plainly affirm he cannot: this I am sure is the mannerliest proposition, wherein, notwithstanding, I hold no paradox. For strictly his power is the same with his will, and they both with all the rest do make but one God.

XXVIII. Therefore that miracles have been, I do believe, that they may yet be wrought by the living, I do not deny; but have no confidence in those which are fathered on the dead; and this hath ever made me suspect the efficacy of relics, to examine the bones, question the habits and appurtenances of saints, and even of Christ himself. I cannot conceive why the cross that Helena found, and whereon Christ himself died, should have power to restore others unto life: I excuse not Constantine from a fall off his horse, or a mischief from his enemies, upon the wearing those nails on his bridle, which our Saviour bore upon the cross in his hands: I compute among your piæ fraudes, nor many degrees before consecrated swords and roses, that which Baldwyn king of Jerusalem returned the Genovese for their cost and pains in his wars, to wit, the ashes of John the Baptist. Those that hold, the sanctity of their souls doth leave behind a tincture and sacred faculty on their bodies, speak naturally of miracles, and do not

6 Hac de re videatur P. Diac. Hist. Miscell.

salve the doubt. Now one reason I tender so little devotion unto relics, is, I think, the slender and doubtful respect I have always held unto antiquities; for that indeed which I admire, is far before antiquity, that is, eternity; and that is, God himself; who though he be styled the ancient of days, cannot receive the adjunct of antiquity, who was before the world, and shall be after it, yet is not older than it; for in his years there is no climacter; his duration is eternity, and far more venerable than antiquity.

XXIX. But above all things, I wonder how the curiosity of wiser heads could pass that great and indisputable miracle, the cessation of oracles'; and

7 There are three opinions touching the manner how the predictions of these oracles were performed: some say by vapour, some by the intelligencies, or influences of the heavens, and others say by the assistance of the devils. Now the indisputable miracle the author speaks of, is, that they ceased upon the coming of Christ: and it is generally so believed; and the oracle of Delphos delivered to Augustus, mentioned by the author in this section, is brought to prove it, which is this:

Me puer Hebræus divos, Deus ipse, gubernans,

Cedere sede jubet, tristemque redire sub orcum;
Aris ergo dehinc tacitus discedite nostris.

But yet it is so far from being true that their cessation was miraculous, that the truth is, there never were any predictions given by those oracles at all.

Milton's opinion is worth quoting

The oracles are dumb

No voice or hideous hum

in what swoon their reasons lay, to content them-
selves, and sit down with such a far-fetched and
ridiculous reason as Plutarch allegeth for it.
The Jews, that can believe the supernatural solstice
of the sun in the days of Joshua, have yet the
impudence to deny the eclipse, which every pagan
confessed at his death: but for this it is evident
beyond all contradiction, the devil himself con-
fessed it. Certainly it is not warrantable curiosity,
to examine the verity of scripture by the concord-
ance of human history, or seek to confirm the
chronology of Hester or Daniel, by the authority
of Magasthenes or Herodotus, I confess, I have
had an unhappy curiosity this way, till I laughed
myself out of it with a piece of Justin, where he
delivers, that the children of Israel for being
scabbed were banished out of Egypt. And truly
since I have understood the occurrences of the
world, and know in what counterfeiting shapes, and
deceitful vizards times present represent on the
stage things past; I do believe them little more
than things to come.
Some have been of my

Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving
Apollo from his shrine

Can no more divine,

With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving:
No nighly trance or breathed spell,

Inspires the pale-eyed Priest from the prophetic cell.

In his oracle to Augustus.

Hymn on the Nativity.

opinion, and endeavour to write the history of their own lives; wherein Moses hath outgone them all, and left not only the story of his life, but as some will have it, of his death also.

XXX. It is a riddle to me, how this story of oracles hath not wormed out of the world that doubtful conceit of spirits and witches; how so many learned heads should so far forget their metaphysics, and destroy the ladder and scale of creatures, as to question the existence of spirits. For my part, I have ever believed, and do now know, that there are witches: they that doubt of these, do not only deny them, but spirits; and are obliquely, and upon consequence a sort not of infidels, but atheists. Those that to confute their incredulity desire to see apparitions, shall questionless never behold any, nor have the power to be so much as witches; the devil hath them already in a heresy as capital as witchcraft; and to appear to them, were but to convert them. Of all the delusions wherewith he deceives mortality, there is not any that puzzleth me more than the legerdemain of changelings. I do not credit those transforma

9 Pliny saith, so it fared with Nero, who was so hot in pursuit of the magic arts, that he did dedicate himself wholly to it, and yet could never satisfy himself in that kind, though he got all the cunning men he could from the east, for that purpose. Plin. l. iii. Nat. Hist. c. 1.

F

e that unites and ties the scattered and divided viduals into one species, why may there not be that mates them all? However, I am sure there spirit that plays within us, yet makes part in us; and that is, the Spirit of God, the fe and scintillation of that noble and mighty essence which is the life and radical heat of spirits, and those essences that know not the virtue of the s; a fire quite contrary to the fire of hell: this is that gentle heat that brooded on the waters, and six days had the world; this is that irrain that dies the mists of hell, the clouds of , fear, so despair; and preserves the in of the mind in serenity: whatsoever feels the warm gale, and gentle ventilation of this hough I feel his pulse I dare not s truly without this to me there is no heat de tropic; nor any though I dwelt in

deceitful

stage thin

than thing

Can no more With hollow No nighly tran Inspires the pale

* In his oracle to Aug