-and by "couseners" he seems to have
meant those who used trickery and fraud. In other words, Scot distinctly
implied that there were no real witches--with powers given them by the
Devil. Would he have stood by this when pushed into a corner? It is just
possible that he would have done so, that he understood his own
implications, but hardly dared to utter a straighforward denial of the
reality of witchcraft. It is more likely that he had not altogether
thought himself out.

The immediate impression of Scot's book we know little about. Such
contemporary comment as we have is neutral.[26] That his book was read
painstakingly by every later writer on the subject, that it shortly
became the great support of one party in the controversy, that King
James deemed it worth while to write an answer, and that on his
accession to the throne he almost certainly ordered the book to be
burned by the common hangman,[27] these are better evidence than
absolutely contemporary notices to show that the _Discoverie_ exerted an
influence.

We cannot better suggest how radical Scot's position must have seemed to
his own time than by showing the point of view of another opponent of
witchcraft, George Gifford, a non-conformist clergyman.[28] He had read
the _Discoverie_ and probably felt that the theological aspect of the
subject had been neglected. Moreover it had probably been his fortune,
as Scot's, to attend the St. Oses trials. Three years after Scot's book
he brought out _A Discourse of the Subtill Practises of Devilles by
Witches_, and followed it six years later by _A Dialogue concerning
Witches_,[29] a book in which he expounded his opinions in somewhat more
popular fashion. Like Scot, he wrote to end, so far as possible, the
punishment of innocent women;[30] like Scot, he believed that most of
the evidence presented against them was worthless.[31] But on other
points he was far less radical. There were witches. He found them in
the Bible.[32] To be sure they were nothing more than pawns for the
Devil. He uses them "onely for a colour,"[33] that is, puts them forward
to cover his own dealings, and then he deludes them and makes them
"beleeve things which are nothing so."[34] In consequence they
frequently at their executions falsely accuse others of dreadful
witchcrafts. It is all the work of the Devil. But he himself cannot do
anything except through the power of God,[35] who, sometimes for
vengeance upon His enemies and sometimes t