The displaying of supposed witchcraft

by John Webster

4. Further we are to consider, that there are many notorious impostures, frauds and cheats committed upon the poor ignorant, credulous and silly common people, while some make the people believe that their diseases are inflicted by such and such Saints, and therefore they must use such and such strange lustrations, suffumigations and other vain superstitious Rites and Ceremonies. Others pretend to drive away evil Spirits by exorcisms and conjurations, and others to cure all diseases (in a manner) with words, charms, characters, amulets, and the like, when the most of these pretenders are meer ignorant Knaves and Impostors, that do nothing but cheat the too credulous people of their money, and defame and dishonour the most noble Art of Medicine, of which we have known divers sorts, some of which we have mentioned before in this Treatise. To such as these that ancient Author (supposed by some to be Hippocrates) De morbo sacro, doth give sufficient reproof, and of whom he saith thus: Ac mihi certè qui primi hunc morbum ad Deos retulerunt. tales esse videntur, quales sunt magi, expiatores, circulatores, ac arrogantes ostentatores, qui se valde pios esse plurimumq; scire simulant. A most large Catalogue of these kind of pestiferous impostors, and many others, you have at full and to the life painted forth by Paracelsus in his Preface to his less Chirurgery, where he hath sufficiently stigmatized them with all those wicked marks and brands that justly belong unto them. The same also is fully performed by learned Langius in his Epistles, to whom I referr the readers.

Consid. 5.

5. We are to consider that though we should grant that words or charms had in them no energie, nor efficiency at all, by any natural power, and that the Devils power doth not concur to make them operative; yet (as we have partly shewed before) they are of singular use and benefit to a learned Physician, whereby he may settle the fancies of his patients, to cause them more chearfully and confidently to commit them to his hands, and to take what he shall order and prescribe them, and this manner of their use is no way to be dispraised or condemned, and we leave it as excepted forth of the dispute we have in hand.

There are chiefly three opinions, amongst those that grant the truth of the matter of fact concerning the proper cause of these effects produced by words. 1. Of which the first sort are those that hold there is no efficiency at all in the words themselves, which are nothing but the sign of the league and compact betwixt the Charmer and the Devil, and that whatsoever is brought to pass is only effected by the Devils power, and of this opinion are the greatest part of the learned. 2. Are those that hold that the words or charms are but means to heighten the imagination, and that it is the strength of the exalted imagination only that produceth those things that seem to be effected by those words or charms, and of this opinion was Avicen and many of the Arabians, Ferrerius, Montanus and many others. 3. There are those that hold that there is a natural efficiency in words and characters rightly fitted and conjoined together in proper and agreeable constellations, and of this opinion were Johannes Ludovicus de la Cerda, Johannes Branus, Camisius Lusitanus, Paracelsus, Galeottus Martius, Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, and many others; and of these we shall speak in order.

Reason 1. against this opinion.

1. The first opinion doth take up a false supposition for its ground, to wit that the Devil doth make a visible and corporeal league with the Charmer, by virtue of which compact the effects are produced; and if this compact be not explicite, yet it may be implicite, and so the Devil operateth the effects, thereby to draw the Charmer into his league and service: But we have before sufficiently proved the nullity of any such Covenant, and shewed plainly that it is a false, impious and diabolical Tenent, and that there is not, nor can be any other league betwixt the Devil and wicked men, but what is spiritual, internal and mental, and therefore that the Devil doth not bring those effects to pass, by pretence of a league, that hath no being or existence.

Reason 2. against this opinion.

2. We have proved by the unanimous consent of all the whole army of the learned, that the Devil can work no alteration or change in natural bodies, but by the applying of fit agents to agreeable patients; but what agent could the Devil have applied to make the iron that stuck in the Souldiers shoulder-bone related by Benevenius, to come forth without pain? surely none at all. For where an agent in nature is awanting to produce an effect, there the Devil must needs also be lame, and can effect nothing; and if either the words had a sufficient natural power to cause the iron to come forth, or the Souldiers imagination exalted by confidence in the Charm and Charmer, then the Devils help is in vain implored, or he brought in to be an actor of that he hath no power at all to perform, and there was no other natural agent applied, and therefore it must of necessity be one of the two that produced the effect, and not a Demon.

Reason 3. against this opinion.

Vid. Spong. Fosterianæ expressio. c. 2. p. 7, &c.