This exposition has the advantage of explaining the surprise expressed
by the witch at the unexpected consequences of her own invocation, while
it removes the objection of supposing the spirit of Samuel subject to
her influence. It does not apply so well to the complaint of Samuel that
he was _disquieted_, since neither the prophet, nor any good angel
wearing his likeness, could be supposed to complain of an apparition
which took place in obedience to the direct command of the Deity. If,
however, the phrase is understood, not as a murmuring against the
pleasure of Providence, but as a reproach to the prophet's former friend
Saul, that his sins and discontents, which were the ultimate cause of
Samuel's appearance, had withdrawn the prophet for a space from the
enjoyment and repose of Heaven, to review this miserable spot of
mortality, guilt, grief, and misfortune, the words may, according to
that interpretation, wear no stronger sense of complaint than might
become the spirit of a just man made perfect, or any benevolent angel by
whom he might be represented. It may be observed that in Ecclesiasticus
(xlvi. 19, 20), the opinion of Samuel's actual appearance is adopted,
since it is said of this man of God, that _after death he prophesied,
and showed the king his latter end_.

Leaving the further discussion of this dark and difficult question to
those whose studies have qualified them to give judgment on so obscure a
subject, it so far appears clear that the Witch of Endor, was not a
being such as those believed in by our ancestors, who could transform
themselves and others into the appearance of the lower animals, raise
and allay tempests, frequent the company and join the revels of evil
spirits, and, by their counsel and assistance, destroy human lives, and
waste the fruits of the earth, or perform feats of such magnitude as to
alter the face of Nature. The Witch of Endor was a mere fortune-teller,
to whom, in despair of all aid or answer from the Almighty, the
unfortunate King of Israel had recourse in his despair, and by whom, in
some way or other, he obtained the awful certainty of his own defeat and
death. She was liable, indeed, deservedly to the punishment of death for
intruding herself upon the task of the real prophets, by whom the will
of God was at that time regularly made known. But her existence and her
crimes can go no length to prove the possibility that another class of
witches, no otherwise resembling her than as called by the same name,
either existed at a more recent period, or were liable to the same
capital punishment, for a very different and much more doubtful class of
offences, which, however odious, are nevertheless to be proved possible
before they can be received as a criminal charge.

Whatever may be thought of other occasional expressions in the Old
Testament, it cannot be said that, in any part of that sacred volume, a
text occurs indicating the existence of a system of witchcraft, under
the Jewish dispensation, in any respect similar to that against which
the law-books of so many European nations have, till very lately,
denounced punishment; far less under the Christian dispensation--a
system under which the emancipation of the human race from the Levitical
law was happily and miraculously perfected. This latter crime is
supposed to infer a compact implying reverence and adoration on the part
of the witch who comes under the fatal bond, and patronage, support, and
assistance on the part of the diabolical patron. Indeed, in the four
Gospels, the word, under any sense, does not occur; although, had the
possibility of so enormous a sin been admitted, it was not likely to
escape the warning censure of the Divine Person who came to take away
the sins of the world. Saint Paul, indeed, mentions the sin of
witchcraft, in a cursory manner, as superior in guilt to that of
ingratitude; and in the offences of the flesh it is ranked immediately
after idolatry, which juxtaposition inclines us to believe that the
witchcraft mentioned by the Apostle must have been analogous to that of
the Old Testament, and equivalent to resorting to the assistance of
soothsayers, or similar forbidden arts, to acquire knowledge of
toturity. Sorcerers are also joined with other criminals, in the Book of
Revelations, as excluded from the city of God And with these occasional
notices, which indicate that there was a transgression so called, but
leave us ignorant of us exact nature, the writers upon witchcraft
attempt to wring out of the New Testament proofs of a crime in itself so
disgustingly improbable. Neither do the exploits of Elymas, called the
Sorcerer, or Simon, called Magus or the Magician, entitle them to rank
above the class of impostors who assumed a character to which they had
no real title, and put their own mystical and ridiculous pretensions to
supernatural power in competition with those who had been conferred on
purpose to diffuse the gospel, and facilitate its reception by the
exhibition of genuine miracles. It is clear that, from his presumptuous
and profane proposal to acquire, by purchase, a portion of those powers
which were directly derived from inspiration, Simon Magus displayed a
degree of profane and brutal ignorance inconsistent with his possessing
even the intelligence of a skilful impostor; and it is plain that a
leagued vassal of hell--should we pronounce him such--would have better
known his own rank and condition, compared to that of the apostles, than
to have made such a fruitless and unavailing proposal, by which he could
only expose his own impudence and ignorance.

With this observation we may conclude our brief remarks upon
_witchcraft_, as the word occurs in the Scripture; and it now only
remains to mention the nature of the _demonology_, which, as gathered
from the sacred volumes, every Christian believer is bound to receive as
a thing declared and proved to be true.

And in the first place, no man can read the Bible, or call himself a
Christian, without believing that, during the course of time
comprehended by the Divine writers, the Deity, to confirm the faith of
the Jews, and to overcome and confound the pride of the heathens,
wrought in the land many great miracles, using either good spirits, the
instruments of his pleasure, or fallen angels, the permitted agents of
such evil as it was his will should be inflicted upon, or suffered by,
the children of men. This proposition comprehends, of course, the
acknowledgment of the truth of miracles during this early period, by
which the ordinary laws of nature were occasionally suspended, and
recognises the existence in the spiritual world of the two grand
divisions of angels and devils, severally exercising their powers
according to the commission or permission of the Ruler of the universe.

