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
any power or efficiency of second Causes, than an incorporeal and
spiritual substance is; and therefore whether Angels be simply
incorporeal, or that they be Corporeal, it neither maketh for nor
against their immortality, which consists only in the benign emanation
of the Divine conservative power of the Almighty: And therefore doth
profound _Bradwardine_ draw that invincible, and undeniable Corollary of
verity, _Quod necesse est Deum servare quamlibet Creaturam immediatiùs
quacunq; causa creata_. 4. Though the most of the bodies that are known
unto us be divisible, alterable and discerpible, or dissipable in
respect of our conceptions of them, yet actually we may find many bodies
in nature that are not, nor ever were dissipated or dissevered _secundum
totum_, though there may be alteration in their superficial parts, as
the Earth, the Sun, Moon, the rest of the Planets, and those great and
glorious bodies that we call Stars; so that for the duration of bodies
_à parte post_ we can conclude little of certainty. And as there are
bodies that _secundum suum totum_, are not severed or dissipated, so
there are some bodies that though they may suffer division and
dissipation into smaller parts, yet do those parts though most minute,
suffer no real transmutation, but remain of the same Homogeneous nature
they were before, as is most manifest in Silver dissolved in _Aqua
fortis_, wherein though it be so severed and dispersed, that it appear
not at all unto the eye, yet may it be from thence recovered and
redintegrated into its own nature as it was before. And also the Masters
of the more abstruse Philosophy affirm to us upon their own certain
experience, that though metallick _Mercury_ may be divided into
insensible and invisible Atomes, yet still it retains the nature of
metallic _Mercury_, and that thus _Helmont_ tells us: _Si non vidissem
argentum vivum eludere quamcunq; artificum operam, adeò, quod aut totum
avolet adhuc integrum, aut totum in igne permaneat, atq; utrolibet modo,
servet impermutabilem sui ac primitivam identitatem, identitatisq;
homogeneitatem anaticam: dicerem artem non esse veram, quæ vera est,
sine mendacio, atq; longè verissima_. So also there are bodies which
although they suffer division and separation by some other bodies
dissevering of them, yet by motion of coition they soon close and
redintegrate themselves, having thereby suffered no detriment at all, as
is most apparent in the pure body of the Æther, the visible species of
things, the images in a Looking-glass and in shadows, which are all
bodies. So that seeing bodies, no more than Spirits to be annihilable by
second causes, and that there are some bodies that are not dissipated
_secundum totum_, and that there are others that though they are
separable into more minute particles, yet do they remain in Analytical
and Homogeneous Identity, and that there are others that though they be
actually for a small moment divided, yet they do instantaneously
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