Selected quad for the lemma: woman_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
woman_n	belly_n	child_n	womb_n	1,413	5	9.6916	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A65369	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 ... 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 ...	Webster, John, 1610-1682.	1677 (1677)	Wing W1230; ESTC R12517	396,606	368

to the Oaken pin that it had not by nature for in probability it will constantly by a natural power produce the same effect only thus far the Devil had a hand in the action to draw some wicked person to fix the pin there where the Man was accustomed to make water thereby to hurt and torture him and so was only evil in respect of the end 3. We observe and affirm that whatsoever effects are brought to pass by that which is commonly called and accounted Witchcraft if they be not brought to pass by jugling confederacy delusion and imposture as the most of them are if not all then they are performed either by meer natural causes or the strength of the Witches fancy and most vehement desire of doing of mischief to those she hateth or by both joined together and that Satan is no further an author or actor but as he leadeth and draweth the minds of the Witches to do such mischievous actions and pusheth on to seek about to learn of others such secret poysons charms images and other hidden things that being used so or so may produce such destructive ends as their wicked and diabolical purposes are led to and in this sense they are his clients and bounden vassals and not otherwise 4. The stories that he relateth are either all to be taken to be true or none of them and if they be all alike equally to be credited then it will undeniably follow that they were all alike produced by natural causes and so no need at all of the Devils assistance in performing of them no more than by working upon the minds of such as used those natural means to a wicked and mischievous end For first he giveth these instances of things that were very strange that were voided either by vomit or stool by the ordinary power of nature without suspicion of diabolical cooperation as the voiding of the piece of the brass Cannon with its letters with the Eele wrapped in its secundines The Dragon that the Oxe voided by taking three herbs with a tail like an Eele a body like or of leather with a Serpentine head and not less than a Partridge The knife that the Thieves forced a man to swallow which he voided by an Apostume in the side and was after sound also the arrow head of three fingers broad strucken into the back and after voided by stool with diverse such which we recited before And that these being solid bodies should have penetrated and passed through parts that are impatient of wounds and in which a wound is mortal must of necessity be very wonderful and might as soon and upon as rational grounds be taken to be diabolical as those that he enumerateth to be so For from these it is manifest that either nature put to her last pinch doth make penetration of dimensions or else so inlarge the pores that those solid bodies may pass without wound which if seriously considered is a stupendious operation and effect And as there needeth no cooperation of a diabolical power for the performing of these no more needeth there any concurrence of Devils to the others that to that purpose he relateth Only here is all the difference these are wrought by the ultimate endeavour of the Archaeus to save life without the concurrence of external causes the others that are therefore called diabolical are commonly wrought for a bad end namely to hurt or to take away life and have an external cause to wit the force of the Witches imagination and strong desire of doing of mischief which is stirred up to that end by Satan and therefore in regard of the end are devilish though they be both wrought by the agency of nature the one in the body of the imaginant the other in the body that the Witch intendeth to hurt by the force of her imagination and vehement desire whereby a seminal Idea is created or formed which is sufficiently operative to accomplish the end intended 5. The arguments that he bringeth to prove penetration of dimensions to be in nature or something equivalent thereunto seem to be strong and convincing For in the generation of things whosoever shall seriously and strictly mark shall find as he alledgeth that the spirit of the Archeus though not altogether incorporeal doth in the seeds of things penetrate it self and their parts one another which he further maketh good by the instance of Gold generated of water for it must of necessity be that more than fifteen parts of water must fall in or penetrate one another that from thence one part of Gold may be made for weight is not of nothing but argueth the matter ponderous in the Ballance Therefore naturally the water must so oft penetrate its body as the Gold doth preponderate the water And though it be granted that the water hath pores yet notwithstanding it