N00531:13
Cases of conscience concerning evil spirits personating men, witchcrafts, infallible proofs of guilt in…
Cases of conscience concerning evil spirits personating men, witchcrafts, infallible proofs of guilt in such as are accused with that crime. All considered according to the Scriptures, history, experience, and the judgment of many learned men. / By Increase Mather, president of Harvard College, at Cambridge, and teacher of a church at Boston in New-England. ; [Six lines of quotations]
Boston printed, : and sold by Benjamin Harris at the London Coffee-House., 1693
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.
but there is also an Evidence supposed to be in the Testimony, which is throughly to be weighed, and if it do not infallibly prove the crime against the person accused, it ought not •o determine him guilty of it; for so a righteous man may be Condemned unjustly. In the case of Witchcraft we know that the Devil is the immediate Agent in the Mischief done, the consent or compact of the Witch is the thing to be Demonstrated.
but there is also an Evidence supposed to be in the Testimony, which is throughly to be weighed, and if it do not infallibly prove the crime against the person accused, it ought not •o determine him guilty of it; for so a righteous man may be Condemned unjustly. In the case of Witchcraft we know that the Devil is the immediate Agent in the Mischeif done, the consent or compact of the Witch is the thing to be Demonstrated.
Among many Arguments to evince this, that which is most under present debate, is that which refers to something Vulgarly, called Spectre Evidence, and a certain sort of Ordeal or trial by the sight and touch. The Principal plea to justify the convictive evidence in these, is fetched from the Consideration of the Wisdom and Righteousness of God in Governing the World, which they suppose would fail, if such things were permitted to befall an Innocent person: but it is certain, that too resolute conclusions drawn from hence, are bold usurpations upon spotless Sovereignty; and though, some things, if suffered to be common, would subvert this Government, and disband, yea ruin H• mane ⟨image ?⟩society; yet God doth sometimes suffer such things to even, that we may thereby know how much we are beholden to Him, for that restraint which he Lays upon the infernal Spirits, who would else reduce a World into a Chaos. That the Resolutions of such Cases as these is proper for the Servants of Christ in the Ministry cannot be denied; The seasonableness of doing it now, will be Justified by the Consideration of the necessity there is at this time of a right information of mens Judgments about these things, and the danger of their being misinformed.