ng doubtful or
illogical in the fact of their exceeding poverty, and never stayed to
think that if they could transport themselves through the air to any
distance they chose, they would be but slippery holding in prison, and not
very likely to remain there for the pleasure of being tortured and burnt
at the end. But neither reason nor logic had anything to do with the
matter. The whole thing rested on fear, and that practical atheism of
fear, which denies the power of God and the wholesome beauty of Nature, to
exalt in their stead the supremacy of the Devil. This belief in the
Devil's material presence and power over men was the dark chain that bound
them all. Even the boldest opponent of the Witchcraft Delusion dared not
fling it off; not the bravest man or freest thinker could shake his mind
clear of this terrible trammel, this bugbear, this mere phantasm of human
fear and ignorance, this ghastly lie and morbid delusion, or abandon the
slavish worship of Satan for the glad freedom of God and Nature. It was
much when such men as Scot,[82] and Giffard,[83] and Gaule of
Staughton,[84] Sir Robert Filmer,[85] Ady,[86] Wagstaffe,[87] Webster,[88]
Hutchinson,[89] and half a dozen more shining lights could bring
themselves to deny the supernatural power of a few half-crazed old
beggar-women, and plead for humanity and mercy towards them, instead of
cruelty and condemnation; but not one dare take the wider step beyond, and
deny the existence of that phantom fiend, belief in whom wrought all this
misery and despair. Even the very best of the time gave in to this
delusion, and discussed gravely the properties and proportions of what we
know now were mere lies.

"We find the illustrious author of the 'Novum Organum' sacrificing to
courtly suppleness his philosophic truth, and gravely prescribing the
ingredients for a witch's ointment;--Selden maintaining that crimes of the
imagination may be punished with death;--The detector of Vulgar Errors,
and the most humane of physicians giving the casting vote to the
vacillating bigotry of Sir Matthew Hale;--Hobbes, ever sceptical,
penetrating, and sagacious, yet here paralyzed and shrinking from the
subject, as if afraid to touch it;--The adventurous explorer, who sounded
the depths and channels of the 'Intellectual System' along all the
'wide-watered' shores of antiquity, running after witches to hear them
recite the Common Prayer and the Creed, as a rational test of guilt or
innocence;-