Gleanings of antiquities / By John Beaumont, Gent.

  • John Beaumont
Date:
1724
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Gleanings of antiquities / By John Beaumont, Gent. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    defs, walk with their bare Feet on burning Coals, without being hurt ,* and a world of People flock there every Year, at a certain time, to fee this per¬ form'd. Others think the antient Chriftians intro¬ duced the Fiery-Tryal from the Bible ill-underflood by them ; for in the Prayers with which they con- fecrated the red-hot Iron, they often referred to the Examples of Sidrach, Alifach, and Abdenago, and God has often manifefted his Prefence by the Fire, as a thing agreeable to the Deity. Bangertus concludes thus : Who may not have caufe to wonder that, tho’ the Cadeftiai Deity has given no Command for Mens making ufe of thefe Tryalsj yet often by them he has given a Teftimony of Guilt and Innocency. Grotius in his Prolegomena to his Hiflory of the Goths^ anfwers. That be- caufe God was better pleafed with plain Honefty, than with nice ftudied ways of Addrefs, he ac¬ commodated his wonder-working Power to the Laws of thofe innocent People, who fought to find out the Innocence of particular Perfons by the Touch of fire-hot Plough/hares. But notwithftanding God was fometimes pleafed to give Teflimony of Guilt and Innocency by thofe Tryals, yet all Men were convinced, at long run, that many unjuft Judgments had pafs’d in them. All the famous Civilians in Germany unanimoufly concluded, that in criminal Caufes thofe obfcure, divinatory, fuperftitious, and indeed, null Proofs, did not fuftice ; but Proofs more clear than the Noon-Day, were required, and all the moft learned Divines, Politicians, Phyficians, and Philofophers exploded this mad way of Tryal, calling it a fu¬ perftitious Invention, introduced by Satan and credu¬ lous hearkeners to him, the Devil’s May-game, the ground of dangerous and fcandalous Tragedies : fo that, at length, they were totally abolifh’d. Thus
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