detecting them, and the justice of punishing them, in his dialogues of
_Daemonologie_, written in the Scottish dialect, and published at
Edinburgh. This book was, soon after his accession, reprinted at London,
and as the ready way to gain king James's favour was to flatter his
speculations, the system of _Daemonologie_ was immediately adopted by
all who desired either to gain preferment or not to lose it. Thus the
doctrine of witchcraft was very powerfully inculcated; and as the
greatest part of mankind have no other reason for their opinions than
that they are in fashion, it cannot be doubted but this persuasion made
a rapid progress, since vanity and credulity co-operated in its favour.
The infection soon reached the parliament, who, in the first year of
king James, made a law, by which it was enacted, chap. xii. "That if any
person shall use any invocation or conjuration of any evil or wicked
spirit; 2. or shall consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed or
reward any evil or cursed spirit to or for any intent or purpose; 3. or
take up any dead man, woman or child out of the grave,--or the skin,
bone, or any part of the dead person, to be employed or used in any
manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment; 4. or shall use,
practise or exercise any sort of witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or
enchantment; 5. whereby any person shall be destroyed, killed, wasted,
consumed, pined, or lamed in any part of the body; 6. That every such
person being convicted shall suffer death." This law was repealed in our
own time.

Thus, in the time of Shakespeare, was the doctrine of witchcraft at once
established by law and by the fashion, and it became not only unpolite,
but criminal, to doubt it; and as prodigies are always seen in
proportion as they are expected, witches were every day discovered, and
multiplied as fast in some places, that bishop Hall mentions a village
in Lancashire, where their number was greater than that of the houses.