Montaigne, Bayle, and
Voltaire in France, Thomasius in Germany, Calef in New England,
and Beccaria in Italy, did much also to create an intellectual
and moral atmosphere fatal to it.
And here it should be stated, to the honour of the Church of
England, that several of her divines showed great courage in
opposing the dominant doctrine. Such men as Harsnet, Archbishop
of York, and Morton, Bishop of Lichfield, who threw all their
influence against witch-finding cruelties even early in the
seventeenth century, deserve lasting gratitude. But especially
should honour be paid to the younger men in the Church, who
wrote at length against the whole system: such men as Wagstaffe
and Webster and Hutchinson, who in the humbler ranks of the
clergy stood manfully for truth, with the certainty that by so
doing they were making their own promotion impossible.
By the beginning of the eighteenth century the doctrine was
evidently dying out. Where torture had been abolished, or even
made milder, "weather-makers" no longer confessed, and the
fundamental proofs in which the system was rooted were evidently
slipping away.
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