cessors, having left full
liberty to the various tribunals to whom they delegated the
administration of justice, to decree such punishment as was warranted
by the evidence brought before them.

"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 consequences 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
eye-witnesses, composed partly of accomplices, and partly of people who
had no interest in the trials beyond the love of truth, and confirmed,
moreover, by the confessions of the accused parties themselves; and
that, Sire, with so much agreement and conformity between the different
cases, that the most ignorant persons convicted of this crime have
spoken to the same circumstances, and in nearly the same words, as the
most celebrated authors who have written about it, all of which may be
easily proved to your Majesty's satisfaction by the records of various
trials before your parliaments.

"These, Sire, are truths so intimately bound up with the principles of
our religion, that, extraordinary although they be, no person has been
able to this time to call them in question. If some have cited, in
opposition to these truths, the pretended canon of the Council of
Ancyre, and a passage from St. Augustin, in a treatise upon the 'Spirit
and the Soul', it has been without foundation; and it would be easy to
convince your Majesty that neither the one nor the other ought to be
accounted of any authority; and, besides that, the canon, in this
sense, would be contrary to the opinion of all succeeding councils of
the church, Cardinal Baronius, and all learned commentators, agree that
it is not to be found in any old edition. In effect, in those editions
wherein it is found, it is in another language, and is in direct
contradiction to the twenty-third canon of the same council, which
condemns sorcery, according to all preceding constitutions. Even
supposing that this canon was re