d in his own restricted field a reformer. He was not only
the protagonist of a new cause, but a pioneer who had to cut through the
underbrush of opinion a pathway for speculation to follow. So far as
England was concerned, Scot found no philosophy of the subject, no
systematic defences or assaults upon the loosely constructed theory of
demonic agency. It was for him to state in definite terms the beliefs he
was seeking to overthrow. The Roman church knew fairly well by this time
what it meant by witchcraft, but English theologians and philosophers
would hardly have found common ground on any one tenet about the
matter.[18] Without exaggeration it may be asserted that Scot by his
assault all along the front forced the enemy's advance and in some sense
dictated his line of battle.

The assault was directed indeed against the centre of the opposing
entrenchments, the belief in the continuance of miracles. Scot declared
that with Christ and his apostles the age of miracles had passed, an
opinion which he supported by the authority of Calvin and of St.
Augustine. What was counted the supernatural assumed two forms--the
phenomena exhibited by those whom he classed under the wide term of
"couseners," and the phenomena said to be exhibited by the "poor doting
women" known as witches. The tricks and deceits of the "couseners" he
was at great pains to explain. Not less than one-third of his work is
given up to setting forth the methods of conjurers, card tricks,
sleight-of-hand performances, illusions of magic, materializations of
spirits, and the wonders of alchemy and astrology. In the range of his
information about these subjects, the discoverer was encyclopedic. No
current form of dabbling with the supernatural was left unexposed.

In his attack upon the phenomena of witchcraft he had a different
problem. He had to deal with phenomena the so-called facts of which were
not susceptible of any material explanation. The theory of a Devil who
had intimate relations with human beings, who controlled them and sent
them out upon maleficent errands, was in its essence a theological
conception and could not be absolutely disproved by scientific
observation. It was necessary instead to attack the idea on its _a
priori_ grounds. This attack Scot attempted to base on the nature of
spirits. Spirits and bodies, he urged, are antithetical and
inconvertible, nor can any one save God give spirit a bodily form. The
Devil, a something beyond ou