not knowing whether he was in the body or out of the body when he was rapt into the third Heaven yet so much at least may be gathered from the Apostles words that in his judgment such an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Disjunction of the Soul from the Body without ensuing Death was possible To this head may likewise be referred the detestable and nefarious Conventions of Witches with wicked Spirits those officious Daemons loosening the Continuity or Vinculum between Soul and Body by which means they pass freely and securely to the general Rendezvous But here I would not so be understood as if I thought that Witches did never bodily assist at the performance of their Hellish Rites but only that sometimes they may be present at them when their Bodies are at home perhaps among other reasons that they may act with more safety and security and the better preserve their necks from the halter And though these discoveries are in a great measure owing to the confessions of Witches yet when these confessions are voluntary and unconstrained by any Racks or Torments and proceed from persons of perfect health of Body and no way disturbed in their Rational Faculties it is too open and pitiful a sham to ascribe them to the effects of Dotage and Melancholy since upon the same grounds it may be affirmed that the soberest actions of our lives are but dreams and all Histories past and present relations of matters of Fact especially if they refer never so little to the Being of Spirits may be concluded by an Atheistical Foppe to be no other than melancholick delusions OBJECTION II. That these Airy Spirits are too remote and of a Nature too sublime to have any Communication with Mortals TO this it is replied 1. That those who are at the furthest distance from us never exceed or go beyond the Regions of the Air being fetter'd and chained within the Atmosphere of the Earth by that Divine Nemesis that casts them thither and here the grand Prince of Darkness hath seated his Throne and from hence casting his envious eyes upon Earth like a Vultur descends whereever he spies his prey Nor will the sublimity of their Nature be a sufficient security to frail Mortals from their revenge and malice since lust and ambition balk no employments but will undertake the most fordid offices to compass their desired Ends. And that stately Apostate who once disdained not to insinuate and couch himself in the winding Spires of a hateful Serpent the better to allure and deceive the innocent credulity of Eve we have no reason to think that to gratifie his revenge and lust he will abhor the society of a Witch 2. It is affirmed that there have been persons bodily acted and possessed by evil Spirits which is not only attested by the many relations of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Daemoniacks that is men possessed with Devils or infested by them recorded in the holy Scriptures in our Saviours time but confirmed by later Writers of unexceptionable credit and veracity that it were a perfect piece of impudence to go about to deny and out-face them And I do not doubt but a curious Observator may find some fresh instances even in our own Times But this hankering after the bare Mechanical causes of things and not acknowledging any higher principle than Matter and Motion in the Universe the very dregs of Atheism hath cast so much dust into some mens eyes that those effects which really proceed from the Activity and Energy of Incorporeal Beings are by them ascribed to Frenzy and madness or some other Bodily disease Though it be true which is asserted by a very learned Author of our own that the Iews in our Saviour's time as they did not suppose all Mad-men to be Daemoniacks so neither all Daemoniacks Mad-men we reading of Devils cast out from others besides Mad-men and of a Woman which had a Spirit of infirmity only and was bowed together and could not lift up her self which is said by our Saviour Christ to have been bound by Satan To which purpose this learned person gives a notable instance of a Demoniacal possession out of Fernelius a very experienced Physician who was an eye-witness thereof A young man of a Noble Family who was strangely convulsed in his Body having sometimes one member and sometimes another violently agitated insomuch that four several persons were scarcely able to hold him and this at first without any distemper in his head or crazedness in his brain To whom Fernelius with other skilful Physicians being called applied all manner of remedies Blisters Purgations Cupping-glasses Fomentations Unctions Plaisters and strengthning Medicines but all in vain The reason whereof is thus given by the same Fernelius Quoniam omnes longe aberamus c. i.e. Because we were all far from the knowledge of the Truth For in the third Month it was first plainly discovered to us that it was a certain Daemon who was the Author of all this mischief He manifesting himself by his speech and by unusual words both in Greek and Latin though the Patient were altogether ignorant of the Greek Tongue and by his revealing many of the secrets of those who stood by especially of the Physicians whom also he derided for tormenting the Patient in that manner with their frustraneous Remedies By which it is apparent that neither the fancied remoteness and distance nor yet the sublimity of their natures is any bar to these wicked Spirits from having Communication with us Mortals and that this Objection is vainly urged against the Being