words, and letters, dispersed up and down in the bible, at their
own good will and pleasure, and making one thing out of another, they
dissolve the members of truth, raising up sentences, inductions, and
parables of their own, apply thereto the oracles of divine scripture to
them, defaming the scriptures, and affirming their fragments to consist
of them, blaspheme the word of God by their wrested suppositions of
words, syllables, letters and numbers; endeavouring to prop up their
villainous inventions, by arguments drawn from their own delusions."

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Antonio de Haen, S.C.R.A. Majestate a consiliis anticis, et
Archiatri, medicinae in alma et antiquissimo universitate professoris
primarij, plurium eruditorium societatem socii, de magia liber. 8vo.
Vienna.

[3] Many significations have been attached to the word miracle, both by
the ancients and moderns. With us a miracle is the suspension or
violation of the laws of nature; and a miracle, which can be explained
upon physical principles, ceases to be such. Whatever surpassed their
comprehension was regarded by the ancients as a miracle, and every
extraordinary degree of information attained by an individual, as well
as any unlooked-for occurrence, was referred to some peculiar
interposition of the deity. Hence among the ancients, the followers of
different divinities, far from denying the miracles performed by their
opponents, admitted their reality, but endeavoured to surpass them; and
thus in the "life of Zoroaster," we find that able innovator frequently
entering the lists with hostile enchanters, admitting but exceeding the
wonderful works they performed; and thus also when the thirst of power,
or of distinction, divided the sacerdotal colleges, similar trials of
skill would ensue, the successful combatant being considered to derive
his knowledge from the more powerful god. That the science on which each
party depended was derived from experimental physics, may be proved. 1.
by the conduct of the Thaumaturgists, or wonder-workers: 2. from what
they themselves had said concerning magic; the genii invoked by the
magicians, sometimes denoting physical or chemical agents employed,
sometimes men who cultivated the science.

[4] All the three orders of Magi enumerated by Porphyry, abstained from
wine and women, and the first of these orders from animal food.

[5] Vol. ii. p. 287.

[6] See Tobit. chap. viii. v. 2 and 2.

[7] Elias, as quoted by Becker.