NEXT, let the preacher make provision against certain arguments of laymen or of certain learned men,565 who deny the existence of sorceresses to the extent that, while they grant the demon's evil and his power to inflict evils of this kind as he pleases, they nonetheless deny that divine permission stoops to his level. They are unwilling to have God permit such things to happen, and although they have no way of arguing and grope in the dark like blind men, touching now one means, now another, it is nonetheless necessary to reduce their claims to the five arguments from which all their quibbles can certainly be derived. The first is that God does not permit the Devil to act savagely against men by the authority of such power.

[TT] Whether divine permission must in fact co-operate in order for a demon to bring about an effect of sorcery through a sorceress. It is argued with five arguments that God does not give His permission, and hence there is also no such thing as sorcery in the world. The first argument concerns God, the second, the Devil, the third, the sorceress, the fourth, disease, and the fifth, the preachers and judges who, in preaching such sermons and passing such judgments against them, would certainly never be safe.

[AG 1] The first is as follows. God can punish a man for his sin and He punishes by the sword, hunger and mortality, and also by the countless other sorts of illnesses to which the human condition is subject. Hence, because God has no need to add other punishments, He does not give His permission.

[AG 2] The second argument (concerning the Devil) is as follows. It is preached that sorceresses are able to impede the power of procreation, so that a woman does not conceive, or if she does, she has a miscarriage, or if she does not have a miscarriage, they kill the children after the birth.