[Footnote 20: Bournon, p. 23.] [Footnote 21: De Lancre, _Tableau_, pp. 124, 125, 126, 135, 208, 458.] [Footnote 22: Bodin, _Fléau_, p. 373.] [Footnote 23: Bourignon, _Parole_, p. 87.—Hale, p. 27.] [Footnote 24: _Full Tryals of Notorious Witches_, p. 8.] [Footnote 25: _Records of the Justiciary Court of Edinburgh_, ii, p. 14.—Arnot, p. 359.] [Footnote 26: _Witches of Northamptonshire_, p. 8.] II. THE GOD 1. _As God_ It is impossible to understand the witch-cult without first understanding the position of the chief personage of that cult. He was known to the contemporary Christian judges and recorders as the Devil, and was called by them Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, the Foul Fiend, the Enemy of Salvation, and similar names appropriate to the Principle of Evil, the Devil of the Scriptures, with whom they identified him. This was far from the view of the witches themselves. To them this so-called Devil was God, manifest and incarnate; they adored him on their knees, they addressed their prayers to him, they offered thanks to him as the giver of food and the necessities of life, they dedicated their children to him, and there are indications that, like many another god, he was sacrificed for the good of his people. The contemporary writers state in so many words that the witches believed in the divinity of their Master. Danaeus, writing in 1575, says, 'The Diuell co[~m]aundeth them that they shall acknowledge him for their god, cal vpõ him, pray to him, and trust in him.—Then doe they all repeate the othe which they haue geuen vnto him; in acknowledging him to be their God.'[27] Gaule, in 1646, nearly a century later, says that the witches vow 'to take him [the Devil] for their God, worship, invoke, obey him'.[28]