cannot contain so much as fourteen times it whole And therefore he irrefragably concludeth Est ergo ordinarium in natura quod aliquae partes aquae se penetrent in unicum locum And this he backs with an unanswerable story of a Woman that longing for Muscles did in greediness eat some of them with the shells twice or thrice broken with her teeth and that she brought forth a child with the same half eaten shells and a wound in the belly therefore those shells had penetrated the stomach womb and secundines or otherwise the force of the Archeus had opened the pores and letten them pass in an unconceiveable manner So that if these things be granted to be true and we confess we know not how they can be answered then there need no diabolical power be brought to solve the injecting of strange things into mens bodies seeing nature is sufficient of it self and therefore we can allow no power at all unto Devils in effecting these things if they be truly done and be not delusions but only in drawing the minds of the Witches to these wicked and mischievous courses and therefore the Lord Bacon said profoundly and wisely these words Ut in operationibus illis earumque causis error cavendus est ita quoque danda vel imprimis opera est ne effecta nobis imponant temere judicantibus talia esse quae eousque nondum processerunt Sic prudentes judices praescripta velut norma fidem haberi temere nolunt confessionibus sagarum nec etiam factorum contra illas probationi Sagas enim turbat imaginationis vertigo ut putent se illud facere quod non faciunt populumque hîc ludit credulitas ut naturae opera imputent fascino 6. And to confirm this point he addeth far more stupendious matters of fact than the former of things that were within being taken to without or invisibly conveyed away as the woman at Mechlin that saw the Souldier in a conflict lose his hand and forthwith brought forth a Daughter wanting an hand which was never found and the wench died of the Haemorrhage

should so often be turned into small powder and again restored into their former condition For he saith I have seen at Bruxells in the year 1599. that an Oxe having taken three Herbs did vomit a Dragon with a tail like an Eele a body as of leather a Serpentine Head and not less than a Partridge There is he saith an History of a Polonish Countryman seen lately of the Son of the Lord Ericius Puteanus A certain rustick did attempt himself to cut the Squinsie that he had in his throat with a short Knife which at unawares he swallowed and that at the length he did void the same at the right side of the Abdomen or lower belly with much rotten matter after great tortures and survived in health Also at Vilvordia in the year 1636. a Countryman known unto me he saith intending to feed a Cow did daily give her a bowl in which he had boiled Pot-Herbs with bran At last she waxeth leaner more and more every day and begun to halt upon the right thigh The Cow being killed the short Knife of his Wives bended back into the haft of Box is found hid betwixt the ribs and the shoulder blade For the Country Woman in cutting the rape root had left her Knife amongst the Pot-Herbs and the Cow by drinking had swallowed it Also he saith Ambrosius Paraeus relateth a story of a certain man whom Thieves had compelled to swallow a Knife which he afterwards being sound did void by an Apostume of the side Alexander Benedictus he saith doth mention another to whom an Arrow had penetrated into his back the hook of which of the breadth of three fingers he did void by stool without hurt The same Author relateth of a certain Girl of Venice who had swallowed a Needle and that after two years she voided it by urine crusted over with a stony substance Also he saith Antonius Benevenius doth relate that an Hetruscan Woman had swallowed a Copper Needle or Pin which three years after she voided at the Navil and was sound Valesius de Taranta he saith mentioneth a Girl of Venice perhaps the same who voided by urine a Pin of three fingers long A certain Capucine at Eburum called Bullonius by Sirname Hamptean did with much aversion of mind drink up an huge living Spider which he had seen fall into the Chalice in the time of the Sacrifice of the Mass. Within a few days he had a Phlegmon or bile that did arise in his right thigh and with much rotten matter from thence he voided the whole Spider but being dead A young Merchant of Antwerp being playing at Venice in his mouth with an unripe Ear of Barley did swallow the same with an huge fear of suffocation From thence after three Weeks in the left side above the Girdle an Apostume appeared and at the length with the rotten matter the same Ear of a yellow colour is extracted whole And he escaped sound With Fernelius a Student is related to be cured by him who had voided an Ear of Corn by the ribs Also Writers do commemorate that the young one sometimes dead and wasted in the Womb hath voided the bones through the Womb the belly by the na vil and sometimes by the fundament More things of this nature