Page:The history of Witchcraft and demonology.djvu/82

 rare such a connexion may be it is, at least, possible. It is this connexion with its consequences, conditions, and attendant circumstances, that is known as Witchcraft. The erudite Sprenger in the Malleus Maleficarum expressly declares that in his opinion a denial of the possibility of Witchcraft is heresy. “After God Himself hath spoken of magicians and sorcerers, what infidel dare doubt that they exist?” writes Pierre de Lancre in his L’Incredulité et Mescreance du Sortilège (Paris, 1622). That eminent lawyer Blackstone, in his Commentaries (1765), IV, 4, asserts: “To deny the possibility, nay, actual existence of Witchcraft and Sorcery, is at once flatly to contradict the revealed Word of God in various passages both of the Old and New Testament; and the thing itself is a truth to which every Nation in the World hath in its turn borne testimony, either by examples seemingly well attested, or by prohibitory laws, which at least suppose the possibility of commerce with evil spirits.” Even the ultra-cautious—I had almost said sceptical—Father Thurston acknowledges: “In the face of Holy Scripture and the teaching of the Fathers and theologians the abstract possibility of a pact with the Devil and of a diabolical interference in human affairs can hardly be denied.” Imposture, trickery, self-deception, hypnotism, a morbid imagination have, no doubt, all played an important part in legends of this kind. It is not enough quite sincerely to claim magical powers to possess them in reality. Plainly, a man who not only firmly believes in a Power of evil but also that this Power can and does meddle with and mar human affections and human destinies, may invoke and devote himself to this Power, may give up his will thereunto, may ask this Power to accomplish his wishes and ends, and so succeed in persuading himself that he has entered into a mysterious contract with evil whose slave and servant he is become. Moreover, as we should expect, the records teem with instances of common charlatanry, of cunning villainies and crime masquerading under the cloak of superstition, of clever fraud, of what was clearly play acting and mumming to impress the ignorant and vulgar, of diseased vanity, sick for notoriety, that craved the name and reputation of witch, of quackery and cozening that proved lucrative and comfortable enough.