Answer; It must be owned that by such things as these Witchcrafts and Witches have been discovered more than once or twice: And that an ill Fame, or other Circumstances attending the suspected Party, this may be a Ground for Examination; but this alone does not afford sufficient Matter for Conviction: As Spectres or Devils appearing in the Shapes of Men that have been murdered, declaring that they were murdered by such Persons and in such a place, may give just occasion to the Magistrate for Enquiry into the Matter: One great Witch-Advocate[49] confes
seth, that by this means Murders have been brought to light; yet that alone, if other Circumstances did not concur, would not by the Law of God take away the Life of any Man. If my Reader pleaseth, he shall hear what old Mr. Bernard of Batcomb saith to a Case not unlike to this, and the former: His Words are these,[50] 'The naming of the suspected in their Fits, and also where they have been, and what they have done here or there, as Mr. Throgmorton's Children could do, and that often and ever found true; this is a great Presumption: yet is this but a Presumption, because this is only the Devils Testimony, who can lie, and that more often than speak Truth. Christ would not allow his Witness of him in a point most true; nor St. Paul in the due Praises of him and Sylas; his Witness then may not be received as sufficient in case of ones Life: He may accuse an Innocent, as I shewed before in Mr. Edmund's giving over his Practice to find Stollen Goods; and Satan we read would accuse Job to God himself to be an Hypocrite, and to be ready to be a Blasphemer, and he is called the Accuser of the Brethren. Albeit, I cannot deny but this has very often proved true, yet seeing the Devil is such an one as you heard, Christian Men should not take his Witness, to give in Verdict upon Oath, and so swear that the Devil has therein spoken the Truth; be it far from good men to confirm any Word of the Devil by Oath, if it be not an evident Truth without the Devil's Testimony, who in speaking the Truth, has a lying Intent, and speaks some Truths
of things done, which may be found to be so, that he may wrap with them some pernicious Lye, which cannot be tried to be true, but must rest upon his own testimony to ensnare the Blood of the Innocent.' Thus Mr. Bernard resolved the Case above sixty Years ago; and truly in my Opinion like a Wise and Orthodox Divine, what he says, reacheth both this and the former Case. Dr. Cotta (a Learned Physician) in his Book, about The Tryal of Witchcraft, shewing the true and right Method of the Discovery, with a Confutation of Erroneous ways (which Book he dedicates to the Right Honourable Sir Edward Cook, Lord Chief Justice of England,)[51] He discourses concerning Exploration of Witches by the touch of the Witch curing the touched bewitched, and sheweth the Fallibility and Vanity of that way of Tryal, tho' he had often seen Persons bewitched in that way immediately delivered from the present Fit or Agony which was upon them: But he taketh it to be a Diabolical Miracle. He argueth thus,[52] 'No Man can doubt but that the Vertue wherewith this touch was indued, is supernatural: If it be so, How can man to whom nothing is simply possible that is not natural be justly reputed an Agent therein? If he cannot be esteemed in himself any possible or true Agent, then it remaineth that he can only be interested therein as an Accessary in Consent, or as a Servant unto a Superior Power: If that Superior Power be the Devil, the least reasonable doubt, whether the Devil alone, or with the Consent or Contract of the suspected Person has produced that wonderful effect; with what Religion or Reason can
any Man incline rather to credit the Devil's mouth in the Bewitched, than to pity the Accused, and believe them against the subtility of a deceitful Devil: If the Devil by Divine Permission may cause supernatural Concomitances and Consequences to attend the natural Actions of Men without their allowance, as is manifest in possessed Persons, how is it reasonable and just that the Impositions of the Devil should be imputed unto any Man: And (saith he) God forbid that the Devil's Signs and Wonders, nay his Truths should become any legal Allegations or Evidences in Law. We may therefore conclude it unjust, that the forenamed miraculous Effect by the Devil wrought and imputed by the Bewitched, should be esteemed an infallible mark against any Man, as therefore convinced for that the Devil and the Bewitched have so decyphered him!' Thus that Learned Man. But to the Case in hand, I have several things to offer.
1. It is possible that the Persons in Question may be possessed with Cacodæmons: That bewitched Persons are many times really possessed with evil Spirits, is most certain. And as Mr. Perkins observes, no Man can prove but that Witchcraft might be the Cause of many of those Possessions, which we read of in the Gospel: And that Devils have been immitted into the Bodies of miserable Creatures by Magicians and Witches, Histories and Experience do abundantly testifie. Hierom[53] relates concerning a certain Virgin, that a young Man, whose Amours she despised, prevailed with a Magician to send an evil Spirit into her, by means whereof she was strangely besotted.
