Notes on witchcraft

by George Lyman Kittredge

One is tempted to still further quotations from Webster’s utterances on this topic, especially because his book has been much oftener mentioned than read. But we must rest content with one passage which sums up the whole matter:—“The opinions that we reject as foolish and impious are those we have often named before, to wit, that those that are vulgarly accounted Witches, make a visible and corporeal contract with the Devil, that he sucks upon their bodies, that he hath carnal copulation with them, that they are transubstantiated into Cats, Dogs, Squirrels, and the like, or that they raise tempests, and fly in the air. Other powers we grant unto them, to operate and effect whatsoever the force of natural imagination joyned with envy, malice and vehement desire of revenge, can perform or perpetrate, or whatsoever hurt may be done by secret poysons and such like wayes that work by meer natural means.”[78]

It is true that Webster opposed some of the current witch dogmas of his time. There are passages enough in his elaborate treatise which insist on the prevalence of fraud and melancholia. In his Epistle Dedicatory, which is addressed to five Yorkshire justices of the peace, he lays particular stress on the necessity of distinguishing between impostors and those unfortunate persons who are “under a mere passive delusion” that they are witches, and warns the magistrates not to believe impossible confessions. For all this he deserves honor.[79] Nor do I intend for a moment to suggest that the queer things (as we regard them now-a-days) which I have cited are in any manner discreditable to Webster. He was not exceptionally credulous, and he belonged to that advanced school of English physicians who, in the second half of the seventeenth century, upheld the general theories of Paracelsus and van Helmont in opposition to the outworn follies of the Galenists or regulars. He was a man of great erudition, of vast and varied experience, of uncommon mental gifts, and of passionate devotion to the truth. I admire him, but I must be pardoned if I am unable to see how he can be regarded as a tower of skeptical strength in the great witchcraft controversy. Even his admissions on the subject of the fallen angels are enough to destroy the efficiency of his denial of current notions about witchcraft. Once grant, as Webster does, that our atmosphere is peopled by legions upon legions of evil angels, delighting in sin, eager to work mischief, inimical to God and man, furnished with stores of acquired knowledge, and able to devise wicked thoughts and put them into our minds,[80] and it was idle to deny—in the face of the best philosophic and theological opinion of the ages—that these demonic beings can make actual covenants with witches or furnish them with the means of doing injury to their fellow-creatures.

“A Witch,” according to Glanvill’s definition, “is one, who can do or seems to do strange things, beyond the known Power of Art and ordinary Nature, by vertue of a Confederacy with Evil Spirits.... The strange things are really performed, and are not all Impostures and Delusions. The Witch occasions, but is not the Principal Efficient, she seems to do it, but the Spirit performs the wonder, sometimes immediately, as in Transportations and Possessions, sometimes by applying other Natural Causes, as in raising Storms, and inflicting Diseases, sometimes using the Witch as an Instrument, and either by the Eyes or Touch, conveying Malign Influences: And these things are done by vertue of a Covenant, or Compact betwixt the Witch and an Evil Spirit. A Spirit, viz. an Intelligent Creature of the Invisible World, whether one of the Evil Angels called Devils, or an Inferiour Dæmon or Spirit, or a wicked Soul departed; but one that is able and ready for mischief, and whether altogether Incorporeal or not, appertains not to this Question.”[81] Glanvill’s book was well known to the Mathers. So was Webster’s Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft.[82] Could there be a moment’s doubt which of the two would appeal the more powerfully to their logical sense? Why, even we ourselves, if we look at the matter fairly,—taking into consideration Webster’s whole case, and not merely such parts of it as accord with our preconceived opinions,—are forced to admit that Glanvill’s position is much the stronger.

