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have discovered the quadrature of the circle, and dogmatically upheld his claim in the face of the clearest refutation. In this controversy, personal feeling, according to the custom of the time, appeared without disguise. Hobbes having published a sarcastic piece, entitled Six Lessons to the Professors of Mathematics in Oxford, Wallis retorted by administering, in 1656, Due Correction for Mr Hobbes, | |_ or School-Discipline for not Saying his Lessons Right. Here his language to the philosopher is in the following unceremonious strain :-It seems, Mr Hobbes, that you have a mind to say your lesson, and that the mathematic professors of Oxford should hear you. You are too old to learn, though you have as much need as those that be younger, and yet will think much to be whipt. What moved you to say your lessons in English, when the books against which you do chiefly intend them were written in Latin? Was it chiefly for the perfecting your natural rhetoric, whenever you thought it convenient to repair to Billingsgate? You found that the oysterwomen could not teach you to rail in Latin. Now you can, upon all occasion, or without occasion, give the titles of fool, beast, ass, dog, &c., which I take to be but barking; and they are no better than a man might have at Billingsgate for a box o' the ear. You tell us, "though the beasts that think our railing to be roaring, have for a time admired us, yet, now you have showed them our ears, they will be less affrighted." Sir, those persons needed not a sight of your ears, but could tell by the voice what kind of creature brayed in your books: you dared not have said this to their faces.' When Charles II. came to the throne, he conferred on Hobbes an annual pension of one hundred pounds; but notwithstanding this and other marks of the royal favour, much odium continued to prevail against him and his doctrines. The Leviathan' and 'De Cive' were censured in parliament in 1666, and also drew forth many printed replies. Among the authors of these, the most distinguished was Lord Clarendon, who, in 1676, published A Brief View and Survey of the Dangerous and Pernicious Errors to Church and State, in Mr Hobbes's Book, entitled Leviathan. Two years previously Hobbes had entered a new field of literature, by publishing a metrical version of four books of Homer's Odyssey, which was so well received, that, in 1675, he sent forth a translation of the remainder of that poem, and also of the whole Iliad. Here, according to Pope, Hobbes has given us a correct explanation of the sense in general; but for particulars and circumstances, he continually lops them, and often omits the most beautiful. He sometimes

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tory of the Civil Wars from 1640 to 1660, was finished
in 1679, but did not appear till after his death, an
event which took place in December of that year,
when he had attained the age of ninety-two.
Hobbes is described by Lord Clarendon as one for
whom he had always had a great esteem, as a
man who, besides his eminent parts of learning and
knowledge, hath been always looked upon as a man
of probity and a life free from scandal.' It was a
saying of Charles II., in reference to the opposition
which the doctrines of Hobbes met from the clergy,
that he was a bear, against whom the church played
their young dogs, in order to exercise them.' In
his latter years he became morose and impatient of
contradiction, both by reason of his growing infir-
mities, and from indulging too much in solitude, by
which his natural arrogance and contempt for the
opinions of other men were greatly increased. He
at no time read extensively: Homer, Virgil, Thu-
cydides, and Euclid, were his favourite authors; and
he used to say, that, if he had read as much as
other men, he should have been as ignorant as
they.' Owing to the timidity of his disposition, he
was continually apprehensive about his personal
safety, insomuch that he could not endure to be left
in an empty house. From the same motive, probably,
it was, that, notwithstanding his notorious hetero-
doxy, he maintained an external adherence to the
established church, and in his works sometimes
assented to theological views which undoubtedly he
did not hold. Though he has been stigmatised as
an atheist, the charge is groundless, as may be in-
ferred from what he says, in his Treatise on Human
Nature,' concerning

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[God.]

it followeth that we can have no conception or image Forasmuch as God Almighty is incomprehensible, of the Deity; and, consequently, all his attributes signify our inability and defect of power to conceive anything concerning his nature, and not any conception of the same, except only this, That there is a God. For the effects, we acknowledge naturally, do include a power of their producing, before they were produced; and that power presupposeth something existent that hath such power and the thing so existing with power to produce, if it were not eternal, must needs have been produced by somewhat before it, and that, again, by something else before that, till we come to an eternal (that is to say, the first) Power of all Powers, and first Cause of all Causes: and this is it which all men conceive by the name of GOD, implying eternity, incomprehensibility, and omnipotency. And thus all that will consider may know that God is, though not what he is: even a man that is born blind, though it be not possible for him to have any imagination what kind of thing fire is, yet he cannot but know that something there is that men call fire, because it warmeth him.

