The discovery of witchcraft proving that the compacts and contracts of witches with devils and all infernal spirits or familiars are but erroneous novelties and imaginary conceptions : also discovering, how far their power extendeth in killing, tormenting, consuming, or curing the bodies of men, women, children, or animals by charms, philtres, periapts, pentacles, curses, and conjurations : wherein likewise the unchristian practices and inhumane dealings of searchers and witch-tryers upon aged, melancholly, and superstitious people, in extorting confessions by terrors and tortures, and in devising false marks and symptoms, are notably detected ... : in sixteen books / by Reginald Scot ... ; whereunto is added an excellent Discourse of the nature and substance of devils and spirits, in two books : the first by the aforesaid author, the second now added in this third edition ... conducing to the compleating of the whole work, with nine chapters at the beginning of the fifteenth [sic] book of The discovery.

CHAP. V.

A great Objection answered, concerning this kind of Witchcraft called Veneficium.

IT is objected, That if Veneficium were comprehended under the title of man∣slaughter, it had been a vain repetition, and a disordered course undertaken by Moses to set forth a law against Veneficas severally. But it might suffice to answer any reasonable Christian, that such was the pleasure of the holy Ghost, to institute a particular Article hereof, as of a thing more odious, wicked and dangerous, then any other kind of Muther. But he that shall read the law of Moses, or the Testament of Christ himself, shall find this kind of repetition and reiteration of the law most common: For, as it is written, Exod. 22.21. Thou shalt not grieve nor afflict a stranger, for thou was a stranger in the land of Aegypt: so are the same words found repeated in Levit. 19.33. Polling and shaving of heads and beards is forbidden in Deut. 27. which was before prohibited in 22. It is written in Exod. 20. Thou shalt not steal: and it is repeated in Levit. 19. and and in Deut. 5. Murther is generally forbidden in Exod. 20. and likewise in 22. and repeated in Numb. 35. But the aptest example is, that Magick is forbidden in three several places, to wit, once in Levit. 19. and twice in Levit. 20. For the which a man might as well cavil with the holy Ghost, as for the other.