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
and at the same instant peaceably expired.
“This popular tale Mahomet learned when he drove his camels to the fairs
of Syria; and he has introduced it, as a divine revelation, into the
Koran.” The same story has been adopted and adorned, by the natives from
Bengal to Africa, who profess the Mahometan religion.
These monks imagined that holiness was often proportioned to a saint’s
filthiness. St. Ignatius delighted, say they, to appear abroad with old
dirty shoes; he never used a comb, but suffered his hair to run into
clots, and religiously abstained from paring his nails. One saint
attained to such a pitch of piety as to have near three hundred patches
on his breeches; which, after his death, were exhibited in public as a
stimulus to imitate such a _holy life_. St. Francis discovered, by
certain experience, that the devil was frightened away by similar kinds
of _unmentionables_; but was animated by clean clothing to tempt and
seduce the wearers; and one of their heroes declares that the purest
souls are in the dirtiest bodies. On this subject a story is told by
them which may not be very agreeable to fastidious delicacy. Brother
Juniper was a gentleman perfectly pious in this principle; indeed so
great was his merit in this species of mortification, that a brother
declared he could always nose Brother Juniper when within a mile of the
monastery, provided he was at the due point. Once, when the blessed
Juniper, for he was no saint, was a guest, his host, proud of the honour
of entertaining so pious a personage, the intimate friend of St.
Francis, provided an excellent bed and the finest sheets. Brother
abhorred such luxury; and this too evidently appeared after his sudden
departure in the morning, unknown to his kind host. The great Juniper
did this, says his biographer, (having told us what he did) not so much
from his habitual inclinations for which he was so justly celebrated, as
from his excessive piety, and as much as he could to mortify worldly
pride, and to shew how a true saint despised clean sheets.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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