rom men and driving them into swine. There
are numerous passages of the Bible which speak of the Devil, the Devil
and his angels, spirit of an unclean devil, dumb spirit, foul spirit,
unclean spirit, evil spirit, witch, witchcraft, wizards, necromancers,
satan, the tempter, prince of the power of the air, prince of devils,
etc.

These passages in the Bible were at once the chief source and sanction
of the terrible atrocities which extended over several centuries and
have come to be known, taken collectively, as the "Witchcraft
Persecutions." The Devil, with his subordinate demons and the human
beings who sold their souls to him, were supposed to be both capable and
guilty of blighting the crops; causing the lightning; bringing
destructive storms; withholding the rain; drying up cows; killing
domestic and wild beasts; afflicting the nations with pestilence,
famine, and war; causing all manner of diseases; betwitching men, women,
and children; planting doubts in the mind and weeds in the fields; and
in brief, doing about everything that was disagreeable to man in
general, or that offended the priests as a caste.

Thus buttressed by the Bible, and with the nearly entire current of
Church literature setting in the same direction, it is no wonder that
the witchcraft delusion became one of the most appalling, if not the
most appalling, fact in the development of the Christian religion.

There is extant no other record of destruction and cruel slaughter
growing out of such beliefs in supernatural persons and powers that can
ever begin to tell such a story of degradation and mercilessness as the
record made by the Christian Church. Theologians laid stress especially
upon the famous utterances of the Psalmist that "All the gods of the
Heathens are devils," and St. Paul, "The things which the Gentiles
sacrifice, they sacrifice to the devils."

Those suspected of heresy and witchcraft must confess; they were to be
tortured until they did confess. This made suspicion equivalent to
confession and conviction. In the witch "trial" the victim must not only
incriminate herself but her accomplices, or all whom she "knew" to be in
partnership with the Devil. She was bound to be tortured until she had
given the names or described the persons of those she had seen at the
"witches' sabbath." Then they would be put to the torture and the
process repeated. It was not in human nature long to bear the awful
pain; soon the leading questions o