Secondly, wise men have thought and argued that the idols of the heathen
were actually fiends, or, rather, that these enemies of mankind had
power to assume the shape and appearance of those feeble deities, and to
give a certain degree of countenance to the faith of the worshippers, by
working seeming miracles, and returning, by their priests or their
oracles, responses which "palter'd in a double sense" with the deluded
persons who consulted them. Most of the fathers of the Christian Church
have intimated such an opinion. This doctrine has the advantage of
affording, to a certain extent, a confirmation of many miracles related
in pagan or classical history, which are thus ascribed to the agency of
evil spirits. It corresponds also with the texts of Scripture which
declare that the gods of the heathen are all devils and evil spirits;
and the idols of Egypt are classed, as in Isaiah, chap. xix. ver. 2,
with charmers, those who have familiar spirits, and with wizards. But
whatever license it may be supposed was permitted to the evil spirits of
that period--and although, undoubtedly, men owned the sway of deities
who were, in fact, but personifications of certain evil passions of
humanity, as, for example, in their sacrifices to Venus, to Bacchus, to
Mars, &c., and therefore might be said, in one sense, to worship evil
spirits--we cannot, in reason, suppose that every one, or the thousandth
part of the innumerable idols worshipped among the heathen, was endowed
with supernatural power; it is clear that the greater number fell under
the description applied to them in another passage of Scripture, in
which the part of the tree burned in the fire for domestic purposes is
treated as of the same power and estimation as that carved into an
image, and preferred for Gentile homage. This striking passage, in which
the impotence of the senseless block, and the brutish ignorance of the
worshipper, whose object of adoration is the work of his own hands,
occurs in the 44th chapter of the prophecies of Isaiah, verse 10 _et
seq_. The precise words of the text, as well as common sense, forbid us
to believe that the images so constructed by common artisans became the
habitation or resting-place of demons, or possessed any manifestation of
strength or power, whether through demoniacal influence or otherwise.
The whole system of doubt, delusion, and trick exhibited by the oracles,
savours of the mean juggling of impostors, rather than the audacious
intervention of demons. Whatever degree of power the false gods of
heathendom, or devils in their name, might be permitted occasionally to
exert, was unquestionably under the general restraint and limitation of
providence; and though, on the one hand, we cannot deny the possibility
of such permission being granted in cases unknown to us, it is certain,
on the other, that the Scriptures mention no one specific instance of
such influence expressly recommended to our belief.

Thirdly, as the backsliders among the Jews repeatedly fell off to the
worship of the idols of the neighbouring heathens, so they also resorted
to the use of charms and enchantments, founded on a superstitious
perversion of their own Levitical ritual, in which they endeavoured by
sortilege, by Teraphim, by observation of augury, or the flight of
birds, which they called _Nahas_, by the means of Urim and Thummim, to
find as it were a byroad to the secrets of futurity. But for the same
reason that withholds us from delivering any opinion upon the degree to
which the devil and his angels might be allowed to countenance the
impositions of the heathen priesthood, it is impossible for us
conclusively to pronounce what effect might be permitted by supreme
Providence to the ministry of such evil spirits as presided over, and,
so far as they had liberty, directed, these sinful enquiries among the
Jews themselves. We are indeed assured from the sacred writings, that
the promise of the Deity to his chosen people, if they conducted
themselves agreeably to the law which he had given, was, that the
communication with the invisible world would be enlarged, so that in the
fulness of his time he would pour out his spirit upon all flesh, when
their sons and daughters should prophesy, their old men see visions, and
their young men dream dreams. Such were the promises delivered to the
Israelites by Joel, Ezekiel, and other holy seers, of which St. Peter,
in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, hails the fulfilment
in the mission of our Saviour. And on the other hand, it is no less
evident that the Almighty, to punish the disobedience of the Jews,
abandoned them to their own fallacious desires, and suffered them to be
deceived by the lying oracles, to which, in flagrant violation of his
commands, they had recourse. Of this the punishment arising from the
Deity abandoning Ahab to his own devices, and suffering him to be
deceived by a lying spirit, forms a striking instance.

Fourthly, and on the other hand, abstaining with reverence from
accounting ourselves judges of the actions of Omnipotence, we may safely
conclude that it was not his pleasure to employ in the execution of his
judgments the consequences of any such species of league or compact
betwixt devils and deluded mortals, as that denounced in the laws of our
own ancestors under the name of _witchcraft_. What has been translated
by that word seems little more than the art of a medicator of poisons,
combined with that of a Pythoness or false prophetess; a crime, however,
of a capital nature, by the Levitical law, since, in the first capacity,
it implied great enmity to mankind, and in the second, direct treason to
the divine Legislator. The book of Tobit contains, indeed, a passage
resembling more an incident in an Arabian tale or Gothic romance, than a
part of inspired writing. In this, the fumes produced by broiling the
liver of a certain fish are described as having power to drive away an
evil genius who guards the nuptial chamber of an Assyrian princess, and
who has strangled seven bridegrooms in succession, as they approached
the nuptial couch. But the romantic and fabulous strain of this legend
has induced the fathers of all Protestant churches to deny it a place
amongst the writings sanctioned by divine origin, and we may therefore
be excused from entering into discussion on such imperfect evidence.

