o
convincing. He had long preached and written about the danger of
witches. In a sermon on the Holy Ghost in the fifties he had shown a
wide acquaintance with foreign works on demonology.[9] In a _Defence of
the Christian Religion_,[10] written several years later, he recognized
that the malice of the accusers and the melancholy of the accused were
responsible for some cases, but such cases were exceptions. If any one
doubted that there were _bona fide_ cases, let him talk to the judges
and ministers yet living in Suffolk, Norfolk, and Essex. They could tell
him of many of the confessions made in the Hopkins period. Baxter had
not only talked on witchcraft with Puritan ministers, but had
corresponded as well with Glanvill, with whom, although Glanvill was an
Anglican, he seems to have been on very friendly terms.[11] Nor is it
likely that in the many conversations he held with his neighbor, Sir
Matthew Hale,[12] the evidence from witchcraft for a spiritual world had
been neglected. The subject must have come up in his conversations with
another friend, Robert Boyle.[13] Boyle's interest in such matters was
of course a scientific one. Baxter, like Glanvill, looked at them from a
religious point of view. In the classic _Saint's Everlasting Rest_ he
drew his fourth argument for the future happiness and misery of man
from the Devil's compact with witches.[14] To this point he reverted in
his _Dying Thoughts_. His _Certainty of the World of Spirits_, in which
he took up the subject of witchcraft in more detail, was written but a
few months before his death. "When God first awakened me, to think with
preparing seriousness of my Condition after Death, I had not any
observed Doubts of the Reality of Spirits.... But, when God had given me
peace of Conscience, Satan Assaulted me with those worse Temptations....
I found that my Faith of Supernatural Revelation must be more than a
Believing Man and that if it had not a firm foundation, ... even sure
Evidence of Verity, ... it was not like ... to make my Death to be safe
and comfortable.... I tell the Reader, that he may see why I have taken
this Subject as so necessary, why I am ending my Life with the
publication of these Historical Letters and Collections, which I dare
say have such Evidence as will leave every Sadduce that readeth them,
either convinced, or utterly without excuse."[15]

By the "Collection" he meant, of course, the narratives brought out in
his _Certainty of the