Chap. XVI.
1. The Atheists Evasions against Apparitions; as first, That they are mere Imaginations. 2. Then, That though they be Realities without yet they are caused by the force of Imagination; with the confutation of these Conceits. 5. Their fond conceit, That the Skirmishings in the Aire are from the exuvious Effluxes of things; with a confutation thereof. 4. A copious confutation of their last subterfuge, (viz. That those Fightings are the Reflexions of Battels on the Earth) from the distance, and debility of Reflexion; 5. From the rude Politure of the Clouds; 6. From their inability of reflecting so much as the image of the starrs, which yet were a thing far easier; First, by reason of the undiminishableness of their magnitude. 7. Then from the purity of their light. 8. Thirdly, from the posture of our Eye in the shade of the Earth. 9. Lastly, from their dispersedness, ready from every part to be reflected if the Clouds had any such Reflexivity in them. 10. That if they have any such Reflexivity at to represent battels so exceeding distant, it is by some supernatural Artifice. 11. That this Artifice has its limited laws. 12. Whence at least some of these Aereal battels cannot be Reflexions from the Earth. 13. Machiavel's opinion concerning these Fightings in the Aire. 14. Nothing so demonstrable in Philosophy as the being of a God. 15. That Pedantick affectation of Atheisme whence it probably arose. 16. The true causes of being really prone to Atheisme. 17. That men ought not to oppose their mere complexional humours against the Principles of Reason, and Testimonies of Nature and History His Apology for being so copious in the reciting of Stories of Spirits.
1. Now for their Evasions whereby they would elude the force of that Argument for Spirits which is drawn from Apparitions, they are so weak and silly, that a man may be almost sure they were convinced in their judgement of the truth of such like Stories, else it had been better flatly to have denied them, then to feign such idle and vain Reasons of them.
For first, they say they are nothing but Imaginations, and that there is nothing reall without us in such Apparitions.
2. But being beaten off from this slight account, for that many see the same thing at once, then they fly to so miraculous a power of Phansy, as if it were able to change the Air into a real shape and form, so that others may behold it as well as he that fram'd it by the power of his Phansy.
Now I demand of any man, whether this be not a harder Mystery and more unconceiveable then all the Magical Metamorphoses of Devils or Witches. For it is far easier to conceive that some knowing thing in the Air should thus transform the Air into this or that shape, being in that part of the Air it doth thus transform, then that the Imagination
