Webster also believes fully in the “bleeding or cruentation of the bodies of those that have been murthered,” particularly at the touch of the murderer or in his presence, and he gives a very curious collection of examples, in some of which “the murtherers had not been certainly known but by the bleeding of the body murthered.”[66] The most probable explanation of such phenomena he finds in the existence of the astral spirit, “that, being a middle substance, betwixt the Soul and the Body doth, when separated from the Body, wander or hover near about it, bearing with it the irascible and concupiscible faculties, wherewith being stirred up to hatred and revenge, it causeth that ebullition and motion in the blood, that exudation of blood upon the weapon, and those other wonderful motions of the Body, Hands, Nostrils and Lips, thereby to discover the murtherer, and bring him to condign punishment.”[67] In some cases, however, Webster holds that the soul has not actually departed, “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.”[68] These specimens of Webster’s temper of mind might perhaps suffice to show with what slight justification he has been regarded as a scientific rationalist. We must not dismiss him, however, until we have scrutinized his views on the subject of witchcraft itself. He passes for a strong denier of the whole business of sorcery. We shall find that this is a great mistake. So far from denying the existence of witches, Webster is indignant at the imputation that his theories and those of other like-minded scholars should be interpreted in any such sense. “If I deny that a Witch cannot flye in the air, nor be transformed or transubstantiated into a Cat, a Dog, or an Hare, or that the Witch maketh any visible Covenant with the Devil, or that he sucketh on their bodies, or that the Devil hath carnal Copulation with them; I do not thereby deny either the Being of Witches, nor other properties that they may have, for which they may be so called: no more than if I deny that a dog hath rugibility (which is only proper to a Lion) doth it follow that I deny the being of a Dog, or that he hath latrability?”[69] This sentence contains, in effect, the sum and substance of Webster’s negative propositions on the subject.[70] Let us see what he holds as affirmatives.