Abstract
George Gifford, Elizabethan minister and puritan activist, was among the earliest English writers to address the witch-hunts of the latter sixteenth century. Though not as influential as the works of his contemporaries Reginald Scot and William Perkins, Gifford's Dialogue Concerning Witches and Witchcraftes (1593) is notable for its attention to the ministerial challenges posed by witch belief as well as for its entertaining dialogue designed to appeal to a wide audience. Gifford understood witch belief primarily as a pastoral problem, and this led him to discount the power of witches and to reject witch-hunts as spiritually distracting for the common sort of Christian. His approach contrasts with that of other writers, both skeptics and believers, who understood witchcraft primarily as an intellectual or theological problem.
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