re occasionally
prevented from giving evidence in courts of justice against witches,
and even judges were sometimes so overawed by the culprits' looks that
they could not discharge their duties with firmness. A witch could, by
a cast of her evil eye, strike people to the ground, and by the same
visual organ kill cattle. Men and beasts were also bewitched into
madness. To such an extent, we are told, were people tormented by
witches in New England, that the Church appointed days of prayer on
behalf of afflicted persons. And so peculiar were diseases, that the
physicians declared their patients' troubles were preternatural. That
being so, a little ingenuity, strengthened with spite, enabled the
afflicted or the afflicted's friends to trace the disorder to the
malevolence of a certain witch or witches.

In the trial of Susan Martin, in 1692, among other absurdities of
circumstantial evidence relied on, was that her skirts were not
draggled when out on a wet day, while the clothes of other women
travelling with her were bespattered and clotted with mud.

Writers of no mean order, including clergymen, believed in the
existence of witches, ghosts, and goblins, and boldly defended the
proceedings in New England against the victims put to death for their
alleged diabolical deeds through the agency of Satan.

Witchcraft spread alarm over Sweden in the seventeenth century. The
news of particular acts of witchcraft coming to the king's ear, his
Majesty appointed commissioners to inquire into the matter. From a
public register of 1669 and 1670, we ascertain that the commission,
consisting of clergymen and laymen, were instructed to visit Mobra and
inquire into frightful proceedings there. The commissioners met at the
parson's house to hear complaints. Both the minister and people of
fashion complained, with tears in their eyes, of the miserable
condition they were in, from the calamity of witchcraft. They gave the
commissioners strange instances of the devil's tyranny among
them--how, by the help of witches, he had drawn hundreds of children
to him; how he had been seen going in visible shape through the
country; how he had wrought upon the poorer people, by presenting them
with meat and drink. The inhabitants begged earnestly, yet in the most
respectful manner,

"The Lords Commissioners to root out this hellish
crew, that rest and quietness might be regained; and
the rather, because the children who used to