of Witches 3. But to give it all the strength that may be it is further answered that it is not necessary to suppose the Grandees of the Airy Principality to trade with Witches but that the Souls of extremely wicked persons after their release from the Body may do those feats For whether we suppose that such as in this life have incorporated themselves into the Dark Society by all manner of villanous and flagitious actions are when loosened by Death from their Terrestrial Bodies the Vassals and Slaves of those crafty Daemons whose cursed inspirations and counsels they so eagerly followed and so by them are employed in these abominable offices Or whether the proclivity of their own Natures to all enormous wickedness may not induce them to attempt Familiarity and Society with Sorcerers and Witches especially since those radicated and confirmed habits of Vice contracted in this life are rather heightned and increased than any way diminished or abated by the releasement from the flesh and consequently it may be accounted by them a pleasant sport and pastime to tempt and inveigle such desolate and forlorn Mortals Either of these ways are sufficient to beget a probability that those Familiars of Witches to whom they have linked themselves may be no other than humane Souls deeply sunk and drowned in wickedness OBJECTION III. That it supposes Witches by the help of evil Spirits may do real Miracles
Automaton that is any kind of Machine that moves of it self wound up having of it self the corporeal principle of those Motions for which it was instituted with all things requisite for its action and the same Watch or other Engine when it is broken and the principle of its Motion ceases to act From hence it will appear that there is no impossibility in the thing nor any such inextricable difficulty in conceiving how the Soul may actually separate from the Body for some time without ensuing Death For the further clearing of which there are these two things required 1. To shew how the necessary Functions of life may be conserved and kept up while the Soul is separate from the Body 2. To consider what those things are which may cause a Temporaneous disunion and disjunction of the Soul from the Body First then it will not seem at all strange that the principal Functions of life should be performed for some time without the presence of the Soul to them who will admit of the principles of the Cartesian Philosophy which supposes that the Soul contributes nothing to any of those Motions in the Body which depond not upon actual Will and Cogitation And if withal we suppose Brutes to be but Machines or Automata it will be very clear that all those Motions which we call Vital in the Body may be performed without the actual presence of the Soul But if this seem harsh and irrational to them who imagine bare Mechanism to be an incompetent cause for the production of such effects and that the Systole and Diastole of the Heart which later Anatomists have found to be a Muscular Constriction and Relaxation and the Circulation of the Bloud through all parts of the Body must proceed not from a Mechanical but Vital principle They may be pleased to consider that in Nature there is a certain Vis Plastica or rather Nature it self is it a Plastick Power or Inconscious Incorporeal life which passing through the Universe governs all the Motions of Matter every where according to such laws fatally imprest upon it and reconciles the enmities and contrarieties of particular things bringing them into one general Harmony in the whole and strikes the first and Rudimental lineaments in the formation of the Bodies of Animals and lastly may be particular Souls or Spirits be so far rapt and drawn into consent as to work strange effects not only upon their own but upon separate and distant Bodies Now by this Hylarchical principle or Plastick nature so many of the vital motions of the Body may be kept in play as shall render it as fit and convenient for the Inhabitation of the Soul at its return as it was when she dislodged and separated from it In answer to the second particular it may be said that it is possible the Soul may be rapt from this Terrestrial Body and carried to remote and distant places from whence she may make a Postliminiar return by either of these two ways 1. From a vehement affection or deep imagination piercing into the very lowest of her Powers 2. By the assistance and activity of a more potent Spirit While a House is standing whole and entire the occupier of it may go out and in and still keep the possession but when it is either thrown down and broken by an external violence or falls to pieces through the rottenness and consumption of its parts he must lye in the streets if he cannot get another dwelling Such is the condition of the Soul in respect of the Body whose principal parts in which consist the safety of the whole being corrupted she hastes away never to return till it be rebuilt But while they remain firm and safe she may be carried out by strong and powerful affections and re-enter and dwell there as before Nor is any Desire or Velleity whereby many will say they would fain go out of their Bodies to some distant place though without any more potent affection than to try the experiment enough to cause a separation but it must be so strong and vehement and so far imprint it self upon the imagination as to reach that Plastick Faculty by which the Soul is connected to the Body and these cords being loosened and untied she