stupidity. This fearful disorder
did not end with that century: through the whole of the sixteenth and
up to the middle of the eighteenth century these horrible judicial
murders continued. It was not till the time of the great Frederick that
they ceased.

The literary activity of the few enlightened men who ventured to speak
out in the interests of humanity against these trials for witchcraft,
was pregnant with danger. They themselves had to fear imprisonment and
the stake, and at least they incurred the hatred and the malice with
which believing fanatics assailed their opponents. One name belongs to
the sixteenth century which should ever be named with gratitude; that
of the Protestant physician _Johann Weier_, physician in ordinary to
Duke Wilhelm of Cleves, who in 1593 wrote his three volumes--'_De
praestigiis Daemonum_.' Even he believed in necromancers, who, by the
help of the devil, wrought mischief, in which case they were to fall
under the punishment of the laws; but the witches he considered as poor
miserable beldames, who, in the worst cases, only imagined themselves
to be doing the work of the devil, but were for the most part quite
innocent. His warm heart for the oppressed, and his noble indignation
against the brutality of the judges in the cases of witchcraft, made an
immense sensation. Within his limited sphere of action Weier appears to
us as a supplement to Luther. Against him also the raging orthodox crew
upraised themselves. The good effect produced by Weier's book was in a
great manner counteracted by a flood of opposition writings. But again
amidst the horrors of the Thirty years' war, Friedrich Spee, the best
of the German Jesuits, wrote secretly his '_Cautio Criminalis_,'
against the burning of heretics; he published this anonymously in a
Protestant printing-press.

The various popular transformations of the devil did not end with the
century in which Luther taught, and Weier endeavoured to banish the
stake from the place of execution. The Thirty years' war brought
forward another set of gloomy fantasies concerning him. Satan was
considered by the wild troopers as a demon who made fortresses, and
cast magic balls which could penetrate every kind of armour.

When the peace came, the war-devil withdrew into the woods, where he
taught his arts to the wild huntsmen; and when there remained nothing
in the land but an impoverished population devoid of faith and hope,
the devil was sought after in h