The second thing that comes under consideration is, the influence and operation of external agents, namely, an angel, good or bad. It is not to be denied, but good angels may help and dispose all our faculties, excite, elevate, and set them upon edge and action; likewise, that evil angels may perturb, confound, and hurt, our external and internal senses, (when permitted) particularly by stirring the spirits, humours, and vapours, which of themselves, when so stirred, help to make many shapes and representations, either regular or irregular, (as has been formerly observed) and withal, they can colorate external objects far beyond any painter, insensibly to the beholder, _repente applicando activa passivis_; and that they can alter the medium interposed between our senses and the objects, by making it grosser or thinner, opaque or lucid, is a thing not to be questioned. For a clear proof of this I hope any rational man will allow me.
That even the evil angels, who were created in a degree above us, must have a more penetrating wit than ours is, and having experienced from their creation, to this very day, and can be present to every experiment found out, or that is committed to writing by the art of man; and withal, being not subject to oblivion as man is, (for they have no material faculty to be obliterated), I say any rational man will allow me, that they can do as much, and beyond what the art of man is able to do; but so it is, that painters can make one object more pleasant than another, distorted and worse favoured than another,--that any smoke may engross the air,--that a cloud removed on or off the face of the sun, give way to the beams of it to illuminate the air, or to eclipse its light,--that vapours and exhalations, from sea and land, multiply and magnify objects, misshapes and distorts them, and makes them of diverse figures, all in an instant, which is observable in hot summer days, especially in the end of the canicular days, for you may readily see about three or four in the afternoon, the same hills (providing they are situated at a considerable distance from you) to be of diverse shapes, forms, and figures, changing very suddenly from one shape to another, for example, from a globe to a pyramid, from a pyramid to a quadrangular figure, &c. All which our ordinary multiplying, magnifying, and distorting glasses, produce. Moreover, that physicians can administer such medicines as may provoke a man to madness and rage, yea, to fantastic or hypochondriac fits; so also medicines that move pleasant and unpleasant dreams, by exciting the melancholic or sanguine humours, raging or peaceable dreams, by moving the choleric or phlegmatic humour.