ing been tortured into confession,
and now seeing no way of safety but by complicity and witch-finding. She
told of one convention held on a hill in Atholl, where there were
twenty-three hundred witches, and the devil among them. "She said she knew
them all well enough, and what mark the devil had given severally to every
one of them. There was many of them tried by swimming in the water, by
binding of their two thumbs and their great toes together, for being thus
casten in the water, they floated ay aboon." It was not only the
malevolent witch that suffered in this wild raid made against reason and
humanity. The doom dealt out to the witch who slew was equally allotted to
the witch who saved. Yet the witchologists made a difference between the
two.

"Of witches there be two sorts," says Thomas Pickering, in his 'Discovrse
of the damned Art of Witchcraft,' printed 1610, "_the bad witch_ and _the
good witch_; for so they are commonly called. The _bad witch_ is he or she
that hath consulted in league with the Deuill; to vse his helpe for the
doing of hurte onely, so as to strike and annoy the bodies of men, women,
children, and cattell, with diseases and with death itselfe; so likewise
to raise tempests by sea and by land, &c. This is commonly called _the
binding_ witch.

"The _good witch_ is he or she that by consent in a league with the Deuill
doth vse his helpe for the doing of good onely. This cannot hurt, torment,
curse, or kill, but onely heale and cure the hurt inflicted vpone men or
cattell by badde witches. For as they can doe no good but onely hurt; so
this can doe no hurt but good onely. And this is that order which the
Deuill hath set in his kingdome, appointing to severall persons their
severall offices and charges. And the Good Witch is commonly called the
Vnbinding Witch."

But the good witch, as Pickering calls her, was no better off than the
bad. Indeed she was held in even greater dread, for the black witch hurt
only the body and estate, while the white witch hurt the soul when she
healed the body; the healed part never being able to say "God healed me."
Wherefore it was severed from the salvation of the rest, and the wholeness
of the redemption destroyed. In consequence of this belief we find as
severe punishments accorded to the blessing as to the banning witches; and
no movement of gratitude was dreamt of towards those who had healed the
most oppressive diseases, or shown the most humane feeling and