And, moreover, the interference of priests has often led to the interdiction of protestants, in their scientific ministering to disease the most severe, as typhus fever, or surgical operations, because they were heretics; while the profane Paracelsus says, “It matters not, by God or devil, so he be cured;” even without an indulgence, I presume, from Della Genga, or the leave of the sacred college.
Believe me, the influence of faith will illustrate all this mystery, and reduce even these impostures to a simple truth. Without it, only the grossest superstition would believe that sympathy would thus “take the wings of the morning,” and impart to a mind that was thinking at our antipodes a consciousness of our own sentiments; for this would be a revival of that blind credulity, which in the darker ages was reposed in the superhuman agency of magic and of witchcraft.
SIBYLLINE INFLUENCE.
“She was a charmer, and cou’d almost read
The thoughts of people.”
Othello.
Ida. As you unfold the wonders of the mind, Evelyn, the secrets of many splendid mysteries shine forth in the light of your truth; and the wisdom of “charmed rings,” “blessed brambles,” and amulets and talismans, fades before the precepts of a purer faith. Yet is there no witchcraft in your philosophy? You have, methinks, absolved Astrophel from spells and dark hours, for, in the softened lustre of his eye I see a light more holy than its wonted flash of divination.
Cast. You have more faith in his conversion than I have, Ida; for, lo ye now! On a mossy stone in Tintern lay this sable velvet pouch, which, from its mystic ’broidery, might be the lost treasure of a Rosicrucian cabalist.
“There’s magic in the web of it;
A sibyl that had number’d in the world