A Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft, so farre forth as it is revealed in the Scriptures, and manifest by true experience

[Extract from The Workes], [5], 607-652pp., title with woodcut typographic ornament, woodcut typographic head-and-tail-pieces and decorative initials, contemporary ink marginalia,occasional light spotting. Red morocco bookplate of William Foyle to front pastedown, modern red half morocco, gilt, t.e.g., folio, Cambridge, Printed by Cantrell Legge, 1613

A Scarce Pamphlet by prominent English demonologist and Puritan preacher, William Perkins.

William Perkins (1555-1602) wrote numerous and uncompromising works combating Roman Catholicism, maintaining an extreme evangelical position throughout. Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft was originally delivered as a sermon before being published posthumously in 1608. By 1610, Perkins surpassed King James I as the authority on witchhunting in Great Britain. This popularity may have been caused by the King’s later defection as a witch hunter, as well as Perkins’ refusal to address the European demonologists and his almost exclusive appeal to the Bible.

In A Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft Perkins affirms the existence of pacts with the devil and urges death for convicted witches. As a Protestant, Perkins was more critical of witchcraft as an act of apostasy, as a denial of the Christian faith through the pledge of allegiance to Satan, than of any real acts of magic perpetrated by the witch. His work was so persuasive that Robert Filmer, in his Advertisement to the Jurymen of England (1653) still thought it necessary to refute Perkins’ arguments of half a century earlier. In 1693 Cotton Mather included a summary of Discourse in his work The Invisible World.

[BOUND WITH]

A Resolution to the Country-man’ and ‘Christian Oeconomie’.

[Hope Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology]