Selected quad for the lemma: kingdom_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
kingdom_n	cast_v	devil_n	divide_v	3,310	5	9.5405	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A42824	Saducismus triumphatus, or, Full and plain evidence concerning witches and apparitions in two parts : the first treating of their possibility, the second of their real existence / by Joseph Glanvil. With a letter of Dr. Henry More on the same subject and an authentick but wonderful story of certain Swedish witches done into English by Anth. Horneck.	Glanvill, Joseph, 1636-1680.; More, Henry, 1614-1687.; Horneck, Anthony, 1641-1697.	1681 (1681)	Wing G822; ESTC R25463	271,903	638

the D●…vil or unclean Spirit So Luke 4. 33. In the Synagogue there was a Man that had a Spirit of an unclean Devil and cryed out with a loud Voice saying Let us alone c. Well but might not this be the Man himself that cryed out so Therefore read a little on v. 35. And Jesus rebuked him viz. him that spake saying to the same still Hold thy peace and come out of him Which must be another Person distinct srom the Man himself and who was that It follows And when the Devil had thrown him in the midst he came cut of him the same Devil that spake that our Saviour rebuked and commanded to come out which could be no other than a real Evil Spirit And that those ejected Devils were not Diseases appears further Matth. 12. v. 22. There was brought unto him one possessed with a Devil blind and dumb and he healed him insomuch to wit the consequence of the ejecting the Devil was that the blind and dumb both spake and saw The Pharisees v. 24. impute this casting out Devils to a confederacy with Beelzebub the Prince of the Devils our Saviour there argues that then Sathan should be divided against himself namely Beelzebub the chief against the Inferiour Devils that he cast out who are of his Kingdom and doing the work of it For there it follows that his Kingdom could not stand v. 26. These things will be hardly applyed to Diseases And Fourthly and lastly If the Evangelist should call Diseases Devils and unclean Spirits and speak of casting out Devils in an History with all the plainness and expresness of Words and Phrase and Circumstance that such an action could be described by and yet mean nothing of it what would this suggest but that they falsly ascribed to Christ wonders that he never did and consequently that they were Lyars and Deceivers and vain Impostours For clear it is that whoever shall read those passages in the Gospel without a prepossest Opinion will be led into this belief by them that our Saviour did really cast Devils out of Persons possest And if there be really no such thing as Possession by evil Spirits but only Diseases by the ignorant and credulous people taken for such then the History imposeth on us and leads Men into a perswasion of things done by the Power of Christ that never were And what execution this will do upon the truth and credit of the whole History is very easie to understand SECT VII That the Witch-Advocates cannot elude Scripture-Testimony of Possession by Evil Spirits by saying it speaks according to the received Opinions of Men. I But the Scripture doth we know speak often according to the received Opinions of Men though they are errours which it is not concerned to rectify when they concern no Morality or Religion But first The Doctrine of Spirits and Devils was not the received Opinion of all the Jews The Sadducees a considerable Sect were of another mind So that the Stories of ejecting such must look to them as Impostures And the Scriptures were not written only for the Jews and for that particular time alone but for all Places and all Ages Most of which have no such use of calling Diseases Devils and among them the History must either convey a false Opinion or lose the Reputation of its Truth Secondly Though the Scripture doth not vary from the common forms of Speech where they are grounded upon harmless and lesser mistakes yet when such are great and dangerous prejudicial to the Glory of God and Interest of Religion it is then much concerned to reform and rectify such errours And according to the Belief of the Witch-Advocates the Doctrine of Possessions is highly such For it leads to the Opinion of Witchcraft which they make such a Dismal and Tragical Error Blasphemy an abominably Idolatrous yea an Atheistical Doctrine the grand Apostasie the greatest that ever was or can be that which cuts off Christs Head and Un-Gods him renounceth Christ and God and owns the Devil and makes him equal to them c. As the Authour of the Grand Apostasie raves And Mr. Webster saith little less of this Opinion in his Preface viz. That it tends to advance Superstition and Popery is derogatory to the Wisdom Justice and Providence of the Almighty tending to cry up the Power of the Kingdom of darkness to question the verity of the principal Articles of the Christian Faith concerning the Resurrection of Christ and generally tends to the obstructing of Godliness and Piety And Mr. Wagstaffe loads it with as dreadful imputations in his Preface As that it doth necessarily infer plurality of Gods by attributing Omnipotent effects to more than one and that it supposeth many Omnipotents and many Omniscients If any thing of this be so certainly our Saviours inspired Historians would not have connived at much less would they have spoken in the Phrase that supposeth and encourageth a common Error that leads to such an horrid Opinion SECT VIII An Answer to an Objection from Christs n●… mentioning his casting out Devils to John's Disciples amongst other Miracles BUt saith the Authour of the Grand Apestasie p. 34. our Saviour himself in his Answer to the Disciples of John the Baptist Luke 7. doth not pretend to the casting out Devils but only the cure of Diseases and raising the Dead To which I say First we may not argue negatively from Scripture in such matters and certainly we ought not to argue from silence in one place against plain assirmations in many Secondly Our Saviour answers in reference to the things he was then doing when the Disciples of John came to him v. 21. And in that same hour he cured many of their Infirmities and Plagues Evil Spirits it must be confessed are also mentioned Some of those Diseases it is like were occasioned by Evil Spirits as Ma●…th 12. 22. the blindness and dumbness of th●… possessed person there was And then the ●…jection of the Evil Spirit is implyed when the Disease is said to be Cured Thirdly The business of John's Disciples was to enquire whether he was the Messiah and it was fit our Saviour in his Answer should give such proofs of his being so as were plain and palpable Go your way saith he and tell John what things ye have seen and heard Luke 7. 22. They had heard him Preach the Gospel it is like and had seen him Cure Diseases These things were plain and sensible and could admit of no dispute or doubt But whether the Distempers Christ then healed were inflicted by Evil Spirits and whether those were cast out in the Cure did not plainly appear at that time Our Saviour therefore did not bid them mention that Instance to their Master John because they could not testify it on their own knowledge as they could the things themselves saw and heard SECT IX An Answer to two more Objections the one that St. John mentions no casting out Devils in his Gospel the other that

