That even the evil angels, who were created in a degree above us, must have a more penetrating wit than ours is, and having experienced from their creation, to this very day, and can be present to every experiment found out, or that is committed to writing by the art of man; and withal, being not subject to oblivion as man is, (for they have no material faculty to be obliterated), I say any rational man will allow me, that they can do as much, and beyond what the art of man is able to do; but so it is, that painters can make one object more pleasant than another, distorted and worse favoured than another,—that any smoke may engross the air,—that a cloud removed on or off the face of the sun, give way to the beams of it to illuminate the air, or to eclipse its light,—that vapours and exhalations, from sea and land, multiply and magnify objects, misshapes and distorts them, and makes them of diverse figures, all in an instant, which is observable in hot summer days, especially in the end of the canicular days, for you may readily see about three or four in the afternoon, the same hills (providing they are situated at a considerable distance from you) to be of diverse shapes, forms, and figures, changing very suddenly from one shape to another, for example, from a globe to a pyramid, from a pyramid to a quadrangular figure, &c. All which our ordinary multiplying, magnifying, and distorting glasses, produce. Moreover, that physicians can administer such medicines as may provoke a man to madness and rage, yea, to fantastic or hypochondriac fits; so also medicines that move pleasant and unpleasant dreams, by exciting the melancholic or sanguine humours, raging or peaceable dreams, by moving the choleric or phlegmatic humour.
How much more can the prince of the air do, and his retinue, who is better seen in the nature of the elements and their compounds; who is better seen in the nature of trees, plants, minerals, stones, the secret qualities of springs and fountains, rivers and lochs, and the influence of celestial bodies, &c. and who is better seen in the constitution of every man, his customs and inclinations, and his present state and bygone circumstances; I say, in all these, he is better seen than any man, and can accommodate them to his purpose beyond the greatest virtuoses.
Let us therefore consider, that an evil angel being permitted thereunto, can muster in our brain the latent intentional species of external absent objects, and can present the same to the fancy in the methods best fitting his purpose, and not only so in time of our sleep, (for then indeed the fancy sticks with more tenacity to what it apprehends), but also when we are not sleeping, he can deduce these species by forcing them out of the rooms or cells of the brain, to the organ of the eye and ear, and so of necessity a man either sitting or going in the high-way, will hear and see such things as these species do represent; and seeing that naturally it may be done, as would appear from what is above spoken from the strength and force of medicines to operate upon the spirits and humours of man to work strange things, why may not a good or bad angel excite nature to it? or by an immediate impulse force these material qualities to the organs of the external senses, as well as they can move their vehicles, which are the spirits and humours.
The third thing proposed was, the connexion of these representations with the future contingent events that are observed to follow them, as for example, a second sighted man sees a winding sheet upon his neighbour, or blood running down his face, shoulders, or arms, he concludes that he must die, or be wounded in the face, shoulders, or arms. If you will ask what warrant he has for this, he will tell, he has found by experience, that whenever he saw the like of this, that he found death or wounds to follow. Quaeritur, then, what connexion can this representation have with an effect or contingent event not yet existant? For answer to this, God, who knoweth all things, no doubt imparteth much of the foreknowledge of things, not only to good angels, but also evil angels, for reasons well known to himself, particularly that they might give some true signs, and so have way to deceive in many things besides; and though the signs foretold should surely come to pass, it does not infer that the doctrine of evil angels, and their lies that they would suggest to mankind, should be credited. This is clear from the 13th of Deuteronomy, 1, 2, and 3, verses, If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass whereof he spake unto thee, saying, let us go after other gods, (which thou has not known), and let us serve them; thou shalt not hearken to the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your God proveth you, to know whether you love the Lord your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul. And this is very just with God when men give themselves over to a reprobate and wicked mind, and evil and unwarrantable practices, expressly against the Lord's commands; I say it is just with God to let evil angels or spirits delude them, and give way to these spirits