lves are the authors of sin, forming it in thought, word, and deed;
God permitting all this by reason of our sinfulness, as I have already
said.

"Possibly you will ask, my son, if so be you understand me, who made me
a theologian? And mayhap you will say to yourself, Confound the old hag!
why does not she leave off being a witch since she knows so much? Why
does not she turn to God, since she knows that he is readier to forgive
sin than to permit it? To this I reply, as though you had put the
question to me, that the habit of sinning becomes a second nature, and
that of being a witch transforms itself into flesh and blood; and amidst
all its ardour, which is great, it brings with it a chilling influence
which so overcomes the soul as to freeze and benumb its faith, whence
follows a forgetfulness of itself, and it remembers neither the terrors
with which God threatens it, nor the glories with which he allures it.
In fact, as sin is fleshly and sensual, it must exhaust and stupefy all
the feelings, and render the soul incapable of rising to embrace any
good thought, or to clasp the hand which God in his mercy continually
holds out to it. I have one of those souls I have described; I see it
clearly; but the empire of the senses enchains my will, and I have ever
been and ever shall be bad.

"But let us quit this subject, and go back to that of our unguents. They
are of so cold a nature that they take away all our senses when we
anoint ourselves with them; we remain stretched on the ground, and then
they say we experience all those things in imagination which we suppose
to occur to us in reality. Sometimes after we have anointed and changed
ourselves into fowls, foals, or deer, we go to the place where our
master awaits us. There we recover our own forms and enjoy pleasures
which I will not describe, for they are such as the memory is ashamed to
recal, and the tongue refuses to relate. The short and the long of it
is, I am a witch, and cover my many delinquencies with the cloak of
hypocrisy. It is true that if some esteem and honour me as a good woman,
there are many who bawl in my ear the name imprinted upon your mother
and me by order of an ill-tempered judge, who committed his wrath to the
hands of the hangman; and the latter, not being bribed, used his plenary
power upon our shoulders. But that is past and gone; and all things
pass, memories wear out, lives do not renew themselves, tongues grow
tired, and new events ma