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Working from the text of Exodus 22:18, "Thou shalt not suffer a Witch to live," Perkins delivers one of the most penetrating discourses on the subject of the devil, witchcraft and the occult in its various forms. He sets forth this treatise showing that witchcraft was a common sin in his own day, and it is, no doubt, a common sin in our day. He demonstrates the diverse ways that Satan uses witchcraft in its various forms, and shows how people of all kinds can be involved in the occult, either by entering into a covenant with Satan willfully, or they may enter into a league with Satan unintentionally, through superstition. He covers four main points: 1) What witchcraft is, 2) What is the ground of the practice of witchcraft, 3) How many kinds and differences there are of witchcraft, and 4) Its punishment. This is a powerful, biblical exposition of the Law of God and its application concerning this topic. This is not a scan or a facsimile, but a newly typeset work updated and made easily readable, with an active table of contents.
This book approaches witchcraft and demonology through literary records. The works discussed deal with the contemporary theories propounded by those who sought either to justify, or to refute persecution. Eight contributors of differing interests,a nd with different approaches to their subject, examine a selection of important, representative witchcraft texts – published in England, France, Germany, Italy and America – setting them within their intellectual context and analysing both their style and argument.
In her analysis of the cultural construction of gender in early America, Elizabeth Reis explores the intersection of Puritan theology, Puritan evaluations of womanhood, and the Salem witchcraft episodes. She finds in those intersections the basis for understanding why women were accused of witchcraft more often than men, why they confessed more often, and why they frequently accused other women of being witches. In negotiating their beliefs about the devil's powers, both women and men embedded womanhood in the discourse of depravity.Puritan ministers insisted that women and men were equal in the sight of God, with both sexes equally capable of cleaving to Christ or to the devil. Nevertheless, Reis explains, womanhood and evil were inextricably linked in the minds and hearts of seventeenth-century New England Puritans. Women and men feared hell equally but Puritan culture encouraged women to believe it was their vile natures that would take them there rather than the particular sins they might have committed.Following the Salem witchcraft trials, Reis argues, Puritans' understanding of sin and the devil changed. Ministers and laity conceived of a Satan who tempted sinners and presided physically over hell, rather than one who possessed souls in the living world. Women and men became increasingly confident of their redemption, although women more than men continued to imagine themselves as essentially corrupt, even after the Great Awakening.