s in Egypt, by Cairo, as well to confirm this
as the resurrection, mentioned by [3044]Kornmannus _mirac. mort. lib. 1.
cap. 30._ Camerarius _oper. suc. cap. 37._ Bredenbachius _pereg. ter.
sanct._ and some others, "where once a year dead bodies arise about March,
and walk, after awhile hide themselves again: thousands of people come
yearly to see them." But these and such like testimonies others reject, as
fables, illusions of spirits, and they will have no such local known place,
more than Styx or Phlegethon, Pluto's court, or that poetical _Infernus_,
where Homer's soul was seen hanging on a tree, &c., to which they ferried
over in Charon's boat, or went down at Hermione in Greece, _compendiaria ad
Infernos via_, which is the shortest cut, _quia nullum a mortuis naulum eo
loci exposcunt_, (saith [3045]Gerbelius) and besides there were no fees to
be paid. Well then, is it hell, or purgatory, as Bellarmine: or _Limbus
patrum_, as Gallucius will, and as Rusca will (for they have made maps of
it) [3046]or Ignatius parler? Virgil, sometimes bishop of Saltburg (as
Aventinus _anno_ 745 relates) by Bonifacius bishop of Mentz was therefore
called in question, because he held antipodes (which they made a doubt
whether Christ died for) and so by that means took away the seat of hell,
or so contracted it, that it could bear no proportion to heaven, and
contradicted that opinion of Austin, Basil, Lactantius that held the earth
round as a trencher (whom Acosta and common experience more largely
confute) but not as a ball; and Jerusalem where Christ died the middle of
it; or Delos, as the fabulous Greeks feigned: because when Jupiter let two
eagles loose, to fly from the world's ends east and west, they met at
Delos. But that scruple of Bonifacius is now quite taken away by our latter
divines: Franciscus Ribera, _in cap. 14. Apocalyps._ will have hell a
material and local fire in the centre of the earth, 200 Italian miles in
diameter, as he defines it out of those words, _Exivit sanguis de
terra--per stadia mille sexcenta_, &c. But Lessius _lib. 13. de moribus
divinis, cap. 24._ will have this local hell far less, one Dutch mile in
diameter, all filled with fire and brimstone: because, as he there
demonstrates, that space, cubically multiplied, will make a sphere able to
hold eight hundred thousand millions of damned bodies (allowing each body
six foot square) which will abundantly suffice; _Cum cerium sit, inquit,
facta subductione, n