effects which were punishable, a fact in capable of proof. Lastly, granted that witches were able to do certain acts, what ever they did was decreed by God, and those who executed His will were not punishable. Sir George replied to these arguments by again quoting Exodus xxii. 18: "Thou shall not suffer a witch to live." After observing that Jews, Persians and Romans agreed in condemning witchcraft, he asserted that "by the same reason we should deny witches, we must deny the truth of all history, ecclesiasti cal and secular;" and that "it is true that the devil, having the power and will to prejudice men, cannot but be ready to execute all that is in witchcraft." The acts of witches were not necessarily impossible, since "it is tindeniable that the devil, knowing all the secrets of Nature, may, by applying actives to passives that are unknown to us, produce real effects which seem impossible." True, there were secrets in Nature now known to men, which would have formerly been re garded as the effects of magic, and a philoso-. pher in the darker ages drawing iron with a magnet might have run a great risk of being burned; nevertheless he was of opinion that learning had sufficiently illuminated the world to enable men to distinguish between physicians and magicians. It cannot have afforded much comfort to the student in those days to reflect that he ran the risk of being burnt at the stake if his opinions were too advanced to be deemed orthodox by a jury of prejudiced blockheads. Witchcraft was held to be one of the greatest of crimes, in so far as it included in itself "the grossest of heresies, blasphemies and treasons against God, in preferring to the Almighty His rebel and enemy, and in think ing the devil worthy of being served and reverenced." In addition, it was often ac companied by murder, poisoning and other wickedness, which added to and doubled the blackness of its inherent guilt. When review ing the attitude of the older divines and lawyers towards witchcraft, we must not overlook this last point. It is an undeniable
fact that the possession of occult powers was often used as a cloak for abominable crimes, and that if the miserable wretches did not merit death as witches, they well merited it by the atrocities they had otherwise wrought. This circumstance helps to explain the stern conclusion of our author that witches should be punished, not merely with scourging and banishment, but "by the most ignomi nious of deaths." At the same time he deprecated rash and hasty judgments. "I condemn," he says, "next to the witches themselves, those cruel and too forward judges, who burn persons by thousands as guilty of this crime." Con viction ought not to follow accusation except upon the most convincing proofs, and con vincing proofs were, from the nature of the charge, adduced with difficulty. Confession, even where it had not been extorted by torture, had to be regarded with suspicion. The persons charged were usually poor ignorant creatures, who did not understand of what they were accused. . Deserted by their friends, shut up in squalid cells, starved, de prived of sleep, often tortured by their keepers, what reliance could be put upon their statements? In testimony of the utterly unreliable nature of the confessions of selfaccused witches. Sir George relates the fol lowing experience: "I went when I was a Justice Depute to examine some women who had confessed judicially, and one of them, who was a silly creature, told me under secrecy that she had not confessed because she was guilty: but being a poor creature who wrought for her meat, and being de famed for a witch, she would starve, because no person thereafter would either give her meat or lodging, and that all men would beat her and hound dogs at her, and that there fore she desired to be set out of the world; whereupon she wept most bitterly and upon her knees called God to witness to what she said." The narrative closes at this point and does not satisfy our curiosity as to the fate of this poor woman; but the connection in which it is introduced, and our knowledge of
