development of the Satanic doctrine from
a superstition into its acceptance as a dogma of Christian belief.

"As Satan's principal object in his warfare with God was to seduce human
souls from their divine allegiance, he was ever ready with whatever
temptation seemed most likely to effect his purpose. Some were to be won
by physical indulgence; others by conferring on them powers enabling
them apparently to forecast the future, to discover hidden things, to
gratify enmity, and to acquire wealth, whether through forbidden arts or
by the services of a familiar demon subject to their orders. As the
neophyte in receiving baptism renounced the devil, his pomps and his
angels, it was necessary for the Christian who desired the aid of Satan
to renounce God. Moreover, as Satan when he tempted Christ offered him
the kingdoms of the earth in return for adoration--'If thou therefore
wilt worship me all shall be thine' (Luke iv, 7)--there naturally arose
the idea that to obtain this aid it was necessary to render allegiance
to the prince of hell. Thence came the idea, so fruitful in the
development of sorcery, of compacts with Satan by which sorcerers became
his slaves, binding themselves to do all the evil they could to follow
their example. Thus the sorcerer or witch was an enemy of all the human
race as well as of God, the most efficient agent of hell in its
sempiternal conflict with heaven. His destruction, by any method, was
therefore the plainest duty of man.

"This was the perfected theory of sorcery and witchcraft by which the
gentle superstitions inherited and adopted from all sides were fitted
into the Christian dispensation and formed part of its accepted creed."
(_History of Inquisition in the Middle Ages_, 3, 385, LEA.)

Once the widespread superstition became adapted to the forms of
religious faith and discipline, and "the prince of the power of the air"
was clothed with new energies, the Devil was taken broader account of by
Christianity itself; the sorcery of the ancients was embodied in the
Christian conception of witchcraft; and the church undertook to deal
with it as a heresy; the door was opened wide to the sweep of the
epidemic in some of the continental lands.

In Bamburg and Wurzburg, Geneva and Como, Toulouse and Lorraine, and in
many other places in Italy, Germany, and France, thousands were
sacrificed in the names of religion, justice, and law, with bigotry for
their advocate, ignorance for their judge,