N00531:63
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.
3. As for that which concerns the Bewitched Persons being recovered out of their Agonies by the Touch of the Suspected Party, it is various and fallible.
For sometimes the Afflicted Person is made sick, (instead of being made whole) by the touch of the Accused. Sometimes the Power of Imagination is such as that the Touch of a Person innocent and not accused shall have the same effect. It is related in the Account of the Trials of Witches at Bury in Suffolk 1664 during the time ⟨p. 44⟩(r)of the Trial there were some Experiments made with the persons afflicted, by bringing the Accused to touch them, and it was observed that by the least Touch of one of the supposed Witches, they that were in their Fits, to all mens Apprehension wholly deprived of all sense and understandings, would suddenly shriek out and open their hand.
For sometimes the Afflicted Person is made sick, (instead of being made whole) by the touch of the Accused. Sometimes the Power of Imagination is such as that the Touch of a Person innocent and not accused shall have the same effect. It is related in the Account of the Tryals of Witches at Bury in Suffolk 1664 during the time ⟨p. 44⟩(r)of the Tryal there were some Experiments made with the persons afflicted, by bringing the Accused to touch them, and it was observed that by the least Touch of one of the supposed Witches, they that were in their Fitts, to all mens Apprehension wholly deprived of all sense and understandings, would suddenly shriek out and open their hand.
- (r)See the Trial, pag. 40. 43, 45.See the Tryal, pag. 40. 43, 45.