♦_Geffr. Chau._ in the beginning of the wife of Baths tale.♦ ♦[*] [_Ital._]♦ ♦[†] [Text J.]♦ ¶ _The fift Booke._ The first Chapter. _Of transformations, ridiculous examples brought by the adversaries for the confirmation of their foolish doctrine._ Now that I may with the verie absurdities, conteined in their owne authors, and even in their principall doctors and last writers, confound them that mainteine the transubstantiations of witches; I will shew you certeine proper stuffe, which _Bodin_ (their cheefe champion of this age) hath gathered out of _M. Mal._ and others, whereby he laboureth to establish this impossible, incredible, and supernaturall, or rather unnaturall doctrine of transubstantiation. ♦_J. Bod. lib. 2. de dæmon. cap, 6._♦ First, as touching the divell (_Bodin_ saith) that he dooth most properlie and commonlie transforme himselfe into a gote, confirming that opinion by the 33. and 34. of _Esaie_: where there is no one title[*] sounding to anie such purpose. Howbeit, he sometimes alloweth the divell the shape of a blacke Moore, and as he saith he used to appeare to _Mawd Cruse_, _Kate Darey_, and _Jone Harviller_. But I mervell, whether the divell createth himselfe, when he appeareth in the likenesse of a man; or whether God createth him, when the divell wisheth it. As for witches, he saith they speciallie transubstantiate themselves into wolves, and them whom they bewitch into asses: though else-where he differ somewhat herein from himselfe. But though he affirme, that it may be naturallie brought to passe, that a girle shall become a boie; and that anie female maybe turned into the male: yet he saith the same hath no affinitie with _Lycanthropia_; wherein he saith also, that men are wholie transformed, and citeth infinite examples hereof. ♦J. Bodin abuseth scripture to proove a lie.♦ ♦[*] [= tittle.]♦ ♦_Pudendis tunc primùm erumpentibus._♦ First, that one _Garner_ in the shape of a woolfe killed a girle of the age of twelve yeares, and did eat up hir armes and legges, and carried the rest home to his wife. Item, that _Peter Burget_, and _Michael Werdon_, having turned themselves with an ointment into woolves, killed, and finallie did eate up an infinite number of people. Which lie _Wierus_ dooth sufficientlie confute. But untill you see and read that, consider whether _Peter_ could eate rawe flesh without surfetting, speciallie flesh of his owne kind. Item, that there was an arrowe shot into a woolves thigh, who afterwards being turned into his former shape of a man, was found in his bed, with the arrowe in his thigh, which the archer that shot it knew verie well. Item, that another being _Lycanthropus_ in the forme of a woolfe, had his woolves feet cut off, and in a moment he became a man without hands or feete. ♦_Jo. Wier. lib. 6. de mag ca. 12._♦