nthusiasm, to attempt to establish a rule of life
in direct contradiction to the laws of that universe of which they
professed to believe Him to be the Creator. The futile attempt to
imitate His immaculate purity blinded their eyes to the fact that He
never taught or encouraged celibacy among His followers, and this
gradually led them to the strange conclusion that the passion which,
sublimed and brought under control, is the source of man's noblest and
holiest feelings, was a prompting proceeding from the author of all
evil. Imbued with this idea, religious enthusiasts of both sexes immured
themselves in convents; took oaths of perpetual celibacy; and even, in
certain isolated cases, sought to compromise with Heaven, and baffle the
tempter, by rendering a fall impossible--forgetting that the victory
over sin does not consist in immunity from temptation, but, being
tempted, not to fall. But no convent walls are so strong as to shut
great nature out; and even within these sacred precincts the ascetics
found that they were not free from the temptations of their arch-enemy.
In consequence of this, a belief sprang up, and spread from its original
source into the outer world, in a class of devils called incubi and
succubi, who roamed the earth with no other object than to tempt people
to abandon their purity of life. The cases of assault by incubi were
much more frequent than those by succubi, just as women were much more
affected by the dancing manias in the fifteenth century than
men;[1]--the reason, perhaps, being that they are much less capable of
resisting physical privation;--but, according to the belief of the
Middle Ages, there was no generic difference between the incubus and
succubus. Here was a belief that, when the witch fury sprang up,
attached itself as a matter of course as the phase of the crime; and it
was an almost universal charge against the accused that they offended in
this manner with their familiars, and hundreds of poor creatures
suffered death upon such an indictment. More details will be found in
the authorities upon this unpleasant subject.[2]

[Footnote 1: Hecker, Epidemics of the Middle Ages, p. 136.]

[Footnote 2: Hutchinson, p. 52. The Witch of Edmonton, Act V. Scot,
Discoverie, book iv.]

107. This intercourse did not, as a rule, result in offspring; but this
was not universally the case. All badly deformed or monstrous children
were suspected of having had such an undesirable parentage, an