explained That many of the Ephesians being of those who had exercised curious Arts had brought their Books and burned them openly c. She forthwith he saith came unto me with a mind plainly troubled and with tears pouring forth into my bosom the secrets of her breast did receive Christian instruction and when she had understood by the blessing of God the vanity of Diabolical Impostures and perceived them with opened eyes she was easily converted to the light of truth the smoak of lyes being laid aside She truth being once received hath most constantly confessed that it did appear to her more clear than the light at noon day that Satan did only deceive and blind the eyes of his Vassals and that there was nothing done in verity and this she declared with a detestation of her Diabolical Art And so concludes it in these words Uno verbo dicam me satis experientiâ didicisse bonam partem incantationum mera esse insomnia And whosoever shall read and seriously consider the Epistle of that excellent and learned Divine will find the most of those vain illusions laid open and confuted so that in all or the most of the things attributed unto Witches we shall find no more of Diabolical operation in them than an internal mental and spiritual delusion in making the Witches to believe and to draw on others to the same opinion that the Devil hath a kind of omnipotent Power and Soveraignty Therefore did Aristotle well conclude Incantamenta esse muliercularum figmenta 4. A fourth Reason of the meer falsity and incredibility of these Confessions is this Is it possibly credible to a rational and unbiassed judgment that the Witches though never so many at several times and places having made themselves the Slaves and Vassals of the Devil both in soul and body and being led by his lying and deceitful Spirit though making large and voluntary confessions can be conceived to have any touch of truth in them at all Surely no more truth in these confessions than there is in the Devil who was a Lyar from the beginning and therefore we argue thus Such kind of will affections and inclinations as are in the Devil himself such kind are in his Children But the will and affections of the Devil are against God his Truth and against all Gods people and his inclinations tend to continual lying Therefore the will affections and inclinations of his Children such as the Witches are and are granted to be are against God his Truth and against all Gods people and their inclinations tend to continual lying The proof of the major and minor Proposition is the plain words of our Saviour Ye are of your father the devil and the lusts of your father the devil ye will do 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and he was a murtherer from the beginning and abode not in the truth because there is no truth in him When he speaketh a lye he speaketh of his own for he is a lyar and the father of it And again St. John tells us He that committeth sin is of the devil for the devil sinneth from the beginning So that it may truly be said of them They delight in lyes and their confessions are nothing but lyes And if they object and say that here we confess a League with the Devil and the Witch otherwise the Witches could not be his Children Vassals and Bond-slaves which elsewhere we deny we answer it is a gross mistake in not observing the distinction we make betwixt a mental and spiritual League such as the Devil and Judas made and such as all wicked men make with him and under this League we acknowledge all Witches to be but a visible and corporeal League we positively deny and so the objection is of no validity And thus we suppose we have sufficiently proved that there ought no credit at all to be given to the Confessions of Witches no more than to Devils who are all lyars Now let us proceed to their third main Objection That so many wise and grave Judges and honest Juries could not have been deceived to put to death such great numbers of those kind of people without sufficient proof of the matters of fact Against which we oppose these following Reasons 1. It is but an Argument at the best to drive the other Party into an absurdity which is not of any such dangerous consequence as may be supposed for it would but conclude that many grave and wise Judges and Juries have been imposed upon and deceived which is but argumentum ad homines and doubtless many might and have been And do not we Christians hold that the gravest and wisest Judges amongst the Turks and Persians have been and are deceived and have done unjustly in persecuting and putting Christians to death because they would not submit to the Religion of Mahomet and yet we account it no absurdity or injustice to pass that censure upon them And do not the Idolaters in all those large Empires and Kingdoms of Tartary China the Moguls Country and the rest of those Countries in the East of Asia persecute and put many to death for not worshipping their Idols or embracing their Religion and do we think it absurd to censure and condemn them of injustice though in their own Countries they be accounted grave and wise Judges Surely we do not and there is the parity of reason in both the Arguments for all are but men and so may erre 2. But as for the grave learned and wise Judges and understanding and honest Juries within His Majesties Dominions we affirm they are clear and innocent from these imputations and that for divers and sundry sound reasons 1. Our Judges and Juries have no such sinister and corrupt ends to wrest the Laws or wring forth and extort feigned and false Confessions because they have no such ends as to uphold and maintain idolatrous and superstitious Tenents as praying to Saints magnifying of Holy-water or setting up of Purgatory as had the Popish Inquisitors and the Demonographers and Witchmongers that writ for those ends And therefore it is no absurdity to say or think that they dealt unjustly in their proceedings which our learned and pious Judges are not nor can be guilty of 2. The Inquisitors and their Agents had benefit by the death of Witches having a share in their Goods and therefore no absurdity to conclude that their proceedings were unjust partial and corrupt of which our Judges and Juries are clear as having no profit at all by the death of these wretched and deluded people 3. Our Judges are but sworn to the due execution of the Laws made and the Juries sworn to bring in their Verdicts according to their best evidence now if the Witnesses forth of malice envy ignorance or mistake swear to matters of fact for which death or other punishments are allotted by the Law both the Judges and the Jury are absolutely excusable and if there be any
Fascination and then diabolical is but in vain and needless 7. How can the Witches if not maniacal in the highest degree believe that the Devil who is a Lyar and the Father of lyes and whom they cannot but know hath in the like cases deceived many that have in their opinion made contracts with him will prove true in the performance of his promise Or that he who is the enemy of all truth and goodness and laboureth to deceive all Mankind will be faithful to perform his promise or to do them any good either real or apparent Or if the Witches be not incredibly mad can they believe that he will perform without Hostages Bonds-men or Sureties when we find that the weakest and maddest of Mortals if he make a Covenant with another of known loosness and deceit though for a thing of a far less value than either soul or body will he not require sufficient Bonds-men and Security Now what Bonds-men or Security can the Witches have 8. And if the Witches be not beyond measure deluded and mad must they not rationally know that if the Devil deceive them as he is sure to do there is no recompence to be had nor any that can compel him to perform bargains Before what Judicature before what Judges by what Law must they call him to an account or have him punished So that in all reason and sound judgment we must conclude the Witches to be absolutely mad and then all these things also madness lyes and folly or that there is not nor ever was any such League or Covenant 9. But if all this were granted yet who are the Witnesses to this visible League or Covenant can the Witches name or find any The things that cannot be proved by sufficient Witnesses are never to be believed and we have proved the nullity impossibility and falsity of the pretended Confessions of Witches themselves and therefore that no credit at all ought to be given unto them and however no Law nor Equity ought to allow the Evidence of a Party as in these cases all Witches are And though some few of them have been so exceedingly mad to make such false and absurd Confessions yet if the Records of all Ages and Courts were sought it will be found that many hundreds of them have suffered that never confessed the least tittle of any such matter and the supposed Witches of Salmesbury in the County of Lancaster the tenth year of the Raign of King James were so far from this confession that they were cleared and the accusation found to be false and all acted by the imposture of one Thompson or Christopher Southworth And I my self have known two supposed Witches to have been put to death at Lancaster within these eighteen years that did utterly deny any such League or ever to have seen any visible Devil at all and may not the confession of these who both dyed penitently be as well credited as the confessions of those that were brought to such confessions by force fraud or cunning perswasion and allurements But if there be any such League or Covenant betwixt the Witches and the Devil how cometh the truth of this matter of fact if ever there were or could be any such thing to be certainly known and revealed Have any of the Pen-men of the holy Scriptures recorded that there ever was is or can be any such League or Contract Or was it ever attested by any honest rational men that were ear or eye-witnesses of such a bargain and contract Therefore we must once again conclude De non apparentibus non existentibus eadem est ratio 10. As for the Witches either Males or Females having carnal Copulation with Devils either as an Incubus or Succubus and their stealing of seed from a man and conveying it into the vessels of the woman it is in it self so horrid monstrous and incredible that I cannot well believe him to be a rational person or sanae mentis that believes it as a truth and therefore cannot but think the rehearsal of it a sufficient confutation Also herein I do appeal to all learned Physicians who do know the way that Nature breeds humane seed the causes that make it prolifical and the members fit for its generation and reception who I doubt not will deride this Tenent and condemn it as false and abominable Moreover the horrid absurdity of it hath been sufficiently demonstrated by Wierus Dr. Tandlerus Mr. Scot Mr. Wagstaff and others and therefore all we shall say is this That Devils whether conceived to be corporeal or incorporeal and to assume bodies for the one it must of necessity be were not created of God to generate neither have they nor can have any seed or members fit for generation and therefore to copulate or generate is derogatory from the glory of Nature and blasphemous against God and his Power As for the Devils sucking the Teats Warts or such like excrescences of the Witches bodies we should have passed it over as easily as the former but only that Mr. Glanvil hath taken up the Cudgels to defend it to confute which we shall give these satisfactory Reasons 1. There can be no rational end assigned why the Devil should perform this action for we must tell Mr. Glanvil that supposals are no proofs and ex suppositis supposita consequuntur and in a thing of this nature arguments to prove it probable are insufficient And if as he confesseth for their being suckt by the Familiar I say he saith We know so little of the Nature of Demons and Spirits that 't is no wonder we cannot certainly divine the reason of so strange an action Now if he knew so little of their Nature it must needs be vanity and arrogance to take upon him to declare so much and if he could not certainly divine the reason of so strange an act it was extreme folly and pride in him to bring in idle and vain conjectures and probability where verity and certainty are expected One while he supposeth them corporeal which if granted will not prove that they are recreated by the reeks and vapours of humane blood because their bodies are of a more pure Nature than to be nourished with gross and sometimes especially in melancholick old men and women corrupted blood for if every thing be nourished by its like then they cannot be fed with humane blood for they have no flesh nor bones such as ours that have need to be nourished with blood And for his next perhaps and may be that it is a diabolical Sacrament we shall believe it when he proves it and not before But he hath a third supposal which to him seemeth most probable viz. That the Familiar doth not only suck the Witch but in the action infuseth some poysonous ferment into her If this had been most probable why did he bring in the other two that are less probable surely he might have known that srustra fit per
