Demonologia : $b or, natural knowledge revealed; being an exposé of ancient and modern superstitions, credulity, fanaticism, enthusiasm, & imposture, as connected with the doctrine, caballa, and jargon, of amulets, apparitions, astrology, charms, demonology, devils, divination, dreams, deuteroscopia, effluvia, fatalism, fate, friars, ghosts, gipsies, hell, hypocrites, incantations, inquisition, jugglers, legends, magic, magicians, miracles, monks, nymphs, oracles, physiognomy, purgatory, predestForsyth, J. S.
History
Demonologia : $b or, natural knowledge revealed; being an exposé of ancient and modern superstitions, credulity, fanaticism, enthusiasm, & imposture, as connected with the doctrine, caballa, and jargon, of amulets, apparitions, astrology, charms, demonology, devils, divination, dreams, deuteroscopia, effluvia, fatalism, fate, friars, ghosts, gipsies, hell, hypocrites, incantations, inquisition, jugglers, legends, magic, magicians, miracles, monks, nymphs, oracles, physiognomy, purgatory, predest
Forsyth, J. S.
Demonology; Superstition; Witchcraft
was sent to Sir Charles, at his house in Warwickshire; but he was so
afflicted with the death of his daughter, that he came not till she was
buried, but when he came he caused her to be taken up, and to be buried
with her mother, at Edmonton, as she desired in her letter.”
This is one of the most interesting ghost-stories on record. Yet, when
strictly examined, the manner in which a leading circumstance in the
case is reported, affects but too much the supernatural air imparted to
other of its incidents. For whatever might have been averred by a
physician of the _olden time_, with regard to the young lady’s sound
state of health during the period she saw her mother’s ghost, it may be
asked—if any practitioner of the present day would have been proud of
such an opinion, especially when death followed so promptly after the
spectral impression.
——“There’s bloom upon her cheek;
But now I see it is no living hue,
But a strange hectic—like the unnatural red
Which autumn plants upon the perish’d leaf.”
Probably the languishing female herself might have unintentionally
contributed to the more strict verification of the ghost’s prediction.
It was an extraordinary exertion which her tender frame underwent, near
the expected hour of dissolution, in order that she might retire from
all her scenes of earthly enjoyment, with the dignity of a resigned
christian. And what subject can be conceived more worthy the masterly
skill of a painter, than to depict a young and lovely saint cheered with
the bright prospect of futurity before her, and ere the quivering flame
of life which for a moment was kindled up into a glow of holy ardour,
had expired for ever, sweeping the strings of her guitar with her
trembling fingers, and melodiously accompanying the notes with her
voice, in a hymn of praise to her heavenly Maker? Entranced with such a
sight, the philosopher himself would dismiss for the time his usual cold
and cavelling scepticism, and giving way to the superstitious
impressions of less deliberating bye-standers, partake with them in the
most grateful of religious solaces, which the spectacle must have
irresistibly inspired.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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