There are, however, writers who maintain, in this century, and in our generation, even, the direct agency of the Devil in daily life, and see in demoniac sufferings the punishment of the wicked in this life already. The question of how much truth there may have been in this belief in witchcraft, held by so many nations, and persevered in during so many centuries, has never yet been fully answered. It is hardly to be presumed that during this long period all men, even the wisest and subtlest, should have been completely blinded or utterly demented. Many historians as well as philosophers have looked upon witchcraft as a mere creation of the Inquisition. Rome, they argue, was in great danger, she had no new dogma to proclaim which would give food to inquiring minds, and increase the prestige of her power; she was growing unpopular in many countries heretofore considered most faithful and submissive, and she was engaged in various dangerous conflicts with the secular powers. In this embarrassment her Inquisitors looked around for some means of escape, and thought a remedy might be found in this new combination of the two traditional crimes of heresy and enchantment. Witchcraft, as a crime, because of the deeds of violence with which it was almost invariably associated, belonged before the tribunal of the secular judge; as a sin it was to be punished by the bishop, but as heresy it fell, according to the custom of the day, to the share of neither judge nor bishop, but into the hands of the Inquisition.