But fierce indeed was the hatred with which was regarded, in the last half of the century, that other connection with hell,--the old witchcraft. Even Luther believed in witches; he mentions incidentally that such a woman had injured his mother; and in another place was angry with the lawyers who did not punish similar sorceresses when they injured their fellow-creatures. But these expressions were not intended to be very severe; he on the whole troubled himself little with this phase of superstition. He, the copious writer, never considered it necessary to discourse to his people concerning it; in his sermons he only occasionally mentions witchcraft, and his whole nature was repugnant to the application of violence. But if happily for us, Luther's pure spirit preserved him from bitterness against the devil's helpmates, his scholars and successors had little of his high-mindedness. Young Protestantism was on this point little better than the old belief. In Protestant countries the ministers of God were by no means the only persecutors; the civil authorities were also willing to follow the example of the ecclesiastical courts of the Roman Catholics, and above all of the Jesuits. The victims were countless; they amount without doubt to hundreds of thousands. It was first in the domains of the ecclesiastical princes, that the contagion burst forth, which devastated whole provinces as in Eichstaedt, Wuertsburg and Cologne. In twenty villages in the vicinity of Treves, three hundred and sixty-eight persons were executed in seven years, besides many who were burnt in the city itself; in Brunswick the burnt stakes stood like a little forest on the place of execution. In every province hundreds and thousands might be counted. Every kind of baseness was practised by the ecclesiastical and temporal judges; the most contemptible grounds of suspicion sufficed to depopulate whole villages. No position and no age was a security; children and the aged, learned men and even councillors, were bound to the stake, but the greater part were women;--we shudder when we look at the method of these condemnations. It is not impossible, although it cannot be spoken of with certainty, that a victim here and there did live in the mad delusion that they were in union with the devil through magic arts; it is not impossible, although this cannot be certified, that hurtful mediums, intoxicating beverages and superstitious medicaments were in some cases used for the detriment of others. But it is the strongest proof of the infamy of the whole proceeding, that amidst the monstrous mass of old records concerning witches, we find no ground of belief that in any case the judgment was justified by the real misdeeds of the accused, though they were made the excuse for it; for so great was the degree of fanaticism, narrow-mindedness, or malice, that the mere accusation was almost certain to be fatal. Torture was applied on the most frivolous charges;