monotonous are all the witch trials of which Europe has so many to
show. At first the accused denies, then under torture she confesses,
then relapses and denies; tortured again she confesses again,
amplifies her story, and accuses others. When given to the stake, she
not seldom asserts all her confessions to be false, which is ascribed
to the power which the fiend still has over her. Then she is burnt
and her ashes given to the winds. Those who wish to read one
unexampled, perhaps for barbarity and superstition, and more curious
than the rest from the prominence given in it to a man, may find it
in the trial of Dr. Fian, the Scotch wizard, "which doctor was
register to the Devil, that sundry times preached at North Baricke
(North Berwick, in East Lothian) Kirke, to a number of notorious
witches." [22] But we advise no one to venture on a perusal of this
tract who is not prepared to meet with the most unutterable
accusations and crimes, the most cruel tortures, and the most absurd
confessions, followed as usual by the stoutest denial of all that had
been confessed; when torture had done her worst on poor human nature,
and the soul re-asserted at the last her supremacy over the body.
[23] One characteristic of all these witch trials, is the fact, that
in spite of their unholy connection and intrigues with the Evil One,
no witch ever attained to wealth and station by the aid of the Prince
of Darkness. The pleasure to do ill, is all the pleasure they feel.
This fact alone might have opened the eyes of their persecutors, for
if the Devil had the worldly power which they represented him to
have, he might at least have raised some of his votaries to temporal
rank, and to the pomps and the vanities of this world. An old German
proverb expresses this notorious fact, by saying, that 'every seven
years, a witch is three halfpence richer'; and so with all the unholy
means of Hell at their command, they dragged out their lives, along
with their black cats, in poverty and wretchedness. To this fate at