may without any difficulty pass into the open Air. And he that considers the strange and wonderful effects of Imagination even upon these our Earthly Tenements will have no reason to doubt but the same Power may extend to a Temporary disjunction of the Soul from the Body Common experience shows how the Pica or longing of a pregnant Woman will by a keen Fancy stamp and impress the character of the thing so passionately desired upon the Child in her womb I will not take upon me to maintain the truth of all those strange effects attributed to the strength of Imagination by Fienus Cornelius Agrippa and others though I must confess so much is said by them as to matter of Fact as may satisfie a free and unprejudicated mind that the power of Imagination even upon these gross and unwieldy Bodies is much greater and more notable than is by many supposed But if any one shall so far distrust the truth of such stories as to rank them among Legendary Fables let him consider what other could be Iacobs intent in that device of his in placing pilled and straked Rods before the flocks at the watring-places but only to heighten and invigorate the Imaginative Faculty of the Ews at the time of Conception Now that this hath actually hapned namely that the Soul hath been carried from the Body and after some time returned again the relations of disinterested persons would induce us to believe And it is very probable that upon a due search into the Causes and Natures of things it may not seem incredible what Cardan relates of himself that he could when he pleased fall into this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Disjunction or Abreption of his Soul from his Body A thing which is credibly reported of the Lappians who lying as it were in a Trance for some hours will give a perfect account of affairs at three hundred miles distance and by some evident token give assurance of their being in such places To which if we should add the story of Phaereus Pamphylius recorded by Plato of Hermotimus Clazomenius by Pliny and of Soleus by Plutarch it will at least assure us that grave and wise Persons did not think such an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as is here contended for to be altogether a thing so monstrous and incredible The other way whereby a Soul may be withdrawn from the Body and brought back again is by the efficiency and activity of a more powerful Spirit And hitherto some learned men refer that of Ezek. 37.1 The hand of the Lord was upon me and carried me out in the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the midst of the valley And though S. Paul deliver it doubtfully as
and ways of recovering men out of the hands of the Devil undervalued and despised when he sees men wilfully shut their eyes against those bright rays of Truth that encircle them then in a just judgment he suffers them to fall under the power of Satan and to be led away as the Apostle speaks with strong delusions to the occecation and blinding their very Reasons and Judgments And this insensate condition can never arrive to its full maturity and perfection without the potent Energy and Activity of the Devil CHAP. VI. That nothing hinders but having full Possession of the Minds of Men these Evil Spirits may likewise enslave their Bodies FOR the Possession of the Mind by such strong falshoods as shall lead to all Impurity of life and actions may be as real a work of the Devil though not so visible as his inacting their Bodies And if it might as well conduce to the interest and advantage of his Kingdom to make such visible discoveries of himself by acting in the Bodies of men there is no question but such Possessions would be infinitely more frequent than they are For the frame and temper of the Mind being the peculiar object of Divine Providence it is certain that a man may lapse so far into wickedness and vice as to forfeit this Care and to turn himself out of her Protection and then he comes into the dominion of and becomes a prey to the invisible Harpyes And though these bodily vexations and infestations by evil Daemons may sometimes befal others yet they are more infrequent and permitted by Providence for ends and purposes not readily discoverable by us But when they are exercised upon deplorably wicked and profligate persons those Daemons seise upon and use but what is their own Now that there have been such real Possessions of men by Devils hath been so fully attested by unprejudic'd persons in all Ages that he cannot escape the suspicion of having imbibed some Atheistical principles that shall have the confidence to deny them But because there are many so staggering fluctuating and uncertain in their Religion that they can hardly be perswaded to believe the existence of such Spirits or the association and confederation of men with these foul and unclean Daemons and that the Scriptures speak of Wizards Witches and Magicians by which we understand persons that combine with and are confederate with impure Spirits I shall endeavour to take off this grand Objection against those Sacred Writings by shewing the possibility of the thing that there have been in all Ages of the World such as have practised and entred into Familiarity with wicked Daemons and that the Scriptures are not therefore to be derided and exposed by profane Wits when they speak of these things as matters of Fact and Reality since true and genuine Philosophy asserts the same and the wisest and most learned persons among the Heathens believed