CHAP. II.
A lawyer’s argument for the existence of witchcraft—Proofs of spectral impressions, from recollected perceptions—New England witches—Cardan—Donne—Jonson—The maid of France—and other visionaries.
In a compilation, on the duties of a Justice of Peace, published by Nelson, we meet with a proof of the existence of witchcraft, which the editor appears to have thought irrefragable. “It seems,” saith he, “that there must formerly have been such a crime as witchcraft, because divers statutes have been made against it.” Were we to reason in the same manner, respecting demoniacal agency, in medical cases, proof could be brought, (particularly from the older German writers), that medicines have been administered, for the purpose of expelling the devil from human bodies, into which it was supposed that he had entered, and that many different remedies had been employed to this end.
Instead of resorting to any arguments of this nature, I shall now proceed to shew, that the forms of objects which have no external prototypes, are exhibited to the mind, in certain states of the brain.