tches had
effected the death of the noble lord by burying his glove in the
ground, and 'as that glove did rot and waste, so did the liver of
the said lord rot and waste.' Margaret Flower confessed she had
'two familiar spirits sucking on her, the one white, the other
black spotted. The white sucked under her left breast,' &c.

CHAPTER VIII.

The Literature of Europe in the Seventeenth Century proves
the Universality and Horror of Witchcraft--The most acute
and most liberal Men of Learning convinced of its
Reality--Erasmus and Francis Bacon--Lawyers prejudiced by
Legislation--Matthew Hale's judicial Assertion--Sir Thomas
Browne's Testimony--John Selden--The English Church least
Ferocious of the Protestant Sects--Jewell and
Hooker--Independent Tolerance--Witchcraft under the
Presbyterian Government--Matthew Hopkins--Gaule's 'Select
Cases of Conscience'--Judicial and Popular Methods of
Witch-discovery--Preventive Charms--Witchfinders a legal and
numerous Class in England and Scotland--Remission in the
Severity of the Persecution under the Protectorship.

Had we not the practical proof of the prevalence of the credit of
the black art in accomplished facts, the literature of the first
half of the seventeenth century would be sufficient testimony to
its horrid dominion. The works of the great dramatists, the
writings of men of every class, continually suppose the universal
power and horror of witchcraft. Internal evidence is abundant.
The witches of Macbeth are no fanciful creation, and Shakspeare's
representation of La Pucelle's fate is nothing more than a copy
from life. What the vulgar superstition must have been may be
easily conceived when men of the greatest genius or learning
credited the possibility, and not only a theoretical but actual
occurrence, of these infernal phenomena. Gibbon is at a loss to
account for the fact that the acute understanding of the learned
Erasmus, who could see through much more plausible fables,
believed firmly in witchcraft.[137] Francis Bacon, the advocate
and second founder of the inductive method and first apostle of
the Utilitarian philosophy, opposed though he might have been to
the vulgar persecution, was not able to get rid of the principles
upon which the creed was based.[138] Sir Edward Coke, his
contemporary, the most acute lawyer of the age, or (as it is
said) of any time, ventured even to define the d