Speeches of Mad-men, supposed to be possessed with a divine Spirit; which Possession they called Enthusiasme; and these kinds of foretelling events, were accounted Theomancy, or Prophecy; Sometimes in the aspect of the Starres at their Nativity; which was called Horoscopy, and esteemed a part of judiciary Astrology:  Sometimes in their own hopes and feares, called Thumomancy, or Presage:  Sometimes in the Prediction of Witches, that pretended conference with the dead; which is called Necromancy, Conjuring, and Witchcraft; and is but juggling and confederate knavery:  Sometimes in the Casuall flight, or feeding of birds; called Augury:  Sometimes in the Entrayles of a sacrificed beast; which was Aruspicina:  Sometimes in Dreams:  Sometimes in Croaking of Ravens, or chattering of Birds:  Sometimes in the Lineaments of the face; which was called Metoposcopy; or by Palmistry in the lines of the hand; in casuall words, called Omina:  Sometimes in Monsters, or unusuall accidents; as Ecclipses, Comets, rare Meteors, Earthquakes, Inundations, uncouth Births, and the like, which they called Portenta and Ostenta, because they thought them to portend, or foreshew some great Calamity to come; Sometimes, in meer Lottery, as Crosse and Pile; counting holes in a sive; dipping of Verses in Homer, and Virgil; and innumerable other such vaine conceipts.  So easie are men to be drawn to believe any thing, from such men as have gotten credit with them; and can with gentlenesse, and dexterity, take hold of their fear, and ignorance.

The Designes Of The Authors Of The Religion Of The Heathen And therefore the first Founders, and Legislators of Common-wealths amongst the Gentiles, whose ends were only to keep the people in obedience, and peace, have in all places taken care; First, to imprint in their minds a beliefe, that those precepts which they gave concerning Religion, might not be thought to proceed from their own device, but from the dictates of some God, or other Spirit; or else that they themselves were of a higher nature than mere mortalls, that their Lawes might the more easily be received:  So Numa Pompilius pretended to receive the Ceremonies he instituted amongst the Romans, from the Nymph Egeria:  and the first King and founder of the Kingdome of Peru, pretended himselfe and his wife to be the children of the Sunne:  and Mahomet, to set up his new Religion, pretended to have conferences with the Holy Ghost, in forme of a Dove.  Secondly, they have had a care, to make it believed, that the same things were displeasing to the Gods, which were forbidden by the Lawes.  Thirdly, to prescribe Ceremonies, Supplications, Sacrifices, and Festivalls, by which they were to believe, the anger of the Gods might be appeased; and that ill success in War, great contagions of Sicknesse, Earthquakes, and each mans private Misery, came from the Anger of the Gods; and their Anger from the Neglect of their Worship, or the forgetting, or mistaking some point of the Ceremonies required.  And though amongst the antient Romans, men were not forbidden to deny, that which in the Poets is written of the paines, and pleasures after this life; which divers of great authority, and gravity in that state have in their Harangues openly derided; yet that beliefe was alwaies more cherished, than the contrary.