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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

Name: 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
Author: Webster, John

Webster, John

Witchcraft; Witchcraft -- Early works to 1800

1. For to say that the Apparitions of Spirits, good or bad, do prove
their Existence, is but _petitio principii_, a begging of the question,
that first is in doubt, and ought to be proved. For how come we to be
assured, that the Apparitions that are made, and really by
unquestionable Witnesses attested for truth (not to speak of melancholy
Fancies, and Fables, Knacks of Knavery and Imposture, and other ignorant
and gross mistakes, which are often believed to be Apparitions, when
they are no such matter) that they are made by good or bad Spirits? for
that is the thing in doubt, and so is but a circular way of arguing by
way of begging the question, or proving _ignotum per ignotius_; for
Apparitions do not prove the Being of Spirits, except it be first
proved, that those Apparitions be made or caused by Spirits.

[Sidenote: _Argum. 2._]

2. There are many Apparitions that are produced by natural and
artificial Causes, and need not be referred to supernatural ones, as are
all those _Idola_, Images, or Species that we see in Glasses, which
cannot be denied to be Apparitions, and yet arise from natural Causes.
So the Apparition of Comets, new Stars, and many other sort of strange
Meteors, as sometimes three Suns, the Rain-bow, _Halones_, and the like,
that have natural Causes to produce them, and are no proof of the Being
of Spirits. Nay as the best and most credible Historians have left upon
Record, and hath been known to be a certain verity in divers parts of
these three Kingdoms, within the space of these forty years, strange and
various Sights have been seen in the Air, both of Men, and Horses, and
Armies fighting one with another; and yet were these no proof of the
Existence of Spirits, because they may (and doubtlesly do) proceed from
other causes, and not from the operation or efficiency of Angels or
Spirits, either good or bad.

[Sidenote: _Argum. 3._]

[Sidenote: _Jo. Drusii Præterit. l. 7. p. 289._]

[Sidenote: _De Subtil._ _l._ 19. _p._ 1202, 1203.]

[Sidenote: _De Nymph._ _lib. pag._ 389.]

[Sidenote: The invisible World, sect. 6. pag. 303.]

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