The Effects of the Witch Superstition are to be traced in the Laws of a Kingdom--Usually punished in England as a Crime connected with Politics--Attempt at Murder for Witchcraft not in itself Capital--Trials of Persons of Rank for Witchcraft, connected with State Crimes--Statutes of Henry VIII--How Witchcraft was regarded by the three Leading Sects of Religion in the Sixteenth Century; first, by the Catholics; second, by the Calvinists; third, by the Church of England and Lutherans--Impostures unwarily countenanced by individual Catholic Priests, and also by some Puritanic Clergymen--Statute of 1562, and some cases upon it--Case of Dugdale--Case of the Witches of Warbois, and the execution of the Family of Samuel--That of Jane Wenham, in which some Church of England Clergymen insisted on the Prosecution--Hutchison's Rebuke to them--James the First's Opinion of Witchcraft--His celebrated Statute, 1 Jac. I.--Canon passed by the Convocation against Possession--Case of Mr. Fairfax's Children--Lancashire Witches in 1613--Another Discovery in 1634--Webster's Account of the manner in which the Imposture was managed--Superiority of the Calvinists is followed by a severe Prosecution of Witches--Executions in Suffolk, &c. to a dreadful extent--Hopkins, the pretended Witchfinder, the cause of these Cruelties--His Brutal Practices--His Letter--Execution of Mr. Lowis--Hopkins Punished--Restoration of Charles--Trial of Coxe--Of Dunny and Callendar before Lord Hales--Royal Society and Progress of Knowledge--Somersetshire Witches--Opinions of the Populace--A Woman Swum for Witchcraft at Oakly--- Murder at Tring--Act against Witchcraft abolished, and the belief in the Crime becomes forgotten--Witch Trials in New England--Dame Glover's Trial--Affliction of the Parvises, and frightful Increase of the Prosecutions--Suddenly put a stop to--The Penitence of those concerned in them.