gious camp, supported the superstition even
more zealously, asserting at times his belief that the winds themselves
are only good or evil spirits, and declaring that a stone thrown into a
certain pond in his native region would cause a dreadful storm because
of the devils, kept prisoners there.(223)

(223) For Luther, see the Table Talk; also Michelet, Life of Luther
(translated by Hazlitt, p. 321).

Just at the close of the same century, Catholics and Protestants
welcomed alike the great work of Delrio. In this, the power of devils
over the elements is proved first from the Holy Scriptures, since, he
declares, "they show that Satan brought fire down from heaven to consume
the servants and flocks of Job, and that he stirred up a violent
wind, which overwhelmed in ruin the sons and daughters of Job at their
feasting." Next, Delrio insists on the agreement of all the orthodox
fathers, that it was the devil himself who did this, and attention is
called to the fact that the hail with which the Egyptians were punished
is expressly declared in Holy Scripture to have been brought by the
evil angels. Citing from the Apocalypse, he points to the four angels
standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the winds and
preventing their doing great damage to mortals; and he dwells especially
upon the fact that the devil is called by the apostle a "prince of the
power of the air." He then goes on to cite the great fathers of the
Church--Clement, Jerome, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas.(224)

(224) For Delrio, see his Disquisitiones Magicae, first printed at Liege
in 1599-1600, but reprinted again and again throughout the seventeenth
century. His interpretation of Psalm lxxviii, 47-49, was apparently
shared by the translators of our own authorized edition. For citations
by him, see Revelation vii, 1,; Ephesians ii, 2. Even according to
modern commentators (e.g., Alford), the word here translated "power"
denotes not MIGHT, but GOVERNMENT, COURT, HIERARCHY; and in this sense
it was always used by the ecclesiastical writers, whose conception
is best rendered by our plural--"powers." See Delrio, Disquisitiones
Magicae, lib. ii, c. 11.

This doctrine was spread not only in ponderous treatises, but in light
literature and by popular illustrations. In the Compendium Maleficarum
of the Italian monk Guacci, perhaps the most amusing book in the whole
literature of witchcraft, we may see the witch, in propria persona