rage, &c., mingling himself among these humours. This is that which Tertullian avers, Corporibus infligunt acerbos casus, animaeque repentinos, membra distorquent, occulte repentes, &c. and which Lemnius goes about to prove, Immiscent se mali Genii pravis humoribus, atque atrae, bili, &c. And [1246]Jason Pratensis, that the devil, being a slender incomprehensible spirit, can easily insinuate and wind himself into human bodies, and cunningly couched in our bowels vitiate our healths, terrify our souls with fearful dreams, and shake our minds with furies. And in another place, These unclean spirits settled in our bodies, and now mixed with our melancholy humours, do triumph as it were, and sport themselves as in another heaven. Thus he argues, and that they go in and out of our bodies, as bees do in a hive, and so provoke and tempt us as they perceive our temperature inclined of itself, and most apt to be deluded. [1247] Agrippa and [1248]Lavater are persuaded, that this humour invites the devil to it, wheresoever it is in extremity, and of all other, melancholy persons are most subject to diabolical temptations and illusions, and most apt to entertain them, and the Devil best able to work upon them. But whether by obsession, or possession, or otherwise, I will not determine; 'tis a difficult question. Delrio the Jesuit, Tom. 3. lib. 6. Springer and his colleague, mall. malef. Pet. Thyreus the Jesuit, lib. de daemoniacis, de locis infestis, de Terrificationibus nocturnis, Hieronymus Mengus Flagel. daem. and others of that rank of pontifical writers, it seems, by their exorcisms and conjurations approve of it, having forged many stories to that purpose. A nun did eat a lettuce [1249]without grace, or signing it with the sign of the cross, and was instantly possessed. Durand. lib. 6. Rationall. c. 86. numb. 8. relates that he saw a wench possessed in Bononia with two devils, by eating an unhallowed pomegranate, as she did afterwards confess, when she was cured by exorcisms. And therefore our Papists do sign themselves so often with the sign of the cross, Ne daemon ingredi ausit, and exorcise all manner of meats, as being unclean or accursed otherwise, as Bellarmine defends. Many such stories I find amongst pontifical writers, to prove their assertions, let them free their own credits; some few I will recite in this kind out of most approved physicians. Cornelius Gemma, lib. 2. de nat. mirac. c. 4. relates of a young maid, called Katherine Gualter, a cooper's daughter, _an._ 1571. that had such strange passions and convulsions, three men could not sometimes hold her; she purged a live eel, which he saw, a foot and a half long, and touched it himself; but the eel afterwards vanished; she vomited some twenty-four pounds of fulsome stuff of all colours, twice a day for fourteen days; and after that she voided great balls of hair, pieces of wood, pigeon's dung, parchment, goose dung, coals; and after them two pounds of pure