N00531:66
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.
And it is good for men to concern themselves with them as little as may be.
I think there is weight in Dr. Cotta's (u)Argument, Viz.
- (u)ubi supra pag. 121.
That the Gift of healing the Sick and Possessed was a special Grace and Favour of God, for the Confirmation of the Truth of the Gospel, but that such a Gift should be annexed to the Touch of Wicked Witches, as an infallible sign of their Guilt, is not easy to be believed. It is a thing well known, that if a Person possessed by an Evil Spirit, is (as oft it so happens) never so outrageous whilst a good man is Praying with, and for the Afflicted, let him lay his hand on them, and the Evil Spirit is quiet. I hope this is no evidence of any Covenant, or voluntary Communion between the Good man that is Praying and the Evil Spirit. No more does the Case before us, Evince any such thing.
That the Gift of healing the Sick and Possessed was a special Grace and Favour of God, for the Confirmation of the Truth of the Gospel, but that such a Gift should be annexed to the Tonch of Wicked Witches, as an infallible sign of their Guilt, is not easy to be believed. It is a thing well known, that if a Person possessed by an Evil Spirit, is (as oft it so happens) never so outragious whilst a good man is Praying with, and for the Afflicted, let him lay his hand on them, and the Evil Spirit is quiet. I hope this is no evidence of any Covenant, or voluntary Communion between the Good man that is Praying and the Evil Spirit. No more does the Case before us, Evince any such thing.