and burned them." Acts xix, 19.

"But there was a certain man called Simon which beforetime in the same
city used sorcery and bewitched the people of Samaria." Acts viii, 9.

"If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is
withered, and men gather them and cast them into the fire, and they are
burned."[C] John xv, 6.

[Footnote C: In the opinion of the eminent Italian jurist Bartolo,
witches were burned alive in early times on this authority.]

These citations make clear the scriptural recognition of witchcraft as a
heinous sin and crime. It is, however, necessary to draw a broad line of
demarcation between the ancient forms and manifestations which have been
brought into view for an illustrative purpose, and that delusion or
mania which centered in the theologic belief and teaching that Satan was
the arch enemy of mankind, and clothed with such power over the souls of
men as to make compacts with them, and to hold supremacy over them in
the warfare between good and evil.

The church from its earliest history looked upon witchcraft as a deadly
sin, and disbelief in it as a heresy, and set its machinery in motion
for its extirpation. Its authority was the word of God and the civil
law, and it claimed jurisdiction through the ecclesiastical courts, the
secular courts, however, acting as the executive of their decrees and
sentences.

Such was the cardinal principle which governed in the merciless attempts
to suppress the epidemic in spreading from the continent to England and