scover "the suspected."[29] He was inclined to believe that the
"apparition of the party suspected, whom the afflicted in their fits
seem to see," was a ground for suspicion. The main aim of his discourse
was, indeed, to warn judges and jurors to be very careful by their
questions and methods of inquiring to separate the innocent from the
guilty.[30] In this contention, indeed in his whole attitude, he was
very nearly the mouthpiece of an age which, while clinging to a belief,
was becoming increasingly cautious of carrying that belief too far into
judicial trial and punishment.[31]

It is a jump of seventeen years from Bernard of Batcombe to John Gaule.
It cannot be said that Gaule marks a distinct step in the progress of
opinion beyond Bernard. His general position was much the same as that
of his predecessor. His warnings were perhaps more earnest, his
skepticism a little more apparent. In an earlier chapter we have
observed the bold way in which the indignant clergyman of
Huntingdonshire took up Hopkins's challenge in 1646. It was the Hopkins
crusade that called forth his treatise.[32] His little book was in large
part a plea for more caution in the use of evidence. Suspicion was too
lightly entertained against "every poore and peevish olde Creature."
Whenever there was an extraordinary accident, whenever there was a
disease that could not be explained, it was imputed to witchcraft. Such
"Tokens of Tryall" he deemed "altogether unwarrantable, as proceeding
from ignorance, humor, superstition." There were other more reliable
indications by which witches could sometimes be detected, but those
indications were to be used with exceeding caution. Neither the evidence
of the fact--that is, of a league with the Devil--without confession
nor "confession without fact" was to be accounted as certain proof. On
the matter of confession Gaule was extraordinarily skeptical for his
time. It was to be considered whether the party confessing were not
diabolically deluded, whether the confession were not forced, or whether
it were not the result of melancholy. Gaule went even a little further.
Not only was he inclined to suspect confession, but he had serious
doubts about a great part of witch lore. There were stories of
metamorphoses, there were narratives of "tedious journeys upon broomes,"
and a hundred other tales from old authors, which the wise Christian
would, he believed, leave with the writers. To believe nothing of them,
how