evil's agents in
witchcraft. Sir Thomas Browne (author of 'Pseudodoxia Epidemica'
or 'Vulgar Errors!'), a physician and writer of considerable
merit, and Sir Matthew Hale, in 1664, proved their faith, the one
by his solemn testimony in open court, the other by his still
more solemn sentence.

[137] See _Miscellaneous Works: Abstract of my Readings_.

[138] 'Consorting with them [the unclean spirits who have
fallen from their first estate] and all use of their
assistance is unlawful; much more any worship or veneration
whatsoever. But a contemplation and knowledge of their
nature, power, illusions, not only from passages of sacred
scripture but _from reason or experience_, is not the least
part of spiritual wisdom. So truly the Apostle, "We are not
ignorant of his wiles." And it is not less permissible in
theology to investigate the nature of demons, than in physics
to investigate the nature of drugs, or in ethics the nature
of vice.'--_De Augmentis Scientiarum_, lib. iii. 2.

If theologians were armed by the authority or their
interpretation of Scripture, lawyers were no less so by that of
the Statute Book. Judge Hale, in an address to the jury at Bury
St. Edmund's, carefully weighing evidence, and, summing up,
assures them he did 'not in the least doubt there are witches:
first, because _the Scriptures affirmed it_; secondly, because
the _wisdom of all nations_, particularly of our own, _had
provided laws_ against witchcraft which implied their belief of
such a crime.'[139] Sir Thomas Browne, who gave his professional
experience at this trial, to the effect that the devil often acts
upon human bodies by natural means, afflicting them in a more
surprising manner through the diseases to which they are usually
subject; and that in the particular case, the fits (of vomiting
nails, needles, deposed by other witnesses) might be natural,
only raised to a great degree by the subtlety of the devil
cooperating with the malice of the witches, employs a well-known
argument when he declares ('Religio Medici'), 'Those that to
confute their incredulity desire to see apparitions shall
questionless never behold any. The devil hath these already in a
heresy as capital as witchcraft; and to appear to them were _but_
to convert them.'

[139] Unfortunately for the cause of truth and right, Sir
Matthew Hale's reasons are not an exceptional illustration
of the mischief according to Roger Bacon's experien