that in many cases the witch confused dreams with reality and believed
that she had visited the Sabbath when credible witnesses could prove that
she had slept in her bed all the time. Yet such visions are known in other
religions; Christians have met their Lord in dreams of the night and have
been accounted saints for that very reason; Mahomed, though not released
from the body, had interviews with Allah; Moses talked with God; the
Egyptian Pharaohs record similar experiences. To the devotee of a certain
temperament such visions occur, and it is only to be expected that in every
case the vision should take the form required by the religion of the
worshipper. Hence the Christian sees Christ and enters heaven; Mahomed was
caught up to the Paradise of the true believers; the anthropomorphic
Jehovah permitted only a back view to His votary; the Egyptian Pharaohs
beheld their gods alive and moving on the earth. The witch also met her god
at the actual Sabbath and again in her dreams, for that earthly Sabbath was
to her the true Paradise, where there was more pleasure than she could
express, and she believed also that the joy which she took in it was but
the prelude to a much greater glory, for her god so held her heart that no
other desire could enter in. Thus the witches often went to the gibbet and
the stake, glorifying their god and committing their souls into his
keeping, with a firm belief that death was but the entrance to an eternal
life in which they would never be parted from him. Fanatics and
visionaries as many of them were, they resemble those Christian martyrs
whom the witch-persecutors often held in the highest honour.

Another objection is that, as the evidence of the witches at the trials is
more or less uniform in character, it must be attributed to the publication
by the Inquisitors of a questionary for the use of all judges concerned in
such trials; in short, that the evidence is valueless, as it was given in
answer to leading questions. No explanation is offered by the objectors as
to how the Inquisitors arrived at the form of questionary, nor is any
regard given to the injunction to all Inquisitors to acquaint themselves
with all the details of any heresy which they were commissioned to root
out; they were to obtain the information from those who would recant and
use it against the accused; and to instruct other judges in the belief and
ritual of the heresy, so that they also might recognize it and act
ac