Page:The history of Witchcraft and demonology.djvu/26

 with the Inuocatioun of the spreitis of the Deuill; speciallie in the visioune and forme of ane Mr. William Sympsoune, hir cousing and moder-brotheris-sone, quha sche affermit wes ane grit scoller and doctor of medicin.” Conuicta et combusta is the terse record of the margin of the court-book.

One of the most interesting identifications of “the Devil” occurs in the course of the notorious trials of Dr. Fian and his associates in 1590–1. As is well known, the whole crew "Was in league with Francis Stewart, Earl of Bothwell, and even at the time well-founded gossip, and something more a than gossip, freely connected his name with the spells, Sabbats, and orgies of the witches. He was vehemently suspected of the black art; he was an undoubted client of warlocks and poisoners; his restless ambition almost overtly aimed at the throne, and the witch covens were one and all frantically attempting the life of King James. There can be no sort of doubt that Bothwell was the moving force who energized and directed the very elaborate and numerous organization of demonolaters, which was almost accidentally brought to light, to be fiercely crushed by the draconian vengeance of a monarch justly frightened for his crown and his life.

In the nineteenth century both Albert Pike of Charleston and his successor Adriano Lemmi have been identified upon abundant authority as being Grand Masters of societies practising Satanism, and as performing the hierarchical functions of “the Devil” at the modern Sabbat.

God, so far as His ordinary presence and action in Nature are concerned, is hidden behind the veil of secondary causes, and when God’s ape, the Demon, can work so successfully and obtain not merely devoted adherents but fervent worshippers by human agency, there is plainly no need for him to manifest himself in person either to particular individuals or at the Sabbats, but none the less, that he can do so and has done so is certain, since such is the sense of the Church, and there are many striking cases in the records and trials which are to be explained in no other way.

That, as Burns Begg pointed out, the witches not unseldom “seem to have been undoubtedly the victims of unscrupulous and designing knaves, who personated Satan” is no palliation of their crimes, and therefore they are not one