Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/230

Rh chusetts; convicted by a jury of twelve good men and true; preached against by the clergy, and executed by the common hangman. Any one who looks carefully and without prejudice into the matter sees, I think, more evidence for the reality of those “wonders of the invisible world” than for the Christian miracles. Here is the testimony of scholars, clergymen, witnesses examined under oath, jurymen, and judges; the confession of honest men, of persons whose character is well known at the present day, to prove the reality of witchcraft and the actual occurrence of miraculous facts; of the interference of powers more than human in the affairs of the world. See, who will, Cotton Mather's Wonders of the Invisible World, Boston, 1693; Increase Mather's Cases of Conscience, &c., and the learned authors in Diabology therein cited. See also Hale’s Modest Inquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft, &c., Boston, 1702; Calef, More Wonders from the Invisible World, London, 1700; Upham's Lectures on Witchcraft, &c.; Stone's History of Beverley, Boston, 1843, p. 213, et seq.; Mather's Magnalia, passim; Chandler's Criminal Trials, p. 65, et seq.; Bancroft, ubi sup. ch. XIX. See many curious particulars in Hutchinson's Essay concerning Witchcraft, &c., second edition, London, 1720. See Remigius, Demonolatriæ, Libri III., Col. 1576, 1 vol. 12mo. I have not seen the book, but it is said to contain matter derived from the cases of about 900 persons executed for witchcraft in 15 years at Lorraine. See a contemporary Narrative of the Proceedings against Dame Alice Kyteler, prosecuted for sorcery in 1324 by the Bp of Ossory, Lond. 1843, 1 vol. 4to, Introduction. See Account of the Trial, Confession, &c., of Six Witches at Maidstone, &c., 1652, and the Trial of Three Witches, &c., 1645, Lond. 1837. In the 13th century the Cath. Church declared a disbelief of witchcraft to be Heresy, See, who will, the Bulls of the Popes relative to this from Greg. IX. down to the famous Bull of Innoc. VIII. (1484), Summis desiderantes. The celebrated work of Sprenger and Kramer, Malleus Malleficarum (1484 at Saesse), may be consulted by the curious. In 1487 this infamous work was approved by the theological faculty at Cologne, and acquired a great reputation in the church. It is remarkable that in 1650, when two Jesuits in Germany wrote against trials for witchcraft, the most famous Protestant divines—as Pott at Jena and Carpzov at Leipsic—defended the prosecution, and wished men punished for disbelieving in witchcraft. See Gazzaniga, ubi sup. Vol. IV. Diss. I. C. 20, p. 44, et seq. The appearance of spectres and ghosts, of the Devil as “a little a black man;” the power of witches to ride through the air, overturn a ship, raise storms, and torture men at a distance, is attested by a cloud of witnesses, perfectly overshadowing to a man of easy faith. In the celebrated case