ithin the breasts of a selected and
separated people, the God of Jacob necessarily showed himself a jealous
God to all who, straying from the path of direct worship of Jehovah, had
recourse to other deities, whether idols or evil spirits, the gods of
the neighbouring heathen. The swerving from their allegiance to the true
Divinity, to the extent of praying to senseless stocks and stones which
could return them no answer, was, by the Jewish law, an act of rebellion
to their own Lord God, and as such most fit to be punished capitally.
Thus the prophets of Baal were deservedly put to death, not on account
of any success which they might obtain by their intercessions and
invocations (which, though enhanced with all their vehemence, to the
extent of cutting and wounding themselves, proved so utterly unavailing
as to incur the ridicule of the prophet), but because they were guilty
of apostasy from the real Deity, while they worshipped, and encouraged
others to worship, the false divinity Baal. The Hebrew witch, therefore,
or she who communicated, or attempted to communicate, with an evil
spirit, was justly punished with death, though her communication with
the spiritual world might either not exist at all, or be of a nature
much less intimate than has been ascribed to the witches of later days;
nor does the existence of this law, against the witches of the Old
Testament sanction, in any respect, the severity of similar enactments
subsequent to the Christian revelation, against a different class of
persons, accused of a very different species of crime.

In another passage, the practices of those persons termed witches in the
Holy Scriptures are again alluded to; and again it is made manifest that
the sorcery or witchcraft of the Old Testament resolves itself into a
trafficking with idols, and asking counsel of false deities; in other
words, into idolatry, which, notwithstanding repeated prohibitions,
examples, and judgments, was still the prevailing crime of the
Israelites. The passage alluded to is in Deuteronomy xviii. 10,
ii--"There shall not be found among you anyone that maketh his son or
his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an
observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a
consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer." Similar
denunciations occur in the nineteenth and twentieth chapters of
Leviticus. In like manner, it is a charge against Manasses (2 Chr