[Pity and Indignation.]

omits whole similes and sentences, and is now and then guilty of mistakes, into which no writer of his learning could have fallen but through carelessness. His poetry, as well as Ogilby's, is too mean for criticism. Nevertheless, the work became so popular, that three large editions were required within less than ten years. Hobbes was more successful as a translator in prose than in poetry; his version of the Greek historian Thucydides (which had appeared in 1629, and was the first work that he pubPity is imagination or fiction of future calamity lished) being still regarded as the best English to ourselves, proceeding from the sense of another translation of that author. Its faithfulness to the man's calamity. But when it lighteth on such as we original is so great, that it frequently degenerates think have not deserved the same, the compassion is into servility. This work, he says, was undertaken greater, because then there appeareth more probabiby him from an honest desire of preventing, if pos- lity that the same may happen to us; for the evil sible, those disturbances in which he was apprehen- that happeneth to an innocent man may happen to sive that his country would be involved, by showing, every man. But when we see a man suffer for great in the history of the Peloponnesian war, the fatal crimes, which we cannot easily think will fall upon consequences of intestine troubles.' At Chatsworth, ourselves, the pity is the less. And therefore men are to which he retired in 1674 to spend the remainder apt to pity those whom they love; for whom they of his days, he continued to compose various works, love they think worthy of good, and therefore not the principal of which, entitled Behemoth, or a His-worthy of calamity. Thence it is also, that men pity

the vices of some persons at the first sight only, out of love to their aspect. The contrary of pity is hardness of heart, proceeding either from slowness of imagination, or some extreme great opinion of their own exemption from the like calamity, or from hatred of all or most men.

Indignation is that grief which consisteth in the conception of good success happening to them whom they think unworthy thereof. Seeing, therefore, men think all those unworthy whom they hate, they think them not only unworthy of the good fortune they have, but also of their own virtues. And of all the passions of the mind, these two, indignation and pity, are most raised and increased by eloquence; for the aggravation of the calamity, an extenuation of the fault, augmenteth pity; and the extenuation of the worth of the person, together with the magnifying of his success, which are the parts of an orator, are able to turn these two passions into fury.

[Emulation and Envy.]

[Love of Knowledge.]

Forasmuch as all knowledge beginneth from experience, therefore also new experience is the beginning of new knowledge, and the increase of experience the beginning of the increase of knowledge. Whatsoever, therefore, happeneth new to a man, giveth him matter of hope of knowing somewhat that he knew not before. And this hope and expectation of future knowledge from anything that happeneth new and strange, is that passion which we commonly call admiration;? and the same considered as appetite, is called curiosity, which is appetite of knowledge. As in the discerning of faculties, man leaveth all community with beasts at the faculty of imposing names, so also doth he surmount their nature at this passion of curiosity. For when a beast seeth anything new and strange to him, he considereth it so far only as to discern whether it be likely to serve his turn or hurt him, and accordingly approacheth nearer to it, or fleeth from it: whereas man, who in most events remembereth in what manner they were caused and begun, looketh for the cause and beginning of everything that ariseth new unto him. And from this passion of admiration and curiosity, have arisen not only the invention of

Emulation is grief arising from seeing one's self exceeded or excelled by his concurrent, together with hope to equal or exceed him in time to come, by his own ability. But envy is the same grief joined with pleasure conceived in the imagination of some ill-for-names, but also supposition of such causes of all tune that may befall him.

[Laughter.]

