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
Creation have no generative power given them, nor members or organs to
perform the act of copulation withal; and therefore their having carnal
copulation with the Witches, is a most monstrous fiction, and an
absolute impossibility, and can have nothing in it more than the
stirring up of the imaginative faculty, and thereby to move titillation
in the members fitted for the act of generation, which is a thing that
happens to many both men and women, that are of hot constitutions, and
abound with seed, which we call _nocturnæ prolutiones_, of which the
Divines and Casuists make that great question, _An nocturnæ prolutiones
sint peccatum?_ And it is as simply impossible for either the Devil or
Witches to change or alter the course that God hath set in Nature, as to
transubstantiate a man or woman into a Cat, a Dog, or a Wolf; and
therefore are these confessions meer impossibilities and monstrous lyes.
4. There can in sound and right reason no credit at all be given to
these confessions, because divers of them have been proved to be utterly
false, as is plain in the man that did confidently affirm, that he was a
true Wolf, and that he had hair under his skin, the woful tryal of which
was his death, though a pregnant and undeniable proof, that the delusion
was in the Phantasie, and that there was no real change of the mans body
into a Wolf; and therefore doth flatly overthrow the credibility of
these vain and lying confessions. To the same purpose is the story
related by _Camerarius_ from _Johannes Baptista Porta_, a great
Naturalist, and a person of competent veracity, which is this. “Once
(saith he) I met an old Witch, one of those that are said to enter
houses in the night time, and there to suck the blood of little children
lying in their Cradles. Having asked her a question of something, she
promised forthwith, that within a while she would give me answer. She
puts forth of her Chamber all those that went in with me to be witnesses
of that which should pass. Having shut us out, she strips her self stark
naked, and rubs over all her body with a certain Oyntment, which we saw
through the chinks of the door. The operation of the soporiferous
juyces, whereof this Oyntment was compounded, made her fall to the
ground, and brought her into a deep sleep. Upon this we open the door,
and some of us begin to strike and knock her well-favour’dly; but she
was so soundly asleep, that to strike her body and a stone, it was all
one. Forth we go again, in the mean time the Oyntment had ended his
working, and the old Trot being awaked, and having put on her cloaths,
begins to tell tales of _Robin Hood_, saying, That she had passed over
Seas and Mountains, and then gives us false answers. We tell her, that
her body had never stir’d out of the Chamber; she maintains the
contrary: we shew her the blows we had given her, she persisteth the
more stifly in her opinion.” By the testimony of this Author, who was an
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account