The displaying of supposed witchcraft : $b Wherein is affirmed that there are many sorts of deceivers and impostors, and divers persons under a passive delusion of melancholy and fancy. But that there is a corporeal league made betwixt the devil and the witch, or that he sucks on the witches body, has carnal copulation, or that witches are turned into cats, dogs, raise tempests, or the like, is utterly denied and disproved. Wherein also is handled, the existence of angels and spirits, the truth Webster, John
Religion
The displaying of supposed witchcraft : $b Wherein is affirmed that there are many sorts of deceivers and impostors, and divers persons under a passive delusion of melancholy and fancy. But that there is a corporeal league made betwixt the devil and the witch, or that he sucks on the witches body, has carnal copulation, or that witches are turned into cats, dogs, raise tempests, or the like, is utterly denied and disproved. Wherein also is handled, the existence of angels and spirits, the truth
Webster, John
Witchcraft; Witchcraft -- Early works to 1800
9. But if all this were granted, yet who are the Witnesses to this
visible League or Covenant, can the Witches name or find any? The things
that cannot be proved by sufficient Witnesses, are never to be believed,
and we have proved the nullity, impossibility, and falsity of the
pretended Confessions of Witches themselves, and therefore that no
credit at all ought to be given unto them, and however no Law nor Equity
ought to allow the Evidence of a Party, as in these cases all Witches
are. And though some few of them have been so exceedingly mad to make
such false and absurd Confessions, yet if the Records of all Ages and
Courts were sought, it will be found that many hundreds of them have
suffered that never confessed the least tittle of any such matter; and
the supposed Witches of _Salmesbury_ in the County of _Lancaster_, the
tenth year of the Raign of King _James_, were so far from this
confession, that they were cleared, and the accusation found to be
false, and all acted by the imposture of one _Thompson_, or _Christopher
Southworth_. And I my self have known two supposed Witches to have been
put to death at _Lancaster_ within these eighteen years, that did
utterly deny any such League, or ever to have seen any visible Devil at
all: and may not the confession of these (who both dyed penitently) be
as well credited, as the confessions of those that were brought to such
confessions by force, fraud, or cunning perswasion, and allurements? But
if there be any such League or Covenant betwixt the Witches and the
Devil, how cometh the truth of this matter of fact (if ever there were
or could be any such thing) to be certainly known and revealed? Have any
of the Pen-men of the holy Scriptures recorded, that there ever was, is,
or can be any such League or Contract? Or was it ever attested by any
honest rational men, that were ear or eye-witnesses of such a bargain
and contract? Therefore we must once again conclude: _De non
apparentibus & non existentibus eadem est ratio_.
[Sidenote: _Reas. 10._]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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