Page:A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings of Dr. Henry More.djvu/159

Rh her alone, presently assaults her, pulls away the bedding, and would have carried her away with him; bat Hie hardly escaping fled to the rest of the Family, where she espied him standing by the candle; and straight, way after vanishing.

Another time he came into her Masters Chamber, making a noise like a Hog that eat grains, smacking and grunting very sonorously. They could not chase him away by speaking to him; but ever as they lighted a Candle he would vanish.

On another time about Evening, when this Theologer was sitting with his Wife and Children about him, exercising himself in Musick, according to his usual manner, a most grievous stink arose suddenly, which by degrees spred it self to every corner of the room. Hereupon he commends himself and his family to God by prayer. The smell nevertheless encreased, and became above all measure pestilently noisom, insomuch that he was forced to goe up to his chamber. He and his Wife had not been in bed a quarter of an hour, but they find the same stink in the bed-chamber, of which while they are complaining one to another, out steps the Spectre from the wall, and creeping to his bed-side breathes upon him an exceeding cold breath of so intolerable stinking and malignant a sent, as is beyond all imagination and expression. Hereupon the Theologer, good soul, grew very ill, and was fain to keep his bed, his face, belly and guts swelling, as if he had been poisoned, whence he was also troubled with a difficulty of breathing, and with a putrid inflammation of his eyes, so that he could not well use them of a long time after.

8. But taking leave of the sick Divine, if we should goe back and recount what we have omitted, it would exceed the number of what we have already recounted. As for example, The trembling and sweating of Cuntius his Gelding, from which he was not free night nor day: The burning blew of the Candles at the approaches of Cuntius his Ghost: His drinking up the milk in the milk-bowls, his flinging dung into them, or turning the milk into blood: His pulling up posts deep set in the ground, and so heavy that two lusty Porters could not deal with them: His discoursing with several men he met concerning the affairs of the Wagoners: His strangling of old men: His holding fast the Cradles of Children, or taking them out of them: His frequent endeavouring to force Women: His defiling the water in the Font, and fouling the Cloth on the Altar on that side that did hang towards his grave with dirty bloody spots: His catching up Dogs in the streets, and knocking their brains against the ground; His sucking dry the Cows, and tying their tails like the tail of an Horse: His devouring of Poultry, and his flinging of Goats bound into the Racks: His tying of an Horse to an empty Oat-tub in the Stable to clatter up and down with it, and the hinder foot of another to his own head-stall: His looking out of the window of a low Tower, and then suddenly changing himself into the form of a long staff: His chiding of a Matron for suffering her servant to wash dishes on a Thursday, at what time he laid his hand upon her, and she said it felt more cold then ice: His pelting one of the women that washed his corps, so forcibly, that the prints of the Clods he flung were to be seen upon the Rh