cester, who, while he urged his clergy to
give up their notions about witches, was inclined to believe that the
Devil still operates in the Gentile world and among the Pagans.[21]
Joseph Addison was equally unwilling to take a radical view. "There
are," he wrote in the _Spectator_ for July 14, 1711, "some opinions in
which a man should stand neuter.... It is with this temper of mind that
I consider the subject of witchcraft.... I endeavour to suspend my
belief till I hear more certain accounts.... I believe in general that
there is, and has been, such a thing as witchcraft; but at the same time
can give no credit to any particular instance of it."[22] The force of
credulity among the country people he fully recognized. His Sir Roger de
Coverley, who was a justice of the peace, and his chaplain were, he
said, too often compelled to put an end to the witch-swimming
experiments of the people.

If this was belief, it was at least a harmless sort. It was almost
exactly the position of James Johnstone, former secretary for Scotland,
who, writing from London to the chancellor of Scotland, declared his
belief in the existence of witches, but called attention to the fact
that the parliaments of France and other judicatories had given up the
trying of them because it was impossible to distinguish possession from
"nature in disorder."[23]

But there were those who were ready to assert a downright negative. The
Marquis of Halifax in the _Political, Moral and Miscellaneous Thoughts
and Reflections_ which he wrote (or, at least, completed) in 1694, noted
"It is a fundamental ... that there were witches--much shaken of
late."[24] Secretary of State Vernon and the Duke of Shrewsbury were
both of them skeptical about the confessions of witches.[25] Sir
Richard Steele lampooned the belief. "Three young ladies of our town,"
he makes his correspondent relate, "were indicted for witchcraft. One by
spirits locked in a bottle and magic herbs drew hundreds of men to her;
the second cut off by night the limbs of dead bodies and, muttering
words, buried them; the third moulded pieces of dough into the shapes of
men, women, and children and then heated them." They "had nothing to say
in their own defence but downright denying the facts, which," the writer
remarks, "is like to avail very little when they come upon their
trials." "The parson," he continued, "will believe nothing of all this;
so that the whole town cries out: 'Shame! that one of hi