Demonologia

PROOFS AND TRIALS OF GUILT IN SUPERSTITIOUS AGES.

ASTROLOGY, &c.

“This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeit of our own behaviour) we make guilt of our disasters, the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers (traitors), by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an inforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in by a Divine thrusting on; an admirable evasion of whoremaster to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star! My father compounded with my mother under the Dragon’s tail; and my nativity was under Ursa Major; so that it follows, I am rough and lecherous.—Tut, I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled at my bastardizing.”—Shakspeare.

It is a singular fact, that men the most eminent for their learning were those who indulged most in the favourite superstition of judicial Astrology; and as the ingenious Tenhove observes, whenever an idea germinates in a learned head, it shoots with additional luxuriance. At the present time, however, a belief in judicial Astrology can only exist in the people, who may be said to have no belief at all; for mere traditional sentiments can hardly be said to amount to a belief.

It is said that Dr. Fludd^[6] was in possession of 19the MSS. of Simon Forman, the Astrologer. We have seen that the studies of Mathematics, Astronomy, and Medicine, were early united in several persons connected with the faculty of medicine. Real Astronomy gave birth to judicial Astrology; which offering an ample field to enthusiasm and imposture, was eagerly pursued by many who had no scientific purpose in view. It was connected with various juggling tricks and deceptions, affected an obscure jargon of language, and insinuated itself into every thing in which the hopes and fears of mankind were concerned. The professors of this pretended science were at first generally persons of mean education, in whom low cunning supplied the place of knowledge. Most of them engaged in the empirical practice of physic, and some, through the credulity of the times, even arrived at a degree of eminence in it; yet since the whole foundation of their art was folly and deceit, they nevertheless gained many proselytes and dupes, both among the well-informed and the ignorant.

When Charles the First was confined, Lilly, the famous Astrologer, was consulted for the hour that should favour his escape.

A story, which strongly proves how much Charles II. was bigoted to judicial astrology, and whose mind was certainly not unenlightened, is recorded in Burnet’s History of his own times. The most respectable characters of the age, Sir William Dugdale, Elias Ashmole, Dr. Grew, and others, were members of an astrological club^[7]. 20Congreve’s character of Foresight, in Love for Love, was then no uncommon person, though the humour now is scarcely intelligible. Dryden cast the nativities of his sons; and, what is remarkable, his prediction relating to his son Charles, was accomplished. This incident is of so late a date, one might hope it would have been cleared up; but, if it be a fact, it must be allowed that it forms a rational exultation for its irrational adepts.

In 1670, the passion for horoscopes and expounding the stars, prevailed in France among the first rank. The new-born child was usually presented naked to the astrologer, who read the first lineaments in its forehead, and the transverse lines in its hands, and thence wrote down its future destiny. Catherine de Medicis brought Henry IV. then a child, to old Nostradamus, whom antiquaries esteem more for his Chronicle of Provence than for his vaticinating powers. The sight of the reverend seer, with a beard which “streamed like a meteor in the air,” terrified the future hero, who dreaded a whipping from so grave a personage. Will it be credited, that one of these magicians, having assured Charles IX. that he would live as many days as he should turn about on his heels in an hour, standing on one leg, that his Majesty every morning performed that solemn exercise for an hour; the principal officers of the court, the judges, 21the chancellors, and generals, likewise, in compliment, standing on one leg, and turning round!

It has been reported of several famous for their astrological skill, that they have suffered a voluntary death merely to verify their own predictions: this has been said of Cardan, and Burton the author of the Anatomy of Melancholy.

It is curious to observe the shifts to which astrologers are put when their predictions are not verified. Great winds were predicted, by a famous adept, about the year 1586. No unusual storms, however, happened. Bodin, to save the reputation of the art, applied it as a figure to some revolutions in the state, and of which there were instances enough at that moment. Among their lucky and unlucky days, they pretend to give those of various illustrious persons and of families. One is very striking:—Thursday was the unlucky day of our Henry VIII. He, his son Edward VI. Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth, all died on a Thursday! This fact had, no doubt, great weight in this controversy of the astrologers with their adversaries.

The life of Lilly, the astrologer, written by himself, is a curious work. He is the Sidrophel of Butler. It contains so much artless narrative, and at the same time so much palpable imposture, that it is difficult to know when he is speaking what he really believes to be the truth. In a sketch of the state of astrology in his day, those adepts, whose characters he has drawn, were the lowest miscreants of the town. They all speak of each other as rogues and impostors. Such were Booker, George Wharton, Gadbury, who gained a livelihood 22by practising on the credulity of even men of learning so late as in 1650, to the 18th century. In Ashmole’s life an account of these artful impostors may be found. Most of them had taken the air in the pillory, and others had conjured themselves up to the gallows. This seems a true statement of facts. But Lilly informs us, that in his various conferences with angels, their voice resembled that of the Irish! The work is certainly curious for the anecdotes of the times it contains. The amours of Lilly with his mistress are characteristic. By his own accounts, he was a very artful man; and managed matters admirably which required deception and invention.

In the time of the civil wars, astrology was in high repute. The royalists and the rebels had their astrologers as well as their soldiers! and the predictions of the former had a great influence over the latter. On this subject, it may gratify curiosity to notice three or four works which bear an excessive price; a circumstance which cannot entirely be occasioned by their rarity; and we are induced to suppose, that we still have adepts in this science, whose faith must be strong, or whose scepticism weak.

The Chaldean sages were nearly put to the route by a quarto park of artillery, fired on them by Mr. John Chamber, in 1691. Apollo did not use Marsyas more inhumanly than his scourging pen this mystical race, and his personalities made them feel more sore. However, a Norwich knight, the very Quixote of astrology, arrayed in the enchanted armour of his occult authors, encountered this 23pagan in a most stately carousal. He came forth with “A defence of Judiciall Astrologye, in answer to a treatise lately published by Mr. John Chamber. By Christopher Knight. Printed at Cambridge, 1603.” This is a handsome quarto of about 500 pages. Sir Christopher is a learned and lively writer, and a knight worthy to defend a better cause. But his Dulcinea had wrought most wonderfully on his imagination. This defence of this fanciful science, if science it may be called, demonstrates nothing, while it defends every thing. It confutes, according to the Knight’s own ideas: it alleges a few scattered facts in favour of astrological predictions, which may be picked up in that immensity of fabling which disgraces history. He strenuously denies, or ridicules, what the greatest writers have said against this fanciful art, while he lays great stress on some passages from obscure authors, or what is worse, from authors of no authority. The most pleasant part is at the close, where he defends the art from the objections of Mr. Chamber, by recrimination. Chamber had enriched himself by medical practice, and when he charges the astrologers by merely aiming to gain a few beggarly pence, Sir Christopher catches fire, and shews by his quotations, that if we are to despise an art by its professors attempting to subsist on it, or for the objections which may be raised against its vital principles, we ought by this argument most heartily to despise the medical science and medical men! He gives here all he can collect against physic and physicians, and from the confessions of Hippocrates and Galen, Avicenna 24and Agrippa, medicine appears to be a vainer science than even astrology! Sir Christopher is a shrewd and ingenious adversary; but when he says he only means to give Mr. Chamber oil for his vinegar, he has totally mistaken its quality.

The defence was answered by Thomas Vicars, in his “Madnesse of Astrologers.”

But the great work is by Lilly; and entirely devoted to the adepts. He defends nothing; for this oracle delivers his dictum, and details every event as matters not questionable. He sits on the tripod; and every page is embellished by a horoscope, which he explains with the utmost facility. This voluminous monument of the folly of the age, is a quarto, valued at some guineas! It is entitled, “Christian Astrology, modestly treated of in three Books, by William Lilly, student in Astrology, 2nd edition, 1659.” There is also a portrait of this arch rogue, and astrologer! an admirable illustration for Lavater!

Lilly’s opinions, and his pretended science, were such favourites of the age, that the learned Gataker wrote professedly against this popular delusion. Lilly, at the head of his star-expounding friends, not only formally replied to, but persecuted Gataker annually in his predictions, and even struck at his ghost, when beyond the grave. Gataker died in July 1654, and Lilly having written in his Almanack of that year, for the month of August, this barbarous Latin verse:—

He had the impudence to assert, that he had predicted 25Gataker’s death! But the truth is, it was an epitaph to the “lodgings to let:” it stood empty, ready for the first passenger to inhabit. Had any other of that party of any eminence died in that month, it would have been as appositely applied to him. But Lilly was an exquisite rogue, and never at a fault. Having prophesied, in his Almanack for 1650, that the parliament stood upon a tottering foundation, when taken up by a messenger during the night, he contrived to cancel the page, printed off another, and shewed his copies before the committee, assuring them that the others were none of his own, but forged by his enemies.

PRACTICAL ASTROLOGY, &c.

NATURAL ASTROLOGY

JUDICIAL OR JUDICIARY ASTROLOGY — Origin of Astrology. — Astrological Schemes, &c. — Table of the Twelve Houses. — Signs to the Houses of the Planets. — Angles or Aspects of the Planets. — The Application of Planets. — Prohibition , — Separation , — Translation of Light and Virtue , — Refrenation , — Combustion. — Reception , — Retrogradation , — Frustration , — The Dragon’s Head and Tail. — Climacteric. — Lucky and Unlucky Days. — Genethliaci. — Barclay’s Refutation of Astrology.

ON THE ORIGIN AND IMAGINARY EFFICACY OF AMULETS & CHARMS, — Definition of Amulets, &c. — Effect of the Imagination on the Mind, &c.

Amulets are certain substances to which the peculiar virtue of curing, removing, or preventing diseases, was attached by the superstitious and credulous; for which purpose they were usually worn about the neck or other parts of the body. The council of Laodicea prohibited ecclesiastics from wearing amulets and phylacteries, under pain of degradation. St. Chrysostome and Jerome were likewise zealous against the same practice. “Hoc apud nos,” says the latter, “superstitiosæ mulierculæ in parvulis evangeliis, et in crucis ligno, et istiusmodi rebus, quæ habent quidam zelum Dei, sed non juxta scientiam usque hodie factitant.”—Vide Kirch. Oedip. Egypt.

At the present day, although by no means entirely extinct, amulets have fallen into disrepute; the learned Boyle nevertheless considered them as an instance of the ingress of external effluvia into the habit, in order to shew the great porosity of the human body. He moreover adds, that he is persuaded “some of these external medicaments do answer;” for that he was himself subject to a bleeding from the nose; and being obliged to use several remedies to check this discharge, he found the moss of a dead man’s skull, though only applied so as to touch the skin until the moss became warm from being in contact with it, to be the most 52efficacious remedy. A remarkable instance of this nature was communicated to Zwelfer, by the chief physician to the states of Moravia, who, having prepared some troches, or lozenges of toads, after the manner of Van Helmont, not only found that being worn, as amulets, they preserved him, his domestics, and friends, from the plague, but when applied to the carbuncles or buboes, a consequence of this disease, in others, they found themselves greatly relieved, and many even saved by them. Mr. Boyle also shews how the effluvia, even of cold amulets, may, in the course of time, pervade the pores of the living animal, by supposing an agreement between the pores of the skin and the figure of the corpuscules. Bellini has demonstrated the possibility of this occurrence, in his last proposition de febribus; the same has also been shewn by Dr. Wainwright, Dr. Keil, and others. There were also verbal or lettered charms, which were frequently sung or chaunted, and to which a greater degree of efficacy was ascribed; and a belief in the curative powers of music has even extended to later times. In the last century, Orazio Benevoli composed a mass for the cessation of the plague at Rome. It was performed in St. Peter’s church, of which he was maestro di capella, and the singers, amounting to more than two hundred, were arranged in different circles of the dome; the sixth choir occupying the summit of the cupola.

The origin of amulets may be traced to the most remote ages of mankind. In our researches to discover and fix the period when remedies were 53first employed for the alleviation of bodily suffering, we are soon lost in conjecture, or involved in fable; we are unable to reach the period in any country, when the inhabitants were destitute of medical resources, and we find among the most uncultivated tribes, that medicine is cherished as a blessing, and practised as an art, as by the inhabitants of New Holland and New Zealand, by those of Lapland and Greenland, of North America and the interior of Africa. The personal feelings of the sufferer, and the anxiety of those about him, must, in the rudest state of society, have incited a spirit of industry and research to procure alleviation, the modification of heat and cold, of moisture and dryness; and the regulation and change of diet and habit, must intuitively have suggested themselves for the relief of pain, and when these resources failed, charms, amulets, and incantations, were the natural expedients of the barbarians, ever more inclined to indulge the delusive hope of superstition than to listen to the voice of sober reason. Traces of amulets may be discovered in very early history. The learned Dr. Warburton is evidently wrong, when he assigns the origin of these magical instruments to the age of the Ptolemies, which was not more than 300 years before Christ; this is at once refuted by the testimony of Galen, who tells us that the Egyptian king, Nechepsus, who lived 630 years before the Christian era, had written, that a green jasper cut into the form of a dragon surrounded with rays, if applied externally, would strengthen the stomach and organs of digestion. We have moreover the 54authority of the Scriptures in support of this opinion: for what were the ear-rings which Jacob buried under the oak of Sechem, as related in Genesis, but amulets? and we are informed by Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews, (lib. viii. c. 2, 5,) that Solomon discovered a plant efficacious in the cure of epilepsy, and that he employed the aid of a charm or spell for the purpose of assisting its virtues; the root of the herb was concealed in a ring^[13], which was applied to the nostrils of the demoniac; and Josephus himself remarks, that he himself saw a Jewish priest practise the art of Solomon with complete success in the presence of Vespasian, his sons, and the tribunes of the Roman army. Nor were such means confined to dark and barbarous ages; Theophrastus pronounced Pericles to be insane, because he discovered that he wore an amulet about his neck; and in the declining era of the Roman empire, we find that this superstitious custom was so general, that the Emperor Caracalla was induced to make a public edict, ordaining, that no man should wear any superstitious amulets about his person.

In the progress of civilization, various fortuitous incidents^[14], and even errors in the choice and preparation 55of aliments, must gradually have unfolded the remedial powers of many natural substances: these were recorded, and the authentic history of medicine may date its commencement from the period when such records began.

We are told by Herodotus, that the Chaldeans and Babylonians carried their sick to the public roads and markets, that travellers might converse with them, and communicate any remedies which had been successfully used in similar cases; this custom continued during many ages in Assyria: Strabo states that it also prevailed among the ancient Lusitanians, or Portuguese: in this manner, however, the results of experience descended only by oral tradition. It was in the temple of Æsculapius in Greece, that medical information was first recorded; diseases and cures were then registered on durable tablets of marble; the priests and priestesses, who were the guardians of the temple, prepared the remedies and directed their application; and as these persons were ambitious to pass for the descendants of Æsculapius, they assumed the name of the Asclepiades. The writings of Pausanias, Philostratus, and Plutarch, abound with the artifices of those early physicians. Aristophanes describes in a truly comic manner, the craft and pious avarice of these godly men, and mentions the dexterity and promptitude with which they collected and put into bags the offerings on the altar. The patients, during this period, reposed on the skins of sacrificed rams, in order 56that they might procure celestial visions. As soon as they were believed to be asleep, a priest, clothed in the dress of Æsculapius, imitating his manners, and accompanied by the daughters of the God, that is, by young actresses, thoroughly instructed in their parts, entered and delivered a medical opinion.

All remedies working as it were sympathetically, and plainly unequal to the effect, may be termed Amulets; whether used at a distance by another person, or immediately about the patient: of these various are related. By the Jews, they were called Kamea; by the Greeks, Phylacteries, as already mentioned; and by the Latins, Amuleta or Ligatura; by the Catholics, Agnus Dei, or consecrated relicts, and by the natives of Guinea, where they are still held in great veneration, Fetishes. Different kinds of materials by these different people, have been venerated and supposed capable of preserving from danger and infection, as well as to remove diseases when actually present.

Plutarch relates of Pericles, an Athenian general, that when a friend came to see him, and inquiring after his health, he reached out his hand and shewed him his Amulet; by which he meant to intimate the truth of his illness, and, at the same time, the confidence he placed in these ordinary remedies.

Amulets still continue among us to the present day, indeed there are few instances of ancient superstition some parcel of which has not been preserved, and not unfrequently they have been adapted by men of otherwise good understanding, who 57plead in excuse, that they are not nauseous, cost little, and if they can do no good they can do no harm. Lord Bacon, whom no one can suspect of being an ignorant man, says, that if a man wear a bone ring or a planet seal, strongly believing, by that means, that he might obtain his mistress, or that it would preserve him unhurt at sea, or in battle, it would probably make him more active and less timid; as the audacity they might inspire would conquer and bind weaker minds in the execution of a perilous duty.

There are a variety of Amulets used by the common people for the cure of ague; and however this may be accounted for, whether by the imagination or the disease subsiding of its own accord, many have been apparently cured by them, when the Peruvian bark had previously failed. Agues, says Dr. Willis, resisting Amulets have often been applied to the wrist with success. Abracadabra written in a conical form, i. e. in the shape of an Isoceles triangle, beginning with A, then A B, A B R, and so on, and placed under each other, will have a good effect. The herb Lunaria, gathered by moonlight, we are assured by very respectable authorities, has performed some surprising cures. Naaman, we are told (numero deus impare gaudet) was cured by dipping seven times in the river Jordan. An old gentleman, of eighty years of age, who had nearly exhausted his substance upon physicians, was cured of a strangury, by a new glass bottle that had never been wet inside, only by making water in it, and burying it in the earth. There were also certain formalities 58performed at the pool of Bethseda for the cure of diseases. Dr. Chamberlayne’s Anodyne necklace for a long time was the sina qua non of mothers and nurses, until its virtue was lost by its reverence being destroyed; and those which have succeeded it have nearly run their race. The Grey Liverwort was at one time thought not only to have cured hydrophobia, but, by having it about the person, to have prevented mad dogs from biting them. Calvert paid devotions to St. Hubert for the recovery of his son, who was cured by this means. The son also performed the necessary rites at the shrine, and was cured not only of the hydrophobia, “but of the worser phrensy with which his father had instilled him.” Cramp rings were also used, and eel skins tied round the limbs, to prevent this spasmodic affection; and also by laying the sticks across on the floor in going to bed, have also performed cures this way. Numerous are the charms, amulets, and incantations, used even in the present day for the removal of warts. We are told by Lord Verulam (vol. iii. p. 234,) that when he was at Paris he had above an hundred warts on his hands; and that the English Ambassador’s lady, then at court, and a woman far above all superstition, removed them all only by rubbing them with the fat side of the rind of a piece of bacon, which they afterwards nailed to a post, with the fat side towards the south. In five weeks, says my Lord, they were all removed.

As Lord Verulam is allowed to have been as great a genius as this country ever produced, it may not be irrelevant to the present subject, to 59give, in his own words, what he has observed relative to the power of Amulets. After deep metaphysical observations in nature, and arguing in mitigation of sorcery, witchcraft, and divination, effects that far outstrip the belief in Amulets, he observes “we should not reject all of this kind, because it is not known how far those contributing to superstition depend on natural causes. Charms have not their power from contracts with evil spirits, but proceed wholly from strengthening the imagination; in the same manner that images and their influence, have prevailed in religion; being called from a different way of use and application, sigils, incantations, and spells.

Imagination, indubitably, has a powerful effect on the mind, and in all these miraculous cures is by far the strongest ingredient. Dr. Strother says, the influence of the mind and passions works upon the body in sensible operations like a medicine, and is of far the greater force upon the juices than exercise. The countenance, he observes, betrays a good or wicked intention; and that good or wicked intention will produce in different persons a strength to encounter, or a weakness to yield to the preponderating side. “Our looks discover our passions; there being mystically in our faces, says Dr. Brown, certain characters, which carry in them the motto of our souls, and therefore probably work secret effects in other parts,” or, as Garth, in his “Dispensatory,” so beautifully illustrates the idea:

Addison, on the power and pleasure of the imagination (Spect. vol. vi.) concludes, from the pleasure and pain it administers here below, that God, who knows all the ways of afflicting us, may so transport us hereafter with such beautiful and glorious visions, or torment us with such hideous and ghastly spectres, as might even of themselves suffice to make up the entire of Heaven or Hell of any future being.

St. Vitus’ dance was cured by visiting the tomb of the saint, near Ulm, every May. Indeed, there is some reason in this assertion; for exercise and change of scene and air will cure many obstinate diseases. The bite of the Tarantula is cured by music; and what is more wonderful still, persons bitten by this noxious animal are only to be cured by certain tunes; thus, for instance, one might be cured with “Nancy Dawson,” while another could only reap a similar benefit from “Moll in the wood,” or “Off she goes.”

The learned Dr. Willis, whom we have already mentioned, in his treatise on Nervous diseases, does not hesitate to recommend Amulets in epileptic disorders. “Take,” says he, “some fresh Pæony roots, cut them into square bits, and hang them round the neck, changing them as often as they dry. In all probability the hint from this circumstance 61was taken for the Anodyne necklaces, which was in such strong requisition some time ago, and which produced so much benefit to the proprietors; as the doctor, a little further on, prescribes the same root for the looseness, fevers, and convulsions of children during the time of dentition, mixed, to make it appear more miraculous, with some elk’s hoof.

Turner, whose ideas on hydrophobia are so absurd, where he asserts, that the symptoms may not appear for forty years after the bite; and who asserts, “that the slaver or breath of such a dog is infectious; and that men bit, will bite like dogs again, and die mad; although he laughs at the Anodyne necklace, argues much in the same manner. It is not so very strange that the effluvia from external medicines entering our bodies, should effect such considerable changes, when we see the efficient cause of apoplexy, epilepsy, hysterics, plague, and a number of other disorders, consists, as it were in imperceptible vapours.

Lapis Ætites (blood stone) hung about the arm, by some similar secret means is said to prevent abortion, and to facilitate delivery, when worn round the thigh. Dr. Sydenham, in the iliac passion, orders a live kitten to be laid constantly on the abdomen; others have used pigeons split alive, and applied to the soles of the feet with success, in pestilential fevers and convulsions. The court of king David thought that relief might be obtained by external agents; otherwise they would not have advised him to seek a young virgin; doubtless thereby imagining that the virgin of youth would impart a portion of its warmth and 62strength to the decay of age. “Take the heart and liver of the fish and make a smoke, and the devil shall smell it and flee away.” (Tobit, c. vi.)

During the plague of London, arsenic was worn as an amulet against infection. During this melancholy period, Bradley says, that Bucklersbury was not visited with this scourge, which was attributed to the number of druggists and apothecaries living there.

During the plague at Marseilles, which Belort attributed to the larvæ of worms infecting the saliva, food, and chyle; and which, he says, were hatched by the stomach, took their passage into the blood, at a certain size, hindering the circulation, affecting the juices and solid parts, advised amulets of mercury to be worn in bags suspended at the chest and nostrils, either as a safeguard or as a means of cure; by which method, through the admissiveness of the pores, effluvia specially destructive of all venemous insects, were received into the blood. “An illustrious prince,” continues Belort, “by wearing such an amulet, escaped the small-pox.”

An Italian physician (Clognini) ordered two or three drachms of crude mercury to be worn as a defensive against the jaundice; and also as a preservative against the noxious vapours of inclement seasons: “it breaks,” he observes, “and conquers the different figured seeds of pestilential distempers floating in the air; or else, mixing with the air, kills them where hatched.”

Other philosophers have ascribed the power of mercury in these cases, to an elective faculty given out by the warmth of the body; which attracts the 63infectious particles outwards. For, say they, all bodies are continually emitting effluvia more or less around them, and some whether they be external or internal. The Bath waters change the colour of silver in the pockets of those who use them; mercury the same; cantharides applied externally (or taken inwardly) affects the urinary organ; and camphor, in the same manner, is said to be an antiphrodesiac. Quincey informs us, that by only walking in a newly-painted room, a whole company had the smell of turpentine in their urine. Yawning and laughing are infectious; so is fear and shame. The sight of sour things, or even the idea of them, will set the teeth on edge. Small-pox, itch, and other diseases, are infectious; if so, mercurial amulets bid fair to destroy the germ of some complaints when used only as an external application, either by manual attrition or worn as an amulet, or inhaled by the nose. One word for all; amulets, medicated or not, are precarious and uncertain; and, now a-day, are seldom resorted to, much less confided in.

Baglivi refines on the doctrine of effluvia, by ascribing his cures of the bite of the tarantula to the peculiar undulation any instrument or tune makes by its strokes in the air; which, vibrating upon the external parts of the patient, is communicated to the whole nervous system, and produces that happy alteration in the solids and fluids which so effectually contributes to the cure. The contraction of the solids, he says, impresses new mathematical motions and directions to the fluids; in one or both of which, is seated all distempers, 64and without any other help than a continuance of faith, will alter their quality, a philosophy as wonderful and intricate as the nature of the poison it is intended to expel; but which, however, supplies this observation, that, if the particles of sound can do so much, the effluvia of amulets may do more.

The Moors of Barbary, and generally throughout the Mahomedan dominions, the people are remarkably attached to charms, to which and nature they leave the cure of almost every distemper; and this is the more strongly impressed on them from the belief in predestination; which, according to this sect, stipulates the evils a man is to suffer, as well as the length of time it is ordained he should live upon the land of his forefathers: consequently, they conceive that the interference of secondary means would avail them nothing, an opinion said to have been entertained by King William, but by no means calculated for nations, liberty, and commerce; upon the principle, that when the one was entrenched upon, men would probably be more sudden in their revenge and dislike physic and its occupation, and when actuated with religious enthusiasm, nothing could stand them in any service.

“A long and intense passion on one object,” observes an old navy surgeon^[15], “whether of pride, love, anger, fear, or envy, we see have brought on some universal tremors; on others, convulsions, madness, melancholy, consumption, hecticks, or such a chronical disorder, 65as has wasted their flesh or their strength, as certainly as the taking in of any poisonous drugs would have done. Any thing frightful, sudden, and surprising, upon soft, timorous natures, not only shews itself in the countenance, but produces sometimes very troublesome consequences; for instance, a parliamentary fright will make even grown men sh-t themselves, scare them out of their wits, turn the hair grey. Surprise removes the hooping-cough; looking from precipices, or seeing wheels turn swiftly, gives giddiness, &c. Shall then these little accidents or the passions, (from caprice or humour perhaps,) produce those effects, and not be able to do any thing by amulets? No, as the spirits in many cases resort in plenty, we find where the fancy determines, giving joy and gladness to the heart, strength and fleetness to the limbs, lust a flagrancy to the eyes, palpitation, and priapism; so amulets, under strong imagination, is carried with more force to a distempered part; and, under these circumstances, its natural powers exert better to a discussion.

“The cures compassed in this manner are not more admirable than many of the distempers themselves. Who can apprehend by what impenetrable method the bite of a mad dog^[16] or tarantula should produce their symptoms? The 66touch of a torpedo, numbness? or a woman impress the marks of her longings and her frights on her fœtus? If they are allowed to do these, doubtless they may the other; and not by miracles, which Spinoza denies the possibility of, but by natural and regular causes, though inscrutable to us.

“The best way, therefore, in using amulets, must be in squaring them to the imagination of patients: let the newness and the surprise exceed the invention, and keep up the humour by a long roll of cures and vouchers: by these and such means many distempers, especially of women, that are ill all over, or know not what they ail, have been cured, I am apt to think, more by a fancy to the physician than his prescription; which hangs on the file like an amulet. Quacks again, according to their boldness and way of addressing (velvet and infallibility particularly) command success by striking the fancies of an audience. If a few, more sensible than the rest, see the doctor’s miscarriages, and are not easily gulled at first sight, yet when they see a man is never ashamed, in time jump in to his assistance.”

Our inability upon all occasions to appreciate the efforts of nature in the cure of disease, must always render our notions, with respect to the powers of art, liable to numerous errors and multiplied deceptions. Nothing is more natural, and at the same time more erroneous, than to attribute the cure of a disease to the last medicine that had 67been employed; the advocates of amulets and charms^[17] have ever been thus enabled to appeal to the testimony of what they are pleased to call experience, in justification of their superstitions; and cases which in truth ought to have been considered lucky escapes, have been triumphantly puffed off as skilful cures; and thus have medicines and practitioners alike acquired unmerited praise or unjust censure.

HISTORY OF POPULAR MEDICINES, ETC.—HOW INFLUENCED BY SUPERSTITION.

ALCHYMY [22] . — Origin, Objects, and Practice of Alchymy, &c.

ALKAHEST, OR ALCAHEST,

In Chemistry, means a most pure and universal menstruum or dissolvent, with which some chemists have pretended to resolve all bodies into their first matter, and perform other extraordinary and unaccountable operations.

Paracelsus and Van Helmont, expressly declare, that there is a certain fluid in nature, capable of reducing all sublunary bodies, as well hemogeneous as mixed, into their ens primum, or original matter of which they are composed; or into an uniform equable and potable liquor, that will unite with water, and the juices of our bodies, yet will retain its radical virtues; and if mixed with itself again, will thereby be converted into pure elementary water. This declaration, seconded by the asseveration of Van Helmont, who solemnly declared himself possessed of the secret, excited succeeding Chemists and Alchymists to the pursuit of so noble a menstruum. Mr. Boyle was so much attracted with it, that he frankly acknowledged he had rather been master of it, than of the Philosopher’s Stone. In short, it is not difficult to conceive, that bodies might originally arise from some first matter, which was once in a fluid form. Thus, the primitive matter of gold is, perhaps, nothing more than a ponderous fluid, which, from its own nature, or a strong cohesion or attraction between its particles, acquires afterwards a solid form. And hence there does not appear 86any absurdity in the notion of an universal ens, that resolves all bodies into their Ens Genitate.

The Alcahest is a subject that has been embraced by many anthers; e. g. Pantatem, Philalettes, Tachenius, Ludovicus, &c. Boerhaave says, a library of them might be collected; and Werdenfelt, in his treatise de Secretis Adeptorum, has given all the opinions that have been entertained concerning it.

The term Alcahest is not peculiarly found in any language: Helmont declares, he first observed it in Paracelsus, as a word that was unknown before the time of that author, who in his second book, De Viribus Membrorum, treating of the liver, has these rather remarkable words: Est etiam alkahest liquor, magnam sepates conservandi et confortandi, &c. “There is also the liquor Alkerhest, of great efficacy in preserving the liver; as also in curing hydropsical and all other diseases arising from disorders of that part. If it have once conquered its like, it becomes superior to all other hepatic medicines; and though the liver itself was broken and dissolved, this medicine should supply its place.”

It was this passage alone, quoted from Paracelsus, that stimulated succeeding chemists to an enquiry after the Alkahest; there being only another indirect expression, in all his work, relating to it.

As it was a frequent practice with Paracelsus to transpose the letters of his words, and to abbreviate or otherwise conceal them; e. g. for tartar, he would write Sutratur; for Nitrum, Mutrin, 87&c. it is supposed that Alcahest must be a word disguised in the same manner. Hence some imagine it, and with much probability, to be formed of alkali est; consequently that it was the Alkaline salt of tartar salatilized. This appears to have been Glauber’s opinion; who, in fact, performed surprising things with such a menstruum, upon subjects of all the three kingdoms. Others will have it derived from the German word algeist, that is, wholly spirituous or volatile; others are of opinion, that the word Alcahest is taken from saltz-geist, which signifies spirit of salt; for the universal menstruum, it is said, is to be wrought from water: and Paracelsus himself calls salt the centre of water, wherein metals ought to die, &c. In fact, spirit of salt was the great menstruum he used on most occasions.

The Commentator on Paracelsus, who gave a Latin edition of his works at Delft, assures us that the alcahest was mercury, converted into a spirit. Zwelfer judged it to be a spirit of vinegar rectified from verdigris, and Starkey thought he discovered it in his soap.

There have nevertheless been some synonimous and more significant words used for the Alkahest. Van Helmont, the elder, mentions it by the compound name of ignis-aqua, fire-water: but he here seems to allude to the circulated liquor of Paracelsus, which he terms fire, from its property of consuming all things; and water, on account of its liquid form. The same author calls it liqoer Gehennæ, infernal fire; a word also used by Paracelsus. He also entitles it, “Summun et felicismum 88omnium salium,” “the highest and most successful of all salts; which having obtained the supreme degree of simplicity, purity, and subtilty, enjoys alone the faculty of remaining unchanged and unimpaired by the subjects it works upon, and of dissolving the most stubborn and untractable bodies; as stones, gems, glass, earth, sulphur, metals, &c. into real salt, equal in weight to the matter dissolved; and this with as much ease as hot water melts down snow.”—“This salt,” continues he, “by being several times cohabited with Paracelsus’, Sal circulatum, loses all its fixedness, and at length becomes an insipid water, equal in quantity to the salt it was made from.”

