and vice; thus they cannot be too carefully sought out, or too
severely punished.

We may add that what is often taken for black or diabolical magic is
nothing but natural magic, or art and cleverness on the part of those
who perform things which appear above the force of nature. How many
marvelous effects are related of the divining rod, sympathetic powder,
phosphoric lights, and mathematical secrets! How much knavery is now
well known in the priests of idols, and in those of Babylon, who made
the people believe that the god Bel drank and ate; that a large living
dragon was a divinity; that the god Anubis desired to have certain
women, who were thus deceived by the priests; that the ox Apis gave
out oracles, and that the serpent of Alexander of Abonotiche knew the
sickness, and gave remedies to the patient without opening the billet
which contained a description of the illness! We may possibly speak
more fully on this subject hereafter.

In short, the most judicious and most celebrated Parliaments have
recognized neither magicians nor sorcerers; at least, they have not
condemned them to death unless they were convicted of other crimes,
such as theft, bad practices, poisoning, or criminal seduction--for
instance, in the affair of Gofredi, a priest of Marseilles, who was
condemned by the Parliament of Aix to be torn with hot pincers, and
burnt alive. The heads of that company, in the account which they
render to the chancellor of this their sentence, testify that this
cure was in truth accused of sorcery, but that he had been condemned
to the flames as guilty, and convicted of spiritual incest with his
penitent, Madelaine de la Palu. From all this it is concluded that
there is no reality in what is called magic.

CHAPTER IX.

REPLY TO THE OBJECTIONS.

In answer to these, I allow that there is indeed very often a great
deal of illusion, prepossession, and imagination in all that is termed
magic and sorcery; and sometimes the devil by false appearances
combines with them to deceive the simple; but oftener, without the
evil spirit being any otherwise a party to it, wicked, corrupt, and
interested men, artful and deceptive, abuse the simplicity both of men
and women, so far as to persuade them that they possess supernatural
secrets for interpreting dreams and foretelling things to come, for
curing maladies, and discovering secrets unknown to any one. I can
easily agree to all that. All kinds of histories are fu