Page:A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings of Dr. Henry More.djvu/227

 the exceptions made against what we have wrote, that it may be some warm yong man had got into the place of the cold Devil: for who knows what juggles there might be in these things?

But to answer more home to the purpose, I confess that the Bodies of Devils may be not only warm, but sindgingly hot, as it was in him that took one of Melanchthon's relations by the hand, and so scorched her, that she bare the mark of it to her dying day. But the examples of cold are more frequent, as in that famous story of * Cuntius, when he toucht the arm of a certain woman of Pentsch as she lay in her bed, he felt as cold as ice; and so did the Spirit's claw to * Anne Styles: and many other stories there are of that nature. But I will not deny but their bodies may be also warm, else it is not intelligible how those two execrable Magi should reap such unexpressible pleasure, the one from his Armellina, the other from his Florina, as they profess themselves to have done, in a certain Dialogue of Franciscus Picus his, which he has entituled Strix, or De Ludiscatione Dæmonum; and assures us in his Epistle before it, that it is a true history, and that he sets down but such things as he has either seen with his eyes, or else heard from the confession of Witches themselves.

The force therefore of the Objection is levelled against what we do not assert, that the Bodies of Devils are found only cold: But what we would intimate is only this, that their Bodies being nothing but coagulated or constringed Aire, when they put them in such a posture as to constringe their vehicles in a greater measure by far then agitate the single particles of it, that it will then seem not only cold as congealed water does, but more piercingly and stingingly cold, by reason of the subtilty of the parts.

But when they not only strongly constringe their vehicle in the whole, but also fiercely agitate the single particles thereof, their Body will become sindgingly hot, and imitate in some measure heated brass or iron, wherein the particles keep close together, and yet every one is smartly moved in it self. As is plain to us if we spit upon those metalls so heated; for they will make the spittle hizze and bubble, the particles of the metalls communicating their motion to the spittle that lies upon them; and will turn all liquor into vapours, as we ordinarily see in the burning of Vinegar and Rose-water in a chamber to perfume the room. For what is this perfuming but the setting of the Aqueous separable parts of the liquor on motion so strongly, as to the mounting of them into the Aire and dispersing of them into fume, by the fierce and strong agitation of the inseparable parts of the heated fire-shovel?

But lastly, If a Spirit use his Agitative power moderately and his constrictive forcibly enough to feel solid or palpable to that man or woman he has to deal withall, he may not only feel warm, but more pleasantly and gratefully warm then any earthly or fleshly body that is; for the subtilty of the Matter will more punctually hit, and more powerfully reach the Organs of Sense, and more exquisitely and enravishingly move the Nerves, then any terrestrial body can possibly. But in the mean time the Spirit himself is neither hot, nor warm, nor cold, nor any thing else that belongs to a Body, but a Substance specifically distinct from all