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
mind plainly troubled; and with tears pouring forth into my bosom the
secrets of her breast, did receive Christian instruction; and when she
had understood, by the blessing of God, the vanity of Diabolical
Impostures, and perceived them with opened eyes, she was easily
converted to the light of truth, the smoak of lyes being laid aside.
She, truth being once received, hath most constantly confessed, that it
did appear to her more clear than the light at noon day, that Satan did
only deceive and blind the eyes of his Vassals, and that there was
nothing done in verity, and this she declared with a detestation of her
Diabolical Art.” And so concludes it in these words: _Vno verbo dicam,
me satis experientiâ didicisse, bonam partem incantationum mera esse
insomnia_. And whosoever shall read, and seriously consider the Epistle
of that excellent and learned Divine, will find the most of those vain
illusions laid open and confuted: so that in all (or the most) of the
things attributed unto Witches, we shall find no more of Diabolical
operation in them, than an internal, mental, and spiritual delusion, in
making the Witches to believe, and to draw on others to the same opinion
that the Devil hath a kind omnipotent Power and Soveraignty. Therefore
did _Aristotle_ well conclude: _Incantamenta esse muliercularum
figmenta_.
[Sidenote: _Reas. 4._]
[Sidenote: Joh. 8. 44.]
[Sidenote: 1 Joh. 3. 8.]
[Sidenote: Psal. 62. 4.]
4. A fourth Reason of the meer falsity and incredibility of these
Confessions is this: Is it possibly credible to a rational and unbiassed
judgment, that the Witches (though never so many, at several times and
places) having made themselves the Slaves and Vassals of the Devil, both
in soul and body, and being led by his lying and deceitful Spirit
(though making large and voluntary confessions) can be conceived to have
any touch of truth in them at all? Surely no more truth in these
confessions, than there is in the Devil, who was a Lyar from the
beginning; and therefore we argue thus. Such kind of will, affections
and inclinations as are in the Devil himself, such kind are in his
Children. But the will and affections of the Devil are against God, his
Truth, and against all Gods people, and his inclinations tend to
continual lying. Therefore the will, affections, and inclinations of his
Children (such as the Witches are, and are granted to be) are against
God, his Truth, and against all Gods people, and their inclinations tend
to continual lying. The proof of the major and minor Proposition is the
plain words of our Saviour, _Ye are of your father the devil, and the
lusts of your father the devil ye will do_, θέλετε ποιεῖν, _and he was a
murtherer from the beginnings and abode not in the truth, because there
is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lye, he speaketh of his own: for
he is a lyar, and the father of it._ And again St. _John_ tells us: _He
that committeth sin, is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the
beginning_.
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