end. Such
persecutions, begun by papal authority, continued among illiterate
zealots till late times, and, as is well known, were practised even in
America. Very masculine minds fell into these delusions. Thus Luther, in
his work on the abuses attendant on private masses, says that he had
conferences with the Devil on that subject, passing many bitter nights
and much restless and wearisome repose; that once, in particular, Satan
came to him in the dead of the night, when he was just awakened out of
sleep. [Sidenote: Experiences of Luther.] "The Devil," says Luther,
"knows well enough how to construct his arguments, and to urge them with
the skill of a master. He delivers himself with a grave and yet with a
shrill voice. Nor does he use circumlocutions and beat about the bush,
but excels in forcible statements and quick rejoinders. I no longer
wonder that the persons whom he assails in this way are occasionally
found dead in their beds. He is able to compress and throttle, and more
than once he has so assaulted me and driven my soul into a corner that I
have felt as if the next moment it must leave my body. I am of opinion
that Gesner and OEcolampadius came in that manner to their deaths. The
Devil's manner of opening a debate is pleasant enough, but he soon urges
things so peremptorily that the respondent in a short time knows not how
to acquit himself."

[Sidenote: English wizards--Scotch witches.] Social eminence is no
preservative from social delusion. When it was affirmed that Agnes
Sampson, with two hundred other Scotch witches, had sailed in sieves
from Leith to North Berwick church to hold a banquet with the Devil,
James I. had the torture applied to the wretched woman, and took
pleasure in putting appropriate questions to her after the racking had
been duly prolonged. It then came out that the two hundred crones had
baptized and drowned a black cat, thereby raising a dreadful storm in
which the ship that carried the king narrowly escaped being wrecked.
Upon this Agnes was condemned to the flames. She died protesting her
innocence, and piteously calling on Jesus to have mercy on her, for
Christian men would not. On the accession of James to the English throne
he procured an act of Parliament against any one convicted of
witchcraft, sorcery, or enchantment, or having commerce with the Devil.
Under this monstrous statute many persons suffered. At this time England
was intellectually in a very backward state. [Siden