in order to confirm their lies; to appoint signs before hand, which signs, by God's appointment, may come to pass, answerable to the prediction. It may rationally, and very probably be concluded, that Ahab's false prophets, in number 400, have often foretold truth; and this purposely by God's appointment, that they might be the better believed, and more easily persuade to lay siege to Ramoth Gilead; and it is hard to conceive that Ahab should give them so much credit, or they themselves so extraordinary confident, if they had not had many truths suggested to them, and made proof of the same to Ahab. It is not for nought that we are commanded to try the spirits, and that rather by their doctrines, than their signs and wonders, or fair and smooth pretences. Therefore, suppose these evil angels to know a contingent future event, either by a revelation, or natural or moral causes, they may, in the method foresaid make the representation of them to the eyes or ears; as for example, an angel, good or bad, finds that either the lungs, heart, stomach, liver, or brain, are under such a consumption, as may against such a time kill a man; or that he knows the secret contrivance of a potent party that is resolved to wound or kill him, or that it is revealed to him it should be so (which may very well be, as has been above noted), he can easily represent these before hand, though the event should follow but a considerable time thereafter; he has no more to do than to reverse the species of these things from a man's brain to the organ of the eye.
Here ariseth a question from what has just been said, whether it be more probable that good angels make this representation (because men having this second sight are found to tell truth, and to be innocent in their lives, and free of any paction, either implicit or explicit, likewise free of any fraudulent design, and sound enough in the necessary articles of their salvation), or that it be done by evil angels for the trial of men and women, juggling with their fancy and external organs, and so have a patent way to tell lies among some truths. For answer to this question, I shall not be ready positively to determine these things, but I humbly conceive, that as the representations are oft done by evil angels, so likewise it is probable that it may be done by good angels. I cannot be so uncharitable to several men that I have known to be of considerable sense, and pious and good conversation, as to conclude them to be given over to be deluded continually by an evil angel: Moreover, I conceive that there are many good Christians, if they would advert well, that have some secret tokens and signs of notable alterations to come, suggested to them before hand; and that these signs, some of them are common to them with others, as dreaming, which are often observed to be completely fulfilled, and that some of the signs and warnings are peculiar to some persons, which fail not to answer to the things signified; as for example, I have certainly known a man, that when he found an unvoluntary motion in such a member of his body, particularly his right hand or right eye, that was sure that some matter of joy would shortly come to his hearing; and that if he found the same motion in the left eye or hand, it signified infallibly grief: And that which is more wonderful, the thing to come signified by these signs and warnings keeped an exact proportion with the continuance or vehemency of the motion; if the motion continued long, so did the joy or the grief; if the motion was snell or vehement, so was the matter of grief or joy; and finding that this man was both a good man, and of a right penetrating wit, and had art enough, it moved me to use freedom with several other good men that had knowledge and sense enough to examine circumstances to a hair. I found very many to acknowledge the very same thing, yet signified by different signs, (which shows they are not signa naturalia, but ex instituto), which puts me in mind of Dr Brown's observation to the same purpose, in his inquiry into vulgar errors, where he concludes several presentations to be acted in us by our tutelary angels that have the charge of us at the time. Mark this, though the signs be different in themselves, yet to each particular person, his own sign is still significative of the same thing; and why might not this of the second sight be counted amongst one of these? I likewise humbly conceive, that God might compense the want of many other gifts to poor men, by giving them this minor sort of knowledge. But I would advise all of them that have the second sight, to examine themselves, and to pray earnestly to God that no evil angel should have power to abuse their senses, because the devil still strives to imitate what God, or his good angels, communicates to his own children. I know that the common opinion of some philosophers and divines will be objected, and that is, that angels, good or bad, may condense the air, figurate and colorate the same, and make it of what figure or shape they please, so that this representation is made by external objects in effect emitting visible species to the