Democritus ascribes it to little Images or Representatives separated from the things themselves Albertus to the Superior Influences which continually flow from the Skie through many Specifick Mediums The Physicians impute the Cause thereof to Vapours and Humours others to the affections and cares predominant in persons when awake Others joyn the powers of the Soul Celestial Influences and Images together all making but one Cause Arthemidorus and Daldianus have written of the Interpretation of Dreams and certain Books go about under Abrahams Name whom Philo in his Book of the Gyants and of Civil Life asserts to have been the first Practiser thereof Other Treatises there are falsified under the Names of David and Solomon wherein are to be read nothing but meer Dreams concerning Dreams But Marcus Cicero in his Book of Divination hath given sufficient Reasons against the vanity and folly of those that give Credit to Dreams which I purposely here omit CHAP. XL. Of Madness BUT though I had almost forgot it let us with these Dreamers number those that give a kind of sacred Credit to the Prophesies of Mad-folks who themselves have lost all knowledge of things present memory of past and indeed all humane sense fondly imagining them to have the gift of Foreknowledg as if what the wise and waking know not Mad-folks and Dreamers should see as if God were nearer at hand to them than to the vigilant watchful intelligible and those that are full of premeditation Unhappy men that believe such Vanity that give obedience to such Impostures that cherish such Deluders submitting their own Faith and Discretion to their Bellies For what can we imagine Madness to be but a departure of Reason persecuted by evil Spirits convey'd through the Stars or through the Inferiour Bodies by the bad Angels which Lucan seems to intimate when he brings in Arvus the Thuscan Prophet In Thunders motion skill'd and Lightnings bright And in the downy Feathers airy flight Then after the City-Procession after the Offering slain after the Entrails inspected he brings in a Potter thus delivering his judgment What rage ye Gods what wâ—es do ye preparâ— If Saturn's baneful Star in topmost Air Should kindle his dull Fires we then should moan To see Aquarius pour whole Rivers down And all the World in total deluge drown If Sol should mount the Nemaean Lions back In Flame would all the Worlds whole Fabrick crack And all the Skie with Sol's burnt Chariot blaze These Aspects cease but thou that burntst the claws And firk'st the Tail of threatning Scorpion What great thing breed'st thou Mars milde Jove goes down Oppressed in his fall and in the Skies The wholsome Star of Venus dulled is Mercury looses his swift motion And fiery Mars rules in the Skie alone Why do the Stars their Course forsaking glide Obscurely through the Air why does the side Of Sword-breaking Orion shine too bright Wars rage is threatned the Swords power all right Confounds by force Impiety shall bear The name of Vertue and for many a year This fury lasts Therefore all these delusions of Divination have their root and foundation from Astrology For whether the Lineaments of the Body Countenance or Hand be inspected whether Dream or Vision be seen whethe marking of Entrails or mad Inspiration be consulted there must be a Celestial Figure first erected by the means of whose indications together with the conjectures of Signes and Similitudes they endeavour to finde out the truth of what is desired So requisite is the use of Astrology to the Arts of Divination as if it were the Key that opens the door of all their Mysteries Therefore how much all these Arts are distant from Truth is evident from this that they make use of principles so absolutely false and feigned which being such as neither are ever were or will be and yet they will have to be the causes of future Events what can appear to be more contrary to all Truth CHAP. XLI Of Magick in general IT is requisite that we should here say something of Magick which is so linkt to Astrology as being her neer Kinswoman that whoever professes Magick without Astrology does nothing but is altogether out of the way Suidas is of opinion that Magick took its Original and Name from the Magusaei The common opinion is that it is a Persian name with whom Porphyrius and Apuleius consent and that Magos signifies in that Language no more than a Wise man or a Philosopher so that Magick containing both Natural Philosophy and the Mathematicks takes into the same Society the forces and bands of all Religions joyning to its self Goetia and Theurgy which is the reason that Magick is generally divided into Natural and Ceremonial CHAP. XLII Of Natural Magick NAtural Magick is taken to be nothing else but the chief power of all the natural Sciences which therefore they call the top and perfection of Natural Philosophy and which is indeed the active part of the same which by the assistance of natural force and faculties through their mutual opportune application performs those things that are
bold The French-man through vehement desire of a wise man becomes a fool but the German having wasted all his Estate at length though late of a fool becomes a wise man the Spaniard for his Mistriss sake will attempt great things and the Italian for the enjoyment of his Lady contemns all thought of danger Moreover we see that great men intangled in the Shares of Love and Passion many times forsake great Actions and leave most noble Enterprizes behinde their backs as formerly Mithridates in Pontus at Capua Hannibal Caesar in Alexandria in Greece Demetrius Antonie in Egypt Hercules ceas'd from his labours for Iole's sake Achilles hides himself from the Battel for love of Briseis Circe stays Vlysses Claudius dies in Prison for love of a Virgin Caesar is detain'd by Cleopatra and the same woman was the ruine of Antonius We read in Scripture that for the Fornication of Seth with the Daughters of Cain that the whole Race of man was drowned in the