Chapter LX, Section 1b

And this thing, they think, happens under a three-fold difference, according to a three-fold apprehension of the soul, viz., imaginative, rational, and mental; they say, therefore, that when the mind is forced with a melancholy humor, nothing moderating the power of the body, and, passing beyond the bounds of the members, is wholly carried into imagination, it doth suddenly become a seat for inferior spirits, by which the mind oftentimes receives wonderful ways and forms of manual arts. So we see that any most ignorant man doth presently become an excellent painter, or contriver of building, and to become a master in any such art. But when these kinds of spirits portend to us future things they show those things which belong to the disturbing of the Elements and changes of times, as rain, tempests, inundations, earthquakes, slaughter, great mortality, famine, and the like. As we read in Aulus Gelius that his priest, Cornelius Patrarus, did, at the time when Cæsar and Pompey were to fight in Thessalia, being taken with a madness, foretell the time, order and issue of the battle. But when the mind is turned wholly into reason it becomes a receptacle for middle world spirits. Hence it obtains the knowledge and understanding of natural and human things. So we see that a man sometimes doth on a sudden become a philosopher, physician, or an orator, and foretells mutations of kingdoms, and restitutions of ages, and such things as belong to them, as did the Sibyl to the Romans. But when the mind is wholly elevated into the understanding, then it becomes a receptacle of sublime spirits and learns of them the secrets of divine things, such as the Law of God, and the Orders of Angels, and such things as belong to the knowledge of things eternal and the ascent of souls. It foresees things which are appointed by predestination, such as future prodigies or miracles, the prophet to come, and the changing of the law. So the Sibyls prophesied of Christ a long time before his coming. So Virgil, understanding that Christ was at hand and remembering what the Sibyl, Cumæa, had said, sang thus to Pollio: Last times are come, Cumæa's prophesie— Now from high heaven springs a new progenie, And times Great Order now again is born, The Maid returns, Saturnian Realms return. And, a little after, intimating that original sin shall be of no effect, he saith: If any prints of our old vice remain’d By thee they're void, and fear shall leave the Land; He a God's life shall take, with Gods shall see Mixt Heroes, and himself their object be; Rule with paternal power th’ appeased Earth He shall—— Then he adds, that thence the fall of the Serpent, and the poison of the tree of death, or of the knowledge of good and evil, shall be nulled, saying: ——The Serpent shall And the deceitful Herb of Venom fall. Yet he intimates that some sparks of original sin shall remain, when he saith: Some steps of ancient fraud shall yet be found. And at last with a most great hyperbole cries out to his child, as the offspring of God, adoring him in these words: Dear race of Gods, great stock of Jupiter, Behold! the World shakes on its ponderous axe, See earth, and heavens immense, and Ocean tracts, How all things at th’ approaching Age rejoice! O, that my life would last so long, and voice, As would suffice thy actions to rehearse.