Van Helmont positively expresses that this salt is the product of art and not of nature. “Though, says he, a homogeneal part of elementary earth may be artfully converted into water, yet I deny that the same can be done by nature alone; for no natural agent is able to transmute one element into another.” And this he offers as a reason why the Elements always remain the same.

It may throw some light into this affair, to observe, that Van Helmont, as well as Paracelsus, took water for the universal instrument of chymistry and natural philosophy; and earth for the unchangeable basis of all things—that fire was assigned as the sufficient cause of all things—that seminal impressions were lodged in the mechanism of the earth—that water, by dissolving and fermenting with this earth, as it does by means of fire, brings forth every thing; whence originally proceeded 89the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms: even man himself, according to Moses, was thus at first created.

The great characteristic or property of the Alkahest, as has already been observed, is to dissolve and change all sublunary bodies—water alone excepted.——The changes it induces proceed in the following manner, viz.

1. The subject exposed to its operation, is converted into its three principles, salt, sulphur, and mercury; and afterwards into salt alone, which then becomes volatile; and, at length, is wholly turned into insipid water.—The manner in which it is applied, is by touching the body proposed to be dissolved; e. g. gold, mercury, sand, glass, or the like, once or twice with the pretended alkahest; and if the liquor be genuine, the body will on this application be converted into its own quality of salt.

2. It does not destroy the seminal virtues of the bodies thereby dissolved.—For instance,—gold, by its action, is reduced to a salt of gold; antimony, to a salt of antimony; saffron, to a salt of saffron, &c. of the same seminal virtues, or characters with the original concrete. By seminal virtues, Van Helmont means those virtues which depend upon the structure or mechanism of a body, and which constitutes it what it actually is. Hence an actual and general aurum potabile might readily be gained by the alkahest, as converting the whole body of gold into salt, retaining its seminal virtues, and being withal soluble in water.

3. Whatever it dissolves may be rendered volatile 90by a sand-heat; and if, after volatilizing the solvent, it be distilled therefrom, the body is left pure insipid water, equal in quantity to its original self, but deprived of its seminal virtues. Then, if gold be dissolved by the Alkahest, the metal first becomes salt, which is potable gold; but when the menstruum, by a further application of fire, is distilled therefrom, it is left mere elementary water. Whence it appears, that pure water is the last production or effect of the alkahest.

4. It suffers no change or diminution of force by dissolving the bodies it works in; consequently sustains no reaction from them; being the only immutable menstruum in nature.

5. It is incapable of mixture, and therefore remains free from fermentation and putrefaction; coming off as pure from the body it has dissolved, as when first applied to it; without leaving the least foulness behind.

MAGICIAN.

One who practises the art of Magic. (Vide Divination, Sorcery, and Magic.)

The ancient magicians pretended to extraordinary powers of interpreting dreams, foretelling future events, and accomplishing many wonderful things, by their superior knowledge of the secret powers of nature, of the virtues of plants and minerals, and of the motions and influences of the stars. And as the art of magic among Pagan nations was founded on their system of theology, and the magi who first exercised it were the priests of the gods, they pretended to derive these extraordinary powers from the assistance of the gods, which assistance they sought by a variety of rites and sacrifices, adapted to their respective natures, by the use of charms and superstitious words, and also by ceremonies and supplications: they pretended, likewise, in the proper use of their art, to a power of compelling the gods to execute their desires and commands. An excellent writer has shewn, that the Scripture brands all these powers as a shameless imposture, and reproaches those who assumed them with an utter inability of discovering, or accomplishing, any thing supernatural. (See Isaiah, xlvii. 11, 12, 13. chap. xli. 23, 24. chap. xliv. 25. Jeremiah, x. 2, 3, 8, 14. chap xiv. 14. chap, xxvii. 9, 10. chap. i. 36. Ps. xxi. 6. Jonah, ii. 8.) Nevertheless, many of the Christian fathers, as 92well as some of the heathen philosophers, ascribed the efficacy of magic to evil dæmons; and it was a very prevailing opinion in the primitive, that magicians and necromancers, both among the Gentiles and heretical Christians, had each their particular dæmons perpetually attending on their persons, and obsequious to their commands, by whose help they could call up the souls of the dead, foretel future events, and perform miracles. In support of this opinion, it has been alleged that the names by which the several sorts of diviners are described in scripture, imply a communication with spiritual beings; that the laws of Moses (Exod. xxii. 18. Lev. xix. 26, 31. chap. xx. 27. Deut. xviii. 10, 11.) against divination and witchcraft, prove the efficacy of these arts, though in reality they prove nothing more than their execrable wickedness and impiety; and that pretensions to divination could not have supported their credit in all the heathen nations, and through all ages, if some instances of true divination had not occurred. But the strongest argument is derived from the scripture history of the Egyptian magicians who opposed Moses. With regard to the works performed by these magicians, some have supposed that God himself empowered them to perform true miracles, and gave them an unexpected success; but the history expressly ascribes the effects they produced, not to God, but to their own enchantments. Others imagine, that the devil assisted the magicians, not in performing true miracles, but in deceiving the senses of the spectators, or in presenting before them delusive appearances of true 93miracles: against which opinion it has been urged, that it tends to disparage the credit of the works of Moses. The most common opinion, since the time of St. Austin, has been, that they were not only performed by the power of the devil, but were genuine miracles, and real imitations of those of Moses. In a late elaborate enquiry into the true sense and design of this part of scripture history, it has been shewn that the names given to magicians seem to express their profession, their affectation of superior knowledge, and their pretensions both to explain and effect signs and wonders, by observing the rules of their art; and therefore, that they are the persons, whose ability of discovering or effecting any thing supernatural, the scripture expressly denies. The learned author farther investigates the design for which Pharaoh employed them on this occasion: which, he apprehends, was to learn from them, whether the sign given by Moses was truly supernatural, or only such as their art was able to accomplish. Accordingly it is observed, that they did not undertake to outdo Moses, or to controul him, by superior or opposite arts of power, but merely to imitate him, or to do the same works with his, with a view of invalidating the argument which he drew from his miracles, in support of the sole divinity of Jehovah, and of his own mission. The question on this was not, are the gods of Egypt superior to the gods of Israel, or can any evil spirits perform greater miracles than those which Moses performed by the assistance of Jehovah? but the question is, are the works of Moses proper proofs, that the god of Israel is 94Jehovah, the only sovereign of nature, and consequently that Moses acts by his commission; or, are they merely the wonders of nature, and the effects of magic? In this light Philo, (de Vita Mosis, lib. i. p. 616.) and Josephus, (Antiq. Jud. lib. ii. cap. 13.) place the subject. Moreover, it appears from the principles and conduct of Moses, that he could not have allowed the magicians to have performed real miracles; because the scripture represents the whole body of magicians as impostors; the sacred writers, Moses in particular, describe all the heathen deities, in the belief of whose existence and influence the magic art was founded, as unsupported by any invisible spirit, and utterly impotent and senseless: the religion of Moses was built on the unity and sole dominion of God, and the sole divinity of Jehovah was the point which Moses was now about to establish, in direct opposition to the principles of idolatry; so that if he had allowed that the heathen idols, or any evil spirit supporting their cause, enabled the magicians to turn rods into serpents, and water into blood, and to create frogs, he would have contradicted the great design of his mission, and overthrown the whole fabric of his religion; besides, Moses appropriates all Miracles to God, and urges his own, both in general and separately, as an absolute and authentic proof, both of the sole divinity of Jehovah, and of his own mission; which he could not justly have done, if his opposers performed miracles, and even the same with his. On the other hand, it has been urged, that Moses describes the works of the magicians in the very 95same language as he does his own, (Exod. vii. 11, 12. chap. v. 22. chap. viii. 7.) and hence it is concluded, that they were equally miraculous. To this objection it is replied, that it is common to speak of professed Jugglers, as doing what they pretend and appear to do; but that Moses does not affirm that there was a perfect conformity between his works and those of the magicians, but they did so, or in like manner, using a word which expresses merely a general similitude; and he expressly refers all they did, or attempted in imitation of himself, not to the invocation of the power of dæmons, or of any superior beings, but to human artifice and imposture. The original words, translated enchantments, (Exod. vii. 11, 22. and chap. viii. 7, 18.) import deception and concealment, and ought to have been rendered, secret slights or jugglings. Our learned writer farther shews, that the works performed by the magicians did not exceed the cause, or human artifice, to which they are ascribed. Farmer’s Diss. on Miracles, 1771, chap. 3. § 3. chap. 4. § 1. (See Magii.)

MAGI, OR MAGEANS,

A title which the ancient Persians gave to their wise men or philosophers.

The learned are in great perplexity about the word magus, μαγ ος. Plato, Xenophon, Herodotus, Strabo, &c. derive it from the Persian language, in which it signifies a priest, or person appointed to officiate in holy things; as druid among the Gauls; gymnosophist among the Indians; and Levite, among the Hebrews. Others derive it from the Greek μεγας, great; which they say, being borrowed of the Greeks, by the Persians, was returned in the form μαγος; but Vossius, with more probability, brings it from the Hebrew הגה haga, to meditate; whence מהגים, maaghim, in Latin, meditabundi, q. d. people addicted to meditation.

Magi, among the Persians, answers to σοφοι, or φιλοσοφοι, among the Greeks; sapientes, among the Latins; druids, among the Gauls; gymnosophists, among the Indians; and prophets or priests among the Egyptians.

The ancient magi, according to Aristotle and Laertius, were the sole authors and conservators of the Persian philosophy; and the philosophy principally cultivated by them, was theology and politics; they being always esteemed as the interpreters of all law, both divine and human; on which account they were wonderfully revered by the people. Hence, Cicero observes, that none 97were admitted to the crown of Persia, but such as were well instructed in the discipline of the magi; who taught τα βασιλικα, and showed princes how to govern.

Plato, Apuleius, Laertius, and others, agree, that the philosophy of the magi related principally to the worship of the gods: they were the persons who were to offer prayers, supplications, and sacrifices, as if the gods would be heard by them alone. But according to Lucian, Suidas, &c. this theology, or worship of the gods, as it was called, about which the magi were employed, was little more than the diabolical art of divination; for that μαγεια, strictly taken, was the art of divination.

Porphyry defines the magi well; Cicero calls them divina sapientes, &c. in iisdem ministrantes; adding, that the word magus implied as much in the Persian tongue. These people, he says, are held in such veneration among the Persians, that Darius, the son of Hystaspes, among other things, had it engraved on his monument, that he was master of the magi.

Philo Judas describe the magi to be diligent enquirers into nature, out of the love they bear to truth; and who, setting themselves apart from other things, contemplate the divine virtues the more clearly, and initiate others in the same mysteries.

Their descendants, the modern magi, or fire worshippers, are divided into three classes; whereof the first and most learned, neither ate nor kill animals; but adhere to the old institution 98of abstaining from living creatures. The magi of the second class, refrain only from tame animals; nor do the last kill all indifferently, it being the firm distinguishing dogma of them all, τκν μετεμχυωσιυ ειναι, that there is a transmigration of souls.

To intimate the similitude between animals and men, they used to call the latter by the name of the former; thus, their fellow priests they called lions; the priestesses, lionesses; the servants, cows, &c.

MAGIC, MAGIA, MATEIA, — Magic of the Eastern nations,—a brief view of the origin and progress of Magic, &c.

In its ancient sense, implies the science, or discipline, or doctrine, of the magi, or wise men of Persia. The origin of magic, and the magi, is ascribed to Zoroaster; Salmasius derives the very name from Zoroaster, who, he says, was surnamed Mog, whence magus. Others, instead of making him the author of the Persian philosophy, make him only the restorer and improver thereof; alleging, that many of the Persian rites in use among the magi, were borrowed from the Zabii, among the Chaldeans, who agreed in many things with the magi of the Persians; whence some make the name magus common to both the Chaldeans and Persians. Thus Plutarch mentions, that Zoroaster instituted magi among the Chaldeans; in imitation whereof the Persians had theirs too.

Magic, in a more modern sense, is a science which teaches to perform wonderful and surprising effects.

The word magic originally carried along with it a very innocent, nay, a very laudable meaning; being used purely to signify the study of wisdom, and the more sublime parts of knowledge; but in regard to the ancient magi, engaged themselves in astrology, divination, sorcery, &c. the term magic in time became odious, and was only used to signify an unlawful and diabolical kind of science, depending on the devil and departed souls.

If any wonder how vain and deceitful a science 100should gain so much credit and authority over men’s minds, Pliny gives the reason of it. ’Tis, says he, because it has possessed itself of three sciences of the most esteem among men, taking from each all that is great and marvellous in it. Nobody doubts but that it had its first origin in medicine, and that it insinuated itself into the minds of the people, under pretence of affording extraordinary remedies. To these fine promises it added every thing in religion that is pompous and splendid, and that appears calculated to blind and captivate mankind. And, lastly, it mingled judiciary astrology with the rest, persuading people curious of futurity, that it saw every thing to come in the heavens. Agrippa divided magic into three kinds, natural, celestial, and ceremonial or superstitious.

Natural Magic, is no more than the application of natural active causes to passive things, or subjects; by means whereof many surprising, but yet natural effects are produced.

Baptista Porta has a treatise of natural magic, or of secrets for performing very extraordinary things by natural causes. The natural magic of the Chaldæans was nothing but the knowledge of the powers of simples and minerals. The magic which they call theurgia, consisted wholly in the knowledge of the ceremonies to be observed in the worship of the gods, in order to be acceptable to them. By the virtue of these ceremonies, they believed they could converse with spiritual beings and cure diseases.

Celestial Magic borders nearly on judiciary 101astrology; it attributes to spirits a kind of rule or dominion over the planets; and to the planets, a dominion over men; and, on these principles, builds a ridiculous kind of system.

Superstitious, or geotic Magic, consists in the invocation of devils: its effects are usually evil and wicked, though very strange, and seemingly surpassing the powers of nature: they are supposed to be produced by virtue of some compact, either tacit or express, with evil spirits; but the truth is, these supposed compacts have not the power that is usually imagined; nor do they produce half those effects ordinarily ascribed to them.

Naude has published an apology for all the great men suspected of magic. Agrippa says, that the words used by those in compact with the devil, to invoke him, and to succeed in what they undertake, are, dies, mies, jesquet, benedoefet, douvima, enitemaus. There are a hundred other superstitious formulæ of words prescribed for the same occasion, composed of pleasure, or gathered from several different languages; or patched from the Hebrew, or framed in imitation of it.

Chaldeans and Persians.—The origin of almost all our knowledge may be traced to the earlier periods of antiquity. This is peculiarly the case with respect to the acts denominated magical. 102There were few ancient nations, however barbarous, which could not furnish many individuals to whose spells and enchantments the powers of nature and the immaterial world were supposed to be subjected. The Chaldeans, the Egyptians, and, indeed, all the oriental nations, were accustomed to refer all natural effects for which they could not account, to the agency of Demons. Demons were believed (See Demonology,) to preside over herbs, trees, rivers, mountains, and animals; every member of the human body was under their power, and all corporeal diseases were produced by their malignity. For instance, if any happened to be afflicted with a fever, little anxiety was manifested to discover its cause, or to adopt rational measures for its cure; it must no doubt have been occasioned by some evil spirit residing in the body, or influencing in some mysterious way the fortunes of the sufferer. That influence could be counteracted only by certain magical rites,—hence the observance of those rites soon obtained a permanent establishment in the East.

Even at the present day many uncivilized people hold that all nature is filled with genii, of which some exercise a beneficent, and others a destructive power. All the evils with which man is afflicted, are considered the work of these imaginary beings, whose favour must be propitiated by sacrifices, incantations, songs. If the Greenlander be unsuccessful in fishing, the Huron in hunting, or in war; if even the scarcely half-reasoning Hottentot finds every thing is not right in his mind, body, or fortune, no time must be lost 103before the spirit be invoked. After the removal of some present evil, the next strongest desire in the human mind is the attainment of some future good. This good is often beyond the power, and still oftener beyond the inclination of man, to bestow; it must therefore be sought from beings which are supposed to possess considerable influence over human affairs, and which being elevated above the baser passions of our nature, were thought to regard with peculiar favour all who acknowledged their power, or invoked their aid; hence the numerous rites which have in all ages and countries been observed in consulting superior intelligences, and the equally numerous modes in which their pleasure has been communicated to mortals.

The Chaldeans were more celebrated for their skill in Astrology than Magic; of the former, they were beyond doubt the inventors: so famous did they become in divining from aspects, positions, and influences of the stars, that all Astrologers were termed Chaldeans, particularly by the Jews and Romans.

Of all species of idolatry, the worship of the heavenly bodies appears to have been among the most ancient. The Babylonians soon perceived that these bodies continually changed their places, and that some of them moved in regular orbits; they concluded, therefore, that this regularity of motion must necessarily imply some designing cause—something superior to mere inert matter: but the primeval notion of one supreme being presiding over the universe, was almost extinct, from 104a period little subsequent to the deluge, to the vocation of Abraham. Hence arose the belief that the stars were genii, of which some were the friends, and others the enemies of men; that they possessed an incontrollable power over human affairs; and that to their dominion were subjected, not only the vicissitudes of the seasons, of the atmosphere, and the productions of the earth, but also the dispositions and thoughts of mortals. They were supposed to delight in sacrifices and prayers. Hence a species of worship, subordinate to that of the gods, was established in their honour. It was believed that no event could be foreknown, no magical operation performed, without their aid; and they conferred extraordinary and supernatural powers on all who sought their favour. Men eminent for authority or wisdom, were thought, after their decease, to be incorporated with the race of genii, and sometimes even of gods.

There is little doubt that the Baal of the Scriptures, is the same with the Belus of profane historians. Like Atlas, king of Mauritania, he excelled in the knowledge of Astronomy; but superstition has assigned to the celebrated founder of the Babylonian monarchy a greater dignity than to his western rival; the former was long worshipped by the Assyrians as one of their chief gods, while to the latter was committed the laborious and no very enviable task of supporting the earth on his shoulders. Indeed all the successors of Belus enjoyed the rare felicity of being honoured both living and dead. On leaving the globe, their souls being transformed into genii, were distributed 105through the immensity of space, to superintend the nations, and to direct the influence of the heavenly orbs. The Chaldean magii was chiefly founded on Astrology, and was much conversant with certain animals, metals and plants, which were employed in all their incantations, and the virtue of which was derived from Stellar influence. Great attention was always paid to the positions and configurations presented by the celestial sphere; and it was only at favourable seasons that the solemn rites were celebrated. Those rites were accompanied with many peculiar and fantastic gestures, by leaping, clapping of hands, prostrations, loud cries, and not unfrequently unintelligible exclamations^[25]. Sacrifices and burnt-offerings were used to propitiate superior powers; but our knowledge of the magical rites exercised by certain Oriental nations, the Jews only excepted, is extremely limited. All the books professedly written on the subject, have been swept away by the torrent of time. We learn, however, that the professors among the Chaldeans were generally divided into three classes; the Ascaphim, or charmers, whose office it was to remove present, and to 106avert future contingent evils; to construct talismans, &c.; the Mecaschephim, or magicians properly so called, who were conversant with the occult powers of nature, and the supernatural world; and the Chasdim, or astrologers, who constituted by far the most numerous and respectable class. And from the assembling of the wise men on the occasion of the extraordinary dream of Nebuchadnezzar, it would appear that Babylon had also her Oneicrotici, or interpreters of dreams—a species of diviners indeed to which almost every nation of antiquity gave birth.

The talisman is probably a Chaldean invention. It was generally a small image of stone, or of any metallic substance, and was of various forms. On it were several mysterious characters, which were cut under a certain configuration of the planets, and some believed to be powerfully efficacious, not only in averting evils, but in unfolding the dark and distant picture. Some learned men have lately expressed their doubts as to the antiquity of the talisman, and have even contended that it is not older than the Egyptian Amulet, which was probably invented but a short time before the Christian era; but we have the authority of the sacred writings for asserting that the Seraphim, which, according to the Jewish Doctors, gave oracular answers, and which, both in form and use, bore a great resemblance to the talisman, was known at an early period. There is no slight reason for concluding that the latter is either an imitation of the former, or that both are one and the same device.—Like the Chaldean Astrologers, 107the Persian Magi, from whom our word Magic is derived, belongs to the priesthood. But the worship of the gods, was not their chief occupation; they were great proficients in the arts of which we are now treating. At first they were distinguished for their ardour in the pursuit of knowledge; they endeavoured to penetrate the secrets of nature by the only way in which those secrets can be discovered—experiment and reason. The former furnished them with facts; the latter taught them how these facts might be made the foundation of higher researches, and rendered subservient to the public utility. While they continued in this innocent and laudable career, devoting, like the druids, no inconsiderable portion of their time to the cure of diseases, by means of herbs and other natural productions, they deserved and obtained the gratitude of their countrymen; but in process of time they became desirous of increasing the reverence with which they were regarded by all ranks: they grew ambitious of higher honours, to direct the counsels of the state, and to render even their sovereigns subject to their sway. They joined therefore to the worship of the gods, and to the profession of medicine and natural magic, a pretended familiarity with superior powers, from which they boasted of deriving all their knowledge. Like Plato, who probably imbibed many of their notions, they taught that Demons hold a middle rank between gods and men; that they (the Demons) presided not only over divinations, auguries, conjurations, oracles, and every species of magic, but also over sacrifices and prayer, which in behalf 108of men they presented, and rendered acceptable to the gods. Hence they were mediators, whose ministry was thought indispensable in all magical and religious rites. The magi constantly persuaded their credulous countrymen, that to them alone was conceded the high privilege of communicating with gods and demons, and of being thereby enabled to foretel future events; they even went so far as to assert that by means of their incantations, they obliged the latter to execute all their commands, and to serve them with the same deference as servants do their masters. The austerity of their lives was well calculated to strengthen the impression which their cunning had already made on the multitude, and to prepare the way for whatever impositions they might afterwards wish to practise.

All the three order of Magi enumerated by Porphyry, abstained from wine and women, and the first of these orders from animal food. These were indulgences which they considered too vulgar for men who were the favourites of Orosmades, Aremanius, and of the inferior Deities, and who were so intimately connected with the offspring of those Deities, the numerous hosts of Genii and Demon.

Three kinds of divination were chiefly cultivated by the Magi; necromancy, which appears to have been twofold; the predicting of future events by the inspection of dead bodies, and the invoking of departed spirits, which were forced to unfold the dark decrees of fate—a science which has in all ages been almost universally diffused over the earth; lecanomancy, by which demons, in 109obedience to certain powerful songs, were obliged to enter a vessel filled with water, and to answer whatever questions were put to them; and hydromancy, which differs from lecanomancy in this, that the voice of the demon was not heard, but his form was perceptible in the water, in which he represented, either by means of his satellites, or by written verses, the cause and issue of any particular event. Whether the celebrated Zoroaster was acquainted with these three species, cannot be well determined. He has been called the inventor of magic; with what justice, is quite as doubtful. It has been inferred, and perhaps with greater plausibility, that he did not as much invent as methodize the art. He may likewise have so extended its bounds as to eclipse the fame of his predecessors; and from that, as well as from the other consideration, the honour of the invention may have been assigned him.

Indians.—Of Indian magic we know even less than we do of that exercised by any other ancient nation. We have however reason to conclude that much of it was similar to that for which the magi, from whom it was probably derived, were held in so high estimation. But the divination of the Indians differed in one respect from that of all other people; they admitted in it affairs of public moment, but rigorously excluded it from all private concerns. The reason of this prohibition probably was, that the science was esteemed too sacred to be employed on the ordinary occurrences of life. Their Gymnosophists, or Brachmans, (it is not clear that there was any distinction 110between them) were regarded with as much reverence as the magi, and were probably more worthy of it. Some of them dwelt in woods, and others in the immediate vicinity of cities. They performed the ceremonies of religion; by them indeed kings worshipped the deities of the country; not a few pretended to superior powers, to cure diseases by enchantments, and to foretel future events by the stars; but generally speaking, they were a useful and honourable body of men. Their skill in medicine was great: the care which they took in educating youth, in familiarizing it with generous and virtuous sentiments, did them peculiar honour; and their maxims and discourses, as recorded by historians, (if indeed those historians be deserving of full credit) prove that they were much accustomed to profound reflection on the principles of civil polity, morality, religion, and philosophy. They preserved their dignity under the sway of the most powerful princes, whom they would not condescend to visit, or to trouble for the slightest favour. If the latter desired the advice or the prayers of the former, they were obliged either to go themselves, or to send messengers.

Egyptians.—The Egyptians also had their magicians from the remotest antiquity. Though these magicians were unable to contend with Moses, they were greatly superior to the Chaldean Astrologers, the Persian Magi, and the Indian Gymnosophists; they appear to have possessed a deeper insight into the arcana of nature than any other professors of the art. By what extraordinary 111powers their rods were changed into serpents, the waters of the Nile into blood, and the land of Egypt covered with frogs, has much perplexed wise and good men. Of all the methods of solution which the learning and piety of either Jewish or Christian commentators have applied to this difficult problem, none appears so consonant with the meaning of the sacred text, and at the same time liable to so few objections, as this; that the magicians were not, in the present case, impostors, and that they really accomplished, by means of supernatural agents, the wonders recorded by the inspired penman^[26]. Earth, air, and ocean, may contain many things of which our philosophy has never dreamt. If this consideration should humble the pride of learning, it may remind the Christian that secret things belong not to him, but to a higher power.

It was maintained by the Egyptians that besides the Gods, there were many demons which communicated with mortals, and which were often rendered visible by certain ceremonies and songs; that genii exercised an habitual and powerful influence over every particle of matter; that thirty-six of these beings presided over the various members of the human body; and that by magical incantations it might be strengthened, or debilitated^[27], afflicted with, or delivered from diseases. Thus, in every case of sickness, the spirit of presiding over the 112afflicted part, was first duly invoked. But the magicians did not trust solely to their vain invocations; they were well acquainted with the virtues of certain herbs, which they wisely employed in their attempts at healing. These herbs were greatly esteemed: thus the cynocephalia, or as the Egyptians themselves termed the asyrites, which was used as a preventive against witchcraft; and the nepenthes, which Helen presented in a potion to Menelaus, and which was believed to be powerful in banishing sadness, and in restoring the mind to its accustomed, or even to greater cheerfulness, were of Egyptian growth^[28]. But 113whatever might be the virtues of such herbs, they were used rather for their magical than for their medicinal qualities; every cure was cunningly ascribed to the presiding demons, with which not a few boasted that they were, by means of their art, intimately connected.

The Egyptian amulets are certainly not so ancient as the Babylonian Talisman, but in their uses they were exactly similar. Some little figures, supposed to have been intended as charms, have been formed on several mummies, which have at various times been brought into Europe. Plutarch informs us, that the soldiers wore rings, on which the representation of an insect, resembling 114our beetle, was inscribed; and we learn from Ælian, that the judges had always suspended round their necks a small image of truth formed of emeralds^[29]. The superstitious belief in the virtues of Amulets is far from extinct in the present age; the Cophts, the Arabians, and Syrians, and, indeed, almost all the inhabitants of Asia, west of the Ganges, whether Christians or Mahometans, still use them against possible evils.

The descendants of the Pharaohs, like the Chaldean kings, were always great encouragers of Astronomy; and though the subjects of the latter were not so eminent as those of the former in the sister science, we have good reason to conclude that they made no inconsiderable progress in it. Herodotus, and other ancient historians, assert that Astrology was, from the remotest times, cultivated by that people. They usually, indeed, prognosticated the general course of life, the disposition, and even the manner of death, of any one, by reference to the deity presiding over the day on which he was born; and not unfrequently by their eastern neighbours, by determining the position of the stars at the moment of delivery.

As Moses passed the greatest part of his life in Egypt, and as he could know little by personal experience of other nations, it may perhaps be inferred that generally when he warns the Israelites against prevailing superstitions, he has a particular eye to those observed in the country in which the posterity 115of Adam had so long resided. He makes frequent allusion, indeed, to the magical rites and idolatrous practices of the Canaanites; but in this case he appears to speak rather from the information he had acquired from others than from his own experience. Should this inference be admitted, we shall have reason for believing that both Witchcraft and Necromancy were known to the Egyptians; and that some days were considered lucky, and others unfavorable, for the prosecution of any important affair. A careful perusal of the Pentateuch, and a reference to the Greek Historians who have written on the affairs of Egypt, and whose works are necessary to elucidate many obscure allusions in the sacred text, will furnish the more curious reader with information on some minor points, which our limits, as a miscellaneous work, necessarily oblige us to omit.

Jews^[30].—We have hitherto had too much reason to complain of the paucity of information afforded by ancient writers on the magic of the Eastern nations; but when we come to consider that of the Jews, we no longer labour under so heavy a disadvantage. The Holy Scriptures, the works of native writers, and above all, the laborious researches of learned Christian commentators, furnish us with abundant materials, from which we shall select such as appear best adapted to give an intelligible, but necessarily brief, view of the subject.—Many Jewish Doctors assign to their magic a preposterous antiquity. They assert 116that it is of divine origin; that it was known to Adam and Abraham, both of whom were animated by the same soul; that the latter taught it by means of his concubines to his children; and that he wore round his neck a precious stone, the bare sight of which cured every disease, and which, after his death, God hung on the sun! But leaving these wild fables, we have sufficient authority for saying, that the Jews were at a very early period addicted to the magical arts. This propensity, which first originated in Egypt, was much increased by their subsequent intercourse with the inhabitants of Syria, and above all, with their Chaldean conquerors. Thus we read in the Book of Kings, that they used divination, and observed the cry of birds. Hence the frequent and awful denunciations employed by the inspired writers against the practisers of their forbidden arts.

Lightfoot has proved, that the Jews, after their return from Babylon, having entirely forsaken idolatry, and being no longer favoured with the gift of prophecy, gradually abandoned themselves, before the coming of our Saviour, to sorcery and divination. The Talmud, which they still regard with a reverence bordering on idolatry, abounds with instructions for the due observance of superstitious rites. After the destruction of their city and temple, many Israelitish impostors were highly esteemed for their pretended skill in magic. Under pretence of interpreting dreams, they met with daily opportunities of practising the most shameful frauds. Many Rabbins were quite as well versed in the school of Zoroaster as in that 117of Moses. They prescribed all kinds of conjuration, some for the cure of wounds, some against the dreaded bite of serpents, and others against thefts and enchantments. Like the Magi, they boasted that by means of their art they held an intercourse with superior beings. Thus Bath-kool, daughter of the voice, is the name given by them to the echo: they regarded it as an oracle, which in the second temple, was destined to supply the defect of the Urim and Thummim, the mysterious oracles of the first. Of Bath-kool many absurd stories are related. Thus when two Rabbins went to consult her concerning the fate of another Rabbin, Samuel, the Babylonian, they passed before a school, in which they heard a boy reading aloud, and Samuel died. (Sam. ch. xxv. v. 1.) On enquiry they subsequently found that the object of their anxiety was no longer an inhabitant of the earth; and thus a casual coincidence, of which no reasonable man would have been surprised, was confidently ascribed to the oracular powers of Bath-kool. Two other Rabbins, Jona and Josa, went to visit Acha in his sickness; as they proceeded on their way they said, “let us hear what sentence Bath-kool will pronounce on the fate of our brother.” Immediately they heard a voice, as if addressed by a woman to her neighbour—“the candle is going out; let not the light be extinguished in Israel.” (Lightfoot, vol. II. p. 267.) No more doubt was entertained that these words proceeded from Bath-kool, than that Elias now assists at the circumcision of every Jewish child.

The divinations of the Israelites were founded 118on the influence of the stars, and on the operations of spirits: that singular people did not, indeed, like the Chaldeans and Magi, regard the heavenly bodies as gods and genii; but they ascribed to them a great power over the actions and opinions of men. Hence the common proverb, ‘such a one may be thankful to his stars,’ when spoken of any person distinguished for his wealth, power, or wisdom. The mazzal-tool was the happy, and the mazzal-ra the malignant influence; and the fate of every one was supposed to be regulated by either one or the other. Like the notions from which their superstitious opinions were derived, the Jews constructed horoscopes, and predicted the fate of every one from his birth. Thus if any one were born under the dominion of the sun, it was prognosticated that he would be fair, generous, open-hearted, and capricious; under Venus, rich and wanton; under Mercury, witty, and of a retentive memory; under the Moon, sickly, and inconstant; under Saturn, unfortunate; under Jupiter, just, and under Mars, successful.

