ook the
affair in hand with great earnestness and dignity; he first crushed the
culprit by severe admonitions, then he knelt down with him in the
church, laid his hands on him, prayed with fervour, and caused the
youth finally to repeat after him a penitent confession; thus was the
business settled. Even historical personages did not escape the
melancholy fate of being possessed by the devil. The belief in this
continued beyond the Thirty years' war.

In the last century the compact which the Duke of Luxemburg, the
opponent of Prince William of Orange, had made with the devil, was
imparted to the public with all kinds of details and comments; and it
is characteristic of that fastidious period, that the Duke imposed upon
the devil, among other conditions, that he should only appear to him
under an agreeable, not in a terrible form.[68] Following the examples
given in the Bible, the new Church treated more kindly those that were
possessed. Luther and his followers assumed that these, through sins
which might be forgiven, and sometimes through small errors, had fallen
into the power of the devil, and that it was a duty and a merit in
believers to drive out the evil spirit by prayers and adjurations. It
was not all lunatics or epileptic persons who were considered to be
possessed of the devil, but as he was supposed to be at work
everywhere, they often had the satisfaction of finding him. The most
wonderful indications of his activity were watched with credulous zeal.
Weak-minded women principally were impressed with the belief that they
were tormented by the devil; and it was the natural result of this
imagination that in their sickly condition they expressed the most
violent repugnance against ecclesiastics, and the pious ceremonies with
which they were favoured. But how far preconceived opinions can confuse
the senses, not only of the sick, but also of the healthy, and falsify
the witness of their own eyes and ears, we discover with astonishment
in numerous accounts of eye-witnesses, who are fully worthy of credit,
but who perceive and believe in the most impossible things in those
possessed. To mention a very absurd instance supposed to have happened
in the time of Luther, at Frankfort on the Oder; a maiden who had
always been weak in mind was possessed by Satan in the following way:
"When the suspected maid seized any one by the coat or beard, or
otherwise, she always found money instead in her hand, which she
instant