[Footnote 19:  In the intervening period between the publication of Soot’s work and the advertisement of Filmer, several books came out on the subject of witchcraft.  Amongst them it is right to notice “A Dialogue concerning Witches and Witchcraft, by George Giffard, Minister of God’s Word in Maldon,” 1593, 4to.  This tract, which has been reprinted by the Percy Society, is not free from the leading fallacies which infected the reasonings of almost all the writers on witchcraft.  It is, nevertheless, exceedingly entertaining, and well deserves a perusal, if only as transmitting to us, in their full freshness, the racy colloquialisms of the age of Elizabeth.  It is to be hoped that the other works of Giffard, all of which are deserving of attention, independently of their theological interest, as specimens of pure and sterling English, may appear in a collected form.  The next tract requiring notice is “The Trial of Witchcraft, by John Cotta,” 1616, 4to, of which a second and enlarged edition was published in 1624.  Cotta, who was a physician of great eminence and experience, residing at Northampton, has supplied in this very able, learned, and vigorous treatise, a groundwork which, if pursued to its just results, for he writes very cautiously and guardedly, and rather hints at his conclusions than follows them out, would have sufficed to have overthrown many of the positions of the supporters of the system of witchcraft.  His work has a strong scholastic tinge, and is not without occasional obscurity; and on these accounts probably produced no very extensive impression at the time.  He wrote two other tracts—­1.  “Discovery of the Dangers of ignorant practisers of Physick in England,” 1612, 4to; 2.  “Cotta contra Antonium, or An Ant-Anthony,” Oxford, 1623, 4to; the latter of which, a keen satire against the chymists’ aurum potabile, is exceedingly rare.  Both are intrinsically valuable and interesting, and written with great vigour of style, and are full of curious illustrations derived from his extensive medical practice.  I cannot conclude this note without adverting to Gaule’s amusing little work, ("Select Cases of Conscience touching Witches and Witchcraft, by John Gaule, Preacher of the Word at Great Haughton, in the county of Huntingdon,” 1646, 24mo.) which gives us all the casuistry applicable to witchcraft.  We can almost forgive Gaule’s fundamental errors on the general question, for the courage and spirit with which he battled with the villainous witchfinder, Hopkins, who wanted sorely to make an example of him, to the terror of all gainsayers of the sovereign power of this examiner-general of witches.  Gaule proved himself to be an overmatch for the itinerating inquisitor, and so effectually attacked, battled with, and exposed him, as to render him quite harmless in future.  The minister of Great Haughton was made of different metal to the “old reading parson Lewis,” or Lowes, to whose fate Baxter refers with such nonchalance.  As the only clergyman of the Church of England, that I am aware of, who was executed for witchcraft, Lewis’s case is sufficiently interesting to merit some notice.  Stearne’s (vide his Confirmation of Witchcraft, p. 23,) account of it, which I have not seen quoted before, is as follows:—­