482 THE SUFFOLK WITCHES. 



us that 7000 witches and wizards were said to have been 

 burnt at Treves ; 600 by a single bishop of Bamberg ; 800 

 in a single year in the bishopric of Wurtzburg ; 1000 in the 

 province of Como ; 400 at Toulouse at a single execution ; 

 500 at Geneva in three months; 48 at Constance; 80 at 

 the town of Valery, in Savoy ; and 70 in Sweden. A judge 

 named Remy boasted, that he himself had been the means 

 of putting to death in 16 years 800 witches. Well on to 

 our own time, powerful authority could be cited favouring 

 the existence of witches. ' To give up witchcraft,' said John 

 Wesley, ' is to give up the Bible.' ' From which,' said' Dr. 

 Colenso, in a lecture delivered by him at the Marylebone 

 Literary Institution, May 23d, 1865, 'from which also follow 

 a number of similar conclusions, viz. that to give up the date 

 of the creation, the account of the rib turned into a woman, 

 the stories of the Fall and of the Deluge, of the speaking ass, 

 of the sun and moon standing still; to give up any one of 

 these as a historical fact, is to give up the Bible; or rather, as 

 some have said, to give up our nearest and dearest conso- 

 lations, and all our hopes for time and eternity.' 



In Sir Matthew Hale's time the belief in witchcraft stood 

 in the same relation to churchmen and philosophers that 

 biblical literalism does now. It was the correct, the orthodox 

 thing to believe in witchcraft then, as it is the correct, the 

 orthodox thing now, to believe in scriptural literalism. 



Whilst Sir Matthew Hale flourished, there were many 

 among philosophers who not only did not believe in witches, 

 but spoke and wrote as far as they durst in deprecation of 

 the judicial cruelties practised on the unfortunate victims of 

 such belief. The elder Disraeli in his disquisitions praises 

 old Reginald Scot for the sensible and humane part he took ; 

 but he begs the reader to remark, that Scot does not dare to 

 deny the existence of witches. 



Dr. Gotta, who lived later than Scot, also took the free- 

 thinking side. The doctor evidently wrote under some re- 



