To this a contribution of some weight, though by no means so influential as has been reckoned, was made by Pedro de Valencia, a disciple of Arias Montano, and one of the most learned men of his time. At the request of Inquisitor-general Sandoval y Rojas, he composed an elaborate "discourse" on witchcraft, addressed to Sandoval under date of April 20th. In this, after premising the great grief and compassion with which he had read the relations of the auto of the previous November, he proceeds to discuss three hypotheses. The first is rationalistic; there is no demon, the aquelarres are assemblages for sensual indulgence, to which the members go on foot, and the presiding demon is a man disguised. The second is illusion, produced by a pact with the demon, who gives to the witch an ointment throwing her into a stupor during which she imagines all that is related of the aquelarres, whence it follows that the evidence of the witch as to those whom she has seen there is not to be accepted. The destruction of cattle and harvests is the work of the demon, or may be accomplished by poisons. The third supposition, believed by the vulgar, in conformity with the evidence and confessions, is the most prodigious and horrible of all, and against this he brings his strongest arguments in full detail. Pedro does not express any positive conclusion of his own, but his reasoning all tends to support the second hypothesis--of stupor and illusion produced by the demonic ointment, and from this he deduces the result that witches are by no means innocent. They delight in the crimes which they believe themselves to commit, and desire to persevere in their apostasy from God and their servitude to the devil. Men sometimes become heretics through ignorance and mistaken zeal, but these seek the devil in all his hideousness for the purpose of partaking in foul and unhallowed pleasures. They merit any punishment that can be inflicted on them, for such rotten limbs should be lopped off, and the cancer be extirpated with fire and blood. Their conspiracies to kill and the crimes which they commit and the injuries inflicted on their neighbors, before and after these dreams deserve all this and greater rigor.