do every where occur amongst Authors worthy of credit 4. From which matters of fact he thus concludeth By which he saith it is manifest that solid bodies sufficiently great have penetrated the Stomach the Bowels the Womb the Caul the lower Belly the skin upon the inside of the Ribs the Bladder Membranes he saith impatient of so great a wound That is to say that Knives have been transmitted through these Membranes without wound which is equivalent to the penetration of dimensions made in nature without the help of the Devil And that an human body may be drawn through a small hole through which a Cat might only pass but not through a Wall Verily that the Devil cannot break a paper Window without the consent of his Master is he saith manifest by the process and arrest of Ludovicus Godfredus the Witch pronounced at Aix in Narbona the last of April 1611. I pray you where have the three pounds of brass of the Cannon of War marked with its letters laid hid how for so many months hath the dross shined in what part was the piece of brass greater than the intestine contained While I was he saith shewing a necessary vacuity in the air I promised that I would declare that although the penetration of bodies by the primary law of nature and by the common way of Artificers be forbidden notwithstanding that while a body doth totally pass over into the dominion of the spirit and is carried over and is by that as it were weakened then bodies do naturally and mutually penetrate one another at least in that part that is porous Because that the spirit then doth inclose the body under it self and therefore as it were taketh away the dimensions 5. And to confirm and open this point more fully he saith I will premise some things The desire of eating Muscles did invade a Woman with Child And she eateth some of them so very hastily that she did devour the raw shells twice or thrice broken with her teeth Thereupon by and by within an hour she bringeth forth a sound and adult Child with the same half-chewed shells and wounded in the belly Therefore the shells without the aperture of the membranes had forthwith penetrated the Stomach Womb and Secundines or else there were new shells generated upon the young Child Neither could this later be true For they were the true fragments of the Muscles and not figuratively framed to the imitation of them Furthermore the appetite is not carried to a thing unknown Therefore the appetite of eating the Muscles was not of the Child but of the Woman Therefore it was not necessary that new Muscles should be generated about the Child for they were desired by the Mother that they might become nutriment to her not the Child Otherwise by the same argument of Identity what things soever should by the appetite be desired should be generated about the young Child of whom when they could not be digested they should be always either left remaining about the Child or should there putrefie Which is false both ways for if it should putrefie that which is desired would cause abortion or if it were conserved there it would be found regularly For the Child is only nourished by the Navil Therefore those external Muscles could neither be wished by the Child nor could be profitable unto it and by consequence were neither for an end made anew but sent to the young one by reason that it was an uterine appetite The appetite is always directed from the end but the Woman with Child desired the Muscles not the shells neither that the Muscle being a living animal might remain in its former state

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

beginning to be stagnant to motion and ebullition and may exert so much force upon the organs as for some small time to move the whole body the hands or the lips and nostrils So that all that is to be done is but to prove that the person murthered is not absolutely dead and that the Soul is not totally separated or departed forth of the Body and this we shall do by undeniable proofs as are these that follow in this order 1. Though we generally take death to be a perfect separation of the Soul from the Body which is most certainly a great truth yet when this is certainly brought to pass is a most difficult point to ascertain because that when the Soul ceases to operate in the Body so as to be perceived by our Senses it will not follow that therefore the Soul is absolutely departed and separated 2. It is manifest that many persons through this mistake have in the times of the Plague been buried quick and so have some Women been dealt withal that lay but in fits of the suffocation of the Womb and yet were taken to be dead So that from the judgment of our Senses no certain conclusion can be made that the Soul is totally departed because it goeth away invisibly for many that not only to the judgment of the vulgar but even in the opinion of learned Physicians have been accounted dead yet have revived as learned Schenckius hath furnished us with this story from Georgius Pictorius that a certain Woman lay in a