articulate palpableness of Flesh and Bone and Temperament that are in living men Till this appear by confest experience to be in the palpable consistency of Familiars or Spirits that transact with Witches the Allegation is infinitely weak upon that account also as weak as spightful and perverse But the Hag-Advocates will alledge any foolish thing rather than seem to be able to say nothing In the mean time I think it here seasonable to declare that though this intended Edition of Saducismus Triumphatus had not the happiness to be perfected by the ingenious Author 's own hand before his death yet such Materials he left behind him and the work in such a forwardness that things being put together in that order and distinctness which they are the Discourse may prove as useful for the reclaiming men from Saducism though perhaps not altogether so delightful as if his own hand had had the last polishing of it And the publishing of it will also do him that right in the eyes of the world that whereas he was suspected haply for some complaisance towards some persons that were over-inclinable to Hobbianism to have shrunk from the sense of such noble Theories with which his mind was enlightned in the morning of his days it from hence may appear that these things stuck close to him and that he entertained them with a sincere warmth all along as is evident from these Papers then private within his own Study-walls As the profession of them broke out from him most expresly when he lay on his Death-bed as his intimate friend Mr. Thomas Alcock largely sets down in a Letter written to Dr. H. More And I think that is the time if ever that men will speak their thoughts freely as the Poet hath observed in the like case Nam vere voces tum demum pectore ab imo Ejiciuntur eripitur persona manet res To this Sense Then 't is men from their Hearts their Mind declare Cast off their Vizards shew their faces bare AN ACCOUNT Of what happened in the KINGDOM OF SWEDEN In the Years 1669 and 1670. In Relation to the Persons that were accused For Witches AND TRIED and EXECUTED By the King's Command Printed at first in the Swedish Dialect by Authority and then Translated into divers other Languages and now upon the requost of some Friends done into English By Anthony Horneck Preacher at the Savoy LONDON Printed 1681. THE TRANSLATORS PREFACE TO THE READER Shewing what Credit may be given to the Matter of Fact related in the ensuing Narrative THat we are to believe nothing but what we have seen is a rule so false that we dare not call our selves rational Creatures and avouch it yet as irrational as the Maxime is is become modish with some men and those no ●…ery mean Wits neither to make use of it and though they will hardly own it in its full Latitude yet when it comes to Particulars let the Reasons to the contrary be never so pregnant or convincing they 'le hugg it as their sacred Anchor and laugh at all those credulous Wretches that without seeing are so easily chous'd into an imprudent Confidence And this pitiful Stratagem we find practised in no affair so much as that of Spirits and Witches and Apparitions which must all be Fancies and Hypocondriack Dreams and the effects of distempered Brains because their own are so dull as not to be able to pierce into those Mysteries I do not deny but the Imagination may be and is sometime deluded and melancholy People may fancy they hear Voices and see very strange things which have no other foundation but their own weakness and like Bubbles break into Air and nothing by their own vanity Yet as no man doth therefore take unpolisht Diamonds to be Pebbles because they do look like them so neither must all passages of this nature we hear or read of be traduced as self-conceit or derided as Old Wives Fables because some smell strong of Imposture and Sophistication We believe men of Reason and Experience and free from Fumes when a person of ordinary Intellectuals finds no great credit with us and if we think our selves wise for doing so why should any man so much forget himself as to be an Infidel in point of such Phaenomena's when even the most judicious men have had experience of such passages It seems 〈◊〉 me no less than madness to contradict what both wise and unwise men do unanimously agree in and how Jews Heathens Mahometans and Christians both learned and unlearned should come to conspire into this Cheat as yet seems to me un accountable If some few melancholy Monks or Old Women had seen such Ghosts and Apparitions we might then suspect that what they pretend to have seen might be nothing but the effect of a disordered Imagination but when the whole World as it were and men of all Religions men of all Ages too have been forced by strong evidences to acknowledge the truth of such occurrences I know not what strength there can be in the Argument drawn from the consent of Nations in things of a sublimer nature if here it be of no efficacy Men that have attempted to evade the places of Scripture which speak of Ghosts and Witches we see how they are forced to turn and wind the Texts and make in a manner Noses of Wax of them and rather squeeze than gather the sence as if the holy Writers had spoke like Sophisters and not like men who made it their business to condescend to the capacity of the Common people Let a man put no force at all on those passages of holy Writ and then see what sence they are like to yield It 's strange to see how some men have endeavoured to elude the story of the Witch of Endor and as far as I can judge they play more Hocus-Pocus tricks in the explication of that passage than the Witch herself did in raising the deceased Samuel To those Straits is Falshood driven while Truth loves Plains and undisguised Expressions and Errour will seek out Holes and Labyrinths to hide itself while Truth plays above board and scorns the subterfuges of the Sceptick Interpreter Men and Brethren Why should it seem a thing incredible with you that God should permit Spirits to appear and the Devil to exert his Power among men on Earth Hath God ever engaged his word to the contrary or is it against the nature of Spirits to assume airy Vehicles and Bodies of condensed Air or to animate grosser substances to shew themselves to mortals upon certain occasions I am so much a Prophet as to foresee what will be the fate of the ensuing story nor can I suppose that upon the reading of it mens verdicts will be much changed from what they were if they have set up this resolution to believe nothing that looks like the shadow of an Apparition though the things mentioned here cannot be unknown to any that have been conversant with forrain affairs