T is objected, that if Veneficium were comprehended under the title of manslaughter, it had beene a vaine repetition, and a disordered course undertaken by Moses, to set foorth a lawe against Veneficas severallie. But it might suffice to answer any reasonable christian, that such was the pleasure of the Holie-ghost, to institute a particular article herof, as of a thing more odious, wicked and dangerous, than any other kind of murther. But he that shall read the lawe of Moses, or the testament of Christ himselfe, shall find this kind of repetition and reiteration of the law most common. For as it is written Exod. 22, 21. Thou shalt not greeve nor afflict a stranger, for thou wast a stranger in the land of Aegypt:Levit. 19, 33. so are the same words found repeated in Levit. 19, 33. Polling and shaving of heads and beards is forbidden in Deut. 27. which was before prohibited in 22. It is written in Exodus the 20. Thou shalt not steale: and it is repeated in Leviticus 19. and in Deut. 5. Murther is generallie forbidden in Exod. 20. and likewise in 22. and repeated in Num. 35. But the aptest example is, that magicke is forbidden in three severall places, to wit, once/121. in Levit. 19. and twise in Levit. 20. For the which a man might as well cavill with the Holie-ghost as for the other.
The sixt Chapter.
In what kind of confections that witchcraft, which is called Venificium, consisteth: of love cups, and the same confuted by poets.
S touching this kind of witchcraft, the principall part thereof consisteth in certeine confections prepared by lewd people to procure love; which indeed are meere poisons, bereaving some of the benefit of the braine, and so of the sense and understanding of the mind. And from some it taketh awaie life, & that is more common than the other. These be called Philtra, or Pocula amatoria, or Venenosa pocula, or Hippomanes; which bad and blind physicians rather practise, than witches or conjurers, &c. But of what value these bables are, towards the end why they are provided, may appeere by the opinions of poets themselves, from whence was derived the estimation of that stuffe. And first you shall heare what Ovid saith, who wrote of the verie art of love, and that so cunninglie and feelinglie, that he is reputed the speciall doctor in that science:
Fallitur Æmonias si quis decurrit ad artes,Ovid. lib. 2. de arte amandi.
Dátq; quod à teneri fronte revellit equi.
Non facient ut vivat amor Medeides herbæ,/
Mistáq; cum magicis mersa venena sonis.91.
Phasias Æsonidem, Circe tenuisset Ulyssem,