As the ancients were acquainted with the incombustibility of asbestos or amianthus, and the art of weaving it into cloth, it is highly probable that it was employed in the performance of some of their miracles, and it is equally probable that it was subsequently used, along with some of the processes already described, in enabling the victims of superstition to undergo without hazard the trial of ordeal by fire. In every country where this barbarous usage prevailed, whether in the sanctuary of the Christian idolater, or in the pagan temple of the Bramin, or under the wild orgies of the African savage, Providence seems to have provided the means of meeting it with impunity. In Catholic countries this exculpatory judgment was granted chiefly to persons in weak health, who were incapable of using arms, and particularly to monks and ecclesiastics, who could not avail themselves of the trial by single combat. The fire ordeal was conducted in the church under the inspection of the clergy: mass was at the same time celebrated, and the iron and the victims were consecrated by the sprinkling of holy water. The preparatory steps were also under the direction of the priests. It was necessary that the accused should be placed three days and three nights under their care, both before and after the trial. Under the pretence of preventing the defendant from preparing his hands by art, and in order to ascertain the result of the ordeal, his hands were covered up and sealed during the three days which preceded and followed the fiery application; and it has been plausibly conjectured by Beckmann, that during the first three days the preventive was applied to those whom they wished to acquit, and that the last three days were requisite to bring back the hands to their natural condition. In these and other cases, the accused could not have availed himself directly of the use of asbestos gloves, unless we could suppose them so made as to imitate the human skin at a distance; but the fibres of that mineral may have been imbedded in a paste which applied itself readily to all the elevations and depressions of the skin.