could separate himself from his senses when he list, and lie like a dead
man, void of life and sense. Cardan brags of himself, that he could do as
much, and that when he list. Many times such men when they come to
themselves, tell strange things of heaven and hell, what visions they have
seen; as that St. Owen, in Matthew Paris, that went into St. Patrick's
purgatory, and the monk of Evesham in the same author. Those common
apparitions 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