purposes to pass.'[45]

[44] _Discoverie of Witchcraft_, book xii. 21.--We shall
have occasion hereafter to notice this great opponent of the
devil's regime in the sixteenth century. We may be inclined
to consider a more probable reason--that spirits, being in
the general belief (so Adam infers that God had 'peopled
highest heaven with spirits masculine') of the masculine
gender, the recipients of their inspiration are naturally of
the other sex: evil spirits could propagate their human or
half-human agents with least suspicion and in the most
natural way.

[45] _Discoverie_, i. 3, 6.--Old women, however, may be
negatively useful. One of the writers on the subject (John
Nider) recommends them to young men since '_Vetularum
aspectus et colloquia amorem excutiunt_.'

Dr. Glanvil, who wrote in the latter half of the seventeenth
century, and is bitterly opposed to the 'Witch-Advocate' and his
followers, defends the capabilities of hags and the like for
serving the demons. He conjectures, 'Peradventure 'tis one of
the great designs, as 'tis certainly the interest, of those
wicked agents and machinators industriously to hide from us their
influences and ways of acting, and to work as near as 'tis
possible _incognito_; upon which supposal it is easy to conceive
a reason why they most commonly work by and upon the weak and the
ignorant, who can make no cunning observations or tell credible
tales to detect their artifice.'[46] The act of bewitching is
defined to be 'a supernatural work contrived between a corporal
old woman and a spiritual devil' ('Discoverie,' vi. 2). The
method of initiation is, according to a writer on the subject, as
follows: A decrepit, superannuated, old woman is tempted by a man
in black to sign a contract to become his, both soul and body. On
the conclusion of the agreement (about which there was much
cheating and haggling), he gives her a piece of money, and causes
her to write her name and make her mark on a slip of parchment
with her own blood. Sometimes on this occasion also the witch
uses the ceremony of putting one hand to the sole of her foot and
the other to the crown of her head. On departing he delivers to
her an imp or familiar. The familiar, in shape of a cat, a mole,
miller-fly, or some other insect or animal, at stated times of
the day sucks her blood through teats in different parts of her
body.[47] If, however, the proper vulgar witch is an old woman,
t