miracle, must arise unto what they appear, are always looked on by ignorant spectators as supernatural spectacles, and made the causes or signs of most succeeding contingencies. To behold a rainbow in the night, is no prodigy unto a philosopher. Than eclipses of sun or moon, nothing is more natural: yet with what superstition they have been beheld since the tragedy of Nicias and his army, many examples declare.

4

True it is, and we will not deny it, that although, these being natural productions from second and settled causes, we need not alway look upon them as the immediate hand of God, or of his ministering spirits: yet do they sometimes. admit a respect therein; and even in their naturals, the indifferency of their existences, contemporised unto our actions, admits a farther consideration.

That two or three suns or moons appear in any man's life or reign, it is not worth the wonder. But that the same should fall out at a remarkable time, or point of some decisive action; that the contingency of its appearance should be confirmed unto that time; that those two should make but one line in the book of fate, and stand together in the great ephemerides of God; beside the philosophical assignment of the cause, it may admit a Christian apprehension in the signality.

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But, above all he deceiveth us, when we ascribe the effects of things unto evident and seeming casualties, which arise from the secret and undiscerned action of himself. Thus hath he deluded many nations in his augurial and extispicious inventions, from casual and uncontrived contingencies divining events succeeding. Which Tuscan superstition seizing upon Rome, hath since possessed all Europe. When Augustus found two galls in his sacrifice, the credulity of the city concluded a hope of peace with Anthony, and the conjunction of persons in choler with each other. Because Brutus and Cassius met a blackmoor, and Pompey had on a dark or sad-coloured garment at Pharsalia; these were pre

4 Nicias and his army.] He lost his army before Syracuse, by delaying to embark it, at the favourable moment, on account of an eclipse of the moon which suddenly came on. Plutarch in Vit.

5 extispicious.] "Relating to the inspection of entrails in order to prognostication."

sages of their overthrow.6 Which notwithstanding are scarce rhetorical sequels; concluding metaphors from realities, and from conceptions metaphorical inferring realities again.

Now these divinations concerning events, being in his power to force, contrive, prevent, or further, they must generally fall out conformably unto his predictions. When Gracchus was slain, the same day the chickens refused to come out of the coop; and Claudius Pulcher underwent the like success, when he condemned the tripudiary augurations; they died, not because the pullets would not feed, but, because the devil foresaw their death, he contrived that abstinence in them. So was there no natural dependence of the event upon the sign, but an artificial contrivance of the sign unto the event. An unexpected way of delusion, and whereby he more easily led away the incircumspection of their belief. Which fallacy he might excellently have acted before the death of Saul; for that being within his power to foretell, was not beyond his ability to foreshow, and might have contrived signs thereof through all the creatures, which, visibly confirmed by the event, had proved authentic unto those times, and advanced the art ever after.

He deludeth us also by philters, ligatures, charms, ungrounded amulets, characters, and many superstitious ways in the cure of common diseases; seconding herein the expectation of men with events of his own contriving, which while some, unwilling to fall directly upon magick, impute unto the power of imagination, or the efficacy of hidden causes, he obtains a bloody advantage; for thereby he begets not only a false opinion, but such as leadeth the open way to destruction. In maladies admitting natural reliefs, making men rely on remedies, neither of real operation in themselves, nor more than seeming efficacy in his concurrence. Which whensoever he pleaseth to withdraw, they stand naked unto the mischief of their diseases, and revenge the contempt of the medicines of the earth which God hath created for them. And therefore, when neither miracle is

5 Because Brutus and Cassius met a blackmoor.] The Ethiopian, who met the standard-bearer opening the gate of the camp, and was cut in pieces by the soldiers, as affording an ill omen.

7 the Devil foresaw, &c.] "Because he foresaw the death of Gracchus and Claudius Pulcher, he contrived that abstinence in the birds."

expected, nor connection of cause unto effect from natural grounds concluded, however it be sometime successful, it cannot be safe to rely on such practices, and desert the known and authentic provisions of God. In which rank of remedies, if nothing in our knowledge or their proper power be able to relieve us, we must with patience submit unto that restraint, and expect the will of the restrainer.

Now in these effects although he seem ofttimes to imitate, yet doth he concur unto their productions in a different way from that spirit which sometimes, in natural means, produceth effects above nature. For whether he worketh by causes which have relation or none unto the effect, he maketh it out by secret and undiscerned ways of nature. So, when Caius the blind, in the reign of Antoninus, was commanded to pass from the right side of the altar unto the left, to lay five fingers of one hand thereon, and five of the other upon his eyes; although the cure succeeded, and all the people wondered, there was not any thing in the action which did produce it, nor any thing in his power that could enable it thereunto. So for the same infirmity, when Aper was counselled by him to make a collyrium or ocular medicine with the blood of a white cock and honey, and apply it to his eyes for three days; when Julian for his spitting of blood, was cured by honey and pine nuts taken from his altar; when Lucius for the pain in his side, applied thereto the ashes from his altar with wine; although the remedies were somewhat rational, and not without a natural virtue unto such intentions, yet need we not believe that by their proper faculties they produced these effects.

