The Discovery of Witchcraft

reformation, than in the destruction and ruin original: "subversion and confusion" of offenders. You are well pleased to increase your own private efforts original: "augment your own private pains" so that you may reduce their public suffering. For in truth, that commonwealth remains in a woeful state where chains and nooses original: "fetters and haltars" hold more power than mercy and due compassion.

However, it is natural for unnatural people, and characteristic of witch-hunters original: "Witchmongers"; Scot's derogatory term for those who promote the belief in and prosecution of witches, to pursue the poor, to accuse the simple, and to kill the innocent. They substitute rigor and malice toward others for what they themselves lack in evidence and discretion, or for what the accused lacks in actual offense or opportunity. But just as a cruel heart and an honest mind seldom meet and eat together from the same dish, so a wise and merciful magistrate and a happy commonwealth cannot be separated. How much then are we indebted to God, who has given us a Queen who is not only the perfect image and pattern of justice, but also (under God) the very fountain and embodiment of mercy and clemency? Because of this, those who hunt most for blood in these days have the least authority to shed it. Moreover, since I see that in cases where leniency might be harmful original: "noisome"; in this context, meaning damaging to the public good and punishment beneficial to the commonwealth, no favoritism original: "respect of person" can move you, no authority can embarrass you, and no fear or threats can daunt you in performing the duty of justice.

In that respect again, I find your Lordship a fit person to judge and examine this present treatise. Within it, I will bring before you, as if to a court of law original: "to the bar", two types of most arrogant and wicked people: the first, claiming for themselves, and the second, attributing to others, that power which belongs only to God—who alone is the Creator of all things; who alone searches the heart and mind original: "reins"; literally the kidneys, believed in biblical times to be the seat of emotions and intent; who alone knows our imaginations and thoughts; who alone reveals all secrets; who alone works great wonders; who alone has power to raise up and cast down; who alone makes thunder, lightning, rain, and tempests, and restrains them at his pleasure; who alone sends life and death, sickness and health, wealth and woe; and who neither gives nor lends his glory to any creature.

And therefore, what grieves me to the bottom of my heart is that these witch-hunters cannot be content to wrench Almighty Power out of God’s hand and keep it for themselves, or leave it with a witch. Instead, when they are forced by the weight of argument to admit defeat original: "lay down the bucklers"; to give up a fight (a buckler is a small shield), they surrender that power to the Devil, or at the least pray for his aid—as though the reins of all