Witchcraft in old and New England / by George Lyman Kittredge.

  • George Lyman Kittredge
Date:
1929
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Witchcraft in old and New England / by George Lyman Kittredge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    596/660 page 582
    24. Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621, Part I, section 2, member 1, subsection 3. I quote from the edition of 1624. 25. The following short character of Glanvil by Bishop Kennet, may be quoted, not because it is just, but because it might conceivably be brought forward by somebody in rebuttal of this proposition: — “Mr. Joseph Glan- vill of Lincoln College, Oxon. taking the Degree of M.A. in the beginning of 1658. was about that Time made Chaplain to old Francis Rous one of Oliver's Lords, and Provost of Eaton College. — He became a great Ad¬ mirer of Mr. Richard Baxter, and a zealous Person for a Commonwealth. After his Majesty’s Restauration he turn’d about, became aLatitudinarian, — Rector of Bath, Prebendary of Worcester, and Chaplain to the King” (White Kennet, Register, 1728, p. 931). 26. See Dr. Ferris Greenslet’s Joseph Glanvill, A Study in English Thought and Letters of the Seventeenth Century, New York, 1900, espe¬ cially chap. vi. For a bibliography of Glanvil, see Emanuel Green, Bib¬ liotheca Somersetensis, Taunton (Eng.), 1902, I, 206 ff. 27. More’s theories on the subject of apparitions, demons, and witches may also be read, at considerable length, in his Antidote against Atheism, Book iii, chaps. 2-13 (Philosophical Writings, 2d ed., 1662, pp. 89 ff.); cf. the Appendix to the Antidote, chaps. 12-13 (pp. 181 ff.), and The Im¬ mortality of the Soul, chap. 16 (pp. 129 ff.). 28. John Hale, A Modest Enquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft, Bos¬ ton, 1702. 29. Mr. Higginson’s Epistle is dated 1697-8. 30. John Hale, A Modest Enquiry, 1702, p. 12. 31. Meric Casaubon was born in 1599 and died in 1671. His learned, lively, and vastly entertaining work, A Treatise concerning Enthusiasme, as it is an Effect of Nature: but is mistaken by many for either Divine In¬ spiration, or Diabolicall Possession, appeared in 1655, and in a “Second edition: revised, and enlarged” in 1656. It shows an open mind and a temper rather skeptical than credulous. Passages of interest in our present discussion may be found on pp. 37-41, 44? 49? 94~95? IO°? 118? x74 (Quak¬ ers), 286, of the second edition. Of particular significances is the Doctor’s account of his visit to a man who was thought to be possessed but whom he believed to be suffering from some bodily distemper (pp. 97 ff.). Casau- bon’s treatise (in two parts) Of Credulity and Incredulity, in Things Nat¬ ural, Civil, and Divine, came out in 1668, and was reissued, with a new title-page (as above), in 1672. A third part, Of Credulity and Incredulity in Things Divine and Spiritual, appeared in 1670. Webster’s assault upon Casaubon in his Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft was made in apparent ignorance of the fact that the venerable scholar had been dead for some years (see p. 343, above). 32. Compare Reginald Scot’s chapter “Of Theurgie, with a confutation thereof” (Discoverie of Witchcraft, Book xv, chap. 42, pp. 466-467 [336- 337], ed. Nicholson, pp. 392-393). See also Henry Hallywell, Melampro- noea: or A Discourse of the Polity and Kingdom of Darkness. Together with a Solution of the Chiefest Objections brought against the Being of Witches, 1681, pp. 5°~51•
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