The following is the language addressed to Queen Elizabeth by Bishop Jewell.  He was one of the most learned persons of his age, and is to this day regarded as the mighty champion of the Church of England, and of the cause of the Reformation in Great Britain.  He was the terrible foe of Roman-Catholic superstition.  “It may please Your Grace,” says he, “to understand that witches and sorcerers within these four last years are marvellously increased within Your Grace’s realm; Your Grace’s subjects pine away even unto the death; their color fadeth, their flesh rotteth, their speech is benumbed, their senses are bereft.  I pray God,” continues the courtly preacher, “they never practise further than upon the subject.”  The petition of the polite prelate appears to have been answered.  The virgin queen resisted inexorably the arts of all charmers, and is thought never to have been bewitched in her life.

It is probable that Spenser, in his “Faerie Queen,” has described with accuracy the witch of the sixteenth century in the following beautiful lines:—­

      “There, in a gloomy hollow glen, she found
      A little cottage built of sticks and weedes,
      In homely wise, and wald with sods around,
      In which a witch did dwell in loathly weedes
      And wilful want, all careless of her needes;
      So choosing solitarie to abide
      Far from all neighbors, that her devilish deedes
      And hellish arts from people she might hide,
    And hurt far off unknowne whomever she envide.”

So prone were some to indulge in the contemplation of the agency of the Devil and his myrmidons, that they strained, violated, and perverted the language of Scripture to make it speak of them.  Thus they insisted that the word “Philistines” meant confederates and subjects of the Devil, and accordingly interpreted the expression, “I will deliver you into the hands of the Philistines,” thus, “I will deliver you into the hands of demons.”

I cannot describe the extent to which the superstition we are reviewing was carried about the close of the sixteenth century in stronger language than the following, from a candid and learned French Roman-Catholic historian:  “So great folly,” says he, “did then oppress the miserable world, that Christians believed greater absurdities than could ever be imposed upon the heathens.”

* * * * *

We have now arrived at the commencement of the seventeenth century, within which the prosecutions for witchcraft took place in Salem.  To show the opinions of the clergy of the English Church at this time, I will quote the following curious canon, made by the convocation in 1603:—­

“That no minister or ministers, without license and direction of the bishop, under his hand and seal obtained, attempt, upon any pretence whatsoever, either of possession or obsession, by fasting and prayer, to cast out any devil or devils, under pain of the imputation of imposture or cozenage, and deposition from the ministry.”  In the same year, licenses were actually granted, as required above, by the Bishop of Chester; and several ministers were duly authorized by him to cast out devils!