University of Virginia Library

HALE'S A MODEST INQUIRY

A Modest Enquiry Into the Nature of Witchcraft, and How Persons Guilty of that Crime may be Convicted: And the means used for their Discovery Discussed, both Negatively and Affirmatively, according to Scripture and Experience.

By John Hale, Pastor of the Church of Christ in Beverley, Anno Domini 1697.

When they say unto you, seek unto them that have Familiar Spirits and unto Wizzards, that peep, etc., To the Law and to the Testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. Isaiah VIII. 19. 20. That which I see not teach thou me, Job 34. 32.

Boston in N. E. Printed by B. Green and J. Allen, for Benjamin Eliot under the Town House. 1702[356]

Any general Custom against the Law of God is void. St. Germans, Abridgment of Common Law. Lib. 1. C. 6.

Omnium legum est inanis censura nisi Divinæ legis imaginem gerat.[357] Finch, Common Law. Lib. 4. C. 3.

Where a Law is grounded upon a Presumption, if the Presumption fail the Law is not to be holden in Conscience. Abridgment of C. Law. Lib. 1. C. 19.[358]

Notes

[[356].]

Title-page of original.

[[357].]

“No law hath any validity unless it bear the image of divine law.”

[[358].]

Reverse of title-page.