xii. "That if any
person shall use any invocation or conjuration of any evil or wicked
spirit; 2. or shall consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed or
reward any evil or cursed spirit to or for any intent or purpose; 3. or
take up any dead man, woman or child out of the grave,--or the skin,
bone, or any part of the dead person, to be employed or used in any
manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment; 4. or shall use,
practise or exercise any sort of witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or
enchantment; 5. whereby any person shall be destroyed, killed, wasted,
consumed, pined, or lamed in any part of the body; 6. That every such
person being convicted shall suffer death." This law was repealed in our
own time.
Thus, in the time of Shakespeare, was the doctrine of witchcraft at once
established by law and by the fashion, and it became not only unpolite,
but criminal, to doubt it; and as prodigies are always seen in
proportion as they are expected, witches were every day discovered, and
multiplied as fast in some places, that bishop Hall mentions a village
in Lancashire, where their number was greater than that of the houses.
The jesuits and sectaries took advantage of this universal error, and
endeavoured to promote the interest of their parties by pretended cures
of persons afflicted by evil spirits; but they were detected and exposed
by the clergy of the established church.
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