behold the face of my father which is in heaven Upon which Beza hath this note Loquitur more seculi hujus ubi consistere in conspectu regis faciemque ejus perpetuò videre posse signum est domesticae intimaeque familiaritatis But the faln Angels are totally deprived of this blessed Vision being cast forth of Heaven as saith the Text. And the great Dragon was cast out that old Serpent called the Devil and Satan which deceiveth the world he was cast out into the earth and his Angels were cast out with him And S. Peter tells us that God spared not the Angels that sinned but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness 2. And as they have lost the vision and fruition of the mercies of God so they have utterly lost the knowledge of his will concerning his Covenant of Grace and mercy to the elect for they are only ministring spirits sent forth to tempt to sin to afflict and punish and have still enough for the advancing of the Kingdom of darkness but have no knowledge of saving grace nor the mysteries of the Gospel but are all enemies and adversaries to God and the Kingdom of Christ and goeth about seeking continually whom he may devour But it is the blessed elect Angels that are ministring spirits sent forth for to minister to them who shall be heirs of Salvation 3. The good Angels have the blessed messages revealed unto them for the assisting and delivering of the godly So an Angel did comfort Joshua and another warned Joseph to take the child Jesus and to fly into Aegypt thereby to preserve the childs life and an Angel delivered the Apostles forth of prison and many such happy errands are made manifest unto them and they imployed about them of all which the faln Angels are utterly ignorant and they are concealed from them 6. There are some things that the evil Angels know of which the blessed ones have no sensibility of that is the knowledge of their own guilt and the experimental sense of the loss of Gods Favour Love Grace and Mercy 2. The second thing that we proposed to handle is that the knowledge that the faln Angels have is dark and confused which is plain because they are reserved in chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day Now those that are kept or reserved in darkness must of necessity have their knowledge dark and consequently confused and he also that is the Prince of darkness and the Father and Author of the works of darkness must needs like his children have his understanding darkned also And therefore we will conclude this point with the opinion of S. Augustine who speaking both of the Angels that stood and those that fell saith thus Ante peccatum autem tam isti quam illi perfectè omnia intelligebant Accessit igitur istis propter peccatum aliquid tenebrarum Proindè etiam tenebrae appellantur in tenebris esse dicuntur coelesti illa luce destituti in locum caliginosum praecipitati Ut indè intelligamus nonnihil tenebrarum naturali etiam illorum menti accessisse in poenam admissipeccati in Deum Deique filium But we shall only here speak of their knowledge in reference to things acted in this elementary and sublunary world and that in these particulars 1. Though they retain the same faculty of understanding that they had before their fall of the generation motion and mutation of natural things here below yet is it much darkned and far inferior to the knowledge of the good Angels in natural things the one sort living and abiding in light and the other being shut up in darkness 2. What knowledge soever they have by their natural faculties or that they may be supposed to gain by acquisition is by them gotten or learned for no other end but for the hurt and destruction of mankind and not as the good Angels who make use of theirs for the benefit of those that shall be heirs of Salvation For as a good Physician labours and studies to know the nature and virtues of Animals Vegetables and Minerals and their parts and products for the good and benefit of mankind but a Witch or poysoner laboureth to know their virtues thereby to destroy and kill even so do the evil Angels and not otherwise 3. The knowledge of Devils whether natural or acquisitive is spurious erroneous fallacious deceitful and delusive both in respect of themselves and others for as saith the Scripture He was a murderer from the beginning and abode not in the truth because there is no truth in him When he speaketh a lie he speaketh of his own for he is a liar and the father of it Therefore saith learned Rollock upon this very place Hoc est loqui ex ingenio suo quod naturale est sibi facere suum enim quod ex sese deprompsit non autem quod aliundè accepit profert For as all the endeavours of the faln Angels tend to the seduction and delusion of others so are they and were they the deceivers and deluders of themselves For it is most manifest that their minds are so obcaecated and covered over with darkness that although they be not altogether in general destitute of the knowledge of that which is just and unjust good and evil pious and impious yet they do not acknowledge their own sin as they ought for they are so pertinacious in their sin and wickedness that they do not attentively perpend and consider their own evil and therefore are not truely sensible or do understand that it is evil and therefore are by the just judgment of God so absolutely obcaecated that they cannot acknowledge their own evil and sin And as that knowledge they have is so darkned that they have deluded and deceived themselves so all their knowledge in respect of others is erroneous fallacious and lying as the Text witnesseth of Antichrist Even he whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders And with all deceiveableness of unrighteousness in them that perish And for this cause God shall send them strong delusions that they should believe a lie 4. In regard of the words intentions and actions of wicked Men they both know and may foretel much because they are the Authors and devisers of those evils and wicked thoughts as it was the Devil that pushed on the Scribes and Pharisees to accuse and put Christ to death for it was their hour and the power of darkness and it was Satan that had darted it into the mind of Judas Iscariot to betray his Master And therefore the Devils might probably if not certainly know that his death would be brought to pass so that they may easily foretel what themselves have projected and prepared instruments to accomplish 5. The acquired knowledge of the faln Angels must needs be great in regard of their vast multitudes and their being
Imprimatur July 29. 1676. Jonas Moore Soc. Regiae Vice-Praeses THE DISPLAYING OF SUPPOSED WITCHCRAFT Wherein is affirmed that there are many sorts of Deceivers and Impostors AND Divers persons under a passive Delusion of MELANCHOLY and FANCY But that there is a Corporeal League made betwixt the DEVIL and the WITCH Or that he sucks on the Witches Body has Carnal Copulation or that Witches are turned into Cats Dogs raise Tempests or the like is utterly denied and disproved Wherein also is handled The Existence of Angels and Spirits the truth of Apparitions the Nature of Astral and Sydereal Spirits the force of Charms and Philters with other abstruse matters By John Webster Practitioner in Physick Falsae etenim opiniones Hominum praeoccupantes non solùm surdos sed caecos faciunt it à ut videre nequeant quae aliis perspicua apparent Galen lib. 8. de Comp. Med. LONDON Printed by J. M. and are to be sold by the Booksellers in London 1677. To his Worshipful and honoured Friends Thomas Parker of Braisholme John Asheton of the Lower-Hall William Drake of Barnoldswick-coat William Johnson of the Grange Henry Marsden of Gisburne Esquires and his Majesties Justices of Peace and Quorum in the West-riding of Yorkshire Worshipful Gentlemen and honoured Friends I Do not dedicate this piece of my Labours unto you thereby to beg protection for it as fearing either its weakness or the malevolent censures of the ignorant for I very well know and have experienced that it is the usual property of idle and pragmatical persons to please their own malignant humors with the condemning and scoffing at the painful lucubrations of others And I have ever judged that nothing ought to be published that like a Noun Substantive cannot stand by it self without being supported by any other adjoined help Neither is this forth of a vain confidence or an overweening of mine own abilities though I very well know that some are as much in love with the brood of their own brains as others are with the fruit of their loines Because I have for many years been as wary and vigilant as any could be to watch over my self that I might both know and keep a clear distinction betwixt flattering Phantasie and true and sound judgment But I shall in brief shew you the true reasons of my presenting of this poor piece to your reading and judgments 1. The first reason is because you have all been Gentlemen not only well known unto me for many years as being my near Neighbours but also with whom I have been freely admitted to a Noble and Generous converse and have been trusted and honoured by you in your Dâ—estick concerns wherein by my Medical Profession I might be 〈◊〉 to you or your Families far beyond my poor Merit and Desert And having been for many years a due observer of your deportments in your places of trust as Magistrates for being but as a stander by and looking on may perhaps have noted as much as those that are Gamesters I was moved to present this piece of my labours unto you by reason of that knowledge and acquaintance rather than to others whose abilities and integrity I did not so well understand And I hope I may without suspicion of flattery of which I am sure both your selves and others that know me will acquit me that if I be any way guilty it is rather in being too plain and open say that you have been and are true Patriots to your Countrey and not only Justices of the Peace but true conservers of iâ— and Peace-makers amongst all your Neighbours and really this is one of the chief causes why I have dedicated this Treatise unto you 2. Another reason is you have all fully known me and the most of the particulars of my life both my follies and frailties as also my other endowments and abilities and therefore in reference to these I thought none more fit than your selves to whom I might tender this laborious piece For it is not unknown unto you that excepting my Physical Practice which age and infirmities will not suffer me very much to attend I have for many years last past lived a solitary and sedentary life mihi Musis having had more converse with the dead than the living that is more with Books than with Men. And therefore I present this unto you as being better able than most others to whom I am unknown to judge what I am like or able to perform in such a subject as this is 3. Also it is not unknown unto you that I have had a large portion of Trouble and Persecution in this outward world wherein you did not like many others stand aloof off as though you had not known me but like persons of Justice and true Magnanimity durst boâ—h look upon and assist wrongâ—d innocency though besmeered over with the envious dirt of malicious scandals and even in that very conjuncture of time when the whole giddy Troop of barking Dogs and ravenous Wolves did labour to devour me But then even then did put to your helping hands and were free to declare what you knew of mine innocency which was so Generous Noble and Christian a kind of just commiseration that I should for ever account my self a wretched person if I should not have deeply impressed in my breast and memory which no time nor adversity can ever obliterate But being in a condition that I may truly say with the Apostle S. Peter 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Silver and Gold have I none which I know you expect not and therefore the greatest power I have is my weak pen thereby to testifie my thankfulness for your unparallel'd kindness And therefore I offer this Treatise as a perpetual and monumental memorial to all Posterities of my gratitude and your goodness And further to whom can a subject of this nature be more suitably and fitly presented than to such Magistrates as your selves who have often occasion to be cumbred and troubled with the ignorant envious and sometimes knavish accusaiions against people suspected of Witchcraft Sorcery Charming and Inchantment Wherein to free the guilty and condemn the innocent is equally abominable to the Lord And therefore much judgment caution care and diligent inspection ought to be used in the examining and determining of these matters wherein I have used as much perspicuity and plainness as was possible to distinguish betwixt those that are Impostors Cheaters and active Deceivers and those that are but under a mere passive delusion through ignorant and superstitious education a melancholy temper and constitution or led by the vain credulity of inefficacious Charms Pictures Ceremonies and the like traditionally taught them The one sort of which deserves to be punished for couzening of the people and taking upon them and pretending to bring to pass things that they have neither skill nor power to perform but the other sort rather merit pity and information or the Physicians help than any punishment at
and were not exempted from the common frailty of Mankind who are all subject to errours And therefore unless they were assured that their Ancestors in former Ages held the certain and undoubted grounds of truth it is nothing of reason in them but meer perversness of will rather obstinately errare cum patribus than to learn to follow the truth with those that are coetaneous with them which is foolish and irrational Further there are more helps now and means to attain the knowledge of Verity than were in the days when their Ancestors lived and it must be a kind of the greatest madness to shut their eyes that the light of truth may not appear unto them 2. This kind of reasoning hath no more of reason in it than if one should say that because his Grandfather and great Grandfather were blind or lame therefore they will be so too or that their Ancestors never learned the Greek or Latine Tongues nor to write or read neither will they learn any more than they did or that their Predecessors were ill husbands and unthrifts and that therefore they will continue the same courses or that because their Forefathers followed drunkenness and luxury therefore they will continue the same cariere of vices as many of our debauched persons do now adays having no better reasons to alledge for their exorbitant and vicious courses but what the Prophet condemned The fathers have eaten sowr grapes and the childrens teeth are set on edge 3. How far would they run back to state the beginning of their Ancestors If as far as their first Originals then they must all be Savages Barbarians and Heathens And if they state it distant from their first Originals then their Predecessors had the same reason to have continued as those did that preceded them But if their Ancestors varied from and left the steps and opinions of those that went before them then if they will do as their Ancestors did they must leave their courses and opinions as they had done of those that preceded them 4. Some say they cannot recede from the opinions of their Predecessors because it would be a shame and disgrace unto them But that which we call shame and disgrace consists in the opinion of others and we ought not to receive errour or reject truth by reason of the censures or opinions of others Si de veritate scandalum sumitur utilius permittitur nasci scandalum quà m veritas relinquatur And to leave an errour to entertain truth is so far from being a shame and a disgrace that there cannot be a greater honour or glory for errare humanum est sed in errore perseverare belluinum ac diabolicum est 4. Those effects that seem strange and wonderful either in respect of Art or Nature require much diligence truly to discover and find out their causes and we ought not rashly to attribute those effects to the Devil whose causes are latent or unknown unto us and that for these grounds 1. It hath been common almost in all Ages not only for the vulgar but also for the whole rabble of Demonographers and Witchmongers to ascribe those strange and wonderful effects whether arising from Art or Nature unto the worst of Gods Creatures if they did not themselves understand their causes and to censure the Authors that writ of them as Conjurers and Magicians as I have made manifest in my former Instances and might be further made good and