Miss Murray has worked out her thesis with no inconsiderable ingenuity, but when details are considered, historically examined, and set in their due proportions, it must be concluded that the theory of the continuity of an ancient religion is baseless. Her book is called _A Study in Anthropology_, and here we can, I think, at once put our finger upon the fundamental mistake. Anthropology alone offers no explanation of Witchcraft. Only the trained theologian can adequately treat the subject. An amount of interesting material has been collected, but the key to the dark mystery could not be found. Yet, as our investigations have shown, it was not so far to seek. In the succinct phrase of that profound and prolific scholar Thomas Stapleton[95]: “Crescit cum magia hæresis, cum hæresi magia.” (The weed heresy grows alongside the weed witchcraft, the weed witchcraft alongside the weed heresy.) NOTES TO CHAPTER I. [1] _Paris. Jacques du Puys._ 4to. 1580. The preface, addressed to De Thou, is signed: “De _Laon_, ce xx iour de _Decembre_, M.D.LXXIX.” There were nine editions before 1604. The most complete is _Paris_, 4to. 1587. In addition to the text it contains ten extra pages only found here giving the trial of a sorcerer, Abel de la Rue, executed in 1582. [2] The first Papal bull dealing with sorcery was issued by Alexander IV, 13 December, 1258. The last Papal Constitution concerned with this crime is that of Urban VIII, _Inscrutabilis iudiciorum Dei altitudo_, 1 April, 1631. The last regular English trial seems to have been that of an old woman and her son, acquitted at Leicester in 1717. In 1722 the last execution of a Scottish witch took place at Loth; both English and Scottish statutes were repealed in 1735. The Irish Statute was not repealed until 1821. At Kempten in Bavaria, a mad heretic, a woman, was executed for sorcery in 1775. In the Swiss canton of Glaris, a wench named Anna Goeldi, was hanged as a witch, 17 June, 1782. Two hags were burned in Poland on the same charge as late as 1793. [3] Roland Brévannes. _Les Messes Noires_, Iⁱᵉʳ tableau, scène VII. [4] I have actually heard it categorically laid down by a speaker in a Shakespearean debate, a litterateur of professed culture, that the Elizabethans could not, of course, really have believed in witchcraft. [5] In the Exhibition of this artist’s work at the Leicester Galleries, London, in March, 1925. [6] ... qu’elle, & sa mère montoient sur vne ramasse, & que sortans le contremont de la cheminée elles alloient par l’air en ceste façon au Sabbat. Boguet, _Discours_, p. 104. [7] Glanvill, Part II. p. 194. [8] Julius Wellhausen. _Reste arabischen Heidenthums_, p. 159. Berlin, 1897. [9] _Apud_ Miss Murray’s _The Witch-Cult_. (1921). Appendix V. pp. 279-80. [10] Boguet, _Discours_. XVI. 4.