The introduction describes the manuscript treatise, providing detailed arguments as to its date and authorship. It highlights the treatise’s relationship to Scot’s Discoverie, showing that the treatise is a response to a draft version of that book, and that it was written by a personal friend of Scot’s. It goes on to discuss the significance of the treatise in relation to the witchcraft debate that began at this time, and shows that the treatise reveals a more complex and nuanced view of witchcraft than the views typically expressed in printed works on the subject.