He thus expostulates with some of the better class who were eager for the prosecution:—­“(1) What single fact of sorcery did this Jane Wenham do?  What charm did she use, or what act of witchcraft could you prove upon her?  Laws are against evil actions that can be proved to be of the person’s doing.  What single fact that was against the statute could you fix upon her?  I ask (2) Did she so much as speak an imprudent word, or do an immoral action, that you could put into the narrative of her case?  When she was denied a few turnips, she laid them down very submissively; when she was called witch and bitch, she only took the proper means for the vindication of her good name; when she saw this storm coming upon her she locked herself in her own house and tried to keep herself out of your cruel hands; when her door was broken open, and you gave way to that barbarous usage that she met with, she protested her innocence, fell upon her knees, and begged she might not go to gaol, and, in her innocent simplicity, would have let you swim her; and at her trial she declared herself a clear woman.  This was her behaviour.  And what could any of us have done better, excepting in that case where she complied with you too much, and offered to let you swim her?

“(3) When you used the meanest of paganish and popish superstitions—­when you scratched and mangled and ran pins into her flesh, and used that ridiculous trial of the bottle, &c.—­whom did you consult, and from whom did you expect your answers?  Who was your father? and into whose hands did you put yourselves? and (if the true sense of the statute had been turned upon you) which way would you have defended yourselves? (4) Durst you have used her in this manner if she had been rich? and doth not her poverty increase rather than lessen your guilt in what you did?

“And therefore, instead of closing your book with a liberavimus animas nostras, and reflecting upon the court, I ask you (5) Whether you have not more reason to give God thanks that you met with a wise judge, and a sensible gentleman, who kept you from shedding innocent blood, and reviving the meanest and cruelest of all superstitions amongst us?"[55]

[Footnote 55:  Hutchison’s “Essay on Witchcraft,” p. 166.]

But although individuals of the English Church might on some occasions be justly accused of falling into lamentable errors on a subject where error was so general, it was not an usual point of their professional character; and it must be admitted that the most severe of the laws against witchcraft originated with a Scottish King of England, and that the only extensive persecution following that statute occurred during the time of the Civil Wars, when the Calvinists obtained for a short period a predominating influence in the councils of Parliament.