pirits fully evinced by unquestionable Histories of
Apparitions, Witchcrafts, Operations, Voices, &c., proving the
Immortality of Souls, the Malice and Misery of Devils and the
Damned, and the Blessedness of the Justified. Written for the
Conviction of Sadducees and Infidels,' was a formidable
inscription which must have overawed, if it did not subdue, the
infidelity of the modern Sadducees.[151]

[151] It would not be an uninteresting, but it would be a
melancholy, task to investigate the reasoning, or rather
unreasoning, process which involved such honest men as
Richard Baxter in a maze of credulity. While they rejected
the principle of the ever-recurring ecclesiastical miracles
of Catholicism (so sympathetic as well as useful to ardent
faith), their devout imagination yet required the aid of a
present supernaturalism to support their faith amidst the
perplexing doubts and difficulties of ordinary life, and
they gladly embraced the consoling belief that the present
evils are the work of the enmity of the devil, whose
temporary sovereignty, however, should be overthrown in the
world to come, when the faith and constancy of his victims
shall be eternally rewarded.

The sentence and execution of two old women at Bury St. Edmund's,
in 1664, has been already noticed. This trial was carried on with
circumstances of great solemnity and with all the external forms
of justice--Sir Matthew Hale presiding as Lord Chief Baron: and
the following is a portion of the evidence which was received two
hundred years ago in an English Court of Justice and under the
presidency of one of the greatest ornaments of the English Bench.
One of the witnesses, a woman named Dorothy Durent, deposed that
she had quarrelled with one Amy Duny, immediately after which her
infant child was seized with fits. 'And the said examinant
further stated that she being troubled at her child's distemper
did go to a certain person named Doctor Job Jacob, who lived at
Yarmouth, who had the reputation in the country to help children
that were bewitched; who advised her to hang up the child's
blanket in the chimney-corner all day, and at night when she put
the child to bed to put it into the said blanket; and if she
found anything in it she should not be afraid, but throw it into
the fire. And this deponent did according to his direction; and
at night when she took down the blanket with an intent to put the
child therein, there fell