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228 In Europe tortures the most terrible were inflicted to compel confession. In "Superstition and Force," Mr. Henry C. Lea quotes Rickens, a magistrate during an epidemic of witchcraft at the close of the seventeenth century, as complaining that no reliance could be placed on legal witnesses to procure conviction. Del Rio avers that torture is to be more readily resorted to in witchcraft than in other crimes, in consequence of the extreme difficulty of its proof. This, Mr. Lea says, was the common opinion of the time. Constantine issued a decree 358 that no dignity of birth or station should protect those accused of sorcery or magic from the severest application of torture. Old German records are full of accounts of men and women yielding and confessing, usually in language put into their mouths by the inquisitors. In New England none of those who confessed themselves to be witches were executed, and every effort was made to induce them to do so. If any one confessed to being a witch, and afterward, driven by conscience, retracted, he was certain to be executed. This was the case with Samuel Wardwell, who confessed, retracted his confession, and died upon the gallows protesting his innocence. But why did some religions and spiritually minded persons confess? Because they were saturated with erroneous views of the power of the devil, and his mode of exercising it. They believed that he was very near them all the time, endeavoring to effect an entrance; and when they were accused, saw "the afflicted," and realized that the magistrates and ministers thought they were guilty, their minds being weakened by the terrible pressure upon them, they came to the conclusion that in some unguarded moment the devil had gained an advantage over them; and that, though "they were unconscious of having