Opening the text

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

In his life of Henry VIII. Lord Herbert notices the _great fall of the
price of relics_ at the dissolution of the monasteries. “The respect
given to relics, and some pretended miracles, fell, insomuch as I find
by our records, that a _piece of St. Andrew’s finger_, (covered only
with an ounce of silver,) being laid to pledge by a monastery for forty
pounds, was left unredeemed at the dissolution of the house; the king’s
commissioners, who, upon surrender of any foundation, undertook to pay
the debts, refusing to pay the price again;” that is, they did not
choose to repay the _forty pounds, to receive a piece of the finger of
St. Andrew_. About this time the property of relics suddenly sunk to a
South-Sea bubble; for shortly after the artifice of the Road of Grace,
at Boxley, in Kent, was fully opened to the eye of the populace, and a
far-famed relic at Hales in Gloucestershire, of the blood of Christ, was
at the same time exhibited. It was showed in a phial, and it was
believed that none could see it who were in mortal sin: and after many
trials usually repeated to the same person, the deluded pilgrim at
length went away fully satisfied. This relic was the _blood of a duck_,
renewed every week, and put into a phial; one side of which was
_opaque_, and the other _transparent_; either side of which was turned
to the pilgrim which the monk thought proper. The success of the pilgrim
depended on the oblations he had made. Those who were scanty in their
offerings, were the longest in getting a sight of the blood. When a man
was in despair he usually became generous.


                                THE END.


            W. WILSON, PRINTER, 57, SKINNER-STREET, LONDON.

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Footnote 1:

  The discipline of the augurs is of very ancient date, having been
  prohibited by Moses, in Leviticus. The cup put in Joseph’s sack, was
  that used by Joseph to take auguries by. In its more general
  signification, augury comprises all the different kinds of divination,
  which Varrow distinguishes into four species of augury, according to
  the four elements; namely, _pyromancy_, or augury by fire;
  _aeromancy_, or augury by the air; _hydromancy_, or augury by the
  water; and _geomancy_, or augury by the earth.—See DIVINATION. The
  Roman augurs took their presages concerning futurity from birds,
  beasts, and the appearances of the heavens, &c.

Footnote 2:

  See AUGURS.

Footnote 3:

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