themselves.
Some relevant articles of witchcraft are founded upon
events having no necessary dependence on the means
used by the person accused: as that a man on whom
a woman had laid a grievous sickness by her sorcery
was relieved thereof by her taking him by the hand,
and the moving of her lips; or that a woman came
several times into a house when the doors and
windows were all fast locked and shut at night,
combed her hair the last night, and laid her hand
upon a nurse's breast, upon which a child then
sucking her died within half-an-hour--because
injuries done by witches are not occasioned by
any inherent virtue or efficacy in the means used
by them, but only by the devil's influence; and that
there is no natural cause for the mischief done, is
the reason of ascribing it to witchcraft. Where one
is indicted for being in league with the devil, and
exercising acts of witchcraft, it sufficeth to prove
that the indictee was in confederacy with that evil
spirit, and did such things; but in the trial of one
indicted for bewitching any person, two things are to
be proved, viz. that such a person is bewitched, and
that the indictee is the witch."

Mr. Forbes says that symptoms of witchcraft are: "When
learned and skilful physicians find the patient's
trouble doth not proceed from any bodily distemper or
natural causes; when he is exceedingly tormented at
the saying of prayers and graces, or reading of the
Bible; when in his fits he tells truly many things
past and future, which in an ordinary way he could not
know; and when things are done with respect to him by
some invisible hand working in a manner that cannot be
understood. Other proofs are such as when one cannot
shed tears, and cannot say the Lord's Prayer. And
other presumptions," he proceeds, "are inferred from
the drawing of blood of the suspected person, or the
putting of something under a threshold where he or she
goes in, or under a stool where the suspected person
sits, or causes him or her to come into a room where
those afflicted with witchcraft are, and touch them;
or trying if the suspected person will sink or swim
when put tied into the water; the burning of cakes
wherein are the afflicted person