“Again, that they have a power of appearing in their own personal shapes to whom there is occasion, as Anne Walker’s soul did to the miller; and that this being a faculty of theirs either natural or acquirable, the doing so is no miracle. And,
“Thirdly, That it was the strong piercing desire, and deep distress and agony of mind in Saul, in his perplexed circumstances, and the great compassion and goodness of spirit in the holy soul of Samuel, that was the effectual magick that drew him to condescend to converse with Saul in the woman’s house at Endor, as a keen sense of justice and revenge made Anne Walker’s soul appear to the miller with her five wounds in her head.
“The ridged and harsh severity that Webster fancies Samuel’s ghost would have used against the woman, or sharp reproofs to Saul; as for the latter, it is somewhat expressed in the text, and Saul had his excuse in readiness, and the good soul of Samuel was sensible of his perplexed condition. And as for the former, sith the soul of Samuel might indeed have terrified the poor woman, and so unhinging her, that she had been fit for nothing after it, but not converted her, it is no wonder if he passed her by; goodness and forbearance more befitting an holy angelical soul than bluster and fury, such as is fancied by that rude goblin that actuates the body and pen of Webster.
“As for departed souls, that they never have any care or regard to any of their fellow souls here upon earth, is expressly against the known example of that great soul, and universal pastor of all good souls, who appeared to Stephen at his stoning, and to St. Paul before his conversion, though then in his glorified body; which is a greater condescension than this of the soul of Samuel, which was also to a prince, upon whose shoulders lay the great affairs of the people of Israel: To omit that other notable example of the angel Raphael so called (from his office at that time, or from the angelical order he was adopted into after his death) but was indeed the soul of Azarias, the son of Ananias the Great, and of Tobit’s brethren, Tobit, v. 12. Nor does that which occurs, Tob. xii. 15, at all clash with what we have said, if rightly understood: for his saying, ‘I am Raphael one of the seven holy angels which present the prayers of the saints, and which go in and out before the glory of the holy one,’ in the Cabbalistical sense signifies no more than thus, that he was one of the universal society of the holy angels, (and a Raphael in the order of the Raphaels) which minister to the saints, and reinforce the prayers of good and holy men by joining thereto their own; and as they are moved by God, minister to their necessities, unprayed to themselves, which would be an abomination to them, but extreme prone to second the petitions of holy sincere souls, and forward to engage in the accomplishing of them, as a truly good man would sooner relieve an indigent creature, over-hearing him making his moan to God in prayer, than if he begged alms of himself, though he might do that without sin. This Cabbalistical account, I think, is infinitely more probable, than that Raphael told a downright lye to Tobit, in saying he was the son of Ananias when he was not. And be it so, will J. Webster say, what is all this to the purpose, when the book of Tobit is apocryphal, and consequently of no authority? What of no authority? Certainly of infinitely more authority than Mr. Wagstaff, Mr. Scot, and Mr. Adie, that Mr. Webster so frequently and reverently quoteth.
“I but, will he farther add, these apparitions were made to good and holy men, or to elect vessels; but King Saul was a wretched reprobate. This is the third liberal badge of honour that this ill-bred advocate of the witches has bestowed on a distressed prince. First, a ‘drowned puppet,’ p. 170, then a ‘distracted bedlam,’ in the same page, which I passed by before; and now a ‘wretched reprobate.’ But assuredly Saul was a brave prince and commander, as Josephus justly describes him, and reprobate only in type, as Ismael and Esau; which is a mystery it seems, that J. Webster was not aware of. And therefore no such wonder that the soul of Samuel had such a kindness for him, as to appear to him in the depth of his distress, to settle his mind, by telling him plainly the upshot of the whole business, that he should lose the battel, and he and his sons be slain, that so he might give a specimen of the bravest valour that ever was atchieved by any commander, in that he would not suffer his country to be overrun by the enemy while he was alive without resistance; but though he knew certainly he should fail of success, and he and his sons dye in the fight, yet in so just and honourable a cause as the defence of his crown and his country, would give the enemy battel in the field, and sacrifice his own life for the safety of his people. Out of the knowledge of which noble spirit in Saul, and his resolved valour in this point, those words haply may come from Samuel, ‘To morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me,’ (as an auspicious insinuation of their favourable reception into the other world,) in סחיצחצדקימ, in thalamo justorum, as Munster has noted out of the Rabbins.
