Ad gravem hanc impietatem, connivent theologi plerique omnes.  But it is not to be denied that the Presbyterian ecclesiastics who, in Scotland, were often appointed by the Privy Council Commissioners for the trial of witchcraft, evinced a very extraordinary degree of credulity in such cases, and that the temporary superiority of the same sect in England was marked by enormous cruelties of this kind.  To this general error we must impute the misfortune that good men, such as Calamy and Baxter, should have countenanced or defended such proceedings as those of the impudent and cruel wretch called Matthew Hopkins, who, in those unsettled times, when men did what seemed good in their own eyes, assumed the title of Witchfinder General, and, travelling through the counties of Essex, Sussex, Norfolk, and Huntingdon, pretended to discover witches, superintending their examination by the most unheard-of tortures, and compelling forlorn and miserable wretches to admit and confess matters equally absurd and impossible; the issue of which was the forfeiture of their lives.  Before examining these cases more minutely, I will quote Baxter’s own words; for no one can have less desire to wrong a devout and conscientious man, such as that divine most unquestionably was, though borne aside on this occasion by prejudice and credulity.

“The hanging of a great number of witches in 1645 and 1646 is famously known.  Mr. Calamy went along with the judges on the circuit to hear their confessions, and see there was no fraud or wrong done them.  I spoke with many understanding, pious, learned, and credible persons that lived in the counties, and some that went to them in the prisons, and heard their sad confessions.  Among the rest an old reading parson, named Lowis, not far from Framlingham, was one that was hanged, who confessed that he had two imps, and that one of them was always putting him upon doing mischief; and he, being near the sea, as he saw a ship under sail, it moved him to send it to sink the ship; and he consented, and saw the ship sink before them.”  Mr. Baxter passes on to another story of a mother who gave her child an imp like a mole, and told her to keep it in a can near the fire, and she would never want; and more such stuff as nursery-maids tell froward children to keep them quiet.

It is remarkable that in this passage Baxter names the Witchfinder General rather slightly as “one Hopkins,” and without doing him the justice due to one who had discovered more than one hundred witches, and brought them to confessions, which that good man received as indubitable.  Perhaps the learned divine was one of those who believed that the Witchfinder General had cheated the devil out of a certain memorandum-book, in which Satan, for the benefit of his memory certainly, had entered all the witches’ names in England, and that Hopkins availed himself of this record.[57]

[Footnote 57:  This reproach is noticed in a very rare tract, which was bought at Mr. Lort’s sale, by the celebrated collector Mr. Bindley, and is now in the author’s possession.  Its full title is, “The Discovery of Witches, in Answer to several Queries lately delivered to the Judge of Assize for the County of Norfolk; and now published by Matthew Hopkins, Witchfinder, for the Benefit of the whole Kingdom.  Printed for R. Royston, at the Angel, in Inn Lane. 1647.”]