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
his side, and thereby manifesteth that it was he himself, and the very
same individual body in which he suffered, by which _Thomas_ his great
unbelief and doubting was unanswerably satisfied, by putting his fingers
into or upon the very prints of the nails, and by putting his hand into
or upon the wound or scar upon his side. And therefore though the same
power that raised him from the dead, and rouled the sealed stone from
the Sepulchre, could have perfected his body to be without prints or
scars of the wounds; yet did the divine Wisdom reserve them, thereby to
cure the infidelity of his Disciples, and undeniably to confirm the
truth of his Resurrection; to which purpose one said well: _Ibi ad
dubitantium corda sananda, vulnerum sunt servata vestigia_. And the
further to establish and settle their Faith, he took a piece of a
broiled fish, and of an honeycomb, and eat before them; all which
concluded him to have a true body, and that he was not a Spirit: from
whence we draw these conclusions.
1. That howsoever Spirits do or may appear, they have not, or can have
such a body, that in respect of tangibility, is as flesh and bones. For
flesh and bones are dense, solid, and make sensible resistance to the
touch; but the bodies of Spirits in their apparitions are not, nor can
be so. For as we deny not but there are and may be apparitions in any
figure or shape, yet they can but be as the figures and shapes in the
Clouds, which are often seen, and cause much wonder, though (we suppose)
many of them may be rather attributed to the assimilation made in mens
fancies, than to their real existence in those forms or shapes. So they
may be as shadows, or the species of bodies that we see near or afar
off, or as the images that we behold of our selves and other things in
Mirrours or Looking-glasses: which though without doubt they be not
non-entities, for _nullius entis nulla est operatio_, but these affect
the senses, which is an operation or action; yet do they all easily
yield to the touch, and have no firmness nor solidity, as flesh and
bones have; and this is all that can be justly deduced from our Saviours
argumentation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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