ime of comparative mental repose, says Mr. Lecky,

"All those conceptions of diabolical presence; all that
predisposition toward the miraculous, which acted so fearfully upon
the imaginations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, existed;
but the implicit faith, the boundless and triumphant credulity with
which the virtue of ecclesiastical rites was accepted, rendered them
comparatively innocuous. If men had been a little less
superstitious, the effects of their superstition would have been much
more terrible. It was firmly believed that any one who deviated from
the strict line of orthodoxy must soon succumb beneath the power of
Satan; but as there was no spirit of rebellion or doubt, this
persuasion did not produce any extraordinary terrorism."

The Church was disposed to confound heretical opinion with sorcery; false
doctrine was especially the devil's work, and it was a ready conclusion
that a denier or innovator had held consultation with the father of lies.
It is a saying of a zealous Catholic in the sixteenth century, quoted by
Maury in his excellent work, "De la Magie"--"_Crescit cum magia
haeresis_, _cum haeresi magia_." Even those who doubted were terrified
at their doubts, for trust is more easily undermined than terror. Fear
is earlier born than hope, lays a stronger grasp on man's system than any
other passion, and remains master of a larger group of involuntary
actions. A chief aspect of man's moral development is the slow subduing
of fear by the gradual growth of intelligence, and its suppression as a
motive by the presence of impulses less animally selfish; so that in
relation to invisible Power, fear at last ceases to exist, save in that
interfusion with higher faculties which we call awe.

Secondly, Mr. Lecky shows clearly that dogmatic Protestantism, holding
the vivid belief in Satanic agency to be an essential of piety, would
have felt it shame to be a whit behind Catholicism in severity against
the devil's servants. Luther's sentiment was that he would not suffer a
witch to live (he was not much more merciful to Jews); and, in spite of
his fondness for children, believing a certain child to have been
begotten by the devil, he recommended the parents to throw it into the
river. The torch must be turned on the worst errors of heroic minds--not
in irreverent ingratitude, but for the sake of measuring our vast and
various debt to all the influences