A Discovery of the Impostures of Witches, by John Brinley

A Discovery of the Impostures of Witches and Astrologers

A Discovery of the Impostures of Witches and Astrologers by John Brinley 1680

A Discovery of the Impostures of Witches and Astrologers © 2015 by Troy Books. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Llewellyn Publications, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First North American Edition, 2020 First Printing, 2020 ISBN 978-0-7387-6574-7 Originally published by Troy Books Inc. 2015 ISBN 978-1-909602-10-6 Llewellyn Publications is a registered trademark of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd. Cataloging-in-Publication Programme data is on file with the British National Bibliography.

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Contents

Foreword The Preface

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Part I A Discourse on Superstition and Witchcraft Chapter I, That most men are naturally inclin’d to Superstition, especially the ignorant sort Chapter II, That God’s hand is in all Crosses, who Ruleth over Devils and all their Instruments.

Chapter III, Several strange Diseases happen only from natural Causes, in which neither Divels nor any of his Instruments have any hand.

Chapter IV, That Devils may do mischief to man or beast, without any Association with Witch or Wizard.

Chapter V, That seeing Men , or Women, or Beasts may be Afflicted from some natural Causes, or that some persons may on purpose Counterfeit many things; or that the Devil himself may be the sole Worker, people ought to be cautious how they ascribe their Distempers, or Troubles to Witchcraft.

Chapter VI, That there be Witches.

Chapter VII, Of the ground of Witchcraft, and of all the Practices thereof.

Chapter VIII, That besides the forementioned open and express League, there are certain practices used by Witches, which imply a Compact without any form of words.

1 6 15 21 24

29 35 44

Chapter IX, The reasons and grounds of Witch- 48 craft further debated on.

Chapter X, The Signs whereby one may Discover 58 whether a Party be Possest or Bewitched.

Chapter XI, That Witches are not to be sought 62 unto. The Conclusion of the whole work.

Part II Being A Discourse of the Impostures Practiced in Judicial Astrology Chapter I, A Discourse Concerning Astrology. Of the Original thereof Chapter II, A Discourse Concerning Judicial Astrology

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Publishers’ Note

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Photo plates between pages 32-33

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Foreword John Brinley’s A Discovery of the Impostures of Witches and Astrologers, published in 1680, is a fascinating window onto the way witchcraft and magic were viewed and discussed at the time of the witch-hunts. It is an important reminder that the persecution of suspected witches was the result of neither collective madness nor isolation and ignorance, but was the subject of, and justified by, much carefully considered debate.

Those who promoted the argument that witchcraft was a threat included some extremely eminent and influential people – King James I, for example, and the French political philosopher Jean Bodin.

There were also, or course, more fanatical and dubious characters, such as Heinrich Kramer, author of the notorious Malleus Maleficarum, and Matthew Hopkins, who wrote a pamphlet justifying his witchhunts.

However, many of those who participated in the debate, putting forward a

viii wide variety of different arguments, were people with no celebrity status – ordinary establishment figures such as clergymen, magistrates and academics, who saw themselves as a kind of moral elite, and took a protective but condescending attitude to their fellow citizens. Significantly, it is clear that for them witchcraft and magic (or at least the belief in them) were deeply embedded in everyday life – and yet also raised profound questions about morality, religion and social responsibility.

And John Brinley is a classic representative of this important group.

John Brinley’s view of witchcraft is not straightforward. He argues that denying the existence of witches verges on atheism, but he also deplores the fact that innocent people could be accused, and even convicted, of witchcraft.

One of his most crucial points, which he expresses with particular emphasis, is that the worst danger comes from the apparently benign magic of cunning folk: These are such as we usually call White Witches; a sort of Sots who being Gull’d, and having their understandings

ix Debauch’d by Superstitions, do evil that good may come of it, that is use Charms, Spells and Incantations (all of which are of no force without the Cooperation of the Devil) to remove Distempers, and do certain Feats in some measure useful to Mankind, yet of pernicious consequence to themselves.

To John Brinley, suffering and misfortune are either a test or punishment from God, and the response should be humility and prayer. Trying to take control of the situation, especially using magic, is an act of defiance against the divine will, and any apparent success is a cunning subterfuge by the Devil. He is determined to convince his readers that magic is not a healing and empowering force but a Satanic delusion. He wants to keep it dangerous while at the same time denying that it gives its practitioners genuine power.

This of course reflects the reason why magic made establishment figures like John Brinley so uneasy – it was a powerful influence in society that was outside their control. It is also an indication that hostility towards magic did not grow out of

x Christianity itself, but out of a particular view of the cosmic order and the role of the Devil in encouraging humans to rebel against it.

And yet John Brinley also displays a rather endearing appreciation of the mystery and complexity of the Universe, writing of “the wonderful Connexion, and strict Ties wherewith the things of this visible world are linkt together amongst themselves, and the secret relation that is betwixt these and the intellectual world” (insisting that this is entirely natural, not magical). And he describes with enthusiasm the discovery “that the Moon had in it Hills, and Valleys like the Earth, and that it was Habitable.”

He couldn’t know that the work of the scientist and occultist Isaac Newton was about to signal the victory of a model of the Universe that triumphantly fused the mystical and the mechanistic, and would end the witch-hunts by making John Brinley’s idea of the Devil untenable.

Joyce Froome December 2014

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THE

P R E F A C E.

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Ertainly if the enjoyment of Truth be the beginning of our happiness in this Life, as it is the perfection of it in the Life to come, there can be no greater Charity, than to reduce the Wanderers into the way, and to undeceive a multitude, which is always greedy of its own ruin, and fond of every thing that carries in it any show or appearance of goodness.

