t movement, the
eminent Lutheran jurist and theologian Benedict Carpzov, whose boast was
that he had read the Bible fifty-three times, especially distinguished
himself by his skill in demonstrating the reality of witchcraft, and by
his cruelty in detecting and punishing it. The torture chambers were
set at work more vigorously than ever, and a long line of theological
jurists followed to maintain the system and to extend it.

To argue against it, or even doubt it, was exceedingly dangerous. Even
as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century, when Christian
Thomasius, the greatest and bravest German between Luther and Lessing,
began the efforts which put an end to it in Protestant Germany, he did
not dare at first, bold as he was, to attack it in his own name,
but presented his views as the university thesis of an irresponsible
student.(258)

(258) For Thomasius, see his various bigraphies by Luden and others;
also the treatises on witchcraft by Soldan and others. Manuscript notes
of his lectures, and copies of his earliest books on witchcraft as well
as on other forms of folly, are to be found in the library of Cornell
University.

The same stubborn resistance to the gradual encroachment of the
scientific spirit upon the orthodox doctrine of witchcraft was seen in
Great Britain. Typical as to the attitude both of Scotch and English
Protestants were the theory and practice of King James I, himself the
author of a book on Demonology, and nothing if not a theologian. As to
theory, his treatise on Demonology supported the worst features of the
superstition; as to practice, he ordered the learned and acute work of
Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, one of the best treatises
ever written on the subject, to be burned by the hangman, and he applied
his own knowledge to investigating the causes of the tempests which
beset his bride on her voyage from Denmark. Skilful use of unlimited
torture soon brought these causes to light. A Dr. Fian, while his legs
were crushed in the "boots" and wedges were driven under his finger
nails, confessed that several hundred witches had gone to sea in a sieve
from the port of Leith, and had raised storms and tempests to drive back
the princess.

With the coming in of the Puritans the persecution was even more
largely, systematically, and cruelly developed. The great witch-finder,
Matthew Hopkins, having gone through the county of Suffolk and tested
multitudes of poor