in Bede and Gregory, Saint Bridget’s revelations, Wier. l. 3. de lamiis, c. 11. Caesar Vanninus, in his Dialogues, &c. reduceth (as I have formerly said), with all those tales of witches’ progresses, dancing, riding, transformations, operations, &c. to the force of [1604] imagination, and the [1605]devil’s illusions.  The like effects almost are to be seen in such as are awake:  how many chimeras, antics, golden mountains and castles in the air do they build unto themselves?  I appeal to painters, mechanicians, mathematicians.  Some ascribe all vices to a false and corrupt imagination, anger, revenge, lust, ambition, covetousness, which prefers falsehood before that which is right and good, deluding the soul with false shows and suppositions. [1606]Bernardus Penottus will have heresy and superstition to proceed from this fountain; as he falsely imagineth, so he believeth; and as he conceiveth of it, so it must be, and it shall be, contra gentes, he will have it so.  But most especially in passions and affections, it shows strange and evident effects:  what will not a fearful man conceive in the dark?  What strange forms of bugbears, devils, witches, goblins?  Lavater imputes the greatest cause of spectrums, and the like apparitions, to fear, which above all other passions begets the strongest imagination (saith [1607]Wierus), and so likewise love, sorrow, joy, &c.  Some die suddenly, as she that saw her son come from the battle at Cannae, &c.  Jacob the patriarch, by force of imagination, made speckled lambs, laying speckled rods before his sheep.  Persina, that Ethiopian queen in Heliodorus, by seeing the picture of Persius and Andromeda, instead of a blackamoor, was brought to bed of a fair white child.  In imitation of whom belike, a hard-favoured fellow in Greece, because he and his wife were both deformed, to get a good brood of children, Elegantissimas imagines in thalamo collocavit, &c. hung the fairest pictures he could buy for money in his chamber, “That his wife by frequent sight of them, might conceive and bear such children.”  And if we may believe Bale, one of Pope Nicholas the Third’s concubines by seeing of [1608]a bear was brought to bed of a monster.  “If a woman” (saith [1609] Lemnius), “at the time of her conception think of another man present or absent, the child will be like him.”  Great-bellied women, when they long, yield us prodigious examples in this kind, as moles, warts, scars, harelips, monsters, especially caused in their children by force of a depraved phantasy in them:  Ipsam speciem quam animo effigiat, faetui inducit:  She imprints that stamp upon her child which she [1610]conceives unto herself.  And therefore Lodovicus Vives, lib. 2. de Christ, faem., gives a special caution to great-bellied women, [1611]"that they do not admit such absurd conceits and cogitations, but by all means avoid those horrible objects, heard or seen, or filthy spectacles.”  Some will laugh, weep, sigh,