matter Iulian was trained up in Christianity and professed it but stealing to magicall Masters they so perverted him with their Magicall sophistry as that they utterly perverted him and that made him as soon as he durst appeare in his own colours apostate or fall away from it Ecebolius the Sophister who was one of Iulians Tutors while Constantius raigned he seemed very ardently to embrace the Christian faith but after that Iulian had obtained the Empire he presently conformed to those opinions and manners of the Emperour which he and his light had infused into him But Iulian being dead he pretended again to professe the Christian Religion and cast himselfe prostrate at the doore of the Church out of which he was excommunicated crying out to such as past by tread me under feet as unsavory salt yet after all this remained light and unconstant in his religion to an utter apostasie at the last Porphyrius that notable contemplator in Magick and practitioner also who of Christian turn'd Platonist and Pagan upon this occasion Certaine Christians of Caesarea Palestinae having reproved him sharply some say scourged him for the notorious scandall as well of his manners as opinions he indigning to be thus dealt withall quite deserted Christianity became a capitall enemy thereunto and wrote divers cursed books against Christian Religion besides those wherein he promoted magicall Philosophy and Paganisme wherein he blasphemed God and Christ and the Holy Ghost depraved and wrested the Scriptures calumniated the Prophets and Apostles and slandered sundry Fathers Doctors and Confessours of the Primitive Church Aquila making some flourishes in the Christian profession but not forsaking his former corrupt habit in the vanities of Astrologie but still abhorring the superstitious positions of Nativities was therefore reprehended by the orthodox teachers of those times But instead of amending those his pernicious errors he perversly opposed them even against the truth it selfe For which being expelled the Church he renounced Christianity turned Proselyte and became a circumcised Iow Pope Alexander the third they say suspended a Priest from his office for the space of a whole yeere for but consulting with an Astrologer about a thest that was committed in the Church Eleusius a Novatian Bishop and one who himselfe had sacrificed to Fortune was depriued of his Bishoprick for the baptizing of Heraclius a presaging Priest of Hercules and admitting him to the degree of a Deacon At Laodicea one Epiphanius a Sophister about to recite an Ode in the honour of Bacchus began to declame hence ye prophane and not initiated to the sacred Bacehanals Notwithstanding many of the Christians staid still as being taken with the fame of the Rhetorician Amongst the rest were the two Apollinares the father and the sonne both Clerks one a Presbiter the other a Lector Of which Theodorus the Bishop of Laodicea being advertised he reasonably chid the lay people and so pardoned them But as for the Apollinares after long sharp and publique rebuke he interdicted them the Church and communion of Christians Anatolius very familiar to Gregorius the Bishop being found to have sacrificed to Idols at Antioch and the prefect of the East being but too negligent and remisse in judging him for it the people began to rise in tumult and to lay hands upon Gregory himselfe whom they also impeached of Idolatry but unjustly Hereupon by the command of Tiberius the Emperour him that succeeded Iustin Anatolius was called in question and not having whereof to accuse Gregory at the acclamation of the people who could not endure such a wickednesse unpunished he was not only excluded the Church but condemned to the beasts 15. Of those that have retracted recanted repented of the study practice and consult of Magick and Astrologie and that either fruit fully or unfruit fully desperately or contritely MAnasseh was a Magician for he observed times and used inch auntments used witcherast and dealt with a familiar spirit and with wizzards 2 Chron. 33.6 yet we believe that he truly and unfainedly repented and although his prayer be Apecryphall for be besought the Lord his God and humbled himselfe greatly before the God of his father and prayed unto him and he was entreated of him and heard his supplication Then Manasseh knew that the Lord be was God Vers 12 13. Neither doe we make any doubt of the hearty and effectuall repentance of those Exercists Acts 19.17 18. because feare fell on them all and the name of the Lord Iesus was magnified and many that believed came and confessed and shewed their deeds many also of them which used curious arts brought their books together and burned them before all men So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed The like we believe of the Damsell Act. 16.16 17 18. because possessed with a spirit of divination passive rather then active the divel divining by her rather then she by the Divel The same followed Paul and us and cried saying these men are the servants of the most high God which shew unto us the way of salvation A good confession in all respects take it to be the Damsels and not the Divels speech giving God and his Ministers their due and yet claming their own interest withall But as for Simon Magus his repenting pray ye to the Lord for me that none of these things which ye have spoken come upon me Acts 8. 