illustrated by the effects of healing by the Weapon-salve the Sympathetick Powder the Curing of divers Diseases by Appensions Amulets or by Transplantation and many other most admirable effects both of Art and Nature which by these self conceited Ignorants are all thrown upon the Devils back and he made the Author and effector of them as though he had a kind of omnipotent power of which the learned Philosopher and Physician Van Helmont gives us this account Credo equidem cum pietate pugnare si Diabolo tribuatur potestas naturam superans Verum naturae ignari praesumunt se naturae secretarios per librorum lectionem quicquid autem ipsos latet vel adynaion vel falsum vel praestigiosum atque diabolicum esto And a little after he adds this Pigritiae saltem enim immensae inventum fuit omnia in Diabolum retulisse quae non capimus nec velim Diabolum invocatum ut nostris satisfaciat quaestionibus per temerariam potestatum attributionem 2. Whosoever shall read Pancirollus de rebus memoralibus noviter repertis may easily be satisfied what strange and stupendious things Art and the Inventions of men have produced in these latter Ages And no man can rationally doubt but that many more as strange or far more wonderful may in Ages to come be found out and discovered for there is a kind of bottomless depth in Arts whether Liberal or Mechanical that yet hath not been sounded but lye hid and unknown unto men And if these for their wonderfulness should as former Ages have ignorantly done be ascribed unto the power of Satan and their Authors accused of Conjuring and Diabolical Magick no greater wrong could be done unto Art and Artists and it would be a kind of blasphemy to attribute these stupendious effects as the Vulgar and Witchmongers use to do unto the Devil the worst of Gods Creatures and the Enemy of Mankind 3. The third argument I shall take from Mr. Glanvil which is the greatest piece of truth in all his Treatise and convert and retort it against him and is this he saith We are ignorant of the extent and bounds of Natures Sphere and Possibilities Now if we be ignorant of the extent and bounds of Natures Sphere and Possibilities then it must needs be folly madness and derogative against Gods power in Nature to attribute those effects to wicked fallen and degenerated Demons that we do not know but are produced by the course of Nature And to ascribe the products of Nature to such wicked Instruments is blasphemous in depriving Nature of the honour due unto her and robbing God of the honour and glory belonging unto him for the wonderful power wherewith he hath endowed his Creatures who were all made to shew forth his power and Godhead and the Heavens declare the glory of God and the Firmament sheweth his handy work and as one said very well Natura creatrix est quaedam vis potentia divinitùs insita alia ex aliis in suo genere producens So that the honour that is due unto the Creator Conserver and Orderer of Nature ought not to be ascribed unto the Devils for in doing this the Witchmongers become guilty of Idolatry and are themselves such Witches as are mentioned in the Old Testament who by their lying Divinations led the people after them to follow Idols therefore the effects that belong unto Nature are to be attributed to Nature and the effects that Devils produce are to be ascribed unto them and
and skill And to this opinion do the Schools both of the ancient and later Academicks wholly incline and seems to be favoured both by Dr. Moor and Mr. Glanvil himself and if there be any such matters doubtless from thence did arise all the strange stories and gests that former Generations have told and believed concerning the Apparition of these kind of Creatures which the common people call Fayries of which the Reverend and Learned person Bishop Hall giveth us this touch The times are not past the ken of our memory since the frequent and in some part true reports of those familiar Devils Fayries and Goblins wherewith many places were commonly haunted the rarity whereof in these latter times is sufficient to descry the difference betwixt the state of ignorant Superstition and the clear light of the Gospel And whosoever shall seriously read and consider that little Piece that was printed some few years since though written long ago and by some that pretend to no small share of Learning cryed up exceedingly for a most convincing Relation to prove the Existence of Spirits called The Devil of Mascon may easily gather that if the thing were truly related as to the matter of fact that it must needs be some Creature of a middle Nature and no evil Spirit both because it was such a sportful and mannerly Creature that it would leave them and not disturb them at their devotions as also as far as I remember for I have not the Book by me because it denied that it was a Devil and professed that it hoped to be saved by Christ. 4. That the Scriptures contain in them all things necessary to Salvation is so clear a truth that none but those that are wilfully blind can deny it for Christ taught his Disciples all things that he had learned of the Father and the Father sending him to be the Saviour of the World and to preach the Gospel of eternal Salvation was not defective in declaring all things that were necessary to accomplish the work and end for which he was sent forth of the Father And the glorious Apostle St. Paul tells the Disciples and Brethâ—en That he had not shunned to declare unto them all the counsel of God which must of necessity be abundantly sufficient for their Salvations And he telleth Timothy That he had known the Scriptures from a child which were able to make him wise unto salvation All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine for reproof for correction for instruction in righteousness That the man of God may be perfect throughly furnished unto all good works Nay the Woman of Samaria had so much knowledge and faith that she believed that when the Messias was come he would tell them all things Now to the obtaining of Salvation there is nothing more necessary than to know what enemies men have to fight against in their Christian Warfare which the Apostle tells in these words For we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities against powers against the rulers of the darkness of this world against spiritual wickedness in high places Wherefore they are to take unto them the whole armor of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that they may be able to stand against the wiles of the Devil 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that made the Apostle say in another place We are not ignorant of his devices or crafts 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Now the Scriptures being able to make us wise to Salvation it hath sufficiently declared the natures powers knowledge and offices of both the good and bad Angels and is a sure word of Prophecy unto which it is good to take heed and not unto old wives fables of Apparitions and Goblins such as Mr. Glanvil would perswade us that they are tydings of another World when we are taught by unerring testimony of Truth That those that have Moses and the Prophets and do not hear them neither will they be perswaded though one rose from the dead And therefore we must be bold to tell Mr. Glanvil that the Sacred Scriptures do with infallible certitude teach us that both good and bad Spirits have most certainly an Existence and therefore we need none of his feigned nor forged stories of Apparitions which if they were certainly known to be true and real by undeceivable matters of fact yet he that doth not believe what is written of the Being of Spirits by Moses and the Prophets will not believe Apparitions no not of a man if he came from the dead And therefore I will conclude with that precious and pithy Sentence of St. Austin who saith Major est hujus Scripturae authoritas quà m omnis humani ingenii perspicacitas And believe not them that say If you would know the power of Devils and Witches go to the Writings of Dr. Casaubon Mr. Glanvil and to the rest of the Demonographers and Witchmongers that amass and heap together all the lying vain improbable and impossible stories that can be scraped forth of any Author ancient middle or modern when we are commanded to go to the Law and to the Testimony if they speak not according to this word it is because there is no truth in them And so I shall shut up this Chapter wherein I suppose I have sufficiently proved that the denying of such a Witch as I have described doth not infer the denial of the Being of Angels or Spirits and that Apparitions are no sufficient grounds for Christians to believe the Existence of Angels and Spirits by but the Word of God which was the thing undertaken to be proved CHAP. IV. That the Scriptures and sound Reason are the true and proper Mediums to prove the Actions attributed unto Witches by and not other improper ways that many Authors have used And of the Requisites necessary truly to prove a matter of Fact by AS we have in the former Chapter proved that Apparitions though true are no sufficient warrant to ground our belief upon for the Existence of Angels or Spirits but the Word of God so here we shall endeavour clearly to manifest that the Sacred Scriptures are the only Medium joyned with sound Reason of deciding this point of the power and operation of Demons and Witches and not other improper Mediums brought in by divers Authors and first we shall answer the Objection of Mr. Glanvil that runs thus That though the New Testament had mentioned nothing of this matter yet its silence in such cases is not argumentative He said nothing of those large unknown Tracts of America nor gave he any intimations of as much as the existence of that numerous people much less did he leave instructions about their Conversion He gives no account of the affairs and state of the other World but only that general one of the happiness of some and the misery of others He made no discovery of the Magnalia of Art or
a bare affirmation without proof that these things are verified to have been matters of fact and really performed both by authority and the evidence of sense which are both utterly false then they flye to this assertion That the Confessions of so many Witches in all Ages in several Countries at divers times and places all agreeing in these particulars are sufficient evidence of the truth of these matters To which we shall rejoyn that the Confessions of Witches however considered are not of credit and validity to prove these things but are in themselves null and void as false impossible and forged lyes which we shall make good by these following Reasons 1. The Witch must be taken to be either a person insanae vel sanae mentis and if they be insanae mentis their Confessions are no sufficient evidence nor worthy of any credit because there is neither Reason Law nor Equity that allows the testimony or confession of an Idiot Lunatick mad or doting person because they are not of a right and sound understanding and are not to be accounted as compotes mentis nor governed by rationability For as by the Civil Law mad Folks Idiots and Old men childish Bond-slaves and Villains are not capable of making a Will to dispose of Goods Lands or Chattels so much more are all these sorts of persons excepted for giving evidence by confessions or otherwise in matters concerning life and death which are of far greater weight and concernment And that these persons are of unsound understandings is manifest in all the points that they confess and therefore are no proof nor ought to be credited and that for these reasons 1. Because the things they confess are not attested by any other persons of integrity and sound judgment and they must of necessity be lyars because the Bond-slaves of the Devil whose works they will do and he was a lyar from the beginning 2. Because they confess things that are impossible as we shall prove anon and confiteri impossibilia insanienti◠est 3. There is no good end wherefore they make these Confessions neither do they receive any benefit by them either spiritual or temporal internal nor external And this doth sufficiently shew that they are deluded melancholy and mad persons and so their Confessions of no credit truth or validity 2. Their Confessions will be found null and false if we consider the impulsive cause that moves them to make them and the end wherefore they declare such false and lying matters and that in these particulars 1. The moving cause is not nor can be the Spirit of God which is a Spirit of truth and righteousness nor any motion of true remorse for their sins or any thing flowing from repentant hearts because they are persons forsaken of God and his Grace and given over to reprobate minds and senses and therefore the truth of the Word of God is fulfilled in them Because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved therefore God shall send them strong delusion that they might believe a lye That they all might be damned who believed not the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness 2. Neither is the end for the glory of God or their own Salvation because they are the Vassals and Bond-slaves of Satan being kept Captive at his will and are Rebels and Traitors against God and Christ his Church and Truth having renounced the Faith and become Apostata's to the truth 3. The impulsive cause and chief end wherefore they make these and such like confessions is sometimes and in some persons meerly to eschew torture and bodily pains and sometimes the quite contrary solely to escape the present miseries of a poor wretched and troublesom life and therefore these confessions not at all to be credited as being vain and feigned 4. Sometimes they are by force waking craft and cunning in hope of pardon and life to make such confessions as the base ends and corrupt intentions of the Inquisitors themselves or their Agents have infused into them for the advancement of false Doctrine Superstition and Idolatry such were the most if not all recorded by Delrio Bodinus and the rest of the Witchmongers to which no credit can be given at all 5. But the chief end that Satan hath who is the Forger Contriver and Deviser of these Confessions if voluntarily and freely made the principal Agent in all these matters is to set forth the power and glory of his own Kingdom thereby to lead men into and continue them in lyes and errors for when he speaketh a lye he speaketh of his own for he is a lyar and the father of it and the Witches are his Children and the works of their Father the Devil they will do and he was and is a Murtherer and Lyar from the beginning And thus far we acknowledge a spiritual and mental League betwixt the Witch and the Devil by virtue of which they confess these horrible and abominable lyes of the glory of him and his Kingdom but other League or Covenant there is none neither is there any the least spark of truth in all that they say or confess because their sole end in making of these confessions is to advance the credit and power of Satan 6. The impulsive cause that often makes them to utter such confessions of strange and impossible things is the strong passive delusion that they lye under contracted by ignorant unchristian and superstitious education which they have suckt in with their milk heightned with an atrabilarious temper and constitution and confirmed by the wicked lyes and teaching of others which makes them confess these execrable things which they in their depraved and vitiated imaginations do think and believe they have done and suffered when there was never truly acted any such matter ad extrà but only in their mad and deluded Phantasies and so no more credit to be given to them than to the maddest Melancholist that ever was read or heard of 3. That there is not any jot of truth in these Confessions is manifest if we consider the subjective matter of them as is plain by these ensuing grounds 1. For the most of them are not credible by reason of their obscenity and filthiness for chast ears would tingle to hear such bawdy and immodest lyes and what pure and sober minds would not nauseate and startle to understand such unclean stories as of the carnal Copulation of the Devil with a Witch or of his sucking the Teat or Wart of an old stinking and rotten Carkass surely even the impurity of it may be sufficient to overthrow the credibility of it especially amongst Christians 2. There are many things that have no verity in them at all that notwithstanding have verisimilitude but these are not only void of truth but also of truth-likeliness for it is neither truth nor hath any likelihood of it to believe it for a truth that the Devil should carry an
