Demonologia : $b or, natural knowledge revealed; being an exposé of ancient and modern superstitions, credulity, fanaticism, enthusiasm, & imposture, as connected with the doctrine, caballa, and jargon, of amulets, apparitions, astrology, charms, demonology, devils, divination, dreams, deuteroscopia, effluvia, fatalism, fate, friars, ghosts, gipsies, hell, hypocrites, incantations, inquisition, jugglers, legends, magic, magicians, miracles, monks, nymphs, oracles, physiognomy, purgatory, predestForsyth, J. S.
History
Demonologia : $b or, natural knowledge revealed; being an exposé of ancient and modern superstitions, credulity, fanaticism, enthusiasm, & imposture, as connected with the doctrine, caballa, and jargon, of amulets, apparitions, astrology, charms, demonology, devils, divination, dreams, deuteroscopia, effluvia, fatalism, fate, friars, ghosts, gipsies, hell, hypocrites, incantations, inquisition, jugglers, legends, magic, magicians, miracles, monks, nymphs, oracles, physiognomy, purgatory, predest
Forsyth, J. S.
Demonology; Superstition; Witchcraft
Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,
Atque metus omnes et inexorable fatum,
Subjicit pedibus, _Strepitumque Acherontes avari_.
But in order to shew with what fervour the belief in witches and
apparitions was maintained about a century and a half ago, we lay before
our readers, as it is scarce, “Doctor Henry More, his letter, with the
postscript to Mr. J. Glanvil[48], minding him of the great expedience
and usefulness of his new intended edition of the Dæmon of Tedworth, and
briefly representing to him the marvellous weakness and gullerie of Mr.
Webster’s[49] display of Witchcraft.”
“Sir,
“When I was at London, I called on your bookseller, to know in what
forwardness this new intended impression of the story of the Dæmon of
Tedworth (see p. 223) was, which will undeceive the world touching that
fame spread abroad, as if Mr. _Mompesson_ and yourself had acknowledged
the business to have been a meer trick or imposture. But the story, with
your ingenious considerations about witchcraft, being so often printed
already, he said it behoved him to take care how he ventured on a new
impression, unless he had some new matter of that kind to add, which
might make this edition the more certainly saleable; and therefore he
expected the issue of that noised story of the spectre at _Exeter_, seen
so oft for the discovery of a murther committed some thirty years ago.
But the event of this business, as to juridical process, not answering
expectation, he was discouraged from making use of it, many things being
reported to him from thence in favour of the party most concerned. But I
am told of one Mrs. _Britton_, her appearing to her maid after her
death, very well attested, though not of such a tragical event as that
of _Exeter_, which he thought considerable. But of discoveries of
murther I never met with any story more plain and unexceptionable than
that in Mr. John Webster his display of supposed Witchcraft: the book
indeed itself, I confess, is but a weak and impertinent piece; but that
story weighty and convincing, and such as himself, (though otherwise an
affected caviller against almost all stories of witchcraft and
apparitions,) is constrained to assent to, as you shall see from his own
confession. I shall, for your better ease, or because you may not haply
have the book, transcribe it out of the writer himself, though it be
something, chap. 16, page 298, about the year of our Lord 1632, (as near
as I can remember, having lost my notes and the copy of the letters to
Serjeant _Hutton_, but I am sure that I do most perfectly remember the
substance of the story.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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