find it hard to give a reason; to which I may add some other Passages of Scripture that yield sufficient evidence in the case. The Nations are forbid to hearken to the Diviners, Dreamers, Enchanters, and Sorcerers, Jer. xxvii. 9. The Caldeans are deeply threatned for their Sorceries and Enchantments, Isa. xlvii. 9. and we read that Nebuchadnezzar called the Magicians, Astrologers, Sorcerers, and Chaldeans to tell his Dream. My mention of which last, minds me to say, that for ought I have to the contrary, there may be a sort of Witches and Magicians that have no Familiars that they know, nor any express compact with apostate Spirits; who yet may perhaps act strange things by Diabolical aids, which they procure by the use of those Forms, and wicked Arts that the Devil did first impart to his Confederates; and we know not but the Laws of that dark Kingdom may enjoyn a particular attendance upon all those that practise their Mysteries, whether they know them to be theirs or not, for a great Interest of their Empire may be served by this Project, since those that find such success in the unknown Conjurations, may by that be toll'd on to more express Transactions with those Fiends, that have assisted them incognito; or if they proceed not so far, yet they run upon a Rock by acting in the dark, and dealing in unknown and unwarranted Arts, in which the effect is much beyond the proper efficiency of the thing they use, and affords ground of more than suspicion, that some evil Spirit is the Agent in those wondrous performances.
Upon this account I say, it is not to me unlikely, but that the Devils may by their own Constitution be bound to attend upon all that use their Ceremonies and Forms, tho' ignorantly and without design of evil; and so Conjuration may have been performed by those who are none of the Covenant Sorcerers and Witches. Among those perhaps we may justly reckon Balaam, and the Diviners. For Balaam, Moncæus hath undertaken to clear him from the guilt of the greater Sorcery. And the Diviners are usually distinctly mentioned from those that had Familiar Spirits. The Astrologers also of Elder times, and those of ours, I take to have been of this sort of Magicians, and some of them under the colour of that mystical Science, worse. And I question not, but that things are really done, and foretold by those pretended Artists, that are much beyond the regular possibilities of their Art; which in this appears to be exceedingly uncertain and precarious, in that there are no less than six ways of errecting a Scheme, in each of which the prediction of Events shall be different,
