kind out of most approved physicians.  Cornelius Gemma, lib. 2. de nat. mirac. c. 4. relates of a young maid, called Katherine Gualter, a cooper’s daughter, an. 1571. that had such strange passions and convulsions, three men could not sometimes hold her; she purged a live eel, which he saw, a foot and a half long, and touched it himself; but the eel afterwards vanished; she vomited some twenty-four pounds of fulsome stuff of all colours, twice a day for fourteen days; and after that she voided great balls of hair, pieces of wood, pigeon’s dung, parchment, goose dung, coals; and after them two pounds of pure blood, and then again coals and stones, or which some had inscriptions bigger than a walnut, some of them pieces of glass, brass, &c. besides paroxysms of laughing, weeping and ecstasies, &c. Et hoc (inquit) cum horore vidi, this I saw with horror.  They could do no good on her by physic, but left her to the clergy.  Marcellus Donatus, lib. 2. c. 1. de med. mirab. hath such another story of a country fellow, that had four knives in his belly, Instar serrae dentatos, indented like a saw, every one a span long, and a wreath of hair like a globe, with much baggage of like sort, wonderful to behold:  how it should come into his guts, he concludes, Certe non alio quam daemonis astutia et dolo, (could assuredly only have been through the artifice of the devil).  Langius, Epist. med. lib. 1.  Epist. 38. hath many relations to this effect, and so hath Christophorus a Vega:  Wierus, Skenkius, Scribanius, all agree that they are done by the subtlety and illusion of the devil.  If you shall ask a reason of this, ’tis to exercise our patience; for as [1250]Tertullian holds, Virtus non est virtus, nisi comparem habet aliquem, in quo superando vim suam ostendat ’tis to try us and our faith, ’tis for our offences, and for the punishment of our sins, by God’s permission they do it, Carnifices vindictae justae Dei, as [1251]Tolosanus styles them, Executioners of his will; or rather as David, Ps. 78. ver. 49.  “He cast upon them the fierceness of his anger, indignation, wrath, and vexation, by sending out of evil angels:”  so did he afflict Job, Saul, the Lunatics and demoniacal persons whom Christ cured, Mat. iv. 8.  Luke iv. 11.  Luke xiii.  Mark ix.  Tobit. viii. 3. &c.  This, I say, happeneth for a punishment of sin, for their want of faith, incredulity, weakness, distrust, &c.

SUBSECT.  III.—­Of Witches and Magicians, how they cause Melancholy.

You have heard what the devil can do of himself, now you shall hear what he can perform by his instruments, who are many times worse (if it be possible) than he himself, and to satisfy their revenge and lust cause more mischief, Multa enim mala non egisset daemon, nisi provocatus a sagis, as [1252]Erastus thinks; much harm had never been done, had he not been provoked by witches to it.  He had not appeared in Samuel’s