dero: dabis improbe poenas."

"My angry ghost arising from the deep,
Shall haunt thee waking, and disturb thy sleep;
At least my shade thy punishment shall know,
And Fame shall spread the pleasing news below."

They are (as others suppose) appointed by those higher powers to keep men
from their nativity, and to protect or punish them as they see cause: and
are called _boni et mali Genii_ by the Romans. Heroes, lares, if good,
lemures or larvae if bad, by the stoics, governors of countries, men,
cities, saith [1124]Apuleius, _Deos appellant qui ex hominum numero juste
ac prudenter vitae curriculo gubernato, pro numine, postea ab hominibus
praediti fanis et ceremoniis vulgo admittuntur, ut in Aegypto Osyris_, &c.
_Praestites_, Capella calls them, "which protected particular men as well
as princes," Socrates had his _Daemonium Saturninum et ignium_, which of
all spirits is best, _ad sublimes cogitationes animum erigentem_, as the
Platonists supposed; Plotinus his, and we Christians our assisting angel,
as Andreas Victorellus, a copious writer of this subject, Lodovicus de
La-Cerda, the Jesuit, in his voluminous tract _de Angelo Custode_,
Zanchius, and some divines think. But this absurd tenet of Tyreus, Proclus
confutes at large in his book _de Anima et daemone_.

Psellus [1125], a Christian, and sometimes tutor (saith Cuspinian) to
Michael Parapinatius, Emperor of Greece, a great observer of the nature of
devils, holds they are corporeal [1126], and have "aerial bodies, that they
are mortal, live and die," (which Martianus Capella likewise maintains, but
our Christian philosophers explode) "that they [1127]are nourished and have
excrements, they feel pain if they be hurt" (which Cardan confirms, and
Scaliger justly laughs him to scorn for; _Si pascantur aere, cur non
pugnant ob puriorem aera_? &c.) "or stroken:" and if their bodies be cut,
with admirable celerity they come together again. Austin, _in Gen. lib.
iii. lib. arbit._, approves as much, _mutata casu corpora in deteriorem
qualitatem aeris spissioris_, so doth Hierome. _Comment. in epist. ad
Ephes. cap. 3_, Origen, Tertullian, Lactantius, and many ancient Fathers of
the Church: that in their fall their bodies were changed into a more aerial
and gross substance. Bodine, _lib. 4, Theatri Naturae_ and David Crusius,
_Hermeticae Philosophiae, lib. 1. cap. 4_, by several arguments proves
angels and spirits to be corporeal: _quicquid cont