I have elsewhere in this volume attempted to show that, even in our own days, there is nothing particularly incredible about a witch--and that the disrespect into which she has fallen is due rather to our modern lack of any sense of proportion in our beliefs, than to any fault of her own. Certainly we have no cause to pride ourselves on any intellectual superiority to the great divines and scholars of past ages who devoted themselves to the dissection or condemnation of witchcraft--rather we should deplore our lack of faith and of imagination. For them there existed no possibility of doubt, no relative standard of fact or theory. The premises were absolute. The spiritual world was based upon the word of God as expressed in the Bible and translated by the Church. To argue the absurdity or inadmissibility of any particular tenet of Christian doctrine was to suppose a paradox--the fallibility of the infallible. Eminent jurists, as was Bodin, or learned physicians such as Wierus, both writing towards the close of the sixteenth century, arguing with great mental dexterity on opposite sides, alike accepted the initial axiom, cramp and confine them though it might. They had, indeed, no alternative--as well might two modern astronomers in disputing over the whereabouts of an undiscovered planet deny the existence of the sun. The humane Wierus, a friend of Sir Philip Sidney, by the way, preaches from the same text as does the judicial Bodin--though he delivers a different sermon. Bodin, supporter of the old conventions, makes a formidable onslaught on Wierus--not for any scepticism as to the existence of witches--no ground was given him for such an accusation--but for maintaining against the view of the Church that witches were victims rather than disciples of the Devil. Nor, in the face of the very explicit injunction, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live"--and the suggestion was still to be mooted that "witch" in the original stood for "poisoner"--can we accuse those who obeyed it of having acted from any other motives than those of earnest Christians. It is true that they carried zeal to the point of enthusiasm--but zeal has always been accounted a mark of grace. As we have seen the severest period of witch-persecution commences from their definite classification as heretics by the Bull of Innocent VIII. issued in 1484. The Bull itself was not lacking in directness:--"It has come to our ears," it commences, "that great numbers of both sexes are not afraid to abuse their own bodies with devils that serve to both sexes. And with their Inchantments, charms and sorceries to vex and afflict Man and Beast with inward and outward pains and tortures.... Therefore with the authority apostolic we have given power to the Inquisitor ... to convict, imprison and punish."