N00531:60
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.
1. It is possible that the Persons in Question may be Possessed with Cacodemons. That bewitched Persons are many times really possessed with evil Spirits, is most certain. And as Mr. Perkins observes, no man can prove but that Witchcraft might be the cause of many of those Possessions, which we read of in the Gospel. And that Devils have been immitted into the Bodies of miserable Creatures by Magicians and Witches, Histories and Experience do abundantly testify. Hierom (h)relates ⟨p. 39⟩concerning a certain Virgin, that a young man, whose Amours she despised, prevailed with a Magician to send an evil Spirit into her, by means whereof she was strangely besotted. Tis reported (i)of Simon Magus that after he had used an Hellish Sacrifice, to be revenged of some that had called him a great Witch, he caused infernal Spirits to enter into them. Many confessing Witches have acknowledged that they were the cause of such and such Persons being Possessed by evil Angels, as (k)Thyroeus and others have observed. Now no Credit ought to be given to what Daemons in such, as are by them Obsessed, shall say. Our Saviour by his own unerring Example has taught us not to receive the Devils Testimony in any thing. The Papists are justly Condemned for bringing Diabolical Testimony to confirm the Principles of their Religion. Peter Cotton the Jesuit (l)enquired of the Devil in a Possessed. Person what was the clearest Scripture to prove Purgatory. At the time when Luther dyed, all the possessed people in the Netherlands were quiet. The Devils in them, said the ⟨p. 40⟩reason was, because Luther (m)had been a great Friend of theirs, and they owed him that respect as to go as far as Germany to attend his Funeral. Another time when there was a talk of some Ministers of the reformed Religion, the Devils in the Obsessed laughed and said they were not at all afraid of them, for the Calvinists and they were very good Friends. The Jesuits insult with these Titimonie as if they were divine Oracles. But the Father of Lies is never to be believed. He will utter Twenty great Truths to make way for one lye. He will accuse Twenty Witches, if he can but thereby bring one Innocent Person into Trouble. He mixeth Truths with Lies, that so those Truths giving Credit unto Lies, men may believe both, -and so be deceived.