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6 SECT. III.

''Here are Actions in most of those Relations ascribed to Witches, which are ridiculous and impossible in the Nature of things; such are (1) their flying out of Windows, after they have anointed themselves, to remote Places. (2) their Transformation into Cats, Hares, and other Creatures. (3) their feeling all the Hurts in their own Bodies which they have receiv'd in those. (4) Their raising Tempests by muttering some nonsensical Words, or perfoming Ceremonies alike impertinent as ridiculous. And (5) their being fuck'd in a certain private place in their Bodies by a Familiar. These are presumed to be Actions inconsistent with the Nature of Spirits, and above the power of those poor and miserable Agents. And therefore the Objection supposeth them performed only by the Fancy, and that the whole Mistery of Witchcraft is but an Illusion of crafie Imagination.'' O this aggregate Objection I return, (1) in the general, The more absurd and unaccountable these Actions seem, the greater confirmations are they to me of the Truth of those Relations, and the Reality of what the Objectors would destroy. For these Circumstances being exceeding unlikely, judging by the measures of common belief, 'tis the greater probability they are not Fictitious: For the contrivers of Fictions use to form them as near as they can conformably to the most unsuspected realities, endeavouring to make them look as like Truth as is possible in the main supposals, tho' withal, they make them strange in the circumstance. None but a Fool or a Mad-man would relate, with a purpose of having it believed, that he saw in Ireland, Men with Hoofs on their Heads, and Eyes in their Breasts; or if any should be so ridiculously vain, as to be serious in such an incredible Romance, it cannot be supposed that all Travellers that come into those Parts after him should tell the same Story. There is a large Field in Fiction; and if all those Relations were arbitrary Compositions, doubtless the first Romancers would have framed them more agreeable to the common Doctrine of Spirits; at least after these supposed absurdities had been a thousand times laugh'd at, People by this time would have learned to correct those obnoxious Extravagancies; and tho' they have not yet more veracity than the