On the north side of the College runs a narrow lane, connecting the square in which Brasenose College faces that of All Souls, with Turl Street. Going towards the latter, on the left-hand side stands Brasenose, until it is joined by the north portion of Lincoln College. On the other side is the high garden wall of Exeter College. It is a dreary and dismal-looking thoroughfare at best; and especially so at night. The windows of Brasenose College are of a narrow Jacobean type, protected both by horizontal as well as perpendicular stanchions. The lower windows, being almost level with the street, were further secured by a coarse wire netting.
Towards midnight on a day in December in the year above-named, one of the Fellows of Brasenose College was returning home, when as he approached he saw a tall man apparently draped in a long cloak, and, as he imagined, helping to assist some one to get out of the window. The window belonged to the rooms of one who was reported to be a leading member of the Hell-Fire Club. Being one of the authorities of the College, he instinctively rushed forward to detect what he imagined to be the perpetration of a distinct breach of the rules, when (as he himself afterwards declared) a thrill of horror seized him in a moment, and he felt all at once convinced that it was no human being at whom, appalled and fear-stricken, he looked. As he rushed past he saw the owner of the rooms, as he conceived, being forcibly and strugglingly dragged between the iron stanchions. The form, the features,[59] horribly distorted and stamped with a look of indescribable agony, were vividly before him; and the tall figure seemed to hold the frantic struggler in a strong grasp.
He rushed past, round to the chief entrance, knocked at the gate, and then fell to the ground in a swoon. Just as the Porter opened it, there rose a cry from a crowd of men trooping out from a set of rooms immediately to the right of the Porter’s lodge. They were members of the notorious Hell-Fire Club. In the middle of a violent speech, as profane as it is said to have been blasphemous, and with a frightful imprecation upon his lips, a chief speaker (the owner of the rooms) had suddenly broken a blood vessel, and was then lying dead on the floor.
The club in question, it is reported, never met again.[60]
So much on this point. A few words are perhaps needed upon another. It may be held by some that what has already been written on Witchcraft and Necromancy is a melancholy instance of grovelling superstition on the part of its Author.[61] Be it so. He is quite ready to avow his entire belief in the express statements of Holy Scripture, and in the general Christian tradition and teaching on the subject itself and all that is necessarily involved in it. Those who believe in the existence of angels, “the glorious battalions of the living God,” and who frankly accept as truth the various records of Holy Scripture, in which their ministry to mankind is set forth, will likewise believe that S. Peter’s exhortation to the Early Christians did not simply embody a sentiment but declared a fact, when he wrote: “Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the Devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”[62]
That the pagan nations owning and serving the Prince of this World, and being supernaturally served by him in return, actively practised magic at the time of our Blessed Saviour’s first coming, is generally allowed. And that the Christian writers of early times, more particularly S. Gregory Thaumaturgus, admitted the reality and force of the sorcerers’ incantations and powers, is abundantly evident from their words and reasoning. The case of the damsel of Thyatira, “possessed with a spirit of divination,” who “brought her masters much gain by soothsaying,” clearly establishes this point; and so does the apostle’s authoritative action:—“Paul, being grieved, turned and said to the spirit, I command thee in the Name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And he came out the same hour.”[63]
When, three centuries after the Day of Pentecost, the Church of God commenced numbering up her earliest triumphs, the soothsayers, the diviners, and the dealers with evil spirits began to experience her righteous and beneficent power. Constantine, urged to action by those who sat in the seats of the apostles, formally sanctioned the condemnation of magicians; but of course under Julian the Apostate, magic rites were not only still commonly in vogue, but were publicly patronized. Later on, Valentinian re-enacted the laws of Constantine; and under Theodosius the severest penalties were likewise enforced against the practice of magic; and, in truth, against every phase of pagan worship. But a general belief in sorcery and divination remained powerful and active long after the supreme and glorious victory of Christianity in the sixth century; and the manner in which the authorities of the Christian Church met the belief, and, by Sacraments and Sacramentals, aided the faithful to withstand the legions of the Devil and his human allies, is perfectly familiar to the student of history.
The well-known conviction that demons had appeared to mankind under the names of sylvans, gnomes, and fauns was common enough amongst the Romans prior to the revelation of Christianity; while the conviction that these demons had sometimes made women the object of their passion was arrived at by many. Justin Martyr and S. Augustine of Hippo[64] seem to imply something of the sort; and marriage or commerce with demons was a charge frequently made against witches, even from the earliest times.[65] It was said that these demons owned a remarkable attachment to women with beautiful hair,—a belief possibly founded on the passage in S. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians,[66] in which he exhorts women to cover their heads “because of the angels.” In the middle ages the intercourse of philosophers belonging to certain secret societies with sylphs and salamanders was also believed by many:[67] and, later on, the study of astrology, with its fatalistic theories, and the restoration of the heresies of the Manichees, served to aid in more systematically formulating that belief in witchcraft and the supernatural which was for centuries so universal, and which never could have become so without a sure and solid substratum of fact and truth.
Again, it is impossible to believe that the sorcerers of the Oriental nations have been and are impostors. As regards those of modern Egypt, Mr. Lane, in his interesting volume upon that country,[68] appears to have settled the question by expressing his conviction of the truth and reality of their supernatural performances. And similar conclusions have reluctantly but most certainly been arrived at by those who, with some knowledge and reasonable powers of observation, have witnessed the acts and deeds of the Eastern dealers with evil spirits.
With reference to Egypt, Mr. Lane’s statement on the subject stands thus:—