That he was a scholar is true in more senses than one. In his use of deduction from classical writers he was something of a scholastic, in his willingness to venture into new fields of thought he was a product of the Renaissance, in his thorough use of research he reminds us of a modern investigator. He gives in his book a bibliography of the works consulted by him and one counts over two hundred Latin and thirty English titles. His reading had covered the whole field of superstition. To Cornelius Agrippa and to Wierus (Johann Weyer),[14] who had attacked the tyranny of superstition upon the Continent, he owed an especial debt. He had not, however, borrowed enough from them to impair in any serious way the value of his own original contribution. In respect to law, Scot was less a student than a man of experience. The _Discoverie_, however, bristled with references which indicated a legal way of thinking. He was almost certainly a man who had used the law. Brinsley Nicholson believes that he had been a justice of the peace. In any case he had a lawyer's sense of the value of evidence and a lawyer's way of putting his case. No less practical was his knowledge of theology and scripture. Here he had to meet the baffling problems of the Witch of Endor. The story of the witch who had called up before the frightened King Saul the spirit of the dead Samuel and made him speak, stood as a lion in the path of all opponents of witch persecution. When Scot dared to explain this Old Testament tale as an instance of ventriloquism, and to compare it to the celebrated case of Mildred Norrington, he showed a boldness in interpretation of the Bible far in advance of his contemporaries.