24. who can judge it to be other then false and fruitlesse For he was terrified onely with an apprehension of the punishment not of the sin and put off that duty to others which he should have exercised himselfe Tiberius importunate to know who should be his successor in the Empire it was answered even he that should first come to him the next morning Hereupon he gave order to his Tutor to bring his Nephew Tiberius to him very early the next day and the day appearing commanded Euodus ignorant of his intent and desire to goe out and bring in to him the first youth that he met which fell out to be Caius which when Tiberius saw he was infinitely troubled exceedingly beshrewing himselfe that he had sought after any Augurie or presage at all For whereas he might have lived and died a great deale more contentedly had he been altogether ignorant of things future their fore-knowledge now served onely to adde both to the miseries of his life and death After the death of Caesar which was said to follow the fatidicall prediction of Spurina the Mathematician the people lamented and wisht that the cursed Diviner had rather lost his skill then that a father of his Countrey should so have lost his life Nero was himselfe held to be a great Mag astro-mancer and wanted neither wit nor will nor wealth nor Tutors nor instruments nor study nor credulity yet for all this confessed that he never found any argument of truth nor experiment of reality in magicall operation which made him at last abdicate and renounce it reject and contemne it and abhorre
false calumny and barbarous cruelty raised and maintained thirty yeeres persecution against the Christians devising and inflicting horried tortures upon Abdas or Audas a Bishop upon Benjamin a Deacon and also upon Hormisda a Nobleman Theoteclinus a Magician of Antioch under Maximinus by magicall force caused an Image of Iupiter to poure forth Oracles and such they were as served to whet on the Emperours persecution and to exasperate the hatred of the Citizens against the Christians 11. Of the divining envy dissimulation calumny blasphemy and enmity not onely against Christian Religion but even against Christ himselfe MIlesian Apollo being consulted about Christ whether he was God or man gave this answer That he was mortall according to flesh or body wise in portentous or monstrous workes but being apprehended by armes under Chaldean Judges with nailes and clubs he made a bitter end Upon which Lactantius his comment is That although the Oracle as it was forced began to speak truth yet it did it so subtilly and perversely as with intent to deceive the consulter being altogether ignorant of the mystery of God and man and so seems to deny him to be God by confessing him to be man But in that it acknowledgeth him to be mortall according to the flesh it is not inconsequent although against the mind of the Oracle but that he was immortall and God neverthelesse according to the Spirit And why must he needs make mention of the flesh when as it was enough to say him mortall but being pressed with truth he could not deny the thing to be as it was as he also was forced to confesse him to be wise And what saies Apollo to himselfe If he be wise then is his doctrine wisdome and no other and they are therefore wise that follow it and no other Why then doe their vulgar account us vain and foolish since we follow a master and Teacher wise by their Oraculous gods own confession In that he saith that he did portentous works by which he merited the faith of a Godhead he seems to assent unto us because he saith him to doe those very things which rightly understood and believed we glory in Neverthelesse he recollects himselfe and returnes to his daemonicall frauds of calumny and blasphemy For albeit he spake some truth as necessitated yet he seems to be a betrayer of himselfe and the gods in as much as he would have enviously concealed through an inimicall and deceiving lie that which the truth partly wrung from him And therefore he saith him to have done wonderfull workes but he meant it should be understood not by a divine but by a magicall or divining power But whereas he saith further that he was apprehended under Chaldaean Judges c. I demand hereupon whether they were Chaldeans by nature or by profession The first is not to be conceded as concerning Herod and Pilat nor yet properly as touching Annas and Caiaphas and therefore since he will needs call them Chaldeans the latter is rather to be