De betoverde weereld ... in vier boeken

22, 23

reason; and where that reaches its limit, it is further to be drawn from God's Word: so I now proceed, according to the order once established and the constant distinction made in the first book, to Humans, who are said to have some fellowship with Spirits, and especially the Devil, as the common opinion suggests. I also keep therein the same order as in the Second Book; so that I first seek for everything, and at the last show how much it amounts to, what I have thus found. The one part is presented in the first 18 chapters, and the other in the 5 last.

I open for this the right State of this Dispute: making it known that here the question is not so much whether Toverij Witchcraft exists, which I admit: but whether there is such Witchcraft that, on the basis of a pact of men with the Devil, can do, say, and bring about things that surpass Nature. This I explain in the first chapter.

Following the mentioned distinction, I examine it with Reason first in the 2nd and 3rd chapters; thus divided into two, that I first go to see whether it can be understood that humans have interaction with the Spirits, to work upon or through one another: so that it must first stand firm, if one wishes to believe that there can be an express Covenant between the two, and everything pass back and forth. The first is denied here on such ground as I laid in the 2nd chapter of the Second Book; and what was said there is explained somewhat more closely, and defended against Joseph Glanvill (1636–1680) was an English clergyman and philosopher who famously defended the reality of witchcraft and spirits in his work "Saducismus Triumphatus". Glanvill, an Englishman, in the second chapter. Whereupon the third builds, to reject that Covenant of the sorcerers with the Devil as absurd and unbelievable: wherein the same Glanvill is answered on various evasions, and sufficiently convinced out of his own reasons.

Proceeding to the Scripture, as a higher School, I undertake to see those through from front to back, as I do from the 4th to the 17th chapter, to seek therein most closely what the same makes known to us of that work with all that is attached to it, by words or examples: from there then making up the work, as one must believe of it according to the Scripture.

The Investigation has in the fourth chapter as an introduction a list of the Names that are therein attributed to such people or their arts and

dealings: and the variety of the translation of the same both by our Translators among themselves, and also by others, with which the same are compared.

That is first only in general: thereafter it is then investigated more particularly, first, whether the Scripture speaks of such people, arts, and dealings, generally holding them as such, in the 5th to 12th chapters. If not, what kind of people they were, and what the Scripture actually says of them in the 13th to 17th chapters.

The first I treat likewise from the Scripture as from Reason; in such a way that it proceeds step by step: first investigating whether these people of whom it speaks to us had special interaction with the Devil, by whose help and power they divined and bewitched; and then, what is more, whether they also had a Covenant. The passages of Scripture that I investigate concerning that first are of three kinds. Some that show us Histories, wherein such persons with their sorceries are mentioned, in the 5th, 6th, and 7th chapters: namely all the sorceries of Egypt in the fifth; of Balaam, the Philistine priests, and the toveres tot Endor witch of Endor in the sixth; and yet various others, in which idolatrous kings in Israel sinned; those who were at the court in Babylon; of Simon and Elymas, both named sorcerers; the Maidservant at Philippi with her waarseggenden Geest soothsaying spirit, and of the seven Brothers who were Exorcists. And this thus together in the seventh chapter. The investigation of the names, words, deeds, and circumstances, by comparison of the Translations in various languages, and also of various translators with the Dutch; as well as the explanations they give one another, with the text: all this brings out from all those recounted places no more than that it was a bad sort of people, either in doctrine or also in life; but nothing in the very least that looks like they had special fellowship with the Devil.

The second order of scriptural passages is of express Laws, by which all that sort of people were judged and their doing forbidden; which I investigate in the eighth and ninth chapters. Yet I find no other reason than the idolatry and the Deceit that consisted in their doing, the one as well as the other being unseemly for God's special people.