guilt in the Witnesses or falsity in their Evidences it lyes at their own doors and upon their own consciences and the Judges and Jurors are clear and not to be blamed for no humane prudence can altogether prevent that Witnesses may not erre or swear falsely 3. Have there not been many thousands of true and faithful Martyrs that have suffered and been condemned in many Ages in many and several Countries at many different and distinct times And some of these have been condemned by such as were called and accounted General Councils Parliaments High-Courts of Justice and other places of great Judicature before Judges that were accounted wise grave and learned and by Juries of honesty and understanding were there therefore no true Martyrs and were they all justly condemned and put to death or is it absurd to be guilty of such incredulity as to think and hold that so many grave and wise Judges and knowing Juries were deceived and did unjustly Let Mr. Glanvil or any other solve this Argument and carry the cause or else we must necessarily conclude that opinio quae à se non propellit absurda per absurda non premit adversarium Now having given a full and satisfactory Answer to their main and strongest Objections and defeated the whole force of their first and most furious Charge we shall proceed to overthrow their main Battel in proving the four Particulars mentioned in the beginning of the Chapter to be false and impossible And in doing of this we shall handle the three first promiscuously and all together and the fourth about Transubstantiations or Change of Witches into Cats Hares Dogs Wolves or the like we shall handle by it self 1. And first we acknowledge an internal mental and spiritual League or Covenant betwixt the Devil and all wicked persons such as are Thieves Robbers Murtherers Impostors and the like whereby the temptations suggestions and allurements of Satan spiritually darted and cast into the mind the persons so wrought upon and prevailed withal do assent and consent unto the motions and counsels of the evil Spirit and so do make a League and Covenant with the said evil Spirit as saith the Text According to the Prince of the power of the air that now worketh in the children of disobedience He doth not only rule over them but also worketh in them for men are either the Temples of God or the Temples of Satan and Antichrist who sitteth in the Temple of God and opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God or worshipped Such a spiritual League or Covenant as this did Judas make with the Devil whereby he agreed to betray his Master Christ. Then entred Satan into Judas not that essentially or personally he entred into Judas but that he put it into his heart 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to betray him which wrought so effectively in him in a spiritual manner that he took up that Diabolical resolution to betray his innocent Master and this was entring into a spiritual League with the Devil For as Theophylact saith upon the place Hoc enim significat spospondit hoc est perfectam promissionem pactum fecit And another saith In Judam Satanas intravit non impellens sed patulum inveniens ostium nam oblitus omnium quae viderat ad solam avaritiam dirigebat intuitum And again Missio ista spiritualis suggestio est non sit per aurem sed per cogitationem diabolicae enim suggestiones immittuntur humanis cogitationibus immiscentur 2. We acknowledge that this spiritual League in some respects and in some persons may be and is an explicit League that is the persons that enter into it are or may be conscious of it and know it to be so for when a person resolves to murther he cannot but know that he then maketh a League with the Devil who was a Murtherer from the beginning And it is manifest that in this League and in no other were all the Priests that belonged to the Oracles who knew well enough that the Idols or false Gods they worshipped did give no answers at all but the responsions given were only of their own devising and framing to uphold their credit and more colourably to cozen and deceive the people they did pretend that they had answers from their Gods or Idols and thus far the Devil was in all their impostures and jugglings And so all the several sorts of the Diviners or Witches mentioned in the Old Testament were under a spiritual League with the Devil and did very well know that what they did was not by the finger of God but either by the help of Art Nature Leger-de-main Confederacy or such like impostures and cheats and yet they pretended as did Simon Magus and gave out that they were some great men thereby to deceive others when explicitly they plainly knew that themselves were but dissemblers and lyars and that for gain credit and vain-glory they pretended to do those things which they could never truly perform And under this spiritual League explicitly considered are all our Figure-flingers contained who take upon them far beyond the Rules of the true Art to declare where stollen Goods are and to cause them to be brought back again and many other such vain and lying matters which they well know they have no power to perform but that they willingly and knowingly take upon them to pretend to do these things for vain-glory and filthy lucre sake And of this sort are all our pretending Conjurers Diviners Wizards and those that take upon them to reveal things by looking in Crystals Beryls and the like of which we may perhaps speak more largely hereafter that indeed know well enough they do but deceive and cheat others of all which we could recite very lepid and apposite stories certainly known unto us or discovered by us but Mr. Glanvil would account them but silly Legends and old Wives Fables and therefore we shall supersede here and leave them to a fitter place 3. There are others that are under this spiritual League though implicitly as are all those that we have granted to be passively deluded Witches those that by ignorant and irreligious education joyned with a melancholy temper and disposition to which they have added Charms Pictures and other superstitious Ceremonies which they learned by Tradition By all which they become so deluded and besotted in their Phantasies that they believe the Devil doth visibly appear unto them suck upon them have carnal copulation with them that they are carried in the Air to feastings dancings and such like Night-revellings and that they can raise tempests kill men or beasts and an hundred such like fopperies and impossibilities when they do nor suffer any thing at all but in their depraved and deceived imaginations And so do blindly and implicitly believe that the Devil doth perform all these things for them when indeed and truth he doth nothing but dart and cast in these filthy
plura quod fieri potest per pauciora And is his sucking now come to infusion and injection surely these will not accord but enough of supposals 2. But we must know of Mr. Glanvil how he comes to know that the Devils sucking of the Witches bodies is a truth or ever was proved to be matter of fact who were by and present that were ear or eye-witnesses of it A thing that never was proved ought never to be believed and if he recur to the Witches confessions that is fully overthrown before and we are sure that in these late years that are past when so many pretended Witch-finders were set abroad in Scotland and Northumberland they never mánifested nor could verifie any such thing but were found and discovered to be notorious Impostors and Knaves pretending to discover Witches by putting sharp Needles or Pins into the Warts and hollow Excrescences of divers persons when the persons so dealt withal did not see nor know and if the persons did not feel nor complain of pain then forsooth they must be taken for Witches and be burnt So of many persons they got money and bribes that they might not be searcht or stript naked and of others for finding Excrescences upon them that were hollow and fistulous and therefore when the Pin was thrust into the fistulous cavity that was skinned within and so indolent they were then accounted guilty and were either forced to compound with these notorious pretended Witch-finders or to be prosecuted for their lives By which wicked means and unchristian practices divers innocent persons both men and women lost their lives and these wicked Rogues wanted not greater persons even of the Ministry too that did authorize and incourage them in these Diabolical courses as though this had been some way prescribed by God or his Word to discover Witches by when it was an Hellish device of the Devil to delude Witchmongers and bring poor innocent people to danger and death Yet it had prevailed further if some more wise Heads and Christian Hearts had not interposed by whom the Villany was detected and the Impostors severely punished and that this is a most certain truth hundreds yet living can witness and testifie And the like in my time and remembrance happened here in Lancashire where divers both men and women were accused for supposed Witchcraft and were so unchristianly unwomenly and inhumanely handled as to be stript stark naked and to be laid upon Tables and Beds to be searched nay even in their most privy parts for these their supposed Witch-marks so barbarous and cruel acts doth diabolical instigation working upon ignorance and superstition produce 3. But as this was never really proved de facto that the Devil did suck upon the body of a supposed Witch so the possibility of it likewise can never be demonstrated For whether a Spirit be taken to be corporeal or to assume a body yet it neither hath nor can have such a body as our Saviour did appear in after his Resurrection which was the same real and numerical body that he suffered in and was by the sense of seeing and feeling distinguished from any bodies that Spirits can have and appear in especially in solidity and tangibility for a Spirit hath not flesh and bones as he was felt and seen to have And where there is no flesh and bones there cannot be any animal sucking and we speak not here of artificial sucking or attraction of which there is a great question whether any such thing be at all or not but however the Spirits have no power to suck because they have not flesh and bones 4. That there are divers Nodes Knots Protuberances Warts and Excrescences that grow upon the bodies of men and women is sufficiently known to learned Physicians and experienced Chirurgions Some have them from their mothers wombs some grow afterwards some proceed from internal causes some from external hurts some are soft some hard some pendulous some not some fistulous and issue matter some hollow and indolent and many other ways And these are more frequent in some persons by reason of their Complexion and Constitution in others by reason of their Age Sex and other accidents and circumstances especially in Women that are old and their accustomed purgations staid or by reason of Child-birth and the like Now if all these were Witch-marks then few would go free especially those that are of the poorer sort that have the worst diet and are but nastily kept And for their being indolent it doth argue nothing but ignorance for many sorts of Tumors and Excrescences are without pain as well as fistulous and hollow Warts And it is a woful errour to make that a sign and mark of a diabolical Contract that hath natural causes for its production And it is a strange kind of Logick to argue or conclude that men or women are Witches and have made a Contract with the Devil because they have such Warts or Excrescences that are indolent when pricked into where is the coherence connexion or just consequence Let all wise men judge As for that vain opinion that Witches are or can be really and essentially transformed into Dogs Cats Hares and the like or men transubstantiated into Wolves it is largely by numerous positive arguments confuted by Casmannus and by the Authors of that learned Treatise of Spirits and Devils written in the Raign of Queen Elizabeth as also by Wierus Mr. Scot and others so that we shall not bring all that others have written about this point but note such things as are most material and have been less handled or regarded by others and that in these Particulars 1. It is taken to be a great matter with some because St. Augustin seemeth to favour this opinion of transformation and tells us this Si enim dixerimus ea non esse credenda non desunt etiam nunc qui ejusmodi quaedam vel certissima and isse vel etiam expertos se esse asseverent And then saith And we when we were in Italy did hear such things of a certain Region of those parts where certain Women that kept Inns being skilled in these Arts they did say were wont to give in Cheese to Travellers that they could get to take it from whence forthwith they were turned into Juments and carried necessary burdens and when they had done did again return unto themselves but that while they had not a bestial but rational and humane understanding And yet concludeth Haec vel falsa sunt vel tam inusitata ut meritò non credantur To which we shall return these short answers 1. Though St. Austin were in many things a very Learned man yet being but a man might and did erre not only in this point but in many others 2. His Reasons to prove it by are weak and groundless 3. He speaketh nothing of his certain and peculiar knowledge but by common fame and hearsay and therefore the matters