eye; and consequently, that it is not the reversion of the species formerly received; though, as I have observed before, that good and bad angels can alter the medium in a strange way, and can work great alteration on the elements and their compounds, I think it very improbable that any created power can bring the air to that solidity, and actually condense it, colorate, and figurate it, as to represent a man by a beast, or Peter by Paul, especially at such a distance as from one side of a chamber to the other. The miracles done by the magicians of Egypt is their Achillean argument; but in short, I say, that what was done by the magicians of Egypt, has neither been a delusion of the senses, (as some would have it) much less that the devil could produce the creatures de novo of condensed air, and that for the following reasons: First, thence it would follow that Moses and Aaron were deluded as well as the Egyptians; but the last is false, therefore the first: Secondly, it would follow, that the fashioning and framing of Adam's body of clay, was but a mean act of creation in comparison of these creatures, if they should be fashioned and framed of condense air, which is naturally a fluid element, not so easily stigmatized as the earth. I do not deny but the devil can snatch dead and quick bodies from one place to another, and that insensibly to the beholders, by pressing their optic nerves, as Franciscus Valesius has observed in his Sacra Philosophia, and I conclude with Abraham Couley, (no contemptible author) that the magicians of Egypt were after this manner served by the devil, to imitate God's power in the hands of Moses and Aaron. Mark, finally, if it were within the sphere of angelical power to take bodies of condense air, what needed them assume such material and earthly bodies as these angels that came to Abraham and Lot assumed? whose bodies could be touched and handled, and whose bodies were not found to yield to the touch, as the most condensed air must do; and it is very consisting with reason, that the angels, good or bad, should rather assume bodies of the element of the earth, which is a great deal more easily brought to the figure and fashion of a body, than the air. Some curious spirits, perhaps, may desire to know whether this second sight be hereditary or propagable from father to son; and I think no wonder that some would think so, because the sanative gift of the king's evil is lineally traduced to the natural heirs of the crown of England; and there is a whole family in Spain, that has a sanative gift of some particular diseases, which gift is propagated from the father to the son; neither is it diminished or augmented by the morality or immorality of the persons, as has been observed by that famous philosopher and physician, Franciscus Valesius, who lived in that kingdom, and had time and opportunity to examine the truth of this affair. In short, I answer, that it is not propagable from father to son, neither peculiar to any particular family; and as I have observed many honest men, free of all scandal that ever I could learn, to have it; so I have observed many vicious persons to have it who foretold truth oft enough.
Perhaps it may be doubted what should make this second sight more frequent here than in the heart of the kingdom; I answer, that it is the lack of observation and inquiry that it should not be found there as well as here. Secundo, that it passes under a great odium and disgrace with the most of men, which causes those that see it, conceal it. Thirdly, I confess that credulity and ignorance give occasion to evil spirits to juggle more frequently, than otherwise they would have done. But sure it is, that men of little learning and education may be recompensed by notable presentations, not so obvious to others of greater parts. I remember of a nobleman in Spain, that was deaf and dumb from his infancy, and yet was taught by a monk to speak, and understand what was spoken to him, only by observing the motion of his lips that spoke to him. Sir Kenelm Digby saw him, as he tells in his Treatise of Bodies, and the monk that taught him, was a cousin of Franciscus Valesius. This was more than ordinary sagacity and docility, and it is found, that many dumb persons foretel many things before hand, and it is a hard measure to conclude all to be from evil spirits. In fine, as I noted before, as questionless Satan may, and often does, deceive after this manner, so it is as sure, it may be allowed, that good angels may forewarn this way, as well as by other signs and tokens, as Dr Brown observes.
It is observed, that those who have the second sight, have this representation at any time of the day, but indeed more ordinarily in the morning and evening, and with candle light.
The design of these weak conceptions on this sublime theme, is not to impose upon any man, freely leaving every man to follow his own judgment in things that offend not church or state, but that others of greater capacity may be stimulated to prosecute the same in a better method, humbly submitting myself to the judgment of my betters, to whose hands perhaps this pamphlet may come.
FINIS.