strange and impossible things, is the strong passive delusion, that they lye under, contracted by ignorant, unchristian, and superstitious education, which they have suckt in with their milk, heightned with an atrabilarious temper and constitution, and confirmed by the wicked lyes, and teaching of others, which makes them confess these execrable things, which they in their depraved and vitiated imaginations, do think and believe they have done and suffered, when there was never truly acted any such matter _ad extrà_, but only in their mad and deluded Phantasies: and so no more credit to be given to them, than to the maddest Melancholist that ever was read or heard of. [Sidenote: _Reas. 3._] [Sidenote: _Lib._ 1. of Prognost.] [Sidenote: _Hist. meditat._ _lib._ 4. _cap._ 13. _pag._ 280.] [Sidenote: History 1.] [Sidenote: _Hist. nat._ _l._ 7. _c._ 52. _pag._ 103.] [Sidenote: _Doctor. Epist._ _pag._ 641.] [Sidenote: History 2.] [Sidenote: _Histor. Animal._ _lib._ 8. _cap._ 24.] 3. That there is not any jot of truth in these Confessions, is manifest, if we consider the subjective matter of them, as is plain by these ensuing grounds. 1. For the most of them are not credible, by reason of their obscenity and filthiness; for chast ears would tingle to hear such bawdy and immodest lyes; and what pure and sober minds would not nauseate and startle to understand such unclean stories, as of the carnal Copulation of the Devil with a Witch, or of his sucking the Teat or Wart of an old stinking and rotten Carkass? surely even the impurity of it may be sufficient to overthrow the credibility of it, especially amongst Christians. 2. There are many things that have no verity in them at all, that notwithstanding have verisimilitude; but these are not only void of truth, but also of truth-likeliness: for it is neither truth, nor hath any likelihood of it, to believe it for a truth, that the Devil should carry an old Witch in the Air into foraign Regions, that can hardly crawl with a staff, to dancing and banqueting, and yet to return with an empty belly, and the next day to be forced, like old _Dembdike_ or _Elizabeth Sothernes_, and _Alizon Denice_, to go a begging with the sowr-milk Can: is this either probable or likely? would it not much more have advantaged the Devils interest and his Kingdom, to have furnished them with good and true meat and drink, and not with such imaginary Cates, which would neither fill the stomach, nor satisfie the appetite? Had it not been more for the Devils benefit to have furnished them with plenty of gold and silver, than to let them go ragged and tattered, begging their bread from door to door? 3. As these confessions have no truth-likeliness in them, so they are things that are simply impossible to be performed by any created power, and therefore must needs be false and fictitious relations; for no Creature can perform any thing but that for which by Creation it was ordered and designed to; but the Devils by