There haue bin very many in al ages, which haue vtterly denied that there bee any spirits or straunge sightes. The Philosophers of =Epicurus= sect, did iest & laugh at all those things which were reported of them, and counted them as fained and counterfeyt, by the which only children and fooles, and plaine simple men were made afraide. When =Cassius=, who was an =Epicurian=, vnderstood by =Brutus=, that he had séene a certaine vision, he (as =Plutarch= doth testifie) indeuoured to attribute the matter vnto naturall causes. We read in the 23. chapter of the Actes of the Apostles, that the Sadduces did not beléeue there should be any Resurrection of the dead, and that they denied there were any spirites or angels: Yea and at this day, many good & godly men beléeue those things to be but tales, which are talked of too and fro concerning those imagined visions: partly because in all their life, they neuer sawe any such, and partly or rather especially, because in time past men haue bin so often deceiued with apparitions, visions and false miracles done by Monkes and Priestes, that now they take things yͭ are true, to be as vtterly false. Whatsoeuer the cause is, it may be proued, by witnesse of many writers, and by daily experience also, that spirites and strange sightes do sometime appeare, and that in very déed many strange and maruellous things do happen. True it is, that many men do falsly perswade themselues that they sée or heare ghoasts: for that which they imagine they sée or heare, procéedeth either of melancholie, madnesse, weakenesse of the senses, feare, or of some other perturbation: or else when they sée or heare beasts, vapors, or some other naturall thing, then they vainly suppose, they haue séene sightes I wotte not what, as hereafter I will shewe particularly by many and notable examples. There is no doubt, but that almost al those things which the common people iudge to be wonderfull sightes, are nothing lesse than so. But in the meane season it cannot be denied, but that straunge sightes, and many other such lyke things, are sometimes heard and also séene. [Sidenote: Sundry imaginations of melancholike persons.] [Sidenote: Theatrum a place to behold plaies and pastimes in.] [Sidenote: Ioannes Sertorius.] [Sidenote: Ste. Ludouic. Cæliu. li 17. ca.2 antiquitat.]