Gleanings of antiquities / By John Beaumont, Gent.

  • Beaumont, John, -1731.
Date:
1724
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

    210/226 (page 196)
    icj6 Notes concerning G e n i t, it’s join’d with the Archausy conflitutes a fort of fha- dowing Apparition, which walks about, and has a proper Subftance. Now if this Do&rine could hold, it might account for the aforementioned things ; but others are of opinion this Dodlrine cannot hold according to found Philofophy, viz,. That the imaginative Faculty in Man has fo great a Power, that of it felf, it can produce fome real Eftedfc, either within or out of the Body of the Perfon who imagines. I fay of itfelf, becaufe the imaginative Faculty of itfelf produces no Effedl, but by Accident and indiredtly, as it changes the Body of the Perfon, or that of the Em¬ bryo within it, by {birring up the Appetite, and this the removing Faculty, which moves the Spirits and Humours; but it produces no Effedl on an external Body, there being no affignableVehicle, Way, or Me¬ dium for it to perform it by. If therefore there are Apparitions which have a real Subfiflence, they muff be explained fome other way, which will be hard to do but by the Hypothecs of Spirits. There is this to be faid for a real Subfiflence ot fome Spedters, viz. That they are feen by all Perfdns prelent, as the Imps before-mentioned, and not only by fome par¬ ticular Perfon, who may fay, he fees them, when others do not. Secondly, that they are perceived not only by the Sight, but likewife by the Touch* as fome have been flruck by them, when others have been prefent. Thirdly, they have fometimes carried away, or removed things from one place to another, and given other Marks of fome real and underftanding Agents. If we find it difficult to account for what Experience evinces of the Beings and Operations of Spirits, you may confider what Campanula writes concerning it, Met.p. 3. L. 12. C. 5, Art. 3. the Head of which Article is thus : That the way is unknown to us by which an Angel adapts ft Body to himfelf j yet it is mod true, that he appears