supposed it is not strange to be believed that any one of them might be of the Chaldean profession or addicted to it And why might not the Chaldaeanizing Oracle be drawn to confesse so much against it selfe And might it not be one end of the Ecclipse at his passion to make even all the Chaldaeanizing Astrologers to confesse with some of their fellows that it was no other but the God of nature that now suffered One asking Apollo what God he might appease whereby to recall his wife from Christianity The Oracle gave this answer as St. Augustine cites it from Porphyrius a great enemy of Christ and Christians Sooner mayst thou write in water or fly in the ayre like a bird then remove the opinion of thy impious wife let her goe on as she will and sing a dead God in vaine fallacies and false lamentations whom the Judge rightly determining an ill death hath ended This Porphyrius cites and expounds blasphemously as if Christ died deservedly from the just sentence of his Judges But St. Augustine conceives Apollo spake not thus but his vaticinating Diviner and yet not he but this magicall calumniator that durst blaspheme above the devill himselfe For Apollo himselfe durst not but speak well of him saying he was such a God and King as made the heavens the earth and Sea and the deep things of Hell to tremble of whom both he and his fellow Daemons were afraid Such also was the answer of Hecate concerning Christ and so were all the rest of them Among some forced and dissembled truths abundance of blasphemy and calumny against Christ and Christian religion The Pythian Oracle being consulted again and again by the Athenians what religion was best to be set up would stil answer their Fathers or Countries customes rites or ceremonies Not but that he would false religion in all variety but that he feared a change of religion might make way to reformation of Christianity 12. Magicians Astrologers Diviners Diabolically praedicting maliciously envying malefically imprecating and venefically murdering such as inhibited opposed confuted contradicted them or their arts That is either by violence treachery or sorcery seeking and venturing their adversaries destruction whether they were Kings or Priests Christians or Persians VItellius having commanded by his Edicts that the Chaldeans Mathematicians Magicians judiciall Astrologers and Diviners should depart the City of Rome and be banished all Italy within the Kalends of October Thereupon the Chaldaeans set up an imprecatory and devotory libell threatning that Vitellius Germanicus by the day of the same Kalends should be no where or not in being And yet not that by Fate so much as vaticinall malesice Domitian having decreed the banishment of the Astologers although he much presumed to be an Astrologer or Diviner himselfe they likewise casting his constellation told him what time he should die Ascletarion the Mathematician especially threatned his death to his own face At which Domitian angerly demanded what death found he by his art that he should die himselfe He answered that he himselfe should be eaten up of dogs which saith the story fell out as prodigiously as inevitably Now those dogs being divels without doubt it was easie for the Divell to suggest unto the Astrologer what he meant to effect himselfe so easie is it for Astrologers to predict those things whereof they intend to be the instruments or by their effascinating predictions to instigate others to commit And if they understood not these very things by diabolicall instinct to satisfie their tempting invocations how should Apellonius Tyanaeus disputing in the Schooles at Ephesus stop on a sudden with defixed eyes and distracted conntenance cry out at the very instant that Domitian was slaine at Rome well done Stephanus kill the Tyrant that Tyrant Domitian is even now wounded slayne dead Well might a Magician be advised of the act when it was a soothsaying divination that provoked to doe the deed Iustine Martyr was slain by the treachery of
the terrible portent but other more skilful heruspicks were for the intercession because the Images weeping portended prosperous things Proteus is a proverb of versatile mutability And of him that part of story which is least fabulous is this Proteus was an Astrologicall magician and is said therefore to transforme himselfe into so many shapes because of his various and contrarious opinions vaticinations predictions and prestigious prankes A fit emblem of all such that are seldome like themselves Colophonius Xenophanes one who confessed there to be Gods denied all divination All the rest besides Epicurus babling about the nature of the Gods approved of divination although not after one way Dicaearchus the Peripatetick took away all other kind of divination and onely left those of Dreams and Fury And besides those Cratippus rejected all the rest Panaetius indeed durst not deny the power of divining altogether yet he said he