It is not many years since a fanatic in one of our colonies took a fancy to accuse a neighbour of witchcraft: the crime was clearly proved, and the poor culprit suffered according to law. In credulity and superstition there is something epidemical. The contagion spread; and this being found a summary process for removing a competitor in trade, or revenging an insult, informations for sorcery became frequent. Their sessions-house was crowded with witches, as is that at the Old Bailey with pickpockets. It however brought fees, and so far was well: but these sapient legislators at length discovered that the province was likely to be depopulated; and what affected them still more, their own fraternity were liable to the consequences. A man, who had been cheated by his lawyer, made an affidavit that said lawyer was a wizard. This was too much: the court had a special meeting, and unanimously determined that they would not receive any more informations against wizards. The bye-law had the effect of a charm, and sorcery was no more!
Lord Bacon somewhere remarks that superstition is worse than atheism. It takes from religion every attraction, every comfort; and the place of humble hope and patient resignation is supplied by melancholy, despair, and madness!
To the best minds, credulity is the source of much misery. Our first Charles, who, with all his errors as a king, had the manners and mind of a gentleman, was so much under its influence, that he never enjoyed a day's happiness after consulting the Sortes Virgilianæ.[116]
In our age—an age in many respects enlightened by the beams of philosophy—the effects resulting from credulity, superstition, and fanaticism are dreadful; but while the evils are contemplated with horror, the system is too ridiculous for sober reasoning. It induces the infatuated votary to believe that being in the pale of a particular church will ensure his salvation. The ignorant are confounded with metaphysical subtleties which the wisest cannot comprehend; and by combining different texts of holy writ, we are insulted with conclusions contrary to common sense.[117]
To check this inundation of absurdity, which deemed carnal reason profane, and was not to be combated by argument, Mr. Hogarth engraved this print; it contains what must ever operate as a complete refutation of those who, because they were his opponents in politics, have impudently asserted that he lost his talents in the decline of life: for though the delineation was made in his sixty-fourth year, in satire, wit, and imagination, it is superior to any of his preceding works.
The text "I speak as a fool" is a type of the preacher, whose strength of lungs is a convenient substitute for strength of argument. He is literally a Boanerges; his tones rend the region, and the thunder of his eloquence has cracked the sounding-board. His right hand poises a witch astride upon a broom-stick, and in his left he suspends an emissary of Satan: this embryotic demon wields a gridiron as a terror to the ungodly, and at the witch's breast is an incubus in the shape of a cat.[118] Considering action as the first requisite of an orator, our ecclesiastical juggler throws his whole frame into convulsions: he shakes as the lofty cedar in a storm. Like Milton's devil,
"With head, hands, wings, or feet, he works his way,
And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies."