Scot's Discovery of vvitchcraft proving the common opinions of witches contracting with divels, spirits, or familiars ... to be but imaginary, erronious conceptions and novelties : wherein also, the lewde unchristian all written and published in anno 1584, by Reginald Scot, Esquire.

CHAP. XI.

The strange and divers effects of melancholy, and how the same hu∣mor abounding in witches,* 1.1 or rather old women; filleth them full of marvellous imaginations, and that their confessions are not to be credited.

BUt in truth, this malancholike humor (as the best Physitians affirme) is the cause o•• all their strange, impossible and incredible confessions:

which are so fond, that I wonder how any men can be abused thereby. Howbeit these affections, though they appear in the mind of man, yet are they bred in the body, and proceed from this humor, which is ••he very dregs of blood, nourishing and feeding those places, from whence proceed feares, cogitations, superstitions, fastings, labours, and such like.

This maketh sufferance of torments,* 1.2 and (as some say) foresight of things to come, and preserveth health, as being cold and dry; it make••h men subject to leannesse, and to the quartane ague. They that are vexed therewith are destroyers of themselves, stout to suffer injuries, fearfull to offer violence; except the humor be hot. They learne strange tongues with small industry (as Aristotle and others affirme.)

If our witches phantasies were not corrupted, nor their wils confound∣ed with this humor, they would not so voluntarily and readily confesse that which calleth their life in question; whereof they could never other∣wise be convicted. I. Bodin with his lawyers physick reasoneth contrarily; as though melancholy were furthest of all from those old women,* 1.3 whom we call witches: deriding the most famo••s and noble Physitian Iohn Wier for his opinion in that behalfe. But bec••use I am no Physitian, I will set a Physitian to him; namely Erastus, who hath these words, to wit, that these witches, through their corrupt phantasie abounding with melan∣cholike humors, by reason of their old age, do dreame and imagine they hurt those things which they neither could nor do hurt; and so think they knew an art, which they neither have learned nor yet understand.

But why should there be more credit given to witches, when they say they have made a reall bargain with the divell, killed a cow, bewitched butter, infeebled a child, forespoken her neighbour, &c. than when she confesseth that she transubstantiateth her self, maketh it rain or hail, flieth in the air, goeth invisible, transferreth corn in the grasse from one field to another? &c. If you think that in the one their confessions be found, why should you say that they are corrupt in the other; the confession of all these things being made at one instant, and affirmed with like con∣stancy, or rather audacity? But you see the one to be impossible, and therefore you think thereby, that their confessions are vain and false. The other you think may be done,* 1.4 and see them confesse it, and there∣fore you conclude, A Posse ad essé; as being perswaded it is so, because you think it may be so. But I say, both with the divines, and philoso∣phers, that that which is imagined of witch-craft, hath no truth of action; or being besides their imagination, the witch (for the most part) is oc∣••upied in false causes. For whosoever desireth to bring to passe an im∣possible thing,* 1.5 hath a vain, and idle, and childish perswasion, bred by an unsound minde; for Sana mentis voluntas, voluntas; rei possibilis est; The will of a sound mind, is the desire of a possible thing.

Notes

• * 1.1

  H. Card. de var. rerum. cap. 8. Io. Wierus de depraest. lib. 6. cap.
• * 1.2

  Aristotle de somni••. H. Card. lib. 8. de var. rer.
• * 1.3

  Io. Bod. con∣tra. lo. Wie∣rum.
• * 1.4

  August. lib. de Trinit. 3. Idem de civit. Dei.
• * 1.5

  Clemens, recog. 3. Iamblichus. Io. Wierus. Cardanus. Pampia. &c.