Wilhelm Adolphus Scribonius, the sharpest defender of this opinion and judicial practice, tries to establish it by arguments partly physical and partly hyperphysical. The physical argument is what he says about the lightness of the demon, holding the weight of witches above the waters. The theological argument is what he says about hatred and antipathy between water and witches. But so that this may be understood more conveniently, take his words as they are represented by Richius, with whom Godelmann and others who report them agree in this matter. I do not abbreviate them, although I could easily do so, lest anyone suspect me of calumny.
[margin: Richius’s representation of Scribonius, chapter 4 from number 229; Godelmann in the same chapter 4; Binsfeld, On the Confessions of Witches, part 2, conclusion 7, doubt 1]
He says, then, that this floating of witches comes from Satanic lightness as its efficient cause. For Satan is naturally very light, as one who partakes more of air than of water. Therefore he can support them upon the waters in two ways: either by placing himself under the witches and lifting them, as it were, on his back; or also by uniting himself to them and infusing himself into their whole body by a certain occupation and possession, not indeed intrinsically joining himself by a hypostatic union or physical mixture, but in some way giving and, as it were, communicating to them, through his presence, the lightness connate with himself.
Therefore the evil demon, he says, substantially diffused in witches, holds them, namely as to the spirit itself which inhabits them without his own essence, not as to the substance of the parts of the witches’ body. Therefore that lightness is not one which proceeds immediately from the form of the body, but is adventitious, external, and received from elsewhere.
This is his view, obscurely expressed indeed, and plainly faultily. It is most obscure because either he meant only this: that witches are sustained by the demon through the prerogative of lightness which, from his airy nature, has in him the power of rising out of waters, and that this happens when the demon has entered into the body as he is accustomed to enter those possessed by a demon. Then they emerge like inflated skins. Or, if he did not mean this, he certainly covered and buried the falsity of a judgment he did not understand beneath these coverings of words badly heaped together.
But it is faulty because each of those two modes supposes that the demon has an airy body, which has been refuted elsewhere. Rather, he would have a fiery body; and thus he would either be extinguished by water or heat the water and force it to boil, both of which things are contrary to experience and right reason.
Those statements also fight with one another: that the evil demon is substantially diffused in witches, and that the spirit inhabits them without his own essence. Who would believe, too, that all witches are possessed by a demon as the seized or possessed are, and as the swine of the Gerasenes were? The witches themselves deny this, and experience refutes it. If he besieges them, how does he appear outside when he approaches them? Is he then in two places? Or does he go out and come back whenever he pleases? I believe he could; but I do not believe that he does so.
Next, if his lightness does this, why are the other possessed not equally light? Why do they sink in waters? Why did those herds of swine sink? Because he did not wish to sustain them? Then it is not that lightness of the demon’s nature but his will that accomplishes this. This is true, and the matter returns to that when Scribonius adds that Satan sustains them as God’s lictor; and because it is not lawful for a lictor to exceed the judge’s prescription, therefore it happens that the demon can neither sink those whom the waters are not to endanger, nor sustain in the waters those who are to escape unpunished. But this is now a refuge to the hyperphysical, about which immediately.
Against that lightness he is also strongly pressed by the fact that heaviness and lightness are properties of embodied things. Therefore they no more belong to a demon than to a rational soul. But I hear of some spiritual lightness or other. If, because a demon is endowed with spiritual lightness, he can do this, then certainly the soul too will be able to do it, for it too is wholly spiritual and therefore wholly light; and it is wholly in the whole body and in each part of the body, substantially diffused, and not merely inhabits but also informs. But those who do not know how to swim, and who have sometimes entered waters, know that the soul cannot do this. If the soul’s lightness cannot do this, reason cries out that neither can the demon, once he has entered a body, support it by reason of his lightness. If he supports it, he supports it because, being stronger than that bodily mass, he can move it in place, as was taught in the second book.
At last Scribonius flees to the will and predestination of God:
What if, he says, I were to say that God himself clothes the bodies of witches, those, namely, whom he truly knows to be such, with a certain singular and specific lightness by which they are carried on the surface of the waters? From that, surely, it would not follow that God has not ceased from the works of creation. For he could have so predisposed matters that, if any would be witches in the future, they should by a certain special mode by no means be submerged in waters. But will this be called contrary to divine omnipotence? Or contrary to his will because it is not expressly signified in Sacred Scripture? By no means.
We indeed confess that God can do this when it pleases him. We doubt whether it has ever pleased him. We find no signs by which we may believe that he willed it; we have many arguments which teach that he did not and does not will it. Therefore we ask that the will of God which they affirm be proved; and the experience which they bring forward as witness we shall soon refute, as deceitful, not just once. But what he adds about a new creation is not only outside the chorus of the dancer, but even the talk of delirium. What does it have to do with the matter?
