prodigious, which are told of magicians, demand the belief of wise men on two accounts; because as experience backs reason on the one hand, reason backs experience on the other, and so the issue of the whole argument, whether there are magicians or not, is thrown upon both experience and reason. These arguments on each side, I shall draw up fairly _pro_ and _con_; for I do not pretend to be the inventor of them myself, they belong to other authors many years ago; be it enough for me to boast of, if I can draw them up in a better and closer form together than they have yet appeared in. In that I take upon myself a very great task; I erect myself as it were into a kind of a judge; I will sum up the evidences on both sides, and I shall, wherever I see occasion, intimate which side of the argument bears the most weight with me; but when I have enforced my opinion as far as I think needful, my readers, like a jury, are still at liberty to bring in their verdict just as they themselves shall see fit; and this naturally leads me where I promised to come to in the fifth part of this discourse, to the several objections against the power of art magic, and the refutation of those objections. _The First Objections being against the Existence of Spirits, and the Refutations thereof._ The first objection which they who reject magic make use of, is, denying that there are any such things as spirits, about which, since those who defend the art say it entirely exerciseth itself, the objectors contend, that if they can make out that there are no such beings as spirits, all pretensions to the art must be entirely groundless, and for the future exploded. To make this part out, that there are no spirits, the first man they produce on their side is undoubtedly one of very great credit and authority, inasmuch as he has justly borne for many centuries the title of a prince of philosophers. They say that Aristotle in his book _de Mundo_, reasons thus against the existence of spirits, viz., That since God can do all things of himself, he doth not stand in need of ministering angels and demons. A multitude of servants showing the weakness of a prince.