In his treatise _De Lamiis_, published in 1577, 8vo., he defends
nearly all the absurdities of the system with a blind zealotry which
in such a man is very remarkable. His book has accordingly taken its
place on the same shelf with Sprenger, Remigius, Delrio, and De
Lancre, and deserves insertion only in a list which has yet to be made
out, and which if accurately compiled would be a literary curiosity,
of the singularly illogical books of singularly able reasoners.
What was left unaccomplished by the centurions of literature came
ultimately from the strangest of all possible quarters; from the
study of an humble pupil of the transmuter of metals and prince
of mountebanks and quacks--the expounder of Reuchlin _de verbo
mirifico_, and lecturer in the unknown tongues--the follower of
Trismegistus--cursed with bell, book and candle, by every decorous
Church in Christendom--the redoubted Cornelius Agrippa; who, if he
left not to his pupil Wierus the secret of the philosopher's stone or
grand elixir, seems to have communicated a treasure perhaps equally
rare and not less precious, the faculty of seeing a truth which should
open the eyes of bigotry and dispel the mists of superstition, which
should stop the persecution of the helpless and stay the call for
blood. If, in working out this virgin ore from the mine, he has
produced it mixed up with the _scoria_ of his master's _Occult
Philosophy_; if he gives us catalogues of devils and spirits, with
whose acquaintance we could have dispensed; if he pleads the great
truth faintly, inconsistently, imperfectly, and is evidently unaware
of the strength of the weapons he wields; these deductions do not the
less entitle Wierus to take his place in the first rank of Humanity's
honoured professors, the true philanthropists and noble benefactors of
mankind.