from artificial or counterfeited Transfigurations For it is wonderful to behold how anger and rage doth alter the faces and countenances of some and so grief sorrow despair and the like in others causeth horrible changes all over the external parts both of the face and body Neither is any passion more prevalent than deep-rooted fear mixed with despair as hath been manifested in some that in a short time nay even in the space of one night have had their hair that formerly was black turned into gray or white as is testified by Authors of unquestionable veracity And for diseases it is almost incredible to think what strange alterations Madness Frenzy the bitings of a mad Dog Melancholies especially that kind which Physicians call Lycanthropia which is so wonderful that it hath made many dotingly believe they were really transformed will produce and bring forth Examples of which at large may be seen in Schenckius of which we shall speak more fully anon as also of artificial and counterfeited Transfigurations and that Devils nor Witches can perform no such Transfigurations as this of Christ and Moses is manifest by the Arguments laid down before because these were brought to pass by a divine Hand and an omnipotent Power which Devils and Witches have not and therefore cannot operate any such things 4. Moreover in the Scripture there is mention of counterfeit simulated and hypocritical transformation such the Apostle mentioneth in these words speaking of the false Apostles For such are false Apostles deceitful workers transforming themselves into the Apostles of Christ. And no marvel for Satan himself is transformed into an Angel of light Therefore it is no great thing if his Ministers also be transformed as the Ministers of Righteousness whose end shall be according to their works The word there thrice used is from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which cometh from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 habeo possideo teneo and from thence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 habitus so that the compound Verb properly signifieth effingo assimulo and so of necessity must signifie in these three places So the Apostle saith in another place The form of this world 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 passeth away that is the fashion condition custom or usage of the world passeth away This place of Scripture concerning Satans transforming of himself into an Angel of light though plain in it self hath been and still is most usually alledged by Witchmongers to prove the Apparitions of Devils by For thus they commonly argue If Satan can transform himself into an Angel of Light much more arguing à majore ad minus into any other shape and so may easily appear in the form of a Cat Dog or in any other shape whatsoever and this they think to be an invincible Argument This way of argument were of force if the Apostle in this place had meant or intended any real or essential transformation but that this is not the meaning of the Text we shall prove by these following Reasons 1. The very signification of the word here doth not bear nor intend any essential transformation but only feigning pretending and assimulating as when Judas pretended charity and love to the poor when he said Why was not this oyntment sold for three hundred pence and given to the poor This he said not that he cared for the poor but because he was a thief and had the bag and bare what was put therein Though Judas Iscariot hypocritically feigned and pretended this charity to and care for the poor yet was he not really a charitable man or a lover of the poor but a thief and a most covetous wretch So these false Apostles did pretend much zeal and piety to preach and promote the Gospel but therefore were they not really transformed and changed into true Apostles but were Deceivers Dissemblers and Hypocrites So Satan often pretendeth heavenly angelical and divine things and to do as the holy Angels do but it is in deceit cozenage falsity and hypocrisie and so he is by counterfeiting and dissembling said to be transformed into an Angel of Light and not otherwise by any essential transformation at all 2. The Text it self doth plainly manifest that they were not transformed into true Apostles for then St. Paul had had no cause to have written so bitterly against them but that notwithstanding that shew form or pretence that they held forth and though outwardly they seemed to personate the true Apostles of Christ yet that was but an external and hypocritical simulation for really and truly they were false Apostles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and deceitful workers 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And so Satan may make what shews or pretences he will of goodness piety and of heavenly things and so may counterfeit dissemble and lye yet still he remaineth a very accursed Devil and is never really changed from his damned and diabolical Nature 3. Satan is so transformed into an Angel of Light as his Ministers are transformed into the Apostles of Christ. But Satans Ministers are not essentially transformed into the Apostles of Christ. Therefore neither is Satan essentially transformed into an Angel of Light For though Satans Ministers may pretend never so much piety and zeal and labour to personate and imitate the true Ministers of Christ yet notwithstanding that pretended transformation they still really and essentially remain as they were that is Deceivers and Hypocrites And Satan for all his seeming and apparent personating and imitating the Angels of Light he still remaineth in his essence and nature an Angel of Darkness and a lying and accursed Wretch 4. The Devil is never nor can be really and essentially transubstantiated into an Angel of Light for then he could indeed and in truth be no longer a Devil but his diabolical Nature would of necessity cease But all his transformation is when he intendeth most deeply to circumvent and deceive the sons of men then he pretendeth the most religious and the holiest shews of all Pretending in all outward appearance the holy affections sincerity and zeal of the holiest Angels of Light For as St. Austin saith Unless the malignity of Satan be sleightly and cunningly covered his deceivable purpose is seldom or never effected 5. The best and most sound Expositors both ancient middle and modern do expound the place as we have urged it of which we shall name only two or three St. Chrysostom tells us this Operarii dolosi nam operantur quidem sed revellunt ea quae sunt plantata nam quoniam sciunt se aliter non posse esse acceptos personâ veritatis sumptâ erroris actum simulantes peragunt And a little after he saith thus Et multos Diabolus sic decipit personâ in se acceptâ non factus Angelus lucis sic illi personam Apostolorum circumferunt non ipsam potentiam neque fortes sunt Dr. Hammond gives the Paraphrase of this place thus For the truth is he
yea the Devils in the infernal pit and in the air do perform but without voice in a spiritual manner 3. If this opinion were true then the blessed Souls being divested from their Bodies should not have a communion one with another nor should jointly praise and glorifie God together which were false and absurd and therefore the learned Father said well It is to be holden stedfastly that the offices of the Heavenly Hoast are by no means performed in silence seeing we may read that the Angelical powers before the Throne of the Lord do sound forth his praise with unwearied voices 4. The sleights and subtil machinations for he hath his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or devices of Satans Kingdom could not be carried on if he had not a way and means to communicate them to the rest of the Crew of his inferiour Fiends and therefore doth plainly prove that there is a way of hidden Mystical and Spiritual discourse which the Devil might and did represent to the mind and understanding of Evah whereby she was seduced and that there was no need of a vocal and audible interlocution and so much in answer to his objection The next place of Scripture that is commonly brought and urged thereby to prove the great power of Devils and Witches is that of Pharaohs Magicians from whence they argue thus If the Magicians of Pharaoh were able by the power and assistance of the Devil to change their Rods into Serpents the Water into Blood and to produce Frogs Why may not Witches by the power and assistance of the Devil change themselves and other things into strange and several shapes and do the rest of the feats that are ascribed unto them But though this be but petitio principii a begging of the question that by the assistance of the Devil they did these things which is neither supposed nor granted but ought first to have been proved And though in the case of hardening Pharaohs heart there might be and was a peculiar dispensation from God at that time yet it will not follow that God doth always dispense with and give the Devil leave to operate the like things and so nothing firmly can be concluded from hence Yet I say though these be so we shall pretermit them and come to the full opening and discussion of the matter and that in these two particulars 1. How far the Devils power and assistance did concurr with the actions and performances 2. And wherein he did not concurr nor act at all 1. We shall grant that Pharaoh and the Magicians being Idolaters and worshippers of false gods their ends were principally to magnifie the power of their Idols and to manifest that their supposed gods could work and bring to pass as strange miracles or wonders as Moses and Aaron could perform by the assistance of the God of the Hebrews and in respect of this end they had all the assistance that Satan and his dark kingdom of Angels could afford them in a spiritual and hellish way for he is the Prince of the power of the air that worketh in the children of disobedience for such were both Pharaoh and his Magicians And to this purpose doth the Apostle tell us speaking of false and seducing teachers That they were like Jannes and Jaâ—bres that withstood Moses in their resisting of the truth so that the Magicians of Pharaoh were condemned for resisting the truth of that message that Moses and Aaron brought and of those real miracles that they performed and so in respect of the wicked end they aimed at they were assisted with the power and concurrence of the Devil and in that respect only were his servants and instruments But as for the second particular namely the efficient causes and â—eans of the producing of those thing that the Magicians did we affirm they were performed by the power of nature and art and that the Devil was no efficient cause of their production and that by these irrefragable arguments 1. Those that affirm that the Devil did or can produce such strange effects do also acknowledge that what he performeth in natural and elementary Bodies is done by applying natural agents to natural and fit patients which dotruly bring to pass such strange effects and that he doth no more but only make the local application of them From whence it must necessarily follow that the effects flow from natural agents and so no causality at all can be ascribed unto him except that fictitious one of being causa sine qua non which is as much as no cause And besides that there is no proof that he maketh this local application for if he be incorporeal then it is simply impossible that he should perform any such matter and however a man by natural power and means if he know the fit and apt actives and passives may perform them himself and so his assistance is needless and we have never yet met with any argument that bore any convincing force that might induce us to believe that he is so great a Naturalist 2. There are many persons that think themselves no mean sharers in the most sorts of learning and others that are very strait laced in their pretended zeal for godliness and in detesting the works of Satan that even startle and shew an abhorrency at the word Magick if it be but once named as though there were no Magick but what is diabolical or that which they call diabolical were any other way evil but only in the end and use for there are many plants and minerals that though poysonous are yet notwithstanding good in respect of their Creation and the good uses that may be made of them as to kill noxious animals that are hurtful unto man But if any forth of malice and wickedness should use them to poyson and destroy Men and Women it were wicked and diabolical in the end and use yet were the means lawful and natural So whatsoever the Devil may do by wicked Men his instruments in leading and drawing them to make use of the great magnalia naturae to work strange wonders by thereby to confirm Idolatry and Superstition or to resist the truth and such devilish ends though the end and use may be wicked and diabolical yet the efficient cause is natural and lawful And therefore we can find no other ground or reason of dividing Magick into natural and Diabolical but only that they differ in the end and use for otherwise they both work by a natural agency and means seeing the Devil can do nothing above or contrary to that course that God hath set in nature Therefore may men do without the aid of Devils whatsoever they can do seeing they have no advantage over us but operate only by applying active things to passive like as Men do And therefore said that most learned Philosopher Chymist and Mathematician our Countreyman Roger Bacon excellent well in these words non igitur oportet nos
