The curious matter of demoniacal possession called forth a great many books and pamphlets treating of its nature, history, methods of repression, and the dispossession of those under witches' spells. John Wier, a physician, wrote a treatise, in the last half of the sixteenth century, in which he described witches as but exaggerated types of the perversity which is found in women generally. In the easy subjection of the sex to malign influences he saw a proof of its greater moral weakness.
The seventeenth century was as prolific of cases of persecution of women for demon possession as any of those of the less enlightened period of mediævalism. In 1568, in a sermon before Queen Elizabeth, Bishop Jewell said: "It may please your Grace to understand that witches and sorcerers within these few last years are marvellously increased within your Grace's realm. Your Grace's subjects pine away even unto the death, their colour fadeth, their flesh rotteth, their speech is benumbed, their knees are bereft. I pray God they never practise _further than upon the subjects_." The Bull of Innocent VIII., in 1484, did not do more for the furtherance of persecution of the unfortunates who came under suspicion of using magic than did the declaration of Luther: "I should have no compassion on these witches; I would burn all of them." As upon the continent, so in England reformers took up the persecution of witches with keen zest, as a contest with the powers of darkness working for the destruction of the peace and health of humanity in an open and flagrant manner. The same spirit of espionage which was one of the baleful effects of the outbreaks of persecution during the Middle Ages attended the persecution of witchcraft in England during the seventeenth century. To save themselves from suspicion, persons informed against others, and even members of a household would give evidence leading to the trial of those of their own kin. When an unfortunate fell under suspicion,--which too frequently meant the animosity of an evil-disposed person,--the minister would denounce her by name from the pulpit, prohibit his parishioners from harboring her or in any way giving her succor, and exhort them to give evidence against her. The Puritans had conned well the story of the Witch of Endor, and, with their tendency to reproduce the Old Testament spirit, felt that the existence of witches was an abomination in the sight of the Lord, which would bring divine wrath upon the community that sheltered them unless the sin were purged from it by their death. In this they were but the inheritors of the faith of the Church from the early ages, and are liable to no more serious censure for their persecution of witches than that which they merit for the vindictive and splenetic spirit and the satisfaction in barbarities and cruelty which too often they evinced.