A discourse concerning prodigies: wherein the vanity of presages by them is reprehended. And their true and proper ends asserted and vindicated / By John Spencer, B.D.

  • John Spencer
Date:
1663
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A discourse concerning prodigies: wherein the vanity of presages by them is reprehended. And their true and proper ends asserted and vindicated / By John Spencer, B.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    79/150 (page 57)
    ©fPhantafms, and delufive images; and that many ftories of this Nature there are which like Spe&res are filled out in {hew with body and fubilance, which when we come to handle and examine by making fearch into their grounds and evidence, we {hall find them vaniftiing into the ayr of common report, or the fingle tefiimony of fome fuperfiitious or melanchply imaginant- And therefore tl know) many men are not at all impreflive to any fuch relations, but look upon them all but as ('apparitions indeed) things which never advanc’d nearer to realities, then the images o{ a dream. Look as in Religion, fome men (to prefent God but with a flat¬ tering faith) take great pleafure to invent new myfteries therein, to fancy a fomewhat inexplicable in every article thereof, till they have made it a contradiction to the moft natural maximesand eafy fenfeofour minds, and a fcandal to men that can difcourfe 5 fo others are very bufy in filling up every depth, and removing every real myllery therein, till they have left no image or footftep of its unfearchable Authour, thereupon thus it comes to pafs in the matters of providence, fome men are hugely taken with mytf erics therein, delighted to hear and relate 77 xc/j/on^yv fomewhat new and ftrange> their pia Mater is alway big with fome religious Legend, or prophecy j to obtrude upon the eafy world as a divine difcovery. Others again would remove all prodigies,apparitions>and what ever goes off from the figures and meafures of common and ordinary, and know not to admit a perfwafion of anything, ofwhofe caufes, ends or examples, they are not aware- Lucian commends this temper in Epicurus, Democritus, Metrodorus^ that if any thing rare and wonderfull, fell before their confidera- tion, they had put on dJttfaa.\i]ivvv yva/wv, a refolution as inflexible as adamant to endeavour a folution thereof, and its reduction to the proper ends and caufes : which if they were able to doe, Welland good 1 but if not, to arreft all further fearch and wonder with this fentence, •d.tCJfc ^ dk>vAmvy it is a lie, and impoflibleto be at all (An eafy art to maintain the repute of underlining men/) And we {hall not feldom find men (efpecially fuch as are arrived at no great experience of themfelves or thingsj advancing the length of their own undemanding and experience (like as our Einglifh King did his arme) the common fiandard and meafureof the truth or fallhood of things; aninltanceof which temper appears in their flow and heavy motion to a faith of fuch things (appari¬ tions among the refl) whofe natures, caufes, ends or patterns fall not within their compafs. But certainly as to be of a waxen faith, jmpreffive to any narrations of this nature, is an inftance of ioftnefs and fuperftition, foanobftinate and pertinacious incredulity, re¬ tains a little to Atheifm, becaufe removing one of the greatell and moll pregnant arguments of a Deity, and gives caufe of fufpicion that the Perfon hath ingcnium difliculter fanabile in Religion, which (as we may obferve) is fo managed, as to fuppofe men candid and ingenuous, fuch as will fit down with high probabilities, where the condition of the things to be believed, admits not evidence and de- I 1 monflra- In Akxand,.