Speaking of a particular case, Mr. H. L. Stephen[558] quotes Campbell as follows: “... During the trial the imposture practised by the prosecutors was detected and exposed. Hales’ motives were most laudable; but he furnished a memorable instance of the mischief originating from superstition. He was afraid of an acquittal or a pardon, lest countenance should be given to a disbelief in witchcraft, which he considered tantamount to disbelief in Christianity.” Glanvil[559] follows on the same side, arguing with great ingenuity from the scriptural point of view (for instance, in dealing with certain doctrines as to the fate of unbaptized children, p. 22). “The question whether there are witches or not,” he begins in Part ii., “is not a matter of vain speculation or of indifferent moment, but an inquiry of very great and weighty importance. For on the resolution of it depends the authority of our laws, and, which is more, our religion, in its main doctrines, is nearly concerned.” And what may be called the religious belief in witches[560]—a very different thing from the torturing of them—outlived the penal laws concerning them.[561] The Rev. John Brown of Haddington (1703–1791)[561] complained of the repeal of King James’s Act,[562] and even John Wesley (1722–1787) declared that giving up witchcraft is, in effect, giving up the Bible.[563] On page 366 of the journal[564] which he edited we read: “With my latest breath will I bear testimony against giving up to infidels one great proof of the invisible world. I mean that of witchcraft and apparitions, confirmed by the testimony of all ages”;[565] and Huxley[566] alluded to a contemporary clergyman who had been preaching diabolical agency. Nor did the actual persecutions cease altogether, and though the last legal trial in England took place in 1712[567] (the last execution in Europe is given by Lecky[568] as occurring in Switzerland in 1782; another authority mentions Posen,[569] with date 1793), sporadic outrages continued in the country, and persist in a modified form to the present day.[570] At Clonmel, Ireland, in 1895,[571] a poor old woman was placed upon the kitchen fire by her own family and burned, so that she died from the effects.[572] But what were once pious customs and duties had at length become crimes, and the chief mover in this latest witch trial got (to the best of my recollection) twenty years’ penal servitude.