SORCERY.
The crime of witchcraft, or divination, by the assistance of evil spirits.
Sorcery is held by some to be properly what the ancients called Sortilegium, or divination by means of Sortes or lots.
Lord Coke (3 Instit. fol. 44,) describes a Sorcerer, qui utitur sortibus, et incantationibus dæmonium. Sorcery, by Stat. 1o.Jac. is felony. In another book it is said to be a branch of heresy; and by Stat. 12, Carolus II. it is excepted out of the general pardons.
Sorcery is pretended to have been a very common thing formerly; the credulity, at least, of those ages made it pass for such; people frequently suffered for it. In a more enlightened and less believing age, sorcery has fled before the penetrating rays of science, like every other species of human superstition and complicated diablerie. For, indeed, it is a very probable opinion, that the several glaring instances of sorcery we meet, in our old law books and historians, if well inquired into, would be found at bottom, to have more human art and desperate malignity and vindictive cunning about them, than of demoniacal and preternatural agency. Were it not for a wellregulated police acting under wise regulations for the safety and harmony of society, sorcerers and evil spirits would be equally as prevalent and destructive at the present day, as they were some two or three hundred years ago.