other particulars answerable to what the spectators had seen aforehand. * De Præstig. Dæmon. lib. 1. cap. 14.* Wierus acknowledgeth the truth of the Relation, but will by all means have it be the Devil, not the Soul of the Man; which he doth in a tender regard to the Witches, that from such a truth as this they might not be made so obnoxious to suspicion that their Ecstasies are not mere Dreams and Delusions of the Devil, but are accompanied with reall effects.
8. I will not take upon me to decide so nice a Controversie, onely I will make bold to intermeddle thus far, as to pronounce Bodinus his opinion not at all unworthy of a rational and sagacious man: and that though, by his being much addicted to such like speculations, he might attribute some natural effects to the ministery of Spirits, when there was no need so to doe; yet his Judgement in other things of this kinde is no more to be slighted for that, then Cartesius, that stupendious Mechanical Wit, is to be disallowed in those excellent inventions of the causes of those more general Phænomena of Nature, because by his success in those he was imboldened to enlarge his Principles too far, and to assert that Animals themselves were mere Machinas: like Aristoxenus the Musician, that made the Soul nothing else but an Harmony; of whom Tully pleasantly observes, Quòd non recessit ab arte sua.
Every Genius and Temper, as the sundry sorts of Beasts and living Creatures, have their proper excrement: and it is the part of a wise man to take notice of it, and to chuse what is profitable, as well as to abandon what is useless and excrementitious.
Chap. XII.
1. The Coldness of those Bodies that Spirits appear in, witnessed by the experience of Cardan and Bourgotus. 2. The natural reason of this Coldness. 3 . That the Devil does really lie with Witches. 4. That the very Substance of Spirits is not Fire. 5. The Spectre at Ephesus. 6. Spirits skirmishing on the ground. 7, 8. Field-fights and Sea-fights seen in the Aire.
1. But to return into the way, I might adde other Stories of your Dæmones Metallici, your Guardian Genii, such as that of Socrates, and that other of which Bodinus tells an ample Relation, which he received from him who had the society and assistance of such an Angel or Genius, which for my own part I give as much credit to as to any Story in Livy or Plutarch; your Lares familiares, as also those that haunt and vex Families, appearing to many, and leaving very sensible effects of their appearings. But I will not so far tire either my self or my Reader. I will onely name one or two more, rather then recite them. As that of Facius Cardanus, who relates, as you may see in * See Cardan De rerum varietate, lib. 16. cap. 93.* Cardan, how a Spirit that familiarly was seen in the house of a friend of his, one night laid his hand
