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
“Besides, knaves do not use to speak what things are true, but what
things are pleasing. And moreover, this woman of Endor, though a
Pythoness, yet she was of a very good nature and benign, which Josephus
takes notice of, and extols her mightily for it, and therefore she could
take no delight to lay further weight on the oppressed spirit of
distressed king Saul; which is another sign that this scene was acted
_bonâ fide_, and that there was no cozening in it. As also that it is
another, that she spoke so magnificently of what appeared to her, that
she saw Gods ascending. Could she then possibly adventure to turn out a
countryslouch with a maund-woman’s cloak to act the part of so God-like
and divine a personage of Samuel, who was Θεῷ τὴν μορφὴν ὅμοιος, as the
woman describes him in Josephus Antiq. Judaic. lib. vii. c. 15, unto all
which you may add, that the Scripture itself, which was written by
inspiration, says expressly, verse 20, that it was Samuel. And the son
of Sirach, chap xlvi. that Samuel himself prophesied after his death,
referring to this story of the woman of Endor. But for our new inspired
seers, or saints, S. Scot, S. Adie, and if you will, S. Webster, sworn
advocate of the witches, who thus madly and boldly, against all sense
and reason, against all antiquity, all interpreters, and against the
inspired scripture itself, will have no Samuel in this scene, but a
cunning confederate knave, whether the inspired scripture, or these
inblown buffoons, puffed up with nothing but ignorance, vanity and
stupid infidelity, are to be believed, let any one judge.
“We come now to his other allegation, wherein we shall be brief, we
having exceeded the measure of a postscript already. ‘It was neither
Samuel’s soul,’ says he, ‘joined with his body, nor his soul out of his
body, nor the devil; and therefore it must be some confederate knave
suborned by that cunning, cheating quean of Endor.’ But I briefly
answer, it was the soul of Samuel himself; and that it is the
fruitfulness of the great ignorance of J. Webster in the sound
principles of theosophy and true divinity, that has enabled him to heap
together no less than ten arguments to disprove this assertion, and all
little to the purpose: so little indeed, that I think it little to the
purpose particularly to answer them, but shall hint only some few truths
which will rout the whole band of them.
“I say therefore that departed souls, as other spirits, have an
ἀυτεξούσιον in them, such as souls have in this life; and have both a
faculty and a right to move of themselves, provided there be no express
law against such or such a design to which their motion tends.
“Again, that they have a power of appearing in their own personal shapes
to whom there is occasion, as Anne Walker’s soul did to the miller; and
that this being a faculty of theirs either natural or acquirable, the
doing so is no miracle. And,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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