sters who were on the look-out "in
every wild notion or phansie" for a "suggestion of the Devil."[23] But,
like Glanvill, and indeed like the spiritualists of to-day, he insisted
that many cases of fraud do not establish a negative. There is a very
large body of narratives so authentic that to doubt them would be
evidence of infidelity. Casaubon rarely doubted, although he sought to
keep the doubting spirit. It was hard for him not to believe what he had
read or had been told. He was naturally credulous, particularly when he
read the stories of the classical writers. For this attitude of mind he
was hardly to be censured. Criticism was but beginning to be applied to
the tales of Roman and Greek writers. Their works were full of stories
of magic and enchantment, and it was not easy for a seventeenth-century
student to shake himself free from their authority. Nor would Casaubon
have wished to do so. He belonged to the past both by religion and
raining, and he must be reckoned among the upholders of
superstition.[24]

In the next year, 1669, John Wagstaffe, a graduate of Oriel College who
had applied himself to "the study of learning and politics," issued a
little book, _The Question of Witchcraft Debated_. Wagstaffe was a
university man of no reputation. "A little crooked man and of a
despicable presence," he was dubbed by the Oxford wags the little
wizard.[25] Nevertheless he had something to say and he gained no small
hearing. Many of his arguments were purely theological and need not be
repeated. But he made two good points. The notions about witches find
their origin in "heathen fables." This was an undercutting blow at those
who insisted on the belief in witchcraft as an essential of Christian
faith; and Wagstaffe, moreover, made good his case. His second argument
was one which no less needed to be emphasized. Coincidence, he believed,
accounts for a great deal of the inexplicable in witchcraft
narratives.[26]

Within two years the book appeared again, much enlarged, and it was
later translated into German. It was answered by two men--by Casaubon in
the second part of his Credulity[27] and by an author who signed himself
"R. T."[28] Casaubon added nothing new, nor did "R. T.," who threshed
over old theological straw. The same can hardly be said of Lodowick
Muggleton, a seventeenth-century Dowie who would fain have been a
prophet of a new dispensation. He put out an exposition of the Witch of
Endor that was entirely