t, sorcery, charm, or enchantment;
or shall use, exercise, or practice any sort of witchcraft, &c.,
whereby any person shall be destroyed, killed, wasted, consumed,
pined or lamed in any part of the body; that every such person
being convicted shall suffer death.' Twelve bishops sat in the
Committee of the Upper House.[116]

[115] The 'Witch Act' of James I. was passed in the year
1604. The new translation, or the present authorised
version, of the Bible, was executed in 1607. The inference
seems plain. An ecclesiastical canon passed at the same
period, which prohibits the inferior clergy from exorcising
without episcopal licence, proves at the same time the
prevalence of 'possession' and the prevalence of exorcism in
the beginning of the seventeenth century.

[116] The parliament of James I. would have done wisely to
have embraced the philosophic sentiment of a Hungarian prince
(1095-1114) who is said to have dismissed the absurd
superstition with laconic brevity: 'De strigis vero, quae non
sunt, nulla quaestio fiat.'

The Scottish Parliament, during Queen Mary's reign, anathematised
the _papistical_ practices; and from that time the annals of
Scottish judicature are filled with records of trials and
convictions. James was educated among the stern adherents of
Calvin. In whatever matters of ecclesiastical faith and rule the
countryman of Knox may have deviated from the teaching of his
preceptors, he maintained with constant zeal his faith in the
devil's omnipotence; and we may be disposed to concede the
title of 'Defender of the Faith' (so confidently prefixed to
successive editions of the Authorised Version) to his activity in
the extermination of witches, rather than to his hatred of
priestcraft. While monarch only of the Northern kingdom, he
published a denunciation of the damnable infidelity of the 'Witch
Advocates,' and his own unhesitating belief. James VI. and his
clerical advisers were persuaded, or affected to be persuaded,
that the devil, with all his hellish crew, was conspiring to
frustrate the beneficial intentions of a pious Protestant prince.
Infernal despair and rage reached the climax when the marriage
with the Danish princess was to be effected. But, far from being
terrified by so formidable a conspiracy, he gloried in the
persuasion that he was the devil's greatest enemy; and the man
who shuddered at the sight of a drawn sword was not afraid to
enter the lists against