It is asserted by several authorities that no less than three thousand persons were executed for Witchcraft during that dark period of heretical pravity, the Great Rebellion. Now, as “Rebellion,” according to the express assurance of the Prophet Samuel (1 Sam. xv. 23) “is as the sin of Witchcraft,” no hearty believer in God’s revelation can be at all surprised to find that both Witchcraft and Rebellion in an atmosphere of heresy flourished together, under that odious tyrant and hypocritical fanatic, Oliver Cromwell: when the altar was thrown down and both King and Archbishop were murdered. In 1488, the country four leagues around Constance was laid waste by lightning and tempest; and two women being, by fair means or foul, made to confess themselves guilty as the cause of the devastation, suffered death. About 1515, five hundred persons were executed at Geneva, under the character of “Protestant witches;” from41 which we may suppose many suffered for heresy. Forty-eight witches were burnt at Ravensburgh within four years, as Hutchison reports, on the authority of Mengho, the author of the Malleus Maleficarum. In Lorraine, the learned inquisitor, Remigius, boasts that he put to death nine hundred people in fifteen years. As many were banished from that country; so that whole towns were on the point of becoming desolate. In 1524, a thousand persons were put to death in one year at Coma, in Italy, and about one hundred every year for several years. In the beginning of the next century, the persecution of witches broke out in France with a fury which was hardly conceivable, and multitudes were burnt amid that gay and lively people. The dream of the so-called “Swaffham Tinker” is singular, and may well be here reproduced, because it represents an example of the practical results of dreaming, which is quite worthy of consideration:—