We have called John Webster's a great name in the literature of our subject, and we have given our reasons for so thinking. Yet it would be a mistake to suppose that he created any such sensation in his time as did his arch-opponent, Glanvill. His work never went into a second edition. There are but few references to it in the writings of the time, and those are in works devoted to the defence of the belief. Benjamin Camfield, a Leicestershire rector, wrote an unimportant book on _Angels and their Ministries_,[48] and in an appendix assailed Webster. Joseph Glanvill turned fiercely upon him with new proofs of what he called facts, and bequeathed the work at his death to Henry More, who in the several following editions of the _Sadducismus Triumphatus_ attacked him with no little bitterness. We may skip over three lesser writers on witchcraft. During the early eighties John Brinley, Henry Hallywell, and Richard Bovet launched their little boats into the sea of controversy. Brinley was a bold plagiarist of Bernard, Hallywell a logical but dull reasoner from the Bible, Bovet a weakened solution of Glanvill.[49] We turn now from the special literature of witchcraft to a sketch of the incidental evidences of opinion. Of these we have a larger body than ever before, too large indeed to handle in detail. It would be idle to quote from the chap-books on witch episodes their _raisons d'être_. It all comes to this: they were written to confute disbelievers. They refer slightingly and even bitterly to those who oppose belief, not however without admitting their numbers and influence. It will be more to our purpose to examine the opinions of men as they uttered them on the bench, in the pulpit, and in the other walks of practical life. We have already had occasion to learn what the judges were thinking. We listened to Matthew Hale while he uttered the pronouncement that was heard all over England and even in the North American colonies. The existence of witches, he affirmed solemnly, is proved by Scripture and by the universality of laws against them. Justice Rainsford in the following years and Justice Raymond about twenty years later seem to have taken Hale's view of the matter. On the other side were to be reckoned Sir John Reresby and Francis North. Neither of them was quite outspoken, fearing the rage of the people and the charge of atheism. Both sought to save the victims of persecution, but rather by exposing the deceptions of the accusers than by denying witchcraft itself. From the vast number of acquittals in the seventies and the sudden dropping off in the number of witch trials in the eighties we know that there must have been many other judges who were acquitting witches or quietly ignoring the charges against them. Doubtless Kelyng, who, as a spectator at Bury, had shown his skepticism as to the accusations, had when he later became a chief justice been one of those who refused to condemn witches.