In particular, they everywhere turned with a new zest to the burning of witches, the old superstitions being frightfully reinforced by the newly current doctrine of the Pentateuch. No argument--though it was tried by some--could countervail the testimony of the Sacred Book against witchcraft, and its decree of the death penalty. As the frenzy of witch-burning was equally intense in the Catholic countries in the Lutheran period, the mania may be traced in the first instance to the Inquisition, which made a specialty of such action. But it is clear that the new study of the Bible in Protestant countries gave it as strong a stimulus. In England and Scotland, for instance, there had been very little witch-burning in the Catholic period; and the first English law for the purpose was passed under Henry VIII, in 1541; but in both countries the madness thenceforth went step for step with the growth of Puritanism; and the amount of insane cruelty caused by it is past human power to realize. If the merits of Christianity as a civilizing force are to be in any way determined by its influence in working bloodshed, its record in the matter of witch-slaying alone would serve to place it, in that regard, lower than any other creed. Classic paganism knew no such infamy. All the horrors which Christians are wont to cite as typically heathen, the legends of Juggernaut and the pictures of Dahomey, dwindle in moral bulk beside the dreadful sum of evil set forth in the past of their own faith. For the Protestant lands burned at least as many hapless women for the imaginary crime of witchcraft as the Inquisition burned men for heresy. Most of the victims were women whose sole offence had been to have few friends. To be left a childless widow or an old maid was to run the risk of impeachment as a witch by any superstitious or malevolent neighbour; and the danger seems to have been actually doubled when such a woman gave herself to the work of rustic medicine-making in a spirit of goodwill to her kind. Lonely women who suffered in their minds from their very loneliness were almost sure to be condemned; and in cases where partial insanity did not lead them to admit the insane charges against them, torture easily attained the same end. But the mere repute for scientific studies could bring a man to his death; and in Scotland a physician was horribly tortured and at last burned on the charge of having raised the storm which endangered the life of King James on his return voyage from Denmark with his bride.