Angelographia, or A discourse concerning the nature and power of the holy angels, and…

When he had left singing, and was come to himself again, he would with much confidence maintain, that Angels had carried his Soul to Heaven, where he had seen things that he could not express. And when he perceived the fit was coming upon him, he would say, Now the Angels are come to carry me away. Nevertheless, not a good Angel, but Satan was in all this. Persons attended with such fits are many times of a Melancholy temper. And it is wonderful to see what power imagination has in them that are distempered with Melancholy, in which doubtless evil Angels have a great operation, that humour being Baelneum diaboli, a water which the Devils love to be dabbling in. A certain man in this Country fourteen years ago, came to me in great horror & amazement, declaring that as he was walking in the Woods, he heard a voice say to him, Sword, Famine and Pestilence beginning at New-England will make the Earth desolate. I laboured to persuade him, that it was only a phansy, and that he did not really hear any such words spoken: he told me, he was as certain of it, as he was sure that he was then speaking to me, and that they did at the Time when he heard them, put him into a Trembling fit, and that he came to me, because the first means of good to his Soul (as he said) was a Sermon which diverse years before that he had heard me Preach in Boston, & because he thought I would use my best endeavours to prevent those evils, which it was revealed to him that without Repentance intervening they would shortly come to pass. The man then lived above an hundred Miles from Boston. What is since come of him, I know not. But his Trembling fi• was a sign of Satanocal Possession Such persons amongst the Gentiles as had a spirit of Diabolical ⟨p. 20⟩Divination, would when the Daemon came upon them, be put into Shakings & Tremblings, after the very same manner as has been usual amongst that sort of People who of later years have been called Quakers, as is well noted by a late Learned writer. v. Dickinson de origine oraeculor. Cap. 9. p. 96. Men that are Caetera sani, in all other things well, and as rational as any men in the world, yet in some one thing are really distracted by reason of their being under the power of a Melancholy humour. And what will they not then phansy?

When he had left singing, and was come to himself again, he would with much confidence maintain, that Angels had carried his Soul to Heaven, where he had seen things that he could not express. And when he perceived the fit was coming upon him, he would say, Now the Angels are come to carry me away. Nevertheless, not a good Angel, but Satan was in all this. Persons attended with such fits are many times of a Melancholy temper. And it is wonderful to see what power imagination has in them that are distempered with Melancholy, in which doubtless evil Angels have a great operation, that humour being Baelneum diaboli, a water which the Devils love to be dabling in. A certain man in this Country fourteen years ago, came to me in great horror & amazement, declaring that as he was walking in the Woods, he heard a voice say to him, Sword, Famine and Pestilence beginning at New-England will make the Earth desolate. I laboured to perswade him, that it was only a phansy, and that he did not really hear any such words spoken: he told me, he was as certain of it, as he was sure that he was then speaking to me, and that they did at the Time when he heard them, put him into a Trembling fit, and that he came to me, because the first means of good to his Soul (as he said) was a Sermon which diverse years before that he had heard me Preach in Boston, & because he thought I would use my best endeavours to prevent those evils, which it was revealed to him that without Repentance intervening they would shortly come to pass. The man then lived above an hundred Miles from Boston. What is since come of him, I know not. But his Trembling fi was a sign of Satanocal Possession Such persons amongst the Gentiles as had a spirit of Diabolical