"And that is true of the whole range of science. Science is, in fact, atheistic or nothing. It knows nothing of God, it does not bother about God, its triumphs are achieved by leaving God out of account." (_C. Cohen_.) What has heretofore been mentioned is but a mere trifle when one considers the vast number of similar incidents in which religion has played the role of barrier to progress. These examples, though few, are sufficient to impress the mind of any clear-minded, intelligent individual with the conviction, in spite of all the sophistry and casuistry of the ecclesiastical apologies, that progress in this world has taken place in direct proportion to the degree that the mind of man has liberated itself from the control of theology and the myth of religion. CHAPTER XII RELIGION AND WITCHCRAFT _Better that a man's body should be destroyed than his soul. The worst death of the soul is freedom to err_. ST. AUGUSTINE. _It would be hard to calculate the perilous import of so treacherous an utterance, an utterance the latent sentiment of which has been responsible for I know not how much human agony. Menacing indeed to human happiness was such a claim, and in the course of time when the corporate body of the church became all-powerful in Christendom, it put into tyrannical practice what had been but a theological theory_. LLEWELYN POWYS. It is the purpose of this chapter to trace the origin of witches, wizards, and devils, the widespread belief in them at the time of pagan Rome, and the manner in which these were incorporated into Christian theology. With the rise of Christianity and the gain of political power by its adherents, the perverted pagan idea of witchcraft became the source of the most terrible persecutions in the bloody history of religion. The numerous references to witches and devils in both the Old and New Testaments established the authority for the organized religious mania that scourged both Roman Catholic and Protestant Europe, and extended its tentacles into the New England colonies. Instigated by ecclesiastics, and carried into effect by the intellectual serfs, their adherents, hundreds of thousands of "witches" were tortured and burned during the sway of the Witchcraft Delusion. With the Bible as an inspiration, the clergy inflamed the superstitious minds of the masses of that time with the conception of a ceaseless strife between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Satan for possession of their souls and their bodies.