General causes, are either supernatural, or natural. “Supernatural are from God and his angels, or by God's permission from the devil” and his ministers. That God himself is a cause for the punishment of sin, and satisfaction of his justice, many examples and testimonies of holy Scriptures make evident unto us, Ps. cvii, 17. “Foolish men are plagued for their offence, and by reason of their wickedness.” Gehazi was stricken with leprosy, 2 Reg. v. 27. Jehoram with dysentery and flux, and great diseases of the bowels, 2 Chron. xxi. 15. David plagued for numbering his people, 1 Par. 21. Sodom and Gomorrah swallowed up. And this disease is peculiarly specified, Psalm cxxvii. 12. “He brought down their heart through heaviness.” Deut. xxviii. 28. “He struck them with madness, blindness, and astonishment of heart.” [1100]“An evil spirit was sent by the Lord upon Saul, to vex him.” [1101]Nebuchadnezzar did eat grass like an ox, and his “heart was made like the beasts of the field.” Heathen stories are full of such punishments. Lycurgus, because he cut down the vines in the country, was by Bacchus driven into madness: so was Pentheus and his mother Agave for neglecting their sacrifice. [1102]Censor Fulvius ran mad for untiling Juno's temple, to cover a new one of his own, which he had dedicated to Fortune, [1103]“and was confounded to death with grief and sorrow of heart.” When Xerxes would have spoiled [1104]Apollo's temple at Delphos of those infinite riches it possessed, a terrible thunder came from heaven and struck four thousand men dead, the rest ran mad. [1105]A little after, the like happened to Brennus, lightning, thunder, earthquakes, upon such a sacrilegious occasion. If we may believe our pontifical writers, they will relate unto us many strange and prodigious punishments in this kind, inflicted by their saints. How [1106]Clodoveus, sometime king of France, the son of Dagobert, lost his wits for uncovering the body of St. Denis: and how a [1107]sacrilegious Frenchman, that would have stolen a silver image of St. John, at Birgburge, became frantic on a sudden, raging, and tyrannising over his own flesh: of a [1108]Lord of Rhadnor, that coming from hunting late at night, put his dogs into St. Avan's church, (Llan Avan they called it) and rising betimes next morning, as hunters use to do, found all his dogs mad, himself being suddenly strucken blind. Of Tyridates an [1109]Armenian king, for violating some holy nuns, that was punished in like sort, with loss of his wits. But poets and papists may go together for fabulous tales; let them free their own credits: howsoever they feign of their Nemesis, and of their saints, or by the devil's means may be deluded; we find it true, that ultor a tergo Deus, [1110]“He is God the avenger,” as David styles him; and that it is our crying sins that pull this and many other maladies on our own heads. That he can by his angels, which are his ministers, strike and heal (saith [1111]Dionysius) whom he will; that he can plague us by his creatures, sun, moon, and stars, which he useth as his instruments, as a husbandman (saith Zanchius) doth a hatchet: hail, snow, winds, &c. [1112]Et conjurati veniunt in classica venti: as in Joshua's time, as in Pharaoh's reign in Egypt; they are but as so many executioners of his justice. He can make the proudest spirits stoop, and cry out with Julian the Apostate, Vicisti Galilaee: or with Apollo's priest in [1113]Chrysostom, O coelum! o terra! unde hostis hic? What an enemy is this? And pray with David, acknowledging his power, “I am weakened and sore broken, I roar for the grief of mine heart, mine heart panteth,” &c. Psalm xxxviii. 8. “O Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither chastise me in thy wrath,” Psalm xxxviii. 1. “Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which thou hast broken, may rejoice,” Psalm li. 8. and verse 12. “Restore to me the joy of thy salvation, and stablish me with thy free spirit.” For these causes belike [1114]Hippocrates would have a physician take special notice whether the disease come not from a divine supernatural cause, or whether it follow the course of nature. But this is farther discussed by Fran. Valesius, de sacr. philos. cap. 8. [1115] Fernelius, and [1116]J. Caesar Claudinus, to whom I refer you, how this place of Hippocrates is to be understood. Paracelsus is of opinion, that such spiritual diseases (for so he calls them) are spiritually to be cured, and not otherwise. Ordinary means in such cases will not avail: Non est reluctandum cum Deo (we must not struggle with God.) When that monster-taming Hercules overcame all in the Olympics, Jupiter at last in an unknown shape wrestled with him; the victory was uncertain, till at length Jupiter descried himself, and Hercules yielded. No striving with supreme powers. Nil juvat immensos Cratero promittere montes, physicians and physic can do no good, [1117]“we must submit ourselves unto the mighty hand of God,” acknowledge our offences, call to him for mercy. If he strike us una eademque manus vulnus opemque feret, as it is with them that are wounded with the spear of Achilles, he alone must help; otherwise our diseases are incurable, and we not to be relieved.
SUBSECT. II.—A Digression of the nature of Spirits, bad Angels, or Devils, and how they cause Melancholy.
