The Chaldeans and Egyptians, who knew something of them, kept it a great secret and never spoke of them but in riddles; so that until Alexander's time, and the reign of the Macedonians, they had made no great progress in such learning as might cure them of superstition. An immoderate love of the study of astrology, was a weakness which characterized also the fifteenth century. In the age of Lewis XIV, the court was infatuated with the notion of judicial astrology: many of the princes, through a superstitious pride, supposed that nature, to distinguish them, had writ their destiny in the stars. Victor Amadeus, Duke of Savoy, father to the Duchess of Burgundy, had an astrologer always with him, even after his abdication. The same weakness which gave credit to the absurd chimera, judicial astrology, also occasioned the belief of sorcery and witchcraft; courts of justice composed of magistrates, who ought to have had more sense than the vulgar, were employed in trying persons accused of witchcraft.--Latest posterity must hear with astonishment that the Madame d'Ancre was burnt at the _Gréve_ as a sorceress. This unfortunate woman, when questioned by counsellor Courtin concerning the kind of sorcery she had used to influence the will of Mary de Medecis, having answered, _She had used that power only which great souls always have over weak minds_; this sensible reply served only to precipitate the decree of her death[11]. It must be confessed there is a strong propensity in man's nature, to assign every thing uncommon to supernatural means. But though I am very apt to believe there is greater credulity in most minds, than will be candidly acknowledged, yet the degree of it must be in proportion to people's ignorance and want of information. Thus the famous doctors of the faculty at Paris, when John Faustus brought the first printed books that had then been seen in the world, or at least seen there, and sold them for manuscripts, were surprised at the performance, and questioned Faustus about it; but he affirming they were manuscripts, and that he kept a great many clerks employed to write them, they were satisfied. Looking further, however, into the work, and observing such an exact uniformity throughout the whole, that if there was a blot in one, it was the same in all, etc. etc. etc. their doubts were revived. The learned divines not being able to comprehend the thing, (and that was always sufficient) concluded it must be the _devil_; that it was done by magic and witchcraft; and that, in short, poor Faustus (who was indeed nothing but a mere printer) dealt with the _devil_.