But whilst it is to a great extent true that paganism was substantially little better than an organized diablerie, and the devil, as the strong man in the Gospel, was keeping his house in comparative peace, still the very elements of man's nature, despite his fall, did in various ways protest against the enemy and impede his action. The idea of a supreme God could not be wholly withdrawn from the minds and hearts of men, and many true prayers, despite the demon's elaborate machinery to intercept them, pierced the heavens. Nay, the very forms themselves of idolatry would often suggest thoughts and acts of worship which no evil influence could control; for the world had been given to men, and not to the demon. Even the senses, for all they were so many inlets of temptation, did, by bringing men under the wholesome influence of external nature, and by their equable excitation of his mental powers, tend, in fact, to break the fascinating grasp which the fiend would hold upon his imagination. The material world at once spoke to him of God, and housed him from the pitiless storm of spiritual influence with which he was assailed. Common sense was not without its power of natural exorcism, and true affection often grew and flowered where the devil only thought to have nurtured lust.
In the cults which express the religious sentiments of the more civilized nations, we meet with much that is humane and noble, whilst, at the same time, we are often shocked by manifestations of a very different character—rites in which the fire of the pit seems to have found a direct vent.
On the whole, in pre-Christian, as compared with Christian, times, the devil reigned. When the apostle would warn the faithful of the foes with whom they would have to contend, he says: "Our warfare is not against flesh and blood"—i.e. these are, under the circumstances, hardly worth considering—"but against principalities and powers; against the rulers of the world of this darkness; against spiritual wickedness in high places." It was by the direct onslaught of the early church upon the citadel of paganism—her forcing the devil, by the intolerable brightness of her presence, to show himself in his true colors—and by thus enlisting on her side all the more honest elements of human nature, that she gained the victory, and the devil was fairly outlawed. In the expressive language of the Theodosian Codex (ix. tit. xvi.), sorcerers are denounced as "aliens of nature," (peregrini naturæ). Still, for all this, the war was by no means over, and its character remained substantially what it had always been. The devil did not lose his power of working marvels, but, as in the case of Pharaoh's magicians, he was outdone and baffled.
I think there will be little difficulty in showing that the teaching of the church on the subject of the devil's power was in the earliest times substantially what it was in the middle ages and what it is now. The contrary has been maintained by Janus, and we must do him the justice to acknowledge that even reputable writers like Maffei and Cantù have gone some lengths in the same direction. As Janus is still quoted as an authority in this country, it will not be amiss to combine his refutation with the illustration of my subject.
Janus maintains in so many words that in the Christian Church "it was long looked upon as a wicked and unchristian error, as something heretical, to attribute supernatural powers and effects to the aid of demons"; that "for many centuries ... the popular notions about diabolical agency, nocturnal meetings with demons, enchantments and witchcrafts, were viewed and treated as a folly inconsistent with Christian belief"; that this doctrine continued until gradually ousted by the "threefold authority of the popes, Aquinas, and the powerful Dominican Order."[95] Now, I of course admit that the action taken by the authorities of the church in regard to particular phenomena of witchcraft has varied extremely with circumstances; but she has always held that the devil has the power, which he is sometimes allowed to exercise, either en rapport with human agents or independently of them, of working marvels which transcend the natural power of the particular nature in conjunction with which they are wrought, though not transcending the sphere of universal nature; and that these are done by rapid, imperceptible combinations of other natural powers. When theologians disputed as to whether the devil could do this or that particular marvel—for example, transport imprisoned witches through their prison-walls to the "Sabbath"—the dispute did not turn on the reality or non-reality of magic, but upon whether the marvel in question did or did not transcend the sphere of universal nature. On the other hand, theologians have always maintained that in a certain sense witchcraft is an absurdity, no craft at all, an ars nugatoria, as S. Thomas calls it, since it is founded upon no fixed principles, but depends for its issues on the free will of one who has been a deceiver from the beginning. The scholastics made a great point of insisting upon the essentially unscientific character of witchcraft, since the devil had taken advantage of the extraordinary thirst for learning which prevailed in the middle ages to present himself in the light of a guide to new realms of science.
Janus relies for the justification of his statement upon a document long known as a chapter of the Council of Ancyra, but generally acknowledged to be the utterance of some IXth century Frank council. I subjoin it at length, together with the kindred questions from the Penitentiary of Burchard. Over and above their controversial value, they have an antiquarian interest which I hope not to neglect:
"Neither must this be passed over, that certain wicked women, turning back after Satan, and seduced by the illusions and phantasms of demons, believe and profess that they ride by night with Diana, goddess of the pagans, or with Herodias and a countless multitude of women, upon certain beasts, and silently, and in the dead of night, traverse many lands, obeying her commands as their mistress, and were, on certain nights, summoned to do her service. And would that these only had perished in their faithlessness! for an innumerable multitude, deceived by this false opinion, believe these things to be true, and, so believing, deviate from the true faith, and relapse into the errors of paganism, in believing that aught divine and godlike can be besides God. Wherefore, priests in the churches under their charge should preach to the people with all earnestness, so that they may understand that these things are, in all respects, false, and that such phantasms are injected into the minds of the faithful, not by the spirit of God, but by the evil spirit.
"Verily, Satan himself, who transfigures himself into an angel of light, after seizing upon the mind of some silly woman, and subjugating her to himself by infidelity, thereupon transforms himself into the forms and semblances of various persons, and in dreams deceiving the mind which he holds in captivity, and showing it anon pleasant things, anon sad, anon known, anon unknown, leads it everywhere from the road; and whilst the spirit alone undergoes this, the unfaithful mind thinks that this is taking place, not in the soul, but in the body? But who, in dreams and visions of the night, is not carried out of himself, and does not see many things in his sleep which he had never seen awake? yet who is so silly and stupid as to think that all these things which take place in the spirit only, occur also in the body? seeing that Ezechiel the prophet saw the visions of the Lord in the spirit, and not in the body, and the Apostle John saw the mystery of the Apocalypse in the spirit, not in the body. 'At once,' he saith, 'I was in the spirit'; and Paul dared not say that he had been taken out of the body. Wherefore, all must be told that whosoever believes these things and the like loses the faith, and he who hath not the right faith in the Lord is not the Lord's, but his in whom he believes—that is, the devil's; for of our Lord it is written, 'By him all things were made.' Whoever, then, believes that it can happen that a creature should be changed into a better or a worse, or be transformed into another sort or species save by the Creator who made all things, and through whom all things were made, of a surety is an infidel, and worse than a pagan."
The following are passages from what Burchard transcribes as an ancient Roman Penitentiary, and are specimens of a practical application of the preceding chapter:
"Hast thou ever believed or taken part in the perfidious credence that enchanters and those that call themselves storm-senders can, by the enchantment of demons, excite storms or alter men's minds? If thou hast believed or taken part, thou shalt do penance for one year on the lawful Ferias.