There is a passion that hath no name; but the sign of it is that distortion of the countenance which we call laughter, which is always joy: but what joy, what we think, and wherein we triumph when we laugh, is not hitherto declared by any. That it consisteth in wit, or, as they call it, in the jest, experience confuteth; for men laugh at mischances and indecencies, wherein there lieth no wit nor jest at all. And forasmuch as the same thing is no more ridiculous when it groweth stale or usual, whatsoever it be that moveth laughter, it must be new and unexpected. Men laugh often (especially such as are greedy of applause from everything they do well) at their own actions performed never so little beyond their own expectations; as also at their own jests : and in this case it is manifest that the passion of laughter proceedeth from a sudden conception of some ability in himself that laugheth. Also, men laugh at the infirmities of others, by comparison wherewith their own abilities are set off and illustrated. Also

men laugh at jests, the wit whereof always consisteth in the elegant discovering and conveying to our minds some absurdity of another; and in this case also the passion of laughter proceeded from the sudden imagination of our own odds and eminency; for what is else the recommending of ourselves to our own good opinion, by comparison with another's man's infirmity or absurdity? For when a jest is broken upon ourselves, or friends, of whose dishonour we participate, we never laugh thereat. I may therefore conclude, that the passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from a sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly; for men laugh at the follies of themselves past, when they come suddenly to remembrance, except they bring with them any present dishonour. It is no wonder, therefore, that men take heinously to be laughed at or derided; that is, triumphed over. Laughing without offence, must be at absurdities and infirmities abstracted from persons, and when all the company may laugh together; for laughing to one's self putteth all the rest into jealousy, and examination of themselves. Besides, it is vain glory, and an argument of little worth, to think the infirmity of another sufficient matter for his triumph.

things as they thought might produce them. And from this beginning is derived all philosophy, as astronomy from the admiration of the course of heaven; natural philosophy from the strange effects of the elements and other bodies. And from the degrees of curiosity proceed also the degrees of knowledge amongst men; for, to a man in the chase of riches or authority (which in respect of knowledge are but sensuality), it is a diversity of little pleasure, whether it be the motion of the sun or the earth that maketh the day; or to enter into other contemplations of any strange accident, otherwise than whether it conduce or not to the end he pursueth. Because curiosity is delight, therefore also novelty is so; but especially that novelty from which a man conceiveth an opinion, true or false, of bettering his own estate; for, in such case, they stand affected with the hope that all gamesters have while the cards are shuffling.

The following passages are extracted from Hobbes's works on

The Necessity of the Will.

that is to say, whether he can write or forbear, speak The question is not, whether a man be a free agent, will to write, and the will to forbear, come upon him or be silent, according to his will; but whether the according to his will, or according to anything else in his own power. I acknowledge this liberty, that I to be an absurd speech. can do if I will; but to say, I can will if I will, I take

[In answer to Bishop Bramhall's assertion, that the doctrine of free will is the belief of all mankind, which we have not learned from our tutors, but is imprinted in our hearts by nature']—It is true, very few have learned from tutors, that a man is not free to will; nor do they find it much in books. That they find in books, that which the poets chaunt in the theatres, and the shepherds on the mountains, that which the pastors teach in the churches, and the doctors in the universities, and that which the common people in the markets and all mankind in the whole world do assent unto, is the same that I assent unto; namely, that a man hath freedom to do if he will; but whether he hath freedom to will, is a question which it seems neither the bishop nor they ever thought on. A wooden top that is lashed by the boys, and runs about, sometimes to one wall, sometimes to another, sometimes spinning, sometimes

hitting men on the shins, if it were sensible of its own motion, would think it proceeded from its own will, unless it felt what lashed it. And is a man any wiser when he runs to one place for a benefice, to another for a bargain, and troubles the world with writing errors, and requiring answers, because he thinks he does it without other cause than his own will, and seeth not what are the lashings that cause that will?

