In 1599, Samuel Harsnett, Archbishop of York, wrote a work, published in London, to expose certain persons who pretended to have the power of casting out devils, and detecting their “deceitful trade.”  This writer was among the first to bring the power of bold satire and open denunciation to bear against the superstitions of demonology.  He thus describes the motives and the methods of such impostors:—­

“Out of these,” saith he, “is shaped us the true idea of a witch,—­an old, weather-beaten crone, having her chin and her knees meeting for age, walking like a bow, leaning on a staff; hollow-eyed, untoothed, furrowed on her face, having her limbs trembling with the palsy, going mumbling in the streets; one that hath forgotten her Pater-noster, and yet hath a shrewd tongue to call a drab a drab.  If she hath learned of an old wife, in a chimney-end, Pax, Max, Fax, for a spell, or can say Sir John Grantham’s curse for the miller’s eels, ’All ye that have stolen the miller’s eels, Laudate dominum de coelis:  and all they that have consented thereto, Benedicamus domino:’  why then, beware! look about you, my neighbors.  If any of you have a sheep sick of the giddies, or a hog of the mumps, or a horse of the staggers, or a knavish boy of the school, or an idle girl of the wheel, or a young drab of the sullens, and hath not fat enough for her porridge, or butter enough for her bread, and she hath a little help of the epilepsy or cramp, to teach her to roll her eyes, wry her mouth, gnash her teeth, startle with her body, hold her arms and hands stiff, &c.; and then, when an old Mother Nobs hath by chance called her an idle young housewife, or bid the Devil scratch her, then no doubt but Mother Nobs is the witch, and the young girl is owl blasted, &c.  They that have their brains baited and their fancies distempered with the imaginations and apprehensions of witches, conjurers, and fairies, and all that lymphatic chimera, I find to be marshalled in one of these five ranks:  children, fools, women, cowards, sick or black melancholic discomposed wits.”

In 1669, a work was published in London with the following title:  “The Question of Witchcraft Debated; or, a Discourse against their Opinions that affirm Witches.”  It is a work of great merit, and would do honor to a scholar and logician of the present day.  The author was John Wagstaffe, of Oxford University:  he is described as a crooked, shrivelled, little man, of a most despicable appearance.  This circumstance, together with his writings against the popular belief in witchcraft, led his academical associates to accuse him, some of them in sport, but others with grave suspicion, of being a wizard.  Wood, the historian of Oxford, says that “he died in a manner distracted, occasioned by a deep conceit of his own parts, and by a continual bibbing of strong and high-tasted liquors.”  But poor Wagstaffe was assailed by something more than private raillery and slander.  His heretical sentiments exposed