[14] _Quœre_, Whether if God would have us to proceed any further than bare _Enquiry_, upon what Reports there may come against any Man, from the World of _Spirits_, he will not by his Providence at the same time have brought into our hands, these more evident and sensible things, whereupon a man is to be esteemed a Criminal. But I will venture to say this further, that it will be safe to account the Names as well as the Lives of our Neighbors; two considerable things to be brought under a Judicial Process, until it be found by Humane Observations that the Peace of Mankind is thereby disturbed. We are Humane Creatures, and we are safe while we say, they must be Humane Witnesses, who also have in the particular Act of Seeing, or Hearing, which enables them to be Witnesses, had no more than Humane Assistances, that are to turn the Scale when Laws are to be executed. And upon this Head I will further add: A wise and a just Magistrate, may so far give way to a common Stream of Dissatisfaction, as to forbear acting up to the heighth of his own Perswasion, about what may be judged convictive of a Crime, whose Nature shall be so abstruse and obscure, as to raise much Disputation. Tho' he may not do what he should leave undone, yet he may leave undone something that else he could do, when the Publick Safety makes an _Exigency_. § VII. I was going to make one Venture more; that is, to offer some safe Rules, for the finding out of the Witches, which are at this day our accursed Troublers: but this were a Venture too _Presumptuous_ and _Icarian_ for me to make; I leave that unto those Excellent and Judicious Persons, with whom I am not worthy to be numbred: All that I shall do, shall be to lay before my Readers, a brief _Synopsis_ of what has been written on that Subject, by a Triumvirate of as Eminent Persons as have ever handled it. I will begin with, FOOTNOTES: [44] Probably the same whose Name appears in sundry Publications as _Symmonds_. Walker, _Sufferings of the Clergy_, ii, 361, calls him Simmons, and speaks very dubiously of him, as though he was a great Sufferer both for, and for not being a Puritan. See also _Ibid_, Part i, 67, 68. Neale, _Hist. Puritans_, ii, 19-20. Brooks's _Lives_, iii, 110-11. Old Thomas Fuller was well acquainted with Mr. Symonds, and gives an Anecdote or two about him in his _Worthies_, and tells us he died _about_ 1649, in London. He died in 1649, in London. [45] As to the _Loyalty_ professed, _that_ required pretty strong Assurances on the Part of the prominent Men of New England, to gain it Credence among the Officials in Old England; for not long before an Agent of Massachusetts had asserted that "the Acts of that Colony were not subject to any reëxamination in England;" and a Writer of 1688 that "till the Reign of his present Majesty, James II, New England would never submit to any Governor sent from England, but lived like a Free State."