kind of relievo. At which junctures, all their belches were received for facred, the fourer the better, and swallowed with infinite confolation by their meagre devotees. And to render these yet more complete; becaufe the breath of man's life is in his noftrils, therefore the choiceft, moft edifying, and most enlivening belches, were very wifely conveyed through that vehicle, to give them a tincture as they paffed.

Their gods were the four winds, whom they worshipped, as the spirits that pervade and enliven the universe, and as those from whom alone all infpiration can properly be faid to proceed. However, the chief of these, to whom they performed the adoration of latria*, was the almighty North: an ancient deity, whom the inhabitants of Megalopolis, in Greece, had likewife in the higheft reverence: Omnium deorum Boream maxime celebrant t. This god, though endued with ubiquity, was yet fuppofed by the profounder Æolifts to poffefs one peculiar habitation, or (to speak in form) a cœlum empyraum, wherein he was more intimately prefent. This was fituated in a certain region, well known to the ancient Greeks, by them called Exoria, or, the land of darkness. And although many controverfies have arifen upon that matter; yet fo much is undifputed, that, from a region of the like denomination, the most

*Latria is that worship which is paid only to the Supreme Deity. Hawkef. † Paufan. 1. 8.

moft refined Eolifts have borrowed their original; from whence, in every age, the zealous among their priesthood have brought over their choiceft infpiration; 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 gasp 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 preserving winds in cafks or barrels, which was of great affiftance upon long fea-voyages; and the loss of so useful an art at prefent is very much to be lamented, although, I know not how, with great negligence omitted by Pancirollus *. It was an invention afcribed to Æolus himself, from whom this fect is denominated; and who, in honour of their founder's memory, have to this day preferved great numbers of thofe barrels, whereof they fix one in each of their temples, first beating out the top. Into this barrel, upon folemn days, the priest enters; where, having before duly prepared himself by the methods already described, 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

* An author who writ de artibus perditis, &c. of arts lost, and

of arts invented.

Whereupon you behold him fwell immediately to the shape and fize of his veffel. In this pofture he difembogues whole tempefts upon his auditory, as the spirit from beneath gives him utterance, which, ifsuing 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 fea; first blackening, then wrinkling, and at last bursting it into a foam *. It is in this guife the facred Æolift 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 appeased.

It is from this cuftom of the priests, that fome authors maintain thefe Æolifts to have been very ancient in the world; because the delivery of their myfteries, which I have juft now mentioned, appears exactly the fame with that of other ancient oracles, whofe infpirations 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

* This is an exact defcription of the changes made in the face by enthusiastic preachers.

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 ecstasy. 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 modern Æolists, who are agreed to receive their infpiration, derived through the receptacle aforefaid, like their ancestors, the Sibyls.

And whereas the mind of man, when he gives the fpur and 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 tranfports 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 height and depth border upon each other, with the fame courfe and wing, he falls down plum into the lowest bottom of things; like one who travels the east into the weft; 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 reverfe; or whether reafon, reflecting 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 darknefs; or whether fancy, flying up to the imagination of what is

*

I

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

highest and best, becomes over-fhort, and fpent, and weary, and fuddenly falls, like a dead bird of paradise, to the ground; or whether, after all thefe metaphyfical conjectures, I have not entirely miffed the true reafon; the propofition, however, which hath ftood me in so much circumftance, is altogether true, That as the most uncivilized parts of mankind have fome 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 ferved them pretty tolerably for a devil. And this proceeding seems to be natural enough: For it is with men, whose imaginations are lifted up very high, after the same rate as with those 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, cither in act, or in vifion, which was in moft antipathy to the god they had framed. Thus also the fect of Æolifts poffeffed themselves with a dread, and horror, and hatred of two malignant natures, betwixt whom and the deities they adored, perpetual enmity was established. The first of these was the Camelion *, fworn foe to infpiraVOL. I. Ff tion,

*I do not well understand what the author aims at here, any more than by the terrible monfter mentioned in the following lines, called Moulinavent, which is the French name for a wind-mill.