Page:Three Books of Occult Philosophy (De Occulta Philosophia) (1651).djvu/603

 can neither prove nor evince any thing; but we may (according to the words of Gregory) with the same facility contemn them, as they are affirmed. Rabanus the Monk, by the same artifice hath feigned many things, but in Latin Characters and verses, with certain pictures inserted, which being read any way by the delineations of the superficies and pictures, do declare some sacred mysterie, representing the histories of the things painted; which also may without doubt be wrested from prophane writings, as every one may know, who hath read the Cantones of Valena Proba, composed out of the verses of Virgil, concerning Christ; All things of this kind are the speculations of idle brains, but what belongeth to the working of miracles, there is none of you, I suppose, of so foolish an understanding, who believeth that they have any art or science of them; therefore this Cabala of the Jews is nothing else then a most pernicious superstition, by the which they gather at their pleasure, divide, transfer words, names and letters, scatteringly put in the holy Scriptures, and by making one thing out of another, they dissolve the connections of the truth, the speeches, inductions and parables, and here and there construing them by their own fictions, would bring the words of God to their follies, defaming the Scriptures, and saying that their fictions have foundation on them. They calumniate the Law of God, and by the supputations of words, syllables, letters, numbers impudently extorted, they assay to bring violent and blasphemous proofs for their unbelief. Besides, they being puft up by these trifles, do boast that they finde and search out the unspeakable mysteries of God, and secrets, which are ahove the Scriptures, by the which also they irnpudently affirm, and without blushing, that they can even prophecy, and do miracles and wonders; but it happeneth to them, as to Aesops Dog, who leaving his bread, and gaping after the shadow, lost his food; so this perfidious and stiff necked people, being always busied in the shadows of the Scriptures, and about their own vanities, and doing violence by their artificiall, but superstitious Cabala, do loose the bread of eternall life, and being fed with vain words, do destroy the word