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[Concerning the justice of punishing criminals on the supposition of necessity of the will, he remarks] -The intention of the law is not to grieve the delinquent for that which is past, and not to be undone, but to make him and others just, that else would not be so; and respecteth not the evil act past, but the good to come; insomuch as, without the good intention for the future, no past act of a delinquent could justify his killing in the sight of God. But you will say, How is it just to kill one man to amend another, if what were done were necessary? To this I answer, that men are justly killed, not for that their actions are not necessitated, but because they are noxious; and that they are spared and preserved whose actions are not noxious. For where there is no law, there no killing, nor anything else, can be unjust; and by the right of nature we destroy (without being unjust) all that is noxious, both beasts and men. When we make societies or commonwealths, we lay down our right to kill, excepting in certain cases, as murder, theft, or other offensive action; so that the right which the commonwealth hath to put a man to death for crimes, is not created by the law, but remains from the first right of nature which every man hath to preserve himself; for that the law doth not take that right away in the case of criminals, who were by law excepted. Men are not, therefore, put to death, or punished, for that their theft proceedeth from election; but because it was noxious, and contrary to men's preservation, and the punishment conducing to the preservation of the rest; inasmuch as, to punish those that do voluntary hurt, and none else, frameth and maketh men's wills such as men would have them. And thus it is plain, that from the necessity of a voluntary action cannot be inferred the injustice of the law that forbiddeth it, or of the magistrate that punisheth it.

[As to praise or dispraise]-These depend not at all on the necessity of the action praised or dispraised. For what is it else to praise, but to say a thing is good? Good, I say, for me, or for somebody else, or for the state and commonwealth. And what is it to say an action is good, but to say it is as I would wish, or as another would have it, or according to the will of the state; that is to say, according to the law? Does my lord think that no action can please me, or him, or the commonwealth, that should proceed from necessity? Things may be therefore necessary, and yet praiseworthy, as also necessary, and yet dispraised, and neither of them both in vain; because praise and dispraise, and likewise reward and punishment, do, by example, make and conform the will to good or evil. It was a very great praise, in my opinion, that Velleius Paterculus gives Cato, where he says, that he was good by nature, et quia aliter esse non potuit'-' and because he could not be otherwise.']

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The style of Hobbes is characterised by Sir James Mackintosh as the very perfection of didactic language. Short, clear, precise, pithy, his language never has more than one meaning, which never requires a second thought to find. By the help of his exact method, it takes so firm a hold on the mind, that it will not allow attention to slacken. His little

tract on Human Nature has scarcely an ambiguous or a needless word. He has so great a power of always choosing the most significant term, that he never is reduced to the poor expedient of using many in its stead. He had so thoroughly studied the genius of the language, and knew so well to steer between pedantry and vulgarity, that two centuries have not superannuated probably more than a dozen of his words.'* Among his greatest philosophical errors are those of making no distinction between the intellectual and emotive faculties of man-of representing all human actions as the results of intellectual deliberation alone-and of in every case deriving just and benevolent actions from a cool survey of the advantages to self which may be expected to flow from them. In short, he has given to neither the moral nor the social sentiments a place in his scheme of human nature. The opponents of this selfish system have been numberless; nor is the controversy terminated even at the present day. The most eminent of those who have ranged themselves against Hobbes are Cumberland, Čudworth, Shaftesbury, Clarke, Butler, Hutcheson, Kames, Smith, Stewart, and Brown.

LORD HERBERT.

Among the distinguished persons whom we have mentioned as intimate with Hobbes, is LORD HERBERT OF CHERBURY (1581-1648), a brave and high-spirited man, at a time when honourable feeling was rare at the English court. Like the philosopher of Malmesbury, he distinguished himself as a free-thinker; and, says Dr Leland, as he was one of the first, so he was confessedly one of the greatest writers that have appeared among us in the deistical cause.' He was born at Eyton, in Shropshire, studied at Oxford, and acquired, both at home and on the continent, a high reputation for the almost Quixotic chivalry of his character. In 1616 he was sent as ambassador to Paris, at which place he published, in 1624, his celebrated deistical book, De Veritate, prout distinguitur à Revelatione Verisimili, Possibili, et à Falso- Of Truth, as it is distinguished from Probable, Possible, and False Revelation']. In this work, the first in which deism was ever reduced to a system, the author maintains the sufficiency, universality, and absolute perfection of natural religion, and the consequent uselessness of supernatural revelation. This universal religion he reduces to the following articles:-1. That there is one supreme God. 2. That he is chiefly to be worshipped. 3. That piety and virtue must repent of our sins, and if we do so, God will are the principal part of his worship. 4. That we pardon them. 5. That good men are rewarded, and times expresses it, both here and hereafter. bad men punished, in a future state; or, as he somereprinting the work at London in 1645, he added two tracts, De Causis Errorum [Of the Causes of Error'], and De Religione Laici [Of the Religion of a Layman']; and soon afterwards he published another book, entitled De Religione Gentilium, Errorumque apud eos Causis, of which an English translation appeared in 1705, entitled 'The Ancient Religion of the Gentiles, and Cause of their Errors,

