By ©. R. Straton, FES. 157 
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been overcome and his agents defeated. Nothing, it was thought, 
struck terror into the fiend like a commission with plenary powers. 
The Devil often tried 'to prevent the victim from confessing under 
torture, even drying up their mouths and putting obstructions in 
their throats, but when at last they confessed enough to ensure 
their being burnt “the fiend lost much credit on these occasions.” 
The poor wretches were usually strangled by being wired to the 
stake, and burnt, but sometimes they were ordered to be “ burnt 
quick,” or alive, and their half-charred bodies, if they tried to 
escape, were pushed back into the flames. The stone blocks and 
pillars seen near towns are some of them stakes for witch-fires. In 
England alone thirty thousand lives were sacrificed by people who 
thought they were doing God a service ; but I have said enough of 
horrors, done in Christian England, in Christ’s name, and in the 
eighteenth century. 
What has brought about this change of thought and opinion in 
so short a time? Men of whose honesty there could be no doubt 
in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries were 
thoroughly convinced of the truth of witchcraft. Bishop Jewel, 
preaching before Queen Elizabeth, said “‘ Your Grace’s subjects 
pine away even unto the death, their colour fadeth, their flesh 
rotteth, their senses are bereft. I pray God they may never 
practise further than upon the subject.” Martin Luther wrote, “As 
for witches that spoil farmers’ butter and eggs, I would burn them 
all!” Lord Verulam, in England, and Lord Stair, in Scotland, 
both men of critical and philosophical minds, strongly disapproved 
of the repeal of the Acts against witchcraft. John Wesley wrote 
_ that “ giving up witchcraft was giving up the Bible.”” We do not 
so view the matter now. With the revival of learning and the 
invention of printing came a steady widening of the stream of 
knowledge, and increased study of natural and physical laws. The 
foundation of the Royal Society in London, of the Academy of 
Sciences in Paris, and of Universities gave a stimulus to the study 
_ of the exact sciences and of the phenomena of Nature. Since the 
foundation of hospitals cases that dwindle, peak, and pine may be 
_ traced to their sources; and by the establishment of asylums 
4 pt OS ee eg ene Teka * 
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