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The Novels and Miscellaneous Works (13); The History and Reality of Apparitions
The Novels and Miscellaneous Works The History and Reality of Apparitions - 13 Author:Daniel Defoe Volume: 13 General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1840 Original Publisher: Printed by D. A. Talboys for T. Tegg, London Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial ... more »access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAP. I. Of apparitions in particular, the reality of them, their antiquity, and the difference between the apparitions of former times, and those which we may call modern, with something of the reason and occasion of that difference. Nothing can be a stronger testimony of the reality of apparitions in general, than to descend to the particular appearances which we are assured have been seen and conversed with from the superior world. And first I begin with such as have been evidently from heaven itself, and by the sovereign appointment of providence upon extraordinary occasions. And though I shall trouble my readers with as little as possible out of Scripture, especially at the beginning of my work, because I am unwilling they should throw it by before they read it out, which there would be some danger of, if I should begin too grave; yet, as I cannot go back to originals, or begin at the beginning, without a little history out of those ancient times, you must bear with my just naming the sacred historians. I will be as short as 1 can. Nothing is more certain, if the Scripture is at all to be believed among us, than that God himself was pleased, in the infancy of things; to appear visibly, and in form, to several persons, and on several occasions, upon earth, assuming or taking up the shape of his creature man, when he thought fit to converse with him, that he might not be a terror to him. Thus Adam was frequently visited in Eden, and we have no room to doubt but it was in a visible form, because Adam both heard him speak,...« less