N00531:8
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.
Christian Reader.
SO Odious and Abominable is the name of a Witch, to the Civilized, much more the Religious part of Mankind, that it is apt to grow up into a Scandal for any, so much as to enter some sober cautions against the over hasty suspecting, or too precipitant Judging of Persons on this account. But certainly, the more execrable the Crime is, the more Critical care is to be used in the exposing of the Names, Liberties, and Lives of men (especially of a Godly Conversation) to the imputation of it. The awful hand of God now upon us, in letting loose of evil Angels among us to perpetrate such horrid Mischiefs; and suffering of Hells instruments, to do such fearful things as have bin scarce heard of; hath put serious persons into deep Musings, and upon curious enquiries what is to be done for the detecting and defeating of this tremendous design of the grand Adversary: and, though all that fear God are agreed, That no evil is to be done, that Good may come of it; yet hath the Devil obtained not a little of his design, in the divisions of Reuben, about the application of this Rule.
SO Odious and Abominable is the name of a Witch, to the Civilized, much more the Religious part of Mankind, that it is apt to grow up into a Scandal for any, so much as to enter some sober cautions against the over hasty suspecting, or too precipitant Judging of Persons on this account. But certainly, the more execrable the Crime is, the more Critical care is to be used in the exposing of the Names, Liberties, and Lives of men (especially of a Godly Conversation) to the imputation of it. The awful hand of God now upon us, in letting loose of evil Angels among us to perpetrate such horrid Mischiefs; and suffering of Hells instruments, to do such fearfull things as have bin scarce heard of; hath put serious persons into deep Musings, and upon curious enquiries what is to be done for the detecting and defeating of this tremendous design of the grand Adversary: and, though all that fear God are agreed, That no evil is to be done, that Good may come of it; yet hath the Devil obtained not a little of his design, in the divisions of Reuben, about the application of this Rule.