Witchcraft in America. Charles Wentworth Upham

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tastes were rather profane than pious) instructed or amused himself by causing to be discussed the question of the nature of the soul—himself adopting the opinion 'redit in nihilum quod fuit ante nihil,' and the decision of Aristotle and of Epicurus.

      'Lo! the new Pilate, of whose cruelty

       Such violence cannot fill the measure up,

       With no decree to sanction, pushes on

       Into the Temple his yet eager sails.'

      Purgat. xx. Cary's Transl.

      Chapter III.

       Table of Contents

      Witchcraft and Heresy purposely confounded by the Church—Mediæval Science closely connected with Magic and Sorcery—Ignorance of Physiology the Cause of many of the Popular Prejudices—Jeanne d'Arc—Duchess of Gloucester—Jane Shore—Persecution at Arras.

      What can hardly fail to be discerned in these prosecutions is the confusion of heresy and sorcery industriously created by the orthodox Church to secure the punishment of her offending dissentients. There are few proceedings against the pretended criminals in which it is not discoverable; the one crime being, as a matter of course, the necessary consequence of the other. In the interest of the Church as much as in the credulity of the people must be sought the main cause of so violent an epidemic, of so fearful a phenomenon in its continuance and atrocities, a fact demonstrated by the whole course of the superstition in the old times of Catholicism. Materials for exciting animosity and indignation against suspected heretics were near at hand. In the assurance of the pre-scientific world everything remote from ordinary knowledge or experience was inseparable from supernaturalism. What surpassed the limits of a very feeble understanding, what was beyond the commonest experience of every-day life, was with one accord relegated to the domain of the supernatural, or rather to that of the devil. For what was not done or taught by Holy Church must be of 'that wicked One'—the cunning imitator.


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