As to the spirits whose agency was so often employed in divination, we have full information from Manasseh, Ben Israel, and others. “Of wicked spirits,” says the author, “there are several varieties, of which some are intelligent and cunning, others ignorant and stupid. The former flying from one extent of the earth to the other, become acquainted with the general cause of human events, both past and present, and sometimes with those of the future. Hence many mortals conjure these spirits, by whose assistance 119they effect wonderful things. The books of the cabalists, and of some other writers, contain the names of the spirits usually invoked, and a particular account of the ceremonies are accompanied. If (continues the same author,) these spirits appear to one man alone, they portend no good; if to two persons together, they presage no evil: they were never known to appear to three mortals assembled together.”

The magical rites of the Jews were, and indeed are still, chiefly performed on various important occasions, as on the birth of a child, a marriage, &c. On such occasions the evil spirits are believed to be peculiarly active in their malignity, which can only be counteracted by certain enchantments^[31]. Thus Tobit, according to the directions of the angel Raphael, exorcised the demon Asmodeus, whom he compelled, by means of the perfume of the heart and liver of a fish, to fly into upper Egypt. (Tobit, ch. viii. v. 2 and 3.)

Josephus does not think magic so ancient as many writers of this nation do; he makes Solomon the first who practised an art which is so powerful against demons; and the knowledge 120of which, he asserts, was communicated to that prince by immediate inspiration. The latter, continues the weakly credulous historian, invented and transmitted to posterity in his writings, certain incantations, for the cure of diseases, and for the expulsion and perpetual banishment of wicked spirits from the bodies of the possessed. This mode of cure, he further observes, is very prevalent in our nation. It consisted, according to his description, in the use of a certain root, which was sealed up, and held under the nose of the person possessed; the name of Solomon, with the words prescribed by him, was then pronounced, and the demon forced immediately to retire. He does not even hesitate to assert, that he himself has been an eye-witness of such an effect produced on a person named Eleazar, in presence of the emperor Vespasian and his sons. Nor will this relation surprise us, when we consider the deep malignity entertained by a Jew to the Christian religion, and his ceaseless attempts to depreciate the miracles of our Saviour, by ascribing them to magical influence, and by representing them as easy of accomplishment to all acquainted with the occult sciences.

We should scarcely credit the account, were it not founded on unquestionable authority, that on the great day of propitiations, the Jews of the sixteenth century, in order to avert the angel of Samuel, endeavoured to appease him by presents. On that day, and on no other throughout the year, they believed that power was given him to accuse them before the judgment-seat of God. 121They aimed, therefore, to prevent their grand enemy from carrying accusations against them, by rendering it impossible for him to know the appointed day. For this purpose they used a somewhat singular stratagem; in reading the usual portion of the law, they were careful to leave out the beginning and the end,—an omission which the devil was by no means prepared to expect on so important an occasion. They entertained no doubt that their cunning, in this instance, had been more than a match for him.

The cabal is chiefly conversant with enchantments, which are effected by a certain number of characters. It gives directions how to select and combine some passages and proper names of Scripture, which are believed both to render supernatural beings visible, and to produce many wonderful and surprising effects. In this manner the Malcha-sheva, (the queen of Sheba who visited Solomon,) who has often been invoked, and as often made to appear. But the most famous wonders have been effected by the name of God. The sacred word Jehovah, is, when read with points, multiplied by the Jewish doctors into twelve, forty-two, and seventy-two letters, of which words are composed that are thought to possess miraculous energy. By these Moses slew the Egyptians; by these Israel was preserved from the destroying angel of the Wilderness; by these Elijah separated the waters of the river, to open a passage for himself and Elisha; and by these it has been daring and impiously asserted, that the Eternal Son of God cast out evil spirits. The 122name of the devil is likewise used in magical devices. The five Hebrew letters of which that name is composed, exactly constitute the number 364, one less than the days in the whole year. Now the Jews pretended, that owing to the wonderful virtue of the number comprised in the name of satan, he is prevented from accusing them for an equal number of days: hence the stratagem of which we have before spoken, for depriving him of the power to injure them on the only day in which that power is granted him.

Innumerable are the devices contained in the Cabal for averting possible evils, as the plague, disease, and sudden death. But we see no necessity, nor even utility, in prosecuting the subject further. We have said enough to convince the reader of the gross superstition and abominable practice of those who, even in their present state of degradation and infamy, have the arrogance to style themselves God’s peculiar people,—as so many lights to enlighten the Gentiles.

PREDICTION.

Prophecy, Divination, or foretelling future events, either by divine Revelation, by art and human invention, or by conjecture.—See Divination, page 142.

Few great moral or political revolutions have occurred which have not had their accompanying prognostic; and men of a philosophic cast of mind, in the midst of their retirement, freed from the delusions of parties and of sects, while they are withdrawn from their conflicting interests, have rarely been confounded by the astonishment which overwhelms those who, absorbed in active life, are the mere creatures of sensation, agitated by the shadows of truth, the unsubstantial appearances of things. Intellectual nations are advancing in an eternal circle of events and passions which succeed each other, and the last is necessarily connected with its antecedent: the solitary force of some fortuitous incident only can interrupt this concatinated progress of human affairs. That every great event has been accompanied by a presage or prognostic, has been observed by Lord Bacon. “The shepherds of the people should understand the prognostics of state tempests; hollow blasts of wind, seemingly at a distance, and secret swellings of the sea, often precede a storm.” Such were the prognostics discerned by the politic Bishop Williams, in Charles the First’s time, who clearly foresaw and predicted the final success of the puritanic party in our country: attentive to 124his own security, he abandoned the government and sided with the rising opposition, at a moment when such a change in the public administration was by no means apparent. (See Rushworth, vol. i. p. 420.)

Dugdale, our contemplative antiquary, in the spirit of foresight, must have anticipated the scene which was approaching in 1641, in the destruction of our ancient monuments in cathedral churches. He hurried on his itinerant labours of taking draughts and transcribing inscriptions, as he says, “to preserve them for future and better times.” It is to the prescient spirit of Dugdale that posterity is indebted for the ancient monuments of England, which bear the marks of the haste, as well as the zeal, which have perpetuated them. Sir Thomas More was no less prescient in his views; for when his son Roper was observing to him that the Catholic religion, under the “Defender of the Faith,” was in a most flourishing state, the answer of More was an evidence of political foresight:—“True it is, son Roper! and yet I pray God that we may not live to see the day that we would gladly be at league and competition with heretics, to let them have their churches quietly to themselves, so that they would be contented to let us have ours quietly to ourselves.” The minds of men of great political sagacity were at that moment, unquestionably, full of obscure indications of the approaching change. Erasmus, when before the tomb of Becket, at Canterbury, observing it loaded with a vast profusion of jewels, wished that those had been distributed among the poor, and 125that the shrine had only been adorned with boughs and flowers:—“For,” said he, “those who have heaped up all this mass of treasure, will one day be plundered, and fall a prey to those who are in power.” A prediction literally fulfilled about twenty years after it was made. The fall of the religious houses was predicted by an unknown author, (see Visions of Pier’s Ploughman,) who wrote in the reign of Edward the Third. The event, in fact, with which we are all well acquainted, was realized two hundred years afterwards, by our Henry VIII. Sir Walter Raleigh foresaw the consequences of the separatists and the sectaries in the National Church, which occurred about the year 1530. His memorable words are, “Time will even bring it to pass, if it were not resisted, that God would be turned out of churches into barns, and from thence again into the fields and mountains, and under hedges. All order of discipline and church government, left to newness of opinion, and men’s fancies, and as many kinds of religion spring up as there are parish churches within England.” Tacitus also foresaw the calamities which so long desolated Europe on the fall of the Roman empire, in a work written five hundred years before the event! In that sublime anticipation of the future, he observed, “When the Romans shall be hunted out from those countries which they have conquered, what will then happen? The revolted people, freed from their master-oppressor, will not be able to subsist without destroying their neighbours, and the most cruel wars will exist among all these nations.” Solon, at Athens, 126contemplating on the port and citadel of Munychia, suddenly exclaimed, “how blind is man to futurity! could the Athenians foresee what mischief this will do, they would even eat it with their own teeth, to get rid of it.” A prediction verified more than two hundred years afterwards! Thales desired to be buried in an obscure quarter of Milesia, observing that that very spot would in time be the forum. Charlemagne, in his old age, observing from the window of a castle a Norman descent on his coast, tears started in the eyes of the aged monarch. He predicted, that since they dared to threaten his dominions while he was yet living, what would they do when he should be no more! A melancholy prediction of their subsequent incursions, and of the protracted calamities of the French nation during a whole century.

In a curious treatise on “Divination,” or the knowledge of future events, Cicero has preserved a complete account of the state contrivances practised by the Roman government, to instil among the people those hopes and fears by which they regulated public opinion. The Pagan creed, now become obsolete and ridiculous, has occasioned this treatise to be rarely consulted; it remains, however, as a chapter in the history of man!

There appears to be something in minds which take in extensive views of human nature, which serves them as a kind of Divination, and the consciousness of this faculty has been asserted by some. Cicero appeals to Atticus how he had always judged of the affairs of the republic as a good diviner; and that its overthrow had happened, as 127he had foreseen, fourteen years before. (Ep. ad Att. lib. 10, ep. 4.)

Cicero had not only predicted what had happened in his own times, but also what occurred long after, according to Cornelius Nepos. The philosopher, indeed, affects no secret revelation, nor visionary second-sight;—he honestly tells us, that that art had been acquired merely by study, and the administration of public affairs, while he reminds his friend of several remarkable instances of his successful predictions. “I do not,” says Cicero, “divine human events by the arts practised by the augurs; but I use other signs.” Cicero then expresses himself with the guarded obscurity of a philosopher who could not openly ridicule the prevailing superstitions, although the nature of his “signs” are perfectly comprehensible, when in the great pending events of the rival conflicts of Pompey and Cæsar, he shewed the means he used for his purpose: “On one side I consider the humour and genius of Cæsar, and on the other, the condition and manner of civil wars.” (Ep. ad. Att. lib. 6, ep. 6.) In a word, the political diviner, by his experience of the personal character, anticipated the actions of the individual. Others, too, have asserted the possession of this faculty. Du Vard, an eminent chancellor of France, imagined the faculty to be intuitive with him; from observations made by his own experience. “Born,” says he, “with constitutional infirmity, a mind and body but ill adapted to be laborious, with a most treacherous memory, enjoying no gift of nature, yet able at all times to exercise 128a sagacity so great that I do not know, since I have reached manhood, that any thing of importance has happened to the state, to the public, or to myself in particular, which I had not foreseen^[32].” The same faculty appears to be described by a remarkable expression employed by Thucidides, in his character of Themistocles, of which the following is a close translation. “By a species of sagacity peculiarly his own, for which he was in no degree indebted either to early education or after study, he was supereminently happy in forming a prompt judgment in matters that admitted but little time for deliberation; at the same time that he far surpassed all his deductions of the future from the PAST; or was the best guesser of the future from the past.”

Should this faculty of moral and political prediction be ever considered as a science, it may be furnished with a denomination, for the writer of the life of Thomas Brown, prefixed to his works, in claiming the honour for that philosopher, calls it the “Stochastic,” a term derived from the Greek and from Archery, meaning to “shoot at the mark.”

Aristotle, who collected all the curious knowledge of his times, has preserved some remarkable opinions on the art of divination. In detailing the various subterfuges practised by the pretended diviners of the present day, he reveals the secret principle by which one of them regulated his predictions. 129He frankly declared that the FUTURE being always very obscure, while the PAST was easy to know, his predictions had never the future view; for he decided from the PAST, as it appeared in human affairs, which, however, he concealed from the multitude. (Arist. Rhetoric, lib. vii. c. 5.)

With regard to moral predictions on individuals, many have discovered the future character. The revolutionary predisposition of Cardinal Retz, even in his youth, was detected by the sagacity of Cardinal Mazarine. He then wrote a history of the conspiracy of Fresco, with such vehement admiration of his hero, that the Italian politician, after its perusal, predicted that the young author would be one of the most turbulent spirits of the age! The father of Marshal Biron, even amid the glory of his son, discovered the cloud which, invisible to others, was to obscure it. The father, indeed, well knew the fiery passions of his son. “Biron,” said the domestic Seer, “I advise thee, when peace takes place, to go and plant cabbages in thy garden, otherwise I warn thee thou wilt lose thy head upon the scaffold!”

Lorenzo de Medici had studied the temper of his son Piero; for we are informed by Guicciardini that he had often complained to his most intimate friends that “he foresaw the imprudence and arrogance of his son would occasion the ruin of his family.”

There is a singular prediction of James the first, of the evils likely to ensue from Laud’s violence, in a conversation given by Hacket, which the King held with Archbishop Williams. When the 130King was hard pressed to promote Laud, he gave his reasons why he intended to “keep Laud back from all place of rule and authority, because I find he hath a restless spirit, and cannot see when matters are well, but loves to toss and change, and to bring things to a pitch of reformation floating in his own brain, which endangers the stedfastness of that which is in a good pass. I speak not at random; he hath made himself known to me to be such a one.” James then relates the circumstances to which he alludes; and at length, when still pursued by the Archbishop, then the organ of Buckingham, as usual, this King’s good nature too easily yielded; he did not, however, without closing with this prediction: “Then take him to you! but on my soul you will repent it!”

The future character of Cromwell was apparent to two of our great politicians. “This coarse, unpromising man,” observed Lord Falkland, pointing to Cromwell, “will be the first person in the kingdom if the nation comes to blows!” And Archbishop Williams told Charles the First confidentially, that “There was that in Cromwell which foreboded something dangerous, and wished his Majesty would either win him over to him, or get him taken off!”

The incomparable character of Buonaparte, given by the Marquis of Wellesley, predicted his fall when highest in his power. “His eagerness of power,” says this great Statesman, “is so inordinate; his jealousy of independence so fierce; his keenness of appetite so feverish, in all that touches his ambition, even in the most trifling things, that 131he must plunge into dreadful difficulties. He is one of an order of minds that by nature make for themselves great reverses.”

After the commencement of the French Revolution, Lord Mansfield was once asked when it would end? His Lordship replied, “It is an event without precedent, and therefore without prognostic.” The fact is, however, that it had both; as our own history, in the reign of Charles the First, had furnished us with a precedent; and the prognostics were so plentiful, that a volume of passages might be collected from various writers who had foretold it.

There is a production, which does honour to the political sagacity, as well as to his knowledge of human nature, thrown out by Bishop Butler in a Sermon before the House of Lords, in 1741; he calculated that the unreligious spirit would produce, some time or other, political disorders, similar to those which, in the 17th century, had arisen from religious fanaticism. “Is there no danger,” he observed, “that all this may raise somewhat like that levelling spirit, upon Atheistical principles, which in the last age prevailed upon enthusiastic ones? Not to speak of the possibility that different sorts of people may unite in it upon these contrary principles!” All this has literally been accomplished!

If a prediction be raised on facts which our own prejudice induce us to infer will exist, it must be chimerical. The Monk Carron announces in his Chronicle, printed in 1532, that the world was about ending, as well as his Chronicle of it; that 132the Turkish Empire would not last many years; that after the death of Charles V. the Empire of Germany would be torn to pieces by the Germans themselves. This Monk will no longer pass for a prophet; he belongs to that class of Chroniclers who write to humour their own prejudices, like a certain Lady-prophetess who, in 1811, predicted that grass was to grow in Cheapside about this time!

Even when the event does not always justify the prediction, the predictor may not have been the less correct in his principles of divination. The catastrophe of human life, and the turn of great events, often turn out accidental. Marshal Biron, whom we have noticed, might have ascended the throne instead of the scaffold; Cromwell and De Retz might have become only the favourite generals, or the ministers of their Sovereigns. Fortuitous events are not included within the reach of human prescience; such must be consigned to those vulgar superstitions which presume to discover the issue of human events, without pretending to any human knowledge. In the science of the Philosopher there is nothing supernatural.

Predictions have sometimes been condemned as false ones, which, when scrutinize may scarcely be deemed to have failed: they may have been accomplished, and they may again revolve on us. In 1749, Dr. Hartley published his “Observations on Man;” and predicted the fall of the existing governments and hierarchies, in two simple propositions; among others—

133Prop. 81. It is probable that all the civil governments will be overturned.

Prop. 82. It is probable that the present forms of Church government will be dissolved.

Many indeed were terribly alarmed at these predicted falls of Church and State. Lady Charlotte Wentworth asked Hartley when these terrible things would happen? The answer of the predictor was not less awful: “I am an old man, and shall not live to see them.” In the subsequent revolutions of America and France, and perhaps latterly that of Spain, it can hardly be denied that these predictions have failed.

The philosophical predictor, in foretelling some important crisis, from the appearances of things, will not rashly assign the period of time; for the crisis he anticipates is calculated on by that inevitable march of events which generate each other in human affairs; but the period is always dubious, being either retarded or accelerated by circumstances of a nature incapable of entering into his moral arithmetic. There is, however, a spirit of political vaccination which presumes to pass beyond the boundaries of human prescience, which, by enthusiasts, has often been ascribed to the highest source of inspiration; but since “the language of prophecy” has ceased, such pretensions are not less impious than they are unphilosophical. No one possessed a more extraordinary portion of this awful prophetic confidence than Knox the reformer: he appears to have predicted several remarkable events, and the fates of some persons. We are informed that when condemned to a galley in 134Rochelle, he predicted that “within two or three years, he should preach the Gospel at St. Giles’s, in Edinburgh,” an improbable event, which nevertheless happened as he had foretold. Of Mary and Darnley, he pronounced that, “as the King, for the Queen’s pleasure, had gone to mass, the Lord, in his justice, would make her the instrument of his overthrow.” Other striking predictions of the deaths of Thomas Maitland, and of Kirkaldly of Grange, and the warning he solemnly gave to the Regent Murray, not to go to Linlithgow, where he was assassinated, occasioned a barbarous people to imagine that the prophet Knox had received an immediate communication from heaven.

An Almanack-maker, a Spanish friar, predicted, in clear and precise words, the death of Henry the Fourth of France; and Pierese, though he had no faith in the vain science of Astrology, yet, alarmed at whatever menaced the life of a beloved Sovereign, consulted with some of the King’s friends, and had the Spanish almanack before his Majesty, who courteously thanked them for their solicitude, but utterly slighted the prediction: the event occurred, and in the following year the Spanish friar spread his own fame in a new almanack. This prediction of the Spanish friar was the result either of his being acquainted with the plot, or from his being made an instrument for the purposes of those who were. It appears that Henry’s assassination was rife in Spain and Italy before the event occurred.

Separating human prediction from inspired prophecy, we can only ascribe to the faculties of 135man that acquired prescience which we have demonstrated, that some great minds have unquestionably exercised. Its principles have been discovered in the necessary dependance of effects on general causes, and we have shewn that, impelled by the same motives, and circumscribed by the same passions, all human affairs revolve in a circle; and we have opened the true source of this yet imperfect science of moral and political prediction, in an intimate, but a discriminative, knowledge of the past. Authority is sacred when experience affords parallels and analogies. If much which may overwhelm, when it shall happen, can be foreseen, the prescient Statesman and Moralist may provide defensive measures to break the waters, whose streams they cannot always direct; and the venerable Hooker has profoundly observed, that “the best things have been overthrown, not so much by puissance and might of adversaries, as through defect of council in those that should have upheld and defended the same^[33].”

“The philosophy of history,” observes a late writer and excellent observer, “blends the past with the present, and combines the present with the future; each is but a portion of the other. The actual state of a thing is necessarily determined by its antecedent, and thus progressively through the chain of human existence, while, as Leibnitz has happily expressed the idea, the present is always full of the future. A new and beautiful 136light is thus thrown over the annals of mankind, by the analogies and the parallels of different ages in succession. How the seventeenth century has influenced the eighteenth, and the results of the nineteenth, as they shall appear in the twentieth, might open a source of PREDICTIONS, to which, however difficult it might be to affix their dates, there would be none in exploring into causes, and tracing their inevitable effects. The multitude live only among the shadows of things in the appearance of the PRESENT; the learned, busied with the PAST, can only trace whence, and how, all comes; but he who is one of the people and one of the learned, the true philosopher, views the natural tendency and terminations which are preparing for the FUTURE.”

FATALISM, OR PREDESTINATION.

DIVINATION, — Artificial Divination , — Natural Divination , — Axinomancy , — Alectoromantia , — Arithmomancy , — Belomancy , — Cleromancy , — Cledonism. — Coscinomancy. — Capnomancy , — Catoptromancy , — Chiromancy , — Dactyliomancy. — Extispicium , — Gastromancy. — Geomancy , — Hydromancy, ὑδροματεια , — Necromancy , — Oneirocritica , — Onomancy , or Onomamancy [35] , — Onycomancy , or Onymancy . — Ornithomancy , — Pyromancy , — Pyscomancy , or Sciomancy , — Rhabdomancy ,

Is the art or act of foretelling future events, and is divided by the ancients into artificial and natural.

Is that which proceeds by reasoning upon certain external signs, considered as indications of futurity.

Is that which presages things from a mere internal sense, and persuasion of the mind, without any assistance of signs; and is of two kinds, the one from nature, and the other by influx. The first is the supposition that the soul, collected within itself, and not diffused, or divided among the organs of the body, has, from its own nature and essence, some foreknowledge of future things: witness what is seen in dreams, ecstasies, the confines of death, &c. The second supposes that the soul, after the manner of a minor, receives some secondary illumination from the presence of God and other spirits.

Artificial divination is also of two kinds; the one argues from natural causes; e. g. the predictions of physicians about the event of diseases, from the pulse, tongue, urine, &c. Such also are those of the politician, O venalem urbem, et mox peuturam, si emptorem inveneris! The second proceeds from experiments and observations arbitrarily instituted, and is mostly superstitious.

143The systems of divination reducible under this head, are almost incalculable, e. g. by birds, the entrails of birds, lines of the hand, points marked at random, numbers, names, the motion of a sieve, the air, fire, the Sortes Prænestinæ, Virgilianæ, and Homericæ; with numerous others, the principal species and names of which are as follows:—

Was an ancient species of divination or method of foretelling future events by means of an axe or hatchet. The word is derived from the Greek, αξινη, securis; μαντεια, divinatio. This art was in considerable repute among the ancients; and was performed, according to some, by laying an agate stone upon a red hot hatchet.

Is an ancient kind of divination, performed by means of a cock, which was used among the Greeks, in the following manner.—A circle was made on the ground, and divided into 24 equal portions or spaces: in each space was written one of the letters of the alphabet, and upon each of these letters was laid a grain of wheat. This being done, a cock was placed within the circle, and careful observation was made of the grains he picked. The letters corresponding to these grains were afterwards formed into a word, which word was the answer decreed. It was thus that Libanius and Jamblicus sought who should succeed the Emperor Valens; and the cock answering to the 144spaces ΘΕΟΔ, they concluded upon Theodore, but by a mistake, instead of Theodosius.

Is a kind of divination or method of foretelling future events, by means of numbers. The Gematria, which makes the first species of the Jewish Cabala, is a kind of Arithmomancy.

Is a method of divination by means of arrows, practised in the East, but chiefly among the Arabians.

Belomancy has been performed in different manners: one was to mark a parcel of arrows, and to put eleven or more of them into a bag; these were afterwards drawn out, and according as they were marked, or otherwise, they judged of future events. Another way was, to have three arrows, upon one of which was written, God forbids it me; upon another, God orders it me; and upon the third nothing at all. These were put into a quiver, out of which one of the three was drawn at random; if it happened to be that with the second inscription, the thing they consulted about was to be done; if it chanced to be that with the first inscription, the thing was let alone; and if it proved to be that without any inscription, they drew over again. Belomancy is an ancient practice, and is probably that which Ezekiel mentions, chap. xxi. v. 21. At least St. Jerome understands it so, and observes that the practice was frequent among the Assyrians and Babylonians. Something like it is also 145mentioned in Hosea, chap. vi. only that staves are mentioned there instead of arrows, which is rather Rhabdomancy than Belomancy. Grotius, as well as Jerome, confounds the two together, and shews that they prevailed much among the Magi, Chaldeans, and Scythians, from whom they passed to the Sclavonians, and thence to the Germans, whom Tacitus observes to make use of Belomancy.

Is a kind of divination performed by the throwing of dice or little bones; and observing the points or marks turned up.

At Bura, a city of Achaia, was a temple, and a celebrated Temple of Hercules; where such as consulted the oracle, after praying to the idol, threw four dice, the points of which being well scanned by the priests, he was supposed to draw an answer from them.

This word is derived from the Greek κληδων, which signifies two things; viz. rumour, a report, and avis, a bird; in the first sense, Cledonism should denote a kind of divination drawn from words occasionally uttered. Cicero observes, that the Pythagoreans made observations not only of the words of the gods, but of those of men; and accordingly believed the pronouncing of certain words, e. g. incendium, at a meal, very unlucky. Thus, instead of prison, they used the words domicilium; and to avoid erinnyes, said Eumenides. In the second 146sense, Cledonism should seem a divination drawn from birds; the same with ornithomantia.

As the word implies, is the art of divination by means of a sieve.

The sieve being suspended, after repeating a certain form of words, it is taken between two fingers only; and the names of the parties suspected, repeated: he at whose name the sieve turns, trembles or shakes, is reputed guilty of the evil in question. This doubtless must be a very ancient practice. Theocritus, in his third Idyllion, mentions a woman who was very skilful in it. It was sometimes also practised by suspending the sieve by a thread, or fixing it to the points of a pair of scissars, giving it room to turn, and naming as before the parties suspected: in this manner Coscinomancy is still practised in some parts of England. From Theocritus it appears, that it was not only used to find out persons unknown, but also to discover the secrets of those who were.

Is a kind of divination by means of smoke, used by the ancients in their sacrifices. The general rule was—when the smoke was thin and light, and ascended straight up, it was a good omen; if on the contrary, it was an ill one.

There was another species of Capnomancy which consisted in observing the smoke arising from poppy and jessamin seed, cast upon burning coals.

Is another species of divination used by the ancients, performed by means of a mirror.

Pausanias says, that this method of divination was in use among the Achaians; where those who were sick, and in danger of death, let down a mirror, or looking-glass, fastened by a thread, into a fountain before the temple of Ceres; then looking in the glass, if they saw a ghastly disfigured face, they took it as a sure sign of death; but, on the contrary, if the face appeared fresh and healthy, it was a token of recovery. Sometimes glasses were used without water, and the images of future things, it is said, were represented in them.

Is the art of divining the fate, temperament, and disposition of a person by the lines and lineaments of the hands.

There are a great many authors on this vain and trifling art, viz. Artemidorus, Fludd, Johannes De Indagine, Taconerus, and M. De le Chambre, who are among the best.

M. De le Chambre insists upon it that the inclinations of people may be known from consulting the lines on the hands; there being a very near correspondence between the parts of the hand and the internal parts of the body, the heart, liver, &c. “whereon the passions and inclinations much depend.” He adds, however, that the rules and precepts of Chiromancy are not sufficiently warranted; the experiments on which they stand not being well verified. 148He concludes by observing, that there should be a new set of observations, made with justness and exactitude, in order to give to Chiromancy that form and solidity which an art of science demands.

This is a sort of divination performed by means of a ring. It was done as follows, viz. by holding a ring, suspended by a fine thread, over a round table, on the edge of which were made a number of marks with the 24 letters of the alphabet. The ring in shaking or vibrating over the table, stopped over certain of the letters, which, being joined together, composed the required answer. But this operation was preceded and accompanied by several superstitious ceremonies; for, in the first place, the ring was to be consecrated with a great deal of mystery; the person holding it was to be clad in linen garments, to the very shoes; his head was to be shaven all round, and he was to hold vervein in his hand. And before he proceeded on any thing the gods were first to be appeased by a formulary of prayers, &c.

The whole process of this mysterious rite is given in the 29th book of Ammianus Marcellinus.

(From exta and spicere, to view, consider.)

The name of the officer who shewed and examined the entrails of the victims was Extispex.

This method of divination, or of drawing presages relative to futurity, was much practised throughout Greece, where there were two families, 149the Jamidæ and Clytidæ, consecrated or set apart particularly for the exercise of it.

The Hetrurians, in Italy, were the first Extispices, among whom likewise the art was in great repute. Lucan gives us a fine description of one of these operations in his first book.

This species of divination, practised among the ancients, was performed by means of words coming or appearing to come out of the belly.

There is another kind of divination called by the same name, which is performed by means of glasses, or other round transparent vessels, within which certain figures appear by magic art. Hence its name, in consequence of the figures appearing as if in the belly of the vessels.

Was performed by means of a number of little points or dots, made at random on paper; and afterwards considering the various lines and figures, which those points present; thereby forming a pretended judgment of futurity, and deciding a proposed question.

Polydore Virgil defines Geomancy a kind of divination performed by means of clefts or chinks made in the ground; and he takes the Persian magi to have been the inventors of it. De invent. rer. lib. 1, c. 23.

⁂ Geomancy is formed of the Greek γη terra, earth; and μαντεια, divination; it being the ancien 150custom to cast little pebbles on the ground, and thence to form their conjecture, instead of the points above-mentioned.

The art of divining or foretelling future events by means of water; and is one of the four general kinds of divination: the other three, as regarding the other elements, viz. fire and earth, are denominated Pyromancy, Aeromancy, and Geomancy already mentioned.

The Persians are said by Varro to have been the first inventors of Hydromancy; observing also that Numa Pompilius, and Pythagoras, made use of it.

There are various Hydromantic machines and vessels, which are of a singularly curious nature.

Is the art of communicating with devils, and doing surprising things by means of their aid; particularly that of calling up the dead and extorting answers from them. (See Magic.)

Is the art of interpreting dreams; or a method of foretelling future events by means of dreams.

From several passages of Scripture, it appears that, under the Jewish dispensation, there was such a thing as foretelling future events by dreams; but there was a particular gift or revelation required 151for that purpose. Hence it would appear that dreams are actually significative of something to come; and all that is wanting among us is, the Oneirocritica, or the art of knowing what: still it is the general opinion of the present day that dreams are mere chimera, induced by various causes, have no affinity with the realization of future events; but having, at the same time, indeed, some relation to what has already transpired.

With respect to Joseph’s dream, “it was possible,” says an old author, “for God, who knew all things, to discover to him what was in the womb of fate; and to introduce that, he might avail himself of a dream; not but that he might as well have foretold it from any other accident or circumstance whatever; unless God, to give the business more importance, should purposely communicate such a dream to Pharoah, in order to fall in with the popular notion of dreams and divination, which at that time was so prevalent among the Egyptians.”

The name given to the interpreters of dreams, or those who judge of events from the circumstances of dreams, was Oneirocritics. There is not much confidence to be placed in those Greek books called Oneirocritics; they are replete with superstition of the times. Rigault has given us a collection of the Greek and Latin works of this kind; one of which is attributed to Astrampsichus; another to Nicephorus, the patriarch of Constantinople; to which are added the treatises of Artimedorus and Achmet. But the books 152themselves are little else than reveries or waking dreams, to explain and account for sleeping ones.

The secret of Oneirocritism, according to all these authors, consists in the relations supposed to exist between the dream and the thing signified; but they are far from keeping to the relations of agreement and similitudes; and frequently they have recourse to others of dissimilitude and contrariety.

Is the art of divining the good or bad fortune which will befall a man from the letters of his name. This mode of divination was a very popular and reputable practice among the ancients.

The Pythagoreans taught that the minds, actions, and successes of mankind, were according to their fate, genius, and name; and Plato himself inclines somewhat to the same opinion.—Ausonius to Probus expresses it in the following manner:—

In this manner he sports with tippling Meroe, as 153if her name told she would drink pure wine without water; or as he calls it, merum mereim. Thus Hippolytus was observed to be torn to pieces by his own coach horses, as his name imported; and thus Agamemnon signified that he should linger long before Troy; Priam, that he should be redeemed out of bondage in his childhood. To this also may be referred that of Claudius Rutilius:—

It is a frequent and no less just observation in history, that the greatest Empires and States have been founded and destroyed by men of the same name. Thus, for instance, Cyrus, the son of Cambyses, began the Persian monarchy; and Cyrus, the son of Darius, ruined it; Darius, son of Hystaspes, restored it; and, again, Darius, son of Asamis, utterly overthrew it. Phillip, son of Amyntas, exceedingly enlarged the kingdom of Macedonia; and Phillip, son of Antigonus, wholly lost it. Augustus was the first Emperor of Rome; Augustulus the last. Constantine first settled the empire of Constantinople, and Constantine lost it wholly to the Turks.

There is a similar observation that some names are constantly unfortunate to princes: e. g. Caius, among the Romans; John, in France, England and Scotland; and Henry, in France.

