rationalistic.[29] Witches, he maintained, had
no spirits but their own wicked imaginations. Saul was simply the dupe
of a woman pretender.

An antidote to this serious literature may be mentioned in passing.
There was published at London, in 1673,[30] _A Pleasant Treatise of
Witches_, in which a delightful prospect was opened to the reader: "You
shall find nothing here of those Vulgar, Fabulous, and Idle Tales that
are not worth the lending an ear to, nor of those hideous Sawcer-eyed
and Cloven-Footed Divels, that Grandmas affright their children withal,
but only the pleasant and well grounded discourses of the Learned as an
object adequate to thy wise understanding." An outline was offered, but
it was nothing more than a thread upon which to hang good stories. They
were tales of a distant past. There were witches once, of course there
were, but that was in the good old days. Such was the author's
implication.

Alas that such light treatment was so rare! The subject was, in the
minds of most, not one for laughter. It called for serious
consideration. That point of view came to its own again in _The Doctrine
of Devils proved to be the grand apostacy of these later Times_.[31] The
Dutch translator of this book tells us that it was written by a New
England clergyman.[32] If that be true, the writer must have been one of
the least provincial New Englanders of his century, for he evinces a
remarkable knowledge of the witch alarms and witch discussions in
England. Some of his opinions betray the influence of Scot, as for
instance his interpretation of Christ's casting out of devils.[33] The
term "having a devil" was but a phrase for one distracted. The author
made, however, some new points. He believed that the importance of the
New Testament miracles would be overshadowed by the greater miracles
wrought by the Devil.[34] A more telling argument, at least to a modern
reader, was that the solidarity of society would be endangered by a
belief that made every man afraid of his neighbor.[35] The writer
commends Wagstaffe's work, and writes of Casaubon, "If any one could
possibly have bewitcht me into the Belief of Witchcraft, this reverend
person, of all others, was most like to have done it." He decries the
"proletarian Rabble," and "the great Philosophers" (More and Glanvill,
doubtless), who call themselves Christians and yet hold "an Opinion that
Butchers up Men and Women without Fear or Witt, Sense or Reason, Care or
Cons