needs be false But this tenent of Samuels Soul acting in the Body after death is flatly contrary to the plain Doctrine of the Scripture ergo it is false The major we suppose no Oxthodox Christian can justly deny and the minor is proved thus The Scripture doth assure us that those that die in the Lord as without all doubt Samuel did are blessed and rest from their labours Therefore must this Tenent be abominably false for if the Soul of Samuel after his death had been brought again to act in the Body then he had not rested from his labours but had been disquieted and brought to new trouble to have been vexed to have seen Saul committing more wickedness than before in taking counsel from a cursed Idolatrous Woman such as the Lord had commanded to be destroyed And there is no one point in all this transaction of Saul with the Witch that speaketh her Imposture more apparently than where this counterfeit Samuel saith Why hast thou disquieted me As though the Saints of God after death could be disquieted by a Devil or a Witch who according to Gods infallible truth are blessed and rest from their labours and are in the hands of the Lord where no Torments can touch them And therefore none would have spoken those lying words but a devilish cheating quean or a damnable suborned confederate 6. If Samuels Soul was again joined to his body so long after separation and so performed vital actions who was the author of this conjunction or union could the Witch or the Devil or any created power effect that union Surely not none but the almighty power of Jehovah who breathed into Adam the breath of life And therefore we are bold to assert with all the company of learned Christians that this opinion is erroneous impious and blasphemous 2. The second opinion that it was Samuels Soul that appeared in his wonted shape and habit that he wore while he lived hath been strenuously maintained by the Popish party and as strongly confuted by the reformed Divines But we shall not trouble our selves and our readers with them all but only urge two or three that are most cogent thereby to answer Mr. Glanvils fopperies and they are these 1. If it were Samuels Soul that appeared it cannot be supposed to come contrary or whether God would or not for hardly any rational Man we believe will affirm that because God doth whatsoever he will both in Heaven and Earth and who hath resisted his will 2. And it cannot be rationally thought that Samuel who whilst he lived was so punctually careful to do nothing especially in his prophetick office but what he was commanded of God would after his death run an errand without his consent or licence 3. And that his Soul did not come by the command of God is most certain Though Mr. Glanvil ask the question who saith that happy departed Souls were never imployed in any ministeries here below To which though we have answered it before we now again reply that all learned Divines of the reformed Churches have said and maintained it and so do we both say and affirm that they never were nor are imployed in ministeries here below because never created nor ordained of God for any such end or purpose but there are legions of Angels that are ordained to be ministring Spirits and not the Souls of the Saints departed this life But Mr. Glanvil goeth further and saith that Samuel was not raised by the power of the Witches inchantments but came on that occasion on a Divine errand And though we have before unanswerably proved in the general that no Souls of those that are dead do after death appear or wander here below nor come such sleveless errands as he supposeth yet we shall add one or two here in particular to prove that Samuels Soul came not on a Divine errand as sent by God without which mission it could not have come at all 4. For fourthly if Mr. Glanvil had proved by any argument or colour of reason that his Soul had come upon such a Divine errand it had been something but he hath only laid down an affirmation without either proof reason or authority and we may with as good reason deny it as he affirm it for bare affirmations prove nothing at all 5. It is manifest that God in all his ordinances of providence especially in the order of his miracles doth work chiefly to confirm and witness truth for that as the worthy and learned Stillingsleet hath observed is the most proper criterium of a miracle and to send a Soul from the dead must needs be miraculous Now if the chief end in Gods working of miracles for none else but he can work them be to establish truth and settle his own Divine and pure worship then it cannot be to uphold lies and Idolatrous courses But if God should have sent Samuels Soul on a Divine errand when the Witch was practising her Diabolical Divinations and cheating tricks it had been to have countenanced and confirmed both Saul and the Witch in their wicked wayes and to have contradicted his own law and command which did positively order that all that used Divinations should be put to death and all those that sought for counsel from them to be severely punished Now let Mr. Glanvil or any other prove that God orders that to be done by the dead which he forbad to be done by the living 6. If it had been the true Samuel that appeared it is not rational nor credible to imagine that he would neither rebuke Saul for consulting with a Woman that practised those things that were forbidden by the law upon pain of death nor that he would either reprove or punish so wicked a Woman finding her in the very act We say it is not credible unless we suppose Samuel less zealous for the law and commands of God being dead than he was for them being living Surely he that living hewed Agag in pieces only because God had commanded he should be slain would if it had been the true Samuel which without all question it was not have done as much or worse to the cursed and Idolatrous cheating Witch though after his death if he had come upon a Divine errand 7. God should have shewed himself very mutable if he had answered Saul in a miraculous way by a dead Prophet that had refused to answer him by one living And Samuel while living knew certainly that the Lord had rejected Saul from being King over Israel and had testified unto him that the strength of Israel would not lie and that he was not like a man that he should repent But if it had been the true Samuel that had been sent to speak to Saul he knowing both by his own knowledge and relation of Saul himself that God had refused to answer him by Prophets must in that conference both have made God a liar and mutable and also himself who living had testified
the contrary and therefore it could not be either the true Samuel nor his Soul 8. It is manifest that the Lord had before withdrawn his good Spirit from Saul and an evil one from the Lord was come upon him and therefore it was no way probable that the Lord would in a miraculous manner answer such a wicked person whom he had utterly rejected as a reprobate Neither is it like that God would shew him an extraordinary favour by a dead Prophet that would not vouchsafe him his Spirit in an ordinary way And Samuel that came not at him for a long time though but a little distance asunder while he lived was not like to make so long a journey in a Divine errand to visit him after his death 9. And if Abraham at the request of the rich Man would not send Lazarus to warn his brethren lest they should come into that place of torment which bore with it a fair shew both of Charity and Piety much less would God give way or Samuel be desirous to come to send a blessed Soul from its rest for such a frivolous matter and in no wise to connive at the wickedness of both Saul and the Witch and never move either of them to the amendment of their lives 10. Where doth Mr. Glanvil find it mentioned in any part of Scripture or where is it recorded in the writings of any reformed or Orthodoxal Divines or where in any of their works is it declared that ever any blessed Soul after death was either sent or did come upon a Divine errand to any here below Is it not monstrous confidence not to say impudence to utter such groundless assertions without any proof reason or authority at all Let all learned and judicious persons consider and judge 3. That the Devil assumed the shape of Samuel and acted the whole business is the opinion of all or the most of the learned Divines of the reformed Churches of whom we shall crave pardon if we dissent from them it being no fundamental of Religion nor any Article of the Faith And this we profess is not done out of the spirit of contradiction nor for singularity but only because as we conceive the Tenent hath no sufficient grounds neither from Scripture nor sound reason to support it and therefore we shall labour its confutation by these ensuing arguments 1. Because this opinion that the Devil should perform this apparition doth beg two suppositions never yet sufficiently proved and that have in them no certain truth For first they take for an Hypothesis that Devils are meerly and simply incorporeal Spirits which we shall prove hereafter to be false Secondly they take for another Hypothesis that Spirits and Devils can assume what bodies they please and appear in any figure or shape which is a meer figment invented by the doating Schoolmen as we shall sufficiently make good hereafter 2. We are not of their opinion that think that the Devils do move and rove up and down in this elementary world at their pleasure to act what they list and appear when how and in what shapes they please for then the World would be full of nothing almost but apparitions and every corner replenished with their ludicrous tricks as formerly in the times of blind Popery and ignorance there was no discourse almost but of Fairies Hobgoblins apparitions Spirits Devils and Souls ranting in every house and playing feats in every Town and Village when it was nothing but the superstitious credulity and ignorant fancies of the people joined with the Impostures of the Priests and Monks And if this were true then how should Men know a true natural substance or body from these fictitious apparitions Nay how could a Man have known his Father or Mother his Brethren or Sisters his Kinsmen or Neighbours might they not as well have believed them to be Phantasms and assumed bodies as real and true creatures 3. But though faln Angels in respect of their malice wicked wills and envious desires whereby they seek as much as in them lies the ruine of all mankind both in Soul and Body may in that particular end and regard be said to be like roaring Lions going about and seeking whom they may devour and compassing the earth and walking to and fro in it yet we must affirm that in respect of executing their wicked envious and malicious wills and desires they are restrained nay kept in the chains of everlasting darkness from which fetters and chains they go not out but when and so far as they are sent ordered licensed or as some would have it worded permitted by the purpose and decree of the Divine and Almighties providence So that it is most certain that the faln Spirits cannot go forth of their chains when they list to act what mischief they would contrary to the will of the Almighty who hath fettered and still keeps them in those chains but when they are at any time let loose it is only by the will decree licence and order of Jehovah who sends them forth to accomplish his will either for punishment to the wicked to inflict upon them his just judgments for which they are the appointed ministers and executioners and in the performance of these offices of his wrath they are limited and bounded how far they shall proceed and no further or else they are sent forth to tempt or afflict the godly for the trial of their faith and herein they are so restrained and bounded by the power of the Almighty as they cannot act one jot beyond the limit of his commands or Commissions as is manifest in the case of David who was tempted by Satan to number the people and in the affliction of Job wherein he was bounded how far he should act and no further And when the evil Angels are thus sent forth and limited by God what and how far they shall act it is always for just and righteous ends as in the case of Ahab when a lying Spirit was sent by God into the mouths of his Prophets that he might be persuaded to go up to Ramath Gilead that he might be slain there or as it was for a judgment and destruction upon Sennacheribs Army that Jerusalem might be saved and freed and he sent back with shame and confusion into his own countrey or it is to manifest his glory goodness and mercy to his Saints so David was moved to number the people that falling under that temptation and he and the people therefore plagued might be brought to a greater degree of repentance and to know that their defence stood not in the multitude of men but in the benignity of Jehovah who was their strength and their defender and so Job was so sore afflicted that his Faith and Patience might be made manifest and remain for an example to all succeeding posterities But it is utterly irrational and incredible that God would send the Devil without whose mission he could not have done it to
permission and naked inspection But that we may proceed in such order as may be clear and intelligible to the Readers we shall here propose the state of the matter that we undertake to confute which is this That there is not in God a nude passive permission separate from the positive and active decree order and will of his Divine Providence and Government but that he doth rule all things according to the power and determination of his own positive and actual will And this we shall prosecute in this following order and particulars Those that deny that there is in God a passive permission separate from his decretive and actual will in his providence are accused by others thereby to infer the absurdity that God is the author or efficient cause of sin which pretended absurdity in truth and reason cannot be any because it is a simple and absolute impossibility that God should be the author of sin as these arguments do sufficiently testifie 1. That of necessity must be false which the Scriptures do declare to be so in open and plain terms But that God should be the author of sin or evil the Scriptures do deny in open and plain terms as where the Text saith God cannot be tempted with evil where both the act and the possibility of it is absolutely denied Again For thou art not a God that hast pleasure in wickedness neither shall evil dwell with thee Therefore it is false that God is or can be the author of sin and so by consequence the supposed absurdity is a meer impossibility and an absurdity urged that is impossible is most of all absurd 2. He is ens summè perfectum quicquid est in Deo est Deus but sin howsoever understood or accepted is an imperfection defect and an aberration from a just and perfect rule and therefore it is simply impossible that God can be the cause of any thing that is imperfect sinful or evil if sin be considered as malum culpae 3. God is not under any binding law given to him by some other for then he should cease to be supream independent and omnipotent Now to whom there is no law given to observe there can be no transgression for the Apostle saith where there is no law there is no transgression and therefore it is simply impossible that God should be the author or causer of sin or evil because there is no law that he can transgress against 4. God prohibiteth and hateth sin as the Scriptures do every where testifie but God is the cause of nothing but that which he loveth and therefore cannot be the cause of the evil of sin And to speak properly sin hath no efficient cause but a deficient such as is the will of faln Angels and wicked Men whose irregularity of will from the command of God is all the cause that sin and evil hath or can have An efficient cause is only of those things that are good because every efficient cause doth by working put something