In a conversation on witchcraft, Luther said he had no compassion on witches: he would burn every one of them. He reminded the people, that, according to the old law, the priests threw the first stones at such malefactors. Luther said his mother had undergone infinite annoyance from one of her neighbours who was a witch. This witch could throw a charm upon a child, which would make it cry itself to death. A pastor having punished the witch for some of her wicked tricks, she cast a spell on him by means of some earth he had walked upon. The good man fell sick of a malady, which no remedy could remove, and shortly thereafter died. Luther was satisfied the devil, through his prophets, could, and did, foretell future events; that he (the devil) was so skilled that he could cause death even by the leaf of a tree; that he had more boxes and pots full of poison, wherewith he destroyed men, than all the apothecaries in the world had of healing medicine. The devil, Luther thought, was so crafty that he could deceive our senses. He caused one to think he saw something he saw not, and to hear thunder or a trumpet he heard not. Men, he argued, were possessed by the devil, corporeally and spiritually. Those whom he possessed corporeally were mad people. CHAPTER XXXI. Belief and Teaching of the Roman Catholic Church--Instructions to Ecclesiastics in reference to Demons--Swedenborg's Intercourse with Spirits--Marcus Brutus and his Evil Genius--Cassius and Julius Cæsar's Ghost at Philippi--Phantom Soldiers and Horses--Plutarch on Spectres--Socrates on the same subject--Archbishop Bruno and the Spectre--A Haunted House--A Child's Ghost--Spectre at Sea--Ghost of a Murdered Man in New South Wales--A Haunted House--A Spectre at Sea. The belief and teaching of the Roman Catholic Church lead to a conviction that there are many evil spirits who act on men immediately by forming in the imagination representations and phantasies of an evil nature. The subjects of Satan, on whom his tyranny is chiefly exercised, are those who wilfully come under the empire of the prince of darkness, such as magicians, sorcerers, and persons who have renounced their baptism. In a summary of instructions for the guidance of ecclesiastics, entitled _De Instructione Sacerdotum_, which appeared about the middle of the seventeenth century, we find in substance the following:--