edibly reported, with the spirits of the
air, and devils of hell themselves, who are as much enamoured and dote (if
I may use that word) as any other creatures whatsoever. For if those
stories be true that are written of incubus and succubus, of nymphs,
lascivious fauns, satyrs, and those heathen gods which were devils, those
lascivious Telchines, of whom the Platonists tell so many fables; or those
familiar meetings in our days, and company of witches and devils, there is
some probability for it. I know that Biarmannus, Wierus, _lib. 1. cap. 19.
et 24._ and some others stoutly deny it, that the devil hath any carnal
copulation with women, that the devil takes no pleasure in such facts, they
be mere fantasies, all such relations of incubi, succubi, lies and tales;
but Austin, _lib. 15. de civit. Dei_. doth acknowledge it: Erastus _de
Lamiis_, Jacobus Sprenger and his colleagues, &c. [4675] Zanchius, _cap.
16. lib. 4. de oper. Dei_. Dandinus, _in Arist. de Anima, lib. 2. text. 29.
com. 30._ Bodin, _lib. 2. cap. 7._ and Paracelsus, a great champion of this
tenet amongst the rest, which give sundry peculiar instances, by many
testimonies, proofs, and confessions evince it. Hector Boethius, in his
Scottish history, hath three or four such examples, which Cardan confirms
out of him, _lib. 16. cap. 43._ of such as have had familiar company many
years with them, and that in the habit of men and women Philostratus in his
fourth book _de vita Apollonii_, hath a memorable instance in this kind,
which I may not omit, of one Menippus Lycius, a young man twenty-five years
of age, that going between Cenchreas and Corinth, met such a phantasm in
the habit of a fair gentlewoman, which taking him by the hand, carried him
home to her house in the suburbs of Corinth, and told him she was a
Phoenician by birth, and if he would tarry with her, [4676]"he should hear
her sing and play, and drink such wine as never any drank, and no man
should molest him; but she being fair and lovely would live and die with
him, that was fair and lovely to behold." The young man a philosopher,
otherwise staid and discreet, able to moderate his passions, though not
this of love, tarried with her awhile to his great content, and at last
married her, to whose wedding, amongst other guests, came Apollonius, who,
by some probable conjectures, found her out to be a serpent, a lamia, and
that all her furniture was like Tantalus's gold described by Homer, no
substance,