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A name no greater, however, than that of Glanvill, who was a prominent Anglican. It does not belong in this connection, but it should be stated, that one of the strongest reasons for supposing the Presbyterian party largely responsible for the persecution of witches lies in the large number of witches in Scotland throughout the whole period of that party's ascendancy.
In this it is confessed that he entirely failed; though he wrought a few miracles of healing among rural invalids. To meet this fragrant and miraculous Conformist, Lady Conway invited men worthy of the privilege, such as the Rev. Joseph Glanvill, F.R.S., the author of Sadducismus Triumphatus, his friend Dr. Henry More, the Cambridge Platonist, and other persons interested in mystical studies.
Scot, Discoverie of Witchcraft, 512-514. Glanvill had answered a somewhat similar argument, that the miracles of the Bible were wrought by the agency of the Devil.
Rather, the movement which had its inception back in the days of Reginald Scot and had found in the last days of James I a second impulse, which had been quietly gaining force in the thirties, forties, and fifties, was now under full headway. Common sense was coming into its own. The writer wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to Mr. Greenslet's excellent book on Glanvill.
Parker was one of the most disliked ecclesiastics of his time, but he deserves praise at any rate for his stand as to witchcraft. We do not know the details of his opinions; indeed we have nothing more than the fact that in a correspondence with Glanvill he questioned the opinions of that distinguished protagonist of witchcraft.
We find it again in the celebrated Scotch cases of Rerrick , and of Glenluce, while 'the Rev. Richard Baxter. Glanvill also contributes a narrative of the very same description about the haunting of Mr. Paschal's house in Soper Lane, London: the evidence is that of Mr. Andrew Paschal, Fellow of Queen's College, Cambridge.
He had been furnished the narratives which he used by "honest and honourable friends." Yet, if this scientific investigator could be duped, as he had been at Tedworth, much more those worthy but credulous friends whom he quoted. From a simple assertion that he was presenting facts Glanvill went on to make a plea used often nowadays in another connection by defenders of miracles.
Cotton, Gleanings ... relative to the History of ... Exeter, 152. In the famous Warboys case of 1593 it was the witch's presence that relieved the bewitched of their ailments. York Depositions, 64-67. Glanvill, Sadducismus Triumphatus, pt. ii, 120-121. Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports, Various, I, 120. York Depositions, 69. Ibid., 75-78. See the story of Anne Bodenham.
If this were true, what would become of all those bulwarks of religion furnished by the wonders of witchcraft? It looks very much as if Glanvill had let an inconsistency creep into his philosophy. It was two years after Glanvill's first venture that Meric Casaubon issued his work entitled Of Credulity and Incredulity in Things Natural, Civil, and Divine.
That such transformations as were ascribed to the witches were ridiculous, that contracts between the Devil and agents who were already under his control were absurd, that the Devil would never put himself at the nod and beck of miserable women, and that Providence would not permit His children to be thus buffeted by the evil one: these were the current objections; and to them all Glanvill replied that one positive fact is worth a thousand negative arguments.
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