of man, which is but a Modification of his own Minde, should be able at a distance to change it into such like Appearances. But suppose it could, can it animate the Aire that it doth thus metamorphize, and make it speak, and answer to questions, and put things into mens hands, and the like? O the credulity of besotted Atheism! How intoxicated and infatuated are they in their conceits, being given up to sensuality, and having lost the free use of the natural Faculties of their Minde!
But shall this force of Imagination reach as high as the Clouds also, and make Men fight pitched Battels in the Aire, running and charging one against the other?
3. Here the same bold pretender to Wit and Philosophy, In his 51. Dia. de Apparitionibus* Cæsar Vaninus (who cunningly and jugglingly endeavours to infuse the poison of Atheism into the minde of his Reader on every occasion) hath recourse to those old cast rags of Epicurus his School, the Exuvious Effluxes of things, and attempts to salve these Phænomena thus; That the vapours of Mens bodies, and it seems of Horses too, are carried up into the Aire, and fill into a certain proportionable posture of parts, and so imitate the figures of them aloft among the Clouds.
But I demand how the vapours of the horses finde the vapours of their Riders: and when and how long are they coming together? and whether they appear not before there be any Armies in the field to send up such vapours: and whether harness and weapons send up vapours too, as Swords, Pikes and Shields: and how they come to light so happily into the hands of those Aerial men of war, especially the vapours of Metalls (if they have any) being heavier in all likelihood then the reek of Animals and Men: and lastly, how they come to discharge at one another and to fight, there being neither life nor soul in them: and whether Sounds also have their Exuviæ that are reserved till these solemnities; for at Alborough in Suffolk 1642. were heard in the Aire very loud beatings of Drums, shooting of Muskets and Ordnance as also in other such like Prodigies there hath been heard the founding of Trumpets, as Snellius writes. And * Hist. Natural lib. 2. cap. 57.* Pliny also makes mention of the sounding of Trumpets and clashing of Armour heard out of the heavens about the Cimbrick Wars, and often before. But here at Alborough all was concluded with a melodious noise of Musical Instruments.
The Exuviæ of Fiddles it seems fly up into the Aire too; or were those Musical Accents frozen there for a time, and at the heat and firing of the Cannons, the Aire relenting and thawing, became so harmoniously vocal? With what vain conceits are men intoxicated that wilfully wink against the light of Nature, and are estranged from the true knowledge and acknowledgment of a God!
4. But there is another Evasion which the same sedulous Insinuator of Atheism would make use of in case this should not hold, which seems more sober, but no less false: Dialog. 51.and that is this; That these fightings and skirmishings in the Aire are only the reflexion of some real battel on the Earth. But this in Nature is plainly impossible. For of necessity these Armies thus fighting, being at such a distance from the Spectators that the fame of the battel never arrives to their ears, their eyes can never behold
