Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society Volume 84 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 Excerpt: ...Complicated ecclesiastical litigation ensued, with the result that the Synod of North Holland issued a decree declaring Bekker "intolerable as teacher in the Reformed Church" and expelling him from his ministerial office (August 7, 1692)." Soon after, the Church Council of Amsterdam voted to exclude him from the Lord's Supper (August 17),97 and he was never admitted to communion again. He died on June 11, 1698.98 Another reason for going so fully into Bekker 's arguments is that they give us an excellent chance to take up a question which is of cardinal importance in weighing the whole matter of witchcraft. I refer, of course, to the question of Biblical exegesis. If we wish to treat our forefathers fairly, we are required to criticise the few opponents of the witch dogma in a really impartial way. We ought not to commend such portions of their argument as chance to square with our own ideas, and ignore the rest. We must review their case as a whole, so as to discover how far it was right or reasonable on the basis of their own postulates. We must test the correctness of their premises, as well as the accuracy of their logic. This process we have gone through with already in several instances. We have seen that all the opponents of witchcraft so far examined struggle to maintain a position that is strategically indefensible, either because they admit too much, or because they ignore certain difficulties, or because they are frankly eccentric. It does not help their case to contend that what they admit or what they ignore does not signify from our present scientific point of view. It did signify then. The only man whose argument covers the ground completely and affords a thorough and consistent theory on which a seventeenth-century Christian w...