it and that the Arguments and Objections against it are weak and frivolous and betray the ignorance and unskilfulness of their Authors CHAP. VII Of Witchcraft THE Devil is not contented to abuse mankind at a distance as it were by all those ways and arts and illusions in offering temptations from without and thereby seducing them from their obedience to God but in all Ages those impure Spirits have made use of capable subjects with whom they have entred into a nearer union and stricter confederation being first initiated into those hellish mysteries by some External solemnities by which they surrender themselves to the will and power of those Aiery tyrants and by seeming for a time to command render themselves Vassals to the mockery cruelty and unbridled lusts and passions of those malicious Goblins for ever And such persons are properly called Magicians Wizards and Witches Nevertheless it must here be acknowledged that there have been and doubtless are a kind of Necromancers or Magicians who are not like the common sort not only grosly sunk and debauched in their lives but also knowingly do homage to evil Spirits as such for the gratification of their Lusts but more refined Ones who call themselves Theurgists such as being in some measure freed from the grosser Vices and thinking to have to do only with good Spirits yet being proud and vain-glorious and affecting wonders and to transcend the generality of mankind are by a Divine Nemesis justly exposed to the illusions of the Devil or evil Spirits cunningly insinuating here and aptly accommodating themselves to them Now such as these may have the assistance of wicked Spirits though they know them not to be so in the performance of many strange and wonderful things without any such solemn compacts as those fouler and grosser Sorcerers enter into And though Porphyry and some others did distinguish these two sorts so as to condemn indeed the grosser which they called Magick or Goety but allowed the other which they termed Theurgie as laudable and honourable and as an art by which they received Angels and had communication with the Gods Yet S. Austin assures us they are both damnable and bound to the observation of false and silthy Devils instead of Angels which he further proves by relating a memorable story out of Porphyry of a certain Chaldean who good man complained that all his endeavour to purge his Soul by these Theurgick consecrations was frustrate by reason a great Artist envying him this happiness adjured the powers he was to deal with by holy Invocations and bound them from granting him any of his requests Of this sort were probably Zoroaster Apollonius Tyanaeus Apuleius and some others of later times For a more distinct and orderly procedure in this Chapter I shall consider these three things 1. First the account which the Scriptures give of Magick or Witchcraft In the Law of Moses a severe punishment no less than Death it self is ordained for Necromancers Wizards and Witches and such as have commerce with familiar Spirits Levit. 20.27 And the people of Israel are expresly forbid to consult with any such Levit. 19.31 Deut. 18.10 11. Now it seems very dilute and insipid to direct the intention of these Laws only against Juglers Miracle-mongers or Impostors as if it were impossible in the nature of the thing that there should be any confederation of men with evil Spirits and that all those strange effects performed by Necromantick Arts and truly supposed to be brought to pass by the assistance of those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 malicious and deceitful Daemons with whom the Magicians are confederate are only Prestigious delusions and tricks as it were of Leger du maine For first the reason of the Law it self shews it to be of a higher and greater importance Deut. 18.12 For all that do these things are an abomination to the Lord and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee And surely nothing can be a greater and more hainous wickedness than for a man to forsake the
evil Spirit and a Witch 3. Thirdly we are to take notice That there are divers Degrees of these lapsed Spirits and that they sute themselves according to the tempers and constitutions of the persons they deal withal This I have in part already discovered but shall now prosecute it a little further wherefore though the whole Army of these wicked Spirits that rebelled against God how numerous soever be cast down from the Ethereal Regions and confin'd within the Atmosphere of the Earth partly by a Divine Decree and partly urged by the Fatal necessity of their degenerate natures yet their propensions and inclinations are not all alike but are as various and different as those of mankind Psellus from Marcus the Eremite a skilful Daemonist relates six kinds of Daemons the first Fiery called Lelurion i. e. Nocturnal Fire and these wander in the top of the Aiery Region yet far beneath the Moon The second are Aiery whose Mansions are these lower Regions nearer to us The third are Terrestrial dwelling upon the Earth and perillous foes to mankind The fourth are Aquatick or watry keeping their haunts about Rivers Lakes and Springs drowning men often raising storms at Sea and sinking Ships The fifth sort are Subterranean living in Caverns and Hollows of the Earth often hurting and killing Well-diggers and Miners for Metals causing Earthquakes and Eruptions of Flames and Pestilent Winds The last and worst sort are those light-hating Ghosts or night-walkers