in the air, for this were to advance his credit too much, and utterly derogatory to the Glory of God. 3. Concerning Satans being an instrument and means to bring and cause diseases, it may be considered these two ways. 1. In an ordinary way he seduceth and draweth men to gluttony and drunkenness, by which way of ingurgitation and excess they draw and contract to themselves diverse Diseases, as Coughs, Catarrhs, Dropsies, Scorbutick Distempers and the like. Others he draweth to insatiable lust and concupiscence, that thereby they fall into the _Lues Venerea_, and the whole troop of those dire and horrid Symptomes that accompany it, whereby Men and Women undergo great misery, pains, sickness, and sometimes death. Sometimes he pusheth Men on so far in malice, wrath, choler and passion, and many other such like ways, that they wound, lame and sometimes kill one another; and in this sense he may be said to cause diseases diverse ways. 2. But there is another way more extraordinary wherein as an instrument he may be said to cause diseases and sometimes death, as in that case of _Davids_ numbring of the people, where there died of the Pestilence seventy thousand, and though this Pestilence was sent by Jehovah, yet was a destroying Angel the instrument and minister in the execution of it, for the Text saith: _And when the Angel of the Lord stretched forth his hand upon Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord repented him of the evil, and said to the Angel that destroyed the people, It is enough: now stay thy hand_. And _Herod_ for assuming to himself that honour that was only proper to God, _was immediately smitten by the Angel of the Lord, and was eaten up of worms, and gave up the Ghost_. And the Psalmist saith: _He cast upon them the fierceness of his anger, wrath, indignation and trouble by sending evil Angels among them_, the Hebrew giveth it, the emission or sending out of evil Angels. From whence it is manifest that evil Angels are the organs and instruments of Gods wrath, and as Ministers cause Plague, Pestilence and other diseases. 3. Thirdly, there is another great question whether or not the Devil by his vassals, to wit, Sorcerers and Witches doth not cause diseases and death, as is believed by those vomiting up of strange things exceeding the bigness of the Gullet to get either up or down, of which we shall speak largely where we handle the opinion of _Van Helmont_ concerning the actions of Witches: Here only we shall say thus much, that the Devil is author and causer of that hatred, malice, revenge and envy, that is often abounding in those that are accounted Witches, which desire of revenge doth stimulate them to seek for all means by which they may accomplish their intended wickedness, and so they learn all the wicked and secret wayes of hurting, poysoning & killing, but yet we affirm, that what evil soever they perform, it is by causes and means that work naturally, and so the evil is only in the use