ORIGINS OF MODERNITY

theology & witchcraft

Wagstaffe, John (1633-1677)
The question of witchcraft debated, or, A discourse against their opinion that affirm witches : considered and enlarged ...
Second edition
London : Printed for Edw. Millington, 1671.

This work was the most effective critique of witchcraft of the late seventeenth century. The second edition displayed here was significantly enlarged and reprinted a number of times in the early eighteenth century. Wagstaffe represents a part of a culture of wit whose sarcastic and iconoclastic approach to occult phenomena bristled with confidence and cynicism. He even argued that belief in witches had been promoted by the clergy as a means of self-aggrandizement.