One of the principal rules of Onomancy, among the Pythagoreans, was, that an even number of vowels in a name signified an imperfection in the 154left side of a man; and an odd number in the right.—Another rule, about as good as this, was, that those persons were the most happy, in whose names the numeral letters, added together, made the greatest sum; for which reason, say they, it was, that Achilles vanquished Hector; the numeral letters, in the former name, amounting to a greater number than the latter. And doubtless it was from a like principle that the young Romans toasted their mistresses at their meetings as often as their names contained letters.

Rhodingius describes a singular kind of Onomantia.—Theodotus, King of the Goths, being curious to learn the success of his wars against the Romans, an Onomantical Jew ordered him to shut up a number of swine in little stys, and to give some of them Roman, and others Gothic names, with different marks to distinguish them, and there to keep them till a certain day; which day having come, upon inspecting the stys they found those dead to whom the Gothic names had been given, and those alive to whom the Roman names were assigned.—Upon which the Jew foretold the defeat of the Goths.

This kind of divination is performed by means of the finger nails. The ancient practice was, to rub the nails of a youth with oil and soot, or wax, 155and to hold up the nails, thus prepared, against the sun; upon which there were supposed to appear figures or characters, which shewed the thing required. Hence also modern Chiromancers call that branch of their art which relates to the inspection of nails, Onycomancy.

Is a kind of divination, or method of arriving at the knowledge of futurity, by means of birds; it was among the Greeks what Augury was among the Romans.

A species of divination performed by means of fire.

The ancients imagined they could foretel futurity by inspecting fire and flame; for this purpose they considered its direction, or which way it turned. Sometimes they added other matters to the fire, e. g. a vessel full of urine, with its neck bound round with wool; and narrowly watched the side in which it would burst, and thence took their prognostic. Sometimes they threw pitch in it, and if it took fire instantly, they considered it a favourable omen.

An art among the ancients of raising or calling up the manes or souls of deceased persons, to give intelligence of things to come. The witch who conjured up the soul of Samuel, to foretel Saul the event of the battle he was about to give, did so by Sciomancy.

Was an ancient method of divination, performed by means of rods or staves. St. Jerome mentions this kind of divination in his Commentary on Hosea, chap. vi. 12.; where the prophet says, in the name of God: My people ask counsel at their stocks; and their staff declareth unto them: which passage that father understands of the Grecian Rhabdomancy.

The same is met with again in Ezekiel, xxi. 21, 22. where the prophet says: For the king of Babylon stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination; he made his arrows bright; or, as St. Jerome renders it, he mixed his arrows; he consulted with images; he looked in the liver.

If it be the same kind of divination that is alluded to in these two passages, Rhabdomancy must be the same kind of superstition with Belomancy. These two, in fact, are generally confounded. The Septuagint themselves translate חצים of Ezekiel, by ῥαβδος, a rod; though in strictness it signifies an arrow. So much however is certain, that the instruments of divination mentioned by Hosea are different from those of Ezekiel. In the former it is עצו etso, מקלו maklo, his wood, his staff: in the latter חצים hhitism, arrows. Though it is possible they might use rods or arrows indifferently; or the military men might use arrows and the rest rods.

By the laws of the Frisones, it appears that the ancient inhabitants of Germany practised Rhabdomancy. 157The Scythians were likewise acquainted with the use of it: and Herodotus observes, lib. vi. that the women among the Alani sought and gathered together fine straight wands or rods, and used them for the same superstitious purposes.

Among the various other kinds of divination, not here mentioned, may be enumerated: Chiromancy, performed with keys; Alphitomancy or Aleuromancy, by flour; Keraunoscopia, by the consideration of thunder; Alectromancy, by cocks; Lithomancy, by stones; Eychnomancy, by lamps; Ooscopy, by eggs; Lecanomancy, by a basin of water; Palpitatim, Salisatio, παλμος, by the pulsation or motion of some member, &c. &c. &c.

All these kinds of divination have been condemned by the fathers of the Church, and Councils, as supposing some compact with the devil. Fludd has written several treatises on divination, and its different species; and Cicero has two books of the divination of the ancients, in which he confutes the whole system. Cardan also, in his 4th Book de Sapientia, describes every species of them.

ORACLE.

OURAN, OR URAN, SOANGUS,

DREAMS, &c. — Brizomancy. — Origin of Interpreting Dreams. — Opinions on the cause of dreams.

FATE.

PHYSIOGNOMY [37] , ΦΥΣΙΟΓΝΩΜΙΑ .

There seems to be something in Physiognomy, and it may perhaps bear a much purer philosophy than these authors (see Note,) were acquainted with. This, at least, we dare say, that of all the fanciful arts of the ancients, fallen into disuse by the moderns, there is none has so much foundation in nature as this. There is an apparent correspondence, or analogy between the countenance and the mind; the features and lineaments of the one are directed by the motions and affections of the other: there is even a peculiar arrangement in the members of the face, and a peculiar disposition of the countenance, to each particular affection; and perhaps to each particular idea of the mind. In fact, the language of the face (physiognomy,) is as copious, nay, perhaps, as distinct and intelligible, as that of the tongue, (speech.) Thanks to bounteous nature, she has not confined us to one only method of conversing with each other, and of learning each other’s thoughts; we have several:—We do not wholly depend on the tongue, which may happen to be bound; and the ear, which may be deaf:—but in those cases we 172have another resource, viz. the Countenance and the Eye, which afford us this further advantage, that by comparing the reports of the tongue, (a member exceedingly liable to deceive,) with those of the face, the prevarications of the former may be detected.

The foundation of Physiognomy is the different objects that present themselves to the senses, nay, the different ideas that arise on the mind, do make some impression on the spirits; and each an impression correspondent or adequate to its cause,—each, therefore, makes a different impression. If it be asked how such an impression could be effected, it is easy to answer; in short, it is a consequence of the economy of the Creator, who has fixed such a relation between the several parts of the creation, to the end that we may be apprized of the approach or recess of things hurtful or useful to us. Should this not be philosophical enough for our purpose, take the manner of the Cartesian language, thus: the animal spirits moved in the organ by an object, continue their motion to the brain; from whence that motion is propagated to this or that particular part of the body, as is most suitable to the design of nature; having first made a proper alteration in the face by means of its nerves, especially the Pathetici and Motores Occulorum. See Dr. Gurther’s work, anno 1604.

The face here does the office of a dial-plate, and the wheels and springs, inside the machine, putting its muscles in motion, shew what is next to be expected from the striking part. Not that the 173motion of the spirits is continued all the way by the impression of the object, as the impression may terminate in the substance of the brain, the common fund of the spirits; the rest Dr. Gurther imagines, may be effected much after the same manner as air is conveyed into the pipes of an organ, which being uncovered, the air rushes in; and when the keys are let go, is stopped again.

Now, if by repeated acts, or the frequent entertaining of a private passion or vice, which natural temperament has hurried, or custom dragged on to, the face is often put in that posture which attends such acts; the animal spirits will make such passages through the nerves, (in which the essence of a habit consists,) that the face is sometimes unalterably set in that posture, (as the Indian religious are by a long continued sitting in strange postures in their pagods,) or, at least, it falls, insensibly and mechanically, into that posture, unless some present object distort it therefrom, or some dissimulation hide it. This reason is confirmed by observation: thus we see great drinkers with eyes generally set towards the nose; the abducent muscles (by some called bibatorii, or bibatory muscles,) being often employed to put them in that posture, in order to view their beloved liquor in the glass, at the time of drinking. Thus, also, lascivious persons are remarkable for the oculorum mobilis petulantia, as Petronius calls it. Hence also we may account for the Quaker’s expecting face, waiting the spirit to move him; the melancholy face of most sectaries; the studious face of men of great application of mind; revengeful 174and bloody men, like executioners in the act; and though silence in a sort may awhile pass for wisdom, yet sooner or later, St. Martin peeps through the disguise to undo all. “A changeable face,” continues Dr. Gurther, “I have observed to show a changeable mind, but I would by no means have what has been said be understood as without exception; for I doubt not but sometimes there are found men with great and virtuous souls under very unpromising outsides.”

“Were our observations a little more strict and delicate, we might, doubtless, not only distinguish habits and tempers, but also professions. In effect, does there need much penetration to distinguish the fierce looks of the veteran soldier, the contentious look of the practised pleader, the solemn look of the minister of state, or many others of the like kind?”

A very remarkable physiological anecdote has been given by De La Place, in his “Pièces Interrestantes et peu connues.” Vol. iv. p. 8.

He was assured by a friend that he had seen a voluminous and secret correspondence which had been carried on between Louis XIV. and his favourite physician De la Chambre on this science: the faith of the monarch seems to have been great, and the purpose to which this correspondence tended was extraordinary indeed, and perhaps scarcely credible. Who will believe that Louis XIV. was so convinced of that talent, which De la Chambre attributed to himself, of deciding merely by the physiognomy of persons, not only 175on the real bent of their character, but to what employment they were adapted, that the king entered into a secret correspondence to obtain the critical notices of his physiognomist. That Louis XIV. should have pursued this system, undetected by his own courtiers, is also singular; but it appears by this correspondence, that this art positively swayed him in his choice of officers and favourites. On one of the backs of these letters De la Chambre had written, “If I die before his majesty, he will incur great risk of making many an unfortunate choice.”

This collection of Physiological correspondence, if it does really exist, would form a curious publication. We, however, have heard nothing of it.

De la Chambre was an enthusiastic physiognomist, as appears by his works: “The Characters of the Passions,” four volumes in quarto; “The art of Knowing Mankind;” and “the Knowledge of Animals.”

Lavater quotes his “vote and interest” in behalf of his favourite science. It is no less curious, however, to add, that Phillip Earl of Pembroke, under James I., had formed a particular collection of portraits, with a view to physiognomonical studies.

The great Prince of Condé was very expert in a sort of Physiognomy which shewed the peculiar habits, motions, and positions of familiar life, and mechanical employments. He would sometimes lay wagers with his friends, that he would guess, upon the Pont Neuf, what trade 176persons were of that passed by, from their walk and air.

The celebrated Marshal Laudohn would have entered when young, into the service of the great Frederick, King of Prussia; but that monarch, with all his penetration, formed a very erroneous judgment of the young officer, (as he himself found in the sequel,) and pronounced that he would never do; in consequence of which Laudohn entered into the service of the Empress-Queen, Maria Theresa, and became one of the most formidable opponents of his Prussian Majesty. Marshal Turrene was much more accurate in his opinion of our illustrious John Duke of Marlborough, whose future greatness he predicted, when he was serving in the French army as Ensign Churchill, and known by the unmilitary name of the “handsome Englishman.”

In the fine arts, moreover, we have seen no less accurate predictions of future eminence. As the scholars of Rubens were playing and jesting with each other, in the absence of their master, one of them was accidentally thrown against a piece on which Rubens had just been working, and a considerable part of it was entirely disfigured. Another of the pupils set himself immediately to repair it, and completed the design before his master returned. Rubens, on reviewing his work, observed a change, and a difference that surprised and embarrassed him. At last, suspecting that some one had been busy, he demanded an explanation; adding, that the execution was in 177so masterly a manner, that he would pardon the impertinence on account of its merit. Encouraged by this declaration, the young artist confessed, and explained the whole, pleading, that his officiousness was merely to screen a comrade from his master’s anger. Rubens answered, “if any one of my scholars shall excel me, it will be yourself.” This pupil was the great Vandyck.

Lavater, who revived physiognomy, has, unquestionably, brought it to great perfection. But it may justly be doubted whether he is not deceived in thinking that it may be taught like other sciences, and whether there is not much in his system that is whimsical and unfounded. Every man, however, has by nature, something of the science, and nothing is more common than to suspect the man who never looks his neighbour in the face. There is a degree of cunning in such characters, which is always dangerous, but by no means new. “There is a wicked man that hangeth down his head sadly; but inwardly he is full of deceit. Casting down his countenance, and making as if he heard not. A man may be known by his look, and one that hath understanding, by his countenance, when thou meetest him.”—In several of Lavater’s aphorisms, something like the following occurs: “A man’s attire, and excessive laughter, and gait, shew what he is.”

APPARITIONS.

Partial darkness, or obscurity, are the most powerful means by which the sight is deceived: night is therefore the proper season for apparitions. Indeed the state of the mind, at that time, prepares it for the admission of these delusions of the imagination. The fear and caution which must be observed in the night; the opportunity it affords for ambuscades and assassinations; depriving us of society, and cutting off many pleasing trains of ideas, which objects in the light never fail to introduce, are all circumstances of terror: and perhaps, on the whole, so much of our happiness depends upon our senses, that the deprivation of any one may be attended with a proportionate degree of horror and uneasiness. The notions entertained by the ancients respecting the soul, may receive some illustrations from these principles. In dark, or twilight, the imagination frequently transforms an inanimate body into a human figure; on approaching the same appearance is not to be found: hence they sometimes fancied they saw their ancestors; but not finding the reality, distinguished these illusions by the name of shades.

Many of these fabulous narrations might originate from dreams. There are times of slumber, when we are sensible of being asleep^[38]. On this principle, Hobbes has so ingeniously accounted for the spectre which is said to have appeared to Brutus, 179that we cannot resist the temptation of inserting it in his own words. “We read,” says he, “of M. Brutus, (one that had his life given him by Julius Cæsar, and was also his favourite, and notwithstanding murdered him) that at Philippi, the night before he gave battle to Augustus Cæsar, he saw a fearful apparition, which is commonly related by historians as a vision; but considering the circumstances, one may easily judge it to have been but a short dream. For, sitting in his tent, pensive and troubled with the horror of his rash act, it was not hard for him, slumbering in the cold, to dream of that which most affrighted him; which fear, as by degrees it made him wake, so it must needs make the apparition by degrees to vanish: and having no assurance that he slept, he could have no cause to think it a dream, or any thing but a vision.”—The well-known story told by Clarendon, of the apparition of the Duke of Buckingham’s father, will admit of a similar solution. There was no man in the kingdom so much the subject of conversation as the Duke; and, from the corruptness of his character, he was very likely to fall a sacrifice to the enthusiasm of the times. Sir George Viliers is said to have appeared to the man at midnight—there is therefore the greatest probability that the man was asleep; and the dream affrighting him, made a strong impression, and was likely to be repeated.

It must be confessed, that the popular belief of 180departed spirits occasionally holding a communication with the human race, is replete with matter of curious speculation. Some Christian divines, with every just reason, acknowledge no authentic source whence the impression of a future state could ever have been communicated to man, but from the Jewish prophets or from our Saviour himself. Yet it is certain, that a belief in our existence after death has, from time immemorial, prevailed in countries, to which the knowledge of the gospel could never have extended, as among certain tribes of America. Can then this notion have been intuitively suggested? Or is it an extravagant supposition, that the belief might often have arisen from those spectral illusions, to which men in every age, from the occasional influence of morbific causes, must have been subject? And what would have been the natural self-persuasion, if a savage saw before him the apparition of a departed friend or acquaintance, endowed with the semblance of life, with motion, and with signs of mental intelligence, perhaps even holding a converse with him? Assuredly, the conviction would scarcely fail to arise of an existence after death. The pages of history attest the fact that:—

But if this opinion of a life hereafter, had ever among heathen nations their origin, it must necessarily be imbued with the grossest absurdities, incidental to so fallacious a source of intelligence. Yet still the mind has clung to such extravagancies with avidity; “for,” as Sir Thomas Brown has 181remarked, “it is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man, to tell him that he is at the end of his nature; or that there is no future state to come, unto which this seems progressively and otherwise made in vain.” It has remained therefore for the light of revelation alone, to impart to this belief the consistency and conformation of divine truth, and to connect it with a rational system of rewards and punishments.

From the foregoing remarks, we need not be surprised that a conviction of the occasional appearance of ghosts or departed spirits, should, from the remotest antiquity, have been a popular creed, not confined to any distinct tribe or race of people. In Europe, it was the opinion of the Greeks and Romans, that, after the dissolution of the body, every man was possessed of three different kinds of ghosts, which were distinguished by the names of Manes, Anima, and Umbra. These were disposed of after the following manner: the Manes descended into the infernal regions, the Anima ascended to the skies, and the Umbra hovered about the tomb, as being unwilling to quit its connexion with the body. Dido, for instance, when about to die, threatens to haunt Æneas with her umbra; at the same time, she expects that the tidings of his punishment will rejoin her manes below^[39].

182The opinions regarding ghosts which were entertained during the Christian era, but more particularly during the middle ages, are very multifarious; yet these, with the authorities annexed to them, have been most industriously collected by Reginald Scot. His researches are replete with amusement and instruction. “And, first,” says he, “you shall understand, that they hold, that all the soules in heaven may come downe and appeare to us when they list, and assume anie bodie saving their owne: otherwise (saie they) such soules should not be perfectlie happie. They saie that you may know the good soules from the bad very easilie. For a damned soule hath a very heavie and soure looke; but a saint’s soule hath a cheerful and merrie countenance: these also are white and shining, the other cole black. And these damned soules also may come up out of hell at their pleasure, although Abraham made Dives believe the contrarie. They affirme, that damned soules walke oftenest: next unto them, the soules of purgatorie; and most seldom the soules of saints. Also they saie, that in the old lawe soules did appeare seldom; and after doomsdaie they shall never be seene more: in the time of grace they shall be most frequent. The walking of these soules (saith Michael Andræas) is a moste excellent argument for the proofe of purgatorie; for (saith he) those soules have testified that which the popes have affirmed in that behalfe; to wit, that there is not onelie such a place of punishment, but that they are released from thence by masses, and such other satisfactorie works, whereby the goodness of the masse is also ratified and confirmed.

183“These heavenlie or purgatorie soules (saie they) appeare most commonlie to them that are borne upon Ember daies; because we are in best date at that time to praie for the one, and to keepe companie with the other. Also, they saie, that soules appeare oftenest by night; because men may then be at best leisure, and most quiet. Also they never appeare to the whole multitude, seldome to a few, and commonlie to one alone; for so one may tell a lie without controlment. Also, they are oftenest seene by them that are readie to die: as Thrasella saw Pope Fœlix; Ursine, Peter and Paule; Galla Romana, S. Peter; and as Musa the maide sawe our Ladie: which are the most certaine appearances, credited and allowed in the church of Rome; also, they may be seene of some, and of some other in that presence not seene at all; as Ursine saw Peter and Paule, and yet manie at that instant being present could not see anie such sight, but thought it a lie, as I do. Michael Andræas confesseth that papists see more visions than Protestants: he saith also, that a good soule can take none other shape than a man; manie a damned soule may and doth take the shape of a blackmore, or of a beaste, or of a serpent, or speciallie of an heretike.”

Such is the accounts which Scot has given regarding the Popish opinion of departed spirits. In another part of his work, he triumphantly asks, “Where are the soules that swarmed in time past? Where are the spirits? Who heareth their noises? Who seeth their visions? Where are the soules that made such mone 184for trentals, whereby to be eased of their pains in purgatorie? Are they all gone to Italie, because masse are growne deere here in England?—The whole course may be perceived to be a false practice, and a counterfeit vision, or rather a lewd invention. For in heaven men’s soules remaine not in sorrow and care, neither studie they there how to compasse and get a worshipfull burial here in earth. If they did they would not have foreslowed so long. Now, therefore, let us not suffer ourselves to be abused anie longer, either with conjuring priests, or meloncholicall witches; but be thankfull to God that hath delivered us from such blindness and error^[40].” This is the congratulation of a true Protestant at an early period of the reformation; and it is certain, that with the disbelief of that future state of purgatory, taught by the Romish church, the communication of the living with the dead became less frequent. Still, however, some belief of the kind prevailed, though less tinctured with superstition. An author, styling himself Theophilus Insulanus, who, half a century ago, wrote on the second-sight of Scotland, affixes the term irreligious to those who should entertain a doubt on the reality of apparitions of departed souls. “Such ghostly visitants,” he gravely affirms, “are not employed on an errand of a frivolous concern to lead us into error, but are employed as so many heralds by the great Creator, for the more ample demonstration of his power, to proclaim tidings for our instruction; and, as we are prone to despond 185in religious matter, to confirm our faith of the existence of spirits, (the foundation of all religions,) and the dignity of human nature.” With due deference, however, to this anonymous writer, whom we should scarcely have noticed, if he had not echoed in this assertion an opinion which was long popular, we shall advert to the opposite sentiments expressed on the subject by a far more acute, though less serious author. The notion, for instance, of the solemn character of ghosts, and that they are never employed on frivolous errands, is but too successfully ridiculed by Grose^[41]. “In most of the relations of ghosts,” says this pleasant writer, “they are supposed to be mere aërial beings without substance, and that they can pass through walls and other solid bodies at pleasure. The usual time at which ghosts make their appearance is midnight, and seldom before it is dark; though some audacious spirits have been said to appear even by daylight. Ghosts commonly appear in the same dress they usually wore when living: though they are sometimes clothed all in white; but that is chiefly the church-yard ghosts, who have no particular business, but seem to appear pro bono publico, or to scare drunken rustics from tumbling over their graves. I cannot learn that ghosts carry tapers in their hands, as they are sometimes depicted, though the room in which they appear, if without fire or candle, is frequently said to be as light as day. Dragging chains is not the fashion of English 186ghosts; chains and black vestments being chiefly the accoutrements of foreign spectres, seen in arbitrary governments: dead or alive, English spirits are free. If, during the time of an apparition, there is a lighted candle in the room, it will burn extremely blue: this is so universally acknowledged, that many eminent philosophers have busied themselves in accounting for it, without ever doubting the truth of the fact. Dogs too have the faculty of seeing spirits^[42].”

There are several other minute particulars respecting ghosts given by this author, for the insertion of which we have not room; yet it would be inexcusable to omit noticing the account which he has subjoined, of the awfully momentous errands upon which spirits are sent. “It is somewhat remarkable,” he adds, “that ghosts do not go about their business like the persons of this world. In cases of murder, a ghost, instead of going to the next justice of peace, and laying its information, or to the nearest relation of the person murdered, appears to some poor labourer who knows none of the parties; draws the curtain of some decrepit nurse, or alms-woman; or hovers about the place where the body is deposited. The same circuitous road is pursued with respect to redressing injured orphans or widows; when it seems as if the most certain way would be to go to the person 187guilty of the injustice, and haunt him continually till he be terrified into a restitution. Nor are the pointing out lost writings generally managed in a more summary way; the ghost commonly applying to a third person, ignorant of the whole affair, and a stranger to all concerned. But it is presumptuous to scrutinize far into these matters: ghosts have undoubtedly forms and customs peculiar to themselves.”

The view which Grose has taken of the character of departed spirits is pretty correct, although I have certainly read of some spirits whose errands to the earth have been much more direct. One ghost, for instance, has terrified a man into the restitution of lands, which had been bequeathed to the poor of a village. A second spirit has adopted the same plan for recovering property of which a nephew had been wronged; but a third has haunted a house for no other purpose than to kick up a row in it—to knock about chairs, tables, and other furniture. Glanville relates a story, of the date of 1632, in which a man, upon the alleged information of a female spirit, who came by her death foully, led the officers of justice to a pit, where a mangled corpse was concealed, charged two individuals with her murder; and upon this fictitious story, the poor fellows were condemned and executed, although they solemnly persevered to the last in maintaining their innocence. It is but too evident, in this case, by whom the atrocious deed had been committed.

Other apparitions of this kind may be considered as the illusions of well-known diseases. Thus there can be no difficulty in considering the following 188apparition, given on the authority of Aubery and Turner, as having had its origin in the Delirium Tremens of drunkenness. “Mr. Cassio Burroughs,” says the narrator of this very choice, yet, we believe, authentic story, “was one of the most beautiful men in England, and very valiant, but very proud and blood thirsty. There was in London a very beautiful Italian lady,” (whom he seduced.) “The gentlewoman died; and afterwards, in a tavern in London, he spake of it, (contrary to his sacred promise,) “and then going” (out of doors) the ghost of the gentlewoman did appear to him. He was afterwards troubled with the apparition of her, even sometimes in company when he was drinking. Before she did appear, he did find a kind of chilness upon his spirits. She did appear to him in the morning before he was killed in a duel.”

Of the causes of many apparitions which have been recorded, it is not so easy as the foregoing narrative, to obtain a satisfactory explanation. Such is the case of the story related of Viscount Dundee, whose ghost about the time he fell at the battle of Killicranky, appeared to Lord Balcarras, then under confinement, upon the suspicion of Jacobitism, at the Castle of Edinburgh. The spectre drew aside the curtain of his friend’s bed, looked stedfastly at him, leaned for some time on the mantlepiece, and then walked out of the room. The Earl, not aware at the time that he was gazing on a phantom, called upon Dundee to stop. News soon arrived of the unfortunate hero’s fate. Now, regarding this, and other stories of the kind, however 189authentic they may be, the most interesting particulars are suppressed. Of the state of Lord Balcarras’s health at the time, it has not been deemed necessary that a syllable should transpire. No argument, therefore, either in support of, or in opposition to, the popular belief in apparitions, can be gathered from an anecdote so deficient in any notice of the most important circumstances upon which the developement of truth depends. With regard to the spectre of Dundee appearing just at the time he fell in battle, it must be considered, that agreeable to the well-known doctrine of chances, which mathematicians have so well investigated, the event might as well occur then as at any other time, while a far greater proportion of other apparitions, less fortunate in such a supposed confirmation of their supernatural origin, are quietly allowed to sink into oblivion. Thus, it is the office of superstition to carefully select all successful coincidences of this kind, and register them in her marvellous volumes, where for ages they have served to delude and mislead the world.

To this story we shall add another, from Beaumont’s World of Spirits, for no other reason, than because it is told better than most ghost stories with which I am acquainted. It is dated in the year 1662, and it relates to an apparition seen by the daughter of Sir Charles Lee, immediately preceding her death. No reasonable doubt can be placed on the authenticity of the narrative, as it was drawn up by the Bishop of Gloucester, from the recital of the young lady’s father.

“Sir Charles Lee, by his first lady, had only one 190daughter, of which she died in child-birth; and when she was dead, her sister, the Lady Everard, desired to have the education of the child, and she was by her very well educated, till she was marriageable, and a match was concluded for her with Sir William Perkins, but was then prevented in an extraordinary manner. Upon a Thursday night, she, thinking she saw a light in her chamber, after she was in bed, knocked for her maid, who presently came to her; and she asked, ‘Why she left a candle burning in her chamber?’ The maid said, ‘She left none, and there was none but what she brought with her at that time.’ Then she said it was the fire, but that, her maid told her, was quite out; and said she believed it was only a dream. Whereupon she said, it might be so, and composed herself again to sleep. But about two of the clock she was awakened again, and saw the apparition of a little woman between her curtain and her pillow, who told her she was her mother, that she was happy, and that by twelve of the clock that day she should be with her. Whereupon she knocked again for her maid, called for her clothes, and when she was dressed, went into her closet, and came not out again till nine, and then brought out with her a letter sealed by her father; brought it to her aunt, the Lady Everard, told her what had happened, and declared, that as soon as she was dead, it might be sent to him. The lady thought she was suddenly fallen mad, and thereupon sent presently away to Chelmsford for a physician and surgeon, who both came immediately; but the physician could discern no indication of 191what the lady imagined, or of any indisposition of her body: notwithstanding the lady would needs have her let blood, which was done accordingly. And when the young woman had patiently let them do what they would with her, she desired that the chaplain might be sent to read prayers; and when prayers were ended, she took her guitar and psalm-book, and sat down upon a chair without arms, and played and sung so melodiously and admirably, that her music-master, who was then there, admired at it. And near the stroke of twelve, she rose and sat herself down in a great chair with arms, and presently fetching a strong breathing or two, immediately expired, and was so suddenly cold, as was much wondered at by the physician and surgeon. She died at Waltham, in Essex, three miles from Chelmsford, and the letter was sent to Sir Charles, at his house in Warwickshire; but he was so afflicted with the death of his daughter, that he came not till she was buried, but when he came he caused her to be taken up, and to be buried with her mother, at Edmonton, as she desired in her letter.”

This is one of the most interesting ghost-stories on record. Yet, when strictly examined, the manner in which a leading circumstance in the case is reported, affects but too much the supernatural air imparted to other of its incidents. For whatever might have been averred by a physician of the olden time, with regard to the young lady’s sound state of health during the period she saw her mother’s ghost, it may be asked—if any practitioner of the present day would have been proud 192of such an opinion, especially when death followed so promptly after the spectral impression.

Probably the languishing female herself might have unintentionally contributed to the more strict verification of the ghost’s prediction. It was an extraordinary exertion which her tender frame underwent, near the expected hour of dissolution, in order that she might retire from all her scenes of earthly enjoyment, with the dignity of a resigned christian. And what subject can be conceived more worthy the masterly skill of a painter, than to depict a young and lovely saint cheered with the bright prospect of futurity before her, and ere the quivering flame of life which for a moment was kindled up into a glow of holy ardour, had expired for ever, sweeping the strings of her guitar with her trembling fingers, and melodiously accompanying the notes with her voice, in a hymn of praise to her heavenly Maker? Entranced with such a sight, the philosopher himself would dismiss for the time his usual cold and cavelling scepticism, and giving way to the superstitious impressions of less deliberating bye-standers, partake with them in the most grateful of religious solaces, which the spectacle must have irresistibly inspired.

Regarding the confirmation, which the ghost’s mission is, in the same narrative, supposed to have received from the completion of a foreboded death, 193all that can be said of it is, that the coincidence was a fortunate one; for, without it, the story would, probably, never have met with a recorder, and we should have lost one of the sweetest anecdotes that private life has ever afforded. But, on the other hand, a majority of popular ghost-stories might be adduced, wherein apparitions have either visited our world, without any ostensible purpose and errand whatever, or, in the circumstances of their mission, have exhibited all the inconsistency of conduct so well exposed in the quotation which I have given from Grose, respecting departed spirits. “Seldom as it may happen,” says Nicolai, in the memoir which he read to the Society of Berlin, on the appearance of spectres occasioned by disease, “that persons believe they see human forms, yet examples of the case are not wanting. A respectable member of this academy, distinguished by his merit in the science of Botany, whose truth and credulity are unexceptionable, once saw in this very room in which we are now assembled, the phantom of the late president Maupertius.” But it appears that this ghost was seen by a philosopher, and, consequently, no attempt was made to connect it with superstitious speculations. The uncertainty, however, of ghostly predictions, is not unaptly illustrated in the table-talk of Johnson. “An acquaintance,” remarks Boswell, “on whose veracity I can depend, told me, that walking home one evening at Kilmarnock, he heard himself called from a wood, by the voice of a brother, who had gone to America; and the next packet brought an account of that brother’s death. 194Mackbean asserted that this inexplicable calling was a thing very well known. Dr. Johnson said that one day at Oxford, as he was turning the key of his chamber, he heard his mother distinctly calling Sam. She was then at Litchfield; but nothing ensued.” This casual admission, which, in the course of conversation, transpired from a man, himself strongly tainted with superstition, precludes any farther remarks on the alleged nature and errand of ghosts, which would now, indeed, be highly superfluous. “A lady once asked me,” says Mr. Coleridge, “if I believed in ghosts and apparitions? I answered with truth and simplicity, No, Madam! I have seen far too many myself^[43].”

DEUTEROSCOPIA, OR SECOND-SIGHT.

WITCHES, WITCHCRAFT, WIZARDS, &c. — Witchcraft proved by the following texts of Scripture. — Dr. More’s Postscript. — The Confessions of certain Scotch Witches , taken out of an authentic copy of their trial at the Assizes held at Paisley, in Scotland, Feb. 15, 1678, touching the bewitching of Sir George Maxwel . — Then follows the depositions of certain persons, agreeing with confessions of the above-said witches. — The Confession of Agnes Sympson to King James. — The White Pater-noster runs thus:— — The Black Pater-noster.

Witchcraft implies a kind of sorcery, more especially prevalent, and, as supposed, among old women, who, by entering into a social compact with the devil, if such an august personage there be as commonly represented, were enabled, in many instances, to alter the course of nature’s immutable laws;—to raise winds and storms,—to perform actions that require more than human strength,—to ride through the air upon broomsticks,—to transform themselves into various shapes,—to afflict and torment those who might have rendered themselves obnoxious to them, with acute pains and lingering diseases,—in fact, to do whatsoever they wished, through the agency of the devil, who was always supposed to be at their beck and call.

All countries can boast of their witches, sorcerers, &c. they have been genial with every soil, and peculiar with every age. We have the earliest account of them in holy writ, which contains irrefutable proofs, that whether they existed or not, 205the same superstitious ideas prevailed, and continued to prevail until within the last century. The age of reason has now, however, penetrated the recesses of ignorance, and diffused the lights of the Gospel with good effect among the credulous and uninformed, to the great discomfit of witches and evil spirits.