Lastly, in considering the incalculable change which took place upon the
Advent of our Saviour and the announcement of his law, we may observe
that, according to many wise and learned men, his mere appearance upon
earth, without awaiting the fulfilment of his mission, operated as an
act of banishment of such heathen deities as had hitherto been suffered
to deliver oracles, and ape in some degree the attributes of the Deity.
Milton has, in the "Paradise Lost," it may be upon conviction of its
truth, embraced the theory which identifies the followers of Satan with
the gods of the heathen; and, in a tone of poetry almost unequalled,
even in his own splendid writings, he thus describes, in one of his
earlier pieces, the departure of these pretended deities on the eve of
the blessed Nativity:--

  "The oracles are dumb,
   No voice or hideous hum
Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving;
   Apollo from his shrine
   Can no more divine,
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving;
No nightly trance or breathed spell
Inspires the pale-eyed priests from the prophetic cell.

  "The lonely mountains o'er,
   And the resounding shore,
A voice of weeping heard and loud lament;
   From haunted spring and dale,
   Edged with poplar pale,
The parting Genius is with sighing sent;
With flower-inwoven tresses torn,
The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.

  "In consecrated earth,
  And on the holy hearth,
The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint;
  In urns and altars round,
  A drear and dying sound
Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint;
And the chill marble seems to sweat,
While each peculiar Power foregoes his wonted seat.

  "Peor and Baalim
  Forsake their temples dim,
With that twice-battered god of Palestine;
  And mooned Ashtaroth,
  Heaven's queen and mother both,
Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shine;
The Lybic Hammon shrinks his horn;
In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz mourn.

  "And sullen Moloch, fled,
  Hath left in shadows dread
His burning idol all of darkest hue;
  In vain with cymbals ring,
  They call the grisly king,
In dismal dance about the furnace blue;
The brutish gods of Nile as fast,
Isis and Orus, and the Dog Anubis, haste."

The quotation is a long one, but it is scarcely possible to shorten what
is so beautiful and interesting a description of the heathen deities,
whether in the classic personifications of Greece, the horrible shapes
worshipped by mere barbarians, or the hieroglyphical enormities of the
Egyptian Mythology. The idea of identifying the pagan deities,
especially the most distinguished of them, with the manifestation of
demoniac power, and concluding that the descent of our Saviour struck
them with silence, so nobly expressed in the poetry of Milton, is not
certainly to be lightly rejected. It has been asserted, in simple prose,
by authorities of no mean weight; nor does there appear anything
inconsistent in the faith of those who, believing that, in the elder
time, fiends and demons were permitted an enlarged degree of power in
uttering predictions, may also give credit to the proposition, that at
the Divine Advent that power was restrained, the oracles silenced, and
those demons who had aped the Divinity of the place were driven from
their abode on earth, honoured as it was by a guest so awful.

It must be noticed, however, that this great event had not the same
effect on that peculiar class of fiends who were permitted to vex
mortals by the alienation of their minds, and the abuse of their
persons, in the case of what is called Demoniacal possession. In what
exact sense we should understand this word _possession_ it is impossible
to discover; but we feel it impossible to doubt (notwithstanding learned
authorities to the contrary) that it was a dreadful disorder, of a kind
not merely natural; and may be pretty well assured that it was suffered
to continue after the Incarnation, because the miracles effected by our
Saviour and his apostles, in curing those tormented in this way,
afforded the most direct proofs of his divine mission, even out of the
very mouths of those ejected fiends, the most malignant enemies of a
power to which they dared not refuse homage and obedience. And here is
an additional proof that witchcraft, in its ordinary and popular sense,
was unknown at that period; although cases of possession are repeatedly
mentioned in the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles, yet in no one
instance do the devils ejected mention a witch or sorcerer, or plead the
commands of such a person, as the cause of occupying or tormenting the
victim;--whereas, in a great proportion of those melancholy cases of
witchcraft with which the records of later times abound, the stress of
the evidence is rested on the declaration of the possessed, or the demon
within him, that some old man or woman in the neighbourhood had
compelled the fiend to be the instrument of evil.

It must also be admitted that in another most remarkable respect, the
power of the Enemy of mankind was rather enlarged than bridled or
restrained, in consequence of the Saviour coming upon earth. It is
indisputable that, in order that Jesus might have his share in every
species of delusion and persecution which the fallen race of Adam is
heir to, he personally suffered the temptation in the wilderness at the
hand of Satan, whom, without resorting to his divine power, he drove,
confuted, silenced, and shamed, from his presence. But it appears, that
although Satan was allowed, upon this memorable occasion, to come on
earth with great power, the permission was given expressly because his
time was short.

