occurrences of the world, and know in what counterfeit-
ing shapes and deceitful visards times present represent
on the stage things past, I do believe them little more
than things to come. Some have been of my own
opinion, and endeavoured to write the history of their
own lives; wherein Moses hath outgone them all, and
left not only the story of his life, but, as some will have
it, of his death also.

Sect. 30.--It is a riddle to me, how the story of
oracles hath not wormed out of the world that doubtful
conceit of spirits and witches; how so many learned

* In his oracle to Augustus.

heads should so far forget their metaphysicks, and
destroy the ladder and scale of creatures, as to question
the existence of spirits; for my part, I have ever be-
lieved, and do now know, that there are witches. They
that doubt of these do not only deny them, but spirits:
and are obliquely, and upon consequence, a sort, not of
infidels, but atheists. Those that, to confute their in-
credulity, desire to see apparitions, shall, questionless,
never behold any, nor have the power to be so much as
witches. The devil hath made them already in a heresy
as capital as witchcraft; and to appear to them were
but to convert them. Of all the delusions wherewith
he deceives mortality, there is not any that puzzleth
me more than the legerdemain of changelings.<46> I do
not credit those transformations of reasonable creatures