The Jews divided the Cabala into three parts; the first containing the knowledge of _Bresith_, which they call also cosmology, the object of which is to teach and explain the force and efficacy of things created, natural or celestial; expounding also the laws and mysteries of the Bible according to philosophical reasons, which on that account differs little from natural magic, a science in which King Solomon is said to have excelled. We find, therefore, in the sacred histories of the Jews, that he was wont to discourse from the cedar of the forests of Lebanon to the low hyssop of the valley; as also of cattle, birds, reptiles, and fish, all which contain within themselves a kind of magical virtue. Moses also, in his expositions upon the Pentateuch, and most of the Talmudists, have followed the rules of the same art. The other division of the Cabala contains the knowledge of things more sublime, as of divine and angelical powers, the contemplation of sacred names and characters; being a certain kind of symbolical theology, in which the letters, figures, numbers, names, points, lines, accents, etc. are esteemed to contain the significations of most profound things and wonderful mysteries. This part again is twofold--_Authmantick_, handling the nature of angels, the powers, names, characters of spirits and souls departed--and _Theomantick_, which searches into the mysteries of the Divine Majesty, his emanations, his names, and _Pentacula_, which he who attains to is supposed to be endowed with most wonderful power. It was, they say, by virtue of this art, that Moses wrought so many miracles; that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still; that Elias called down fire from heaven; that Daniel the prophet muzzled the lions' mouths; and that the three children sang in the fiery furnace. And, what is more, the perfidious and unbelieving Jews, did not stick to aver, that our Saviour himself wrought all his miracles by virtue of this art, and that he discovered several of its secrets, containing a variety of charms against devils, and also, as Josephus writes, against diseases. "As for my part," says Cornelius Agrippa, in allusion to this subject, "I do not doubt but that God revealed many things to Moses and the prophets, which were contained under the covert of the words of the law, which were not to be communicated to the profane vulgar: so for this art, which the Jews so much boast of, which I have with great labour and diligence searched into, I must acknowledge it to be a mere rhapsody of superstition, and nothing but a kind of theurgic magic before spoken of. For if, as the Jews contend, coming from God, it did any way conduce to perfection of life, salvation of men, truth of understanding, certainly that spirit of truth, which having forsaken the synagogue, is now come to teach us all truth, had never concealed it all this while from the church, which certainly knows all those things that are of God; whose