The indulgence which was then granted to him in a case so unique and
peculiar soon passed over and was utterly restrained. It is evident
that, after the lapse of the period during which it pleased the Almighty
to establish His own Church by miraculous displays of power, it could
not consist with his kindness and wisdom to leave the enemy in the
possession of the privilege of deluding men by imaginary miracles
calculated for the perversion of that faith which real miracles were no
longer present to support. There would, we presume to say, be a shocking
inconsistency in supposing that false and deceitful prophecies and
portents should be freely circulated by any demoniacal influence,
deceiving men's bodily organs, abusing their minds, and perverting their
faith, while the true religion was left by its great Author devoid of
every supernatural sign and token which, in the time of its Founder and
His immediate disciples, attested and celebrated their inappreciable
mission. Such a permission on the part of the Supreme Being would be (to
speak under the deepest reverence) an abandonment of His chosen people,
ransomed at such a price, to the snares of an enemy from whom the worst
evils were to be apprehended. Nor would it consist with the remarkable
promise in holy writ, that "God will not suffer His people to be tempted
above what they are able to bear." I Cor. X. 13. The Fathers of the
Faith are not strictly agreed at what period the miraculous power was
withdrawn from the Church; but few Protestants are disposed to bring it
down beneath the accession of Constantine, when the Christian religion
was fully established in supremacy. The Roman Catholics, indeed, boldly
affirm that the power of miraculous interference with the course of
Nature is still in being; but the enlightened even of this faith, though
they dare not deny a fundamental tenet of their church, will hardly
assent to any particular case, without nearly the same evidence which
might conquer the incredulity of their neighbours the Protestants. It is
alike inconsistent with the common sense of either that fiends should be
permitted to work marvels which are no longer exhibited on the part of
Heaven, or in behalf of religion.

It will be observed that we have not been anxious to decide upon the
limits of probability on this question. It is not necessary for us to
ascertain in what degree the power of Satan was at liberty to display
itself during the Jewish dispensation, or down to what precise period in
the history of the Christian Church cures of demoniacal possession or
similar displays of miraculous power may have occurred. We have avoided
controversy on that head, because it comprehends questions not more
doubtful than unedifying. Little benefit could arise from attaining the
exact knowledge of the manner in which the apostate Jews practised
unlawful charms or auguries. After their conquest and dispersion they
were remarked among the Romans for such superstitious practices; and the
like, for What we know, may continue to linger among the benighted
wanderers of their race at the present day. But all these things are
extraneous to our enquiry, the purpose of which was to discover whether
any real evidence could be derived from sacred history to prove the
early existence of that branch of demonology which has been the object,
in comparatively modern times, of criminal prosecution and capital
punishment. We have already alluded to this as the contract of
witchcraft, in which, as the term was understood in the Middle Ages, the
demon and the witch or wizard combined their various powers of doing
harm to inflict calamities upon the person and property, the fortune and
the fame, of innocent human beings, imposing the most horrible diseases,
and death itself, as marks of their slightest ill-will; transforming
their own persons and those of others at their pleasure; raising
tempests to ravage the crops of their enemies, or carrying them home to
their own garners; annihilating or transferring to their own dairies the
produce of herds; spreading pestilence among cattle, infecting and
blighting children; and, in a word, doing more evil than the heart of
man might be supposed capable of conceiving, by means far beyond mere
human power to accomplish. If it could be supposed that such unnatural
leagues existed, and that there were wretches wicked enough, merely for
the gratification of malignant spite or the enjoyment of some beastly
revelry, to become the wretched slaves of infernal spirits, most just
and equitable would be those laws which cut them off from the midst of
every Christian commonwealth. But it is still more just and equitable,
before punishment be inflicted for any crime, to prove that there is a
possibility of that crime being committed. We have therefore advanced an
important step in our enquiry when we have ascertained that the _witch_
of the Old Testament was not capable of anything beyond the
administration of baleful drugs or the practising of paltry imposture;
in other words, that she did not hold the character ascribed to a modern
sorceress. We have thus removed out of the argument the startling
objection that, in denying the existence of witchcraft, we deny the
possibility of a crime which was declared capital in the Mosaic law, and
are left at full liberty to adopt the opinion, that the more modern
system of witchcraft was a part, and by no means the least gross, of
that mass of errors which appeared among the members of the Christian
Church when their religion, becoming gradually corrupted by the devices
of men and the barbarism of those nations among whom it was spread
showed, a light indeed, but one deeply tinged with the remains of that
very pagan ignorance which its Divine Founder came to dispel.

We will, in a future part of this enquiry, endeavour to show that many
of the particular articles of the popular belief respecting magic and
witchcraft were derived from the opinions which the ancient heathens
entertained as part of their religion. To recommend them, however, they
had principles lying deep in the human mind and heart of all times; the
tendency to belief in supernatural agencies is natural, and indeed seems
connected with and deduced from the invaluable conviction of the
certainty of a future state. Moreover, it is very possible that
particular stories of this class may have seemed undeniable in the dark
ages, though our better instructed period can explain them in a
satisfactory manner by the excited temperament of spectators, or the
influence of delusions produced by derangement of the intellect or
imperfect reports of the external senses. They obtained, however,
universal faith and credit; and the churchmen, either from craft or from
ignorance, favoured the progress of a belief which certainly contributed
in a most powerful manner to extend their own authority over the human
mind.

