Page:A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings of Dr. Henry More.djvu/138



1. The Supernatural Effects observed in the bewitched Children of M$r$ Throgmorton and M$ris$ Muschamp. 2. The general Remarkables in them both. 3 The possession of the Religious Virgins of Werts, Hessimont, &c. 4. The story of that famous Abbatess Magdalena Crucia, her useless and ludicrous Miracles. 5. That she was a Sorceress, and was thirty years married to the Devil. 6. That her story is neither any Figment of Priests, nor delusion of Melancholy.

E will now pass to those supernatural Effects which are observed in Persons that are bewitch'd or possess'd. And such are, Foretelling things to come; telling what such and such persons speak or doe as exactly as if they were by them, when the party possess'd is at one end of the Town and sitting in a house within doors, and those parties that act and confer together are without at the other end of the Town; to be able to see some and not others, to play at Cards with one certain person, and not to discern any body else at the table besides him; to act, and talk, and goe up and down, and tell what will become of things, and what happens in those fitts of possession, and then, so soon as the possessed or bewitched party is out of them, for him to remember nothing at all, but to enquire concerning the welfare of those whose faces he seemed to look upon but just before, when he was in his fitts. All which can be no symptoms nor signs of any thing else but the Devil got into the body of a man, and holding all the Operations of his Soul, and then acting and speaking and sporting as he pleases in the miserable Tenement he hath crouded himself into, making use of the Organs of the Body at his own pleasure, for the performing of such pranks and feats as are far above the capacity, strength or agility of the party thus bewitched or possessed.

All these things are fully made good by long and tedious observations recorded in The discovery of the Witches of Warbois in Huntingtonshire, Anno 1594. the memory whereof is still kept fresh by an Anniversary Sermon preach'd at Huntington by some of the Fellows of Queens College in Cambridge.

There is also lately come forth a Narration how one M$ris$ Muschamps Children were handled in Cumberland, which is very like this of M$r$ Throckmortons Children of Warbois.

2. That which is generally observed in them both is this. That in their fitts they are as if they had no Soul at all in their Bodies, and that whatsoever operations of Sense, Reason or Motion there seems to be in them, it is not any thing at all to them, but is wholly that Stranger's that hath got into them. For so soon as their fitts are over, they are as if they had been in so profound a sleep that they did not so much as dream, and so remember nothing at all of what they either said or did, or where they had been, as is manifest by an infinite number of Examples in the forenamed relations. Rh