By C. R. Straion, F.E.S. 



157 



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 Cod 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 Cod 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 bo 

 traced to their sources; and by the establishment of asylums 