To pass from the pagans of antiquity--the Mahommedans, though their
profession of faith is exclusively unitarian, were accounted worshippers
of evil spirits, who were supposed to aid them in their continual
warfare against the Christians, or to protect and defend them in the
Holy Land, where their abode gave so much scandal and offence to the
devout. Romance, and even history, combined in representing all who were
out of the pale of the Church as the personal vassals of Satan, who
played his deceptions openly amongst them; and Mahound, Termagaunt, and
_Apollo_ were, in the opinion of the Western Crusaders, only so many
names of the arch-fiend and his principal angels. The most enormous
fictions spread abroad and believed through Christendom attested the
fact, that there were open displays of supernatural aid afforded by the
evil spirits to the Turks and Saracens; and fictitious reports were not
less liberal in assigning to the Christians extraordinary means of
defence through the direct protection of blessed saints and angels, or
of holy men yet in the flesh, but already anticipating the privileges
proper to a state of beatitude and glory, and possessing the power to
work miracles.

To show the extreme grossness of these legends, we may give an example
from the romance of "Richard Coeur de Lion," premising at the same time
that, like other romances, it was written in what the author designed to
be the style of true history, and was addressed to hearers and readers,
not as a tale of fiction, but a real narrative of facts, so that the
legend is a proof of what the age esteemed credible and were disposed to
believe as much as if had been extracted from a graver chronicle.

The renowned Saladin, it is said, had dispatched an embassy to King
Richard, with the present of a colt recommended as a gallant war-horse,
challenging Coeur de Lion to meet him in single combat between the
armies, for the purpose of deciding at once their pretensions to the
land of Palestine, and the theological question whether the God of the
Christians, or Jupiter, the deity of the Saracens, should be the future
object of adoration by the subjects of both monarchs. Now, under this
seemingly chivalrous defiance was concealed a most unknightly stratagem,
and which we may at the same time call a very clumsy trick for the devil
to be concerned in. A Saracen clerk had conjured two devils into a mare
and her colt, with the instruction, that whenever the mare neighed, the
foal, which was a brute of uncommon size, should kneel down to suck his
dam. The enchanted foal was sent to King Richard in the belief that the
foal, obeying the signal of its dam as usual, the Soldan who mounted the
mare might get an easy advantage over him.

But the English king was warned by an angel in a dream of the intended
stratagem, and the colt was, by the celestial mandate, previously to the
combat, conjured in the holy name to be obedient to his rider during the
encounter. The fiend-horse intimated his submission by drooping his
head, but his word was not entirely credited. His ears were stopped with
wax. In this condition, Richard, armed at all points and with various
marks of his religious faith displayed on his weapons, rode forth to
meet Saladin, and the Soldan, confident of his stratagem, encountered
him boldly. The mare neighed till she shook the ground for miles around;
but the sucking devil, whom the wax prevented from hearing the summons,
could not obey the signal. Saladin was dismounted, and narrowly escaped
death, while his army were cut to pieces by the Christians. It is but an
awkward tale of wonder where a demon is worsted by a trick which could
hardly have cheated a common horse-jockey; but by such legends our
ancestors were amused and interested, till their belief respecting the
demons of the Holy Land seems to have been not very far different from
that expressed in the title of Ben Jonson's play, "The Devil is an Ass."

One of the earliest maps ever published, which appeared at Rome in the
sixteenth century, intimates a similar belief in the connexion of the
heathen nations of the north of Europe with the demons of the spiritual
world. In Esthonia, Lithuania, Courland, and such districts, the chart,
for want, it may be supposed, of an accurate account of the country,
exhibits rude cuts of the fur-clad natives paying homage at the shrines
of demons, who make themselves visibly present to them; while at other
places they are displayed as doing battle with the Teutonic knights, or
other military associations formed for the conversion or expulsion of
the heathens in these parts. Amid the pagans, armed with scimitars and
dressed in caftans, the fiends are painted as assisting them, pourtrayed
in all the modern horrors of the cloven foot, or, as the Germans term
it, horse's foot, bat wings, saucer eyes, locks like serpents, and tail
like a dragon. These attributes, it may be cursorily noticed, themselves
intimate the connexion of modern demonology with the mythology of the
ancients. The cloven foot is the attribute of Pan--to whose talents for
inspiring terror we owe the word _panic_--the snaky tresses are borrowed
from the shield of Minerva, and the dragon train alone seems to be
connected with the Scriptural history.[5]

[Footnote 5: The chart alluded to is one of the _jac-similes_ of an
ancient planisphere, engraved in bronze about the end of the 15th
century, and called the Borgian Table, from its possessor, Cardinal
Stephen Borgia, and preserved in his museum at Veletri.]

Other heathen nations, whose creeds could not have directly contributed
to the system of demonology, because their manners and even their very
existence was unknown when it was adopted, were nevertheless involved,
so soon as Europeans became acquainted with them, in the same charge of
witchcraft and worship of demons brought by the Christians of the Middle
Ages against the heathens of northern Europe and the Mahommedans of the
East. We learn from the information of a Portuguese voyager that even
the native Christians (called those of St. Thomas), whom the discoverers
found in India when they first arrived there, fell under suspicion of
diabolical practices. It was almost in vain that the priests of one of
their chapels produced to the Portuguese officers and soldiers a holy
image, and called on them, as good Christians, to adore the Blessed
Virgin. The sculptor had been so little acquainted with his art, and the
hideous form which he had produced resembled an inhabitant of the
infernal regions so much more than Our Lady of Grace, that one of the
European officers, while, like his companions, he dropped on his knees,
added the loud protest, that if the image represented the Devil, he paid
his homage to the Holy Virgin.