doubted of it Xenophon took all kinds of divination quite away The chiefe articles that were objected against Socrates were contempt and rejection of Oracles Eudoxus Gnidius was wont to say that the Chaldaeans were by no means to be credited in their observations or predictions upon the lives and fortunes of men from the day and houre of their nativity Two men before their contest at the Olympick games dreamed the like dream viz. that they were drawn by four swift coursers in a Chariot they both consulted one Prophet and he prophecied to the one that he should winne and to the other that he should lose the prize One told Vitellius that the circles which appeared in the waters like crownes were abodes of Empire another of them boded thereupon that either they signified no such thing or else but the instability thereof The fame is that Iulian on a certaine time inspecting the entrayles there appeared in them the signe of the Crosse invironed with a crown Some that partooke of the divination were cast into a feare hereat that the Christian Religion should gather strength and that the doctrine of Christ should be perpetuall taking it for a signe both of victory and eternity But the chiefe divining Artist among them bad the Emperour be of good cheere for the victimes portended prosperous things according to his own desire because the marke of the Christian religion was circumscribed and coarcted as a token that it should have no large spreading in the world Iulian again meditating warre against the Persians sent to the Oracles at Delphos Delos and Dodona and they all consented to incourage him promising him undoubted successe But there was an old prophecy of former diviners that utterly thwarted them all for it foretold that it should be exitiall to the Emperour and people of Rome whensoever he passed with his army beyond the River Euphrates and the City Ctesiphon And thereabouts was Iulian slain and his army overthrown 22. Of jugling predictions forged divinations and ludibrious mock-charms as operative as the rest and all alike effectuall not from themselves but from the Agents or Patients superstition and credulity SErtorius a notable Captaine was wont to faine visions dreams and divinations and pretended himselfe to be informed of many future events by a white Hinde that a skilfull friend had sent him to be his instructor in those mysteries and by these very devices kept his Souldiers in order and courage and so atchieved many notable feates and victories Two Countrey fellows came to Vespasian intreating his helpe in their cure as the Oracle of Serapis had shewed unto them One of them was blind and he was told that if Vespasian did but spit in his eyes that should restore his sight The other was lame of his thighs and he was told he should be cured if Vespasian did but touch the part affected with his heele The good Emperour was somewhat scrupulous to make experiment of a thing so vaine and improbable but at the importunity of his friends and earnest suite of the parties he was drawn to doe as the Oracle or vision had directed and the effect presently followed thereupon Namely upon their superstition and the divels illusion for the Serapidane Divel was a raid that his divining Oracle would fall to the ground now that Christianity began somewhat to appeare in Aegypt and therefore he sent his patients to implore the help of Vespasian that by the rarity of the miracle he might hold up the majesty of the Oracle Alexanders souldiers being greatly terrified and disheartned because of a bloody Ecclipse of the Moon hereupon he secure of all events called for the Aegyptian presagers and commanded them to expresse their skill They concealed the cause of the Ecclipse and their own suspicions from the common sort but forged this interpretation That the Sunne was over the Greekes and the Moon over the Persians and as often as she was in an Ecclipse did portend the slaughter and ruin of that Nation The credulous souldiers hereupon conceived hope went on and prospered Pheron an Aegyptian King had a disease of a strange cause but of a stranger cure He was struck blind for casting a dart into Nilus and so continued for the space of eleven yeeres then consulting the Oracle about his recovery it was answered he must wash his eyes with the urine of a woman that had never known other then her own husband First he made tryall of that of his own wife but it would not doe and of many others more and at last he light of one whereby he recovered his sight And forthwith called all those other women together and burnt them and married that one himselfe whose water was so soveraigne The Dictators Emperours and people of Rome were taught by their augurizing and aruspicall Diviners certaine devotory odes or formes of direfull execration full of barbarismes and prophanenesse that so the imprecating of the one added to the others vaticinating might make the ominating much more