essions of the
accused parties themselves; and that, sire, with so much agreement and
conformity between the different cases, that the most ignorant persons
convicted of this crime have spoken to the same circumstances, and in
nearly the same words, as the most celebrated authors who have written
about it, all of which may be easily proved to your majesty's satisfaction
by the records of various trials before your parliaments.

"These, sire, are truths so intimately bound up with the principles of our
religion, that, extraordinary although they be, no person has been able to
this time to call them in question. If some have cited, in opposition to
these truths, the pretended canon of the Council of Ancyre, and a passage
from St. Augustin, in a treatise upon the _Spirit and the Soul_, it has
been without foundation; and it would be easy to convince your majesty
that neither the one nor the other ought to be accounted of any authority;
and, besides that, the canon, in this sense, would be contrary to the
opinion of all succeeding councils of the Church, Cardinal Baronius, and
all learned commentators agree that it is not to be found in any old
edition. In effect, in those editions wherein it is found, it is in
another language, and is in direct contradiction to the twenty-third canon
of the same council, which condemns sorcery, according to all preceding
constitutions. Even supposing that this canon was really promulgated by
the Council of Ancyre, we must observe that it was issued in the second
century, when the principal attention of the Church was directed to the
destruction of paganism. For this reason, it condemns that class of women
who said they could pass through the air, and over immense regions, with
Diana and Herodias, and enjoins all preachers to teach the falsehood of
such an opinion, in order to deter people from the worship of these false
divinities; but it does not question the power of the devil over the human
body, which is, in fact, proved by the holy Gospel of Jesus Christ
himself. And with regard, sire, to the pretended passage of St. Augustin,
everybody knows that it was not written by him, because the writer,
whoever he was, cites Boetius, who died more than eighty years after the
time of St. Augustin. Besides, there is still more convincing proof in the
fact, that the same father establishes the truth of witchcraft in all his
writings, and more particularly in his _City of God_; and in his first
volu