During the height of this kind of ignorance and superstition, many cruel laws were framed against witchcraft; in consequence of which, numbers of innocent persons, male and female^[45], many of them no doubt friendless, and oppressed with age and penury, and disease, were condemned and burnt for powers they never possessed, for crimes they neither premeditated nor committed. Happily for humanity these terrific laws have long since been repealed. An enlightened age viewed with horror the fanaticism of Pagans, and gave proof of its emancipation from the dark and murderous trammels of ignorance and barbarity, by a recantation of creeds that had no other object in view than to stain the dignity of the creation by binding down the human mind to the most abject state of degeneracy and servility.

The deceptions of jugglers, founded on optical illusions, electrical force, and magnetical attraction, have fortunately, in a great measure, gone a great way to remove the veil of pretended supernatural agency. The oracles of old have been detected as 206mere machinery; the popish miracles, slights of hand; every other supernatural farce has shared the same fate. We hear no more of witches, ghosts, &c. little children go to bed without alarm, and people traverse unfrequented paths at all hours and seasons, without dread of spells or incantations.

In support, however, of the existence of witches, magicians, &c. many advocates have been found; and it is but justice to say, that all who have argued for, have used stronger and more forcible and appropriate reasoning than those who have argued against them. If the bible be the standard of our holy religion, and few there are who doubt it; it must also be the basis of our belief; for whatever is therein written is the WORD OF GOD, and not a parcel of jeux d’esprits, conundrums, or quidproquos, to puzzle and defeat those who consult that sacred volume for information or instruction. Nor do we believe all the jargon and orthodox canting of priests, who lay constructions on certain passages beyond the comprehension of men more enlightened than themselves, especially when they presume to tell us that such and such a word or sentence must be construed such and such a way, and not another. This party purpose will never effect any good for the cause of religion and truth.

In the course of this article we shall quote the texts of Scripture where witches are mentioned in the same manner as we have done those that allude to apparitions, &c. without offering any very decided comment one way or the other, farther than we shall also in this case give precedence to the standard of the Christian religion, which forms a part of the law 207of the land; still maintaining our former opinion, that, doubtless, there have at one time been negotiations carried on between human beings and spirits; and for this assertion we refer to the Bible itself, for proof that there have been witches, sorcerers, magicians, who had the power of doing many wonderful things by means of demoniac agency, but what has become of, or at what precise time, this power or communication became extinct, we may not able to inform our readers, although we can venture to assure them that no such diabolical ascendancy prevails at the present period among the inhabitants of the earth.

That this superstitious dread led to the persecution of many innocent beings, who were supposed to be guilty of witchcraft, there can be no question; our own statute books are loaded with penalties against sorcery; and, as already cited, at no very distant period, our courts of law have been disgraced by criminal trials of that nature, and judges, who are still quoted as models of legal knowledge and discernment, not only permitted such cases to go to a jury, but allowed sentences to be recorded which consigned reputed wizards to capital punishment. In Poland, even so late as the year 1739, a juggler was exposed to the torture, until a confession was extracted from him that he was a sorcerer; upon which, without further proof, he was hanged; and instances in other countries might be multiplied without end. But this, although it exceeds in atrocity, does not equal in absurdity the sanguinary and bigoted infatuation of the Inquisition in Portugal, which actually condemned 208to the flames, as being possessed of the devil, a horse belonging to an Englishman who had taught it perform some uncommon tricks; and the poor animal is confidently said to have been publicly burned at Lisbon, in conformity with his sentence, in the year 1601.

The only part of Europe in which the acts of sorcery obtain any great credit, where, in fact, supposed wizards will practice incantations, by which they pretend to obtain the knowledge of future events, and in which the credulity of the people induced them to place the most implicit confidence. On such occasions a magical drum is usually employed. This instrument is formed of a piece of wood of a semi-oval form, hollow on the flat side, and there covered with a skin, on which various uncouth figures are depicted; among which, since the introduction of Christianity into that country, an attempt is usually made to represent the acts of our Saviour and the apostles. On this covering several brass rings of different sizes are laid, while the attendants dispose themselves in many antic postures, in order to facilitate the charm; the drum is then beat with the horn of a rein-deer, which occasioning the skin to vibrate, puts the rings in motion round the figures, and, according to the position which they occupy, the officiating seer pronounces his prediction^[46].

209“The remedy,” says a late writer^[47], “specifically appropriated for these maladies of the mind, is the cultivation of natural knowledge; and it is equally curious and gratifying to observe, that though the lights of science are attained by only a small proportion of the community, the benefits of it diffuse themselves universally; for the belief of ghosts and witches, and judicial astrology, hardly exists, in these days, even amongst the lowest vulgar. This effect of knowledge, in banishing the vain fears of superstition, is finely alluded to in the last words of the following admirable lines quoted from Virgil, e. g.—

But in order to shew with what fervour the belief in witches and apparitions was maintained about a century and a half ago, we lay before our readers, as it is scarce, “Doctor Henry More, his letter, with the postscript to Mr. J. Glanvil^[48], minding him of the great expedience and usefulness of his new intended edition of the Dæmon of Tedworth, and briefly representing to him the 210marvellous weakness and gullerie of Mr. Webster’s^[49] display of Witchcraft.”

“Sir,

“When I was at London, I called on your bookseller, to know in what forwardness this new intended impression of the story of the Dæmon of Tedworth (see p. 223) was, which will undeceive the world touching that fame spread abroad, as if Mr. Mompesson and yourself had acknowledged the business to have been a meer trick or imposture. But the story, with your ingenious considerations about witchcraft, being so often printed already, he said it behoved him to take care how he ventured on a new impression, unless he had some new matter of that kind to add, which might make this edition the more certainly saleable; and therefore he expected the issue of that noised story of the spectre at Exeter, seen so oft for the discovery of a murther committed some thirty years ago. But the event of this business, as to juridical process, not answering expectation, he was discouraged from making use of it, many things being reported to him from thence in favour of the party most concerned. But I am told of one Mrs. Britton, her appearing to her maid after her death, very well attested, though not of such a tragical event as that of Exeter, which he thought considerable. But of discoveries of murther I never met with any story more plain and unexceptionable than that in Mr. John Webster his display of supposed Witchcraft: the book indeed itself, I 211confess, is but a weak and impertinent piece; but that story weighty and convincing, and such as himself, (though otherwise an affected caviller against almost all stories of witchcraft and apparitions,) is constrained to assent to, as you shall see from his own confession. I shall, for your better ease, or because you may not haply have the book, transcribe it out of the writer himself, though it be something, chap. 16, page 298, about the year of our Lord 1632, (as near as I can remember, having lost my notes and the copy of the letters to Serjeant Hutton, but I am sure that I do most perfectly remember the substance of the story.)

“Near unto Chester-le-Street, there lived one Walker, a yeoman of good estate, and a widower, who had a young woman to his kinswoman, that kept his house, who was by the neighbours suspected to be with child, and was towards the dark of the evening one night sent away with one Mark Sharp, who was a collier, or one that digged coals underground, and one that had been born in Blakeburn hundred, in Lancashire; and so she was not heard of a long time, and no noise or tittle was made about it. In the winter time after, one James Graham, or Grime, (for so in that country they call them) being a miller, and living about 2 miles from the place where Walker lived, was one night alone in the mill very late grinding corn, and about 12 or 1 a clock at night, he came down stairs from having been putting corn in the hopper: the mill doors being shut, there stood a woman upon the midst of the floor with her hair about her head hanging down and all bloody, with 212five large wounds on her head. He being much affrighted and amazed, began to bless himself, and at last asked her who she was and what she wanted? To which she said, I am the spirit of such a woman who lived with Walker, and being got with child by him, he promised to send me to a private place, where I should be well lookt too till I was brought in bed and well again, and then I should come again and keep his house. And accordingly, said the apparition, I was one night late sent away with one Mark Sharp, who upon a moor, naming a place that the miller knew, slew me with a pick, such as men dig coals withal, and gave me these five wounds, and after threw my body into a coal pit hard by, and hid the pick under a bank; and his shoes and stockings being bloody, he endeavoured to wash ’em; but seeing the blood would not forth, he hid them there. And the apparition further told the miller, that he must be the man to reveal it, or else that she must still appear and haunt him. The miller returned home very sad and heavy, but spoke not one word of what he had seen, but eschewed as much as he could to stay in the mill within night without company, thinking thereby to escape the seeing again of that frightful apparition. But notwithstanding, one night when it began to be dark, the apparition met him again, and seemed very fierce and cruel, and threatened him, that if he did not reveal the murder she would continually pursue and haunt him; yet for all this, he still concealed it until St. Thomas’s Eve, before Christmas, when being soon after sun-set in his garden, she appeared again, and then so threatened 213him, and affrighted him, that he faithfully promised to reveal it next morning. In the morning he went to a magistrate and made the whole matter known with all the circumstances; and diligent search being made, the body was found in a coal pit, with five wounds in the head, and the pick, and shoes and stockings yet bloody, in every circumstance as the apparition had related to the miller; whereupon Walker and Mark Sharp were both apprehended, but would confess nothing. At the assizes following, I think it was at Durham, they were arraigned, found guilty, condemned, and executed; but I could never hear they confest the fact. There were some that reported the apparition did appear to the judge or the foreman of the jury, who was alive in Chester-le-Street about ten years ago, as I have been credibly informed, but of that I know no certainty: there are many persons yet alive that can remember this strange murder and the discovery of it; for it was, and sometimes yet is, as much discoursed of in the North Country as any that almost has ever been heard of, and the relation printed, though now not to be gotten. I relate this with great confidence, (though I may fail in some of the circumstances) because I saw and read the letter that was sent to sergeant Hutton, who then lived at Goldsbrugh, in Yorkshire, from the judge before whom Walker and Mark Sharp were tried, and by whom they were condemned, and had a copy of it until about the year 1658, when I had it, and many other books and papers taken from me; and this I confess to be one of the most convincing stories, being of 214undoubted verity, that ever I read, heard, or knew of, and carrieth with it the most evident force to make the most incredulous to be satisfied that there are really sometimes such things as apparitions.” Thus far he.

“This story is so considerable that I make mention of it in my Scholea, on the Immortality of the Soul, in my Volumen Philosophicum, tom. 2, which I acquainting a friend of mine with, a prudent, intelligent person, Dr. J. D. he of his own accord offered me, it being a thing of much consequence, to send to a friend of his in the north for greater assurance of the truth of the narrative, which motion I willingly embracing, he did accordingly. The answer to this letter from his friend Mr. Sheperdson, is this: I have done what I can to inform myself of the passage of Sharpe and Walker; there are very few men that I could meet that were then men, or at the tryal, saving these two in the inclosed paper, both men at that time, and both at the trial; and for Mr. Lumley, he lived next door to Walker, and what he hath given under his hand, can depose if there were occasion. The other gentleman writ his attestation with his own hand; but I being not there got not his name to it. I could have sent you twenty hands that could have said thus much and more by hearsay, but I thought those most proper that could speak from their own eyes and ears. Thus far (continues Dr. More,) Mr. Sheperdson, the Doctor’s discreet and faithful intelligencer. Now for Mr. Lumly, or Mr. Lumley. Being an ancient gentleman, and at the trial of Walker and Sharp 215upon the murder of Anne Walker, saith, That he doth very well remember that the said Anne was servant to Walker, and that she was supposed to be with child, but would not disclose by whom; but being removed to her aunt’s in the same town called Dame Caire, told her aunt (Dame Caire) that he that got her with child, would take care both of her and it, and bid her not trouble herself. After some time she had been at her aunt’s, it was observed that Sharp came to Lumley one night, being a sworn brother of the said Walker’s; and they two that night called her forth from her aunt’s house, which night she was murdered; about fourteen days after the murder, there appeared to one Graime, a fuller, at his mill, six miles from Lumley, the likeness of a woman with her hair about her head, and the appearance of five wounds in her head, as the said Graime gave it in evidence; that that appearance bid him go to a justice of peace, and relate to him, how that Walker and Sharp had murthered her in such a place as she was murthered; but he, fearing to disclose a thing of that nature against a person of credit as Walker was, would not have done it; upon which the said Graime did go to a justice of peace and related the whole matter^[50]. Whereupon the justice of 216peace granted warrants against Walker and Sharp, 217and committed them to a prison; but they found bail to appear at the next assizes, at which they came to their trial, and upon evidence of the circumstances, with that of Graime of the appearance, they were both found guilty and executed.

“The other testimony is that of Mr. James Smart and William Lumley, of the city of Durham, who saith, that the trial of Sharp and Walker was in the month of August 1631, before judge Davenport. One Mr. Fanhair gave it in evidence upon oath, that he saw the likeness of a child stand upon Walker’s shoulders during the time of the trial, at which time the judge was very much troubled, and gave sentence that night the trial was, which was a thing never used in Durham before nor after; out of which two testimonies several things may be counted or supplied in Mr. Webster’s story, though it be evident enough that in the main they agree; for that is but a small disagreement as to the years, when Mr. Webster says about the year of our Lord 1632, and Mr. Fanhair, 1631. But unless at Durham they have assizes but once in the year, I understand not so well how Sharp and Walker should be apprehended some little time after St. Thomas’s day, as Mr. Webster has, and be tried the next assizes at Durham, and yet that be in August, according to Mr. Smart’s testimony. Out of Mr. Lumley’s testimony the christian name of the young woman is supplied, as also the name of the town near Chester-le-Street, namely, Lumley: the circumstance also of Walker’s sending away his kinswoman with Mark Sharp are supplied out of Mr. Lumley’s narrative, and the 218time rectified, by telling it was about fourteen days till the spectre after the murder, when as Mr. Webster makes it a long time.”

We shall not follow the learned Doctor through the whole of his letter, which principally now consists in rectifying some little discrepancies in the account of the murder of Anne Walker, and the execution of the murderers, upon circumstantial evidence, supported by the miller’s story of the apparition, between the account given by Mr. Webster, and that here related by Lumley and Sharp. Mr. Webster’s account, it would appear, was taken from a letter written by Judge Davenport to Sergeant Hutton, giving a detailed narrative of the whole proceeding as far as came within his judicial observation, and the exercise of his functions; which it also appears Dr. More likewise saw; a copy of which, he states, he had in fact by him for some considerable time, but which he unfortunately lost: his account, therefore, is from sheer recollection of the contents of this letter, but as there is very little difference in the material points, unless with respect to the date of the year, between the account given by Webster, and that related from the Doctor’s memory, we shall offer no further observation than that the whole savours so much of other similar stories, the result of superstition and ignorance, that it claims an equal proportion of credit: for if, at the time we allude to, they would hang, burn, or drown a woman for a witch, either upon her own evidence, or that of some of her malignant and less peaceably disposed neighbours, it cannot be matter of surprise, 219that two individuals, for a crime really committed, should be hanged as murderers upon the testimony of the apparition of a murdered person, given through the organ of a miller, who resided only six miles from the spot.

That Dr. Henry More was not only an enthusiast and a visionary, (both of which united in the same person, constitute a canting madman) but also a humorous kind of fellow when he chose to be jocular, and it would appear he was by no means incapable of relaxing the gravity of his countenance as occasion served him, may be still further inferred from the following extracts of the sequel of his letter to the Reverend Joseph Glanvil:—

“This story of Anne Walker, (says Dr. M.) I think you will do well to put amongst your additions in the new impression of your new edition of your Dæmon of Tedworth, it being so excellently well attested, AND SO UNEXCEPTIONABLE IN EVERY RESPECT; and hasten as fast as you can that impression, to undeceive the half-witted world, who so much exult and triumph in the extinguishing the belief of that narration, as if the crying down the truth of that of the Dæmon of Tedworth, were indeed the very slaying of the devil, and that they may now, with more gaiety and security than ever, sing in a loud note, that mad drunken catch—

Which wild song, though it may seem a piece of levity to mention, yet, believe me, the application thereof bears a sober and weighty intimation along 220with it, viz. that these sort of people are very horribly afraid that there should be any spirit, lest there should be a devil, and an account after this life; and therefore they are impatient of any thing that implies it, that they may with a more full swing, and with all security from an after reckoning, indulge their own lusts and humours; and I know by long experience that nothing rouses them so much out of that dull lethargy of atheism and sadducism, as narrations of this kind, for they being of a thick and gross spirit, the most subtle and solid deductions of reason does little execution upon them; but this sort of sensible experiments cuts them and stings them very sore, and so startles them, that a less considerable story by far than this of the drummer of Tedworth, or of Ann Walker, a Doctor of Physic cryed out presently, if this be true I have been in a wrong box all this time, and must begin my account anew.

“And I remember an old gentleman, in the country, of my acquaintance, an excellent justice of peace, and a piece of a mathematician, but what kind of a philosopher he was you may understand from a rhyme of his own making, which he commended to me at my taking horse in his yard; which rhyme is this:—

Which rhyme of his was so rapturous to himself, that at the reciting of the second verse the old man turned himself about upon his toe as nimbly as one may observe a dry leaf whisked round in the corner 221of an orchard walk, by some little whirlwind. With this philosopher I have had many discourses concerning the immortality of the soul and its destruction: when I have run him quite down by reason, he would but laugh at me, and say, this is logic, H., calling me by my christian name; to which I replied, this is reason, Father L., (for I used and some others to call him) but it seems you are for the new lights and the immediate inspirations, which I confess he was as little for as for the other; but I said so only in the way of drollery to him in those times, but truth is, nothing but palpable experience would move him, and being a bold man, and fearing nothing, he told me he had used all the magical ceremonies of conjuration he could to raise the devil or a spirit, and had a most earnest desire to meet with one, but never could do it. But this he told me, when he did not so much as think of it, while his servant was pulling off his boots in the hall, some invisible hand gave him such a clap upon the back that it made all ring again; so, thought he, I am invited to converse with a spirit; and therefore so soon as his boots were off and his shoes on, out he goes into the yard and next field to find out the spirit that had given him this familiar slap on the back, but found him neither in the yard nor the next field to it.

“But though he did not feel this stroke, albeit he thought it afterwards (finding nothing came of it) a mere delusion; yet not long before his death it had more force with him than all the philosophical arguments I could use to him, though I could 222wind him and non-plus him as I pleased; but yet all my arguments, how solid soever, made no impression upon him, wherefore after several reflections of this nature, whereby I would prove to him the soul’s distinction from the body, and its immortality, when nothing of such subtile considerations did any more execution in his mind, than some lightening is said to do, though it melts the sword on the fuzzy consistency of the scabbard: Well, said I, Father L., though none of these things move you, I have something still behind, and what yourself has acknowledged to me to be true, that may do the business: do you remember the clap on your back, when your servant was pulling off your boots in the hall? Assure yourself, said I, Father L., that goblin will be the first that will bid you welcome in the other world. Upon that his countenance changed most sensibly, and he was more confounded with rubbing up of his memory than with all the rational and philosophical argumentations that I could produce.”

How the various commentators on holy writ have reconciled to their minds the existence of spirits, witches, hobgoblins, devils, &c. we are unable to decide, for the want of a folio before us; but, if there are none of this evil-boding fraternity “wandering in air” at the present day, they must be all swamped in the Red sea, ready to be conjured up from the “vasty deep,” by the king of spirits alone; for as sure as the Bible is the word of truth, we find therein such descriptions of spirits, apparitions, witches, and devils, as would make an ordinary man’s hair stand on end. And 223it is from this source alone that Dr. More argues for their existence, and which he has fully corroborated by his old hobby, “The Dæmon of Tedworth,” and the unfortunate Anne Walker.

“Indeed (says the learned divine) if there were any modesty left in mankind, the histories of the Bible might abundantly assure men of the existence of angels and spirits.”

In another place he observes, “I look upon it as a special piece of providence that there are ever and anon such fresh examples of apparitions and witchcraft, as may rub up and awaken their benumbed and lethargic minds into a suspicion at least, if not assurance, that there are other intelligent beings besides those that are clothed in heavy earth or clay; in this I say, methinks the divine providence does plainly interest the powers of the dark kingdom, permitting wicked men and women, and vagrant spirits of that kingdom, to make leagues or covenant one with another, the confession of witches against their own lives being so palpable an evidence, besides the miraculous feats they play, that there are bad spirits, which will necessarily open a door to the belief that there are good ones, and lastly that there is a God.” There is beyond a doubt much plausibility, supported by strong and appropriate argument, in this declaration of the Doctor’s. But as it is not our province to confute or explain texts or passages of Scripture, much less to warp them round to particular purposes, we shall reply by observing that, although we do not entirely concur in the belief of the non-existence of witches, apparitions, 224&c. at an earlier period of the world; we do, from our very souls, sincerely believe that there are no guests of this description, at the present day, either in the water or roaming about at large and invisible, on terra firma; or floating abroad in ether, holding, or capable of holding, converse or communion, either by word, deed, or sign, with the beings of this earth, civilized or uncivilized, beyond those destined by the God of heaven to constitute the different orders, classes, and genera of its accustomed and intended inhabitants. However, as we live in a tolerant mixed age, we have no fault to find with those who may attach faith to the opposite side of our creed.

We shall now, previous to laying before our readers some of those dismal stories of witches, wizards, apparitions, &c. of the days of yore, give the postscript to Dr. More’s letter to the author of “Saducismus Triumphatus;” a postscript, in fact, that might with more propriety be styled a treatise on the subject it relates to; but the rarity of the document, as well as its curiosity and the great learning and ingenuity it betrays, will, we feel assured, be received as an apology for bringing it under their view in this part of our paper, on the subject matter it bears so strongly upon. We give it the more cheerfully as it exemplifies certain passages of Scripture that have never been handled, at least so well, by after-writers who have attempted the illustration.

Exodus, c. xxii, v. 18. Thou shalt not suffer a WITCH to live.

2 Chronicles, c. xxxiii, v. 6. And he caused his children to pass through the fire in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom; also he observed times, and used ENCHANTMENTS, and used WITCHCRAFT, and dealt with a FAMILIAR SPIRIT, and with WIZARDS: he wrought much evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke him to anger.

Galatians, c. v, v. 20. Idolatry, WITCHCRAFT, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies.

Micah, c. v, v. 12. I will cut off WITCHCRAFTS out of thine hand; and thou shalt have no more soothsayers.

Acts, c. xiii, v. 6, 8. ¶ And when they had gone through the isle unto Paphos, they found a certain Sorcerer, a false prophet, a Jew, whose name was Bar-jesus.

But Elymas the Sorcerer, (for so is his name by interpretation,) withstood them, seeking to turn away the deputy from the faith.

Acts, c. viii, v. 9. ¶ But there was a certain man called Simon, which before time in the same city used Sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one.

Deuteronomy, c. xviii, v. 10, 11. There shall not be found among you any one, that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch.

226Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a necromancer.

12. For all that do these things are an abomination: and because of these abominations, the Lord thy God doth drive them from before thee.

The following scarce, curious, and learned document, long since out of print, forms a postscript written by Dr. More, who, it appears, strenuously advocated the existence of preternatural agencies, against the opinion of many eminent men, who wrote, at that time, on the same subject; and however much the belief in witches, &c. may have been depreciated of later years, we will venture to say that few of the present day, layman or divine, could take up his pen, and offer so learned a refutation against, as Dr. More has here done in support of his opinions founded on Scripture.

“This letter lying by me some time before I thought it opportune to convey it, and in the meanwhile meeting more than once with those that seemed to have some opinion of Mr. Webster’s criticisms and interpretations of Scripture, as if he had quitted himself so well there, that no proof thence can hereafter be expected of the being of a witch, which is the scope that he earnestly aims at; and I reflecting upon that passage in my letter, which does not stick to condemn Webster’s whole book for a weak and impertinent piece, presently thought fit, (that you might not think that censure over-rash or unjust) it being an endless task to shew all the weakness and impertinencies 227of his discourse, briefly by way of Postscript, to hint the weakness and impertinency of this part which is counted the master-piece of the work, that thereby you may perceive that my judgment has not been at all rash touching the whole.

“And in order to this, we are first to take notice what is the real scope of his book; which if you peruse, you shall certainly find to be this: That the parties ordinarily deemed witches and wizzards, are only knaves and queans, to use his phrase, and arrant cheats, or deep melancholists; but have no more to do with any evil spirit or devil, or the devil with them, than he has with other sinners or wicked men, or they with the devil. And secondly, we are impartially to define what is the true notion of a witch or wizzard, which is necessary for the detecting of Webster’s impertinencies.

“As for the words witch and wizzard, from the notation of them, they signify no more than a wise man or a wise woman. In the word wizzard, it is plain at the very first sight. And I think the most plain and least operose deduction of the name witch, is from wit, whose derived adjective might be wittigh or wittich, and by contraction afterwards witch; as the noun wit is from the verb to weet, which is, to know. So that a witch, thus far, is no more than a knowing woman; which answers exactly to the Latin word saga, according to that of Festus, Sagæ dictæ anus quæ multa sciunt. Thus in general: but use questionless had appropriated the word to such a kind of skill and knowledge, as was out of the common 228road, or extraordinary. Nor did this peculiarity imply in it any unlawfulness. But there was after a further restriction and most proper of all, and in which alone now-a-days the words witch and wizzard are used. And that is, for one that has the knowledge or skill of doing or telling things in an extraordinary way, and that in virtue of either an express or implicit sociation or confederacy with some evil spirit. This is a true and adequate definition of a witch or wizzard, which to whomsoever it belongs, is such, et vice versâ. But to prove or defend that there neither are, nor ever were any such, is, as I said, the main scope of Webster’s book: in order to which, he endeavours in his sixth and eighth chapters to evacuate all the testimonies of Scripture; which how weakly and impertinently he has done, I shall now shew with all possible brevity and perspicuity.

“The words that he descants upon are Deut. c. xviii. v. 10, 11: ‘There shall not be found among you any one that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizzard, or a necromancer.’ The first word in the Hebrew is קוסם קסמים, kosem kesamim, a diviner. Here because קסם kasam, sometimes has an indifferent sense, and signifies to divine by natural knowledge or human prudence or sagacity; therefore nothing of such a witch as is imagined to make a visible league with the devil, or to have her body sucked by him, or have carnal copulation with him, or is really turned into a cat, hare, wolf or dog, can be deduced from this word. A goodly 229inference indeed, and hugely to the purpose, as is apparent from the foregoing definition. But though that cannot be deduced, yet in that, this divination that is here forbidden, is plainly declared abominable and execrable, as it is v. 12, it is manifest that such a divination is understood that really is so; which cannot well be conceived to be, unless it imply either an express or implicite inveaglement with some evil invisible powers who assist any kind of those divinations that may be comprehended under this general term. So that this is plainly one name of witchcraft, according to the genuine definition thereof. And the very words of Saul to the witch of Endor, are, קסומי נא לי באוב; that is to say, ‘Divine to me, I pray thee, by thy familiar spirit.’ Which is more than by natural knowledge or human sagacity.

“The next word is מעונן megnonen, which, though our English translation renders [gnon] (tempus,) ‘an observer of times;’ which should rather be a declarer of the seasonableness of the time, or unseasonableness of the time, or unseasonableness as to success; a thing which is inquired of also from witches, yet the usual sense, rendered by the learned in the language, is præstigiatur, an imposer on the sight, Sapientes prisci, says Buxtorf, a עין [gnajin, oculus] deduxerunt et מעונן [megnonen] esse eum dixerunt, qui tenet et præstringit oculos, ut falsum pro vero videant. Lo, another word that signifies a witch or a wizzard, which has its name properly from imposing on the sight, and making the by-stander believe he sees forms or transformations of things he sees not! As 230when Anne Bodenham transformed herself before Anne Styles in the shape of a great cat; Anne Styles’s sight was so imposed upon, that the thing to her seemed to be done, though her eyes were only deluded. But such a delusion certainly cannot be performed without confederacy with evil spirits. For to think the word signifies præstigiator, in that sense we translate in English, juggler, or a hocus-pocus, is so fond a conceit, that no man of any depth of wit can endure it. As if a merry juggler that plays tricks of legerdemain at a fair or market, were such an abomination to either the God of Israel, or to his law-giver Moses; or as if a hocus-pocus were so wise a wight as to be consulted as an oracle: for it is said, v. 14, ‘For the nations which thou shalt possess, they consult,’ מעוננים megnonenim. What, do they consult jugglers and hocus-pocusses? No, certainly, they consult witches or wizzards, and diviners, as Anne Styles did Anne Bodenham.’ Wherefore here is evidently a second name of a witch.

“The third word in the text is מנחש menachesh, which our English translation renders, an enchanter. And, with Mr. Webster’s leave, (who insulteth so over their supposed ignorance) I think they have translated it very learnedly and judiciously; for charming and enchanting, as Webster himself acknowledges, and the words intimate, being all one, the word, מנחש menachesh, here, may very well signify enchanters, or charmers; but such properly as kill serpents by their charming, from נחש nachash, which signifies a serpent, from whence comes נחש nichesh, to kill 231serpents, or make away with them. For a verb in pihel, sometimes (especially when it is formed from a noun) has a contrary signification. Thus from שרש radix is שרש radices evulsit, from דשן cinis דשן removit cineres, from חטא peccavit חטא expiavit à peccato; and so lastly from נחש serpens, is made נחש liberavit â serpentibus, nempe occidendo vel fugando per incantationem. And therefore there seems to have been a great deal of skill and depth of judgment in our English translators that rendered מנחש menachesh, an enchanter, especially when that of augur or soothsayer, which the Septuagint call Ὀιωνιζόμενον (there being so many harmless kinds of it) might seem less suitable with this black list: for there is no such abomination in adventuring to tell, when the wild geese fly high in great companies, and cackle much, that hard weather is at hand, but to rid serpents by a charm is above the power of nature; and therefore an indication of one that has the assistance of some invisible spirit to help him in this exploit, as it happens in several others; and therefore this is another name of one that is really a witch.

“The fourth word is מכשף mecasseph, which our English translators render, a witch; for which I have no quarrel with them, unless they should so understand it that it must exclude others from being so in that sense I have defined, which is impossible they should. But this, as the foregoing, is but another term of the same thing; that is, of a witch in general, but so called here from the prestigious imposing on the sight of beholders. Buxtorf tells us, that Aben Ezra defines those to 232be מכשפים [mecassephim] qui mutant et transformant res naturales ad aspectum oculi. Not as jugglers and hocus-pocusses, as Webster would ridiculously insinuate, but so as I understood the thing in the second name; for these are but several names of a witch, who may have several more properties than one name intimates. Whence it is no wonder that translators render not them always alike. But so many names are reckoned up here in this clause of the law of Moses, that, as in our common law, the sense may be more sure, and leave no room to evasion. And that here this name is not from any tricks of legerdemain as in common jugglers that delude the sight of the people at a market or fair, but that it is the name of such as raise magical spectres to deceive men’s sight, and so are most certainly witches, is plain from Exod. chap. xxii, v. 18, ‘Thou shalt not suffer,’ מכשפה mecassephah, that is, ‘a witch, to live.’ Which would be a law of extreme severity, or rather cruelty, against a poor hocus-pocus for his tricks of legerdemain.

“The fifth name is חובר חבר chobher chebher, which our English translators render charmer, which is the same with enchanter. Webster upon this name is very tedious and flat, a many words and small weight in them. I shall dispatch the meaning briefly thus: this חובר חבר, chobher chebher, that is to say, socians societatem, is another name of a witch, so called specially either from the consociating together serpents by a charm, which has made men usually turn it (from the example of the Septuagint, ἐπάδων ἐπαοιδὴν,) a 233charmer, or an enchanter, or else from the society or compact of the witch with some evil spirits; which Webster acknowledges to have been the opinion of two very learned men, Martin Luther and Perkins, and I will add a third, Aben Ezra, (as Martinius hath noted,) who gives this reason of the word חובר chobher, an enchanter, which signifies socians or jungens, viz. Quòd malignos spiritus sibi associat. And certainly one may charm long enough, even till his heart aches, ere he make one serpent assemble near him, unless helped by this confederacy of spirits that drive them to the charmer. He keeps a pudder with the sixth verse of the fifty-eighth Psalm to no purpose; whereas from the Hebrew, אשר לא־ישמע לקול מלחשים חובר חברים מחכם, if you repeat ἀπὸ κοινoῦ לקול before חובר, you may with ease and exactness render it thus: ‘That hears not the voice of muttering charmers, no not the voice of a confederate wizzard, or charmer that is skilful.’ But seeing charms, unless with them that are very shallow and sillily credulous, can have no such effects of themselves, there is all the reason in the world (according as the very word intimates, and as Aben Ezra has declared,) to ascribe the effect to the assistance, confederacy, and co-operation of evil spirits, and so חובר חברים, chobher chabharim, or חובר חבר chobher chebher, will plainly signify a witch or wizzard according to the true definition of them. But for J. Webster’s rendering this verse, p. 119, thus, Quæ non audiet vocem mussitantium incantationes docti incantantis, (which he saith is doubtless the most genuine rendering of the place) let any skilful man 234apply it to the Hebrew text, and he will presently find it grammatical nonsense. If that had been the sense, it should have been חברי חובר מחכם.

