N00531:56
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.
Viz.
If one Bewitched is struck down at the Look or Cast of the Eye of another, and after that Recovered again by a Touch from the same Person, is not this an infallible Proof that the Person Suspected and Complained of is in League with the Devil?
Answer; It must be owned that by such ⟨p. 35⟩things as these Witchcrafts and Witches have been discovered more then once or twice. And that an ill Fame or other Circumstances attending the suspected Party, this may be a ground for Examination; but this alone does not afford sufficient matter for Conviction. As Spectres or Devils appearing in the Shapes of men that have been murdered, declaring that they were murdered by such persons and in such a Place, may give just Occasion to the Magistrate for Enquiry into the matter. One great Witch-Advocate (d)confesseth that by this means Murders have been brought to Light; yet that alone, if other Circumstances did not concur, would not by the Law of God take away the Life of any man. If my Reader pleaseth, he shall hear what old Mr. Bernard of Batcomb faith to a Case not unlike to this, and the former. His words are these. (e)The naming of the suspected in their Fits, and also where they have been, and what they have done here or there, as Mr. Throgmortons Children could do, and that often and ever found true, This is a great Presumption; yet is this but a Presumption, because this is only the Devils Testimony, who can lye and that more often than speak Truth. Christ would not allow his witness of him in a point ⟨p. 36⟩