John Gaule published an octavo volume in London, in 1646, entitled, “Select Cases of Conscience concerning Witches and Witchcraft.”  He is one of the most exact writers on the subject, and arranges witches in the following classes:  “1.  The diviner, gypsy, or fortune-telling witch; 2.  The astrologian, star-gazing, planetary, prognosticating witch; 3.  The chanting, canting, or calculating witch, who works by signs and numbers; 4.  The venefical, or poisoning witch; 5.  The exorcist, or conjuring witch; 6.  The gastronomic witch; 7.  The magical, speculative, sciential, or arted witch; 8.  The necromancer.”

Besides innumerable writers of this class, who spread out the scholastic learning on the subject, and presented it in a logical and theological form, there were others who treated it in a more popular style, and invested it with the charms of elegant literature.  Henry Hallywell published an octavo in London, in 1681, in which, while the main doctrines of witchcraft as then almost universally received are enforced, an attempt was made to divest it of some of its most repulsive and terrible features.  He gives the following account of the means by which a person may place himself beyond the reach of the power of witchcraft:—­

“It is possible for the soul to arise to such a height, and become so divine, that no witchcraft or evil demons can have any power upon the body.  When the bodily life is too far invigorated and awakened, and draws the intellect, the flower and summity of the soul, into a conspiration with it, then are we subject and obnoxious to magical assaults.  For magic or sorcery, being founded only in this lower or mundane spirit, he that makes it his business to be freed and released from all its blandishments and flattering devocations, and endeavors wholly to withdraw himself from the love of corporeity and too near a sympathy with the frail flesh, he, by it, enkindles such a divine principle as lifts him above the fate of this inferior world, and adorns his mind with such an awful majesty that beats back all enchantments, and makes the infernal fiends tremble at his presence, hating those vigorous beams of light which are so contrary and repugnant to their dark natures.”

The mind of this beautiful writer found encouragement and security in the midst of the diabolical spirits, with whom he believed the world to be infested, in the following views and speculations:—­

“For there is a chain of government that runs down from God, the Supreme Monarch, whose bright and piercing eyes look through all that he has made, to the lowest degree of the creation; and there are presidential angels of empires and kingdoms, and such as under them have the tutelage of private families; and, lastly, every man’s particular guardian genius.  Nor is the inanimate or material world left to blind chance or fortune; but there are, likewise, mighty and potent spirits, to whom is committed the guidance and care of