In a well-known passage, in which the intellectual temper of Massachusetts before 1660 is contrasted with that of the next generation,[83] our classic New England essayist remarks that after 1660 the Colonists “sank rapidly into provincials, narrow in thought, in culture, in creed.” “Such a pedantic portent as Cotton Mather,” Lowell continues, “would have been impossible in the first generation; he was the natural growth of the third.” To discuss these epigrammatic theses would take us far beyond the limits of our present subject. One thing, however, must be said. Pedantry in the latter half of the seventeenth century was not confined to New England, nor to the ranks of those who were controversially styled the witchmongers. Meric Casaubon and Joseph Glanvill were not pedantic, but John Webster’s Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft—which in some respects comes very near to being a great book—is a monument of pedantry, and John Webster was not a product of New England.

In Thomas Hobbes, whom we may next consider, we find a philosopher who was altogether incredulous on the subject of witchcraft. “As for witches,” he writes, “I think not that their witchcraft is any real power; but yet that they are justly punished, for the false belief that they have that they can do such mischief, joined with their purpose to do it if they can; their trade being nearer to a new religion than to a craft or science.”[84] This dictum may accord with reason, but one must admit that it was cold comfort for persons accused of diabolical arts. And so was the more famous remark of Selden: “The Law against Witches does not prove there be any; but it punishes the Malice of those people, that use such means, to take away mens lives. If one should profess that by turning his Hat thrice, and crying Buz; he could take away a man’s life (though in truth he could do no such thing) yet this were a just Law made by the State, that whosoever should turn his Hat thrice, and cry Buz; with an intention to take away a man’s life, shall be put to death.”[85] Bayle, shortly after the beginning of the eighteenth century, agreed with Selden as to the justice of putting “sorciers imaginaires” to death.[86] Thomas Ady, believing (like Scot, to whom he often refers) that the witches and sorcerers of the Bible were mere cheats, and that the same is true of all who pretend to similar arts in modern times, is ready to admit the justice of the death penalty in cases of fraud. In describing the case of a certain Master of Arts who was “condemned only for using himself to the study and practice of the Jugling craft,” he concludes:—“If he had been a Jugler, or practiser of that Craft to this end, to withstand the Prophets when they wrought true miracles, as Pharaohs Juglers withstood Moses, or if he were one that practised it to seduce the people after lying delusions, to magnifie himself as a false Prophet, like Simon Magus in the Acts, or to cause people to ascribe miraculous power to him, or to seek to the Devil as our common Deceivers, called good Witches, do, he was deservedly condemned.”[87]

Four dissenters from the current witchcraft dogma we must pass over in silence—John Wagstaffe, Sir Robert Filmer, Robert Calef, and Dr. Francis Hutchinson. Calef came too late to be really significant in our discussion; Filmer’s tract is a kind of jeu d’esprit, not likely to have had any influence except upon lawyers;[88] and Wagstaffe’s book is a quite inconsiderable affair. Yet, in parting, we must not neglect an odd remark concerning two out of the four—as well as one other, John Webster, whose lucubrations we have already criticised—a remark which, occurring as it does in a work of much learning and unusual distinction, illustrates in striking fashion the inaccuracy which we have already had occasion to notice, now and again, in recent writers who have busied themselves with the abstruse and complicated subject of witchcraft. President White, in his Warfare of Science with Theology, expresses his admiration for Webster, Wagstaffe, and Hutchinson in the following terms:—“But especially should honour be paid to the younger men in the Church, who wrote at length against the whole system: such men as Wagstaffe and Webster and Hutchinson, who in the humbler ranks of the clergy stood manfully for truth, with the certainty that by so doing they were making their own promotion impossible.”[89] Of the three men whom Dr. White thus commends for renouncing all hope of ecclesiastical preferment, the first, John Webster, was sixty-seven years old when he published his book; he had long been a Non-Conformist, and he describes himself on his title-page as “Practitioner in Physick.” The second, John Wagstaffe, was a gentleman of independent means who damaged his health by “continual bibbing of strong and high tasted liquors”[90] and who was not in orders at all; the third. Dr. Francis Hutchinson, was Chaplain in Ordinary to King George I. when he published his Essay and was advanced to a bishopric two years after the first edition of the book appeared.[91]