“Lastly, as for that weak imputation, that this opinion of its being Samuel’s soul that appeared is Popish, that is very plebeianly and idiotically spoken, as if every thing that the Popish party are for, were Popish. We divide our zeal against so many things that we fancy Popish, that we scarce reserve a just share of detestation against what is truly so: Such as are that gross, rank and scandalous impossibility of ‘transubstantiation,’ the various modes of fulsome idolatry and lying impostures, the uncertainty of their loyalty to their lawful sovereigns by their superstitious adhesion to the spiritual tyranny of the Pope, and that barbarous and ferine cruelty against those that are not either such fools as to be persuaded to believe such things as they would obtrude upon men, or are not so false to God and their own consciences, as knowing better, yet to profess them.
“As for that other opinion, that the greater part of the reformed divines hold, that it was the devil that appeared in Samuel’s shape; and though Grotius also seems to be inclined thereto, alleging that passage of Porphyrius de abstinentia Animalium, where he describes one kind of spirit to be Γένος ἀπατηλῆς φύσεως, παντόμορφόν τε καὶ πολύτροπον, ὑποκρινόμενον καὶ θεοὺς καὶ δαίμονας καὶ ψυχὰς τεθνηκότων. (which is, I confess, very apposite to this story; nor do I doubt but that in many of these necromantick apparitions, they are ludicrous spirits, not the souls of the deceased that appear,) yet I am clear for the appearing of the soul of Samuel in this story, from the reasons above alleged, and as clear that in other necromancies, it may be the devil or such kind of spirits, as Porphyrius above describes, ‘that change themselves into omnifarious forms and shapes, and one while act the parts of dæmons, another while of angels or gods, and another while of the souls of the deceased.’ And I confess such a spirit as this might personate Samuel here, for any thing Webster has alleged to the contrary, for his arguments indeed are wonderfully weak and wooden, as may be understood out of what I have hinted concerning the former opinion, but I cannot further particularize now.
“For I have made my postscript much longer than my letter, before I was aware; and I need not enlarge to you, who are so well versed in these things already, and can by the quickness of your parts presently collect the whole measures of Hercules by his foot, and sufficiently understand by this time it is no rash censure of mine in my letter, that Webster’s book is but a weak impertinent piece of work, the very master-piece thereof being so weak and impertinent, and falling so short of the scope he aims at, which was really to prove that there was no such thing as a witch or wizard, that is not any mention thereof in Scripture, by any name ‘of one that had more to do with the devil, or the devil with him, than with other wicked men;’ that is to say, of one who in virtue of covenant, either implicit or explicit, did strange things by the help of evil spirits, but that ‘there are many sorts of deceivers and impostures, and divers persons under a passive delusion of melancholy and fancy,’ which is part of his very title-page.
“Whereby he does plainly insinuate, that there is nothing but couzenage or melancholy in the whole business of the fears of witches. But a little to mitigate or smother the greatness of this false assertion, he adds, ‘And that there is no corporeal league betwixt the devil and the witch; and that he does not suck on the witches body, nor has carnal copulation with her, nor the witches turned into dogs or cats,’ &c. All which things as you may see in his book, he understands in the grossest imaginable, as if the imps of witches had mouths of flesh to suck them, and bodies of flesh to lie with them, and at this rate he may understand a corporeal league, as if it were no league or covenant, unless some lawyer drew the instrument, and engrossed it in vellum or thick parchment, and there were so many witnesses with the hand and seal of the party. Nor any transformation into dogs or cats, unless it were real and corporeal, or grossly carnal; which none of his witch-mongers, as he rudely and slovenly calls that learned and serious person, Dr. Casaubon and the rest, do believe. Only it is a disputable case of their bodily transformation, betwixt bodinus and remigius; of which more in my Scholia. But that without this carnal transmutation, a woman might not be accounted a witch, is so foolish a supposition, that Webster himself certainly must be ashamed of it.
“Wherefore if his book be writ only to prove there is no such thing as a witch that covenants in parchment with the Devil by the advice of a lawyer, and is really and carnally turned into a dog, cat, or hare, &c. and with carnal lips sucked by the devil, and is one with whom the devil lies carnally; the scope thereof is manifestly impertinent, when neither Dr. Casaubon, nor any one else holds any such thing. But as for the true and adequate notion of a witch or wizard, such as at first I described, his arguments all of them are too weak and impertinent, as to the disproving the existence of such a witch as this, who betwixt his deceivers, impostors, and melancholists on one hand, and those gross witches he describes on the other hand, goes away sheer as a hair in a green balk betwixt two lands of corn, none of his arguments reaching her, or getting the sight of her, himself in the mean time standing on one side amongst the deceivers and impostors, his book, as to the main design he drives at, being a meer cheat and impostor.