ny crime, to prove that there is a
possibility of that crime being committed. We have therefore advanced an
important step in our enquiry when we have ascertained that the _witch_
of the Old Testament was not capable of anything beyond the
administration of baleful drugs or the practising of paltry imposture;
in other words, that she did not hold the character ascribed to a modern
sorceress. We have thus removed out of the argument the startling
objection that, in denying the existence of witchcraft, we deny the
possibility of a crime which was declared capital in the Mosaic law, and
are left at full liberty to adopt the opinion, that the more modern
system of witchcraft was a part, and by no means the least gross, of
that mass of errors which appeared among the members of the Christian
Church when their religion, becoming gradually corrupted by the devices
of men and the barbarism of those nations among whom it was spread
showed, a light indeed, but one deeply tinged with the remains of that
very pagan ignorance which its Divine Founder came to dispel.

We will, in a future part of this enquiry, endeavour to show that many
of the particular articles of the popular belief respecting magic and
witchcraft were derived from the opinions which the ancient heathens
entertained as part of their religion. To recommend them, however, they
had principles lying deep in the human mind and heart of all times; the
tendency to belief in supernatural agencies is natural, and indeed seems
connected with and deduced from the invaluable conviction of the
certainty of a future state. Moreover, it is very possible that
particular stories of this class may have seemed undeniable in the dark
ages, though our better instructed period can explain them in a
satisfactory manner by the excited temperament of spectators, or the
influence of delusions produced by derangement of the intellect or
imperfect reports of the external senses. They obtained, however,
universal faith and credit; and the churchmen, either from craft or from
ignorance, favoured the progress of a belief which certainly contributed
in a most powerful manner to extend their own authority over the human
mind.

To pass from the pagans of antiquity--the Mahommedans, though their
profession of faith is exclusively unitarian, were accounted worshippers
of evil spirits, who were supposed to aid them in their continual
warfare against the Christians, or to protect and defend them in t