Page:A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings of Dr. Henry More.djvu/151

Rh, it had been argument enough to the unprejudiced, that she swore nothing but what she was assured was true. And those floods of tears and her bitter weepings after Sentence was passed on the Witch, and her bewailing of her own wickedness and madness, and professing her willingness notwithstanding, if it might be done without sin, that the Witch might be reprieved, may further wash away all suspicion of either Fraud or Malice.

12. Nor can the Witches denying (even to her dying day) what the Maid swore to, enervate her testimony. For the Maid tells the whole truth as it was, even to the hazard of her own life; which the Witch indeed denies, but for the saving of hers. And it is no wonder that one that would bid a pox on the Hangman when he desired her to forgive him at her death, should lye and impudently deny any thing to save her own life.

But you'l Object, that this reputed Witch may indeed be wicked enough, and willing enough to doe any thing; but the power of her wickedness not reaching to such performances as the Maid witnessed against her, we may well believe her rather then the Maid. The sense of which Objection, if I understand it, can be nothing but this; that either this Anne Bodenham was no Witch, or else the things charged upon her were absolutely impossible. The meaning of the latter whereof assuredly is, that it is impossible any one should be a Witch, there being no such things as Spirits to be conjured up by them. Which is unskilfully to let goe the Premisses as finding them too strong, and to quarrel with the Conclusion.

13. But if the sense be (admitting there are Witches) that she was none; I think it may be evidently evinced that she was, from what she undoubtedly both did and spake. As for example, from her shewing of the Maid in a Glass the shapes of sundry persons, and their actions and postures, in several rooms in her Masters house, whither when she had returned from the Witch, she told them punctually what they had been doing in her absence; which made Elisabeth Rosewell, one of the Family, profess, that she thought M$ris$ Bodenham was either a Witch or a woman of God. Besides, what hapned to her in reference to the fitts of the Maid, which has been already insisted upon, are shrewd suspicions of her being a Witch. As also what she boasted of to M$r$ Tucker's Clerk concerning a purse that hung about her neck in a green strings that she could doe many feats with it; and that if he would give her half a dozen of Ale, she would make a Toad spring out of it. Her confession to M$r$ Langley of Sarum, that she lived with D$r$ Lamb, and learn'd the art of raising Spirits from him, which she also confessed to Edmond Bower; to whom also she acknowledged her skill of curing diseases by Charms and Spells, that she could discover stolen goods, and shew any one the thief in a Glass: and being asked by him for the Red Book half wrote over with blood, being a Catalogue of those that had sealed to the Devil, she denied not the knowledge of the book, but said it was with one in Hampshire. She also professed that she used many good Prayers, and said the Creed backwards and forwards, and that she prayed to the Planet Jupiter for the curing of Diseases.