indulge a liberal pride, that, in the present age, the enlightened part
of Europe has abolished a cruel and odious prejudice, which reigned in
every climate of the globe, and adhered to every system of religious
opinions. The nations, and the sects, of the Roman world, admitted with
equal credulity, and similar abhorrence, the reality of that infernal
art, which was able to control the eternal order of the planets, and
the voluntary operations of the human mind. They dreaded the mysterious
power of spells and incantations, of potent herbs, and execrable rites;
which could extinguish or recall life, inflame the passions of the soul,
blast the works of creation, and extort from the reluctant daemons the
secrets of futurity. They believed, with the wildest inconsistency,
that this preternatural dominion of the air, of earth, and of hell, was
exercised, from the vilest motives of malice or gain, by some wrinkled
hags and itinerant sorcerers, who passed their obscure lives in penury
and contempt. The arts of magic were equally condemned by the public
opinion, and by the laws of Rome; but as they tended to gratify the
most imperious passions of the heart of man, they were continually
proscribed, and continually practised. An imaginary cause as capable of
producing the most serious and mischievous effects. The dark predictions
of the death of an emperor, or the success of a conspiracy, were
calculated only to stimulate the hopes of ambition, and to dissolve the
ties of fidelity; and the intentional guilt of magic was aggravated by
the actual crimes of treason and sacrilege. Such vain terrors disturbed
the peace of society, and the happiness of individuals; and the harmless
flame which insensibly melted a waxen image, might derive a powerful and
pernicious energy from the affrighted fancy of the person whom it was
maliciously designed to represent. From the infusion of those herbs,
which were supposed to possess a supernatural influence, it was an easy
step to the use of more substantial poison; and the folly of mankind
sometimes became the instrument, and the mask, of the most atrocious
crimes. As soon as the zeal of informers was encouraged by the ministers
of Valens and Valentinian, they could not refuse to listen to another
charge, too frequently mingled in the scenes of domestic guilt; a charge
of a softer and less malignant nature, for which the pious, though
excessive, rigor of Constantine had recently decreed the punishme