Page:The history of Witchcraft and demonology.djvu/168

 carried away by the Satanists were thrown to the pavement and trampled under foot. Marcelline made ceaseless reparation, and at nine o’clock of the evening of 26 April, she received the stigmata in hands, feet, and side, and also the Crown of Thorns. After a few years of expiation she died at Tulle, 25 June, 1708.

The erudite Paul Grilland tells us that the liturgy is burlesqued in every detail: “Those witches who have solemnly devoted themselves to the Devil’s service, worship him in a particular manner with ceremonial sacrifices, which they offer to the Devil, imitating in all respects the worship of Almighty God, with vestments, lights, and every other ritual observance, and with a set liturgy in which they are instructed, so that they worship and praise him eternally, just as we worship the true God.” This abomination of blasphemy is met with again and again in the confessions of witches, and although particulars may differ here and there, the same quintessence of sacrilege persisted throughout the centuries, even as alas! in hidden corners and secret lairs of infamy it skulks and lurks this very day.

What appears extremely surprising in this connexion is the statement of Cotton Mather that the New England witches “met in Hellish Randezvous, wherein the Confessors (i.e. the accused who confessed) do say, they have had their Diabolical Sacraments, imitating the Baptism and the Supper of our Lord.” At the trial of Bridget Bishop, alias Oliver, at the Court of Oyer and Terminer, held at Salem, 2 June, 1692, Deliverance Hobbs, a converted witch, affirmed “that this Bishop was at a General Meeting of the Witches, in a Field at Salem-Village, and there partook of a Diabolical Sacrament in Bread and Wine then administered.” In the case of Martha Carrier, tried 2 August, 1692, before the same court, two witnesses swore they had seen her “at a Diabolical Sacrament … when they had Bread and Wine Administered unto them.” Abigail Williams confessed that on 31 March, 1692, when there was a Public Fast observed in Salem on account of the scourge of sorcery “the Witches had a Sacrament that day at an house in the Village, and that they had Red Bread and Red Drink.” This “Red Bread” is certainly puzzling. But the whole thing, sufficiently profane no doubt, necessarily lacks the hideous impiety of the