N00531:37
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.
I am apt to think that there are some amongst us, who if they had lived in Job's days, and seen the Devil tormenting of him, and heard him complaining of being feared with Dreams and terrified with Night-visions, they would have joined with his uncharitable friends in Censuring him as a most guilty person. But we should consider that the Most High God doth sometimes deal with men in a way of Absolute Sovereignty, performing the thing which is appointed for them, and many such things are with him. If he does destroy the perfect with the wicked, and Laugh at the Trial of the innocent (Job 9. 22, 23.) who shall enter into His Counsels! who has given Him a Charge over the Earth. or who has disposed the whole world! men are not able to give an Account of his ordinary works much less of his secret Counsels, and the Dark Dispensations of his Providence. They do but darken counsel by words without knowledge when they undertake it. If we are not able to see how this or that can stand with the Righteousness of him that Governs the world, shall we say that the Almighty will pervert Judgment? or that he that Governs the Earth hateth Right? ⟨p. 17⟩shall we condemn him that is most just? But whereas 'tis objected where is Providence? and how shall men live on the Earth, If the Devil may be permitted to use such power? I demand, where was Providence, when Satan had Power to cause sons of Belial to lye and swear away the life of innocent Nabeth, laying such Crimes to his charge as he was never guilty of? And what an hour of Darkness was it? How far was the power of Hell permitted to prevail, when Christ the Son of God was Accused▪ Condemned, and Hanged for a Crime that he never was guilty of? That was the strangest Provi▪dence that has happened since the world began, and yet in the Issue the most glorious. We must therefore distinguish between what does ordinarily come to pass by the Providence of God, and things which are extraordinary. It is not an usual thing for a Naboth to have his life taken from him by false Accusations, or for an Athanasi•s or a Susann• to be Charged, and perhaps brought before Courts of Judicature for Crimes of which they were altogether Innocent.