< Sortilegy. – Dr. Doddridge (continued from page 3-118) >
in his prayer, as the reason which chiefly weighed with him to reject the offer, that it was far beyond his forces, and chiefly because he was too young, and had no assistant. He goes on thus: “As soon as ever this address” (meaning the prayer) “was ended, I passed through a room of the house in which I lodged, where a child was reading to his mother, and the only words I heard distinctly were these. And as thy days, so shall thy strength be.” This singular coincidence between his own difficulty and a scriptural line, caught at random in passing hastily through a room (but observe, a line insulated from the context, and placed in high relief to his ear), shook his resolution. Accident co-operated: a promise to be fulfilled at Northampton, in a certain contingency, fell due at the instant; the doctor was detained—this detention gave time for further representations; new motives arose, old difficulties were removed, and finally the doctor saw, in all this succession of steps, the first of which, however, lay in the Sortes Biblicce, clear indications of a providential guidance. With that conviction he took up his abode at Northampton, and remained there for the next thirty one years, until he left it for his grave at Lisbon: in fact, he passed the whole of his public life at Northampton. It must be allowed, therefore, to stand upon the records of Sortilegy, that in the main direction of his life—not, indeed, as to its spirit, but as to its form and local connections—a Protestant divine of much merit, and chiefly in what regards practice, and of the class most opposed to superstition, took his determining impulse from a variety of the Sortes Virgiliance.
If the reader imagines that this ancient form of the practical miraculous is at all ^one out of use, even the example of Dr. Doddridge may satisfy him to the contrary. Such an example was sure to authorize a large imitation. Hut, even apart from that, the belief is common. The records of conversion amongst felons and other ignorant persons might be cited by hundreds upon hundreds to prove that no practice is more common than that of trying the spiritual fate, and abiding by the import of any passage in the Scriptures which may first present itself to the eye. Cowper, the poet, has recorded a case of this sort, in his own experience. It is one to which all the unhappy are prone.
Opinions on Spirit Return
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... return no more.” *)
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* Mind is the quinte essence of the Soul and having joined its divine Spirit now – can return no more on earth – impossible.
Occultism
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Inlay
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Editor's notes