([4674]Coelestis
aestheris, ponti, terrae claves habet Venus,
Solaque
istorum omnium imperium obtinet.)
and if all be certain that is credibly reported, with the spirits of the air, and devils of hell themselves, who are as much enamoured and dote (if I may use that word) as any other creatures whatsoever. For if those stories be true that are written of incubus and succubus, of nymphs, lascivious fauns, satyrs, and those heathen gods which were devils, those lascivious Telchines, of whom the Platonists tell so many fables; or those familiar meetings in our days, and company of witches and devils, there is some probability for it. I know that Biarmannus, Wierus, lib. 1. cap. 19. et 24. and some others stoutly deny it, that the devil hath any carnal copulation with women, that the devil takes no pleasure in such facts, they be mere fantasies, all such relations of incubi, succubi, lies and tales; but Austin, lib. 15. de civit. Dei. doth acknowledge it: Erastus de Lamiis, Jacobus Sprenger and his colleagues, &c. [4675] Zanchius, cap. 16. lib. 4. de oper. Dei. Dandinus, in Arist. de Anima, lib. 2. text. 29. com. 30. Bodin, lib. 2. cap. 7. and Paracelsus, a great champion of this tenet amongst the rest, which give sundry peculiar instances, by many testimonies, proofs, and confessions evince it. Hector Boethius, in his Scottish history, hath three or four such examples, which Cardan confirms out of him, lib. 16. cap. 43. of such as have had familiar company many years with them, and that in the habit of men and women Philostratus in his fourth book de vita Apollonii, hath a memorable instance in this kind, which I may not omit, of one Menippus Lycius, a young man twenty-five