truction
how to play it. Such combinations were sometimes detected, and brought
more discredit on the Church of Rome than was counterbalanced by any
which might be more cunningly managed. On this subject the reader may
turn to Dr. Harsnett's celebrated book on Popish Impostures, wherein he
gives the history of several notorious cases of detected fraud, in which
Roman ecclesiastics had not hesitated to mingle themselves. That of
Grace Sowerbutts, instructed by a Catholic priest to impeach her
grandmother of witchcraft, was a very gross fraud.

Such cases were not, however, limited to the ecclesiastics of Rome. We
have already stated that, as extremes usually approach each other, the
Dissenters, in their violent opposition to the Papists, adopted some of
their ideas respecting demoniacs; and we have now to add that they also
claimed, by the vehemence of prayer and the authority of their own
sacred commission, that power of expelling devils which the Church of
Rome pretended to exercise by rites, ceremonies, and relics. The
memorable case of Richard Dugdale, called the Surrey Impostor, was one
of the most remarkable which the Dissenters brought forward. This youth
was supposed to have sold his soul to the devil, on condition of being
made the best dancer in Lancashire, and during his possession played a
number of fantastic tricks, not much different from those exhibited by
expert posture-masters of the present day. This person threw himself
into the hands of the Dissenters, who, in their eagerness, caught at an
opportunity to relieve an afflicted person, whose case the regular
clergy appeared to have neglected. They fixed a committee of their
number, who weekly attended the supposed sufferer, and exercised
themselves in appointed days of humiliation and fasting during the
course of a whole year. All respect for the demon seems to have
abandoned the reverend gentlemen, after they had relieved guard in this
manner for some little time, and they got so regardless of Satan as to
taunt him with the mode in which he executed his promise to teach his
vassal dancing. The following specimen of raillery is worth
commemoration:--"What, Satan! is this the dancing that Richard gave
himself to thee for? &c. Canst thou dance no better? &c. Ransack the old
records of all past times and places in thy memory; canst thou not there
find out some better way of trampling? Pump thine invention dry; cannot
the universal seed-plot of subtile wiles