CONVERSE WITH ANGELS AND SPIRITS.
DR. RICHARD NEPIER was a person of great abstinence, innocence, and piety: he spent every day two hours in family prayer: when a patient or querent came to him, he presently went to his closet to pray: and told to admiration the recovery, or death of the patient. It appears by his papers, that he did converse with the angel Raphael, who gave him the responses.
Elias Ashmole, Esq. had all his papers, where is contained all his practice for about fifty years; which he, Mr. Ashmole, carefully bound up, according to the year of our Lord, in —- volumes in folio; which are now reposited in the library of the Musseum in Oxford. Before the responses stands this mark, viz. R. Ris. which Mr. Ashmole said was Responsum Raphaelis.
In these papers are many excellent medicines, or receipts for several diseases that his patients had; and before some of them is the aforesaid mark, Mr. Ashmole took the pains to transcribe fairly with his own hand all the receipts; they are about a quire and a half of paper in folio, which since his death were bought of his relict by E. W. Esq. E.S.S.
The angel told him if the patient were curable or incurable.
There are also several other queries to the angel, as to religion, transubstantiation, &c. which I have forgot. I remember one is, whether the good spirits or the bad be most in number ? R. Ris. The good.
It is to be found there, that he told John Prideaux, D.D. anno 1621, that twenty years hence (1641) he would be a bishop, and he was so, sc. bishop of Worcester. '
R. Ris. did resolve him, that Mr. Booth, of —- in Cheshire, should have a son that should inherit three years hence, [sc. Sir George Booth, the first Lord Delamere] viz. from 1619, Sir George Booth aforesaid was born, December 18, anno 1622.
This I extracted out of Dr. Nepier's Original Diary, then in possession of Mr. Ashmole.
When E. W. Esq. was about eight years old, he was troubled with the worms. His grand father carried him to Dr. Nepier at Lynford. Mr. E. W. peeped in at the closet at the end of the gallery, and saw him upon his knees at prayer. The Doctor told Sir Francis that at fourteen years old his grandson would be freed from that distemper; and he was so. The medicine he prescribed was, to drink a little draught of Muscadine in the morning. 'Twas about 1625.