forcible and effectuall Erasmus having in familiarity one Bibliopegus a Dane they two being pleasantly disposed together Erasmus jestingly bad him take a knife and open any lease of Homers Iliads and choose any verse on the right side of the lease and he would thence undertake to tell him his fortune Bibliopegus having observed all circumstances very strictly Erasmus began to predict that he should marry a wife very rich but so ill conditioned that he should be forced to desert her And the event of this jest fell out in good earnest Hemingius while he was a young Student in a Logick Lecture recited these verses used in the Schooles Fecane cageti Daphenes gebare Gedaco Gebali stant sed non stant Phebus becas hedas Hereupon he added in jeasting manner that these verses were very effectuall against a Feaver if the severall words were inscribed upon a piece of bread and given to the sick man in order so as to eate every day a piece with the word inscribed Now there hapned to heare him a good honest simple man who not apprehending
labour and keeping holy day on the Jewish Sabbath seeing it is Saturns day Also they think that the fidelity of every one towards men or towards God and profest Religion and secrets of Conscience may be deprehended from part of the Sun and from the third ninth and eleventh houses of heaven and they delivering many rules of foreknowing the thoughts and as they say the intentions of men And they set up the coelestial configurations as the causes of the very miraculous works of divine omnipotence as namely of the universal flood of the Law given by Moses and of the virgins child-birth and they fable that the death of Christ the Redeemer of man-kind was the work of Mars and that Christ himself in his miracles used the election of hours in which the Jews could not hurt him while he went up to Jerusalem and therefore he said to his Disciples diswading him are there not twelve hours of the day They say moreover that whosoever hath Mars happily placed in a new house of heaven he shall by his sole presence expel devils out of the possessed And he that shall make supplication to God the Moon and Jupiter with the Dragons head being conjoyned in the middle heaven shall obtain all things whatsoever he shall ask And further that the felicity of the life to come is bestowed by Jupiter and Saturn And that if any man in his geniture hath Saturn happily constituted in Leo his soul after this life being freed from innumerable miseries shall passe to heaven the first beginning of its original and be applyed to the Gods But for all this to these execrable fopperies and pernicious heresies Petrus Apponensis Roger Bacon Guido Bonatus Arnoldus de nova villa Philosophers and Alyanensis a Cardinal and a Theologue and divers other Doctors of a Christian name not without an infamy of heresie do subscribe yea and dare testifie and defend that they have experienced these for truth But Johannes Picus Mirandula of late yeers hath written against Astrologers in twelve Books and that in so great copiousnesse that scarce any argument hath escaped him as also with so great efficacy so that hitherto neither Lucius Balnutius an eager propugnator of Astrologie nor yet any other defender of this Art could save it from those reasons that Picus hath brought against it For he proveth by most strong arguments it to have been the invention not of men but of Devils Which self-same thing Firmianus saith by which they have endeavoured to abolish all Philosophie Medicine Laws and Religion to the utter extermination of man-kind For first it detracts from the faith of Religion it extenuates miracles it takes away providence while it teaches that all things come to passe by the force of constellations and that they doe depend by a fatal necessity upon the stars Moreover it patronizes vices excusing them as descending from heaven upon us It defiles and overthrows all good Arts especially Philosophie traducing causes from true reasons to fables and Medicine in like manner turning from natural and effectual remedies to vain observations and perverse superstitions destructive both to body and minde Further it utterly undoes Laws manners and whatsoever Arts of humane prudence while it would have Astrologie onely consulted at what time after what maner and by what means any thing is to be done as if it alone drawing its authority over all down from heaven did hold the scepter over life manners and all both publike and private matters and as if all other things were to be reputed vain that did not acknowledge it for patron Indeed an Art most worthy for devils to professe from the first to the deceit of man and dishonour of God Moreover the heresie of the Manichees wholly taking away all liberty of will flowed not elswhere then from the Astrologers false opinion and doctrine of Fate From the same fountain also sprung the heresie of Basilides who pronounced 365. heavens made of one