Goodwife R. Folly! how wise you are become of a sudden! I know that their spirits lie lurking, for they foster them; and when anybody hath angered them, then they call them forth and send them. And look what they bid them do, or hire them to do, that shall be done: as when she is angry, the spirit will ask her, ‘What shall I do?’ ‘Such a man hath misused me,’ saith she; ‘go, kill his cow’; by-and-by he goeth and doeth it. ‘Go, kill such a woman’s hens’; down go they. And some of them are not content to do these lesser harms; but they will say, ‘Go, make such a man lame, kill him, or kill his child.’ Then are they ready, and will do anything; and I think they be happy that can learn to drive them away.
M. B. If I should reason with you out of the words of God, you should see that all this is false, which you say. The devil cannot kill nor hurt anything; no, not so much as a poor hen. If he had power, who can escape him? Would he tarry to be sent or entreated by a woman? He is a stirrer up unto all harms and mischiefs.
Goodwife R. What will you tell me of God’s word? Doth not God’s word say there be witches? and do not you think God doth suffer bad people? Are you a turncoat? Fare you well; I will no longer talk with you.
M. B. She is wilful indeed. I will leave you also.
Samuel. I thank you for your good company.
About the same time that Gifford was endeavouring to teach his countrymen a more excellent way of dealing with the vexed questions of demonology and witchcraft, a Dutch minister, named Bekker, scandalized the orthodox by a frank denial of all power whatsoever to the devil, and, consequently, to the witches and warlocks who were supposed to be at one and the same time his servants and yet his employers. His ‘Monde Enchanté’ (originally written in Dutch) consists of four ponderous volumes, remarkable for prolixity and repetition, as well as for a certain originality of argument. There was no just ground, however, as Hallam remarks, for throwing imputations on the author’s religious sincerity. He shared, however, the opprobrium that attaches to all who deviate in theology from the orthodox path; and it must be admitted that his Scriptural explanations in the case of the demoniacs and the like are more ingenious than satisfactory.
A violent trumpet-note on the side of intolerance was blown by King James I. in 1597 in his famous ‘Dæmonologia.’ It is written in the form of a dialogue, and numbers about eighty closely-printed pages. James, as the reader has seen, had had ample personal experience of witches and their ‘cantrips,’ and had ‘got up’ the subject with a commendable amount of thoroughness. He divides witches into eight classes, who severally work their evil designs against mankind; then he subdivides into white and black witches, of whom the former are the more dangerous; and again into ‘acted’ and ‘pacted’ witches, the former depending for their power on their supernatural gifts, and the latter having made a compact with Satan contrary to ‘all rules and orders of nature, art or grace.’ Further, the demons have a classification of their own; some of the higher ranks of the demonarchy looking down contemptuously enough on those of the inferior grades, who consist of ‘the damned souls of departed conjurers.’ These ‘damned souls’ discharge all kinds of mean and servile offices—bringing fire from heaven for the convenience of their employers; conveying bodies through the air; conjuring corn from one field into another; imparting a show of life to dead bodies; and raising the wind for witches to sell to their nautical customers—who received pieces of knotted rope, and, untying the first knot, secured a favourable breeze, for the second a moderate wind, and for the third a violent gale.
After describing the rites in vogue on the conclusion of a compact between witch and devil, King James enlarges on other points of ceremonial, such as the making of various magic circles—sometimes round, sometimes triangular, sometimes quadrangular; the use of holy water and crosses in ridicule of the papists; and the offer to the demons of some living animal. He adds that the great witches’ meetings frequently took place in churches: and he says that the witches mutter and hurriedly mumble through their conjurations ‘like a priest despatching a hunting masse’; and that if they step out of a circle in a sudden alarm at the horrible appearance assumed by the demon, he flies off with them body and soul.
The royal expert proceeds to indicate the means by which you may detect a witch. ‘There are two good helpes that may be used for their trials; the one is the finding of their marke and the trying the insensibility thereof. The other is their fleeting on the water: for as in a secret murther, if the dead carkasse be at any time thereafter handled by the murtherer, it will gush out of blood, as if the blood were crying to the heaven for revenge of the murtherer, God having appoynted that secret supernaturale signe for triale of that secret unnaturale crime, so it appears that God hath appoynted (for a supernaturale signe of the monstrous impietie of witches) that the water shall refuse to receive them in her bosome that have shaken off them the sacred water of Baptism and willingly refused the benefit thereof: no, not so much as their eies are able to shed teares (threaten and torture them as you please) while first they repent (God not permitting them to dissemble their obstinacie in so horrible a crime), albeit the womenkind especially be able other waies to shed teares at every light occasion when they will, yea altho’ it were dissemblingly like the crocodiles.’
Incidentally, our witch-hunting King offers an explanation of a peculiarity which, no doubt, our readers have already noted—the great numerical superiority of witches over warlocks. ‘The reason is easie,’ he says; ‘for as that sex is frailer than man is, so is it easier to be intrapped in the grosse snares of the devil,—as was over well prooved to be true by the serpente deceiving of Eva at the beginning, which makes him the homelier with that sex sensine [ever since].’