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
1. There can be no right deduction made, nor no right consequence drawn,
where there is no dependency in causality, nor no connexion of
dependency. For as in the Relative and Correlative, the denying of the
one necessarily destroys the other, yet _fundamentum Relationis non
destruitur_; so a father without a child, as a father, doth neither
exist nor is known, and yet the foundation of those two terms, of
Paternity and Childship, which is Man, doth remain. So he that denieth
Creation, doth destroy the Relative, which is Creator; yet the
foundation, which is God, doth remain: and the denying of the Creation,
doth not infer the necessary conclusion of denying the Being of a God,
because there might be a God, though there were no Creation, because God
is supposed to be, both in respect of causality and duration, before
Creation. So what relation can Mr. _Glanvil_ feign betwixt the Being of
God and the Being of Angels or Spirits? For they both belong to the
Predicament of Substance, and not that of Relation; and there is less
relation betwixt the Being of a Witch and the Being of Spirits: so that
the denying of the one doth not infer the denying of the other. And
though there were relation (which Mr. _Glanvil_ cannot shew) the
foundation of that Relation (which is so necessary, that Relatives
cannot subsist without it) might remain, though the Relatives were taken
away: and therefore the denying of the existence of Angels or Spirits,
doth not infer the denying of the Being of God; and therefore the
Authors of this opinion are wrongfully and falsely charged with Atheism:
and the denying of the existence of a Witch (in the sense specified)
doth not infer the denying of the Being of Spirits; and therefore
_Scot_, _Osburne_, and the like, are falsely and wrongfully charged with
Sadducism.
[Sidenote: _Argum. 2._]
[Sidenote: Mat. 22. 23. Act. 23. 8.]
2. Though it be a true Maxime, that _de posse ad esse non valet
argumentum_; yet on the contrary, the possibility of that can never be
rationally denied, that hath once been in _esse_. But it is apparent,
that the Sadducees denied the Resurrection, and that there were either
Angels or Spirits, that is, they denied that Angels or Spirits, whether
good or bad, did separately exist, and that they were nothing but the
good or bad motions in mens minds: yet these men were no Atheists; for
though they denied the Resurrection, and held that there were no Angels
or Spirits, yet they held and believed there was a God, and did allow
of, and believed the five Books of _Moses_, else would not our Saviour
have used an argument, whose only strength was drawn from a sentence in
the third Chapter of _Exodus_, the sixth verse. So that even the denying
of the Existence of Angels and Spirits, doth not infer the denying of a
God; much less doth the denying the Existence of a Witch, infer the
denial of the Being of Angels and Spirits; and therefore the charge of
Atheism and Sadducism is false, injurious, and scandalous.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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 — John Shaqi
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