a

In

Considered.' The treatise 'De Veritate' was answered by the French philosopher Gassendi, and numerous replies have appeared in England. Lord Herbert wrote History of the Life and Reign of King Henry VIII., which was not printed till 1649, the year after his death. It is termed by Lord Orford 'a masterpiece *Second Preliminary Dissertation to Encyclopædia Britannica, p. 318.

+ Leland's View of the Deistical Writers, Letter II.

of historic biography;' and in Bishop Nicolson's
opinion, the author has acquitted himself with the
like reputation as Lord Chancellor Bacon gained by
the Life of Henry VII, having, in the polite and
martial part, been admirably exact, from the best
records that remain.' He has been accused, how
ever, of partiality to the tyrannical monarch whose
actions he relates, and of having produced rather a
panegyric, or an apology, than a fair and judicious
representation. As to style, the work is considered
one of the best old specimens of historical compo-
sition in the language, being manly and vigorous,
and unsullied by the quaintness and pedantry of the
age. Lord Herbert is remarkable also as the earliest
of our autobiographers. The memoirs which he left
of his own life were first printed in 1764, and have
ever since been popular. In the following extract,
there is evidence of the singular fact, that though he
conceived revelation unnecessary in a religious point
of view, he seriously looked for a communication of
the Divine will as to the publication or suppression
of his principal work :-
:-

[Sir Thomas More's Resignation of the Great Seal.] Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England, after divers suits to be discharged of his place (which he had held two years and a-half), did at length by the king's good leave resign it. The example whereof being rare, will give me occasion to speak more particularly of him. Sir Thomas More, a person of sharp wit, and endued besides with excellent parts of learning (as his works may testify), was yet (out of I know not what natural facetiousness) given so much to jesting, that it detracted no little from the gravity and importance of his place, which, though generally noted and disliked, I do not think was enough to make him give it over in that merriment we shall find anon, or retire to a private life. Neither can I believe him so much addicted to his private opinions as to detest all other governments but his own Utopia, so that it is probable some vehement desire to follow his book, or secret offence taken against some person tended marriage, or the like, might be accounted) or matter (among which perchance the king's new inoccasioned this strange counsel; though, yet, I find no My book, De Veritate, prout distinguitur à Reve- reason pretended for it, but infirmity and want of latione Verisimili, Possibili, et à Falso, having been health. Our king hereupon taking the seal, and givbegun by me in England, and formed there in all its ing it, together with the order of knighthood, to principal parts, was about this time finished; all the Thomas Audeley, speaker of the Lower House, Sir spare hours which I could get from my visits and Thomas More, without acquainting any body with negotiations being employed to perfect this work, what he had done, repairs to his family at Chelsea, which was no sooner done, but that I communicated where, after a mass celebrated the next day in the it to Hugo Grotius, that great scholar, who, having church, he comes to his lady's pew, with his hat in escaped his prison in the Low Countries, came into his hand (an office formerly done by one of his gentleFrance, and was much welcomed by me and Monsieur men), and says, Madam, my lord is gone.' But she Tieleners also, one of the greatest scholars of his time, thinking this at first to be but one of his jests, was little moved, till he told her sadly, he had given up who, after they had perused it, and given it more commendations than it is fit for me to repeat, exthe great seal; whereupon she speaking some pashorted me earnestly to print and publish it; howbeit, sionate words, he called his daughters then present to as the frame of my whole book was so different from see if they could not spy some fault about their anything which had been written heretofore, I found mother's dressing; but they after search saying they I must either renounce the authority of all that had could find none, he replied, Do you not perceive that written formerly concerning the method of finding out your mother's nose standeth somewhat awry ?-of truth, and consequently insist upon my own way, or which jeer the provoked lady was so sensible, that she hazard myself to a general censure, concerning the went from him in a rage. Shortly after, he acquainted whole argument of my book; I must confess it did not his servants with what he had done, dismissing them a little animate me, that the two great persons above- also to the attendance of some other great personages, mentioned did so highly value it, yet, as I knew it to whom he had recommended them. For his fool, he would meet with much opposition, I did consider bestowed him on the lord mayor during his office, and whether it was not better for me a while to suppress afterwards on his successors in that charge. And now it. Being thus doubtful in my chamber, one fair day coming to himself, he began to consider how much he in the summer, my casement being open towards the had left, and finding that it was not above one hunsouth, the sun shining clear, and no wind stirring, I dred pounds yearly in lands, besides some money, he took my book De Veritate' in my hand, and, kneel-advised with his daughters how to live together. But ing on my knees, devoutly said these words:

