A09402:15
A discourse of the damned art of witchcraft so far forth as it is…A discourse of the damned art of witchcraft so farre forth as it is…
A discourse of the damned art of witchcraft so far forth as it is revealed in the Scriptures, and manifest by true experience. Framed and delivered by M. William Perkins, in his ordinary course of preaching, and now published by Tho. Pickering Bachelor of Divinity, and minister of Finchingfield in Essex. Whereunto is adjoined a twofold table; one of the order and heads of the treatise; another of the texts of Scripture explained, or vindicated from the corrupt interpretation of the adversary.A discourse of the damned art of witchcraft so farre forth as it is reuealed in the Scriptures, and manifest by true experience. Framed and deliuered by M. William Perkins, in his ordinarie course of preaching, and now published by Tho. Pickering Batchelour of Diuinitie, and minister of Finchingfield in Essex. Whereunto is adioyned a twofold table; one of the order and heades of the treatise; another of the texts of Scripture explaned, or vindicated from the corrupt interpretation of the aduersarie.
Cambridge: printed by Cantrell Legge, 1610Cambridge: printed by Cantrel Legge, 1610
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
That the light of the Gospel purely preached, is a sovereign mean, to discover & confound the power and policy of Sa••n in Witch-craft and Sorcery. The wo•d of God preached, is the weapon of the Christians warfare, and is mighty through God to cast down strong bolds. 1At the dispensation of i• by the disciples of Christ, Satan fall from heaven a• lightning. 2After the ascension of Christ into Heaven, in the times of Claudius Cesar*, the Devil stirred up sundry persons, who in regard of the admirable works which they did, by the help of Magic and ⟨image 8⟩Sorcery, were accounted as Gods, and their Statues erected and worshipped with great reverence. Amongst the rest, one Simon, called by a kind of eminency; Magus, practising his trade with success, to the admiration of the multitude,4 was holden to be the great power of God. Whose dealing was first discovered by the light of the word, shining in the Ministry of the Apostles, and himself convicted with such evidence of truth, to be an Instrument of Satan, that he was forced at length to fly ou• of Samaria into the Western parts,5 as Eusebius recordeth in his Ecclesiastical History. By this, Christ the true angel of the Covenant, lo• ked and bound up Satan for a 1000.6 years after his ascension, that he might not be so generally powerful in seducing the Gentiles, as he had been before his incarnation. But toward the expiration of those years, when corruption began to creep into the Papacy; when the Bishops affected that Sea, and aspired unto it by Diabolical arts; when the Canons, Decrees, Sentences, Synodlls, Derialls, Clemenines, Extravagants, with other Laws and Constitutions, prevailed above the Scriptures; then began Satan again to erect his kingdom, and these works of iniquity to be set abroach.