Book 16, Chapter 18: Certeine popish reasons concerning spirits made of aier, of daie divels and night divels, and why the divell loveth no salt in his meate
1 Manie affirme (upon a fable cited by M. Mal.) that spirits are of aier, bicause they have beene cut (as he saith) in sunder, and closed presentlie againe; and also bicause they vanish awaie so suddenlie. But of such apparitions I have alreadie spoken, and am shortlie to saie more, which are rather seene in the imagination of the weake and diseased, than in veritie and truth. Which sights and apparitions, as they have beene common among the unfaithfull; so now, since the preaching of the gospell they are most rare. And as among faintharted people; namelie, women, children, and sicke folkes, they usuallie swarmed: so among strong bodies and good stomachs they never used to appeare; as elsewhere I have prooved: which argueth that they were onelie phantasticall and imaginarie. Now saie they that imagine divels and spirits to be made of aier, that it must needs be that they consist of that element; bicause otherwise when they vanish suddenlie awaie, they should leave some earthie substance behind them. If they were of water, then should they moisten the place where they stand, and must needs be shed on the floore. If they consisted of fier, then would they burne anie thing that touched them: and yet (saie they) Abraham and Lot washed their feete, and were neither scalded nor burnt.
2 I find it not in the Bible, but in Bodin, that there are daie divels, and night divels. The same fellow saith, that Deber is the name of that divell, which hurteth by night; and Cheleb is he that hurteth by daie: howbeit, he confesseth that Sathan can hurt both by daie and by night; although it be certeine (as he saith) that he can doo more harme by night than by daie; producing for example, how in a night he slew the first borne of Ægypt. And yet it appeareth plainelie in the text, that the Lord himselfe did it. Whereby it seemeth, that Bodin putteth no difference betweene God and the divell. For further confirmation of this his foolish assertion, that divels are more valiant by night than by daie, he alledgeth the 104. Psalme, wherein is written, Thou makest darknesse, and it is night, wherein all the beasts of the forrest creepe foorth, the lions rore, &c: when the sunne riseth, they retire, &c. So as now he maketh all beasts to be divels, or divels to be beasts. Oh barbarous blindnes! This Bodin also saith, that the divell loveth no salt in his meate, for that it is a signe of eternitie, and used by Gods commandement in all sacrifices; abusing the scriptures, which he is not ashamed to quote in that behalfe.
3 But now I will declare how the scripture teacheth our dull capacities to conceive what maner of thing the divell is, by the verie names appropriated unto him in the same.
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