ese trials had been conducted in the most odious
manner, and that the judges had motives of private vengeance against
many of the more influential persons who had been implicated. The
Parliament of Paris afterwards declared the sentence illegal, and the
judges iniquitous; but its arret was too late to be of service even to
those who had paid the fine, or to punish the authorities who had
misconducted themselves; for it was not delivered until thirty-two
years after the executions had taken place.

In the mean time, accusations of witchcraft spread rapidly in France,
Italy, and Germany. Strange to say, that although in the first instance
chiefly directed against heretics, the latter were as firm believers in
the crime as even the Catholics themselves. In after times we also find
that the Lutherans and Calvinists became greater witchburners than ever
the Romanists had been: so deeply was the prejudice rooted. Every other
point of belief was in dispute, but that was considered by every sect
to be as well established as the authenticity of the Scriptures, or the
existence of a God.

But at this early period of the epidemic the persecutions were directed
by the heads of the Catholic Church. The spread of heresy betokened, it
was thought, the coming of Antichrist. Florimond, in his work
concerning the Antichrist, lets us fully into the secret of these
prosecutions. He says, "All who have afforded us some signs of the
approach of Antichrist agree that the increase of sorcery and
witchcraft is to distinguish the melancholy period of his advent; and
was ever age so afflicted as ours? The seats destined for criminals in
our courts of justice are blackened with persons accused of this guilt.
There are not judges enough to try them. Our dungeons are gorged with
them. No day passes that we do not render our tribunals bloody by the
dooms which we pronounce, or in which we do not return to our homes,
discountenanted and terrified at the horrible confessions which we have
heard. And the devil is accounted so good a master, that we cannot
commit so great a number of his slaves to the flames, but what there
shall arise from their ashes a sufficient number to supply their place."

Florimond here spoke the general opinion of the Church of Rome; but it
never suggested itself to the mind of any person engaged in these
trials, that if it were indeed a devil, who raised up so many new
witches to fill the places of those consumed, it was no o