SUBSEC. 2. A Digression of the nature of Spirits, bad Angels, or Devils, and how they cause Melancholy.

How far the power of Spirits and Devils doth extend, and whether they can cause this, or any other Disease, is a serious question, and worthy to be considered: for the better understanding of which, I will make a brief digression of the nature of Spirits.

And although the question be very obscure, according to Postellus, full of controversie and ambiguity: beyond the reach of humane capacity, fateor excedere vires intentionis meæ, saith Austin, I confess I am not able to understand it, finitum de infinito non potest statuere, we can sooner determine with Tully de nat. deorum, quid non sint, quam quid sint,

our subtle Schoolmen, Cardans, Scaligers, profound Thomists, Fracastoriana & Ferneliana acies, are weak, dry, obscure, defective in these mysteries: and all our quickest wits, as an owles eyes at the Suns light, wax dull, and are not sufficient to apprehend them, yet as in the rest, I will adventure to say something to this point.

In former times, as we reade Acts. 23. the Sadduces denied that there were any such Spirits, Devils, or Angels. So did Galen the Physitian, the Peripateticks, even Aristotle himself, as Pomponatius stoutly maintains, and Scaliger in some sort grants. Though Dandinus the Jesuit, com. in lib. 2. de anima, stifly denies it;

substantiæ separatæ and intelligences, are the same which Christians call Angels, and Platonists Devils, for they name all the Spirits, dæmones, be they good or bad Angels, as Iulius Pollux Onomasticon, lib. 1. cap. 1. observes. Epicures and Atheists are of the same minde in generall, because they never saw them.

Plato, Plotinus, Porphyrius, Iamblicus, Proclus, insisting in the steps of Trismegistus, Pythagoras and Socrates, make no doubt of it: Nor Stoicks, but that there are such spirits, though much erring from the truth.

Concerning the first beginning of them, the Thalmudists say that Adam had a wife called Lilis, before he marryed Eve, and of her he begat nothing but Devils. The Turks Alcoran is altogether as absurd and ridiculous in this point: but the Scripture informs us Christians; how Lucifer the chief of them with his associates, fell from heaven for his pride, and ambition;

created of God, placed in heaven, and sometimes an Angel of light, now cast down into the lower aeriall sublunary parts, or into Hell, and delivered into chains of darkness (2 Pet. 2.4.) to be kept unto damnation.

There is a foolish opinion which some hold, that they are the souls of men departed; good and more noble were deified, the baser groveled on the ground, or in the lower parts: and were devils, the which with Tertullian, Porphyrius the Philosopher, M. Tyrius ser. 27. maintaines. These spirits, he saith, which we call Angels and Devils, are nought but souls of men departed, which either through love and pity of their friends yet living, help and assist them, or else persecute their enemies, whom they hated, as Dido threatned to persecute Æneas:

Omnibus umbra locis adero: dabis improbe pœnas.

They are (as others suppose) appointed by those higher Powers to keep men from their nativity, and to protect, or punish them as they see cause: and are called boni and mali Genii by the Romans. Heroes, Lares, if good, Lemures or Larvæ if bad, by the Stoicks, governours of Countries, Men, Cities, saith Apuleius,

Deos appellant qui ex hominum numero juste ac prudenter vitæ curriculo gubernato, pro numine, postea ab hominibus præditi fanis & ceremoniis vulgo admittuntur, ut in Ægypto Osyris, &c. Præstites, Capella calls them, which protected particular men as well as Princes,

Socrates had his Dæmonium Saturninum & ignium, which of all spirits is best, ad sublimes cogitationes animum erigentem, as the Platonists supposed; Plotinus his; and we Christians our assisting Angel, as Andreas Victorellus, a copious writer of this subject, Lodovicus de La-Cerda the Jesuit in his Voluminous Tract de Angelo Custode, Zanchius, and some Divines think. But this absurd Tenent of Tyreus, Proclus confutes at large in his book de Animâ & dæmone.

Psellus a Christian, and sometimes Tutor (saith Cuspinian) to Michael Parapinatus, Emperour of Greece, a great observer of the nature of Devils, holds they are corporeal, and have aeriall bodies, that they are mortall, live and dye, (which Martianus Capella likewise maintaines, but our Christian Philosophers explode) that they are nourished and have excrements,

that they feele paine if they be hurt (which Cardan confirmes, and Scaliger justly laughs him to scorne for; Si pascantur aere, cur non pugnant ob puriorem aera? &c.) or stricken: and if their bodyes be cut, with admirable celerity they come together again.

Austin in Gen. lib. 3. lib. arbit. approves as much, mutata casu corpora in deteriorem qualitatem aëris spissioris, so doth Hierome, Comment. in epist. ad Ephes. cap. 3. Origen, Tertullian, Lactantius, and many ancient Fathers of the Church: That in their fall their bodyes were changed into a more aerial and gross substance.

Bodine lib. 4. Theatri Naturæ, and David Crusius Hermeticæ Philosophiæ lib. 1. cap. 4. by several arguments proves Angels and Spirits to be Corporeal: quicquid continetur in loco Corporeum est: At spiritus continetur in loco, ergo. Si Spiritus sunt quanti, erunt Corporei: At sunt quanti, ergo. Sunt finiti, ergo quanti, &c.

Bodine goes farther yet, and will have these, Animæ separatæ genii, Spirits, Angels, Devils, and so likewise soules of men departed, if Corporeal (which he most eagerly contends) to be of some shape, and that absolutely round, like Sun and Moone, because that is the most perfect forme, quæ nihil habet asperitatis, nihil angulis incisum, nihil anfractibus involutum, nihil eminens, sed inter corpora perfecta est perfectissimum; therefore all spirits are corporeal he concludes, & in their proper shapes round.

That they can assume other aerial bodies, all manner of shapes at their pleasures, appear in what likeness they will themselves, that they are most swift in motion, can pass many miles in an instant, & so likewise transform bodies of others into what shape they please, and with admirable celerity remove them from place to place;