'Tis reported[54] of Simon Magus, that after he had used an Hellish Sacrifice, to be revenged of some that had called him a great Witch, he caused infernal Spirits to enter into them. Many confessing Witches have acknowledged, that they were the Cause of such and such Persons being possessed of evil Angels, as [55]Thyræus and others have observed: Now no Credit ought to be given to what Dæmons in such as are by them obsessed shall say. Our Saviour by his own unerring Example has taught us not to receive the Devil's Testimony in any thing. The Papists are justly condemned for bringing Diabolical Testimony to confirm the Principles of their Religion. Peter Cotton the Jesuite[56] enquired of the Devil in a possessed Person, what was the clearest Scripture to prove Purgatory. At the time when Luther died, all the possessed People in the Netherlands were quiet: The Devils in them, said the Reason was, because Luther[57] had been a great Friend of theirs, and they owed him that respect as to go as far as Germany to attend his Funeral. Another time when there was a talk of some Ministers of the Reformed Religion, the Devils in the Obsessed laughed and said, they were not at all afraid of them, for the Calvinists and they were very good Friends. The Jesuits insult with these Testimonies as if they were Divine Oracles: But the Father of Lyes is never to be believed: He will utter twenty great truths to make way for one lye: He will accuse twenty Witches, if he can but thereby bring one innocent Person into trouble: He mixeth Truths with
Lyes, that so those truths giving credit unto lyes, Men may believe both, and so be deceived: And whereas some say, that the Persons in question are only bewitched and not possessed, let it be considered that possessed Persons are called Energumens from ΕΡΓΟΜΑΙ Agitor: They whose Bodies are preternaturally agitated, so as to be in danger of being thrown into the Fire, or into the Water, though they may be bewitched, are undoubtedly possessed with Dæmons, Mark 9.22, 25. Learned Men[58] give it as a most certain sign of Possession, when the afflicted Party can see and hear that which no one else can discern any thing of, and when they can discover [59]secret things, Acts 6.16. past, or future, [60]as a possessed Person in Germany foretold the War which broke out in the Year, 1546. And when the Limbs of miserable Creatures, are bent and disjointed so as could not possible be without a Luxation of Joints, were it not done by a preternatural Hand, and yet no hurt raised thereby that argueth Possession. Also, when Persons are by the Devil cast into Fits, in the which they speak of things, that afterwards they have no remembrance of,[61] or, if they are by cruel Devils tortured, so as to cause horrendous Clamours in the distressed Sufferers, that's another sign of Obsession by evil Spirits: If all these things concur in the Persons concerning where the Question is, we may conclude them to be Dæmoniacks: And if so, no Juror can with a safe Conscience look on the Testimony of such, as sufficient to take away the Life of any Man.
2. Falling down by the cast of an Eye proceeds not from
a natural, but an arbitrary Cause;[62] not from any Poyson in the Eye of the Witch, but from the Agency of some Dæmon: The opinion of Fascination by the Eye is an old Fable, and (saith Mr. Perkins) as fond as old. Pliny[63] speaks of a People that killed folks by looking on them; and he adds, that they had two Apples in each Eye: and Tully writes of women who had two Apples in one Eye that always did mischief with their meer looks; so Ovid, Pupula duplex fulminat. And Plutarch[64] writes that some persons have such a Poyson in their Eyes, as that their Friends and Familiars are Fascinated thereby; nay he speaks of one that Bewitched himself sick by looking on his own Face in a Glass: Others write of Fascination by a meer Prolation of Words; and for ought I know, there may be as much Witchery in the Tongue as there is in the Eye. Sennertus[65] has discovered the Superstition of these Fancies; Sight does not proceed from an Emission of Rays from the Eye, but by a reception of the visible Species; and if it be (as Philosophers conclude) an innocent Action and not an Emission of optick Spirits, so that sight as such, does receive something from the Object, and not act upon it, the Notion of Fascination by the Eye is unphilosophical: It is true, that sore Eyes will affect those that look upon them, Dum spectant Oculi Læsos, Leduntur & ipsi, for which a natural Reason is easily to be assigned; but if the Witches Eyes are thus infected with a natural Contagion, Whence is it, that only Bewitched Persons are hurt thereby? If the vulgar Error concerning the Basilisks killing with
the Look of his Poysonful Eye were a Truth, whatever person that Serpent cast his Eye upon would be poysoned. So if Witches had a physical Venom in their Eyes, others as well as Fascinated Persons would be sensible thereof; there is as much Truth in this fancy of Physical Venom in the Eye of a Witch, as there is in what Pliny[66] and others relate concerning the Thibians, viz. that they have two Apples in one Eye, and the Effigies of an Horse in the other Eye; and that they are a people that cannot be drowned.