O thou eternal God, author of the light which now shines upon me, and giver of all inward illuminations, I do beseech thee, of thy infinite goodness, to pardon a greater request than a sinner ought to make; I am not satisfied enough whether I shall publish this book De Veritate; if it be for thy glory, I beseech thee give me some sign from heaven; I shall suppress it.'

not,

I had no sooner spoken these words, but a loud, though yet gentle noise, came from the heavens (for it was like nothing on earth), which did so comfort and cheer me, that I took my petition as granted, and that I had the sign I demanded, whereupon also I resolved to print my book.

This, how strange soever it may seem, I protest before the eternal God is true, neither am I any way superstitiously deceived herein, since I did not only clearly hear the noise, but in the serenest sky that ever I saw, being without all cloud, did to my thinking see the place from whence it came.

As a sample of his 'Life of Henry VIII.,' take his account of

the grieved gentlewomen (who knew not what to reply, or indeed how to take these jests) remaining astonished, he says, ' We will begin with the slender hold out, we will take such commons as they have at diet of the students of the law, and if that will not Oxford; which yet if our purse will not stretch to maintain, for our last refuge we will go a-begging, and at every man's door sing together a Salve Regina to get alms. But these jests were thought to have in them more levity, than to be taken everywhere for current; he might have quitted his dignity without using such sarcasms, and betaken himself to a more retired and quiet life, without making them or himself contemptible. And certainly whatsoever he intended hereby, his family so little understood his meaning, that they needed some more serious instructions. So that I cannot persuade myself for all this talk, that so excellent a person would omit at fit times to give his family that sober account of his relinquishing this place, which I find he did to the Archbishop Warham, Erasmus, and others.

TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE.

One of the most important literary undertak

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ings of this era was the execution of the present authorised translation of the Bible. At the great conference held in 1604 at Hampton Court, between the established and puritan clergy, the version of Scripture then existing was generally disapproved of, and the king consequently appointed fifty-four men, many of whom were eminent as Hebrew and Greek scholars, to commence a new translation. In 1607, forty-seven of the number met, in six parties, at Oxford, Cambridge, and Westminster, and proceeded to their task, a certain portion of Scripture being assigned to each. Every individual of each division, in the first place, translated the portion assigned to the division, all of which translations were collected; and when each party had determined on the construction of its part, it was proposed to the other divisions for general approbation. When they met together, one read the new version, whilst all the rest held in their hands either copies of the original, or some valuable version; and on any one objecting to a passage, the reader stopped till it was agreed upon. The result was published in 1611, and has ever since been reputed as a translation generally faithful, and an excellent specimen of the language of the time. Being universally read by all ranks of the people, it has contributed most essentially to give stability and uniformity to the English tongue.

KING JAMES I.

that such devilish arts have been and are: the other, what exact trial and severe punishment they merit: and therefore reason I, what kind of things are possible to be performed in these arts, and by what natural causes they may be. Not that I touch every particular thing of the devil's power, for that were infinite: but only, to speak scholasticly (since this cannot be spoken in our language), I reason upon genus, leaving species and differentia to be comprehended therein. As, for example, speaking of the power of magicians in the first book and sixth chapter, I say that they can suddenly cause be brought unto them all kinds of dainty dishes by their familiar spirit: since as a thief he delights to steal, and as a spirit he can subtilly and suddenly enough transport the same. Now, under this genus may be comprehended all particulars depending thereupon; such as the bringing wine out of a wall (as we have heard oft to have been practised) and such others; which particulars are sufficiently proved by the reasons of the general.

