an be no
doubt that he would have taken the same ground about miracles,[10] a
position that must have alarmed many of his contemporaries.

In spite of his emphasis of fact, Glanvill was as ready as any to enter
into a theological disquisition. Into those rarefied regions of thought
we shall not follow him. It will perhaps not be out of order, however,
to note two or three points that were thoroughly typical of his
reasoning. To the contention that, if a wicked spirit could work harm by
the use of a witch, it should be able to do so without any intermediary
and so to harass all of mankind all of the time, he answered that the
designs of demons are levelled at the soul and can in consequence best
be carried on in secret.[11] To the argument that when one considers the
"vileness of men" one would expect that the evil spirits would practise
their arts not on a few but on a great many, he replied that men are not
liable to be troubled by them till they have forfeited the "tutelary
care and oversight of the better spirits," and, furthermore, spirits
find it difficult to assume such shapes as are necessary for "their
Correspondencie with Witches." It is a hard thing for spirits "to force
their thin and tenuious bodies into a visible consistence.... For, in
this Action, their Bodies must needs be exceedingly compress'd."[12] To
the objection that the belief in evil beings makes it plausible that the
miracles of the Bible were wrought by the agency of devils,[13] he
replied that the miracles of the Gospel are notoriously contrary to the
tendency, aims, and interests of the kingdom of darkness.[14] The
suggestion that witches would not renounce eternal happiness for short
and trivial pleasures here,[15] he silenced by saying that "Mankind acts
sometimes to prodigious degrees of brutishness."

It is needless to go further in quoting his arguments. Doubtless both
questions and answers seem quibbles to the present-day reader, but the
force of Glanvill's replies from the point of view of his contemporaries
must not be underestimated. He was indeed the first defender of
witchcraft who in any reasoned manner tried to clear up the problems
proposed by the opposition. His answers were without question the best
that could be given.

It is easy for us to forget the theological background of
seventeenth-century English thought. Given a personal Devil who is
constantly intriguing against the kingdom of God (and who would then
have dared t