How far the power of spirits and devils doth extend, and whether they can cause this, or any other disease, is a serious question, and worthy to be considered: for the better understanding of which, I will make a brief digression of the nature of spirits. And although the question be very obscure, according to [1118]Postellus, “full of controversy and ambiguity,” beyond the reach of human capacity, fateor excedere vires intentionis meae, saith [1119]Austin, I confess I am not able to understand it, finitum de infinito non potest statuere, we can sooner determine with Tully, de nat. deorum, quid non sint, quam quid sint, our subtle schoolmen, Cardans, Scaligers, profound Thomists, Fracastoriana and Ferneliana acies, are weak, dry, obscure, defective in these mysteries, and all our quickest wits, as an owl's eyes at the sun's light, wax dull, and are not sufficient to apprehend them; yet, as in the rest, I will adventure to say something to this point. In former times, as we read, Acts xxiii., the Sadducees denied that there were any such spirits, devils, or angels. So did Galen the physician, the Peripatetics, even Aristotle himself, as Pomponatius stoutly maintains, and Scaliger in some sort grants. Though Dandinus the Jesuit, com. in lib. 2. de anima, stiffly denies it; substantiae separatae and intelligences, are the same which Christians call angels, and Platonists devils, for they name all the spirits, daemones, be they good or bad angels, as Julius Pollux Onomasticon, lib. 1. cap. 1. observes. Epicures and atheists are of the same mind in general, because they never saw them. Plato, Plotinus, Porphyrius, Jamblichus, Proclus, insisting in the steps of Trismegistus, Pythagoras and Socrates, make no doubt of it: nor Stoics, but that there are such spirits, though much erring from the truth. Concerning the first beginning of them, the [1120]Talmudists say that Adam had a wife called Lilis, before he married Eve, and of her he begat nothing but devils. The Turks' [1121]Alcoran is altogether as absurd and ridiculous in this point: but the Scripture informs us Christians, how Lucifer, the chief of them, with his associates, [1122]fell from heaven for his pride and ambition; created of God, placed in heaven, and sometimes an angel of light, now cast down into the lower aerial sublunary parts, or into hell, “and delivered into chains of darkness (2 Pet. ii. 4.) to be kept unto damnation.”
Nature of Devils.] There is a foolish opinion which some hold, that they are the souls of men departed, good and more noble were deified, the baser grovelled on the ground, or in the lower parts, and were devils, the which with Tertullian, Porphyrius the philosopher, M. Tyrius, ser. 27 maintains. “These spirits,” he [1123]saith, “which we call angels and devils, are nought but souls of men departed, which either through love and pity of their friends yet living, help and assist them, or else persecute their enemies, whom they hated,” as Dido threatened to persecute Aeneas:
Omnibus umbra locis adero: dabis improbe poenas.
My angry ghost arising from the deep,
Shall haunt thee waking, and disturb thy sleep;
At least my shade thy punishment shall know,
And Fame shall spread the pleasing news below.
Psellus [1125], a Christian, and sometimes tutor (saith Cuspinian) to Michael Parapinatius, Emperor of Greece, a great observer of the nature of devils, holds they are corporeal [1126], and have “aerial bodies, that they are mortal, live and die,” (which Martianus Capella likewise maintains, but our Christian philosophers explode) “that they [1127]are nourished and have excrements, they feel pain if they be hurt” (which Cardan confirms, and Scaliger justly laughs him to scorn for; Si pascantur aere, cur non pugnant ob puriorem aera? &c.) “or stroken:” and if their bodies be cut, with admirable celerity they come together again. Austin, in Gen. lib. iii. lib. arbit., approves as much, mutata casu corpora in deteriorem qualitatem aeris spissioris, so doth Hierome. Comment. in epist. ad Ephes. cap. 3, Origen, Tertullian, Lactantius, and many ancient Fathers of the Church: that in their fall their bodies were changed into a more aerial and gross substance. Bodine, lib. 4, Theatri Naturae and David Crusius, Hermeticae Philosophiae, lib. 1. cap. 4, by several arguments proves angels and spirits to be corporeal: quicquid continetur in loco corporeum est; At spiritus continetur in loco, ergo. [1128]Si spiritus sunt quanti, erunt corporei: At sunt quanti, ergo. sunt finiti, ergo. quanti, &c. Bodine [1129]goes farther yet, and will have these, Animae separatae genii, spirits, angels, devils, and so likewise souls of men departed, if corporeal (which he most eagerly contends) to be of some shape, and that absolutely round, like Sun and Moon, because that is the most perfect form, quae nihil habet asperitatis, nihil angulis incisum, nihil anfractibus involutem, nihil eminens, sed inter corpora perfecta est perfectissimum; [1130]therefore all spirits are corporeal he concludes, and in their proper shapes round. That they can assume other aerial bodies, all manner of shapes at their pleasures, appear in what likeness they will themselves, that they are most swift in motion, can pass many miles in an instant, and so likewise [1131]transform bodies of others into what shape they please, and with admirable celerity remove them from place to place; (as the Angel did Habakkuk to Daniel, and as Philip the deacon was carried away by the Spirit, when he had baptised the eunuch; so did Pythagoras and Apollonius remove themselves and others, with many such feats) that they can represent castles in the air, palaces, armies, spectrums, prodigies, and such strange objects to