as it did then
astonish all the spectators, none of which could restrain themselves
from tears; so it may be to all a demonstration of Satan's subtlety,
whose design is still to destroy all, partly by tempting many to
presumption, and some others to despair. These things to be of truth,
are attested by an eye and ear witness who is yet alive, a faithful
minister of the gospel."[71] It is strange the inference does not seem
to have been deduced, that as one woman out of very despair renounced
her own life, the same might have been the case in many other instances,
wherein the confessions of the accused constituted the principal if not
sole evidence of the guilt.

[Footnote 71: Sinclair's "Satan's Invisible World Discovered," p. 43.]

One celebrated mode of detecting witches and torturing them at the same
time, to draw forth confession, was by running pins into their body, on
pretence of discovering the devil's stigma, or mark, which was said to
be inflicted by him upon all his vassals, and to be insensible to pain.
This species of search, the practice of the infamous Hopkins, was in
Scotland reduced to a trade; and the young witchfinder was allowed to
torture the accused party, as if in exercise of a lawful calling,
although Sir George Mackenzie stigmatises it as a horrid imposture. I
observe in the Collections of Mr. Pitcairn, that at the trial of Janet
Peaston of Dalkeith the magistrates and ministers of that market town
caused John Kincaid of Tranent, the common pricker, to exercise his
craft upon her, "who found two marks of what he called the devil's
making, and which appeared indeed to be so, for she could not feel the
pin when it was put into either of the said marks, nor did they (the
marks) bleed when they were taken out again; and when she was asked
where she thought the pins were put in, she pointed to a part of her
body distant from the real place. They were pins of three inches in
length."

Besides the fact that the persons of old people especially sometimes
contain spots void of sensibility, there is also room to believe that
the professed prickers used a pin the point or lower part of which was,
on being pressed down, sheathed in the upper, which was hollow for the
purpose, and that which appeared to enter the body did not pierce it at
all. But, were it worth while to dwell on a subject so ridiculous, we
might recollect that in so terrible an agony of shame as is likely to
convulse a human being under s