o deny such a premise?), grant that the Devil has
supernatural powers (and there were Scripture texts to prove it), and
it was but a short step to the belief in witches. The truth is that
Glanvill's theories were much more firmly grounded on the bedrock of
seventeenth-century theology than those of his opponents. His opponents
were attempting to use common sense, but it was a sort of common sense
which, however little they saw it, must undermine the current religious
convictions.

Glanvill was indeed exceedingly up-to-date in his own time. Not but that
he had read the learned old authors. He was familiar with what "the
great Episcopius" had to say, he had dipped into Reginald Scot and
deemed him too "ridiculous" to answer.[16] But he cared far more about
the arguments that he heard advanced in every-day conversation. These
were the arguments that he attempted to answer. His work reflected the
current discussions of the subject. It was, indeed, the growing
opposition among those whom he met that stirred him most. Not without
sadness he recognized that "most of the looser Gentry and small
pretenders to Philosophy and Wit are generally deriders of the belief of
Witches and Apparitions."[17] Like an animal at bay, he turned fiercely
on them. "Let them enjoy the Opinion of their own Superlative
Judgements" and run madly after Scot, Hobbes, and Osborne. It was, in
truth, a danger to religion that he was trying to ward off. One of the
fundamentals of religion was at stake. The denial of witchcraft was a
phase of prevalent atheism. Those that give up the belief in witches,
give up that in the Devil, then that in the immortality of the
soul.[18] The question at issue was the reality of the spirit world.

It can be seen why the man was tremendously in earnest. One may indeed
wonder if his intensity of feeling on the matter was not responsible for
his accepting as _bona fide_ narratives those which his common sense
should have made him reject. In defending the authenticity of the
remarkable stories told by the accusers of Julian Cox,[19] he was guilty
of a degree of credulity that passes belief. Perhaps the reader will
recall the incident of the hunted rabbit that vanished behind a bush and
was transformed into a panting woman, no other than the accused Julian
Cox. This tale must indeed have strained Glanvill's utmost capacity of
belief. Yet he rose bravely to the occasion. Determined not to give up
any well-supported fact, he ur