N00531:80
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. The evidence in this Crime ought to be as clear as in any other Crimes of a Capital Nature. The word of God does no where intimate, that a less clear evidence, or that fewer or other witnesses may be taken as sufficient to convict a man of Sorcery, which would not be enough to convict him were he charged with another evil worthy of Death. Numb; 35. 30. if we may not take the Oath of a distracted person or of a possessed person in a case of Murder, Theft, Felony of any sort, then neither may we do it in the Case of witchcraft.
2. Let me premise this also, that there have been ways of trying witches long used in many Nations, Especially in the dark times of Paganism and Popery which the righteous God never approved of. But which as (judicious Mr. Perkins expresseth it in plain English) were invented by the Devil, that so Innocent Persons might be condemned, and some notorious witches escape. Yea, many superstitions and Magical experiments have been used to try witches by. Of this sort is that of scratching the witch, or seething the urine of the Bewitched person, or making a witch-cake with that urine. And that Trial of putting their hands into scalding water, to see if it will not hurt them. And that of sticking an Awl under the seat of the suspected ⟨p. 53⟩party yea, and that way of discovering witches by tying thei• hands and feet, and casting them on the water, to try whether they will sink or swim. I did publicly bear my Testimony against this superstition in a Book Printed at Boston Eight years past.
2. Let me premise this also, that there have been wayes of trying witches long used in many Nations, Especially in the dark times of Paganism and Popety which the righteous God never approved of. But which as (judicious Mr. Perkins expresseth it in plain English) were invented by the Devil, that so Innocent Persons might be condemned, and some notorious witches escape. Yea, many superstitions and Magical experiments have been used to try witches by. Of this sort is that of scratching the witch, or seething the urin of the Bewitched person, or making a witch-cake with that urine. And that Trial of putting their hands into scalding water, to see if it will not hurt them. And that of sticking an Awle under the seat of the suspected