ions, from the
machinations of the devil and his agents. Every calamity that befell
him, he attributed to a witch. If a storm arose and blew down his barn,
it was witchcraft; if his cattle died of a murrain-if disease fastened
upon his limbs, or death entered suddenly, and snatched a beloved face
from his hearth--they were not visitations of Providence, but the works
of some neighbouring hag, whose wretchedness or insanity caused the
ignorant to raise their finger, and point at her as a witch. The word
was upon everybody's tongue--France, Italy, Germany, England, Scotland,
and the far North, successively ran mad upon this subject, and for a
long series of years, furnished their tribunals with so many trials for
witchcraft that other crimes were seldom or never spoken of. Thousands
upon thousands of unhappy persons fell victims to this cruel and absurd
delusion. In many cities of Germany, as will be shown more fully in its
due place hereafter, the average number of executions for this
pretended crime, was six hundred annually, or two every day, if we
leave out the Sundays, when, it is to be supposed, that even this
madness refrained from its work.

A misunderstanding of the famous text of the Mosaic law, "Thou shalt
not suffer a witch to live," no doubt led many conscientious men
astray, whose superstition, warm enough before, wanted but a little
corroboration to blaze out with desolating fury. In all ages of the
world men have tried to hold converse with superior beings; and to
pierce, by their means, the secrets of futurity. In the time of Moses,
it is evident that there were impostors, who trafficked upon the
credulity of mankind, and insulted the supreme majesty of the true God
by pretending to the power of divination. Hence the law which Moses, by
Divine command, promulgated against these criminals; but it did not
follow, as the superstitious monomaniacs of the middle ages imagined,
that the Bible established the existence of the power of divination by
its edicts against those who pretended to it. From the best
authorities, it appears that the Hebrew word, which has been rendered,
venefica, and witch, means a poisoner and divineress--a dabbler in
spells, or fortune-teller. The modern witch was a very different
character, and joined to her pretended power of foretelling future
events that of working evil upon the life, limbs, and possessions of
mankind. This power was only to be acquired by an express compact,
signe