[57] The serious Consideration of this Postulate was the primary Cause of the Reaction which followed the Prosecution. See Dr. I. Mather's Cases of Conscience. MS. in the Editor's Possession.
[58] The Incomprehensibleness of the Creator is nowhere more strikingly expressed than in the following old Lines:
What mortal Man can with a Span mete out Eternity?
Or fathom it by Depth of Wit or Strength of Memory?
The lofty Sky is not so high, Hell's Depth to this is small;
The World so wide is but a Stride, compared therewithal.
It is a main great Ocean, withouten Bank or Bound:
A deep Abyss, wherein there is no Bottom to be found.
Day of Doom, Edit. 1715, P. 51.
[59] In the Notes of Butler and Dr. Nash to Hudibras the Reader will find some Amusement respecting the Witches of Lapland. Although the Laplanders are described as a miserable Race, they could not have been much behind the English in Matters of Superstition at this Period. Dr. Heylyn says the Laplanders, "at their first going out of their Doores in a Morning vse to giue worship and diuine honour all the Day following, to that liuing Creature what ere it be, which they see at their first going out." Mikrokosmos, 328, Edit. 1624, 4to.