acquitting her
judges and jury of her blood, in respect of the strong delusion under
which they laboured.

Although the ministers, whose opinions were but two strongly on this
head in correspondence with the prevailing superstitions of the people,
nourished in the early system of church government a considerable desire
to secure their own immunities and privileges as a national church,
which failed not at last to be brought into contact with the king's
prerogative; yet in the earlier part of his reign, James, when freed
from the influence of such a favourite as the profligate Stuart, Earl of
Arran, was in his personal qualities rather acceptable to the clergy of
his kingdom and period. At his departing from Scotland on his romantic
expedition to bring home a consort from Denmark, he very politically
recommended to the clergy to contribute all that lay in their power to
assist the civil magistrates, and preserve the public peace of the
kingdom. The king after his return acknowledged with many thanks the
care which the clergy had bestowed in this particular. Nor were they
slack in assuming the merit to themselves, for they often reminded him
in their future discords that his kingdom had never been so quiet as
during his voyage to Denmark, when the clergy were in a great measure
intrusted with the charge of the public government.

During the halcyon period of union between kirk and king their hearty
agreement on the subject of witchcraft failed not to heat the fires
against the persons suspected of such iniquity. The clergy considered
that the Roman Catholics, their principal enemies, were equally devoted
to the devil, the mass, and the witches, which in their opinion were
mutually associated together, and natural allies in the great cause of
mischief. On the other hand, the pedantic sovereign having exercised his
learning and ingenuity in the Demonologia, considered the execution of
every witch who was burnt as a necessary conclusion of his own royal
syllogisms. The juries were also afraid of the consequences of acquittal
to themselves, being liable to suffer under an assize of error should
they be thought to have been unjustly merciful; and as the witches tried
were personally as insignificant as the charge itself was odious, there
was no restraint whatever upon those in whose hands their fate lay, and
there seldom wanted some such confession as we have often mentioned, or
such evidence as that collected by the ministe