Flood The Sichemites and the House of Amor was destroy'd in revenge of Fornication and the whole people of Israel for committing Fornication with strange women were many times overcome in Battel and carried into Captivity And for the single Adultery of one person David the King what a destruction and waste of people ensu'd For Fornication and ravishing of women the Thebans Phoceans and Circeans were assail'd and quite overthrown and for the same reason was the Peloponnesian War undertaken as I said before by Pericles and Troy for the same reason ten years besieg'd to the vast detriment of Greece and Asia For the same reasons and upon the same score Tarquinius Claudius Dionysius Hannibal Ptolomy Marck Antony Theodorick the Goth Rodoaldus the Lombard Childerick of France Advinceslaus of Bohemia and Manphred the Neapolitan suffered death and the ruine of their Countries Meerly for the vitiating of Julia Cana Daughter of the Governour of Tingitana by Rodorick the King the Moors having driven out the Goths possess'd all Spain Henry the second King of England for abusing the contracted Wife of his Son Daughter of Philip the French King had like to have been driven out of his Kingdom by his Son For being false to their Beds those enraged Wives Clytemnestra Olympia Laodicea Beronica Fregiogunda and Blanch both Queens of France Joane of Naples and many other women slew their Husbands And this was the reason that Medea Progne Ariadne Althea Heristilla changing their maternal Love into Hatred were every one the cause and plotters of their Sons deaths And now adays we finde that many women revenge the Adulteries of their Husbands upon their Children and of most milde and patient Mothers have become most cruel Medea's furious Althea's and impious Heristilla's CHAP. LXIV Of Pandarism or Procuring NOw because that by the advice assistance and perswasion of Pimps and Bawds both Whores and Whoremongers commit their mutual Follies Let us discourse a little concerning their Subtleties and Devices for as it is the Calling of a Whore onely to prostitute her own body so it is the business of a Pimp or Bawd to batter and overcome the Chastity of another Which is therefore a Trade to be in some respects preferr'd before the Trade of Self-prostitution by how much it is the more wicked and so much the more powerful as being guarded with the Artillery of many other Arts and Experience besides so much the more pernicious that while it makes use of other Arts and Sciences whatever there is of poyson in any Art or Science that this worshipful Vocation wholly sucks to it self out of which the weaves those Snares that not like Spiders Cobwebs take the Flies but let go the stronger Birds nor like the strong toils of Hunters catch the bigger Beasts of Chace and let go the less but such strong Nooses and Bands that no Maid no Virgin no Woman never so silly never so prudent never so constant never so obstinate never so bashful never so fearful never so confident but will at length lend a willing ear to a Bawd be insnar'd with her perswasions So fine a Craft is this that no woman can vanquish whose perswasions no Virgin Widow Wife or Matron though a Vestal can resist whose unarmed Militia vanquishes the Chastity of most women which a whole Army would not be able to conquer The crafty tricks cunning shifts deceit circumventions delusions frauds and strange inventions of the Art of Bawdery no Pen can suffice to set down nor Wit to express So that it is nothing strange that though there be so many Professors of this Trade of both Sexes yet there are few that arrive to a perfection therein For since the Baits of Pandarism lie couch'd in every Art or Science it behoves therefore a Bawd to be perfect in every one Therefore she that intends to be a perfect Bawd must not direct her studies to one particular sort of knowledge as to her Pole-star but to be universally learned as professing an Art to which all other Arts and Sciences are but the Slaves and Hand-maids For first and foremost Grammar the Art of Writing and Speaking affords ye ability to write Love-letters and how to compose and frame them of Complements Petitions Lamentations and Moans Invocations Protestations and alluring perswasions of all which ye have many late Presidents in Sylvius Jacobus Caviceus and many other Modern Authors There is also another use of Grammar for the manner of abstruse and secret writing in Characters an Invention of Archimedes the Syracusan as Aulus Gellius reports Concerning this Trithemius Abbot of Spanheime hath written two Treatises some few years since one under the Title of Polygraphy the other under the Title of Stenography in the latter of which he hath discover'd such mysterious ways and means of expressing the minde at what distance soever and concealing the meaning of words plainly legible that the most discerning jealousie of Juno nor the strict custody of Danae nor the watchful eyes of Argos can ever prevent Next to Grammar comes Madam Poesie who by the assistance of her lascivious Rhimes wanton Stories and Love-dialogues Epigrams and Epistles taken out of the Armories of Venus playing the part of a Pimp and Bawd together corrupts all Chastity destroys all the hope towardliness and good manners of Youth Well therefore do Poets deserve to have the Precedencie above other common Pandars and Bawds of which the chiefest among the Antients were these whom we have above named in the Chapter of Prostitution as Callimachus Philetes Anacreon Orpheus Pindarus Alceon Sappha Tibullus Catullus Propertius Virgil Ovid Juvenal and Martial and we have now adays too many that write after a most impudent and shameful manner Next to Poets Rhetoricians claim Precedencie the contrivers of fraudulent Flatteries and Perswasions for which cause Suadela or Persuasio was held to be the chief Goddess of Pandarism Historians also have not a little Interest in the World especially the Compilers of those Historical Romances of Lancelot