mortal men's eyes, [1132]cause smells, savours, &c., deceive all the senses; most writers of this subject credibly believe; and that they can foretell future events, and do many strange miracles. Juno's image spake to Camillus, and Fortune's statue to the Roman matrons, with many such. Zanchius, Bodine, Spondanus, and others, are of opinion that they cause a true metamorphosis, as Nebuchadnezzar was really translated into a beast, Lot's wife into a pillar of salt; Ulysses' companions into hogs and dogs, by Circe's charms; turn themselves and others, as they do witches into cats, dogs, hares, crows, &c. Strozzius Cicogna hath many examples, lib. iii. omnif. mag. cap. 4 and 5, which he there confutes, as Austin likewise doth, de civ. Dei lib. xviii. That they can be seen when and in what shape, and to whom they will, saith Psellus, Tametsi nil tale viderim, nec optem videre, though he himself never saw them nor desired it; and use sometimes carnal copulation (as elsewhere I shall [1133]prove more at large) with women and men. Many will not believe they can be seen, and if any man shall say, swear, and stiffly maintain, though he be discreet and wise, judicious and learned, that he hath seen them, they account him a timorous fool, a melancholy dizzard, a weak fellow, a dreamer, a sick or a mad man, they contemn him, laugh him to scorn, and yet Marcus of his credit told Psellus that he had often seen them. And Leo Suavius, a Frenchman, c. 8, in Commentar. l. 1. Paracelsi de vita longa, out of some Platonists, will have the air to be as full of them as snow falling in the skies, and that they may be seen, and withal sets down the means how men may see them; Si irreverberatus oculis sole splendente versus caelum continuaverint obtutus, &c., [1134]and saith moreover he tried it, praemissorum feci experimentum, and it was true, that the Platonists said. Paracelsus confesseth that he saw them divers times, and conferred with them, and so doth Alexander ab [1135]Alexandro, “that he so found it by experience, when as before he doubted of it.” Many deny it, saith Lavater, de spectris, part 1. c. 2, and part 2. c. 11, “because they never saw them themselves;” but as he reports at large all over his book, especially c. 19. part 1, they are often seen and heard, and familiarly converse with men, as Lod. Vives assureth us, innumerable records, histories, and testimonies evince in all ages, times, places, and [1136]all travellers besides; in the West Indies and our northern climes, Nihil familiarius quam in agris et urbibus spiritus videre, audire qui vetent, jubeant, &c. Hieronymus vita Pauli, Basil ser. 40, Nicephorus, Eusebius, Socrates, Sozomenus, [1137]Jacobus Boissardus in his tract de spirituum apparitionibus, Petrus Loyerus l. de spectris, Wierus l. 1. have infinite variety of such examples of apparitions of spirits, for him to read that farther doubts, to his ample satisfaction. One alone I will briefly insert. A nobleman in Germany was sent ambassador to the King of Sweden (for his name, the time, and such circumstances, I refer you to Boissardus, mine [1138]Author). After he had done his business, he sailed to Livonia, on set purpose to see those familiar spirits, which are there said to be conversant with men, and do their drudgery works. Amongst other matters, one of them told him where his wife was, in what room, in what clothes, what doing, and brought him a ring from her, which at his return, non sine omnium admiratione, he found to be true; and so believed that ever after, which before he doubted of. Cardan, l. 19. de subtil, relates of his father, Facius Cardan, that after the accustomed solemnities, An. 1491, 13 August, he conjured up seven devils, in Greek apparel, about forty years of age, some ruddy of complexion, and some pale, as he thought; he asked them many questions, and they made ready answer, that they were aerial devils, that they lived and died as men did, save that they were far longer lived (700 or 800 [1139]years); they did as much excel men in dignity as we do juments, and were as far excelled again of those that were above them; our [1140]governors and keepers they are moreover, which [1141]Plato in Critias delivered of old, and subordinate to one another, Ut enim homo homini sic daemon daemoni dominatur, they rule themselves as well as us, and the spirits of the meaner sort had commonly such offices, as we make horse-keepers, neat-herds, and the basest of us, overseers of our cattle; and that we can no more apprehend their natures and functions, than a horse a man's. They knew all things, but might not reveal them to men; and ruled and domineered over us, as we do over our horses; the best kings amongst us, and the most generous spirits, were not comparable to the basest of them. Sometimes they did instruct men, and communicate their skill, reward and cherish, and sometimes, again, terrify and punish, to keep them in awe, as they thought fit, Nihil magis cupientes (saith Lysius, Phis. Stoicorum) quam adorationem hominum. [1142]The same Author, Cardan, in his Hyperchen, out of the doctrine of Stoics, will have some of these genii (for so he calls them) to be [1143]desirous of men's company, very affable and familiar with them, as dogs are; others, again, to abhor as serpents, and care not for them. The same belike Tritemius calls Ignios et sublunares, qui nunquam demergunt ad inferiora, aut vix ullum habent in terris commercium: [1144]“Generally they far excel men in worth, as a man the meanest worm; though some of them are inferior to those of their own rank in worth, as the blackguard in a prince's court, and to men again, as some degenerate, base, rational creatures, are excelled of brute beasts.”