Magia Adamica

I have ever admir'd that Discipline of Eliezer the steward of Abraham, who when [Marginal note: Genes. 24. 11 12.] he prayed at the Well in Mesopotamia, could make his Camels also kneele. I must not believe there was any Hocas in this, or that the spirit of Banks, may be the spirit of Prayer. Jacob makes a Covenant with Laban, that all the spotted and brown Cattell in his Flocks should be assigned to him for his wages. The Bargain is no sooner made, but he finds an Art to Multiplie his own Colours, and sends his Father-in-law almost a Woolgathering. And Jacob took him Rods of green Poplar, and of the Hasel, [Marginal note: Gen. 30. 37.] & Chesnut-tree, & pilled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods; And hee set the rods, which he had pilled, before the Flocks in the Gutters, in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink: And the Flocks conceived before the Rods, and brought forth Cattel ring straked, speckled and spotted. As for that which the Scripture tells us elsewhere, namely that Jacob saw in a dream, and behold [Marginal note: Cap. 31. v. 10.] the Rams that leaped on the Cattell were ringstraked speckled, and grisled, This doth no way impaire our Assertion, or prove this generation miraculous, and supernatural: For no man, I believe is so mad as to think those Appearances, or Ramms of the dream, did leap, and