The power of these witches as we find in their earliest records originated in their intercourse with “familiar spirits,” invisible beings who must be supposed to be enlisted in the armies of the prince of darkness. We do not read in these ancient memorials of any league of mutual benefit entered into between the merely human party, and his or her supernatural assistant. But modern times have amply supplied this defect. The witch or sorcerer could not secure the assistance of the demon but by a sure and faithful compact, by which the human party obtained the industrious and vigilant service of his familiar for a certain term of years, only on condition that, when the term was expired, the demon of undoubted right was to obtain possession of the indentured party, and to convey him irremissibly and forever to the regions of the damned. The contract was drawn out in authentic form, signed by the sorcerer, and attested with his blood, and was then carried away by the demon, to be produced again at the appointed time. “To deny the possibility, nay actual exsitence of12 Witchcraft and Sorcery, is at once flatly to contradict the revealed Word of God, in various passages both of the Old and New Testament; and the thing itself is a truth to which every Nation in the World hath in its turn borne testimony, either by examples seemingly well attested, or by prohibitory laws, which at least suppose the possibility of commerce with evil spirits.”—Blackstone’s “Commentaries,” book iv. chapter 4, p. 61. An anonymous seventeenth-century writer reasons as follows:—“To know things aright and perfectly is to know the causes thereof. A definition doth consist of those causes which give the whole essence, and contain the perfect nature of the thing defined; where that is therefore found out, there appears the very clear light. If it be perfect, it is much the greater; though if it be not fully perfect, yet it giveth some good light. For which respect, though I dare not say I can give a perfect definition in this matter, which is hard to do even in known things, because the essential form is hard to be found, yet I do give a definition which may at the least give notice and make known what manner of persons they be of whom I am to speak:—A witch is one that worketh by the the Devil, or by some devilish or curious art, either hurting or healing, revealing things secret, or foretelling things to come, which the Devil hath devised to entangle and snare men’s souls withal unto damnation. The Conjuror, the Enchanter, the Sorcerer, the Diviner, and whatsoever other sort there is, are indeed encompassed within this circle. The Devil doth (no doubt) after divers forms, deal in these. But no man is able to show an essential difference in each of them from the rest. I hold it no wisdom or labor well spent to travel much therein. One artificer had devised them all.”