“The sixth word is שואל אוב, shoel obh, which our English translation renders, ‘a consulter with familiar spirits;’ but the Septuagint Ἐγγαστρίμυθος. Which therefore must needs signifie him that has this familiar spirit: and therefore שואל אוב shoel obh, I conceive, (considering the rest of the words are so to be understood) is to be understood of the witch or wizzard himself that asks counsel of his familiar, and does by virtue of him give answers unto others. The reason of the name of אוב obh, it is likely was taken first from that spirit that was in the body of the party, and swelled it to a protuberancy like the side of a bottle. But after, without any relation to that circumstance, OBH signifies as much as pytho; as pytho also, though at first it took its name from the pythii vates, signifies no more than spiritum divinationis, in general, a spirit that tells hidden things, or things to come. And OBH and pytho also agree in this, that they both signify either the divinatory spirit itself, or the party that has that spirit. But here in שואל אוב, shoel obh, it being rendered by the Septuagint Ἐγγαςείμυθος, OBH is necessarily understood of the spirit itself, as pytho is, Acts xvi. 16, if you read πνεῦμα πύδωνα, with Isaac Casaubon; but if πύθωνος, it may be understood either way. Of this πνεύμα πύθων, it is recorded in that place, that ‘Paul being grieved, turned and said to that spirit, I command thee, in the name of Jesus Christ, to come out of her, and he came out at the same hour;’ 235which signifies as plainly as any thing can be signified, that this pytho or spirit of divination, that this OBH was in her: for nothing can come out of the sack that was not in the sack, as the Spanish proverb has it; nor could this pytho come out of her unless it was a spirit distinct from her; wherefore I am amazed at the profane impudence of J. Webster, that makes this pytho in the maid there mentioned, nothing but a wicked humour of cheating and cozening divination: and adds, that this spirit was no more cast out of that maid than the seven devils out of Mary Magdalene, which he would have understood only of her several vices; which foolish familistical conceit he puts upon Beza as well as Adie. Wherein as he is most unjust to Beza, so he is most grossly impious and blasphemous against the spirit of Christ in St. Paul and St. Luke, who makes them both such fools as to believe that there was a spirit or divining devil in the maid, when according to him there is no such thing. Can any thing be more frantic or ridiculous than this passage of St. Paul, if there was no spirit or devil in the damsel? But what will this profane shuffler stick to do in a dear regard to his beloved hags, of whom he is sworn advocate, and resolved patron right or wrong?

“But to proceed, that אוב, obh, signifies the spirit itself that divines, not only he that has it, is manifest from Levit. xx. 27, Vir autem sive mulier cùm fuerit [בהם אוב] in eis pytho. And 1 Sam. xxviii. 8, Divina quæso mihi [באוב] per pythonem. In the Septuagint it is ἐν τῶν Ἐγγαστρίμυθῳ, that is, by that spirit that sometimes goes into the 236body of the party, and thence gives answers; but here it only signifies a familiar spirit. And lastly, בעלת אוב, bagnalath obh, 1 Sam. xxviii. 7, Quæ habit pythonem; there OBH must needs signify the spirit itself, of which she of Endor was the owner or possessor; that is to say, it was her familiar spirit. But see what brazen and stupid impudence will do here, בעלת אוב, bagnalath obh, with Webster must not signify one that has a familiar spirit, but the mistress of the bottle. Who but the master of the bottle, or rather of whom the bottle had become master, and by guzzling had made his wits excessively muddy and frothy, could ever stumble upon such a foolish interpretation? But because אוב obh, in one place of the Scripture signifies a bottle, it must signify so here, and it must be the instrument forsooth, out of which this cheating quean of Endor does ‘whisper, peep, or chirp like a chicken coming out of the shell,’ p. 129, 165. And does she not, I beseech you, put her nib also into it sometimes, as into a reed, as it is said of that bird, and cries like a butter-bump? certainly he might as well have interpreted בעלת אוב bagnalath obh, of the great tun of Heidelberg, that Tom. Coriat takes such special notice of, as of the bottle.

“And truly so far as I see, it must be some such huge tun at length rather than the bottle, that is, such a spacious tub as he in his deviceful imagination fancies Manasses to have built; a μανείον forsooth, or oracular edifice for ‘cheating rogues and queans to play their cozening tricks in;’ from that place 2 Chron. xxxiii. 6, ועשה אוב, Et fecit 237pythonem. Now, says he, how could Manasses make a familiar spirit? or make one that had a familiar spirit? Therefore he made a bottle a tun, or a large tub, a μαντεῖον, or oracular edifice ‘for cheating rogues or queans to play their cozening tricks in.’ Very wisely argued, and out of the very depth of his ignorance of the Hebrew tongue, whereas if he had looked into Buxtorf’s Dictionary he might have understood that עשה signifies not only fecit but also paravit, comparavit, acquisivit, magni fecit, none of which words imply the making of OBH in his sense, but the only appointing them to be got, and countenancing them. For in Webster’s sense he did not make ידעני jidegnoni neither, that is wizzards, and yet Manasses is said to make them both alike. יעשה אוב וידעני, Et fecit pythonem et magos. So plain is it that אוב, obh, signifies pytho, and that adequately in the same sense that pytho does, either a familiar spirit, or him that has that spirit of divination. But in בעלת אוב, bagnalath obh, it necessarily signifies the familiar spirit itself, which assisted the witch of Endor; whereby it is manifest she is rightly called a witch. As for his stories of counterfeit ventriloquists, (and who knows but some of his counterfeit ventriloquists may prove true ones,) that is but the threadbare sophistry of Sadducees and Atheists to elude the faith of all true stories by those that are of counterfeits or feigned.

“The seventh word is ידעוני, jidegnoni, which our English translators render a wizzard. And Webster is so kind as to allow them to have translated this word aright. Wizzards, then, Webster 238will allow, that is to say, he-witches, but not she-witches. How tender the man is of that sex! But the word invites him to it ידעוני, jidegnoni, coming from scire, and answering exactly to wizzard or wise man. And does not witch from wit and weet signify as well a wise woman, as I noted above? And as to the sense of those words from whence they are derived, there is no hurt herein; and therefore if that were all, ידעוני, jidegnoni, had not been in this black list. Wherefore it is here understood in that more restrict and worse sense: so as we understand usually now-a-days witch and wizzard, such wise men and women whose skill is from the confederacy of evil spirits, and therefore are real wizzards and witches. In what a bad sense ידעוני, jidegnoni, is understood, we may learn, from Levit. xx. 27, ‘A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizzard, jidegnoni, shall be put to death, they shall stone them with stones,’ &c.

“The last word is דורש המתים, doresh hammethim, which our translators rightly render necromancers; that is, those that either upon their own account, or desired by others, do raise the ghosts of the deceased to consult with; which is a more particular term than בעל אוב, bagnal obh: but he that is bagnal obh, may be also doresh hammethim, a necromancer, as appears in the witch of Endor. Here Webster by המתים, hammethim, the dead, would understand dead statues; but let him, if he can, any where shew in all the Scripture where the word המתים, hammethim, is used of what was not once alive. He thinks he hits the nail on the 239head in that place of Isaiah, viii. 19, ‘And when they say unto you, seek unto [האבות, that is, to בעליה אוב, such as the witch of Endor was,] them that have familiar spirits, and to wizzards that peep and that mutter; [the Hebrew has it המהגים and המצפצפים; that is, speak with a querulous murmurant or mussitant voice, when they either conjure up the spirit, or give responses. If this be to ‘peep like a chicken,’ Isaiah himself peeped like a chicken, xxxviii. 14,] should not a people seek unto their God? for the living, (אל המתים,) to the dead?’ Where hammethim is so far from signifying dead statues, that it must needs be understood of the ghosts of dead men, as here in Deuteronomy. None but one that had either stupidly or wilfully forgot the story of Samuel’s being raised by that בעלת אוב, bagnalath obh, the witch of Endor, could ever have the face to affirm that המתים, hammethim, here in Isaiah, is to be understood of dead statues, when wizzards or necromancers were so immediately mentioned before, especially not Webster, who acknowledges that שואל אוב, shoel obh, signifies a necromancer in this Deuteronomical list of names. And therefore, forsooth, would have it a tautology that doresh hammethim should signify so too. But I say it is no tautology, this last being more express and restrict. And besides, this enumeration is not intended as an accurate logical division of witches or witchcraft, into so many distinct kinds, but a reciting of several names of that ill trade, though they will interfere one with another, and have no significations so precisely distinct. But as I said 240before, this fuller recounting of them is made that the prohibition in this form might be the surer fence against the sin. And now therefore what will J. Webster get by this, if doresh hammethim will not signify a witch of Endor, when it must necessarily signify a necromancer, which is as much against his tooth as the other? Nay indeed this necromancer is also a witch or wizzard, according to the definition produced above.

“The rest of the chapter being so inconsiderable, and I having been so long already upon it, I shall pass to the next, after I have desired you to take notice how weak and childish, or wild and impudent, Mr. Webster has been in the interpretation of Scripture hitherto, in the belief of his sage dames, to fence off the reproach of being termed witches; whereas there is scarce one word in this place of Deuteronomy that does not imply a witch or wizzard, according to the real definition thereof. And truly he seems himself to be conscious of the weakness of his own performance, when after all this ado, the sum at last amounts but to this, that there are no names in all the Old Testament that signifies such a witch that destroy men or beasts, that make a visible compact with the devil, or on whose body he sucketh, or with whom he hath carnal copulation, or that is really changed into a cat, hare, dog, or such like. And to shew it amounts to no more than so, was the task we undertook in this chapter.

“But assure yourself, if you peruse his book carefully, you shall plainly find that the main drift thereof is to prove, as I above noted, that there is 241no such witch as with whom the devil has any thing more to do than with any other sinner, which, notwithstanding this conclusion of his a little before recited, comes infinitely short of: and therefore this sixth chapter, consisting of about thirty pages in folio, is a meer piece of impertinency. And there will be witches for all this, whether these particulars be noted in them or no; for it was sufficient for Moses to name those ill sounding terms in general, which imply a witch according to that general notion I have above delivered; which if it be prohibited, namely, the having any thing to do with evil spirits, their being suckt by them, or their having any lustful or venerous transactions with them, is much more prohibited.

“But for some of these particularities also they may seem to be in some manner hinted at in some of the words, especially as they are rendered sometimes by skilful interpreters: for מכשף (Mecasseph,) is translated by Vatablus, and the vulgar Latin Maleficus, by the Septuagint φαρμακός, that is Veneficus: which word signifies mischievously enough both to man and beast. Besides that Mecasseph carries along with it the signification of transformation also; and haply this may be the difference betwixt מכשף Mecasseph, and מעונן Megnonen, that the former uses prestigious transformations to some great mischief, as where Olaus Magnus tells of those that have transformed themselves into wolves, to men’s thinking, and have presently fallen upon worrying of sheep. Others transformed in their astral spirit, into various shapes, get into 242houses and do mischief to men and children, as I remember Remegius reports. And therefore it is less wonder that that sharp law of Moses is against the מכשפה Mecassephah; such a witch as this is, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live;’ this may be a more peculiar signification of that word. And now for making a compact with the devil, how naturally does that name חובר חבר Chobber Chebber, signifie that feat also? But for sucking and copulation, though rightly stated it may be true, yet I confess there is nothing hinted towards that so far as I see, as indeed it was neither necessary that the other should be. But these are the very dregs, the fex magorum et sagarum, that sink in those abominations, against which a sufficient bar is put already by this prohibition in general by so many names. And the other is filthy, base, and nasty, that the mention thereof was neither fit for the sacred style of Moses’s law, nor for the years of the people.

In my passing to the eight chapter I will only take notice by the way of the shameless impudence of J. Webster, who in favour to his beloved hags, that they may be never thought to do any thing by the assistance of the devil, makes the victory of Moses, with whom the mighty hand of God was, or of Christ, (who was the angel that appeared first to Moses in the bush, and conducted the children of Israel out of Egypt to the promised land) to be the victory only over so many hocus-pocusses, so many jugglers that were, as it seems, old and excellent at the tricks of Legerdemain; which is the basest derogation to the glory of that 243victory, and the vilest reproach against the God of Israel, and the person of Moses, that either the malicious wit of any devil can invent, or the dulness of any sunk soul can stumble upon. Assuredly there was a real conflict here betwixt the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness and the evil spirits thereof, which assisted the חרטמים Hartummim, the Magicians of Egypt; who before that name is named, that no man may mistake, are called מכשפים, Mecassaphim, such kind of magicians as can exhibit to the sight manifold prestigious transformations through diabolical assistance, and are rendered Malificia by good interpreters, as I noted above; that is, they were wizzards, or he-witches. The self same word being used in that severe law of Moses, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’ Are not these magicians then examples plain enough that there are witches; that is to say, such wretched wights as do strange miraculous things by the assistance or consociation of the evil spirits?

“O no, says Mr. Webster, these are only חכמים Chacamim, wise men and great naturalists, who all what they did, they did בלהטיהם, by their bright glittering laminæ, for so להטם forsooth must signifie. But what necessity thereof that להט should signifie lamina? there is only the presence of that one place, Gen. iii, 24. להט חרב, where it is חרב only that signifies the lamina, and that of a long form, scarce usual in those magical laminæ with signatures celestial upon them, which J. Webster would be at; but הטם signifies merely flamma; so that בלהטיהם by this account must 244signifie by their flames, if it be from להט ardere, flammare: and therefore Buxtorfius judiciously places the word under בלהטיהם abscondit, obvolvit, reading not בלאטיהם but בלאטיהם, which is as much as to say, occultis suis rationibus Magicis, which is briefly rendered in English, ‘by their enchantments;’ which agrees marvellously well with מכשפים Mecassephim, which is as much as Præstigiatores Magici, or such as do strange wonderous things in an hidden way, by the help of evil spirits. But that the Egyptian magicians should do those things that are there recorded of them in Exodus, by virtue of any lamels, or plates of metals, with certain sculptures or figures, under such or such a constellation, is a thing so sottish and foolish that no man that is not himself bewitched by some old hag or hobgobling, can ever take sanctuary here to save himself or his old dames from being in a capacity, from this history in Exodus, of being accounted witches. For if there may be he-witches, that is magicians, such as these of Egypt were, I leave J. Webster to scratch his head to find out any reason why there may not be she-witches also.

“And indeed that of the witch of Endor, to pass at length to the eighth chapter, is as plain a proof thereof as can be desired by any man whose mind is not blinded with prejudices. But here J. Webster, not impertinently, I confess, for the general, (abating him the many tedious particular impertinences that he has clogg’d his discourse with) betakes himself to these two ways, to shew there was nothing of a witch in all that whole narration. First, by pretending that all the transaction on the 245woman of Endor’s part was nothing but collusion and a cheat, Saul not being in the same room with her, or at least seeing nothing if he was. And then in the next place, that Samuel that is said to appear, could neither be Samuel appearing in his body out of the grave, nor in his soul; nor that it was a devil that appeared; and therefore it must be some colluding knave, suborned by the witch. For the discovering the weakness of his former allegation, we need but appeal to the text, which is this, 1 Sam. xxviii, v. 8.

‘And Saul said, I pray thee, divine unto me by the familiar spirit, and bring me up whom I shall name unto thee,’ קסומי־נא לי that is, do the office of a divineress, or a wise woman, ‘I pray thee unto me, באוב Beobh, by virtue of the familiar spirit, whose assistance thou hast, not by virtue of the bottle, as Mr. Webster would have it. Does he think that damsel in the Acts, which is said to have had πνεῦμα πύθωνος, that is to have had אוב Obh, carried an aqua-vitæ bottle about with her, hung at her girdle, whereby she might divine and mutter, chirp, or peep out of it, as a chicken out of an egg-shell, or put her neb into it to cry like a bittern, or take a dram of the bottle, to make her wits more quick and divinatory. Who but one who had taken too many drams of the bottle could ever fall into such a fond conceit? Wherefore אוב Obh, in this place does not, as indeed no where else, signifie an oracular bottle, or μαντεῖον, into which Saul might desire the woman of Endor to retire into, and himself expect answers in the next room; but signifies that familiar spirits by virtue of whose 246assistance she was conceived to perform all those wond’rous offices of a wise woman. But we proceed to verse 11.

“‘Then said the woman, whom shall I bring up unto thee? And he said, bring me up Samuel.’ Surely as yet Saul and the woman are in the same room, seeing the woman askt, ‘Whom shall I bring up unto thee?’ and he answering, ‘Bring up unto me Samuel,’ it implies, that Samuel was so brought up that Saul might see him, and not the witch only. But we go on, verse 12.

“‘And when the woman saw Samuel, she cryed with a loud voice; and the woman spake to Saul, saying, why hast thou deceived, for thou art Saul? Tho’ the woman might have some suspicions before that it was Saul, yet she now seeing Samuel did appear, and in another kind of way than her spirits used to do, and in another hue, as it is most likely so holy a soul did, she presently cryed out with a loud voice, ‘not muttered, chirpt, and peept as a chicken coming out of the shell,’ that now she was sure it was Saul, for she was not such a fool, as to think her art could call up real Samuel, but that the presence of Saul was the cause thereof: and Josephus writes expressly, Ὅτι θεασάμενον τὸ γύναιον ἄνδρα σεμνὸν καὶ θεοπρεπῆ ταράττεται, καὶ πρὸς την ὄψίν οὐπλαγέν, οὐ σύ, φησὶν, ὁ Βασιλεὺς Σαοῦλος; i. e. ‘The woman seeing a grave god-like man is startled at it, and thus astonished at the vision, turned herself to the king, and said, art not thou king Saul?’ Verse 13.

“‘And the king said unto her, be not afraid; for what sawest thou? And the woman said unto 247Saul, I saw Gods ascending out of the earth.’ The king here assures the woman, that tho’ he was Saul, yet no hurt should come to her, and therefore bids her not be afraid. But she turning her face to Saul as she spake to him, and he to her, and so her sight being off from the object, Saul asked her, ‘What sawest thou?’ and she in like manner answered, ‘I saw Gods,’ &c. For Gods, I suppose any free translator in Greek, Latin, and English, would say, δαίμονας, genios, spirits. And אלהים signifies Angels as well as Gods; and it is likely these wise women take the spirits they converse with to be good angels, as Ann Bodenham the witch told a worthy and learned friend of mine, that these spirits, such as she had, were good spirits, and would do a man all good offices all the days of his life; and ’tis likely this woman of Endor had the same opinion of hers, and therefore we need not wonder that she calls them אלהים Elohim, especially Samuel appearing among them, to say nothing of the presence of Saul. And that more than one spirit appears at a time, there are repeated examples in Ann Bodenham’s magical evocations of them, whose history, I must confess, I take to be very true.

“The case stands therefore thus: The woman and Saul being in the same room, she turning her face from Saul, mutters to herself some magical form of evocation of spirits; where upon they beginning to appear and rise up, seemingly out of the earth, upon the sight of Samuel’s countenance, she cryed out to Saul, and turning her face towards him, spoke to him. Now that 248Saul hitherto saw nothing, though in the same room, might be either because the body of the woman was interposed betwixt his eyes and them, or the vehicles of those spirits were not yet attempered to that conspissation that they would strike the eyes of Saul, tho’ they did of the witch. And that some may see an object, others not seeing it, you have an instance in the child upon Walker’s shoulders, appearing to Mr. Fairhair, and it may be to the judge, but invisible to the rest of the Court; and many such examples there are. But I proceed to verse 14.

“‘And he said unto her, what form is he of? and she said, an old man cometh up, and is covered with a mantle.’ He asks here in the singular number, because, his mind was only fixt on Samuel. And the woman’s answer is exactly according to what the spirit appeared to her, when her eye was upon it, viz. איש זקן עלה ‘an old man coming up;’ for he was but coming up when she looked upon him, and accordingly describes him: For עלה there, is a particle of the present tense, and the woman describes Saul from his age, habit, and motion he was in, while her eye was upon him. So that the genuine and grammatical sense in this answer to ‘what form is he of?’ is this, an old man coming up, and the same covered with a mantle, this is his form and condition I saw him in. Wherefore Saul being so much concerned herein, either the woman or he changing their postures or standings, or Samuel by this having sufficiently conspissated his vehicle, and fitted it to Saul’s sight also, it follows in the text: ‘And Saul perceived 249it was Samuel, and he stooped with his face to the ground and bowed himself.’

“O the impudent profaneness and sottishness of perverse shufflers and whifflers! that upon the hearing of this passage can have the face to deny that Saul saw any thing, and meerly because the word ‘perceived’ is used, and not ‘saw,’ when the word ‘perceived,’ plainly implies that he saw Samuel, and something more, namely, that by his former familiar converse with him, he was assured it was he. So exquisitely did he appear, and over-comingly to his senses, that he could not but acknowledge (for so the Hebrew word ידע signifies) that it was he, or else why did he stoop with his face to the very ground to do him honour?

“No, no, says J. Webster, he saw nothing himself, but stood waiting like a drowned puppet (see of what a base rude spirit this squire of hags is, to use such language of a prince in his distress,) in another room to hear what would be the issue; for all that he understood, was from her cunning and lying relations. That this gallant of witches should dare to abuse a prince thus, and feign him as much foolisher and sottisher in his intellectuals, as he was taller in stature than the rest of the people, even by head and shoulders, and merely forsooth, to secure his old wives from being so much as in a capacity of ever being suspected for witches, is a thing extremely coarse and intolerably sordid. And indeed, upon the consideration of Saul’s being said to bow himself to Samuel, (which plainly implies, that there was there a Samuel that was the object of his sight, and of the 250reverence he made) his own heart misgives him in this mad adventure, and he shifts off from thence to a conceit that it was a confederate knave, that the woman of Endor turned out into the room where Saul was, to act the part of Samuel, having first put on him her own short cloak, which she used with her maund under her arm to ride to fairs or markets in. To this countryslouch in the woman’s mantle, must king Saul, stooping with his face to the very ground, make his profound obeysance. What was a market-woman’s cloak and Samuel’s mantle, which Josephus calls διπλοΐδα ἱερατικήν, a ‘sacerdotal habit,’ so like one another? Or if not, how came this woman, being so surpriz’d of a sudden, to provide herself of such a sacerdotal habit to cloak her confederate knave in? Was Saul as well a blind as a drowned puppet, that he could not discern so gross and bold an impostor as this? Was it possible that he should not perceive that it was not Samuel, when they came to confer together, as they did? How could that confederate knave change his own face into the same figure, look, and mien that Samuel had, which was exactly known to Saul? How could he imitate his voice thus of a sudden, and they discoursed a very considerable time together?

“Besides, knaves do not use to speak what things are true, but what things are pleasing. And moreover, this woman of Endor, though a Pythoness, yet she was of a very good nature and benign, which Josephus takes notice of, and extols her mightily for it, and therefore she could take no delight to lay further weight on the oppressed spirit 251of distressed king Saul; which is another sign that this scene was acted bonâ fide, and that there was no cozening in it. As also that it is another, that she spoke so magnificently of what appeared to her, that she saw Gods ascending. Could she then possibly adventure to turn out a countryslouch with a maund-woman’s cloak to act the part of so God-like and divine a personage of Samuel, who was Θεῷ τὴν μορφὴν ὅμοιος, as the woman describes him in Josephus Antiq. Judaic. lib. vii. c. 15, unto all which you may add, that the Scripture itself, which was written by inspiration, says expressly, verse 20, that it was Samuel. And the son of Sirach, chap xlvi. that Samuel himself prophesied after his death, referring to this story of the woman of Endor. But for our new inspired seers, or saints, S. Scot, S. Adie, and if you will, S. Webster, sworn advocate of the witches, who thus madly and boldly, against all sense and reason, against all antiquity, all interpreters, and against the inspired scripture itself, will have no Samuel in this scene, but a cunning confederate knave, whether the inspired scripture, or these inblown buffoons, puffed up with nothing but ignorance, vanity and stupid infidelity, are to be believed, let any one judge.

“We come now to his other allegation, wherein we shall be brief, we having exceeded the measure of a postscript already. ‘It was neither Samuel’s soul,’ says he, ‘joined with his body, nor his soul out of his body, nor the devil; and therefore it must be some confederate knave suborned by that cunning, cheating quean of Endor.’ But 252I briefly answer, it was the soul of Samuel himself; and that it is the fruitfulness of the great ignorance of J. Webster in the sound principles of theosophy and true divinity, that has enabled him to heap together no less than ten arguments to disprove this assertion, and all little to the purpose: so little indeed, that I think it little to the purpose particularly to answer them, but shall hint only some few truths which will rout the whole band of them.

“I say therefore that departed souls, as other spirits, have an ἀυτεξούσιον in them, such as souls have in this life; and have both a faculty and a right to move of themselves, provided there be no express law against such or such a design to which their motion tends.

“Again, that they have a power of appearing in their own personal shapes to whom there is occasion, as Anne Walker’s soul did to the miller; and that this being a faculty of theirs either natural or acquirable, the doing so is no miracle. And,

“Thirdly, That it was the strong piercing desire, and deep distress and agony of mind in Saul, in his perplexed circumstances, and the great compassion and goodness of spirit in the holy soul of Samuel, that was the effectual magick that drew him to condescend to converse with Saul in the woman’s house at Endor, as a keen sense of justice and revenge made Anne Walker’s soul appear to the miller with her five wounds in her head.

“The ridged and harsh severity that Webster fancies Samuel’s ghost would have used against 253the woman, or sharp reproofs to Saul; as for the latter, it is somewhat expressed in the text, and Saul had his excuse in readiness, and the good soul of Samuel was sensible of his perplexed condition. And as for the former, sith the soul of Samuel might indeed have terrified the poor woman, and so unhinging her, that she had been fit for nothing after it, but not converted her, it is no wonder if he passed her by; goodness and forbearance more befitting an holy angelical soul than bluster and fury, such as is fancied by that rude goblin that actuates the body and pen of Webster.

“As for departed souls, that they never have any care or regard to any of their fellow souls here upon earth, is expressly against the known example of that great soul, and universal pastor of all good souls, who appeared to Stephen at his stoning, and to St. Paul before his conversion, though then in his glorified body; which is a greater condescension than this of the soul of Samuel, which was also to a prince, upon whose shoulders lay the great affairs of the people of Israel: To omit that other notable example of the angel Raphael so called (from his office at that time, or from the angelical order he was adopted into after his death) but was indeed the soul of Azarias, the son of Ananias the Great, and of Tobit’s brethren, Tobit, v. 12. Nor does that which occurs, Tob. xii. 15, at all clash with what we have said, if rightly understood: for his saying, ‘I am Raphael one of the seven holy angels which present the prayers of the saints, and which go in and out before the glory of the holy one,’ in the Cabbalistical sense 254signifies no more than thus, that he was one of the universal society of the holy angels, (and a Raphael in the order of the Raphaels) which minister to the saints, and reinforce the prayers of good and holy men by joining thereto their own; and as they are moved by God, minister to their necessities, unprayed to themselves, which would be an abomination to them, but extreme prone to second the petitions of holy sincere souls, and forward to engage in the accomplishing of them, as a truly good man would sooner relieve an indigent creature, over-hearing him making his moan to God in prayer, than if he begged alms of himself, though he might do that without sin. This Cabbalistical account, I think, is infinitely more probable, than that Raphael told a downright lye to Tobit, in saying he was the son of Ananias when he was not. And be it so, will J. Webster say, what is all this to the purpose, when the book of Tobit is apocryphal, and consequently of no authority? What of no authority? Certainly of infinitely more authority than Mr. Wagstaff, Mr. Scot, and Mr. Adie, that Mr. Webster so frequently and reverently quoteth.

“I but, will he farther add, these apparitions were made to good and holy men, or to elect vessels; but King Saul was a wretched reprobate. This is the third liberal badge of honour that this ill-bred advocate of the witches has bestowed on a distressed prince. First, a ‘drowned puppet,’ p. 170, then a ‘distracted bedlam,’ in the same page, which I passed by before; and now a ‘wretched reprobate.’ But assuredly Saul was a 255brave prince and commander, as Josephus justly describes him, and reprobate only in type, as Ismael and Esau; which is a mystery it seems, that J. Webster was not aware of. And therefore no such wonder that the soul of Samuel had such a kindness for him, as to appear to him in the depth of his distress, to settle his mind, by telling him plainly the upshot of the whole business, that he should lose the battel, and he and his sons be slain, that so he might give a specimen of the bravest valour that ever was atchieved by any commander, in that he would not suffer his country to be overrun by the enemy while he was alive without resistance; but though he knew certainly he should fail of success, and he and his sons dye in the fight, yet in so just and honourable a cause as the defence of his crown and his country, would give the enemy battel in the field, and sacrifice his own life for the safety of his people. Out of the knowledge of which noble spirit in Saul, and his resolved valour in this point, those words haply may come from Samuel, ‘To morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me,’ (as an auspicious insinuation of their favourable reception into the other world,) in סחיצחצדקימ, in thalamo justorum, as Munster has noted out of the Rabbins.

“Lastly, as for that weak imputation, that this opinion of its being Samuel’s soul that appeared is Popish, that is very plebeianly and idiotically spoken, as if every thing that the Popish party are for, were Popish. We divide our zeal against so many things that we fancy Popish, that we scarce reserve a just share of detestation against what is 256truly so: Such as are that gross, rank and scandalous impossibility of ‘transubstantiation,’ the various modes of fulsome idolatry and lying impostures, the uncertainty of their loyalty to their lawful sovereigns by their superstitious adhesion to the spiritual tyranny of the Pope, and that barbarous and ferine cruelty against those that are not either such fools as to be persuaded to believe such things as they would obtrude upon men, or are not so false to God and their own consciences, as knowing better, yet to profess them.

“As for that other opinion, that the greater part of the reformed divines hold, that it was the devil that appeared in Samuel’s shape; and though Grotius also seems to be inclined thereto, alleging that passage of Porphyrius de abstinentia Animalium, where he describes one kind of spirit to be Γένος ἀπατηλῆς φύσεως, παντόμορφόν τε καὶ πολύτροπον, ὑποκρινόμενον καὶ θεοὺς καὶ δαίμονας καὶ ψυχὰς τεθνηκότων. (which is, I confess, very apposite to this story; nor do I doubt but that in many of these necromantick apparitions, they are ludicrous spirits, not the souls of the deceased that appear,) yet I am clear for the appearing of the soul of Samuel in this story, from the reasons above alleged, and as clear that in other necromancies, it may be the devil or such kind of spirits, as Porphyrius above describes, ‘that change themselves into omnifarious forms and shapes, and one while act the parts of dæmons, another while of angels or gods, and another while of the souls of the deceased.’ And I confess such a spirit as this might personate Samuel here, for any thing Webster has 257alleged to the contrary, for his arguments indeed are wonderfully weak and wooden, as may be understood out of what I have hinted concerning the former opinion, but I cannot further particularize now.

“For I have made my postscript much longer than my letter, before I was aware; and I need not enlarge to you, who are so well versed in these things already, and can by the quickness of your parts presently collect the whole measures of Hercules by his foot, and sufficiently understand by this time it is no rash censure of mine in my letter, that Webster’s book is but a weak impertinent piece of work, the very master-piece thereof being so weak and impertinent, and falling so short of the scope he aims at, which was really to prove that there was no such thing as a witch or wizard, that is not any mention thereof in Scripture, by any name ‘of one that had more to do with the devil, or the devil with him, than with other wicked men;’ that is to say, of one who in virtue of covenant, either implicit or explicit, did strange things by the help of evil spirits, but that ‘there are many sorts of deceivers and impostures, and divers persons under a passive delusion of melancholy and fancy,’ which is part of his very title-page.