[How Witches Travel.]

Philomathes. But by what way say they, or think ye it possible, they can come to these unlawful conventions?

Epistemon. There is the thing which I esteem their senses to be deluded in, and, though they lie not in confessing of it, because they think it to be true, yet not to be so in substance or effect, for they say, that KING JAMES was himself an author, but his works ing of their master, or to the putting in practice any by divers means they may convene either to the adorare now considered merely as curiosities. His most service of his committed unto their charge; one way is celebrated productions are the Basilicon Doron, Da-natural, which is natural riding, going, or sailing, at monology, and A Counterblast to Tobacco. The first was written, for the instruction of his son Prince Henry, a short time before the union of the crowns, and seems not to have been originally intended for the press. In the Dæmonology,' the British Solomon displays his wisdom and learning in maintaining the existence and criminality of witches, and discussing the manner in which their feats are performed. Our readers will be amused by the following extracts from this performance, the first of which is from the preface:

[Sorcery and Witchcraft.]

The fearful abounding at this time in this country of these detestable slaves of the devil, the witches or enchanters, hath moved me (beloved reader) to despatch in post this following treatise of mine, not in any wise (as I protest) to serve for a show of my learning and ingine, but only, moved of conscience, to press thereby, so far as I can, to resolve the doubting hearts of many; both that such assaults of Sathan are most certainly practised, and that the instruments thereof merits most severely to be punished: against the damnable opinions of two principally in our age, whereof the one called Scot, an Englishman, is not ashamed in public print to deny that there can be such a thing as witchcraft; and so maintains the old error of the Sadducees in denying of spirits. The other called Wierus, a German physician, sets out a public apology for all these crafts-folks, whereby, procuring for their impunity, he plainly bewrays himself to have been one of that profession. And for to make this treatise the more pleasant and facile, I have put it in form of a dialogue, which I have divided into three books: the first speaking of magic in general, and necromancy in special: the second, of sorcery and witchcraft: and the third contains a discourse of all these kinds of spirits, and spectres that appears and troubles persons: together with a conclusion of the whole work. My intention in this labour is only to prove two things, as I have already said: the one,

what hour their master comes and advertises them. And this way may be easily believed. Another way is somewhat more strange, and yet it is possible to be true: which is by being carried by the force of the spirit which is their conductor, either above the earth or above the sea, swiftly, to the place where they are to meet: which I am persuaded to be likewise possible, in respect that as Habakkuk was carried by the angel in that form to the den where Daniel lay, so think I the devil will be ready to imitate God, as well in that as in other things: which is much more possible to him to do, being a spirit, than to a mighty wind, being but a natural meteor, to transport from one place in practice. But in this violent form they cannot be to another a solid body as is commonly and daily seen carried but a short bounds, agreeing with the space that they may retain their breath: for if it were longer, their breath could not remain unextinguished, their body being carried in such a violent and forcible his life is but in peril, according to the hard or soft manner, as, by example, if one fall off a small height, lighting; but if one fall from a high and stayl rock, fore he can win? to the earth, as is oft seen by experihis breath will be forcibly banished from the body beence. And in this transporting they say themselves, that they are invisible to any other, except amongst themselves. For if the devil may form what kind of impressions he pleases in the air, as I have said before, speaking of magic, why may he not far easier thicken and obscure so the air that is next about them, by contracting it strait together, that the beams of any other man's eyes cannot pierce through the same, to see

them?

But the third way of their coming to their conventions is that wherein I think them deluded: for some of them saith that, being transformed in the likeness of a little beast or fowl, they will come and pierce through whatsoever house or church, though all ordinary passages be closed, by whatsoever open the air may enter in at. And some saith, that their bodies lying still, as in an ecstacy, their spirits will be

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