They pretended that, owing to the wonderful
virtue of the number comprised in the name of Satan, he is prevented
from accusing them for an equal number of days: hence the stratagem
before alluded to, for depriving the devil of the power of doing them
any harm on the only day on which that power is granted to him.
In allusion to the cabalists, Pliny says, "There is another sect of
magicians of which Moses and Latopea, Jews, were the first authors." It
was the prevailing opinion among the Hebrews, that the Cabala was
delivered by God to Moses, and thence through a succession of ages, even
to the times of Ezra, preserved by tradition only, without the help of
writing, in the same manner as the doctrine of Pythagoras was delivered
by Archippus and Lysiades, who kept schools at Thebes in Greece, where
the scholars learned all their master's precepts by heart, and employed
their memories instead of books. So certain Jews, despising letters,
placed all their learning in memory, observation, and verbal tradition;
whence it was called by them Cabala, that is, a receiving from one to
another by the ear an art said to be very ancient and only known to the
christians in later times.
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