A26888:354
The certainty of the worlds of spirits and, consequently, of the immortality of souls…
The certainty of the worlds of spirits and, consequently, of the immortality of souls of the malice and misery of the devils and the damned : and of the blessedness of the justified, fully evinced by the unquestionable histories of apparitions, operations, witchcrafts, voices &c. / written, as an addition to many other treatises for the conviction of Sadducees and infidels, by Richard Baxter.The certainty of the worlds of spirits and, consequently, of the immortality of souls of the malice and misery of the devils and the damned : and of the blessedness of the justified, fully evinced by the unquestionable histories of apparitions, operations, witchcrafts, voices &c. / written, as an addition to many other treatises for the conviction of Sadduces and infidels, by Richard Baxter.
London: printed for T. Parkhurst, 1691
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Among others, I think meet to add the History of some Enthusiasticks that I have known, not as a Condemnation of their Opinions, but of the way of receiving them.
A Country Man of Inkburrough Parish (as he said) in Worcestershire, came to me to Acton near London, to tell me, that God had revealed to him the truth of that thousand Years Reign of Christ on Earth; and he was possessed with a strong Zeal to propagate it, and I must needs promote the publication of his Papers. I examined him how he came to his knowledge of it, and I found it was not by any hard Study, nor Zeal in Religion, nor by Reading any Book for it, nor by Converse with any of that Opinion, for he had been no such Man, nor had come among such: But it was by seeming Revelation, finding him Ignorant and Enthusiastical, I displeased him, by advising him to suppress his Papers; and I after heard that he turned distracted.
At Coventry there dwelt with me in the Governors House, Major Wilkie, a Scottish Soldier, and a Scholar of considerable Learning; he was Engineer for Fortification. He would drink too much, and had the signs of a heated Brain, but no failing ⟨p. 179⟩of his Reason perceivable. He confidently affirmed his constant notice of Spirits good and bad about him; that he had a good Genius and an Enemy: That one Night his Enemy said, I have torn his Liver, and that he made a Chamber-Pot full of Blood in the Morning: He was confident, that Thunder and Lightning was the Wars of Spirits, foretelling and respecting such things below: He pretended to know by the Thunder and Lightning which side in the Wars should have the Victory: In 1643 or 1644, about a Year and half after the Wars begun, he said, That it was revealed to him, that the War should endure three Years and an half, and the Parliament should Conquer; but their own Divisions should after keep them long unsettled. He said, that being in Paris, in a clear Moonshine Night (many Years before) being walking in his Chamber, and repeating Buchanan's Version of the second Psalm, Quare fremuerunt gentes, &c. suddenly a great noise made him look out, and he saw a Constellation in the shape of a Lion Rampant against the Moon, and while he long gazed on it, one Leg broke off, and turned to the similitude of a Cock, and after the three other Legs broke off. And when he was in Bed his good Spirit expounded it to him, and told him, that the Moon was the Church here, and the Assaulting Lion was