678 
SOllCERY, OR MAGIC. 
condemned for witchcraft, and burnt at the stake. It would be 
ridiculous to attempt a serious refutation of the existence of witches, 
and at present, luckily, the task is unnecessary. In this country, at 
least, the discouragement long given to all suspicion of witchcraft, 
and the repeal of the statutes against that crime, have very much 
weakened, though perhaps they have not entirely eradicated, the per- 
suasion. On the continent, too, it is evidently on the decline ; and 
notwithstanding the exertions of Dr. De Haen, and of the celebrated 
Lavater, we have little doubt that in a short time posterity will won- 
der at the credulity of their ancestors. 
That there ever were witches, is an opinion that cannot for a mo- 
ment be believed by a thinking man. The actions imputed to them 
were either absurd or impossible; the witnesses, by whose evidence 
they were condemned, being either weak enthusiasts or downright 
villains ; and the confessions ascribed to the witches themselves, the 
effects of a disordered imagination, procured by cruel treatment and 
excessive watchings. As to the nightly meetings, demonologists 
themselves have been obliged to confess that they were nothing else 
but uneasy dreams, often produced by soporific compositions. The 
facts which have been brought forward by the advocates for witch- 
craft bear in their front the most evident marks of trick and impos- 
ture ; and this has constantly been found out, whenever these facts 
have been properly examined. The crime of witchcraft, which was 
punished capitally by the law of Moses, was justly punished under the 
Jewish Theocracy, as an act of rebellion against the Divine Majesty, 
in attempting to deceive the people by leading them to trust in de- 
mons and other imaginary beings. 
Sorcery, or Magic. 
Th IS is the power which some persons were formerly supposed to 
possess, of commanding the devil and the infernal spirits, by skill in 
charms and invocations, and of soothing them by fumigation. Sor- 
cery is therefore to be distinguished from witchcraft, it being an art 
which was supposed to be practised, not only by commanding evil 
spirits, but by compact with the devil. As an instance of the power 
of had smells over demons or evil spirits, we may mention the flight 
of the evil spirit mentioned in Tobit, into the remote parts of Egypt, 
produced., it is said, by the smell of the burnt liver of a fish. Lilly 
informs us, that one Evans, having raised a spirit at the request 
of Lord Bothwell and Sir Kenelm Digby, and forgetting a fumigation, 
the spirit, vexed at the disappointment, pulled him without the circle, 
and carried him from his house in the Minories, into a field near 
Battersea Causeway. King James, in his Demonologia, has given a 
very full account of the art of sorcery. 
“Two principal things (says he) cannot well in that errand be wanted ; 
holy water, and some present of a living thing unto him. These 
things being all prepared, circles are made, triangular, quadrangular, 
round, double, or single, according to the form of the apparition they 
crave. When the conjured spirit appears,^which will not be until 
after many ceremonies, Lord’s prayers, and much muttering and inur- 
