The lady struggled, her eyes gleamed with redoubled brilliancy, and her whole body seemed wrung with violent pain.
“In the name of God, depart not,” said the knight.
That holy name was all-powerful. The bodily form of the lady melted away, and was seen no more; whilst, with a cry of anguish and of terror, an evil spirit of monstrous form rose from the ground, clave the chapel roof asunder, and disappeared in the air.
“Such stories might be multiplied by hundreds,” said Herbert. “Every country has its good and evil angels that live among men and assume their forms.”
“It illustrates the curious fact,” remarked Lathom, “that the earliest accusations of sorcery in Christian ages are connected with relapses from the faith of Christ. The Anglo-Saxon laws against witchcraft are levelled against those who still adhered to the heathen practices of their ancestors, or sought to combine the pure faith of the Bible with the superstitions of their ancestral idolatry.”
“Was not such the fact in the south of Europe?” said Herbert; “the still lingering worship of the gods and goddesses of the woods was visited as sorcery. The demons do but occupy their places under forms, and with opinions, gradually adapted to the religious opinions of the age.”
“Many a secret meeting for the worship of God has been made the foundation of the mysteries of a witch’s Sabbath,” said Lathom; “sorcery was a common charge against the early Christians when they met in their secret caves and hiding-places; it was an equally current accusation centuries afterwards, when the Albigenses and Waldenses held their religious assemblages in secret, for fear of the power of that Church whose teaching they seceded from.”
“The same charges were made, in Sweden and Scotland, in the seventeenth century, against witches, as four centuries before, so little changed is superstition,” said Herbert.
“We must beat a truce,” said Lathom, “and be content to leave the rest of our illustrations of natural magic, witchcraft, and demoniacal agency, until our next meeting.”
“Good-night, then,” said Thompson; “remember, the witches’ time of night approaches—