He adds that water itself cannot bear witches within itself. Why, do you think? Because, he says:
God, the best and greatest, by his most prudent and most just judgment, from all ages predestined the element of water for the salutary washing of men, so that those who were to be washed clean of sins and initiated into the Church of Christ should use its baptism, and by this means, made new men, should enter as through a gate into the kingdom of Christ, from which we had previously been cast away. Therefore, he says, with a certain Vatinius-like hatred it accuses them and rejects them; so that, even if they struggle with all their strength, they nevertheless cannot be submerged.
Behold, reader: now the efficient cause is sought not from the demon but from the nature of water, because a hatred against female malefactors has been implanted in it; implanted, that is, by the author of nature, who, when he created the waters, already, with mind foreknowing all, had established that waters would be the instrument of our salvation. Therefore he planted hatred in the waters against those women who are haters and troublers of their own salvation and that of others. For he soon explains it thus:
And what is that hatred? The waters pleased God, and by using them he would wash away and cleanse the sins of men. In baptism we first give our names to Christ the Son of God and are enrolled in his list; and so we are received into the city of God as genuine citizens. Therefore all who only wish to be saved must be immersed and cleansed in this sacred baptismal water. But witches, scorning this divine laver, knowingly and willingly renounce the whole Trinity, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and, making the works of God the creator, his ordinances, and his creatures of no account, they become sinners and apostates, the worst of all others. Since in the whole world no crime more wicked than this can be defined or found, why should I hesitate to say that if witches are not submerged by waters, this happens because of that special antipathy: namely, because the element of water is unwilling to receive them within its channel, but wholly spits them out and flees them in every way, to this end, that the sinners and cause of hatred may be manifested. For even inanimate creatures serve the preaching and glory of the divine name; that is, just as the heavens, so also the elements declare the glory of God, both at other times and in this: if sin and injustice, revealed by them, is punished. In baptism water is a sacrament, a sign, a seal of the new covenant entered between God and the baptized man. Why, then, in the same way, could it not be a sign or indication of that dissolved covenant, and of the covenant broken again? And I would very readily say that this reason or cause is the truest; so that, if no other reasons seem to be admitted, this one alone must nevertheless be received.
Thus far he. In his words there are some things very true, but not aptly brought forward for proving the point about which there was doubt. In them you may easily recognize that spirit which delights in abusing scriptural testimonies and always strives with utmost force to make truth serve falsehood. We Catholics acknowledge those spiritual prerogatives of water which belong to it by reason of regeneration. But what if I were to say, with the princes of the innovators, whose authority I think is highest at Marburg, that this prerogative of water is not singular? Would not the foundation of this antipathy collapse?
[margin: Scribonius’s baptismal-water argument; Del Rio contrasts Catholic teaching on baptismal water with Protestant authorities at Marburg]
But behold: Luther, when he had been asked whether, if water were lacking, it would be lawful to baptize in milk or beer, at first, perhaps struck by the unexpected question, hesitated and said that it should be committed to divine judgment. But after he had recovered his spirit, and with that breath of his supposedly from God, he added that whatever could be called by the name of bath should be judged a not at all unfit matter for baptism. Nor did the other Martin, that Chemnitz, oracle of Leyser, believe with sufficient certainty whether this element of water supplied the necessary matter for baptism. For if he had believed Christ the Lord affirming this and the apostles following their teacher, he never would have called those questions idle: whether this or that liquid is natural and true water, since in them inquiry is made concerning the necessity of water for baptism, or concerning the necessary matter of this sacrament.
Nor did Calvin believe this, for he took the very open statement of Christ the Lord, John 3, in an allegorical sense; and by “water” he wished to understand not that element of water, but the Holy Spirit himself, who is called water because he washes our souls, since Calvin thought that a man could be saved without baptism. And thus he went before and lifted a clear sign for the Anabaptists toward Gehenna.
But we detest all these deliriums of Luther, Chemnitz, and Calvin. Yet Scribonius will see what he is going to answer them if they twist these dogmas of theirs against his imaginary chimera of antipathy. We Catholics have, praise be to God, we have stronger battering-rams. Meanwhile we marvel at Calvin’s tricks and tropes, and we likewise laugh at Luther’s madness. For, to speak of this now: since we can be washed with milk, broth of meat or herbs, wine, and similar liquids, it could not be denied that these can furnish the use of a bath; and the more apt each thing is for wiping clean, the more effective matter it would also furnish for baptism. Will that, then, which the Hebrews call “water of the feet” do? Peace, I beg, to ears and noses: it is filthy and it stinks. Let such a washing, such a bath, fall to Luther alone and to the man who insolently defends this delirium of his. But on this law: that instead of an honorable little strigil, brooms of yew, with which scrapings are scraped off, be applied to him, and olive dregs seasoned with niter in place of salve; and so let him be strigiled vigorously over his whole body, rubbed with pumice, and polished smooth. Nothing cleaner, nothing prettier, nothing more worthy of the Augean stables will be found.