But the effects of powers divine flow from another operation; who, either proceeding by visible means or not unto visible effects, is able to conjoin them by his co-operation. And therefore those sensible ways which seem of indifferent natures, are not idle ceremonies, but may be causes by his command, and arise unto productions beyond their regular activities. If Naaman the Syrian had washed in Jordan without the command of the prophet, I believe he had been cleansed by them no more than by the waters of Damascus. I doubt, if any beside Elisha had cast in salt, the waters of Jericho had not been made wholesome. I know that a decoction of wild gourd or colocynthis (though somewhat

qualified) will not from every hand be dulcified unto aliment by an addition of flour or meal. There was some natural virtue in the plaster of figs applied unto Hezechiah; we find that gall is very mundificative, and was a proper medicine to clear the eyes of Tobit; which carrying in themselves some action of their own, they were additionally promoted by that power, which can extend their natures unto the production of effects beyond their created efficiencies. And thus may he operate also from causes of no power unto their visible effects; for he that hath determined their actions unto certain effects, hath not so emptied his own, but that he can make them effectual unto any other.

Again, although his delusions run highest in points of practice, whose errors draw on offensive or penal enormities, yet doth he also deal in points of speculation, and things whose knowledge terminates in themselves. Whose cognition although it seems indifferent, and therefore its aberration directly to condemn no man, yet doth he hereby preparatively dispose us unto errors, and deductively deject us into destructive conclusions.

That the sun, moon, and stars, are living creatures, endued with soul and life, seems an innocent error, and an harmless digression from truth; yet hereby he confirmed their idolatry, and made it more plausibly embraced. For, wisely mistrusting that reasonable spirits would never firmly be lost in the adorement of things inanimate, and in the lowest form of nature, he begat an opinion that they were living creatures, and could not decay for ever.

That spirits are corporeal, seems at first view a conceit derogative unto himself, and such as he should rather labour to overthrow; yet hereby he establisheth the doctrine of lustrations, amulets, and charms, as we have declared before.

That there are two principles of all things, one good and another evil; from the one proceeding virtue, love, light, and unity: from the other, division, discord, darkness, and deformity, was the speculation of Pythagoras, Empedocles, and many ancient philosophers, and was no more than Oromasdes and Arimanius of Zoroaster.8 Yet hereby he obtained the advantage of adoration, and as the terrible

8 Oromasdes and Arimanius of Zoroaster.] These were the two deities of Zoroaster, the founder of the Magi in Persia.- Wr.

principle became more dreadful than his Maker, and therefore not willing to let it fall, he furthered the conceit in succeeding ages, and raised the faction of Manes to maintain it.

That the feminine sex have no generative emission, affording no seminal principles of conception, was Aristotle's opinion of old, maintained still by some, and will be countenanced by him for ever. For hereby he disparageth the fruit of the Virgin, frustrateth the fundamental prophecy, nor can the seed of the woman then break the head of the serpent.

Nor doth he only sport in speculative errors, which are of consequent impieties, but the unquietness of his malice. haunts after simple lapses, and such whose falsities do only condemn our understandings. Thus if Xenophanes will say there is another world in the moon; if Heraclitus, with his adherents, will hold the sun is no bigger than it ap peareth; if Anaxagoras affirm that snow is black ; if any other opinion there are no Antipodes, or that stars do fall, he shall not want herein the applause or advocacy of Satan. For maligning the tranquillity of truth, he delighteth to trouble its streams; and, being a professed enemy unto God (who is truth itself) he promoteth any error as derogatory to his nature, and revengeth himself in every deformity from truth. If, therefore, at any time he speak or practise truth, it is upon design, and a subtle inversion of the precept of God, to do good that evil may come of it. And therefore, sometime we meet with wholesome doctrines from hell; Nosce teipsum, the motto of Delphos, was a good precept in morality; that a just man is beloved of the gods, an uncontrollable verity. 'Twas a good deed, though not well done,

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by him.] That is, by the devil.

1 if Xenophanes will say there is another world in the moon.] Xenophanes was a pantheistical philosopher, born at Colophon, B. c. 556, who founded the Eleatic sect in Sicily, and died in Magna Græcia at the age of a century, having occupied the Pythagorean chair of philosophy for nearly seventy years. His doctrines, both philosophical and astronomical, if they have been rightly represented, were wild and incongruous; but perhaps it may be inferred, from the reasonableness of his tenet that the moon was an inhabited world, that, as suspected by Brucker and others, they have been misrepresented. This is of course the notion alluded to by our author. See Bruckeri Hist. Crit. Philosophia, tom. i. p. 1143, 1148, 1155.-Br.