rum_, _quid non sint, quam quid sint_, our subtle
schoolmen, Cardans, Scaligers, profound Thomists, Fracastoriana and
Ferneliana _acies_, are weak, dry, obscure, defective in these mysteries,
and all our quickest wits, as an owl's eyes at the sun's light, wax dull,
and are not sufficient to apprehend them; yet, as in the rest, I will
adventure to say something to this point. In former times, as we read, Acts
xxiii., the Sadducees denied that there were any such spirits, devils, or
angels. So did Galen the physician, the Peripatetics, even Aristotle
himself, as Pomponatius stoutly maintains, and Scaliger in some sort
grants. Though Dandinus the Jesuit, _com. in lib. 2. de anima_, stiffly
denies it; _substantiae separatae_ and intelligences, are the same which
Christians call angels, and Platonists devils, for they name all the
spirits, _daemones_, be they good or bad angels, as Julius Pollux
_Onomasticon, lib. 1. cap. 1._ observes. Epicures and atheists are of the
same mind in general, because they never saw them. Plato, Plotinus,
Porphyrius, Jamblichus, Proclus, insisting in the steps of Trismegistus,
Pythagoras and Socrates, make no doubt of it: nor Stoics, but that there
are such spirits, though much erring from the truth. Concerning the first
beginning of them, the [1120]Talmudists say that Adam had a wife called
Lilis, before he married Eve, and of her he begat nothing but devils. The
Turks' [1121]Alcoran is altogether as absurd and ridiculous in this point:
but the Scripture informs us Christians, how Lucifer, the chief of them,
with his associates, [1122]fell from heaven for his pride and ambition;
created of God, placed in heaven, and sometimes an angel of light, now cast
down into the lower aerial sublunary parts, or into hell, "and delivered
into chains of darkness (2 Pet. ii. 4.) to be kept unto damnation."

_Nature of Devils._] There is a foolish opinion which some hold, that they
are the souls of men departed, good and more noble were deified, the baser
grovelled on the ground, or in the lower parts, and were devils, the which
with Tertullian, Porphyrius the philosopher, M. Tyrius, _ser. 27_
maintains. "These spirits," he [1123]saith, "which we call angels and
devils, are nought but souls of men departed, which either through love and
pity of their friends yet living, help and assist them, or else persecute
their enemies, whom they hated," as Dido threatened to persecute Aeneas:

"Omnibus umbra locis a