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
We shall not follow the learned Doctor through the whole of his letter,
which principally now consists in rectifying some little discrepancies
in the account of the murder of Anne Walker, and the execution of the
murderers, upon circumstantial evidence, supported by the miller’s story
of the apparition, between the account given by Mr. Webster, and that
here related by Lumley and Sharp. Mr. Webster’s account, it would
appear, was taken from a letter written by Judge Davenport to Sergeant
Hutton, giving a detailed narrative of the whole proceeding as far as
came within his judicial observation, and the exercise of his functions;
which it also appears Dr. More likewise saw; a copy of which, he states,
he had in fact by him for some considerable time, but which he
unfortunately lost: his account, therefore, is from sheer recollection
of the contents of this letter, but as there is very little difference
in the material points, unless with respect to the date of the year,
between the account given by Webster, and that related from the Doctor’s
memory, we shall offer no further observation than that the whole
savours so much of other similar stories, the result of superstition and
ignorance, that it claims an equal proportion of credit: for if, at the
time we allude to, they would hang, burn, or drown a woman for a witch,
either upon her own evidence, or that of some of her malignant and less
peaceably disposed neighbours, it cannot be matter of surprise, that two
individuals, for a crime really committed, should be hanged as murderers
upon the testimony of the apparition of a murdered person, given through
the organ of a miller, who resided only six miles from the spot.
That Dr. Henry More was not only an enthusiast and a visionary, (both of
which united in the same person, constitute a canting madman) but also a
humorous kind of fellow when he chose to be jocular, and it would appear
he was by no means incapable of relaxing the gravity of his countenance
as occasion served him, may be still further inferred from the following
extracts of the sequel of his letter to the Reverend Joseph Glanvil:—
“This story of Anne Walker, (says Dr. M.) I think you will do well to
put amongst your additions in the new impression of your new edition of
your Dæmon of Tedworth, it being so excellently well attested, AND SO
UNEXCEPTIONABLE IN EVERY RESPECT; and hasten as fast as you can that
impression, to undeceive the half-witted world, who so much exult and
triumph in the extinguishing the belief of that narration, as if the
crying down the truth of that of the Dæmon of Tedworth, were indeed the
very slaying of the devil, and that they may now, with more gaiety and
security than ever, sing in a loud note, that mad drunken catch—
Hay ho! the Devil is dead, &c.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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