In South America the Spaniards justified the unrelenting cruelties
exercised on the unhappy natives by reiterating, in all their accounts
of the countries which they discovered and conquered, that the Indians,
in their idol worship, were favoured by the demons with a direct
intercourse, and that their priests inculcated doctrines and rites the
foulest and most abhorrent to Christian ears. The great snake-god of
Mexico, and other idols worshipped with human sacrifices and bathed in
the gore of their prisoners, gave but too much probability to this
accusation; and if the images themselves were not actually tenanted by
evil spirits, the worship which the Mexicans paid to them was founded
upon such deadly cruelty and dark superstition as might easily be
believed to have been breathed into mortals by the agency of hell.

Even in North America, the first settlers in New England and other parts
of that immense continent uniformly agreed that they detected among the
inhabitants traces of an intimate connexion with Satan. It is scarce
necessary to remark that this opinion was founded exclusively upon the
tricks practised by the native powahs, or cunning men, to raise
themselves to influence among the chiefs, and to obtain esteem with the
people, which, possessed as they were professionally of some skill in
jugglery and the knowledge of some medical herbs and secrets, the
understanding of the colonists was unable to trace to their real
source--legerdemain and imposture. By the account, however, of the
Reverend Cotton Mather, in his _Magnalia_, book vi.,[6] he does not
ascribe to these Indian conjurers any skill greatly superior to a maker
of almanacks or common fortune-teller. "They," says the Doctor,
"universally acknowledged and worshipped many gods, and therefore highly
esteemed and reverenced their priests, powahs, or wizards, who were
esteemed as having immediate converse with the gods. To them, therefore,
they addressed themselves in all difficult cases: yet could not all that
desired that dignity, as they esteemed it, obtain familiarity with the
infernal spirits. Nor were all powahs alike successful in their
addresses; but they became such, either by immediate revelation, or in
the use of certain rites and ceremonies, which tradition had left as
conducing to that end. In so much, that parents, out of zeal, often
dedicated their children to the gods, and educated them accordingly,
observing a certain diet, debarring sleep, &c.: yet of the many
designed, but few obtained their desire. Supposing that where the
practice of witchcraft has been highly esteemed, there must be given the
plainest demonstration of mortals having familiarity with infernal
spirits, I am willing to let my reader know, that, not many years since,
here died one of the powahs, who never pretended to astrological
knowledge, yet could precisely inform such who desired his assistance,
from whence goods stolen from them were gone, and whither carried, with
many things of the like nature; nor was he ever known to endeavour to
conceal his knowledge to be immediately _from a god subservient to him
that the English worship_. This powah, being by an Englishman worthy of
credit (who lately informed me of the same), desired to advise him who
had taken certain goods which had been stolen, having formerly been an
eye-witness of his ability, the powah, after a little pausing, demanded
why he requested that from him, since himself served another God? that
therefore he could not help him; but added, '_If you can believe that my
god may help you, I will try what I can do_; which diverted the man from
further enquiry. I must a little digress, and tell my reader, that this
powah's wife was accounted a godly woman, and lived in the practice and
profession of the Christian religion, not only by the approbation, but
encouragement of her husband. She constantly prayed in the family, and
attended the public worship on the Lord's days. He declared that he
could not blame her, for that she served a god that was above his; but
that as to himself, his god's continued kindness obliged him not to
forsake his service." It appears, from the above and similar passages,
that Dr. Cotton Mather, an honest and devout, but sufficiently credulous
man, had mistaken the purpose of the tolerant powah. The latter only
desired to elude the necessity of his practices being brought under the
observant eye of an European, while he found an ingenious apology in the
admitted superiority which he naturally conceded to the Deity of a
people, advanced, as he might well conceive, so far above his own in
power and attainments, as might reasonably infer a corresponding
superiority in the nature and objects of their worship.

[Footnote 6: "On Remarkable Mercies of Divine Providence."]

