in the witch pamphlets. It is an aspect
of the question which has not been discussed in these pages. Webster
states the facts without exaggeration:[41] "For the most of them are not
credible, by reason of their obscenity and filthiness; for chast ears
would tingle to hear such bawdy and immodest lyes; and what pure and
sober minds would not nauseate and startle to understand such unclean
stories ...? Surely even the impurity of it may be sufficient to
overthrow the credibility of it, especially among Christians." Professor
Burr has said that "it was, indeed, no small part of the evil of the
matter, that it so long debauched the imagination of Christendom."[42]

We have said that Webster denied the existence of witches, that is, of
those who performed supernatural deeds. But, like Scot, he explicitly
refrained from denying the existence of witches _in toto_. He was, in
fact, much more satisfactory than Scot; for he explained just what was
his residuum of belief. He believed that witches were evil-minded
creatures inspired by the Devil, who by the use of poisons and natural
means unknown to most men harmed and killed their fellow-beings.[43] Of
course he would have insisted that a large proportion of all those
charged with being such were mere dealers in fraud or the victims of
false accusation, but the remainder of the cases he would have explained
in this purely natural way.

Now, if this was not scientific rationalism, it was at least
straight-out skepticism as to the supernatural in witchcraft. Moreover
there are cases enough in the annals of witchcraft that look very much
as if poison were used. The drawback of course is that Webster, like
Scot, had not disabused his mind of all superstition. Professor
Kittredge in his discussion of Webster has pointed this out carefully.
Webster believed that the bodies of those that had been murdered bleed
at the touch of the murderer. He believed, too, in a sort of "astral
spirit,"[44] and he seems to have been convinced of the truth of
apparitions.[45] These were phenomena that he believed to be
substantiated by experience. On different grounds, by _a priori_
reasoning from scriptural premises, he arrived at the conclusion that
God makes use of evil angels "as the executioners of his justice to
chasten the godly, and to restrain or destroy the wicked."[46]

This is and was essentially a theological conception. But there was no
small gap between this and the notion that spirits