e extremes the Churchmen of England endeavoured to steer a
middle course, retaining a portion of the ritual and forms of Rome, as
in themselves admirable, and at any rate too greatly venerated by the
people to be changed merely for opposition's sake. Their comparatively
undilapidated revenue, the connexion of their system with the state,
with views of ambition as ample as the station of a churchman ought to
command, rendered them independent of the necessity of courting their
flocks by any means save regular discharge of their duty; and the
excellent provisions made for their education afforded them learning to
confute ignorance and enlighten prejudice.

Such being the general character of the three Churches, their belief in
and persecution of such crimes as witchcraft and sorcery were
necessarily modelled upon the peculiar tenets which each system
professed, and gave rise to various results in the countries where they
were severally received.

The Church of Rome, as we have seen, was unwilling, in her period of
undisputed power, to call in the secular arm to punish men for
witchcraft--a crime which fell especially under ecclesiastical
cognizance, and could, according to her belief, be subdued by the
spiritual arm alone. The learned men at the head of the establishment
might safely despise the attempt at those hidden arts as impossible; or,
even if they were of a more credulous disposition, they might be
unwilling to make laws by which their own enquiries in the mathematics,
algebra, chemistry, and other pursuits vulgarly supposed to approach the
confines of magic art, might be inconveniently restricted. The more
selfish part of the priesthood might think that a general belief in the
existence of witches should be permitted to remain, as a source both of
power and of revenue--that if there were no possessions, there could be
no exorcism-fees--and, in short, that a wholesome faith in all the
absurdities of the vulgar creed as to supernatural influences was
necessary to maintain the influence of Diana of Ephesus. They suffered
spells to be manufactured, since every friar had the power of reversing
them; they permitted poison to be distilled, because every convent had
the antidote, which was disposed of to all who chose to demand it. It
was not till the universal progress of heresy, in the end of the
fifteenth century, that the bull of Pope Innocent VIII., already quoted,
called to convict, imprison, and condemn the sorce