Social eminence was no safeguard against these delusions. When it was affirmed that Agnes Sampson, with two hundred other witches, had sailed in sieves from Leith to North Berwick church to hold a banquet with the devil, James I., {101} had the torture applied to the wretched woman, and took pleasure in putting appropriate questions to her. It then was charged that the two hundred old women had baptized and then drowned a black cat, thereby raising a dreadful storm in which the ship that carried the king narrowly escaped being wrecked. Upon this, Agnes was condemned to the flames. She died protesting her innocence, and piteously calling on Jesus to have mercy on her for Christian men would not. Of all the early reformers, Luther and Melanchthon were perhaps the freest from superstition, and yet even they devoutly believed that in the Tiber, not far distant from the pope's palace, a monster had been found having the head of an ass, the body of a man and the claws of a bird. After searching their Bibles to find out what the prodigy meant, they at length concluded that it was one of the signs and wonders which were to precede the fall of the papacy, and published a pamphlet about it. Yet Luther and Melanchthon were the leaders of a great movement, the teachers of a great nation, and were in every respect the most influential persons in that nation. The people, credulous and grossly ignorant, listened and believed. We, at this distance of time and living in another realm of thought, can form but a faint conception of the effect these horrible conceits produced upon them. But the greatest need of those times was the want of divine authority. The writings of Luther, Melanchthon, Erasmus and Calvin were never considered as inspired. Luther himself never professed to have divine authority for his teachings; but on the other hand denounced the very idea of inspiration. When, in 1525, Munzer and his associates (commonly known as the prophets of Zwickaw) claimed divine authority, Luther was foremost in denouncing and persecuting them, and their followers. According to Mosheim, their principal crimes were in denying infant baptism and the right of a distinct class to preach for hire; and asserting that "God still continued to reveal His will to chosen persons by dreams and visions." (_See Mosheim Vol. II, p. 128_.) They also claimed "that God in His own good time would erect to Himself a holy church possessing a perfect organization, and would set {102} apart for the execution of this grand design, a certain number of chosen instruments divinely assisted and prepared for this chosen work, by the aid and inspiration of His Holy Spirit." As a consequence they claimed the right to rebaptizing persons coming from other churches.