Which may all lead to the question: If a belief in witches as utterly evil servants of the devil could be held as an immutable dogma of the Church and a matter of eternal truth for eternal belief--to prove which there is no end of ingenious argument and an appalling array of ecclesiastical authority cited in the black-letter "Liber de Sortilegiis" of Paulus Grillandus, now lying before me (Lyons, 1547), as well as in the works of Sprenger, Bodinus, Delrio, and the Witch-bull of Pope Innocent--and if this belief be now exploded even among the priests, what proof have we that any of the dogmas which went with it are absolutely and for ever true? This is the question of dogmatik, versus development or evolution, and witchcraft is its greatest solvent. For when people believe, or make believe, in a thing so very much as to torture like devils and put to death hundreds of thousands of fellow-beings, mostly helpless and poor old women, not to mention many children, it becomes a matter of very serious import to all humanity to determine once for all whether the system or code according to which this was done was absolutely right for ever, or not. For if it was true, these executions and the old theory of witchcraft were all quite right, as the Roman Church still declares, since the Pope has sanctioned of late years several very entertaining works in which modern spiritualists, banjo-twangers, table-turners, &c., are declared to be really wizards, who perform their stupendous and appalling miracles directly by the aid of devils. And, by the way, somebody might make an interesting work not only on the works in the Index Librum Prohibitorum, which it entails seventy-six distinct kinds of damnation to read, but also on those which the Pope sanctions--I believe, blesses. Among the later of the latter is one which pretends to prove that Jews do really still continue to sacrifice Christian children at the Passover feast--and, for aught I know, to eat them, fried in oil, or "buttered with goose-grease"--apropos of which, I marvel that the Hebrews, instead of tamely denying it, do not boldly retort on the Christians the charge of torturing their own women and children to death as witches, which was a thousand times wickeder than simply bleeding them with a penknife, as young Hugh of Lincoln was said to have been disposed of by the Jew's daughter.