There are certain formulas of prayer to be used, before they make the
inspection, which they term a call. In a manuscript of Dr. Forman of
Lambeth, (which Mr. Elias Ashmole had) is a discourse of this, and the
prayer. Also there is the call which Dr. Nepier did use.
James Harrington (author of Oceana) told me that the Earl of Denbigh,
then Ambassador at Venice, did tell him, that one did shew him there
several times in a glass, things past and to come.
When Sir Marmaduke Langdale was in Italy, he went to one of those
Magi, who did shew him a glass, where he saw himself kneeling before a
crucifix: he was then a Protestant; afterwards he became a Roman
Catholick. He told Mr. Thomas Henshaw, E.S.S., this himself.
I have here set down the figure of a consecrated Beryl, as No. 4, now
in the possession of Sir Edward Harley, Knight of the Bath, which he
keeps in his closet at Brampton-Bryan in Herefordshire, amongst his
Cimelia, which I saw there. It came first from Norfolk; a minister had
it there, and a call was to be used with it. Afterwards a miller had
it, and both did work great cures with it, (if curable) and in the
Beryl they did see, either the receipt in writing, or else the herb.
To this minister, the spirits or angels would appear openly, and
because the miller (who was his familiar friend) one day happened to
see them, he gave him the aforesaid Beryl and Call: by these angels
the minister was forewarned of his death.