From another narrative we are entitled to infer that the European wizard
was held superior to the native sorcerer of North America. Among the
numberless extravagances of the Scottish Dissenters of the 17th century,
now canonized in a lump by those who view them in the general light of
enemies to Prelacy, was a certain ship-master, called, from his size,
Meikle John Gibb. This man, a person called Jamie, and one or two other
men, besides twenty or thirty females who adhered to them, went the
wildest lengths of enthusiasm. Gibb headed a party, who followed him
into the moorlands, and at the Ford Moss, between Airth and Stirling,
burned their Bibles, as an act of solemn adherence to their new faith.
They were apprehended in consequence, and committed to prison; and the
rest of the Dissenters, however differently they were affected by the
persecution of Government, when it applied to themselves, were
nevertheless much offended that these poor mad people were not brought
to capital punishment for their blasphemous extravagances; and imputed
it as a fresh crime to the Duke of York that, though he could not be
often accused of toleration, he considered the discipline of the house
of correction as more likely to bring the unfortunate Gibbites to their
senses than the more dignified severities of a public trial and the
gallows. The Cameronians, however, did their best to correct this
scandalous lenity. As Meikle John Gibb, who was their comrade in
captivity, used to disturb their worship in jail by his maniac howling,
two of them took turn about to hold him down by force, and silence him
by a napkin thrust into his mouth. This mode of quieting the unlucky
heretic, though sufficiently emphatic, being deemed ineffectual or
inconvenient, George Jackson, a Cameronian, who afterwards suffered at
the gallows, dashed the maniac with his feet and hands against the wall,
and beat him so severely that the rest were afraid that he had killed
him outright. After which specimen of fraternal chastisement, the
lunatic, to avoid the repetition of the discipline, whenever the
prisoners began worship, ran behind the door, and there, with his own
napkin crammed into his mouth, sat howling like a chastised cur. But on
being finally transported to America, John Gibb, we are assured, was
much admired by the heathen for his familiar converse with the devil
bodily, and offering sacrifices to him. "He died there," says Walker,
"about the year 1720."[7] We must necessarily infer that the pretensions
of the natives to supernatural communication could not be of a high
class, since we find them honouring this poor madman as their superior;
and, in general, that the magic, or powahing, of the North American
Indians was not of a nature to be much apprehended by the British
colonists, since the natives themselves gave honour and precedence to
those Europeans who came among them with the character of possessing
intercourse with the spirits whom they themselves professed to worship.

[Footnote 7: See Patrick Walker's "Biographia Presbyteriana," vol. ii.
p. 23; also "God's Judgment upon Persecutors," and Wodrow's "History,"
upon the article John Gibb.]

Notwithstanding this inferiority on the part of the powahs, it occurred
to the settlers that the heathen Indians and Roman Catholic Frenchmen
were particularly favoured by the demons, who sometimes adopted their
appearance, and showed themselves in their likeness, to the great
annoyance of the colonists. Thus, in the year 1692, a party of real or
imaginary French and Indians exhibited themselves occasionally to the
colonists of the town of Gloucester, in the county of Essex, New
England, alarmed the country around very greatly, skirmished repeatedly
with the English, and caused the raising of two regiments, and the
dispatching a strong reinforcement to the assistance of the settlement.
But as these visitants, by whom they were plagued more than a fortnight,
though they exchanged fire with the settlers, never killed or scalped
any one, the English became convinced that they were not real Indians
and Frenchmen, but that the devil and his agents had assumed such an
appearance, although seemingly not enabled effectually to support it,
for the molestation of the colony.[8]

[Footnote 8: "Magnalia," book vii. article xviii. The fact is also
alleged in the "Life of Sir William Phipps."]

It appears, then, that the ideas of superstition which the more ignorant
converts to the Christian faith borrowed from the wreck of the classic
mythology, were so rooted in the minds of their successors, that these
found corroboration of their faith in demonology in the practice of
every pagan nation whose destiny it was to encounter them as enemies,
and that as well within the limits of Europe as in every other part of
the globe to which their arms were carried. In a word, it may be safely
laid down, that the commonly received doctrine of demonology, presenting
the same general outlines, though varied according to the fancy of
particular nations, existed through all Europe. It seems to have been
founded originally on feelings incident to the human heart, or diseases
to which the human frame is liable--to have been largely augmented by
what classic superstitions survived the ruins of paganism--and to have
received new contributions from the opinions collected among the
barbarous nations, whether of the east or of the west. It is now
necessary to enter more minutely into the question, and endeavour to
trace from what especial sources the people of the Middle Ages derived
those notions which gradually assumed the shape of a regular system of
demonology.




LETTER III.

    Creed of Zoroaster--Received partially into most Heathen
    Nations--Instances among the Celtic Tribes of Scotland--Beltane
    Feast--Gudeman's Croft--Such abuses admitted into Christianity after
    the earlier Ages of the Church--Law of the Romans against Witchcraft
    --Roman customs survive the fall of their
    Religion--Instances--Demonology of the Northern
    Barbarians--Nicksas--Bhargeist--Correspondence between the Northern
    and Roman Witches--The power of Fascination ascribed to the
    Sorceresses--Example from the "Eyrbiggia Saga"--The Prophetesses of
    the Germans--The Gods of Valhalla not highly regarded by their
    Worshippers--Often defied by the Champions--Demons of the
    North--Story of Assueit and Asmund--Action of Ejectment against
    Spectres--Adventure of a Champion with the Goddess Freya--Conversion
    of the Pagans of Iceland to Christianity--Northern Superstitions
    mixed with those of the Celts--Satyrs of the North--Highland
    Ourisk--Meming the Satyr.


The creed of Zoroaster, which naturally occurs to unassisted reason as a
mode of accounting for the mingled existence of good and evil in the
visible world--that belief which, in one modification or another,
supposes the co-existence of a benevolent and malevolent principle,
which contend together without either being able decisively to prevail
over his antagonist, leads the fear and awe deeply impressed on the
human mind to the worship as well of the author of evil, so tremendous
in all the effects of which credulity accounts him the primary cause, as
to that of his great opponent, who is loved and adored as the father of
all that is good and bountiful. Nay, such is the timid servility of
human nature that the worshippers will neglect the altars of the Author
of good rather than that of Arimanes, trusting with indifference to the
well-known mercy of the one, while they shrink from the idea of
irritating the vengeful jealousy of the awful father of evil.

