ent,
and are never so effectually suppressed as by being totally
neglected.'

In France, until about the year 1670, there was little abatement
in the fury or number of the prosecutions. In that year several
women had been sentenced to death for frequenting the _Domdaniel_
or Sabbath meeting by the provincial parliament of Normandy.
Louis XIV. was induced to commute the sentence into banishment
for life. The parliament remonstrated at so astonishing an
interference with the due course of justice, and presented a
petition to the king in which they insist upon the dread reality
of a crime that 'tends to the destruction of religion and the
ruin of nations.'[153]

[153] 'Your parliament,' protest these legislators, 'have
thought it their duty on occasion of these crimes, the
greatest which men can commit, to make you acquainted with
the general and uniform feelings of the people of this
province with regard to them; it being moreover a question
in which are concerned the glory of God and the relief of
your suffering subjects, who groan under their fears from
the threats and menaces of this sort of persons, and who
feel the effects of them every day in the mortal and
extraordinary maladies which attack them, and the surprising
damage and loss of their possessions.' They then review the
various laws and decrees of Church and State from the
earliest times in support of their convictions: they cite
the authority of the Church in council and in its most
famous individual teachers. Particularly do they insist upon
the opinions of St. Augustin, in his _City of God_, as
irrefragable. 'After so many authorities and punishments
ordained by human and divine laws, we humbly supplicate your
Majesty to reflect once more upon the extraordinary results
which proceed from the malevolence of this sort of people;
on the deaths from unknown diseases which are often the
consequence of their menaces; on the loss of the goods and
chattels of your subjects; on the proofs of guilt
continually afforded by the insensibility of the marks upon
the accused; on the sudden transportation of bodies from one
place to another; on the sacrifices and nocturnal
assemblies, and other facts, corroborated by the testimony
of ancient and modern authors, and verified by so many
eyewitnesses, composed partly of accomplices and partly of
people who had no interest in the trials beyond the love of
tru