Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft Addressed to J.G. Lockhart, Esq

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1836 edition. Excerpt: ... clergy, too many of whom wealth and ease had caused to neglect that course of morality which best recommends religious doctrine. In almost every nation in Europe, there lurked, in the crowded cities, or wild solitude of the country, sects who agreed chiefly in their animosity to the supremacy of Rome, and their desire to cast off her domination. The Waldenses and Albigenses were parties existing in great numbers through the south of France. Romanists became extremely desirous to combine the doctrine of the heretics with witchcraft, which, according to their account, abounded especially where the Protestants were most numerous; and the bitterness increasing, they scrupled not to throw the charge of sorcery, as a matter of course, upon those who dissented from the Catholic standard of faith. The Jesuit Delrio alleges several reasons for the affinity which he considers a3 existing between the Protestant and the sorcerer; he accuses the former of embracing the opinion of Wierus, and other defenders of the Devil (as he calls all who oppose his own opinions concerning witchcraft), --thus fortifying the kingdom of Satan against that of the Church. A remarkable passage in Monstrelet puts in a clear view the point aimed at by the Catholics in thus confusing and blending the doctrines of heresy and the practice of witchcraft, and how a meeting of inoffensive Protestants could be cunningly identified with a Sabbath of hags and fiends. In this year 1459, in the town of Arras, and county of Artois, arose, through a terrible and melancholy chance, an opinion called, I know not why, the Religion of Vaudaisie. This sect consisted, it is said, of certain persons, both men and women, who, under cloud of night, by the power of the Devil, repaired to some solitary...