GIST MATTERS OP BELIEF. $1 



as the productions of evil daemons or of angry and 

 avenging deities, moftly by fupernatural means, by 

 magical charms, incantations, burning of incenfe, amu- 

 lets, talifmans, and the like. Their art of medicine 

 was therefore, for the moft part, a branch of their 

 magic and theurgy *. Thefe latter, with all their col- 

 lateral branches, the collective arts of divination, 

 of aftrology, geomancy, necromancy, conjuration of 

 fpirits, fpells, exorcifms, difcovery of hidden treafures, 

 &c. were facerdotal arts, connected with religion, and 

 fanctified by it. The propenlity to the marvellous, 

 and the ardent delire of looking into futurity, confii- 

 tute the weak lide of human nature : the priefts drew, 

 too much profit from them, not to turn them every 

 where into a regular trade (more or lefs according to 

 the concurrence of other circumflances), and to culti- 

 vate as far as poffible thefe fertile fields of fuperftition, 

 as their proper appanage and province. Doubtlefs, there 

 might then, as well as now, have been found among 

 them numbers of fanatics and other weak perfons, who 

 believed in earner!: in all thefe follies : but the genera- 

 lity knew very well what was in their fupernatural arts, 

 and their confciences foon grew fufficiently tough, to 



* Magic, ill its moft extenfive fignification, is the pretended 

 occult fcience of a&ing upon fpirits of all kinds, and through 

 them upon the material world. Theurgy is the name of the pre- 

 tended pure and facred magic of the unknown miraculous perfo- 

 nages Hermes Trifmegiftus, Zoroafter, and their pretended dif- 

 ciples, who are faid to have wrought miraculous effects by the 

 power of the names of the gods, by invocation of the deities, and 

 by the heljj of benign fpirits. 



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