Yet more miserable was the wight whom the fiends were
commissioned bodily to possess;--with whose breathing frame an infernal
substance was incorporate and almost identified;--whose thoughts were
sufferings, and his words involuntary blasphemies. Can we wonder that
all this was not borne passively;--that its authors were hunted out,
even, if needful, by their own charms;--that suspicion grew into
conviction, and conviction demanded vengeance;--that it was deemed a
duty to hold them up to public hatred, and drag them to the bar of
public justice;--and that their blood was eagerly thirsted after, of
which the shedding was often believed not merely a righteous
retribution, but the only efficient relief for the sufferers?
"The notion of witchcraft was no innocent and romantic superstition, no
scion of an elegant mythology, but was altogether vulgar, repulsive,
bloody, and loathsome. It was a foul ulcer on the face of humanity.
Other vagaries of the mind have been associated with lofty or with
gentle feelings;--they have belonged more to sportiveness than to
criminality;--they are the poetry interspersed on the pages of the
history of opinions;--they seem to be dreams of sleeping reason, and not
the putrescence of its mouldering carcase; but this has no bright side,
no redeeming quality whatever.
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