How does Crip justify Malachi's actions regarding Lizzie in the novel, Very Old Bones?

Malachi's friend Crip, a failed priest infected with syphilis by his own wife, cites the authority of the Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches), a fifteenth-century theological analysis of witchcraft whose "divinely inspired misogyny conformed to Crip's own outlook," to justify their torture of the innocent, benign Lizzie.