another by succession and similitude and the oftension of these to be the number of the dayes of the yeer or the number of the days of the yeer to be the oftension of these assigning to every one of them certain principles and vertues and Angels and feigning names for them but the chief of them all is Abraxas which name according to the Greek letters containeth in it 365. which namely are the local positions of those heavens commentitiously divised by it These things are therefore shown that ye may know that Astrology is the begetter of hereticks Furthermore as all the most eminent Philosophers do explode this divinatory Astrologie so Moses Esaias Job Jeremias and all the other Prophets of the old Law do detest it And of the Catholike Doctors Augustin censures it as meet to be expelled Christian Religion Hierome disputes it to be a kinde of Idolatry Basil and Cyprian do deride it Chrysostome Eusebius and Lactantius do refute it Gregory Ambrose and Severianus inveigh against it the holy Toletane Councel forbids and damns it also it was anathematized in the Synod of Martin and by Gregory the younger and by Alexander the third Popes and was punished by the civil Laws of the Emperours Among the antient Romans under Tiberius Vitellius Dioclesian Constantine Gratian Valentinian and Theodosius the Emperours it was prohibited the City ejected and punished and by Justinian himself condemned capitally as is manifest in his Code This place admonishes me to speak of the other Arts of divination which yield vaticinations not so much by observation of the coelestials as of inferiour things having a certain shadow or imitation of the coelestials that they being understood ye may the better know this Astrological Tree from which do fall such fruit and from which as a Lernaean Hydra a beast of many heads is generated Amongst the arts therefore that are hasty to divine for their own gain Physiognomy Metoposcopy Chiromancy Aruspicy the Speculatory the Onirocritical which is the interpretation of dreams and the Oracles of the furious here challenge their seat Now all these artifices are of no solid doctrine neither do consist of any certain reasons but inquire of occult things either by fortuitous lot or agnition of spirit or certain appearing conjectures which are taken up from quotidian observations of long time For all these prodigious arts of divination are wont to defend themselves no other way but by the title of experience and to extricate themselves out of the bonds of objections so often as they teach or promise any thing above faith and beside reason Of all which it is thus commanded in the Law There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to passe through the fire or that useth divination or an observer of times or an inchanter or a witch or a charmer or a consulter with familiar spirits or a wizzard or a Necromancer For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord. Physiognomy following from the
one Creseens a dissolute vain-glorious circulatory sophisticall Philosopher because he disputed against and confuted him in that kind of sophistry Picus Mirandula for writing largely soundly and sharply against Astrology was envyously and imprecatingly told by Lucius Bellantius that according to his Astrologicall judgement upon his Nativity he should die in the thirty fourth yeare of his age yet while he formerly disputed for the Mathematicall sciences at large the Astrologers made the Starres to signifie his stupendous living above his yeares It is recorded of Simon Magus that many even of the Heathens observing his praestigiousnesse and branding him for it he soothed them up and pretended a sacrifice and bade all those that had reproached him or his art to a banquet of which they had no sooner eaten but they were all infested and inflicted with divels and diseases A Magician not far from Ihena being upbraided by a neighbour of his a Carpenter with his unlawfull arts and practises pretended to predict some infortunity of his at hand for railing against the profession but wrought it venefically so that the poore man fell suddenly into a strange disease Whereupon begging pardon for offending him or his Art he implored the help of his skill for his release The Magician promised it and to that purpose gave him a certaine root to take in a potion which he had no sooner done but he was taken with most exquisite torments in all parts of which at length he died 13. Of oraculous arts and divinatory artifices silenced and confounded at the presence and by the vertue of wise and holy men and things I Vlian apostatizing from Christianity and being now to be initiated in the Paganish way by the consecration of a praestigious Magician the Divell who was to be present at the solemnity disappeared at the signe of the Crosse which might then be of more vertue because of lesse superstition at which power Iulian was more troubled then he was at the Divels