Dissertation on the Natural Knowledge of Angelic Existence

however, which is that the authority of magistrates would be exposed to great contempt, is clear, because the punishment that they justly claim for themselves for wicked men would be vain, since after death, or the final penalty they suffered for their crimes, they would seize an opportune occasion to avenge themselves, and would rage against the human race even more dissolutely and cruelly. But the latter is absurd; therefore, the former is also [absurd].

(τ) in Comm. ad Problem.
(υ) de Incantation p. 115.
(φ) de Occult. Natur. Mirac. l. 2. c. 2.
(χ) de Potest. Eccl. circa obsess. p. 162.
(ψ) Philos. Sacr. c. 30.

Some reject the use of unknown languages and the revelation of occult things by attributing them to natural causes, contending that these things happen to humans because of an abundance of agitated black bile, which, once evacuated through suitable medicines, causes them to cease being insane, to no longer know the languages, and thus restored, to return to their accustomed use of speaking and a sounder mind; such things are read almost in the same way in the author of the Problems, s. 30. His words are these: Many are also implicated in diseases of madness because that heat is in the proximity of the sediment, and they become lymphatic: whence Sibyls and bacchantes, and those inspired by a divine spirit, arise, when they occur not through disease, but through natural temperament. Petrus Aponensis (τ), Pomponatius (υ), and Levinus Lemnius (φ) have similar views, and he does not hesitate to affirm that humors often stir up such force, and such heat agitates the mind, that the sick in burning fevers speak, either eloquently or obscurely and confusedly, a language they have not been taught; and that the soul, being of celestial origin and a participant in divination, is prescient of the future, and skilled in prophesying, especially when death is imminent: which indeed clearly smack of that Platonic reminiscence. But it is impossible and incredible, as Raphael de la Torre (χ) acknowledged, that this is dogma. For how will there be in the mouth that which was not in the mind, and how in the mind that which was not in the sense? Therefore, it must be said that those things which some have devised here regarding natural causes are fictitious. These things happen through the intervention of demons, and they seek causes in nature in vain—to use the words of Valles (ψ)—when they see divination and do not acknowledge inspiration. Certainly, he says further, it is far easier and more persuasive that a demon represents such a thing to the fantasy than that there is a natural power of knowing things that are future, and which are not yet, and are hidden, whose forms have not entered through the organs of the senses, since this is so repugnant to the nature of the soul itself and to the condition of human cognition.