Continent there were, in
the sixteenth century, two men from whom an exposure of the
absurdities of the system of witchcraft might have been naturally and
rationally expected, and who seem to stand out prominently from the
crowd as predestined to that honourable and salutary office, those two
men were John Bodin[11] and Thomas Erastus.[12] The former a
lawyer--much exercised in the affairs of men--whose learning was not
merely umbratic--whose knowledge of history was most philosophic and
exact--of piercing penetration and sagacity--tolerant--liberal
minded--disposed to take no proposition upon trust, but to canvass and
examine every thing for himself, and who had large views of human
nature and society--in fact, the Montesquieu of the seventeenth
century. The other, a physician and professor, sage, judicious,
incredulous,

"The scourge of impostors, the terror of quacks,"

who had routed irrecoverably empiricism in almost every
shape--Paracelsians--Astrologers--Alchemists--Rosicrucians--and who
weighed and scrutinized and analyzed every conclusion, from
excommunication and the power of the keys to the revolutions of comets
and their supposed effects on empires, and all with perfect
fearlessness and intuitive insight into the weak points of an
argument. Yet, alas! for human infirmity. Bodin threw all the weight
of his reasoning and learning and vivacity into the scale of the witch
supporters, and made the "hell-broth boil and bubble" anew, and
increased the witch _furor_ to downright fanaticism, by the
publication of his _Demo-manie_,[13] a work in which

"Learning, blinded first and then beguiled,
Looks dark as ignorance, as frenzy wild;"

but which it is impossible to read without being carried along by the
force of mind and power of combination which the author manifests, and
without feeling how much ingenious sophistry can perform to mitigate
and soften the most startling absurdity. His contemporary, Erastus,
after all his victories on the field of imposition, was foiled by the
subject of witchcraft at last. This was his pet delusion--almost the
only one he cared not to discard--like the dying miser's last
reserve:--

---- "My manor, sir? he cried;
Not that, I cannot part with that,--and died."

[Footnote 2: Lord Bacon thinks (see his _Sylva Sylvarum_) that
soporiferous medicines "are likeliest" for this purpose, such as
henbane, hemlock, mandrake, moonshade, tobacco, opium, saffron, po