the dark and most inscrutable kind and striking all things they meet with cold Passions And all these Daemons saith he hate both Gods and Men but some worse than others But whether there be just so many kinds is not at all material certain it is that among that degenerate crue their Humours and Passions are various and different and so are fitted for the undertaking different Employments according as the great Divan or superior Council of Darkness shall order and allot them And these Daemons take care to sute themselves to the tempers of those they have familiarity withal and the Devils with whom Apollonius conversed might be far different from those fouler and grosser Fiends that attend a wicked Sorceress daily sucking her bloud and nestling in her loathsome rags To carry on this a little higher A deep Contemplator that considers the frame of the World and the several Beings contained therein together with their mutual relations affections and dependences upon one another shall find that there is a certain Sympathy running through the Universe whereby Superior things act upon Inferior and this is continued through the whole material Creation by that Plastick nature that pervades the whole and being life and activity and consequently incorporeal acts fatally and Magically that is without any express consciousness of what it does From hence arises a kind of union that combines and makes a continuation between all things in Nature which the Platonists signified when they said the whole World was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the great Magician or Inchanter and this they called Natural Magick that is the Concords and Discords or Sympathies and Antipathies of Nature as may be seen in several instances Now as in Nature there is such a Conspiration so likewise in Moral Agents whereby things are carried by a certain Assimilation according to the temper and disposition of the mind Thus wicked men do by a kind of harmony or agreeableness of Nature invite and draw wicked Spirits to their Association and this Magnetism is raised and Invigorated by a deep grounded exorbitancy of the Passions and Affections so that a person deeply immersed in Envy and Malice and edged with a sharp desire of Revenge does as naturally call and solicite an evil Daemon as the cries and shrieks of dying Beasts will gather the rest of the same Species to their assistance Nor is there any greater difficulty in conceiving that an impure Spirit may thus be solicited into a confederacy with a Witch being otherwise sufficiently prompted to such villany by their own wicked natures than that an evil Daemon should be called down by certain Charms and Previous Consecrations to inhabit an Image For this latter S. Austin cites a passage out of Hermes Trismegist Wherefore our Fathers erring exceedingly in Incredulity concerning the Deities and never penetrating into the depth of Divine Religion they invented an Art to make Gods whereunto they joyned a Virtue out of some part of the Worlds Nature like to the other and conjoyning these two because they could make no Souls they framed certain Images whereinto they called either Angels or Devils and so by these mysteries gave these Idols power to hurt or help them Having thus far shewed that there have been in all Ages such persons as we call Witches or Magicians not only from the account which the Holy Scriptures give of them but from the Nature and Reason of the thing it self and by rational evidence made good the possibility of a Confederation between Men and wicked Daemons there remains no more now but to answer those Objections and refute the Arguments in which some so mightily triumph that they think nothing is more plain than that Witchcraft is a mere Fiction and Imposture and a ridiculous piece of non-sence which it is greatly to be feared is thus far improved to cast a contempt upon the Sacred Scriptures and to explode the Being of Spirits as Creatures rather existing in mens Brains and Imaginations than any where else in the Universe and by degrees to make Religion a meer cheat and delusion OBJECTION I. That these Witches are supposed to be present at their Nocturnal Conventicles and Diabolical meetings when their Bodies are at home which is impossible Answ. THis Objection proceeds either from ignorance or misunderstanding the nature and powers of the Soul whose union with the Body is not by Cogitation and Will for then there might be an actual separation whenever men pleased but fixed in some lower Power which chains and links the Soul to the Body even against her will in acute and sharp Diseases And this union is upon certain terms and conditions which so long as they continue unbroken and inviolate the Soul is confined to her Earthly mansion and habitation but when these laws and conditions shall be infringed either by external violence or the prevalency of a Disease or some other enormous and extreme disorder and perturbation in the Body then she dislodges not by explicit Will and Counsel but by Necessity and Constraint because the Body is no longer tenantable or capable of her reception and then ensues that which we properly call Death which as that acute Philosopher Des-Cartes rightly concludes never happens through any defect or fault of the Soul but only because some of the principal parts of the Body are depraved and corrupted And the difference he says between the Body of a living Man and that of a dead one is much what the same as between a Watch or any other