But people all say now--that was the age, and the Church was still under the influence of barbarism, and so on. Exactly; but that admission plainly knocks down and utterly destroys the whole platform of dogmatism and the immutable and eternal truth of any dogma whatever, for it admits evolution--and to seize on its temporary fleeting forms and proclaim that they are immutable, is to mistake the temporal for the eternal, the infinitesimal fraction for the whole. This is not worshipping God, the illimitable, unknown tremendous Source of Life, but His minor temporary forms, "essences," or "angels," as the Cabalists termed the successive off-castings of His manifestations. In Being's flood, in action's storm I work and weave--above, beneath, Work and weave in endless motion Birth and death, an infinite ocean A seizing and giving The fire of the living. 'Tis thus at the roaring loom of Time I ply And weave for God the garment thou seest Him by. Now there are infinite numbers of these garments, but none of them are God, though the Church declared that what they had of them were truly Divine. So Oriental princes sent their old clothes to distant provinces to be worshipped, as Gessler sent his hat: it is an old, old story, and one which will be long repeated in many lands. I have, not far back, mentioned a work on witchcraft by Paulus Grillandus. Its full title is "Tractatus de Hereticis et sortilegiis, omnifariam Coitio eorumque penis. Item de Questionibus et Tortura ac de Relaxatione Carceratorum"--that is, in brief, a work on Heretics, Witches breakers of the Seventh Commandment of all kinds, Examination by Torture, and Imprisonment. It was a leading vade mecum, or standard guide, in its time for lawyers and the clergy, especially the latter, and reads as if it had come from the library of hell, and been written by a devil, though composed, according to the preface, to promote the dignity and glory of the Christian Church. I can well believe that a sensitive humane person could be really maddened by a perusal and full comprehension of all the diabolical horrors which this book reveals, and the glimpses which it gives of what must have been endured literally by millions of heretics and "witches," and all men or women merely accused by anybody of any kind of "immorality," especially of "heresy." I say suspected or accused--for either was sufficient to subject a victim to horrible agonies until he or she confessed. What is most revolting is the calm, icy-cold-blooded manner in which the most awful, infernal cruelties are carefully discussed--as, for instance, if one has already had any limbs amputated for punishment whether further tortures may then be inflicted? It is absolutely a relief to find that among the six kinds of persons legally exempted from the rack, &c.--there are only six and these do not include invalids--are pregnant women. But such touches of common humanity are rare indeed in it.