conversant with the history of diseases and
to inquire more narrowly into the physical causes of things.

A defender of Justice Powell, probably Henry Stebbing, later an eminent
divine but now a young Cambridge master of arts, entered the
controversy. He was not altogether a skeptic about witchcraft in
general, but his purpose was to show that the evidence against Jane
Wenham was weak. The two chief witnesses, Matthew Gilston and Anne
Thorne, were "much disturbed in their Imaginations." There were many
absurdities in their stories. He cited the story of Anne Thorne's mile
run in seven minutes. Who knew that it was seven minutes? There was no
one timing her when she started. How was it known that she went half a
mile? And, supposing these narratives were true, would they prove
anything? The writer took up piece after piece of the evidence in this
way and showed its absurdity. Some of his criticisms are amusing--he
attacked silly testimony in such a solemn way--yet he had, too, his
sense of fun. It had been alleged, he wrote, that the witch's flesh,
when pricked, emitted no blood, but a thin watery matter. "Mr. Chauncy,
it is like, expected that Jane Wenham's Blood shou'd have been as rich
and as florid as that of Anne Thorne's, or of any other Virgin of about
16. He makes no difference, I see, between the Beef and Mutton Regimen,
and that of Turnips and Water-gruel."[7] Moreover, he urges, it is well
known that fright congeals the blood.[8]

We need not go further into this discussion. Mr. Bragge and his friends
re-entered the fray at once, and then another writer proved with
elaborate argument that there had never been such a thing as witchcraft.
The controversy was growing dull, but it had not been without value. It
had been, on the whole, an unconventional discussion of the subject and
had shown very clearly the street-corner point of view. But we must turn
to the more formal treatises. Only three of them need be noticed, those
of Richard Baxter, John Beaumont, and Richard Boulton. All of these
writers had been affected by the accounts of the Salem witchcraft in New
England. The opinions of Glanvill and Matthew Hale had been carried to
America and now were brought back to fortify belief in England. Richard
Baxter was most clearly influenced by the accounts of what had happened
in the New World. The Mathers were his friends and fellow Puritans, and
their testimony was not to be doubted for a minute. But Baxter needed n