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on their fport with the weaknefs and fimplicity of man- 

 kind, than the firffc and fecond centuries of the chri&ian 

 sera. The triumphant conflicts of a Lucian and a 

 Celfus * againft this frantic fpirit of their times, were 

 not mfficient to put a Hop to an evil, the increafe of 

 which was promoted by all imaginable means and cir- 

 cumfrances, which we fhall not here examine, but, in 

 the fequel, principally by the New Platonic philoiophy, 

 which, to ufe a phrafe of the wife Polonius in Hamlet 

 —put method in madnefs. 



Even the chrifiians were intoxicated with this fana- 

 tical philofopl y, as it appeared to them not only per- 

 fecftly well to fuit with their own myfteries, but even 

 to contain the key to them ; and when their party, after 

 long and bloody battles with heathenifm, as it is called, 

 gained at length the afcendant in the roman empire, 

 and had exterminated or fully fupprefled their adverfa- 

 ries, but too foon evinced that the world was but little 

 the better for it. The dasmonifm of the heathens, rofe 

 from its afhes in another drefs, and under other names. 

 The light of fcience gradually withdrew its beams. The 

 monks rilled the places of the fanatical Pythagoreans 

 and Platonics, and got pofieflion, after their example, 

 of the fame magical and theurgic arts ; ufmg for pre- 

 text, that they wrought, by the power of the true God 5 



* Celfus, a friend of Lucian, wrote a great work againft magic, 

 the tore of which is much to be lamented • becaufe, as we may 

 gather from a paffage in Lucian, the chief ftratagems whereby the 

 par teiiBed adepts in magical wifdora impofed upon the credulous 

 were expreffly defciibed. It is eafy to imagine, that the mailers 

 would take all poffible pains to fupprefs a book of that nature. 



and 