in being But privations of which sort are sins do put nothing in being but do truly note the absence of beings Therefore did S. Augustine say well Mali causa efficiens nulla est sed tantùm deficiens 5. That which properly hath an efficient cause hath also an end properly so called But sin hath not an end properly so called because the end is being and therefore good and the perfection of the thing But the Scripture doth declare that all things that God created were exceeding good and that the cause of sin was Man and the Devil for the text saith that the Devil was a murderer from the beginning and abode not in the truth And again He that committeth sin is of the Devil for the Devil sinneth from the beginning Therefore from hence it is clear that God neither is nor can be the author or causer of sin 6. That which God is the author of doth not make Man worse but sin doth make Man worse therefore God is not the author of it And all sin is perpetrated because thereby it receeded from the order that respecteth God as the ultimate end of all things but God doth incline all things unto himself as to the ultimate end neither doth he turn them from himself because he is summum bonum And further as Fulgentius saith Deus non est ejus rei autor cujus est ultor At Deus est peccati ultor ergo non autor And therefore we conclude that this is a vain pretence of an absurdity because it is impossible that God should be the author or causer of sin This plausible pretence to seem to be zealous not to make God the author of sin we commend as allowable but it is but like the zeal of the Scribes and Pharisees which was without knowledge because they pretend that for an absurdity that is a simple impossibility And they ought to remember the argument of Job which is this will ye speak wickedly for God and talk deceitfully for him For as we ought not to suppose or imply him to be the author of sin so we ought not to rob him of his Glory by detracting from his power and providence nor in ascribing that unto Creatures that is only due unto the Creator as those do that hold a nude passive permission in him separate from his will and decree in his providence Neither doth the denying of this any way imply that he is the author of sin for a providential permission we allow as the act of his will and decree as we shall shew hereafter Now concerning permission in God being a suspension of his efficiency in regard of some acts permitted to the creatures and that for just and good ends the definition of it and its affections or properties are so darkly handled even by those that make most ado about it that it would serve rather to divert Men from the right way than to guide them in it or unto it Therefore here we shall only note these three things and pursue it more fully hereafter 1. There must be the person or power permitting that hath ability right and authority so to do 2. There must be the person or power permitted that hath ability to perform the thing permitted otherwise it would be in vain and to no purpose 3. There must be the thing or action that is permitted to be done or brought to pass by the person permitted to act and that must not be impossible 1. Before the Creation it is meerly improper to attribute permission unto God because there was no person nor power besides himself that could act any thing and therefore could not be permitted and so the correlative being awanting both the relative and the relation betwixt them must necessarily fall to the ground as having no existence and so it is impossible that permission should be in God when there was no Creature to
that Antichrist is nothing else but Gods Executioner by whom he punisheth those by his just judgment who have not received the love of the truth but have contemned the Gospel which is so far forth true that if there had not been and now were a contempt of the truth then altogether Antichrist had not been that is the Executioner had not been whom God sendeth to execute his just judgment upon those that despise the truth of his Gospel So that it is manifest that God doth make a just and good use of the very malice and lying nature of Devils in punishing those that did not receive the love of the truth but deceiving them by strong delusions that they might believe a lie and this he doth as sent and commanded of God and so cannot go one jot further than his Commission or as far as he is limited by God 2. We may observe that how great soever these signs and wonders be yet they are but lying ones both in regard of the end for which they are done and in respect of their substance And therefore how great soever the signs and wonders be that evil Angels do perform yet they are totally different from true miracles those being alwayes wrought for the confirming of the true Doctrine and Worship of God but these have their end only to establish false doctrine lies and erroneous opinions or Idolatrous Worships So they differ in their substance for those miracles that God sheweth for the confirmation of his truth are alwayes true and real being against and above the whole power and course of nature but those wonders wrought by Satan are but delusions cheats juglings and impostures which though they may seem strange to those that are ignorant of their causes yet do but all arise from natural causes or from artificial cunning confederacy and the like And therefore we may conclude that what miracles soever are wrought by a Divine Power tend to the overthrow of Satans power in the world but all false miracles are wrought to uphold the power of Satans Kingdom in the world and following delusions lies and false doctrines 3. Therefore what signs and wonders soever Satan doth work they are no real and true miracles for as Dr. Stillingfleet saith God alone can really alter the course of nature I speak not he saith of such things which are apt to raise admiration in us because of our unacquaintedness with the causes of them or manner of their production which are thence called Wonders much less of meer juggles and impostures whereby the eyes of Men are deceived but I speak of such things as are in themselves either contrary to or above the course of nature i. e. that order which is established in the universe And this cannot be altered by any diabolical power but only by that which is Divine and Omnipotent which never doth it but for considerable ends and important causes as may be manifest from these unshaken grounds 1. That Devils can work no true miracles is manifest from the definition of a miracle which is this Verum miraculum est opus quod fit praeter contra naturam secundas causas cujus nulla Physica ratio potest reddi But Satan cannot alter or change the order and course of nature Therefore Satan cannot work or effect a true miracle The proposition may be illustrated by an induction made of many great miracles of which there is mention made in the Old and New Testament all which are of that sort that are repugnant to the order and course of nature and of which no natural or physical reason can be rendered and given Such were the taking of Enoch and Elias into Heaven the conserving of Noah and his Family in the Ark the confusion of tongues at the building of Babel the fecundity of Sarah being old and barren the passage of the children of Israel over the red Sea and over Jordan the standing still of the Sun in the battel of Joshuah its going back in the dial of Ahaz its eclipse at our Saviours suffering the preservation of Daniel in the Den of the Lions and of the three companions of Daniel in the fiery furnace the preserving Jonas in the belly of the Whale the raising up of the dead and the curing of the Man born blind and all the rest of those most true and wonderful miracles wrought by our blessed Saviour and his Apostles 2. The assumption of the Syllogism is thus proved It is the part of the same power to change the order of nature and to create things that were not existent and so the mutation of the order of nature is a certain kind of new creation But Satan hath not power by which he can create things that as yet had no existence as all persons of reason must needs confess From whence it must follow that Satan hath not power to change the order of nature and consequently that he cannot work true and real miracles 3. The working of true miracles is only a proper attribute of God and incommunicable to any creaturely power for the Text saith Blessed be the Lord God the God of Israel who only doth wondrous things And again thou art the God that dost wonders And these two things the changing of the order of nature and creation S. Paul attributeth to God as only proper to him God who quickeneth the dead and calleth those things that be not as though they were Upon which Beza gives this note Eo qui vitae restituit Apud quem jam sint quae alioqui reipsa non sunt ut qui vel uno verbo quidvis possit ex nihilo efficere But if it be objected that though Satan and his Angels of themselves and by their own proper power do not work true miracles yet may not God work real miracles by them as he did by the Prophets Apostles and his Ministers It is answered That the wonders which are wrought by Satan do tend to that end that they might confirm lies against God and his glory But God doth not accommodate his power to confirm lies contrary to his glory and against himself Therefore Satan by the power of God as his Minister doth not work true miracles for God doth use the faln Angels as executioners of his wrath and judgments for the afflicting and punishing of men but when God worketh any thing for the good of mankind either in Soul or Body he doth not use Devils as his Ministers but the good and blessed Angels who are ministring spirits sent forth for the good of those that shall be heirs of Salvation And if it be queried what things and of what sort and kind are those wonders that are wrought by Satan and Antichrist I answer that either they are indeed nothing but prestigious juglings and illusions or if they be any thing they are not brought to pass contrary to the order of nature and second causes although they may seem so
But to apply it or carry it into the man he by no means is able And therefore the Witch doth also send forth another executive medium or mean emanative and commanding which mean is the Idea of a strong desire For it is inseparable to the desire to be carried about things wished for To all which the Devil as a Spectator doth assist in the conduction 10. For he saith in truth I have demonstrated already that operative means are solely in the power of man For only God is the most chiefly glorious Creator to be infinitely praised who hath Created the Universe forth of nothing But man as far forth as he is the Image of God doth forth of nothing create certain Entia rationis or non-Entities in their beginning and that in the proper gift of the Phantastical virtue Which are notwithstanding something more than meerly a privative or negative being For first of all while these conceived Idea's do at length cloath themselves in the species or shape fabricated by the Imagination they become Entities now subsisting in the middest of that Vestment to which by the whole they are equally in them And thus far they are made seminal and operative Entities of which to wit their assumed subjects are forthwith totally directed But this power is given to man alone Otherwise a seminal power to propagate is given to the Earth to Bruits Plants c. Also the Dog by his madness can transfer or change his spittle or saliva into poyson because it is peculiar to his kind or species Which also is obvious in divers poysons of animals But to form Idea's abstracted from their species and adjacent proprieties that is given to none but man Having thus far at large traced his footsteps in these abstruse and mysterious matters we shall come now to examine them and make some observations upon them And although we may be sharply censured for taking upon us to question the things that he hath asserted having been suo gradâ— an Adeptist a person of profound judgment great experience general learning high reputation and now generally followed as the Chief Standard-bearer for Philosophy Physick and Chymistry that many esteem it no small glory to be called and accounted an Helmontian Yet notwithstanding this we shall note some observations in this order 1. He holdeth that the Devil doth only make the things invisible or hides them by his spirit and brings them near to the object into which they are to be injected and that the Witch by the seminal Idea of her imagination and the strength of her desire as the agent or efficient cause doth inject or thrust them into the body of the person intended to be hurt or tormented whereby he necessarily supposes a league or contract betwixt the Devil and the Witch and therefore he calls them the Devils clients and those that are bound unto him But what kind of contract this should be explicite or implicite internal and mental or corporeal and visible he tells us not the latter of which we utterly deny that it is in the power of the Devil to practise when he pleaseth as we have before with sufficient arguments demonstrated at large And for an implicite or mental league we grant that all thieves murderers these kind of malicious and poysoning Witches and all other wicked persons are bound in a spiritual contract unto him For he is the spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience And what wickedness soever he hath tempted and drawn them unto to be willing to commit he prompteth and pusheth them on with all his skill and power to perpetrate and execute the same But still this is to be understood only of his spiritual and invisible assistance and not of any visible or corporeal aid for else as this Author confesseth he might as well kill with a knife or a maul And therefore we cannot here pass by the bold and groundless if not impious assertion of Sennertus who though a very learned person in diverse parts of humane literature yet drawn with the sway of popular opinion did most miserably lapse in affirming that although Witches do purpose to hurt men yet that they neither do nor can effect those things but that the Witches being cast into a profound sleep the Devil in the mean time acteth those things by himself and thinks he proves this sufficiently by a fabulous and lying story feigned to be told of a Witch that being in a deep sleep when she waked told that she had been transformed into a Wolf and had torn in pieces a Cow and a Sheep which were found to be so and therefore the Devil must needs have done it But in this he neither nameth the place time nor Author to avouch it and therefore all reasonable Men may judge how palpable a falsity it is for then if true it would follow that none could be safe and that the Devil might kill immediately with swords or knives which he cannot do 2. Whereas he holdeth that the Devil doth bring or convey the things to be injected near unto the place and that he offereth filth and poysons to his clients that thereby he may fermentally conjoin the Ideas of these formed in the imaginative faculty with these If the Devil be taken to be meerly and simply incorporeal then he cannot remove matter as we have before proved and so cannot convey the things near to the object and if he be taken to be corporeal as we have asserted his help is needless because the Witches may do it themselves as we find sufficient stories of their hideing of strange and poysonous things under the thresholds of houses and Churches and to this purpose this same Author telleth us this story A certain person he saith did by custome use to make water in a corner of the Court whereupon he was afflicted with a bloody and cruel Strangury And all the remedy of the Physicians proved in vain except that as often as he did drink of Birch-Ale he did find a signal ease But as oft as he rose and walked and made water in the same place so often his pains did return At the last a pin of old black Oak-wood is espied to be fixed in the place where he used to make water Which being pulled forth and burned he remained free from the bloody Strangury by drinking Ale of Birchen-twiggs Also he saith that he remembred that Karichterus had written that he had loosed such kind of inchantments by only pissing through Beesomes of Birch Now from hence it is plain that this making water constantly upon this pin of old black Oak-wood did cause his bloody Strangury and that the pulling of it up and burning of it was with the help of the Birchen Ale the cure but it can no wayes be judged necessary that the Devil should fix the Oak pin there but that the Witch might do it himself Neither can it be thought to be any power given by the Devil
