bring full proof of this secret crime, that out of a million
of witches _not one would be convicted if the usual course were
followed_.'[101] He speaks of an old woman sentenced to the stake
after confessing to having been transported to the sabbath in a
state of insensibility. Her judges, anxious to know how this was
effected, released her from her fetters, when she rubbed herself
on the different parts of her body with a prepared unguent and
soon became insensible, stiff, and apparently dead. Having
remained in that condition for five hours, the witch as suddenly
revived, relating to the trembling inquisitors a number of
extraordinary things proving she must have been _spiritually_
transported to distant places.[102] An earlier advocate of the
orthodox cause was a Swiss friar, Nider, who wrote a work
entitled 'Formicarium' (_Ant-Hill_) on the various sins against
religion. One section is employed in the consideration of
sorcery. Nider was one of the inquisitors who distinguished
themselves by their successful zeal in the beginning of the
century.

[101] Yet the lawyer who enunciated such a maxim as this has
been celebrated for an unusual liberality of sentiment in
religious and political matters, as well as for his
learning. Dugald Stewart commends 'the liberal and moderate
views of this philosophical politician,' as shown in the
treatise _De la Republique_, and states that he knows of 'no
political writer of the same date whose extensive, and
various, and discriminating reading appears to me to have
contributed more to facilitate and to guide the researches
of his successors, or whose references to ancient learning
have been more frequently transcribed without
acknowledgment.'--Bayle considered him 'one of the ablest
men that appeared in France during the sixteenth
century.'--_Dissertation First_ in the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_. Hallam (_Introduction to the Literature of
Europe_) occupies several of his pages in the review of
Bodin's writings. Jean Bodin, however, on the authority of
his friend De Thou, did not escape suspicion himself of
being heretical.

[102] In witchcraft (as in the sacramental mystery) it was a
subject for much doubt and dispute whether there might not be
simply a _spiritual_ (without a _real corporeal_) presence at
the sabbath. Each one decided according to the degree of his
orthodoxy.

The Swiss witches, like the old Italian larvae and