"The Swedish Laplanders, the most ignorant mortals in Europe," are "charged with being conjurors, and are said to have done such feats, by the magic art, as do not at all fall far short of miracles; that they will give the sailors such winds as they want in any part of their voyage; that they can inflict and cure diseases at any distance; and insure people of success in their undertakings; and yet they are just such poor miserable wretches as used to be charged with witchcraft here," viz: in England and in New England, "and cannot command so much as the necessaries of life: and indeed, none but very credulous and ignorant people give credit to such fables at this day, though the whole world seems to have been bewitched in believing them formerly." "The 24th of March, 1735, an act passed in the Parliament of Great Britain to repeal the statute of I _Jac's_, entitled an act against conjuration, witchcraft, and dealing with evil and wicked spirits, and to repeal an act in Scotland entitled Amentis Witchcraft." It is but forty-six years since the supreme legislature became apprized of the natural impossibility of any magical intercourse between mankind and evil and wicked spirits; in consequence whereof they repealed their statute laws against it, as they were naturally void, unnecessary, and unworthy of their legislative restriction. For that such a crime had no possible existence in nature, and therefore could not be acted by mankind; though previous to the repeal of those laws, more or less of that island had fallen a sacrifice to them; and the relations of those imaginary criminals were stamped with infamy by such executions, which had the sanction of law, alias of the legislature and the judges, and in which many learned attorneys have demonstrated the turpitude of such capital offences, and the just sanction of those laws in extirpating such pests of society from the earth; to which the clergy have likewise given their approbation, for that those capital transgressors made too free with their devils. Furthermore, the repeal of those laws, as far as the wisdom and authority of the British Parliament may be supposed to go, abrogated that command of the law of Moses, which saith, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," and not only so, but the doctrine of the impossibility of intercourse, or of dealing with wicked spirits, forecloses the supposed miraculous casting out of devils, of which we have sundry chronicles in the New Testament.