[590]. Especially as they often pretended, or really believed in, powers and curses, and, being quite helpless on the material side, invoked the aid of supernatural terrors to get assistance and be looked upon with fear.
[591]. Various persons accused of witchcraft, says Boguet, “ont confessé qu’ils faisoient la gresle en Sabbat afin de gaster les fruicts de la terre.”—Discours des sorciers, p. 144. Storms were supposed to be occasioned by the devils. “Telle est l’origine de l’habitude de sonner les cloches pendant les orages.”—L. F. A. Maury, La Magie, p. 102. Paris, 1860.
[592]. Bodin, Démonologie, p. 171.
[593]. Scot, Discoverie, p. 17. And this was also practised on a prisoner accused of sorcery before James I.—Lecky, History of Rationalism, p. 114.
[594]. One of the early inquirers as to the witch trials took a friend in with him to witness a torturing. As an experiment, he asked the prisoner if his companion, an entire stranger, had not been one of her accomplices, and the poor creature moaned out that he had.
[595]. “Le diable est si bon maistre que nous n’en pouvons envoyer si grand nombre au feu, que de leurs cendres il n’en renaisse de nouveau d’autres.”—Florimonde de Raemond, Antichrist, p. 103. Lyons, 1597.
[596]. It became a common prayer with women of the humbler class that they might not live to be old. It was sufficient to be aged, poor, or half-crazed to ensure death at the stake or on the scaffold.—Mackay, Delusions, p. 116.
[597]. History of Rationalism, p. 3.
[598]. Mackay, Delusions, p. 159.
[599]. Lecky, History of Rationalism, p. 4.