Page:A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings of Dr. Henry More.djvu/224

 182 either out of design of gain or in waggery, may attempt the imitating of them. But this fraud might easily be discovered by prudent spectators, such as I suppose those two Physicians were. Cardan and Wierus, who, if there had been nothing in the business but the sleight of a Jugler, could not have been deceived by that Imposture.

And as for the Children at Amsterdam, the spedacle was so miserable, and their torture by report so great, and then the parties so many, and all attempts of Art or Religion so frustraneous, that it seems very incredible that there should be either fraud or foolery in the matter. As for the Maid of Saxony her speaking Greek, it were a ridiculous thing indeed to look upon it as supernatural, unless it were known that no body taught her that language; and therefore in such cases the judgement and sagacity of the first Relators is to be supposed, as in that Story that Fernelius tells us of a Demoniack in his time that spake Greek, and discovered the secrets of the Physicians, deriding their ignorance, in that they had half kill'd a man by administring Physick upon a false supposal of a natural disease.

3. The third Objection is against the Mirth of some of the Stories recorded, as that of John of Hembach and John Michael the Pipers. But these Narrations are to seem never the more incredible for those passages of mirth, if we consider that those Apostate Spirits that have their haunts near this lower Aire and Earth, are variously laps'd into the enormous love and liking of the Animal life, having utterly forsaken the Divine; and that there are such Passions and Affections in them as are in wicked Men and Beasts; and that some of them especially bear the same Analogy to an unfallen Angel that an Ape or Monkey docs to a sober man, so that all their pleasure is in unlucky ridiculous tricks; and that even those that are more ferocient, if they ever relaxate into mirth, that it is foolishly antick and deformed, as is manifest in all those stories of their dancings and nocturnal Revellings: for they bear a secret hatred to whatever is comely and decorous, and in a perpetual scorn to it distort all their actions to the contrary Mode, applauding themselves onely in an unlimited liberty, and of doing whatever either their fond or foul Imagination suggest to them; affecting nothing but the lust of their own wills, and a power to make themselves wondred at and terrible.

4. The fourth Objection is against those Passages of the Nocturnall Conventicles of Witches, disappearing at the naming of God or Jesus. For the Devils (say they) are not at all afraid of these Names, but can name them by way of scorn or abuse themselves, and apply them to their own persons. But the Exception is easily satisfied, if we do but distinguish betwixt the mindes of the speakers of these words. Therefore I say it does not follow, because they can stand the pronouncing of these words amongst themselves, that they can also when they are named with an honest heart and due devotion.

Besides, it is not irrational (though they could withstand the power of these Names, and the devotion of them that use them) that it may be an indispensable ceremony amongst them not to continue their Conventicles if any be near or present that make an open and serious profession Rh