“Whereby he does plainly insinuate, that there is nothing but couzenage or melancholy in the whole business of the fears of witches. But a little to mitigate or smother the greatness of this false assertion, he adds, ‘And that there is no corporeal league betwixt the devil and the witch; and that he does not suck on the witches body, nor has carnal 258copulation with her, nor the witches turned into dogs or cats,’ &c. All which things as you may see in his book, he understands in the grossest imaginable, as if the imps of witches had mouths of flesh to suck them, and bodies of flesh to lie with them, and at this rate he may understand a corporeal league, as if it were no league or covenant, unless some lawyer drew the instrument, and engrossed it in vellum or thick parchment, and there were so many witnesses with the hand and seal of the party. Nor any transformation into dogs or cats, unless it were real and corporeal, or grossly carnal; which none of his witch-mongers, as he rudely and slovenly calls that learned and serious person, Dr. Casaubon and the rest, do believe. Only it is a disputable case of their bodily transformation, betwixt bodinus and remigius; of which more in my Scholia. But that without this carnal transmutation, a woman might not be accounted a witch, is so foolish a supposition, that Webster himself certainly must be ashamed of it.

“Wherefore if his book be writ only to prove there is no such thing as a witch that covenants in parchment with the Devil by the advice of a lawyer, and is really and carnally turned into a dog, cat, or hare, &c. and with carnal lips sucked by the devil, and is one with whom the devil lies carnally; the scope thereof is manifestly impertinent, when neither Dr. Casaubon, nor any one else holds any such thing. But as for the true and adequate notion of a witch or wizard, such as at first I described, his arguments all of them are too weak and impertinent, as to the disproving 259the existence of such a witch as this, who betwixt his deceivers, impostors, and melancholists on one hand, and those gross witches he describes on the other hand, goes away sheer as a hair in a green balk betwixt two lands of corn, none of his arguments reaching her, or getting the sight of her, himself in the mean time standing on one side amongst the deceivers and impostors, his book, as to the main design he drives at, being a meer cheat and impostor.

“C. C. C. May, 25, 1678.”

The tenour of the confessions as taken before justices. As first of Annabil Stuart, of the age of 14 years, or thereby; who declared that she was brought in the presence of the justices for the crime of witchcraft; and declared, that one harvest last, the devil, in the shape of a black man, came to her mother’s house, and required the declarant to give herself up to him; and that the devil promised her she should not want any thing that was good.—Declares that she, being enticed by her mother, Jennet Mathie, and Bessie Wen, who was officer to their several meetings, she put her hand to the crown of her head, and the other to the sole of her foot, and did give herself up to 260the devil. Declares that her mother promised her a new coat for doing it. Declares that her spirit’s name was Ennipa, and that the devil took her by the hand and nipt her arm, which continued to be sore for half an hour. Declares that the devil, in the shape of a black man, lay with her in the bed, under the clothes, and that she found him cold. Declares, that thereafter, he placed her nearest himself, and declares she was present in her mother’s house when the effigy of wax was made, and that it was made to represent Sir George Maxwel. Declares, that the black man, Jannet Mathie, the declarant’s mother, (whose spirit’s name was Lemdlady; Bessie Weir, whose spirit’s name was Sopha; Margaret Craige, whose spirit’s name is Regerum, and Margaret Jackson, whose spirit’s name is Locas) were all present at the making of the said effigy; and that they bound it on a spit, and turned it before the fire; and that it was turned by Bessie Weir, saying, as they turned it, Sir George Maxwel, Sir George Maxwel, and that this was expressed by all of them, and by the declarant. Declares that this picture was made in October last. And further declares that upon the third day of January instant, Bessie Weir came to her mother’s house, and advertised her to come to her brother John Stuart’s upon the night following; and that accordingly she came to the place, where she found Bessie Weir, Margery Craige, Margaret Jackson, and her brother John Stuart, and a man with black cloaths, and a blue band, and white handcuffs, with hogers, and that his feet were cloven: that declarant sat down by 261the fire with them when they made a picture of clay, in which they placed pins in the breasts and sides; that they placed one in every side, and one in the breast; that the black man did put the pins in the picture of wax; but is not sure who put the pins in the picture of clay; that the effigies produced are those she saw made; that the black man’s name is Ejsal.

This declaration was emitted before James Dunlop, of Husil, and William Gremlage, &c. Jan. 27, 1677, ita est Robertus Park, Notarius Publicus.

“The second confession is of John Stuart, who being interrogate anent the crime of witchcraft, declared that upon Wednesday, the third day of January instant, Bessie Weir, in Pollocton, came to the declarant late at night, who being without doors near to his own house, the said Bessie Weir did intimate to him that there was a meeting to be at his house, the next day; and that the devil under the shape of a black man, Margaret Jackson, Margery Craige, and the said Bessie Weir were to be present; and that Bessie Weir required declarant to be there, which he promised; and that the next night, after declarant had gone to bed, the black man came in, and called the declarant quietly by his name, upon which he arose from his bed, put on his clothes and lighted a candle. Declare, that Margaret Jackson, Bessie Weir, and Margery Craige, did enter in at a window in the cavil of declarant’s house; and that the first thing the black man required, was, that the declarant should renounce his baptism, and deliver himself wholly to him; which the declarant 262did, by putting one hand on the crown of his head, and the other on the sole of his foot; and that he was tempted to it by the devil promising him that he should not want any pleasure, and that he should get his heart filled on all that should do him wrong. Declares, that he gave him the name of Jonat for his spirit’s name; that thereafter the devil required every one of their consents for the making of the effigies of clay, for the taking away the life of Sir George Maxwel, of Pollock, to revenge the taking of declarant’s mother, Jannet Mathie, that every one of the persons above named, gave their consent to the making of the said effigy, and that they wrought the clay; that the black man did make the figure of the head and face, and two arms, to the said effigy; that the devil set three pins in the same, on one each side and one in the breast; and that the declarant did hold the candle to them, all the time the picture was making. And that he observed one of the black man’s feet to be cloven—that his apparel was black—that he had a blueish band and handcuffs—that he had hogers on his legs, without shoes; and that the black man’s voice was hough and goustie: and farther declares that after they had begun the framing of the effigies, his sister, Annabil Stuart, a child of 13 or 14 years of age, came knocking at the door, and being let in by the declarant, she staid with them a considerable time, but that she went away before the rest, he having opened the door for her—that the rest went out at the window at which they entered—that the effigies was placed by Bessie Weir in his bed-straw. He farther declares 263he himself did envy against Sir George Maxwel, for apprehending Jannet Mathie, his mother; and that Bessie Weir had great malice against this Sir George Maxwel, and that her quarrel was, as the declarant conceived, because the said Sir George had not entered her husband to his harvest service; also that the said effigies was made upon the fourth day of January instant, and that the devil’s name was Ejoal; that declarant’s spirit’s name was Jonas, and Bessie Weir’s spirit’s name, who was officer, was Sopha; and that Margaret Jackson’s spirit’s name was Locas; and that Annabil Stuart’s spirit’s name, the declarant’s sister, was Enippa; but does not remember what Margery Craige’s spirit’s name was. Declares that he cannot write.

This confession was emitted in the presence of the witnesses to the other confession, and on the same day.—Ita est. Robertus Park, Notarius Publicus.

The next confession is that of Margaret, relict of Thomas Shaws, who being examined by the justices, anent her being guilty of witchcraft, declares that she was present at the making of the first effigies and picture that were made in Jannet Mathie’s house, in October; and that the devil, in the shape of a black man, Jannet Mathie, Bessie Weir, Margery Craige, and Annabil Stuart, were present at the making of them, and that they were made to represent Sir George Maxwel, of Pollock, for the taking away his life. Declares, that 40 years ago, or thereabout, she was at Pollockshaw Croft, with some few sticks on her back, that the black man came to her, and that she did give up 264herself unto him, from the top of her head to the sole of her foot; and that this was after declarant had renounced her baptism, and that the spirit’s name which he designed her was Locas: and that about the third or fourth of January instant, or thereby, in the night-time, when she awaked, she found a man to be in bed with her, whom she supposed to be her husband, though her husband had been dead twenty years or thereby, and that the said man immediately disappeared; that this man who disappeared was the devil. Declares, that upon Thursday the fourth of January instant, she was present in the house of John Stuart, at night, when the effigies of clay was made, and that she saw the black man there, sometimes sitting, sometimes standing with John Stuart; and that the black man’s cloaths were black, and that he had white handcuffs; and that Bessie Weir, in Pollocton, and Annabil Stuart, in Shaws, and Margery Craigie, were at the aforesaid time and place at making the said effigies of clay; and declares that she gave her consent to the making of the same, and that the devil’s name who compeered in the black man’s shape was Ejoll.

Sic Subscribitur, ita est, Robertus Park, Notatius Publicus, &c.

“Andr. Martin, Servitour to the Lord of Pollock, of the age of thirty years, or thereby, deposes, 265that he was present in the house of Jannet Mathie, Pannel, when the picture of wax produced was found in a little hole in the wall at the back of the fire—that Sir George, his sickness did fall upon him about the eighteenth of October, or thereby—that the picture of wax was found on the —— of December, and that Sir George his sickness did abate and relent about the time the picture of wax was found and discovered in Jannet Mathie’s house—that the pins were placed in the right and left sides; and that Sir George Maxwel, of Pollock, his pains, lay most in his right and left sides. Depones, that Sir George’s pains did abate and relent after the finding of the said picture of wax, and taking out the pins as is said—that the pannel, Jannet Mathie, has been by fame and bruite a reputed witch these several years past. And this is the truth, as he shall answer to God.—Sic Subscribitur, Andr. Martin.”

“Lawrence Pollock, Secretary to the Lord of Pollock, sworn and purged of partial counsel, depones that on the —— day of December he was in the Pannel Jannet Mathie’s house when the picture was found; and that he did not see it before it was brought to the Pannel’s door—that Sir George Maxwel of Pollock’s sickness did seize upon him about the 14th of October, or thereabouts, and he did continue in his sickness or distemper for six weeks, or thereby—that Sir George’s sickness did abate and relent after the finding of the said picture of wax, and taking out of the pins that were in the effigies—that by open bruit and common fame, Jannet Mathie, and Bessie Weir, 266and Margery Craige, are brandit to be witches. Depones, that the truth is this, as he shall answer to God.—Sic Subscrib. Lawrence Pollock.”

“Lodawic’ Stuart, of Auckenhead, being sworn and purged of partial counsel, depones, that Sir George’s sickness fell upon him the 14th or 13th day of October—that he was not present at the finding of the picture of wax; but that he had seen Sir George Maxwel, of Pollock, after it was found; and having seen him in his sickness oftentimes before, he did perceive that Sir George had sensibly recovered after the time that the said picture was said to have been found, which was upon the 11th or 12th of December—that Jannet Mathie and Margery Craigie, two of the Pannel, are by report of the country said to be witches—that he having come to Pollock, he did see Sir George Maxwel, whose pains did recur, and that his pains and torments were greatly increased in respect of what they were before the finding of the picture of wax—that upon the eighth of January, when they left the said Sir George Maxwel, of Pollock, the deponent James Dunlop, of Housil, Allan Douglass, and several others, did go to the house of John Stuart, Warlock, on Pollockshaw, and there he found a picture of clay in the said John Stuart’s bed-straw—that there were three pins in the said picture of clay, and that there was one on each side, and one in the breast—and further depones, that being returned to Sir George’s house, Sir George told the deponent that he found great ease of his pains, and that it was before the deponent Hounsil, and the rest, did reveal to him 267that they had found the said picture of clay, and further, that this is the truth, as he shall answer to God.—Sic. Subscrib. Lodowick Stuart.”

There are more depositions of a similar nature whence these were extracted, but these are enough to discover that the confession of those witches are neither fables nor dreams. It belongs us, therefore, in this enlightened age, when superstition has fled before the rays of science and the influence of religion, to account for the then prevalent notion, which appears so far to be authenticated, of the existence of witches. It is not enough to say that people are barbarous, ignorant, or unenlightened, to exculpate them from charges involving such strong points as supernatural with human agency. In this stage of investigation, nothing is more natural than to ask, did witches ever exist? Yes.—Upon what authority? Sacred Writ.—Are there such beings as witches now? We hear of none.—Then the last grand question, to which a secret of some importance is attached—What has become of them? have they vanished into viewless air, without leaving a wreck behind; or are they consigned to the “bottom of the bottomless pit?” Of this we may say something hereafter; while in the meantime we lay before our readers

“Item.—Fyled and convict for samecle, as she confest before his Majesty that the devil in man’s likeness met her going out in the fields, from her own 268house a Keith, betwixt five and six at even, being alone, and commendit her to be at Northborrick Kirk the next night. And she passed then on horseback, conveyed by her good-son called John Cooper, and lighted at the Kirk-yard, or a little before she came to it, about eleven hours at even. They danced along the Kirk-yard, Geilie Duncan plaid to them on a trump, John Fien, mussiled, led all the rest; the said Agnes and her daughter followed next. Besides there were Kate Grey, George Moile’s wife, Robert Guerson, Catherine Duncan Buchanan, Thomas Barnhill and his wife, Gilbert Macgil, John Macgil, Catherine Macgil, with the rest of their complices, above an hundred persons, whereof there were six men, and all the rest women. The women made first their homage and then the men. The men were turned nine times Widdershins about, and the women six times. John Fien blew up the doors and in the lights, which were like mickle black candles sticking round about the pulpit. The devil started up himself in the pulpit, like a mickle black man, and every one answered here. Mr. Robert Guerson being named, they all ran hirdie girdie, and were angry; for it was promised he should be called Robert the Comptroller, alias Rob the Rowar, for expriming of his name. The first thing he demandit was, as they kept all promise, and been good servants, and what they had done since the last time they convened. At his command they opened up three graves, two within, and one without the Kirk, and took off the joints of their fingers, toes, and neise, and parted them 269amongst them: and the said Agnes Sympson got for her part a winding-sheet and two joints. The devil commandit them to keep the joints upon them while they were dry, and then to make a powder of them to do evil withal. Then he commandit them to keep his commandments, which were to do all the evil they could. Before they departed they kissed his breech [the record speaks more broad.] He [meaning the devil] had on him ane gown and ane hat, which were both black: and they that were assembled, part stood and part sate: John Fien was ever nearest the devil, at his left elbock; Graymarcal keeped the door.”

The Scotch accent has been here retained for the better authenticity of the matter; the confession here given being, in all probability, a principal reason why King James changed his opinion relative to the existence of witches; which, it was reported, he was inclined to think were mere conceits; as he was then but young (not above five or six and twenty years of age) when this examination took place before him; and part of the third chapter of his Demonologie appears to be a transcript of this very confession.

Agnes Sympson was remarkable for her skill in diseases, and frequently, it is said, took the pains and sickness of the afflicted upon herself to relieve them, and afterwards translated them to a third person: she made use of long Scriptural rhymes and prayers, containing the principal points of Christianity, so that she seemed not so much a white witch as a holy woman. She also used nonsensical rhymes in the instruction of ignorant 270people, and taught them to say the white and black Pater-noster in metre, in set forms, to be used morning and evening; and at other times, as occasion might require.

Whenever she required an answer from the devil, on any occasion, he always appeared to her in the shape of a dog. And when she wished him to depart, she conjured him in the following manner, namely: “I charge thee to depart on the law thou livest on:” this it is said was the language with which she dismissed him, after consulting with him on old Lady Edmiston’s sickness. The manner in which she raised the devil was with these words: “Elia come and speak to me;” when he 271never failed to appear to her in the shape of a dog, as usual. Her sailing with her Kemmers and fellow witches in a boat is related as a very remarkable story, where the devil caused them all to drink good wine and beer without money; and of her neither seeing the sailors nor they her; and of the storm which the devil raised, whereby the ship perished; also her baptizing, and using other ceremonies upon a cat, in the company of other witches, to prevent Queen Anne from coming to Scotland.

That which is most remarkable in John Fein, is the devil appearing to him, not in black, but white raiment, although he proposed as hellish a covenant to him as any in the black costume. His skimming along the surface of the sea with his companions—his foretelling the leak in the Queen’s ship—his raising a storm by throwing a cat into the sea, during the King’s voyage to Denmark—his raising a mist on the King’s return, by getting Satan to cast a thing like a foot-ball into the sea, which caused such a smoke, as to endanger his Majesty being driven on the coast of England—his opening locks by means of sorcery, by merely blowing into a woman’s hand while she sat by the fire—his embarking in a boat with other witches, sailing over the sea, getting on board of a ship, drinking wine and ale there, and afterwards sinking the vessel with all on board—his kissing Satan’s —e again, at another conventicle—his being carried into the air, in chasing a cat, for the purpose of raising a storm, according to Satan’s prescription. He pretended also to tell any man 272how long he would live, provided he told him the day of his birth.

SORCERY.

SORTES.—SORTILEGIUM.

SIBYLS.

TALISMANS.

PHILTERS, CHARMS, &c.

A drug, or other preparation, used as a pretended charm to excite love. These are distinguished into true and spurious: the spurious are spells or charms supposed to have an effect beyond the ordinary law of nature, by some inherent magic virtue; such are those said to be possessed formerly by old women, witches, &c.—The true Philters were supposed to operate by some natural and magnetical power. There are many enthusiastic and equally credulous authors, who have encouraged the belief in the reality of these Philters; and adduce matter in fact in confirmation of their opinions, as in all doubtful cases. Among these may be quoted Van Helmont, who says, that by holding a certain herb in his hand, and afterwards taking a little dog by the foot with the same hand, the animal followed him wherever he went, and quite deserted his former master. He also adds, that Philters only require a confirmation of Mumia^[51]; and on this principle he accounts for the phenomena of love transplanted by the touch of an herb; for, says he, the heat communicated to the herb, not coming alone, but animated by the emanations of the natural spirits, determines the herb towards the man, and identifies it to him. Having 286then received this ferment, it attracts the spirit of the other object magnetically, and gives it an amorous motion. But all this is mere absurdity, and has fallen to the ground with the other irrational hypothesis from the same source.

HELL,

INQUISITION. — Inquisition, or the Holy Office ,

In the civil and canon law, inquisition implies a manner of proceeding for the discovery of some crime by the sole office of the judge, in the way of search, examination, or even torture. It is also used in common law for a like process in the king’s behalf, for the discovery of lands, profits, and the like; in which sense it is often confounded with the office of the

Which denotes an ecclesiastical jurisdiction established in Spain, Portugal, and Italy, for the trial and examination of such persons as are suspected to entertain any religious opinions contrary to those professed in the church of Rome. It is called inquisition because the judges of their office take cognizances of crime or common report, without any legal evidence, except what they themselves fish out.

Some people fancy they see the original inquisition, in a constitution made by Pope Lucius, at the council of Verona, in 1184, where he orders the bishops to get information, either by themselves or by their commissaries, of all such persons as were suspected of heresy; and distinguishes the several degrees of suspected, convicted, penitent, relapsed, &c. However this may be, it is generally allowed, that Pope Innocent III., laid the first foundation of the holy office; and that the Vaudois and Albigenses were what gave the occasion 298to it. The pontiff sent several priests, with St. Dominic at their head, to Tholouse, in order to blow up a spirit of zeal and persecution amongst the prelates and princes. These missionaries were to give an account of the number of heretics in those parts, and the behaviour of the princes and persons in authority to them; and thence they acquired the names of inquisitors: but these original inquisitors had not any court, or any authority; they were only a kind of spiritual spies, who were to make report of their discoveries to the Pope.

The Emperor Frederick II. at the beginning of the 13th century, extended their power very considerably: he committed the taking cognizances of the crime of heresy, to a set of ecclesiastical judges; and as fire was the punishment decreed to the obstinate, the inquisitors determined indirectly, with regard both to the persons and the crimes; by which means the laity was cut off from its own jurisdiction, and abandoned to the devout madness and zeal of the ecclesiastics.

After the death of Frederick, who had long before repented the power he had given the churchmen, as having seen some of the fruits of it; Pope Innocent IV. erected a perpetual tribunal of inquisitors, and deprived the bishops and secular judges of the little power the Emperor Frederick had left them. And this jurisdiction, which depended immediately on himself, he took care to introduce into most of the states of Europe. But the inquisitors were so fiery hot, and made such horrid butchery among the reputed heretics, that 299they raised an universal detestation, even in some Catholic countries themselves. Hence it was that their reign proved very short both in France and Germany; nor was even Spain entirely subject to them till the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, in 1448, when their power was increased, under the pretence of clearing the country of Judaism and Mahometanism. The power of the inquisition is very much limited in some countries, particularly at Venice, where it is received under such modifications as prove a great check on its authority. Indeed at Venice it seems rather a political than a religious contrivance, and serves rather for the security of the state, than that of the church. There are appeals from the subaltern inquisitions in Italy, to the congregation of the holy office at Rome.

It is the constant practice of the inquisition to affect, in all their procedures, to inspire as much terror as possible; every thing is done with the most profound silence and secrecy, and with the greatest rigour and pretended impartiality. When a person is seized all the world abandons him; not the nearest friend dares to speak a word in his defence; that alone would be enough to render them suspected of heresy, and would bring them within the claws of the inquisition. The criminals are seized, examined, tried, tortured, and unless they recant, are even condemned and executed, without ever seeing or knowing their accusers; whence the revengeful have a fair opportunity of wreaking their malice on their enemies. When the inquisition has done with them, and condemned 300them to death, they are turned over to the secular arm, with a world of prayer, and pious entreaty, that their lives may not be touched.

Time is no manner of security in point of heresy, nor does the grave itself shelter the accused from the pursuits of the inquisition; even the deceased have their trials, and they proceed in all their form and solemnity against the dead carcases. The execution is always deferred till the number of condemned is very great, that the multitude of sufferers may strike the deeper horror, and make the scene more terrible and shocking.

The inquisition of Rome is a congregation of twelve cardinals and some other officers, where the Pope presides in person. This is accounted the highest tribunal in Rome; it began in the time of Pope Paul IV. on occasion of the Lutheranism.

The inquisition is very severe in the Indies. It is true, there must there be the oaths of seven witnesses to condemn a man; but the deposition of slaves or children are taken. The person is tortured till he condemns himself; for his accusers are never brought to confront him. Persons are accused for the most slender expression against the church; or even for a disrespectful word against the inquisitors.

The standard of the inquisition is a piece of red damask, on which is painted a cross, with an olive branch on one side and a sword on the other; with these words of the Psalm, Exurge, Domine, et judica causam meam.

This infernal engine of tyranny, bigotry, and 301superstition, did not become known in Spain before the year 1484. The court of Rome owed this obligation to another Dominican, John de Torquemada. As he was the confessor of Queen Isabella, he had extorted from her a promise that if ever she ascended the throne, she would use every means to extirpate heresy and heretics. Ferdinand had conquered Grenada, and had expelled from the Spanish realms multitudes of unfortunate Moors. A few remained, who, with the Jews, he compelled to become Christians: they at least assumed the name, but it was well known that both these nations naturally respected their own faith, rather than that of the Christians. This race was afterwards distinguished as Christianos novos; and in marriages, the blood of the Hidalgo was considered to lose its purity by mingling with such a suspicious source.

It was pretended by Torquemada, that this dissimulation would greatly hurt the holy religion. The Queen listened with respectful diffidence to her confessor; and at length gained over the king to consent to the establishment of the unrelenting tribunal. Torquemada, indefatigable in his zeal for the holy see, in the space of fourteen years that he exercised the office of chief inquisitor, is said to have prosecuted near eighty thousand persons, of whom six thousand were condemned to the flames.

Voltaire attributes the taciturnity of the Spaniards to the universal horror such proceedings spread. “A jealousy and suspicion took possession of all ranks of people: friendship and sociability 302were at an end! Brothers were afraid of brothers, fathers of their children.”

The situation and feelings of one imprisoned in the cells of the inquisition are forcibly painted by Orobio, a mild, and meek, and learned man, whose controversy with Limborch is well known. When he escaped from Spain he took refuge in Holland, was circumcised, and died a philosophical Jew. He has left this admirable description of himself in the cell of the inquisition:—“Inclosed in this dungeon I could not even find space enough to turn myself about; I suffered so much that I found my brain disordered. I frequently asked myself, am I really Don Bathazaar Orobio, who used to walk about Seville at my pleasure, who so much enjoyed myself with my wife and children? I often imagined that all my life had only been a dream, and that I really had been born in this dungeon! The only amusement I could invent was metaphysical disputations. I was at once opponent, respondent, and phæses!” In the cathedral at Saragossa is the tomb of a famous inquisitor; six pillars surround the tomb; to each is chained a Moor, as preparatory to his being burnt. On this St. Foix ingeniously observes, “If ever the jack-ketch of any country should be rich enough to have a splendid tomb, this might serve as an excellent model.”

Bayle informs us, that the inquisition punished heretics by fire, to elude the maxim, Ecclesia non novit sanguinem; for burning a man, say they, does not shed his blood! Otho, the bishop at the Norman invasion, in the tapestry worked by Matilda, 303the queen of William the Conqueror, is represented with a mace in his hand, for the purpose, that when he dispatched his antagonist, he might not spill blood, but only break bones! Religion has had her quibbles as well as law.

The establishment of this despotic order was resisted in France; but it may perhaps surprise the reader that a recorder of London, in a speech, urged the necessity of setting up an inquisition in England! It was on the trial of Penn the Quaker, in 1670, who was acquitted by the jury, which seems highly to have provoked the said recorder. “Magna Charta,” says the preface to the trial, “with the recorder of London, is nothing more than Magna F——!” It appears that the jury after being kept two days and two nights to change their verdict, were in the end both fined and imprisoned. Sir John Howell, the recorder, said, “Till now I never understood the reason of the policy and prudence of the Spaniards, in suffering the inquisition among them; and certainly it will not be well with us, till something like unto the Spanish inquisition be in England.” Thus it will ever be, while both parties, struggling for pre-eminence, rush to the sharp extremity of things, and annihilate the trembling balance of the constitution. But the adopted motto of Lord Erskine must ever be that of every Briton, “Trial by Jury.”

Gabriel Malagrida, an old man of seventy, so late as the year 1761, was burnt by these evangelical executioners. His trial was printed at Amsterdam, 3041762, from the Lisbon copy. And for what was this unhappy Jesuit condemned? Not, as some imagined, for his having been concerned in a conspiracy against the King of Portugal. No other charge is laid to him in his trial, but that of having indulged certain heretical notions, which any other tribunal but that of the inquisition, would have looked upon as the deleterious fancies of a fanatical old man. Will posterity believe, that in the eighteenth century an aged visionary was led to the stake for having said, amongst other extravagances, “that the Virgin having commanded him to write the life of Antichrist, told him, that he, Malagrida, was a second John, but more clear than John the Evangelist; that there were to be three Antichrists, and that the last should be born at Milan, of a monk and a nun, in the year 1920; that he would marry Proserpine, one of the infernal furies.”

For such ravings as these the unhappy old man was burnt in recent times. Granger assures us, that a horse, in his remembrance, who had been taught to tell the spots upon cards, the hour of the day, &c. by significant tokens, was, together with his owner, put into the inquisition, for both of them dealing with the devil! A man of letters declared that, having fallen into their hands, nothing perplexed him so much as the ignorance of the inquisitor and his council; and it seemed very doubtful whether they had read even the Scriptures.

The following most interesting anecdote relating to the terrible inquisition, exemplifying how 305the use of the diabolical engines of torture forces men to confess crimes they have not been guilty of, was related to Mr. D’Israeli by a Portuguese gentleman.

A nobleman in Lisbon having heard that his physician and friend was imprisoned by the inquisition, under the stale pretext of Judaism, addressed a letter to one of them, to request his freedom, assuring the inquisitor, that his friend was as orthodox a Christian as himself. The physician, notwithstanding this high recommendation, was put to the torture; and, as was usually the case, at the height of his sufferings, confessed every thing they wished. This enraged the nobleman, and feigning a dangerous illness, he begged the inquisitor would come to give him his last spiritual aid.

As soon as the Dominican arrived, the lord, who had prepared his confidential servants, commanded the inquisitor, in their presence, to acknowledge himself a Jew; to write his confession and to sign it. On the refusal of the inquisitor, the nobleman ordered his people to put on the inquisitor’s head a red hot helmet, which to his astonishment, in drawing aside a screen, he beheld glowing in a small furnace. At the sight of this new instrument of torture, “Luke’s iron crown,” the monk wrote and subscribed this abhorred confession. The nobleman then observed, “See now the enormity of your manner of proceeding with unhappy men! My poor physician, like you, has confessed Judaism; but with this difference, only 306torments have forced that from him, which fear alone has drawn from you!”

The inquisition has not failed of receiving its due praises. Macedo, a Portuguese Jesuit, has discovered the “Origin of the Inquisition,” in the terrestrial Paradise, and presumes to allege, that God was the first who began the functions of an inquisitor over Cain and the workmen of Babel! Macedo, however, is not so dreaming a personage as he appears; for he obtained a professor’s chair at Padua, for the arguments he delivered at Venice, against the Pope, which were published by the title of “The Literary Roarings of the Lion of St. Mark;” besides, he is the author of 109 different works; but it is curious how far our interest is apt to prevail over conscience,—Macedo praised the inquisition up to heaven, while he sank the Pope to nothing.

Among the great revolutions of this age, the inquisition of Spain and Portugal is abolished, but its history enters into that of the human mind; and the history of the inquisition by Limborch, translated by Chandler, with a very curious “Introduction,” loses none of its value with the philosophical mind. This monstrous tribunal of human opinions, aimed at the sovereignty of the intellectual world, without intellect. It may again be restored, to keep Spain stationary at the middle ages!

DEMON,

A name the ancients gave to certain spirits, or genii, which, they say, appeared to men, either to do them service, or to hurt them.

The first notion of demons was brought from Chaldea; whence it spread itself among the Persians, Egyptians, and Greeks. Pythagoras and Thales were the first who introduced demons into Greece. Plato fell in with the notion, and explained it more distinctly and fully, than any of the former philosophers had done. By demons, he understood spirits, inferior to gods, and yet superior to men; which inhabited the middle region of the air, kept up the communication between gods and men, carrying the offerings and prayers of men to the gods, and bringing down the will of the gods to men. But he allowed of none but good and beneficent ones: though his disciples afterwards, finding themselves at a loss how to account for the origin of evil, adopted another sort of demons, who were enemies to men.

There is nothing more common in the heathen theology, than these good and evil genii. And the same superstitious notion we find got footing among the Israelites, by their commerce with the Chaldeans. But by demons, they did not mean the devil, or a wicked spirit: they never took the word demon in that sense, nor was it ever used in such signification, till by the evangelists and some modern Jews. The word is Greek, θαιμων.

Gale endeavours to shew, that the origin and intitution 308of demons was an imitation of the Messiah. The Phœnicians called them בעלים Baalim. For they had one supreme being, whom they called Baal, (and Moloch, and various inferior deities called Baalim,) whereof we find frequent mention in the Old Testament. The first demon of the Egyptians was Mercury, or Thuet. The same author finds some resemblance between the several offices ascribed to the demons and those of the Messiah.

Demoniac, is applied to a person possessed with a spirit, or demon. In the Roman church, there is a particular office for the exorcism of demoniacs.

Demoniacs are also a party or branch of the Anabaptists, whose distinguishing tenet it is, that the devil shall be saved at the end of the world.—See Demonology.

DEMONOLOGY. — Derivation of the strange and hideous forms of Devils, &c. — “ The Narrative of the Demon of Tedworth , or the disturbances at Mr. Monpesson’s house, caused by Witchcraft and Villainy of the Drummer .”

THE DEMON OF JEDBURGH.

THE GHOST OF JULIUS CÆSAR. — The ghosts of the slain at the battle of Marathon. — Familiar spirit or ancient Brownie.

GIPSIES—EGYPTIANS.

In most parts of the continent the gipsies are called Cingari, or Zingari; the Spaniards call them Gitanos, the French Bohemiens or Bohemiennes.

It is not certain when the Gipsies, as they are now termed, first appeared in Europe; but mention is made of them in Hungary and Germany, so early as the year 1417. Within 10 years afterwards we hear of them in France, Switzerland and Italy. The date of their arrival in England is more uncertain; it is most probable that it was not until near a century afterward. In the year 1530, they are spoken of in the following manner, in the penal statutes.

“Forasmuch as before this time, divers and many outlandish people calling themselves Egyptians, using no craft nor feat of merchandize, have come into this realm, and gone from shire to shire, and place to place, in great company, and used great subtil and crafty means to deceive the people; bearing them in mind that they, by palmistry, could tell men’s and women’s fortunes; and so many times, by craft and subtilty, have deceived the people of their money; and also have committed many heinous felonies and robberies, to the great hurt and deceit of the people they have come among,” &c.

This is the preamble to an act, by which the Gipsies were ordered to quit the realm under heavy penalties. Two subsequent acts, passed in 1555 and 1565, made it death for them to remain in the kingdom; and it is still on record, that thirteen were executed under these acts, in the county of Suffolk, a few years before the restoration. 363It was not till about the year 1783, that they were repealed.

