recognized? The best
assurance on such matters, Cotta answered, came "whensoever ... the
Physicion shall truely discover a manifest transcending power."[19] In
other words, the Northampton physician believed that his own profession
could best determine these vexed matters. One who has seen the sorry
part played by the physicians up to this time can hardly believe that
their judgment on this point was saner than that of men in other
professions. It may even be questioned if they were more to be depended
upon than the so superstitious clergy.

In the same year as Cotta's second book, Alexander Roberts, "minister of
God's word at King's Lynn" in Norfolk, brought out _A Treatise of
Witchcraft_ as a sort of introduction to his account of the trial of
Mary Smith of that town and as a justification of her punishment. The
work is merely a restatement of the conventional theology of that time
as applied to witches, exactly such a presentation of it as was to be
expected from an up-country parson who had read Reginald Scot, and could
wield the Scripture against him.[20]

The following year saw the publication of a work equally theological,
_The Mystery of Witchcraft_, by the Reverend Thomas Cooper, who felt
that his part in discovering "the practise of Anti-Christ in that
hellish Plot of the Gunpowder-treason" enabled him to bring to light
other operations of the Devil. He had indeed some experience in this
work,[21] as well as some acquaintance with the writers on the subject.
But he adds nothing to the discussion unless it be the coupling of the
disbelief in witchcraft with the "Atheisme and Irreligion that overflows
the land." Five years later the book was brought out again under another
title, _Sathan transformed into an Angell of Light, ... [ex]emplified
specially in the Doctrine of Witchcraft_.

In the account of the trials for witchcraft in the reign of James I the
divorce case of the Countess of Essex was purposely omitted, because in
it the question of witchcraft was after all a subordinate matter. In the
history of opinion, however, the views about witchcraft expressed by the
court that passed upon the divorce can by no means be ignored. It is not
worth while to rehearse the malodorous details of that singular affair.
The petitioner for divorce made the claim that her husband was unable to
consummate the marriage with her and left it to be inferred that he was
bewitched. It will be remembered that King James, anxious