46. The great Reformation movement wrought a change in this respect. Men began to accept argument and reason, though savouring of special pleading of the schools, in preference to tradition, though never so venerable and well authenticated; and the leaders of the revolution could not but recognize the absurdity of laying down as infallible dogma that God was the Creator of all things, and then insisting with equal vehemence, by way of postulate, that the devil was the originator of some. The thing was gross and palpable in its absurdity, and had to be done away with as quickly as might be. But how? On the other hand, it was clear as daylight that the devil _did_ appear in various forms to tempt and annoy the people of God--was at that very time doing so in the most open and unabashed manner. How were reasonable men to account for this manifest conflict between rigorous logic and more rigorous fact? There was a prolonged and violent controversy upon the point--the Reformers not seeing their way to agree amongst themselves--and tedious as violent. Sermons were preached; books were written; and, when argument was exhausted, unpleasant epithets were bandied about, much as in the present day, in similar cases. The result was that two theories were evolved, both extremely interesting as illustrations of the hair-splitting, chop-logic tendency which, amidst all their straightforwardness, was so strongly characteristic of the Elizabethans. The first suggestion was, that although the devil could not, of his own inherent power, create a body, he might get hold of a dead carcase and temporarily restore animation, and so serve his turn. This belief was held, amongst others, by the erudite King James,[1] and is pleasantly satirized by sturdy old Ben Jonson in "The Devil is an Ass," where Satan (the greater devil, who only appears in the first scene just to set the storm a-brewing) says to Pug (Puck, the lesser devil, who does all the mischief; or would have done it, had not man, in those latter times, got to be rather beyond the devils in evil than otherwise), not without a touch of regret at the waning of his power-- "You must get a body ready-made, Pug, I can create you none;" and consequently Pug is advised to assume the body of a handsome cutpurse that morning hung at Tyburn. [Footnote 1: Daemonologie, p. 56.] But the theory, though ingenious, was insufficient. The devil would occasionally appear in the likeness of a living person; and how could that be accounted for? Again, an evil spirit, with all his ingenuity, would find it hard to discover the dead body of a griffin, or a harpy, or of such eccentricity as was affected by the before-mentioned Balam; and these and other similar forms were commonly favoured by the inhabitants of the nether world.