The Gipsies were expelled France in 1560, and Spain in 1591: but it does not appear they have been extirpated in any country. Their collective numbers, in every quarter of the globe, have been calculated at 7 or 800,000^[66]. They are most numerous in Asia, and in the northern parts of Europe. Various have been the opinion relative to their origin. That they came from Egypt, has been the most prevalent. This opinion (which has procured them here the name of Gipsies, and in Spain that of Gittanos) arose from some of the first who arrived in Europe, pretending that they came from that country; which they did, perhaps, to heighten their reputation for skill in palmistry and the occult sciences. It is now we believe pretty generally agreed, that they came originally from Hindostan; since their language so far coincides with the Hindostanic, that even now, after a lapse of nearly four centuries, during which they have been dispersed in various foreign countries, nearly one half of their words are precisely those of Hindostan^[67]; and scarcely any variation is to be found in vocabularies procured from the Gipsies in Turkey, Hungary, Germany, and those in England^[68]. Their manners, for the most part, coincide, as well as the language, in every quarter of the 364globe where they are found; being the same idle wandering set of beings, and seldom professing any mode of acquiring a livelihood, except that of fortune-telling^[69]. Their religion is always that of 365the country in which they reside; and though they are no great frequenters either of mosques or churches, they generally conform to rites and ceremonies as they find them established.

Grellman says that, in Germany, they seldom think of any marriage ceremony; but their children are baptized and the mothers churched. In England their children are baptized, and their dead buried, according to the rites of the church; perhaps the marriage ceremony is not more regarded than in Germany; but it is certain they are sometimes married in churches. Upon the whole, as Grellman observes, we may certainly regard the Gipsies as a singular phenomenon in Europe. For the space of between three and four hundred years they have gone wandering about like pilgrims and strangers, yet neither time nor example has made in them any alteration: they remain ever and every where what their fathers were: Africa makes them no blacker, nor does Europe make them whiter.

Few of the descendants of the aboriginal Gipsies are to be found any where in Europe, and in England less than any where else. The severity of the police against this description of the degenerate vagabonds existing at the present day, have considerably thinned their phalanxes, and brought them to something like a due sense of the laws and expectations of civilized society. What remains of them, nevertheless, contrive one way or other to elude the vigilance of the laws by different masked callings, under 366which they ostensibly appear to carry on their usual traffic.

The modern Gipsies pretend that they derive their origin from the ancient Egyptians, who were famous for their knowledge in astronomy and other sciences; and, under the pretence of fortune-telling, find means to rob or defraud the ignorant and superstitious. To colour their impostures, they artificially discolour their faces, and speak a kind of gibberish or cant peculiar to themselves. They rove up and down the country in large companies, to the great terror of the farmers, from whose geese, turkeys, and fowls, they take considerable contributions.

When a fresh recruit is admitted into the fraternity, he is to take the following oath, administered by the principal marauder, after going through the annexed forms:—

First, a new name is given to him, by which he is ever after to be called; then standing up in the middle of the assembly, and directing his face to the dimber damber, or principal man of the gang, he repeats the following oath, which is dictated to him by some experienced member of the fraternity; namely, “I, Crank Cuffin, do swear to be a true brother, and that I will, in all things, obey the commands of the great tawny prince, and keep his counsel, and not divulge the secrets of my brethren.

“I will never leave nor forsake the company, but observe and keep all the times of appointment, either by day or by night, in every place whatever.

367“I will not teach any one to cant, nor will I disclose any of our mysteries to them.

“I will take my prince’s part against all that shall oppose him, or any of us, according to the utmost of my ability; nor will I suffer him, or any one belonging to us, to be abused by any strange Abrams, Rufflers, Hookers, Paillards, Swaddlers, Irish Toyles, Swigmen, Whip Jacks, Jackmen, Bawdy Baskets, Dommerars, Clapper Dogeons, Patricoes, or Curtals; but will defend him, or them, as much as I can, against all other outliers whatever. I will not conceal aught I win out of Libkins^[70], or pun the Ruffmans^[71], but will preserve it for the use of the company. Lastly, I will cleave to my Doxy-wap^[72], stifly, and will bring her Duds^[73], Margery Prators^[74], Goblers^[75], Grunting Cheats^[76], or Tibs of the Buttery^[77], or any thing else I can come at, as winning^[78] for her wappings.”

The canters, it would appear, have a tradition, that from the three first articles of this oath, the first founders of a certain boastful, worshipful fraternity, (who pretend to derive their origin from the earliest times) borrowed both the hint and the form of their establishment; and that their pretended derivation of the first word Adam is a forgery, it being only from the first Adam Tyler^[70]. At the admission of a new brother, a general stock is raised for booze or drink, to 368make themselves merry on the occasion. As for peckage or eatables, this they can procure without money, for while some are sent to break the ruffmans, or woods and bushes, for firing, others are detached to filch geese, chickens, hens, ducks, or mallards, and pigs. Their morts, or women, are their butchers, who presently make bloody work with what living things are brought to them; and having made holes in the ground under some remote hedge, in an obscure place, they make a fire, and boil or broil their food; and when it is done enough, fall to work tooth and nail; and having eaten more like beasts than human beings, they drink more like swine than men, entertaining each other during the time with songs in the canting dialect. As they live, so they lie together, promiscuously, and know not how to claim a property either in their goods or children; and this general interest ties them more firmly together, than if all their rags were twisted into ropes, to bind them indissolubly from a separation, which detestable union is farther consolidated by the preceding oath.

They stroll up and down all summer-time in droves, and dexterously pick pockets while they are telling fortunes; and the money, rings, silver thimbles, &c. which they get, are instantly conveyed from one hand to another, till the remotest person of the gang (who is not suspected, because they come not near the person robbed) gets possession of it; so that in the strictest search, it is impossible to recover it, while the wretches, with 369imprecations, oaths, and protestations, disclaim the thievery.

That by which they were said to get the most money, was, when young gentlewomen of good families and reputation, have happened to be with child before marriage, a round sum is often bestowed among Gipsies, for some mort to take the child; and, as in these cases it was never heard of more by the true mother and family, so the disgrace was kept concealed from the world; and, in the event of the child surviving, its parents are never known.

The following account of these wandering beings, is taken from Evelyn’s Journal, which throws some light on their degeneracy from the primitive tribes.

“In our statutes they are called Egyptians, which implies a counterfeit kind of rogues, who ‘being English or Welsh people,’ disguise themselves in uncouth habits, smearing their faces and bodies, and framing to themselves an unknown, canting language, wander up and down; and under pretence of telling fortunes, curing diseases, &c. abuse the common people, trick them of their money, and steal all that is not too hot or too heavy for them. See several statutes made against them, 28 Henry VIII. c. 10. 1 & 2. Philip and Mary, c. 4 & 5. Eliz. c. 20.

“The origin of this tribe of vagabonds called Egyptians, and popularly Gipsies, is somewhat obscure; at least the reason of the denomination is so. It is certain, the ancient Egyptians had the name of great cheats, and were famous for the 370subtilty of their impostures, whence the name might afterwards pass proverbially into other languages, as is pretty certain it did into the Greek and Latin, or else the ancient Egyptians, being much versed in astronomy, which in those days was little better than Astrology, the name was on that score assumed by these diseurs de bonne avanture, as the French call them, or tellers of good fortune. Be this as it may, there is scarce any country in Europe, even at the present day, but has its Egyptians, though not all of them under this denomination: the Latins called them Egyptii; the Italians, Cingani, and Cingari; the Germans, Zigeuna; the French, Bohemiens; others Saracens, and others Tartars, &c.

Munster, Geogr. L. III. c. 5. relates, that they made their first appearance in Germany, in 1417, exceedingly tawny and sun-burnt, and in pitiful array, though they affected quality, and travelled with a train of hunting dogs after them, like nobles. He adds, that they had passports from King Sigismund of Bohemia, and other princes. Ten years afterwards they came into France, and thence passed into England.

Pasquier, in his Recherches, L. IV. c. 19, relates the origin of the Gipsies thus: On the 17th of April, 1427, there came to Paris twelve penitents, or persons, as they said, adjudged to penance; viz. one duke, one count, and ten cavaliers, or persons on horseback; they took on themselves the characters of Christians of the Lower Egypt, expelled by the Saracens; who having made application to the Pope, and confessed 371their sins, received for penance, that they should travel through the world for seven years, without ever lying in a bed. Their train consisted of 120 persons, men, women, and children, which were all that were left of 1200, who came together out of Egypt. They had lodgings assigned them in the chapel, and people went in crowds to see them. Their ears were perforated, and silver buckles hung to them. Their hair was exceedingly black and frizzled; their women were ugly, thieves, and pretenders to telling of fortunes. The bishop soon after obliged them to retire, and excommunicated such as had shewn them their hands.

By an ordinance of the estates of Orleans, in the year 1560, it was enjoined, that all these impostors under the name of Bohemians and Egyptians, do quit the kingdom on the penalty of the gallies. Upon this they dispersed into lesser companies, and spread themselves over Europe. The first time we hear of them in England was three years afterwards, viz. anno 1563.

Ralph Volaterranus, making mention of them, affirms, that they first proceeded or strolled from among the Uxii, a people of Persis or Persia. (See Gipsies.)

The following characteristic sketch of one of the primitive gipsies, is ably delineated in the popular novel of Quentin Durward; with which we shall close this article:

Orleans, who could not love the match provided for him by the King, could love Isabelle, and follows her escort. Quentin, however, unhorses 372him, and sustains a noble combat with his companion the renowned Dunais; till a body of the archers ride up to his relief. The assailants are carried off prisoners, and our victorious Scot pursues his dangerous way, under uncertain guidance, as the following extract will shew:

“While he hesitated whether it would be better to send back one of his followers, he heard the blast of a horn, and looking in the direction from which the sound came, beheld a horseman riding very fast towards them. The low size, and wild, shaggy, untrained state of the animal, reminded Quentin of the mountain breed of horses in his own country; but this was much more finely limbed, and, with the same appearance of hardness, was more rapid in its movements. The head particularly, which, in the Scottish poney, is often lumpish and heavy, was small and well placed in the neck of this animal, with thin jaws, full sparkling eyes, and expanded nostrils.

“The rider was even more singular in his appearance than the horse which he rode, though that was extremely unlike the horses of France. Although he managed his palfrey with great dexterity, he sat with his feet in broad stirrups, something resembling a shovel, so short, that his knees were well nigh as high as the pommel of his saddle. His dress was a red turban of small size, in which he wore a sullied plume, secured by a clasp of silver; his tunic, which was shaped like those of the Estradiots, a sort of troops whom the Venetians at that time levied in the provinces, on the eastern side of their gulf, was green in colour, 373and tawdrily laced with gold; he wore very wide drawers or trowsers of white, though none of the cleanest, which gathered beneath the knee, and his swarthy legs were quite bare, unless for the complicated laces which bound a pair of sandals on his feet; he had no spurs, the edge of his large stirrups being so sharp as to serve to goad the horse in a very severe manner. In a crimson sash this singular horseman wore a dagger on the right side, and on the left a short crooked Moorish sword, and by a tarnished baldrick over the shoulder hung the horn which announced his approach. He had a swarthy and sun-burnt visage, with a thin beard, and piercing dark eyes, a well-formed mouth and nose, and other features which might have been pronounced handsome, but for the black elf-locks which hung around his face, and the air of wildness and emaciation, which rather seemed to indicate a savage than a civilized man.

“Quentin rode up to the Bohemian, and said to him, as he suddenly assumed his proper position on the horse, ‘Methinks, friend, you will prove but a blind guide, if you look at the tail of your horse rather than his ears.’

“‘And if I were actually blind,’ answered the Bohemian, ‘I could guide you through any county in this realm of France, or in those adjoining to it.’

“‘Yet you are no Frenchman born,’ said the Scot.

“‘I am not,’ answered the guide.

“‘What countryman, then, are you?’ demanded Quentin.

374“‘I am of no country,’ answered the guide.

“‘How! of no country?’ repeated the Scot.

“‘No!’ answered the Bohemian, ‘of none. I am a Zingaro, a Bohemian, an Egyptian, or whatever the Europeans, in their different languages, may chuse to call our people; but I have no country.’

“‘Are you a Christian?’ asked the Scotchman.

“The Bohemian shook his head.

“‘Dog,’ said Quentin, (for there was little toleration in the spirit of Catholicism in those days,) ‘dost thou worship Mahoun?’

“‘No,’ was the indifferent and concise answer of the guide, who neither seemed offended nor surprised at the young man’s violence of manner.

“‘Are you a Pagan then, or what are you?’

“‘I have no religion,’ answered the Bohemian.

“Durward started back; for, though he had heard of Saracens and idolaters, it had never entered into his ideas or belief, that any body of men could exist who practised no mode of worship whatsoever. He recovered from his astonishment, to ask where his guide usually dwelt.

“‘Wherever I chance to be for the time,’ replied the Bohemian. ‘I have no home.’

“‘How do you guard your property?’

“‘Excepting the clothes which I wear, and the horse I ride on, I have no property.’

“‘Yet you dress gaily, and ride gallantly,’ said Durward. ‘What are your means of subsistence?’

375“‘I eat when I am hungry, drink when I am thirsty, and have no other means of subsistence than chance throws in my way,’ replied the vagabond.

“‘Under whose laws do you live?’

“‘I acknowledge obedience to none, but as it suits my pleasure,’ said the Bohemian.

“‘Who is your leader, and commands you?’

“‘The father of our tribe—if I chuse to obey him,’ said the guide—‘otherwise I have no commander.’

“‘You are then,’ said the wondering querist, ‘destitute of all that other men are combined by—you have no law, no leader, no settled means of subsistence, no house, or home. You have, may Heaven compassionate you, no country—and, may Heaven enlighten and forgive you, you have no God! What is it that remains to you, deprived of government, domestic happiness, and religion?’

“‘I have liberty,’ said the Bohemian—‘I crouch to no one—obey no one—respect no one.—I go where I will—live as I can—and die when my day comes.’

“‘But you are subject to instant execution, at the pleasure of the Judge.’

“‘Be it so,’ returned the Bohemian; ‘I can but die so much the sooner.’

“‘And to imprisonment also,’ said the Scot; ‘and where, then, is your boasted freedom?’

“‘In my thoughts,’ said the Bohemian, ‘which no chains can bind; while yours, even when your limbs are free, remain fettered by your laws and 376your superstitions, your dreams of local attachment, and your fantastic visions of civil policy. Such as I are free in spirit when our limbs are chained—You are imprisoned in mind, even when your limbs are most at freedom.’

“‘Yet the freedom of your thoughts,’ said the Scot, ‘relieves not the pressure of the gyves on your limbs.’

“‘For a brief time that may be endured; and if within that period I cannot extricate myself, and fail of relief from my comrades, I can always die, and death is the most perfect freedom of all.’

There was a deep pause of some duration, which Quentin at length broke, by resuming his queries.

“‘Yours is a wandering race, unknown to the nations of Europe—Whence do they derive their origin?’

“‘I may not tell you,’ answered the Bohemian.

“‘When will they relieve this kingdom from their presence, and return to the land from whence they came?’ said the Scot.

“‘When the day of their pilgrimage shall be accomplished,’ replied his vagrant guide.

“‘Are you not sprung from those tribes of Israel which were carried into captivity beyond the great river Euphrates?’ said Quentin, who had not forgotten the lore which had been taught him at Aberbrothock.

“‘Had we been so,’ answered the Bohemian, ‘we had followed their faith, and practised their rites.’

“‘What is thine own name?’ said Durward.

377“‘My proper name is only known to my brethren—The men beyond our tents call me Hayraddin Maugrabin, that is, Hayraddin the African Moor.’

“‘Thou speakest too well for one who hath lived always in thy filthy horde,’ said the Scot.

“‘I have learned some of the knowledge of this land,’ said Heyraddin.—‘When I was a little boy, our tribe was chased by the hunters after human flesh. An arrow went through my mother’s head, and she died. I was entangled in the blanket on her shoulders, and was taken by the pursuers. A priest begged me from the Provost’s archers, and trained me up in Frankish learning for two or three years.’

“‘How came you to part with him?’ demanded Durward.

“‘I stole money from him—even the God which he worshipped,’ answered Hayraddin, with perfect composure; ‘he detected me, and beat me—I stabbed him with my knife, fled to the woods, and was again united to my people.’

“‘Wretch!’ said Durward, ‘did you murder your benefactor?’

“‘What had he to do to burden me with his benefits?—The Zingaro boy was no house-bred cur to dog the heels of his master and crouch beneath his blows, for scraps of food—He was the imprisoned wolf-whelp, which at the first opportunity broke his chain, rended his master, and returned to his wilderness.’

“There was another pause, when the young Scot, with a view of still farther investigating the 378character and purpose of this suspicious guide, asked Hayraddin, ‘Whether it was not true that his people, amid their ignorance, pretended to a knowledge of futurity, which was not given to the sages, philosophers, and divines, of more polished society?’

“‘We pretend to it,’ said Hayraddin, ‘and it is with justice.’

“‘How can it be that so high a gift is bestowed on so abject a race?’ said Quentin.

“‘Can I tell you?’ answered Hayraddin—‘Yes, I may indeed; but it is when you shall explain to me why the dog can trace the footsteps of a man, while man, the noble animal, hath no power to trace those of the dog. These powers, which seem to you so wonderful, are instinctive in our race. From the lines on the face and on the hand, we can tell the future fate of those who consult us, even as surely as you know from the blossom of the tree in spring, what fruit it will bear in the harvest.’”

JUGGLERS, THEIR ORIGIN, EXPLOITS, &c.

LEGENDS, &c. MIRACLES, &c.

A Legend^[79] was originally a book used in the old Romish churches, containing the lessons that were to be read in divine service. Hence also the lives of saints and martyrs came to be called legends, because chapters were read out of them at matins, and in the refectories of the religious houses. The Golden Legend is a collection of the lives of the Saints, compiled by James De Varasse, better known by the Latin name of J. De Veragine, Vicar-General of the Dominicans, and afterwards Bishop of Genoa, who died in 1298. It was received into the church with the most enthusiastic applause, which it maintained for 200 years; but, in fact, it is so full of ridiculous and absurd romantic monstrosities, that the Romanists themselves are now generally ashamed of it. On this very account alone the word Legend got into general disrepute.

The following is stated to be the origin of those ecclesiastical histories entitled Legends:—The professors in rhetoric, before colleges were established in the monasteries where the schools were held, frequently gave their pupils the life of some saint for a trial of their talent at amplification. The students, being constantly at a loss to furnish out their pages, invented most of these wonderful adventures. Jortin observes, that the Christians 394used to collect out of Ovid, Livy, and other pagan poets and historians, the miracles and portents, so found there, and accommodated them to their own monks and saints. The good fathers of that age, whose simplicity was not inferior to their devotion, were so delighted with these flowers of rhetoric, that they were induced to make a collection of these miraculous compositions; not imagining that, at some distant period, they would become matters of faith. Yet when James De Veragine, Peter Nadal, and Peter Ribadeneira, wrote the Lives of the Saints, they sought for the materials in the libraries of these monasteries; and, awakening from the dust the manuscripts of amplification, imagined they made an invaluable present to the world, by laying before them these voluminous absurdities. The people received these pious fictions with all imaginable simplicity; and as the book is adorned with a number of cuts, these miracles were perfectly intelligible to their eyes. Fleury, Tillemont, Baillet, Launoi, and Ballendus, cleared away much of the rubbish. The enviable title of Golden Legend, by which James De Veragine called his work, has been disputed; iron or lead might more aptly express the character of this folio.

The monks, when the world became more critical in their reading, gave a graver turn to their narratives, and became more penurious of their absurdities. The faithful Catholic contends that the line of tradition has been preserved unbroken; notwithstanding that the originals were lost in the general wreck of literature from the barbarians, or came down in a most imperfect state. Baronius 395has given the lives of many apocryphal saints; for instance, of a Saint Xenoris, whom he calls a Martyr of Antioch; but it appears that Baronius having read this work in Chrysostom, which signifies a couple or pair, he mistook it for the name of a saint, and continued to give the most authentic biography of a saint who never existed! The Catholics confess this sort of blunder is not uncommon, but then it is only fools who laugh!

As a specimen of the happier inventions, one is given, embellished by the diction of Gibbon the historian.

“Among the insipid legends of ecclesiastical history, I am tempted to distinguish the memorable fable of the Seven Sleepers, whose imaginary date corresponds with the reign of the younger Theodosius, and the conquest of Africa by the Vandals. When the emperor Decius persecuted the Christians, seven noble youths of Ephesus concealed themselves in a spacious cavern on the side of an adjacent mountain, where they were doomed to perish by the tyrant, who gave orders that the entrance should be firmly secured by a pile of stones. They immediately fell into a deep slumber, which was miraculously prolonged without injuring the powers of life, during a period of one hundred and eighty-seven years. At the end of that time the slaves of Adolius, to whom the inheritance of the mountain had descended, removed the stones, to supply materials for some rustic edifice. The light of the sun darted into the cavern, and the Seven Sleepers were permitted to awake: after a slumber, as they thought, of a 396few hours, they were pressed by the calls of hunger; and resolved that Jamblichus, one of their number, should secretly return to the city to purchase bread for the use of his companions. The youth, if we may still employ that appellation, could no longer recognise the once familiar aspect of his native country; and his surprise was increased by the appearance of a large cross, triumphantly erected over the principal gate of Ephesus. His singular dress, and obsolete language, confounded the baker, to whom he offered an ancient medal of Decius as the current coin of the empire; and Jamblichus, on suspicion of a secret treasure, was dragged before the judge. Their mutual inquiries produced the amazing discovery that two centuries were almost elapsed since Jamblichus and his friends had escaped from the rage of a pagan tyrant. The bishop of Ephesus, the clergy, the magistrates, the people, and, it is said, the emperor Theodosius himself, hastened to visit the cavern of the Seven Sleepers; who bestowed their benediction, related their story, and at the same instant peaceably expired.

“This popular tale Mahomet learned when he drove his camels to the fairs of Syria; and he has introduced it, as a divine revelation, into the Koran.” The same story has been adopted and adorned, by the natives from Bengal to Africa, who profess the Mahometan religion.

These monks imagined that holiness was often proportioned to a saint’s filthiness. St. Ignatius delighted, say they, to appear abroad with old dirty shoes; he never used a comb, but suffered 397his hair to run into clots, and religiously abstained from paring his nails. One saint attained to such a pitch of piety as to have near three hundred patches on his breeches; which, after his death, were exhibited in public as a stimulus to imitate such a holy life. St. Francis discovered, by certain experience, that the devil was frightened away by similar kinds of unmentionables; but was animated by clean clothing to tempt and seduce the wearers; and one of their heroes declares that the purest souls are in the dirtiest bodies. On this subject a story is told by them which may not be very agreeable to fastidious delicacy. Brother Juniper was a gentleman perfectly pious in this principle; indeed so great was his merit in this species of mortification, that a brother declared he could always nose Brother Juniper when within a mile of the monastery, provided he was at the due point. Once, when the blessed Juniper, for he was no saint, was a guest, his host, proud of the honour of entertaining so pious a personage, the intimate friend of St. Francis, provided an excellent bed and the finest sheets. Brother abhorred such luxury; and this too evidently appeared after his sudden departure in the morning, unknown to his kind host. The great Juniper did this, says his biographer, (having told us what he did) not so much from his habitual inclinations for which he was so justly celebrated, as from his excessive piety, and as much as he could to mortify worldly pride, and to shew how a true saint despised clean sheets.

Among other grotesque miracles we find, in the 398life of St. Francis, that he preached a sermon in a desert, but he soon collected an immense audience. The birds shrilly warbled to every sentence, and stretched out their necks, opened their beaks, and when he finished, dispersed with a holy rapture into four companies, to report his sermon to all the birds of the universe. A grasshopper remained a week with St. Francis during the absence of the Virgin Mary, and fastened on his head. He grew so companionable with a nightingale, that when a nest of swallows began to twitter, he hushed them, by desiring them not to tittle tattle of his sister the nightingale. Attacked by a wolf, with only the sign manual of the cross, he held a long dialogue with his rabid assailant, till the wolf, meek as a lap-dog, stretched his paws in the hands of the saint, followed him through towns, and became half a Christian. This same St. Francis had such a detestation of the good things of this world, that he would never suffer his followers to touch money. A friar having placed some money in a window collected at the altar, he observed him to take it in his mouth and throw it on the dung of an ass! St. Phillip Nerius was such an admirer of poverty that he frequently prayed God would bring him to that state as to stand in need of a penny, and find none that would give him one! But St. Macaire was so shocked at having killed a louse that he endured seven years of penitence among the thorns and briars of a forest.

The following miraculous incident is given respecting two pious maidens. The night of the Nativity of Christ, after the first mass, they both 399retired into a solitary spot of their nunnery till the second mass was rung. One asked the other, “why do you want two cushions, when I have only one?” The other replied, “I would place it between us, for the child Jesus; as the Evangelist says, “Where there are two or three persons assembled I am in the midst of them.”—This being done, they sat down, feeling a most lively pleasure at their fancy; and there they remained from the nativity of Christ to that of John the Baptist; but this great interval of time passed with these saintly maidens, as two hours would appear to others. The abbess and her nuns were alarmed at their absence, for no one could give any account of them. On the eve of St. John, a cowherd passing by them, beheld a beautiful child seated on a cushion between this pair of run-away nuns. He hastened to the abbess with news of this stray sheep, who saw this lovely child playfully seated between these nymphs, who, with blushing countenances, enquired if the second bell had already rung? Both parties were equally astonished to find our young devotees had been there since the birth of Christ to that of John the Baptist. The abbess inquired after the child who sat between them: they solemnly declared they saw no child between them, and persisted in their story.”

“Such,” observes a late writer on this subject, “is one of the miracles of the ‘Golden Legend,’ which a wicked wit might comment on, and see nothing extraordinary in the whole story. The two nuns might be missing between the nativities, and be found at last with a child seated between 400them. They might not choose to account either for their absence or their child: the only touch of miracle is, that they asseverated they saw no child, that I confess is a little (child) too much.

Ribadeneira’s Lives of the Saints exhibit more of the legendary spirit than Alban Butler’s work on the same subject, (which, by the bye, is the most sensible history of these legends;) for wanting judgment and not faith, the former is more voluminous in his details, and more ridiculous in his narratives.

Alban Butler affirms that St. Genevieve, the patron of Paris, was born in 422, at Nanterre, four miles from Paris, near the present Calvary there, and that she died a virgin on this day in 512, and was buried in 545, near the steps of the high altar, in a magnificent church, dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul, began by Clovis, where he also was interred. Her relics were afterwards taken up and put into a costly shrine about 630. Of course they worked miracles. Her shrine of gold and silver, covered with precious stones, the presents of kings and queens, and with a cluster of diamonds on the top, presented by the intriguing Mary de Medicis, is, on calamitous occasions, carried about Paris in procession, accompanied by shrines equally miraculous, and by the canons of St. Genevieve walking barefoot.

The miracles of St. Genevieve, as related in the Golden Legend, were equally numerous and equally credible. It relates that when she was a child, St. Germaine said to her mother, “Know ye for certain that on the day of Genevieve’s nativity the 401angels sung with joy and gladness,” and looking on the ground he saw a penny signed with the cross, which came there by the will of God; he took it up, and gave it to Genevieve, requiring her to bear in mind that she was the spouse of Christ. She promised him accordingly, and often went to the minister, that she might be worthy of her espousals. “Then,” says the Legend, “the mother was angry, and smote her on the cheek—God avenged the child, so that the mother became blind,” and so remained for one and twenty months, when Genevieve fetched her some holy water, signed her with the sign of the cross, washed her eyes, and she recovered her sight. It further relates, that by the Holy Ghost she showed many people their secret thoughts, and that from fifteen years to fifty, she fasted every day except Sunday and Thursday, when she ate beans, and barley bread of three weeks old. Desiring to build a church, and dedicate it to St. Denis and other martyrs, she required materials of the priests for that purpose. “Dame,” answered the priests, “we would; but we can get no chalk nor lime.” She desired them to go to the bridge of Paris, and bring what they found there. They did so till two swineherds came by, one of whom said to the other, ‘I went yesterday after one of my sows and found a bed of lime;’ the other replied that he had also found one under the root of a tree that the wind had blown down. St. Genevieve’s priests of course inquired where these discoveries were made, and bearing the tidings to Genevieve, the church of St. Denis was began. During its 402progress the workmen wanted drink, whereupon Genevieve called for a vessel, prayed over it, signed it with the cross, and the vessel was immediately filled; “so,” says the Legend, “the workmen drank their belly full,” and the vessel continued to be supplied in the same way with “drink” for the workmen till the church was finished. At another time a woman stole St. Genevieve’s shoes, but as soon as she got home lost her sight for the theft, and remained blind, till, having restored the shoes, St. Genevieve restored the woman’s sight. Desiring the liberation of certain prisoners condemned to death at Paris, she went thither and found the city gates were shut against her, but they opened without any other key than her own presence. She prayed over twelve men in that city possessed with devils, till the men were suspended in the air, and the devils were expelled. A child of four years old fell into a pit, and was killed; St. Genevieve only covered her with her mantle and prayed over her, and the child came to life, and was baptised at Easter. On a voyage to Spain she arrived at a port “where, as of custom, ships were wont to perish.” Her own vessel was likely to strike on a tree in the water, which seems to have caused the wrecks; she commanded the tree to be cut down, and began to pray; when lo, just as the tree began to fall, “two wild heads, grey and horrible, issued thereout, which stank so sore, that the people there were envenomed by the space of two hours, and never after perished ship there; thanks be to God and this holy saint.”

403At Meaux, a master not forgiving his servant his faults, though St. Genevieve prayed him, she prayed against him. He was immediately seized with a hot ague: “on the morrow he came to the holy virgin, running with open mouth like a German bear, his tongue hanging out like a boar, and requiring pardon.” She then blessed him, the fever left him, and the servant was pardoned. A girl going out with a bottle, St. Genevieve called to her, and asked what she carried: she answered oil, which she had bought; but St. Genevieve seeing the devil sitting on the bottle, blew upon it, and the bottle broke, but the saint blessed the oil, and caused her to bear it home safely notwithstanding. The Golden Legend says, that the people who saw this, marvelled that the saint could see the devil, and were greatly edified.

It was to be expected that a saint of such miraculous powers in her lifetime should possess them after her death, and accordingly the reputation of her relics is very high.

Several stories of St. Genevieve’s miraculous faculties, represent them as very convenient in vexatious cases of ordinary occurrence; one of these will serve as a specimen. On a dark wet night she was going to church with her maidens, with a candle borne before her, which the wind and rain put out; the saint merely called for the candle, and as soon as she took it in her hand it was lighted again, “without any fire of this world.”

Other stories of her lighting candles in this way, call to mind a candle, greatly venerated by 404E. Worsley, in a “Discourse of Miracles wrought in the Roman Catholic Church, or, a full refutation of Dr. Stillingfleet’s unjust Exceptions against Miracles,” octavo, 1676. At p. 64, he says, “that the miraculous wax candle, yet seen at Arras, the chief city of Artois, may give the reader entertainment, being most certain, and never doubted of by any. In 1105, that is, much above 720 years ago, (of so great antiquity the candle is,) a merciless plague reigned in Arras. The whole city, ever devout to the Mother of God, experienced her, in this their necessity, to be a true mother of mercy; the manner was thus: The Virgin Mary appeared to two men, and enjoined them to tell the bishop of Arras, that on the next Saturday towards morning she would appear in the great church, and put into his hands a wax candle burning; from whence drops of wax should fall into a vessel of water prepared by the bishop. She said, moreover, that all the diseased that drank of this water, should forthwith be cured. This truly promised, truly happened. Our blessed Lady appeared all beautiful, having in her hands a wax candle burning, which diffused light over the whole church; this she presented to the bishop; he blessing it with the sign of the cross, set it in the urn of water; when drops of wax plentifully fell down into the vessel. The diseased drank of it; all were cured; the contagion ceased; and the candle to this day, preserved with great veneration, spends itself, yet loses nothing; and therefore remains still of the same length and greatness it did 720 years ago. A vast quantity of wax, made up 405of the many drops which fall into the water upon those festival days, when the candle burns, may be justly called a standing indeficient miracle.”

This candle story, though gravely related by a catholic writer, as “not doubted of by any,” and as therefore not to be doubted, miraculously failed in convincing the protestant Stillingfleet, that “miracles wrought in the Roman catholic church,” ought to be believed.

MONKS AND FRIARS.—SAINTS AND HERMITS. — The Hermit of the Pillar. ( St. Simeon Stylites, St. Telesephorus, St. Syncletia. )

HOLY RELIQUE-MANIA.