le, That when God Almighty permits any Spirits from the unseen
Regions, to visit us with surprizing Informations, there is then
something to be enquired after; we are then to enquire of one another,
What Cause there is for such things? The peculiar Government of God,
over the unbodied Intelligences, is a sufficient Foundation for this
Principle. When there has been a Murder committed, an Apparition of the
slain Party accusing of any Man, altho' such Apparitions have oftner
spoke true than false, is not enough to Convict the Man as guilty of
that Murder; but yet it is a sufficient occasion for Magistrates to make
a particular Enquiry, whether such a Man have afforded any ground for
such an Accusation. Even so a Spectre exactly resembling such or such a
Person, when the Neighbourhood are tormented by such Spectres, may
reasonably make Magistrates inquisitive whether the Person so
represented have done or said any thing that may argue their confederacy
with Evil Spirits, altho' it may be defective enough in point of
Conviction; especially at a time, when 'tis possible, some over-powerful
Conjurer may have got the skill of thus exhibiting the Shapes of all
sorts of Persons, on purpose to stop the Prosecution of the Wretches,
whom due Enquiries thus provoked, might have made obnoxious unto
Justice.

_Quaere_, Whether if God would have us to proceed any further than bare
_Enquiry_, upon what Reports there may come against any Man, from the
World of _Spirits_, he will not by his Providence at the same time have
brought into our hands, these more evident and sensible things,
whereupon a man is to be esteemed a Criminal. But I will venture to say
this further, that it will be safe to account the Names as well as the
Lives of our Neighbors; two considerable things to be brought under a
Judicial Process, until it be found by Humane Observations that the
Peace of Mankind is thereby disturbed. We are Humane Creatures, and we
are safe while we say, they must be Humane Witnesses, who also have in
the particular Act of Seeing, or Hearing, which enables them to be
Witnesses, had no more than Humane Assistances, that are to turn the
Scale when Laws are to be executed. And upon this Head I will further
add: A wise and a just Magistrate, may so far give way to a common
Stream of Dissatisfaction, as to forbear acting up to the heighth of his
own Perswasion, about what may be judged convictive of a Crime, whose
Nature shall be so abstruse an