of strange qualities have made many to believe that they were Demons nay it seems their Images and Pictures have been taken for Devils and yet are but meer natural Creatures and by learned men accounted a kind of Apes which we shall now prove by an undeniable instance or two and first this from the pen of that learned Physician Nicholaus Tulpius who saith thus In our remembrance he saith there was an Indian Satyre brought from Angola and presented as a gift to Frederick Henry Prince of Aurange This Satyre was four-footed and from the humane shape which it seems to bear it is called of the Indians Orang antang homo silvestris a wild man and of the Africans Quoias morron expressing in longitude a Child of three years old and in crassitude one of six years It was of body neither fat nor lean but square most able and very swift And of its joints so firm and the Muscles so large that it durst undertake and could do any thing on the foreparts altogether smooth and rough behind and covered with black hairs It s face did resemble a man but the nose broad and crooked downwards rugged and a toothless female But the ears were not different from humane shape As neither the breast adorned on both sides with a swelling dug for it was of the feminine Sex the belly had a very deep navil and the joints both those above and those below had such an exact similitude with man that one egg doth not seem more like another Neither was there a-wanting a requisite commissure to the arm nor the order of fingers to the hands nor an humane shape to the thumb or a prop of the legs to the thighs or of the heel to the foot Which fit and decent form of the members was the cause that for most part it did go upright neither did it lift up any kind of weight less heavily than remove it easily When it was about to drink it would hold the handle of the Kan with the one hand and put the other under the bottom of the Cup then would it wipe off the moysture left upon its lips not less neatly than thou shouldest see the most delicate Courtier Which same dexterity it did observe when it went to bed For lying her head upon the Pillow and fitly covering her body with the Cloaths it did hide it self no otherwise than if the most delicate person had laid there Moreover the King of Samback he saith did one time tell our Kinsman Samuel Blomart that these kind of Satyres especially the Males in the Iland of Borneo have so great boldness of mind and such a strong compaction of Muscles that they have often forceably set upon armed men and not only upon the weak sex of Women and Girls with the flagrant desire of which they are so inflamed that catching them often they abuse them For they are highly prone to lust which is common to these with the lustful Satyres of the ancients yea sometimes so keen and salacious that therefore the Indian Women do eschew the Woods and Groves as worse than a Dog or a Snake in which these impudent animals do lie hid And that this lascivious animal is found in the Eastern Mountains of India as also in Africa between Sierra Liona and the Promontory of the Mountain where perhaps were those places where Plinius lib. 5. cap. 5. affirmeth that upon the nights there was seen to shine frequent Fires of the Aegipanes and to abound with the lasciviousness of the Satyres who do love craggy Dens and Caves and shun the society of mankind being a salacious hairy four-footed Creature with human shape and a crooked nose But that the foot of this Creature neither hath hoofs nor the body every where hairs but only the head shoulders and back The rest of the parts are smooth and the Ears are not sharp So that from hence it is undeniably true that there are such Creatures existent in nature and have been either taken for Devils or the Apparitions of Demons in this shape of Satyres as Doctor Brown hath well observed in these words A conceit there is he saith that the Devil commonly appeareth with a cloven foot or hoof wherein although it seem excessively ridiculous there may be somewhat of truth and the ground thereof at first might be his frequent appearing in the shape of a Goat which answers that description This was the opinion of ancient Christians concerning the Apparitions of Pans Fauns and Satyres and in this form we read of one that appeared unto Antony in the Wilderness The same is also confirmed from expositions of holy Scripture for whereas it is said Thou shalt not offer unto Devils the original word is Sehhirim that is rough and hairy Goats because in that shape the Devil most often appeared as is expounded by the Rabbins as Tremellius hath also explained But saving the reputation of learned Saint Hierome and D r Brown it is but a supposition unproved that ever the Devil appeared in the shape of a Goat the rise of the opinion was only because the Devil was worshipped in an Idol made in the shape of a Goat 3. In a few ages past when Popish ignorance did abound there was no discourse more common which yet is continued amongst the vulgar people than of the apparition of certain Creatures which they called Fayries that were of very little stature and being seen would soon vanish and disappear And these were generally believed to be some kind of Spirits or Demons and Paracelsus held them to be a kind of middle Creatures and called them non-Adamicks as not being of the race of Adam but there are Authors of great credit and veracity that affirm there have been Nations of such people called Pygmies And though Doctor Brown hath learnedly and elegantly handled the question Whether there have been or are any such dwarfish race of mankind as but of three spans not considering them singly but nationally or not and hath brought the most probable arguments that well can b◠to prove that there are not nor have been any such race of people called Pygmies yet doth he moderately conclude in these words There being thus he saith no sufficient confirmation of their verity some doubt may arise concerning their possibility wherein since it is not defined in what dimensions the soul may exercise her faculties we shall not conclude impossibility or that there might not be a race of Pygmies as there is sometimes of Giants and so may take in the opinion of Austine and his Commentator Ludovicus Vives And though Kircherus with his wonted impudence do conclude in these words Fabulosa itaque sunt omnia quae de hujusmodi Pygmaeis veteres Geographi à simplici populo sola relatione descripta tradiderunt Yet I say notwithstanding these negative arguments I give the relation of others that are of as great or greater credit in the affirmative And thus much is affirmed
wrist do appease the Hemicrany and swimming of the head which comes again if they be laid away as he saith the most illustrious Nobleman Cassianus à Puteo most worthy of Roman Purple hath told me The same Noble Puteus he saith hath shewed me the picture of a Meirmaid in his Closet which not many years before was driven to the shore of Malta A certain Spaniard he saith told me that Meirmaids were seen in India having the Genital members of Women like those of humane kind so that the Fishers do bind themselves with an Oath to the Magistrate that they have no copulation with them Bernardinus Ginnarus lib. 1. c. 9. de Indico itinere edit Neap. 1641. doth relate that Meirmaids are seen in the vast River Cuama near the head of Good hope which in the middle superior part are like to the form of men that is with round head but immediately joyned to the breast without a neck with ears altogether like ours and so their eyes lips and teeth And that their dugs being pressed do send forth most white milk Therefore he concludeth There is he saith so great difference of the form of Meirmaids with the Ancients and Moderns that it is no wonder that some do account them figments We have he saith the hands to be seen with eyes and we shew the Meirmaids to be such as in truth they are seen to be Neither do the hands and ribs deceive whose Pictures we have given framed according to the truth of nature 5. But besides these there are other Fishes or Sea-monsters that in all parts resembled Men and Women as these examples make manifest Alexander ab Alexandro a person of great learning and experience relateth That in Epirus a Triton or Sea-Man was found who forth of the Sea did ravish Women being alone upon the shore But being taken by cunning he did resemble a Man with all his members but did refuse meat being offered so that he died with hunger and wasting as being in a strange element 6. Also Ludovicus Vives doth tell us this story In our age he saith with the Hollanders a Sea-Man was seen of many who also was kept there above two years he was mute and then begun to speak But being twice smitten with the Plague he is let loose to the Sea rejoicing and leaping 7. In the year of our Lord 1403. there was taken a Sea-woman in a lake of Holland thrown thither forth of the Sea and was carried into the City of Haerlem she suffered her self to have garments put upon her and admitted the use of bread milk and such like things Also she learned to spin and to do many other things after the manner of Women also she did devoutly bend her knees to the image of Christ crucified being docible to all things which she was commanded by her Master but living there many years she alwayes remained mute 8. To these we shall conclusively add one story of sufficient credit from our own English Annals which is this In the year 1187. being the 33th year of the Reign of Henry the second near unto Oreford in Suffolk certain Fishers of the Sea took in their nets a fish having the shape of a man in all points which fish was kept by Bartholomew de Glanvile Custos of the Castle of Oreford in the same Castle by the space of six months and more for a wonder he spake not a word All manner of meats hâ— did gladly eat but most greedily raw fish after he had crushed out all the moisture Oftentimes he was brought to the Church where he shewed no tokens of adoration At length when he was not well looked to he stole away to the Sea and never after appeared The learned Antiquary Mr. Camden tells this same story from Radulphus Coggeshall an ancient writer and that Capillos habebat barbam prolixam pineatam circa pectus nimium pilosus erat hispidus and concludeth Quicquid nascatur in parte naturae ulla in mari esse non omninò commentitium est By all which examples we may be rationally satisfied that though these creatures have a real existence in nature yet because of their strange natures shapes and properties or by reason of their being rarely seen they have been and often are not only by the common people but even by the learned taken to be Devils Spirits or the effects of Inchantment and Witchcraft And therefore men that would judge aright must take heed that they be not deceived and imposed upon by relations of this nature and also of all such things as may be acted by Imposture and confederacy and those other Physical things that are brought to pass by natural causes divers sorts of which are recited by Ludovicus Lavaterus very largely to which I recommend those that desire further satisfaction in those particulars CHAP. XVI Of Apparitions in general and of some unquestionable stories that seem to prove some such things Of those apparitions pretended to be made in Beryls and Crystals and of the Astral or Sydereal Spirit IN this Treatise we have before sufficiently proved that the denying of the existence of such a Witch as doth make a visible contract with the Devil or upon whose body he sucketh or that hath carnal copulation with a Demon and that is transubstantiated into a Cat or a Dog or that flyeth in the air doth not inferr the denial of Spirits either good or bad nor utterly overthrow the truth of apparitions or of such things as seem to manifest some supernatural operations And therefore here we shall fully handle the question of Apparitions and things that seem to be of that nature and that in this order 1. We shall not meddle with Apparitions in the large extent of the word for so it may comprehend the appearing of new Stars Comets Meteors and other Portents and Prodigies which though unusual and wonderous have yet their production from natural causes But only here we shall treat of such apparitions as are taken to be performed by supernatural creatures or in such a way and by such creatures as we commonly account to be different from if not above the power of ordinary and visible nature as of Angels good or bad the Souls of men departed or their Astral Spirits or of some oâ—her creatures that are or may be of a middle nature 2. As for the apparitions of good Angels sent by God in times past both in sleep and otherwise the Scriptures do give us most full and ample assurance as these few instances may undeniably demonstrate 1. That an Angel of the Lord that is a good Angel did appear visibly unto Manoah and his wife and did vocally and audibly talk and discourse with them both and did after in both their sights openly and visibly ascend in the flame that did arise from the altar Now a more plain and indubitable apparition visibly seen and audibly heard than this