Page:A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings of Dr. Henry More.djvu/133

 Rh 1. That Winds and Tempests are raised upon mere Ceremonies or forms of words. 2. The unreasonableness of Wierus his doubting of the Devils power over the Meteors of the Aire. 3. Examples of that power in Rain and Thunder. 4. Margaret Warine discharged upon an Oaks at a Thunder-Clap. 5. Amantius and Rotarius cast headlong out of a cloud upon an house-top. 6. The witch of Constance seen by the Shepherds to ride through the Aire. 7. That he might adde several other Instances from Eyewitnesses, of the strange Effects of invisible Demons. 8. His compendious Rehersal of the most remarkable exploits of the Devil of Mascon in lieu thereof. 9. The Reasons of giving himself the trouble of this Rehersal.

Ierus that industrious Advocate of Witches, recites several Ceremonies that they use for the raising of Tempests, and doth acknowledge that Tempests do follow the performance of those Ceremonies, but that they had come to pass nevertheless without them: which the Devil foreseeing, excites the deluded Women to use those Magick Rites, that they may be the better perswaded of his power. But whether there be any causal connexion betwixt those Ceremonies and the ensuing Tempests, I will not curiously decide. But that the connexion of them is Supernatural, is plain at first sight, * For what is casting of Flint-Stones behind their backs toward the West, or flinging a little Sand in the Aire, striking a River with a Broom, and so sprinkling the Wet of it toward Heaven, the stirring of Urine or Water with their finger in a Hole in the ground, or boiling of Hogs Bristles in a Pot? What are these fooleries available of themselves to gather Clouds and cover the Aire with Darkness, and then to make the ground smoak with peals of Hail and Rain, and to make the Air terrible with frequent Lightnings and Thunder? Certainly nothing at all. Therefore the ensuing of these Tempests after such like Ceremonies must be either from the prevision of the Devil (as Wierus would have it) who set the Witches on work, or else from the power of the Devil which he hath in his Kingdom of the Aire.

2. And it seems strange to me that Wierus should doubt this power, when he gives him a greater; for what is the transporting of Vapours or driving them together, to the carrying of Men and Cattel in the Aire, (of which he is a confident Asserter) unless it require larger Devils or greater numbers? And that there are sufficient numbers of such Spirits will seem to any body as credible as that there are any at all. But now for the truth of this, that certain Words or Ceremonies do seem at least to cause an alteration in the Aire, and to raise Tempests, Remigius writes that he had it witnessed to him by the free confession of near two hundred men that he examined: Where he adds a Story or two, in which there being neither Fraud nor Melancholy to be suspected, I think them worth the mentioning.