with devilish practices, and the girls themselves were interrogated, and confronted with the accused. They testified that they constantly felt a swarming of ants in certain parts of their bodies, and that they were possessed. The physicians were then called in, or at least those who then passed for physicians. They visited the girls, and sought on Michelle's hody for the devil's seal, which the procès-verbal calls the satanic marks. They thrust a large needle into the spot, and this of itself was a grievous torture. Blood flowed from the

puncture; and Michelle made known, by her cries, that satanic marks do not produce insensibility. The judges, seeing no satisfactory evidence that Michelle Chaudron was a witch, had her put to the torture, which never fails to bring forth proofs. The unfortunate girl, yielding at length to the violence of her torments, confessed whatever was required of her.

"The physicians again sought for the satanic mark. They found it in a small dark spot on one of her thighs. They applied the needle; but the torture had been so excessive, that the poor expiring creature scarcely felt the wound; she did not cry out; therefore, the crime was satisfactorily proved. But, as manners were becoming less rude, she was not burned until she had been hanged."

Every tribunal in Christian Europe still rings with similar condemnations: so long did this barbarous imbecility endure, that even in our own day, at Wurtzburg, in Franconia, there was a witch burned in 1750. And what a witch! A young woman of quality, the abbess of a convent! and in our own times, under the empire of Maria Theresa of Austria !*

* It was so late as the latter end of the reign of Anne, that the pious and enlightened Glanville published his Sadducismus Triumphatus, a laboured collection of narratives and arguments in support of continuing to burn old women for witches, among a "thinking people." The reverend divine, in the genuine spirit of later writers, and of Dr. Southey in particular, laments the infidelity of the age, and the increasing scepticism which was assailing the most venerable opinions and practices! This book forms an admirable example of the genuine nature of,

These horrors, by which Europe was so long filled, determined Bekker to fight against the devil. In vain was he told, in prose and in verse, that he was doing wrong to attack him, seeing that he was extremely like him, being horribly ugly: nothing could stop him. He began with absolutely denying the power of Satan; and even grew so bold as to maintain that he does not exist. 66 If," said he, "there were a devil, he would revenge the war which I make upon him."

Bekker reasoned but too well in saying, that if the devil existed, he would punish him. His brother ministers took Satan's part, and suspended Bekker: for heretics will also excommunicate; and, in the article of cursing, Geneva mimics Rome.

Bekker enters on his subject in the second volume. According to him, the serpent which seduced our first parents was not a devil, but a real serpent;* as Balaam's ass was a real ass, and as the whale that swallowed Jonas was a real whale. It was so decidedly a real serpent, that all its species, which had before walked on their feet, were condemned to crawl on their bellies. No serpent, no animal of any kind, is called Satan, or Belzebub, or devil, in the Pentateuch. There is not so much as an allusion to Satan. The Dutch destroyer of Satan does, indeed, admit the existence of angels; but at the same time he assures us, that it cannot be proved by reasoning. "And if there are any," says he in the eighth chapter of his second volume, "it is hard to say what they are. The Scriptures tell us nothing about their nature, nor in

mere testimony, when, as Swift observes, reason goes to cuffs with the imagination, and fancy gets astride of the judgment. The acts against witchcraft were not repealed until 1726, which unhappily lost the member for Corfe Castle the honour of supporting this memorable portion of the "wisdom of our ancestors," a century later.-T.

*The learned Dr. Adam Clarke, of the Wesleyan Methodist Connection, insists that the original word Nakhash does not signify serpent, but ape; and it must be confessed that a suspicious partiality, occasionally observable in the sex, for animals partaking of the qualities of the latter, seems to favour the reading.-T.

what the nature of a spirit consists. The Bible was made, not for angels, but for men; Jesus was made a man for us, not an angel."

If Bekker has so many scruples concerning angels, it is not to be wondered at that he has some concerning devils; and it is very amusing to see into what contortions he puts his mind, in order to avail himself of such texts as appear to be in his favour, and to evade such as are against him.

He does his utmost to prove that the devil had nothing to do with the afflictions of Job; and here he is even more prolix than the friends of that holy man.

