cryed out presently, If this be true, I have been in a wrong Box all this time, and must begin my account anew.
And I remember an old Gentleman in the Country of my Acquaintance, an excellent Justice of Peace, and a piece of a Mathematician, but what kind of a Philosopher he was you may understand from a Rhime of his own making, which he commended to me at my taking Horse in his Yard, which Rhime is this,
Ens is nothing till Sense finds out:
Sense ends in nothing, so naught goes about.
Which Rhime of his was so rapturous to himself, that the reciting of the second Verse, the old Man turn'd himself about upon his Toe as nimbly as one may observe a dry Leaf whisk'd round in the corner of an Orchard-walk by some little Whirlwind. With this Philosopher I have had many Discourses concerning the Immortality of the Soul and its distinction; when I have run him quite down by Reason, he would but laugh at me and say, this is Logick, H. calling me by my Christian name, to which I reply'd, this is Reason, Father L. (for I used and some others to call him) but it seems you are for the new Lights and immediate Inspiration, which I confess he was as little for as for the other; but I said so only in way of Drollery to him in those times, but truth is, nothing but palpable experience would move him, and being a bold Man and fearing nothing, he told me, he had used all the Magical Ceremonies of Conjuration he could to raise the Devil or a Spirit, and had a most earnest Desire to meet with one, but never could do it. But this he told me, when he did not so much as think of it, while his Servant was pulling off his Boots in the Hall, some invisible Hand gave him such a clap upon the back that it made all ring again; so, thought he, now I am invited to the converse of my Spirit; and therefore so soon as his Boots were off and his Shoes on, out he goes into the Yard and next Field, to find out the Spirit that had given him this Familiar clap on the Back, but found none neither in the Yard nor Field next to it.
But though he did not feel this stroke, albeit he thought it afterwards (finding nothing came of it) a mere delusion; yet not long before his Death it had more force with him than all the Philosophical Arguments I could use to him, though I could wind him and non-plus him as I pleased; but yet all my Argument, how solid soever, made no Impression upon him; where-
