borrowed their original; from whence in every age the zealous among their priesthood have brought over their choicest inSpiration, fetching it with their own hands from the fountain-head in certain bladders, and difploding it among the fectaries in all nations, who did, and do, and ever will, daily gafp and pant after it.

Now, their myfteries and rites were performed in this manner. It is well known among the learned, that the virtuofo's of former ages had a contrivance for carrying and preferving winds in casks or barrels, which was of great affiftance upon long fea voyages; and the loss of so useful an art at present is very much to be lamented, although, I know not how, with great negligence omitted by Pancirollus. It was an invention ascribed to Eolus himself, from whom this fect is denominated, and who, in honour of their founder's memory, have to this day preferved great numbers of those barrels, whereof they fix one in each of their temples, first beating out the top; into this

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* An author who writ De Artibus perditis, &c. of arts loft, and of arts invented.

barrel, upon folemn days, the priest enters; where, having before duly prepared himself by the methods already defcribed, a fecret funnel is alfo conveyed from his pofteriors to the bottom of the barrel, which admits new fupplies of infpiration from a northern chink or crany. Whereupon, you behold him fwell immediately to the fhape and fize of his veffel. In this pofture he difembogues whole tempests upon his auditory, as the fpirit from beneath gives him utterance; which, iffuing ex adytis et penetralibus, is not performed without much pain and gripings. And, the wind in breaking forth deals with his face as it does with that of the sea, first blackening, then wrinkling, and, at last, burfting it into a foam. It is in this guise, the facred Eolift delivers his oracular belches to his panting difciples; of whom, fome are greedily gaping after the fanctified breath; others are all the while hymning out the praises of the winds; and, gently wafted to and fro by their own humming, do thus represent the foft breezes of their deities appeafed.

This is an exact defcrip- face by enthufiaftie preachers. tion of the changes made in the

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It is from this cuftom of the priests, that fome authors maintain thefe Eolifts to have been very ancient in the world. Because the delivery of their mysteries, which I have just now mentioned, appears exactly the fame with that of other ancient oracles, whofe inspirations were owing to certain fubterraneous effluviums of wind, delivered with the fame pain to the priest, and much about the fame influence on the people. It is true indeed, that these were frequently managed and directed by female officers, whofe organs were understood to be better difpofed for the admiffion of those oracular gufts, as entering and paffing up through a receptacle of greater capacity, and caufing alfo a pruriency by the way, fuch as, with due management, hath been refined from carnal into a fpiritual extafy. And, to ftrengthen this profound conjecture, it is farther infifted, that this cuftom of female priests is kept up ftill in certain refined colleges of our medern Eolifts, who are agreed to receive their inspiration derived through the receptacle aforefaid, like their ancestors, the fibyls.

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? Quakers, who fuffer their women to preach and pray.

And, whereas the mind of a man, when he gives the spurand bridle to his thoughts, doth never ftop, but naturally fallies out into both extremes of high and low, of good and evil; his first flight of fancy commonly transports him to ideas of what is most perfect, finished, and exalted; till having foared out of his own reach and fight, not well perceiving how near the frontiers of heighth and depth border upon each other; with the fame course and wing, he falls down plum into the lowest bottom of things; like one who travels the eaft into the west; or like a strait line drawn by its own length into a circle. Whether a tincture of malice in our natures makes us fond of furnishing every bright idea with its reverse; or, whether reason, refecting upon the fum of things, can like the fun ferve only to enlighten one half of the globe, leaving the other half by neceffity under fhade and darkness; or, whether fancy, flying up to the imagination of what is highest and best, becomes over-fhort, and spent, and weary, and fuddenly falls, like a dead bird of paradife, to the ground: or whether, after

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all these metaphyfical conjectures, I have not intirely miffed the true reafon; the propofition however, which hath ftood me in fo much circumftance, is altogether true; that, as the most uncivilized parts of mankind have some way or other climbed up into the conception of a god, or fupreme power, fo they have feldom forgot to provide their fears with certain ghaftly notions, which, instead of better, have served them pretty tolerably for a devil. And this proceeding feems to be natural enough, for it is with men, whofe imagi nations are lifted up very high, after the fame rate, as with thofe, whofe bodies are fo; that, as they are delighted with the advantage of a nearer contemplation upwards, fo they are equally terrified with the difmal profpect of the precipice below. Thus, in the choice of a devil, it hath been the ufual method of mankind to fingle out fome being, either in act, or in vifion, which was in moft antipathy to the god they had framed. Thus alfo the fect of Æolifts poffeffed themselves with a dread, and horror, and hatred of two malignant natures, betwixt whom, and

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