Читать книгу Dæmonologia Sacra; or, A Treatise of Satan's Temptations. In Three Parts онлайн

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When we have thus silenced this imagination, we have yet another to encounter with, and that is, Of those that think these witches, of which the fore-cited texts do speak, are but mere cheats, and by some tricks of delusion and legerdemain pretend they can do things which indeed they cannot do at all; and yet finding death threatened to such, which, in a business of mere juggling, would seem too great a severity, they have framed this answer to it,108 that the death is threatened, not for juggling, but for their presumptuous and blasphemous undertaking to do things that belong to a divine power, and for taking his name in vain. Or, as others are pleased to say,109 though they have no real power, they are justly punished for the belief they have, that they can do such mischief, joined with their purpose to do it, if they can.

In answer to this apprehension, I shall not much insist upon these reasons, which yet are sufficiently weak—the latter accusing God’s laws of unreasonable severity, and the former accusing them of unnecessary redundancy, seeing enough in other places is provided against blasphemers110—but shall offer a consideration or two, which I judge will be of force to rectify the mistake.