fit of the Strangulation of the Womb for six continual days without sense or motion the arteries being grown hard ready to be buried and yet revived again and from Paraeus of some that have lain three days in Hysterical suffocations and yet have recovered and of divers others that may be seen in the place quoted in the Margent 3. So that though the organs of the Body may by divers means either natural or violent be rendered so unfit that the Soul cannot perform its accustomed functions in them or by them so as they may be perceptible to our senses or judgments yet will not that at all conclude that the Soul is separated and departed quite from the Body much less can we be able to define or set down the precise time of the Souls aboad in the Body nor the ultimate period when it must depart for the union may be and doubtless is more strong in some than in others and the Lamp of life far sooner and more easily to be quenched in some than in others And the Soul may have a far greater amorosity to stay in some Body that is lively sweet and young than in others that are already decaying and beginning to putrifie and it may in all probability both have power and desire to stay longer in that lovesome habitation from whence it is driven away by force especially that it may satisfie it self in discovering of the murderer the most cruel and inhumane disjoyner of that loving pair that God had divinely coupled together and to see it self before its final departure in a hopeful way to be revenged 4. If we physically consider the union of the Soul with the Body by the mediation of the Spirit then we cannot rationally conceive that the Soul doth utterly forsake that union untill by putrefaction tending to an absolute mutation it be forced to bid farewel to its beloved Tabernacle for it s not operating ad extra to our senses doth not necessarily inferr its total absence And it may be that there is more in that of Abels blood crying unto the Lord from the ground in a Physical sense than is commonly conceived and God may in his just judgment suffer the Soul to stay longer in the murthered Body that the cry of blood may make known the murtherer or may not so soon for the same reason call it totally away There is another kind of supposed Apparitions that are believed to be done in Beryls and clear Crystals and therefore called by Paracelsus Ars Beryllistica and which he also calls Nigromancy because it is practised in the dark by the inspection of a Boy or a Maid that are Virgins and this he strongly affirmeth to be natural and lawful and only brought to pass by the Sydereal influence and not at all Diabolical nor stands in need of any Conjuration Invocations or Ceremonies but is performed by a strong faith or imagination And of this he saith thus Sed ante omnia ait notate proprietatem Beryllorum Hisunt in quibus spectantur praeterita praesentiae futura Quod nemini admirationi esse debet ideò quia sydus influentiae imaginem similitudinem in Crystallum imprimit similem ei de quo quaeritur And a little after he saith Praeterea syderibus nota sunt omnia quae in natura existunt Cumque Astra homini subjecta sint potest is utique illa in subjectum ita cogere ut voluntati ejus ipsa obsecundent What truth there may be in this his assertion I have yet met with no reasons or experiments that can give me satisfaction and therefore I leave it to every Man to censure as he pleaseth The only story that seems to carry any credit with it touching the truth of Apparitions in Crystals is that which is related of that great and learned Physician Joachimus Camerarius in his Preface before Plutarchs Book De Defectu Oraculorum from the mouth of Lassarus Spenglerus a person excellent both for Piety and Prudence and is in effect this Spengler said that there was one person of a chief family in Norimberge an honest and grave Man whom he thought not fit to name That one time he came unto him and brought wrapt in a piece of Silk a Crystalline Gemm of a round figure and said that it was given unto him of a certain stranger whom many years before having desired of him entertainment meeting him in the Market he took home and kept him three days with him And that this gift when he departed was left him as a sign of a grateful mind having taught such an use of the Crystal as this If he desired to be made more certain of any thing that he should draw forth the glass and will a male chast Boy to look in it and should ask of him what he did see For it should come to pass that all things that he required should be shewed to the Boy and seen in the Apparition And this Man did affirm that he was never deceived in any one thing and that he had understood wonderful things by the boys indication when none of all the rest did by looking into it see it to be any thing else but a neat and pure Gemm He tells a great deal more of it and that doubtful questions being asked an answer would appear to be read in the Crystal but the Man being weary of the use of it did give it to Spengler who being a