For I sadly observe, that the common people are exposed to the deceits of all Professions: They are the Iffachers of the world; They bear the burthens of all sorts of people, and few of them have the Prerogative or the Abilities of Balaam’s Beast to reply; Am not I thine Afs? Even in the concerns of Religion, where we expect, not only the most, A3 innocent,

xiv

The Preface. innocent, but most infallible Truths, are strange Deceptions and Pious Frauds; and besides the little talking Schismaticks, which fill our ears with noise of Sermons, there are greater heads, and more advanced understandings, who make it there business to abuse us. The Lawyers are grown delusive, even to a Proverb, of which the narrowness of some men’s, and entangled condition of others Estates, is too great an Evidence.

Physicians have their Arts also, not only of gaining our Coin, but even of deceiving us into Death it self, form hard and unintelligible names, pretending as strange effects. Astrologers cheat our unwary and too forward beliefs into a concept of things, of which they even doubt themselves; and impose upon us a belief , that arbitrary events and accidental proceedings of things below, have necessary causes above; and the weakness of common judgements (which are ever more greedy of things to come, than inquisitive of things

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The Preface. things Past, or careful of those present) are ready to swallow the predictions of the most ignorant men, which considering the independency of their Causes, and uncertainty of their events, are only in the foreknowledge of him, to whom all things are as present.

Hence proceed those of swarms of Fortune-Tellers, Geomancers, Diviners, Interpreters of Dreams, who possess the common people with apprehensions, that they know all their Fate, the number of their days, the Causalties of their life; and even their natural inclinations, and thoughts of their hearts: by this means Cheating the poor innocents Souls into the grossest Superstition imaginable.

The consideration of these things was the great motive, that stirr’d me up to these undertakings, in which I design nothing but the good of my poor illiterate Country-men, whom I dayly see imposed upon by such Deluders; A4 who

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The Preface. who being generally of persons of broken Fortunes, have no other way to defend themselves from the miseries of poverty; and therefore are forced to fall upon the honest plainness of the common people, and by unnecessary and unlawful Arts, patch up the breaches of their Fortune.

And herein I hope I shall not in the least disoblige any wife or good men, of what Profession soever.

CHAP.

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H A P.

I.

That most men are naturally inclin’d to Superstition, especially the ignorant sort. n Owl, an Hare, and an Old-woman, was Anciently the Emblem of Superstition; and truly if we shall diligently search into the Causes of this Error, we shall find that Ignorance, and Dotage, vain hopes, and foolish fears, groundless expectations, and casual events have been the Springs from whence this folly proceeds, which is the Mother of all these Omens and Prognostications. It is an Ancient observation, Primus

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Primus in orbe Deos timor fecit, that fear Deified the first gods, and without doubt there is much truth in the Assertion.

For though the idea of one true God, and first Principle of all things, was at first Imprinted upon the Soul of man; yet the fears of after Ages Canonized the multitude of false gods. It was a Storm, and an Eclips, that Consecrated Romulus; and fove himself had not been Master of heaven, or worshipped upon earth, had not the terrors of his Thunders advanced the conceit of his Divinity amongst the ignorant, and fearful multitude. Hence Aulus Gellius observes in Noct. Att: l.5.c.12. That he was not only worshipped as a Fuvans Pater, a friend and helper of Mankind, but as a Vejovis and hurtful Deity; and therefore his image was placed in a Temple near the Capitol with darts in his hand, to signifie his hurtful power; and therefore for this reason, Virgil in

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in his Georgics is thought to deprecate these unlucky gods.

In tenui labor, at tenuis non gloria, si quem.

Numina leava sinunt, auditq; voctus Apollo.

Upon the like grounds the rest of the Stars, and Planets came to be rekoned amongst the gods. For the ignorance of vulgar apprehensions, conceiting that it lay in their own powers to disperse what influences they themselves pleased, were not only fearful to offend these new Deities, which themselves had created; but also took great care to win and please, left they should send forth such Malevolent Emissions of their fury, as might be to the prejudice of Mankind, or at least the ruin of those who neglected their worship. Hence also has it come to pass, that the Devil himself has had his Votaries, and hath still his

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his devoutest worshippers; and the cause of this has not only been envy, or desire of Revenge, which prompts men sometimes of the most wicked and unlawful practises; but even cowardly and melancholly apprehensions. And this is evident, first, in that the most ignorant and Narrowfould people are most often seduced by evil spirits, or by the weakness of their own imaginations, to practise unlawful or unnecessary, and fruitless Arts.

And secondly, in that all Witches and Necromancers in their Spells, and most solemn Invocation of Devils, have this, or the like Form. viz.

Whereas they Servant N. is unworthy to crave the help or assistance of Good Angels, give leave to the Daemons, &c. to come to my Aid. And yet these sort of abused people have as many Followers as the greatest Divines, while the ignorant multitude in all Misfortunes, Crosses and Afflictions, forthwith make their Applications to them

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them as the most ready help.

If the man be sick, where shall he have his Physick, but from one that fetches it from behind the curtain? If he lie under any Misfortune, he presently betakes himself to some Fortuneteller or Conjurer. If the Cattel be sick, the White-Witch is presently sent for to bless it.

I shall therefore make it my business to undeceive the people, and to shew them that it is altogether unlawful to have recourse to such men, who practise unlawful Arts; that in all Trials, Crosses, and Afflictions whatever, God alone is to be fought after, who suffers us sometimes to fall into grievous troubles, that we may the more devoutly call upon him.

C H A P.

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