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Updated: June 20, 2025
More and Glanvil were faithful sons of the Church; and if the persecution of witches was especially rife during the ascendency of the Puritans, it was because they happened to be in power while there was a reaction against Sadducism. All the convictions were under the statute of James I., who was no Puritan. After the restoration, the reaction was the other way, and Hobbism became the fashion.
They had the countenance of all the great theologians, Catholic as well as Protestant, of the leaders of the Reformation, and in their own day of such men as More and Glanvil and Baxter. I have already said that it was religious antipathy or clerical interest that first made heresy and witchcraft identical and cast them into the same expiatory fire.
London: Printed by I.M. and are to be sold by the booksellers in London. 1677. Sadducismus Triumphatus: or Full and Plain Evidence concerning Witches and Apparitions. In two Parts. The First treating of their Possibility; the Second of their Real Existence. By Joseph Glanvil, late Chaplain in Ordinary to His Majesty, and Fellow of the Royal Society. The third edition.
In 1681, Joseph Glanvil, a divine who in his day was very famous, took up the defense of the dying belief.
He goes on to enumerate them, mentioning Keeble, Sir Matthew Hale, Glanvil, Bernard, Baxter and Burton, concluding the list with "Cotton Mather's Memorable Providences, relating to Witchcraft, printed, anno 1689." Mather transcribes this also into the Magnalia.
Henry More was no Puritan; and his letter to Glanvil, prefixed to the third edition of the "Sadducismus Triumphatus," was written in 1678, only fourteen years before the trials at Salem. Bekker's "Bezauberte Welt" was published in 1693; and in the Preface he speaks of the difficulty of overcoming "the prejudices in which not only ordinary men, but the learned also, are obstinate."
How he despised himself for his weakness he that had boasted in the words of old Joseph Glanvil, until he had almost made them his own words: "'Man doth not yield himself to the angels nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his will."
I can remember when a child the maids Would place me on their lap, as they undrest me, As silly women use, and tell me stories Of Witches Make me read "Glanvil on Witchcraft," And in conclusion show me in the Bible, The old Family-Bible, with the pictures in it, The 'graving of the Witch raising up Samuel, Which so possest my fancy, being a child, That nightly in my dreams an old Hag came And sat upon my pillow.
Glanvil says, that the noises ceased immediately the drummer was sent beyond the seas; but that, some how or other, he managed to return from transportation; "by raising storms and affrighting the seamen, it was said;" when the disturbances were forthwith renewed, and continued at intervals for several years.
When we think back to that group of capable men headed by Bodin, Gerson, and Joseph Glanvil, who turned their ability and learning to the defense of the Witchcraft Delusion, we find the answer to that ever-present response which the confused of this age give when confronted with the incompatabilities in their religion, namely, "Oh, well, more brilliant men than I believe in this delusion."
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