The True Story of Salem: Book 1-7. Charles Wentworth Upham

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 55Thyræus 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 Jesuite56 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 Luther57 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 Men58 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 59secret things, Acts 6.16. past, or future, 60as 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. Pliny63 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 Plutarch64 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. Sennertus65 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 Pliny66 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.

      3. As for that which concerns the Bewitched Persons being recovered out of their Agonies by the Touch of the suspected Party, it is various and fallible.

For sometimes the afflicted Person is made sick, (instead of being made whole) by the Touch of the Accused; sometimes the Power of Imagination is such, as that the Touch of a Person innocent and not accused shall have the same effect. It is related in the Account of the Tryals of Witches at Bury in Suffolk 1664, during the time67 of the Tryal, there were some Experiments made with the Persons afflicted, by bringing the accused to touch them, and it was observed that by the least Touch of one of the supposed Witches, they that were in their Fits, to all mens Apprehension wholly deprived of all Sense and Understandings, would suddenly shriek out and open their Hands.

Mr. Serjeant Keeling did not think that sufficient to Convict the Prisoners, for admitting that the Children were in truth Bewitched, yet (saith he) it cannot be applyed to the Prisoners upon the Imagination only of the Parties afflicted; for if that might be allowed, no Person whatsoever can be in safety, for perhaps they might fancy another Person who might altogether be innocent in such matters: To avoid this Scruple it was privately desired by the Judge, that some Gentlemen there in Court would attend one of the distempered Persons in the farther part of the Hall, whilst she was in her Fits, and then to send for one of the Witches to try what would happen, which they did accordingly. One of them was conveyed from the Bar, and brought to the Afflicted Maid. They put an Apron before her Eyes, and then another person (not the Witch) touched her, which produced the same effect, as the Touch of the Witch did in the Court. Whereupon the Gentlemen returned much unsatisfied. Bodin68 relates, that a Witch who was Tryed at Nants, was commanded by the Judges to touch a Bewitched person, a thing often practised by the Judges of Germany in the Imperial Chamber. The Witch was extreamly unwilling, but being Compelled by the Judges, she cryed out, I am undone; and as soon as ever she touched the Afflicted person, the Witch fell down dead, and the other recovered. That horrid Witch of Salisbury, Ann Bodenham69 who had been Servant to the Notorious Conjurer Dr. Lamb, could not bear the sight of one that was Bewitched by her. As soon as ever she saw the Afflicted Person, she ran about shrieking, and crying, and roaring after an hideous manner, that the Devil would tear her in pieces, if that person came near her. And whilst the Witch was in such Torment, the Bewitched was at ease. By these things we see, that the Laws and Customs of the Kingdom of darkness, are not always and in all places the same.

      And it is good for men to concern themselves with them as little as may be.