presence But the praestigious pseudomantist excused it and would not have him to think that the divel fled or avoyded the place for feare of it but in hatred to it Iulian again sacrificing to Apollo and no answer being given of any thing whereof he enquired he then demanded of the daemoniacall Priests what might be the cause of such his silence They answered that no answer was given by the Oracle because the Sepulchre of the Martyr Babylas stood so nigh Whereupon he commanded that the Galilaeans for so he called the Christians should come and remove his Sepulchre from thence which they did with great exultation singing even in the eares of the profane Prince Confounded be all they that serve graven Images and that boast themselves of Idols At the incarnation of Ghrist all the divining Oracles of the Panym gods were shut up as the Oracle of Delphos among others was constrained to confesse and so never spake afterwards Wherewith Augustus being afraid caused a great Altar to be erected in the Capitoll signifying that it was the Altar of the Ged the firstborn A jugling impostor carried about a Dragon perswading the people it was Aesculapius saying it would give answers of all that was demanded that whensoever he moved him in any of his circles Oyes was made after the manner of Athens in these termes if any mocker flouter or Christian be here let him goe forth for no prankes could be playd while they were by About the time of Constantine Apollo spake this Oracle not out of the mouth of his Priest as formerly but out of a certaine darke cave or denne viz. that the just which were upon the earth meaning the Christians hindred him from his vaticinating or presaging power Valentinian who was at first somewhat favourable to the Christians was afterwards greatly incensed against them by the Magicians Astrologers and Diviners that urged him to forbid them his house to banish them far away and to put them to the Sword because indeed they were obstacles to their incantations and praestigious practices For there were some of those holy professors that with their very sight and voyce represt all that their diabolicall art and efficacy Thaumaturgus with his companions driven by reason of the night approaching and an hasty shower falling into a Temple where divination was wont to be exercised immediately upon their entrance the Divell gave over his answer and departed the place The next morning after they were gone from thence the Priest of the Temple began his sacrifices to adjure the spirit to his predicting responsals againe who cried out that he could not now have accesse to the place as formerly and all because of his entrance that remained there the last night St. Hierome sayes that upon our Saviours entrance into Aegypt all the Idols there fell down and so their divining arts and offices were undone wherewith they had so long deceived the world And therein he takes the prophecy to be fulfilled Isa 19.1 c. Macarius of Aegypt and Macarius of Alexandria both these holy men were banished into an Isle that had no Christian inhabitant in it They were no sooner entred there but the Devils that had there their Temple or grove and their divining Priest began forthwith to quake for feare Yea the Priests daughter being suddenly obsessed with a fury and crying out why came ye hither to drive ue hence They expelled the Divell out of the Damosell which occasioned the conversion of the Priest and the inhabitants of the whole Isle to the Christian faith The like story is of these two together with Isidorus and the Devils own confession by the tongue of the obstssed Damosell much more large O your power ye servants of Christ every where are we expelled by you out of Cities and Villages Mountaines and Valleys and desart places We had hopes that this strange place of ours might have escaped your presence and power but hither you are driven by your persecutors that you might be a means to drive us hence c. Astyrius by his presence and prayer plainly detected and utterly frustrated the praestigious conveyance of the victimes that in certaine festivals were cast into the enchanted fountaines Apollo himselfe was forced to confesse that the holy men which resided thereabouts were the onely obstacles why he could utter no more his presaging truths and being asked how those kind of men might be discerned he answered by their profession of Iesus Christ 14. Of such as apostated from or were excommunicated out of the Church of Christ because of Magick and Astrologie SImon Magus believed and was baptized and continued with Philip and wondred beholding the miracles and signes which were done Act. 8.13 yet after all this the bond of iniquity the diabolicall compact or magicall covenant had so entangled and insnared him that of sometimes Samaritan sometimes Iewish and for the most part Pagan in his religion he fell utterly away from Christian and had not the least part or lot in that