An essay for the recording of illustrious providences

There is lately published (by Dr. Horneck) the History of the Witches in Sweden, by whose means that Kingdom was fearfully plagued: upon Examination they confessed their crime, & were executed in the year 1670.

And no longer since than the last year, viz. on Aug.25. 1682. three women who were executed at Exon in Devonshire, all of them confessed that they had had converses and familiarities with the Devil.

But the Instance of the Witch Executed in Hartford, here in New-England (of which the preceding Chapter giveth an account) considering the circumstances of that Confession, is as convictive a proof as most single examples that I have met with. It is a vain thing, for the Patrons of Witches to think that they can Sham off this Argument, by suggesting that these Confessions did proceed from the deluded imaginations of Mad and Melancholy persons. Some of them were as free from distemperature in their Brains, as their Neighbours. That divers Executed for Witches have acknowledged things against themselves which were never so, I neither doubt or deny. And that a deluded Fancy may cause persons verily to ⟨p. 187⟩think they have seen and done these things which never had any Existence, except in their own Imaginations is indisputable. I fully concur with a passage which I find, in Worthy Dr. Owen's late excellent Discourse about the work of the Spirit in Prayer (Page 202.) where he has these words: We find by experience that some have had their Imaginations so fixed on things evil and noxious by satanical Delusions, that they have confessed against themselves things and crimes that have rendered them obnoxious to Capital Punishment, whereof they were never really and actually guilty. This not withstanding, that Persons whose Judgement and Reason has been free from disturbance by any Disease, should not only voluntarily acknowledge their being in cursed Familiarities with Satan, but mention the particular circumstances of those Transactions, and give ocular demonstration of the truth of what they say, by discovering the Stigmata made upon their bodies, by the Devils hand: and that when more than one or two have been examined apart, they should agree in the circumstances of their Relations, and yet that all this should be the mere effect of Melancholy or Frenzy, cannot without offering violence to Reason and common Sense be Imagined. And as there are Witches