N00531:62
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.
2. Falling down by the cast of an Eye proceeds not from a natural, but an Arbitrary Cause. Not ⟨p. 42⟩from any Poison in the Eye of the Witch, but from the Agency of some Demon. The Opinion of Fascination by the Eye is an old Fable. And (saith Mr. Perkins) as fond as old. Pliny (o)speaks of a people that killed Folks by looking on them, and he adds that they had two Apples in each Eye. And Tally writes of women who had two Apples in one Eye that always did mischief with their mere Looks. So Ovid. Pupula duplex •ulminat. And Plutarch (p)writes that some persons have such a poison in their Eyes as that their Friends and Familiars are fascinated thereby. Nay he speaks of one that Bewitched himself sick by looking on his own Face in a Glass Others write of Fascination by a mere Prolation of words. And for ought I know, there may be as much witchery in the Tongue as there is in the Eye. Sennertus (q)has discovered the Superstition of these Fancies. Sight does not proceed from an Emission of Rays from the Eye, but by a reception of the visible Species And if it be (as Philosophers conclude) and […] Action and not an Emission of optic Spirits, so that sight as such, does receive something from the Object, and not act upon it, the notion of Fascination by the Eye is unphilosophical. It is true, that sore Eyes will affect those ⟨p. 43⟩that look upon them. Dumb spectant Oculi Loesos, Loeduntur et ipsi, for which a natural Reason is easily to be assigned. But if the Witches eyes are thus infected with a natural Contagion, whence is it, that only Bewi•••ed Persons are hurt thereby? if the vulgar Error concerning the Basilisk's killing with the Look of his poysonful eye, were a Truth, whatever person that Serpent cast his Eye upon would be poisoned. So if Witches had a physical Venom in their Eyes others as well as fascinated persons would be sensible thereof. There is as much Truth in this Phansy of Physical Venom in the Eye of a Witch, as there is in what Pliny