thought they did God good
service by vexing and tormenting them; "and I know," says this humane
and enlightened magistrate, "that this usage was the ground of all
their confession; and albeit, the poor miscreants cannot prove this
usage, the actors in it being the only witnesses, yet the judge should
be jealous of it, as that which did at first elicit the confession, and
for fear of which they dare not retract it." Another author, ["Satan's
Invisible World discovered," by the Rev. G. Sinclair.] also a firm
believer in witchcraft, gives a still more lamentable instance of a
woman who preferred execution as a witch to live on under the
imputation. This woman, who knew that three others were to be strangled
and burned on an early day, sent for the minister of the parish, and
confessed that she had sold her soul to Satan. "Whereupon being called
before the judges, she was condemned to die with the rest. Being
carried forth to the place of execution, she remained silent during the
first, second, and third prayer, and then, perceiving that there
remained no more but to rise and go to the stake, she lifted up her
body, and, with a loud voice, cried out, "Now all you that see me this
day, know that I am now to die as a witch, by my own confession, and I
free all men, especially the ministers and magistrates, of the guilt of
my blood. I take it wholly upon myself. My blood be upon my own head.
And, as I must make answer to the God of heaven presently, I declare I
am as free of witchcraft as any child. But, being delated by a
malicious woman, and put in prison under the name of a witch, disowned
by my husband and friends, and seeing no ground of hope of ever coming
out again, I made up that confession to destroy my own life, being
weary of it, and choosing rather to die than to live." As a proof of
the singular obstinacy and blindness of the believers in witches, it
may be stated, that the minister who relates this story only saw in the
dying speech of the unhappy woman an additional proof that she was a
witch. True indeed is it, that "none are so blind as those who will not
see."

It is time, however, to return to James VI, who is fairly entitled to
share with Pope Innocent, Sprenger, Bodinus, and Matthew Hopkins the
glory or the odium of being at the same time a chief enemy and chief
encourager of witchcraft. Towards the close of the sixteenth century,
many learned men, both on the Continent and in the isles of Britain,
had e