"grave proceedings of many learned judges."
But it was when he found that two "beneficed Ministers," Casaubon and
Glanvill, had "afresh espoused so bad a cause" that he had been impelled
to review their grounds.

As the reader may already have guessed, Webster, like so many of his
predecessors, dealt largely in theological and scriptural arguments. It
was along this line, indeed, that he made his most important
contribution to the controversy then going on. Glanvill had urged that
disbelief in witchcraft was but one step in the path to atheism. No
witches, no spirits, no immortality, no God, were the sequences of
Glanvill's reasoning. In answer Webster urged that the denial of the
existence of witches--_i. e._, of creatures endued with power from the
Devil to perform supernatural wonders--had nothing to do with the
existence of angels or spirits. We must rely upon other grounds for a
belief in the spirit world. Stories of apparitions are no proof, because
we cannot be sure that those apparitions are made or caused by spirits.
We have no certain ground for believing in a spirit world but the
testimony of Scripture.[39]

But if we grant the existence of spirits--to modernize the form of
Webster's argument--we do not thereby prove the existence of witches.
The New Testament tells of various sorts of "deceiving Imposters,
Diviners, or Witches," but amongst them all "there were none that had
made a visible league with the Devil." There was no mention of
transformation into cats, dogs, or wolves.[40] It is hard to see how the
most literal students of the Scriptures could have evaded this argument.
The Scriptures said a great deal about the Devil, about demoniacs, and
about witches and magicians--whatever they might mean by those terms.
Why did they not speak at all of the compacts between the Devil and
witches? Why did they leave out the very essential of the witch-monger's
lore?

All this needed to be urged at a time when the advocates of witchcraft
were crying "Wolf! wolf!" to the Christian people of England. In other
words, Webster was rendering it possible for the purely orthodox to give
up what Glanvill had called a bulwark of religion and still to cling to
their orthodoxy.

It is much to the credit of Webster that he spoke out plainly concerning
the obscenity of what was extorted from the witches. No one who has not
read for himself can have any notion of the vile character of the
charges and confessions embodied