N00531:42
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.
Arg: 4. It is certain both from Scripture and History that Magicians by their Enchantments and Hellish Conjuriati••s may cause a false Representation of persons, & things. An enchanted eye shall see such things as others cannot discern. It is a thing too well known to be denied that some by rubbing there eyes with a Bewitched water have immediately thereupon seen that which others could not discern. And there are persons in the World, who have a strange spectral sight. MrGlanvil (f)speaks of a Dutch-man that could see Ghosts which others could perceive nothing of. There are in Spain a sort of men whom they call Zahurs; these can see into the Bowels of the Earth. They are able to discover Minerals & hidden Treasures. nevertheless, they have their extraordinary sight only on Tuesdays and fridays; and not on the other days of the week. (f)Delrio faith that when he was at Madrid Ano.Domin. 1575. He saw some of these strange sighted Creatures. Mr. ⟨p. 22⟩George Sinclare, in his Book entitled Satan's Invisible World discovered (h)has these words, I am undoubtedly informed that men and women in the High-lands can discern Fatality approaching others by seeing them in the waters or with winding Sheets about them. And that others can lecture in a Sheeps shoulder-bone a death within the Parish seven or eight days before it come. It is not improbable but that such Preternatural Knowledge comes first by a Compact with the Devil and is derived down-ward by Succession to their Posterity. Many such I suppose are Innocent, and have this sight against their will and Inclination. Thus Mr. Sinclare. I concur with his supposal that such Knowledge is Originally from Satan, and perhaps the Effect of some old Enchantment. There are some at this day in the World, that if they come into an House where one of the Family will dye within a Fortnight, the smell of a Dead Corpse offends them to such a degree as that they cannot stay in that House. It is reported, that near unto the Abby of St. Maurice in Burgundy (i)there is a Fish-pond in which are Fishes put according to the number of the Monks of that place. If any one of them happen to be sick there is a Fish seen to Float and Swim above water half dead, and if the Monk shall dye, the Fish a few days before dieth.