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The Novels and Miscellaneous Works: A System of Magic
The Novels and Miscellaneous Works A System of Magic Author:George Chalmers, Daniel Defoe Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAP. III. Of the reason and occasion which brought the ancient honest magi, whose original study was philosophy, astronomy, and the works of nature, to turn ... more »sorcerers and wizards, and deal with the Devil; and how their conversation began. Having thus stated the fact, and given you what I call a system of magic, it is necessary now, that in pursuance of my title, I should insist more particularly upon the third and last sort of magic I mentioned, and which is called diabolical, or according to the vulgar acceptation, the black art, and bring it out to you from its very foundation. This must be deduced historically from the other two, or else I cannot lead you regularly into its original, or give you its true description; besides, a great many useful and agreeable speculations offer themselves in the rise and progress of the thing itself, which will be most necessary to speak to, as we go along. Magic did not jump at once into being, as to the thing itself; it was not a revelation from hell, made at once to mankind, to tell them what they might do : the Devil did not come and offer his service gratis to us, and representing how useful a slave he would be, solicit us to take him into pay, and this at once, without ceremony or introduction. No, no, it was a long progression of studies and improvement in wicked and mischievous schemes, that brought mankind to have recourse to the in- fernals, to seek the aid of the dark agents below, and to solicit a commerce of that kind: nor wasthis done till after finding many difficulties in their other way, they saw evidently they could not do without him, could not accomplish their mischievous desires by other methods, and that this way it was to be done. Not but that the Devil was very ready, when he found himself made necessa...« less