There is great probability that he was condemned only through the ill-humour of his judges at having lost so much time in reading his work. If the devil himself had been forced to read Bekker's World Bewitched, he could never have forgiven the fault of having so prodigiously wearied him.

One of our Dutch divine's greatest difficulties is to explain these words" Jesus was transported by the spirit into the desart, to be tempted by the devil." No text can be clearer. A divine may write against Belzebub as much as he pleases, but he must of necessity admit his existence; he may then explain the difficult texts if he can.

Whosoever desires to know precisely what the devil is, may be informed by referring to the jesuit Scott: no one has spoken of him more at length: he is much worse than Bekker.

Consulting history, where the ancient origin of the devil is to be found in the doctrine of the Persians, Ahrimanes, the bad principle, corrupts all that the good principle had made salutary. Among the Egyptians, Typhon does all the harm he can; while Oshireth, whom we call Osiris, does, together with Isheth, or Isis, all the good of which he is capable.

Before the Egyptians and Persians, Mozazor, among the Indians, had revolted against God, and became the devil, but God had at last pardoned him.*

* See BRAHMINS.

If

Bekker and the Socinians had known this anecdote of the fall of the Indian angels and their restoration, they would have availed themselves of it to support their opinion that hell is not perpetual, and to give hopes of salvation to such of the damned as read their books.

The Jews, as has already been observed,* never spoke of the fall of the angels in the Old Testament; but it is mentioned in the New.

About the period of the establishment of Christianity, a book was attributed to "Enoch, the seventh man after Adam," concerning the devil and his associates. Enoch gives us the names of the leaders of the rebellious and the faithful angels, but he does not say that war was in heaven; on the contrary, the fight was upon a mountain of the earth, and it was for the possession of young women.

St. Jude cites this book in his Epistle:-" "And the angels, which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day.... Woe unto them, for they have gone in the way of Cain.. And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these. . . . ."

St. Peter, in his second Epistle, alludes to the book of Enoch, when he says:- "For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness....

Bekker must have found it difficult to resist passages so formal. However, he was even more inflexible on the subject of devils than on that of angels: he would not be subdued by the book of Enoch, the seventh man from Adam; he maintained that there was no more a devil than there was a book of Enoch. He said that the devil was imitated from ancient mythology, that it was an old story revived, and that we are nothing more than plagiarists.

We may at the present day be asked, why we call

* See ANGELS.

that Lucifer the evil spirit, whom the Hebrew version and the book attributed to Enoch, named Samyaza. It is, because we understand Latin better than Hebrew.

But whether Lucifer be the planet Venus, or the Samyaza of Enoch, or the Satan of the Babylonians, or the Mozazor of the Indians, or the Typhon of the Egyptians, Bekker was right in saying that so enormous a power ought not to be attributed to him as that with which, even down to our own times, he has been believed to be invested. It is too much to have immolated to him a woman of quality of Wurtzburg, Magdalen Chaudron, the curate of Gaupidi, the wife of marshal d'Ancre, and more than a hundred thousand other wizards and witches, in the space of thirteen hundred years, in Christian states. Had Belthezar Bekker been content with pairing the devil's nails, he would have been very well received; but when a curate would annihilate the devil, he loses his cure.

BELIEF.

We shall see, at the article CERTAINTY, that we ought often to be very uncertain of what we are certain of; and that we may fail in good sense, when deciding according to what is called common sense. But what is it that we call believing?

A Turk comes and says to me-" I believe that the angel Gabriel often descended from the empyrean, to bring Mahomet leaves of the Alcoran, written on blue vellum."

Well, Mustapha, and on what does thy shaven head found its belief of this incredible thing?

"On this;-That there are the greatest probabilities that I have not been deceived in the relation of these improbable prodigies; that Abubeker the father-inlaw, Ali the son-in-law, Aisha or Aisse the daughter, Omar, and Osman, certified the truth of the fact in the presence of fifty thousand men,-gathered together all the leaves, read them to the faithful, and attested that not a word had been altered.

"That we have never had but one Koran, which has

VOL. II.

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