Witchcraft
idea · 2 works · 2 mentions · 3 anchored passages
witchcraft
in the texts
An Essay on Crimes and Punishments
The accusation of practicing witchcraft, discussed as a paradigm case of an inherently improbable crime.
The credibility of a witness is the less, as the atrociousness of the crime is greater, from the improbability of its having been committed;
In the case of witchcraft, it is much more probable, that a number of men should be deceived, than that any person should exercise a power which God hath refused to every created being.
Construction Construed and Constitutions Vindicated
A metaphor the narrator applies to certain constitutional words, suggesting that belief in their hidden despotic power is as mistaken as belief in the witchcraft once attributed to old women.
Perhaps the time may arrive, when it would be as absurd to contend for the witchcraft said to be lurking under the words sovereignty, supremacy, necessary and convenient, as it would be to prove now, that it does not lurk under a wrinkled visage;