The Celtic tribes, by whom, under various denominations, Europe seems to
have been originally peopled, possessed, in common with other savages, a
natural tendency to the worship of the evil principle. They did not,
perhaps, adore Arimanes under one sole name, or consider the malignant
divinities as sufficiently powerful to undertake a direct struggle with
the more benevolent gods; yet they thought it worth while to propitiate
them by various expiatory rites and prayers, that they, and the
elementary tempests which they conceived to be under their direct
command, might be merciful to suppliants who had acknowledged their
power, and deprecated their vengeance.

Remains of these superstitions might be traced till past the middle of
the last century, though fast becoming obsolete, or passing into mere
popular customs of the country, which the peasantry observe without
thinking of their origin. About 1769, when Mr. Pennant made his tour,
the ceremony of the Baaltein, Beltane, or First of May, though varying
in different districts of the Highlands, was yet in strict observance,
and the cake, which was then baken with scrupulous attention to certain
rites and forms, was divided into fragments, which were formally
dedicated to birds or beasts of prey that they, or rather the being
whose agents they were, might spare the flocks and herds.[9]

[Footnote 9: See Tennant's "Scottish Tour," vol. i. p. III. The
traveller mentions that some festival of the same kind was in his time
observed in Gloucestershire.]

Another custom of similar origin lingered late among us. In many
parishes of Scotland there was suffered to exist a certain portion of
land, called _the gudeman's croft_, which was never ploughed or
cultivated, but suffered to remain waste, like the TEMENOS of a pagan
temple, Though it was not expressly avowed, no one doubted that "the
goodman's croft" was set apart for some evil being; in fact, that it was
the portion of the arch-fiend himself, whom our ancestors distinguished
by a name which, while it was generally understood, could not, it was
supposed, be offensive to the stern inhabitant of the regions of
despair. This was so general a custom that the Church published an
ordinance against it as an impious and blasphemous usage.

This singular custom sunk before the efforts of the clergy in the
seventeenth century; but there must still be many alive who, in
childhood, have been taught to look with wonder on knolls and patches of
ground left uncultivated, because, whenever a ploughshare entered the
soil, the elementary spirits were supposed to testify their displeasure
by storm and thunder. Within our own memory, many such places,
sanctified to barrenness by some favourite popular superstition,
existed, both in Wales and Ireland, as well as in Scotland; but the high
price of agricultural produce during the late war renders it doubtful if
a veneration for greybearded superstition has suffered any one of them
to remain undesecrated. For the same reason the mounts called Sith
Bhruaith were respected, and it was deemed unlawful and dangerous to cut
wood, dig earth and stones, or otherwise disturb them.[10]

[Footnote 10: See "Essay on the Subterranean Commonwealth," by Mr.
Robert Kirke, minister of Aberfoyle.]

Now, it may at first sight seem strange that the Christian religion
should have permitted the existence of such gross and impious relics of
heathenism, in a land where its doctrines had obtained universal
credence. But this will not appear so wonderful when it is recollected
that the original Christians under the heathen emperors were called to
conversion by the voice of apostles and saints, invested for the purpose
with miraculous powers, as well of language, for communicating their
doctrine to the Gentiles, as of cures, for the purpose of authenticating
their mission. These converts must have been in general such elect
persons as were effectually called to make part of the infant church;
and when hypocrites ventured, like Ananias and Sapphira, to intrude
themselves into so select an association, they were liable, at the
Divine pleasure, to be detected and punished. On the contrary, the
nations who were converted after Christianity had become the religion of
the empire were not brought within the pale upon such a principle of
selection, as when the church consisted of a few individuals, who had,
upon conviction, exchanged the errors of the pagan religion for the
dangers and duties incurred by those who embraced a faith inferring the
self-denial of its votaries, and at the same time exposing them to
persecution. When the cross became triumphant, and its cause no longer
required the direction of inspired men, or the evidence of miracles, to
compel reluctant belief, it is evident that the converts who thronged
into the fold must have, many of them, entered because Christianity was
the prevailing faith--many because it was the church, the members of
which rose most readily to promotion--many, finally, who, though content
to resign the worship of pagan divinities, could not at once clear their
minds of heathen ritual and heathen observances, which they
inconsistently laboured to unite with the more simple and majestic faith
that disdained such impure union. If this was the case, even in the
Roman empire, where the converts to the Christian faith must have found,
among the earlier members of the church, the readiest and the soundest
instruction, how much more imperfectly could those foreign and barbarous
tribes receive the necessary religious information from some zealous and
enthusiastic preacher, who christened them by hundreds in one day? Still
less could we imagine them to have acquired a knowledge of Christianity,
in the genuine and perfect sense of the word, when, as was frequently
the case, they only assumed the profession of the religion that had
become the choice of some favoured chief, whose example they followed in
mere love and loyalty, without, perhaps, attaching more consequence to a
change of religion than to a change of garments. Such hasty converts,
professing themselves Christians, but neither weaned from their old
belief, nor instructed in their new one, entered the sanctuary without
laying aside the superstitions with which their young minds had been
imbued; and accustomed to a plurality of deities, some of them, who
bestowed unusual thought on the matter, might be of opinion that, in
adopting the God of the Christians, they had not renounced the service
of every inferior power.