When in 1692 and 1693, we come to The Enchanted World (De Betoverde Weereld)[92] of the Dutch preacher and theologian Balthasar Bekker, we arrive at a method of opposing the witch dogma different from anything we have so far examined. Bekker was fully aware of the difficulties of his theme, and he had an uncommonly logical head. His method is perfect. He first sets forth the spiritual beliefs of the Greeks and Romans and their practices in the way of sorcery. Then he shows—with an anticipation of the process so often used by the modern anthropological school—that the same doctrines and practices are found among “the pagans of the present day,”—in Northern Europe, in Asia, in Africa, and in America, as well as among the ancient Jews. The Manichæan heresy, he contends, was a mélange of pagan and Jewish doctrines. These doctrines—heathen, Jewish, and Manichæan—early became current among Christians. Hence, Christians in general now hold that all sorts of extraordinary happenings are due to the activity of the devil. Thus Bekker succeeds in explaining the primary conceptions of modern demonology and witchcraft as derived from heathen sources.[93]

Bekker’s next task is to define body and spirit, according to reason and the Bible. Both body and spirit are creatures. God, being perfect and increate, is neither body nor spirit, but superior to both. He is called a spirit in the Bible, simply because there is no better word to express the divine nature, but that nature is different from what is ordinarily meant by the term. God being the governor of the world, we have no ground for believing that there are demigods (dæmons in the Greek sense) or vice-gods. Apart from the Scriptures, reason affords us no proof that there are any spirits except men’s souls. The Scriptures, however, teach that there are good angels, of whom Michael is the chief, and bad angels, whose prince is the devil. Beyond this, we learn practically nothing from the Bible with regard to a hierarchy of angels or of devils. Demoniacal possession was a natural disease: it had nothing to do with evil spirits. Such devils as are mentioned in Scripture are not said to be vassals of Satan; in many cases we are to understand the word “devil” merely as a figure of speech for a wicked man. There is no warrant in Holy Writ for the belief that Satan can appear to mortals under different forms, nor for the powers vulgarly ascribed to him and his supposed demonic household. In particular, there is no scriptural warrant for the opinion that Satan or his imps can injure men bodily or even suggest evil thoughts to them. The devil and the evil angels are damned in hell; they have not the power to move about in this world. The only way in which Satan is responsible for the sins which we commit is through his having brought about the fall of Adam, so that men are now depraved creatures, prone to sin. There is no place in the divine government for particular suggestions to wickedness, made from time to time, since the Fall, either by Satan himself or by any of his train. Diabolical influence upon mankind was confined to the initial temptation in Eden. Since Adam, neither Satan nor any evil spirit has been active in this world in any manner whatever, spiritual or corporeal. God rules, and the devil is not a power to be reckoned with at all. These revolutionary propositions Bekker proves, to his own satisfaction, not only from reason, but from the Word of God.[94]

Here at last we have a rational method. Bekker is not content with half-measures; he lays the axe to the root. There is a devil, to be sure, and there are fallen angels; but neither the one nor the other can have anything to do with the life and actions of mortal men. Practically, then, the devil is non-existent. We may disregard him entirely. If Bekker’s propositions are admitted, the stately fabric of demonology and witchcraft crumbles in an instant. And nothing less drastic than such propositions will suffice to make witchcraft illogical or incredible. Bekker’s argument, we see at once, is utterly different from anything that his predecessors had attempted.

It now becomes necessary for Bekker to proceed to discuss those passages in the Bible which appear to justify the common beliefs in sorcery and witchcraft. These beliefs are contrary to reason, but, if they rest upon revelation, they must still be accepted, for Bekker regards himself as an orthodox Christian of the Dutch Reformed Church. Accordingly Bekker takes up every scriptural passage which mentions witches, enchanters, diviners, and the like, and interprets them all in such a way that they lend no support to current beliefs in the reality of compacts with the devil, of magic, or of witchcraft. Whatever magicians and witches, so-called, may think of their own performances, there is nothing in Scripture, as interpreted by this bold and expert theologian and unsurpassed dialectician, to warrant us in believing in intercourse with Satan, or in his intervention, with or without the mediation of sorcerers and witches, in human life as it is to-day.[95]