Joseph Glanvill, King's Chaplain

Joseph Glanvill (1636-1680) pointed out the dangers of witchcraft in Sadducismus triumphatus (1681). He was groundbreaking on psychics and mediumship and, because he was the king's chaplain and a captivating storyteller, he was very influential.

Protestantism looked askance at relics and miracles of saints and papist practices. The Reformation announced that all before had been superstition, that the age of miracles was long over. Where, then, to find evidence of the supernatural? In witchcraft and demonology. Joseph Glanvill set out as a member of The Royal Society to convince the scientists of the reality of the Other World, "to regain a parcel of Ground which bold Infidelity hath invaded." "Those who dare not say," he wrote in what came to be known as Sadducismus triumphatus, "There is no GOD, content themselves (for a fair step and Introduction) to deny that there are Spirits and Witches." Thus once again heresy and magic were connected and the enemies of society becamse the enemies of God Almighty. Convinced that The Devil and his "Dark Kingdom" would triumph if no one believed what The Enemy of Mankind was up to, Glanvill undertook to present arguments from both scripture and reason and to catch and convince with a "choice collection of modern relations." He offered these stories as proof that The Devil was alive and active even in an Age of Reason.

Glanvill's aim was to give Protestants not only a sense of sin but a sense of the spiritual through an emphasis on the supernatural. After all, the Bible was the cornerstone of the Protestant religion, and did not scriptures as well as tradition demand a belief in the supernatural, in The Devil and all his works and pomps?

Soberly Glanvill undertook to answer half a dozen objections to the existence of witchs: "that the notion of 'spirit' is itself an absurdity," "that the actions attributed to Witches are absurd or impossible," "that 'tis very improbable that the Devil...should be at the beck [and call] of a poor Hag," that to believe the stories of children victimized is "to accuse Providence" of not protecting innocence, that though the reasonable man must "scorn the ordinary tales of Prodigies" the appearances of angels (especially bad angels) are undeniable and not uncommon, that there can be diaolical as well as divine miracles.

He coined the phrase "the climate of opinion." If the climate of opinion in his time was turning from God as it turned toward science, he was going to turn it back, even at the cost of launching a crusade against The Devil in which many of his fellow Britons would die.

In a time when science threatened faith, not unlike the nineteenth century (when Darwin elaborated Glanvill's recognition that things in nature evolve gradually), this divine was anxious that man not lose sight of the supernatural as he strove to understand and control the natural world (Ashley 195-196).

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Joseph Glanvill, King's Chaplain copyrighted 1998 to Shantell Powell.