superstitiously pursued of some
as though no error could be acquainted with custom." May we not
say, indeed, that beliefs are rendered suspect by the very extent
of their currency and acceptance?

But Scot had a greater adversary than even young ignorance or old
custom; and that was King James, who, whilst King of Scotland,
wrote his _Demonologie_ against Scot's ideas (1597). James's mind
was strictly Bible-bound, and for him the disbelief in witches
savoured of Sadduceeism, or the denial of spirits. Yet Scot had
taken care to guard himself, for he wrote: "I deny not that there
are witches or images; but I detest the idolatrous opinions
conceived of them." Nor can James have carefully read Scot, for
tacked on to the _Discoverie_ is a _Discourse of Devils and
Spirits_, which to the simplest Sadducee would have been the
veriest trash. Scot, for instance, says of the devil that "God
created him purposely to destroy. I take his substance to be such
as no man can by learning define, nor by wisdom search out"; a
conclusion surely as wise as the theology is curious. Anyhow it
is the very reverse of Sadduceean. It is said that one of the
first proceedings of James's reign was to have all the copies of
Scot's book burnt that could be seized, and undoubtedly one of
the first of his Acts of Parliament was the statute that made all
the devices of witchcraft punishable with death, as felony,
without benefit of clergy.

But about the burning there is room for doubt. For there is no
English contemporary testimony of the fact. Voet, a professor of
theology in Holland, is its only known contemporary witness; but
he may have assumed the suppression of the book to have been
identical with its burning; a common assumption, but a no less
common mistake. On the other hand, many books undoubtedly were
burnt under James that are not mentioned by name; and the great
rarity of the first edition of the book, and its absence from
some of our principal libraries, support the possibility of its
having been among them.[52:1] Nevertheless, to quote Mr.
D'Israeli: "On the King's arrival in England, having discovered
the numerous impostures and illusions which he had often referred
to as authorities, he grew suspicious of the whole system of
Daemonologie, and at length recanted it entirely. With the same
conscientious zeal James had written the book, the King condemned
it; and the sovereign separated himself from the author, in the
cause of truth;