enlightened judge from an ignominious death. It is almost incredible
that, even after the trial, priests and magistrates who had promoted
the prosecution professed to believe that the charge was true. This
singular narrative, in defence of the poor persecuted Quakeress,
is signed James Blackley, an alderman, George Whitehead, and three
others. No one can believe that John Bunyan gave credit to such
a tale, or mentioned it to the injury of the parties accused. His
reply was, that these slanders were devised by the devil and his
instruments--'God knows that I am innocent.' The probability is,
that the pamphlet called Strange News from Cambridge had been sent
to him, and that he gave it to some Quaker to answer.

Considering the almost universal belief in witchcraft in those
days--that Baxter, Cotton Mather, Clarke, and many of our most
eminent divines, believed in it--and that Bunyan received the
Scriptures in our authorized translation with the deepest reverence,
it becomes an interesting inquiry how far he believed in witchcraft,
possessions, incantations, and charms. He was persuaded that Satan
could appear to mankind in the shape of animals, and in the human
form. Had any one doubted the possibility of these appearances, he
would at that time have been called an atheist and an unbeliever in
the existence of God and of separate spirits. Thus he argues, that
'If sin can make one who was sometimes a glorious angel in heaven
now so to abuse himself as to become, to appearance, as a filthy
frog, a toad, a rat, a cat, a fly, a mouse, or a dog, to serve its
ends upon a poor mortal, that it might gull them of everlasting
life, no marvel if the soul is so beguiled as to sell itself from
God and all good for so poor a nothing as a momentary pleasure.'[202]
When speaking of the impropriety of excluding a pious person from
the Lord's table, because of a difference of opinion as to water