Observations, censures, and confutations of notorious errours in Mr. Hobbes his Leviathan and other his bookes to which are annexed occasionall anim-adversions on some writings of the Socinians and such hæreticks of the same opinion with him / by William Lucy ...

Sect. 5.

But he seems to give a reason for it thus [which men not knowing that such apparitions are nothing else but

Creatures of the fancie, think to be reall and external sub∣stances; and therefore call them Ghosts, as the Latines call them Imagines & Umbrae] I cannot conceive to what this Relative (Which) looks,* 1.1 by the preceding words it should be referred to the Dreames or Image in a Looking-glasse, but by the consequent words it seems to look fur∣ther, to the Invisible Agents, for no man was ever so foolish to think that Dreams, or the Image in a Looking-glasse, are real substances; nor yet is it true of one piece of them, which is the Image in the Looking-glasse, to say it is a Creature of the fancy; for the Image is there, whe∣ther the fancy conceit it so, or no. But then to take this word, Which, as it relates to the invisible Agents, which the words following implie [and therefore call them Ghosts] no man ever called the image in a Looking-glasse a Ghost: now then in this Sense, although a strange per∣turbed one, he saith, that men not knowing these Gods of theirs, those invisible Agents to be nothing but Creatures of the fancy called them Ghosts; I beleeve, if they had known them to be Creatures of the fancy, they would not have so called them Ghosts, as the Latines call them Imagines and Umbrae: Certainly I am perswaded, that the Latines did never call their Gods Imagines or Umbrae. This is a most perplexed discourse, I know not how to make sense of it, nor I beleeve he himself, for mark he goes on, [and thought them Spirits; that is, thin aerial bodies.] Con∣sider the relative Them, what doth he meane by it? Their Gods, those Invisible Agents? That cannot be for the following words [and these Invisible Agents, which they feared to be like them.] Now if by them before he meant these Invisible Agents, he could not say that they thought them like themselves; but for the other mention∣ed before, the Dreames or Images in a Glasse, no man

ever thought to be Spirits or aerial bodies. But he puts a difference betwixt Spirits and Ghosts, or Imagines, or Umbrae, or I know not what [how that they apaear and vanish when they please] and it seems the Ghosts did not: this I beleeve is not delivered by any, I am confident by none of his enemies, that are studied in Schoole and Vni∣versity-Learning; but thus he builds Castles in the aire, and I was about to say, fights against them; but he leaves them upon these weak foundations, and never casts a Trench, or plants a Battery against them, with any solid Argument; it may be he throwes a stone, an ill word somtimes, but not the least attempt to prove what he sayes, that ever I read. Hee proceeds with a discourse, from which I withhold my hand till I come to his Treatise of Angels, which will administer occa∣sion of fuller censure, and here I will leap over to Page 52.

Notes

• * 1.1

  His discourse of Spirits and Ghosts &c. too perplexed.