[margin: Luther, Table Talk or convivial colloquies, chapter 17; John 3:5; Acts 8:36; Acts 10:47; Ephesians 5:26; Chemnitz and Calvin on baptismal water; Council of Trent, session 7, canon 2; Del Rio points ahead to Section III]
What do you say, Scribonius? Is there a Vatinius-like hatred of water against witches? Is water then endowed with reason? For philosophers deny that beasts grow angry and hate because they lack reason. You will say, “I understand a metaphorical hatred, like what we see in plants.” But there is also such love in plants; yet in water and the other elements no such love is discerned, except a certain inclination toward their own place, because it is thought to contribute to their conservation. If water hates witches, it loves the rest. How will you prove this? I see that you admit there is no natural love here, and certainly no hatred; but you want this affection to be supernatural. I ask whether the element of water is conscious of it or ignorant of it. You will not say it is conscious. For what is more absurd, since it is not even endowed with sense, much less with knowledge? Yet this would be necessary for it to distinguish witches from the rest. But it does not distinguish even when, in St. Bernard’s time, it spat out other heretics and hypocrites in the same way. I shall afterward recite his words from sermon 66 on the Song of Songs.
Therefore it is ignorant and is thus moved by God. Is it moved by a new motion every time a witch is thrown into the water? He does not sufficiently explain this, and seems to mean that this decree of God always works from the time when God created the element of water, and that from this decree of God once sanctioned the waters received this power, just as herbs have that power of producing something like themselves through seed by that primitive law by which Genesis 1 commanded, “Let the earth bring forth green herb and making,” and so forth.
I do not doubt that if God had from the beginning imposed this law on waters, this power would belong to them perpetually. But in order for me to believe that this was done by God, other proofs must be brought either from the Scriptures or from ecclesiastical tradition. In a matter of such weight to lean on mere conjectures: this belongs neither to a sober nor to a sound mind or wisdom. It is necessary for us all to be washed in the saving laver in order to be saved. What then? No Catholic denies this; some innovators deny it. Witches renounce this sacred baptism and the whole most holy Trinity. This too we confess, and therefore we declare them most worthy of all punishments and their crime most atrocious.
What follows from this? That waters therefore hate them and spit out the troublesome burden. I believe this as I believe that living waters spit out corpses; but perhaps this happens because of the abundance of water and air which has insinuated itself into corpses. Living bodies would sink, not float. But I hear that this happens because water prefers to betray witches rather than conceal the crime, and so it plays the part, as it were, of a herald. I know that all creatures praise God and declare the glory of God, but they do not do this in the way that Joshua ordered Achan to give glory to God, nor in the way that the Pharisees demanded it from the man born blind; rather, by their beauty, adornment, usefulness, and effectiveness which God has bestowed on them, they announce to human beings the goodness, wisdom, riches, and power of their maker and creator.
But that confession and disclosure and, so to speak, proclamation, or if you prefer, accusation, which Scribonius invents, is new and unheard of in Sacred Scripture, councils, fathers, and ecclesiastical monuments. Therefore it is neither probable, nor credible, nor safe. As if God had left us no other means for investigating truth.
Water is a sign of the covenant entered into with God? This we know and believe, because God says it. You ask us to believe that the same water is also a sign of a violated covenant? Give similar testimony, and we will believe. You give none? We do not believe that thing, though we confess the other. Next, we do not attribute our salvation to water insofar as it is water, as to an instrument or seal; but insofar as the baptismal form has come to the water, it washes savingly, when the word has come to the element. For then the sacrament has been made which before was only a bare element. Take away the word, and I recognize neither sacrament nor seal. Then I shall say that praise and glory of God are equally announced to us by earth, by air, by fire; and I shall ask why these do not equally betray witches. Why does the air not render breath more difficult for them and betray them by slow suffocation? Why does the earth not sink down and swallow them in its midst, so that they may thus be betrayed? Why does the air not dash them against the ground, and why, in turn, does the earth not by rebound strike them back into the air like balls? Why does fire offer itself to them in common with other creatures? Indeed, if they are hated by any element, they will be hated by fire; for they hate fire more than the other elements, and the logic of antipathy is usually mutual. There are also many other things, about which in the following section.