But before we enter upon the positive arguments, we think it fit, lest we be mistaken (though in part we may have touched some of them before) to lay down some few cautions and considerations, which we shall do in this manner.
Consid. 1.
De mirab. pot. Art. & Nat. c. 2.
De Occult. Philos. p. 484.
1. It is to be taken for a certain truth, that the greatest part of those pretended charms and characters that are in this our age used by ignorant, superstitious, and cheating impostors; are utterly false, and of no power or efficacy at all. And this was understood by our learned Countreyman Roger Bacon, who tells us thus much. “For without all doubt (he saith) all of this sort now a days are false, or doubtful or irrational, and therefore not at all to be trusted unto.” And to this doth Paracelsus fully agree, saying: “All characters are not to be trusted to, or any confidence to be placed in them, nor in like manner in words. For the Nigromancers and Poets, being very laboriously imployed about them, have filled all Books with comments proceeding forth of their brains, wanting all truth and foundation, of which some thousands are not worth one deaf nut.”
Consid. 2.
Vid. ut supra.
2. Yet for all this we are to consider, that all of them are not totally to be rejected, for Bacon tells us: “That there are certain deprecations of ancient times instituted of men, or rather ordained of God and good Angels, that are both true and efficacious; and such like as these may retain their first virtue. As in some Countreys (he saith) yet some certain prayers are made upon red hot iron, and upon the water of the flood, and likewise upon other things, by which the innocent are tried, and the guilty condemned.” And this was the trial that by the Saxons (when used in England) was called Ordeall. Therefore Paracelsus saith thus: Repeto ergo, characteribus & verbis non omnibus fidendum esse, sed eligenda & retinenda, quæ recta, genuina, ex fundamento veritatis deprompta, ac multoties probata sint, which is counsel good, sound and profitable. And somewhere he tells us that even those true and genuine characters and Gamahuis that were rightly fabricated under due constellations, and were in old time efficacious, may have now lost their virtue because the configurations of the Heavens are altered.
Confid. 3.
Ubi supra.