in order to prove the crime *. The Emperor Theodore Lascaris, imagining magic to be the cause of his distemper, put the persons suspected to the trial of holding a red-hot iron without being burnt. In the capitularies of Charlemagne, in the canons of several councils, and in the ancient laws of Norway, punishments are enacted against those who are supposed able to raise tempests, termed Tempestarii. During the time of Catharine de Medicis, there was in the court of France a jumble of politics, gallantry, luxury, debauchery, superstition, and atheism. It was common to take the resemblance of enemies in wax, in order to torment them by roasting the figure at a slow fire, and pricking it with needles. If an enemy happened in one instance of a thousand to pine and die, the charm was established for ever. Sorcery and witchcraft were so universally believed in England, that in a preamble to a statute of Henry VIIL ann. 1511, it is set forth, "That smiths, weavers, "and women, boldly take upon them great cures, "in which they partly use sorcery and witch"craft." The first printers, who were Germans, having carried their books to Paris for sale, were condemned by the parliament to be burnt alive as sorcerers; and did not escape punishment but by a precipitate flight. It had indeed much appearance of sorcery, that a man could write so many copies of a book, without the slightest variation. Superstition

L'Esprit des loix, liv. 12. ch. 5.

: Superstition flourishes in times of danger and dismay. During the civil wars of France and of England, superstition was carried to extravagance. Every one believed in magic, charms, spells, sorcery, witchcraft, &c. The most absurd tales past current as gospel truths. Every one is acquainted with the history of the Dutchess of Beaufort, who was said to have made a compact with the devil, to procure Henry IV. of France for her lover. This ridiculous story was believed through all France; and is reported as a truth by the Duke de Sully. Must not superstition have been at a high pitch, when that great man was infected with it? James Howel, eminent for knowledge and for the figure he made during the civil wars of England, relates as an undoubted truth an absurd fiction concerning the town of Hamelen, that the devil with a bagpipe enticed all the rats out of the town, and drowned them in a lake; and because his promised reward was denied, that he made the children suffer the same fate. Upon a manuscript doubting of the existence of witches, he observes, "that there are some men of a mere negative ge"nius, who cross and puzzle the clearest truths "with their but, yet, if they will flap the lie in

Truth's teeth, though she visibly stands before "their face without any vizard. Such perverse cross-grained spirits are not to be dealt with by arguments, but palpable proofs: as if one deny that the fire burns, or that he hath a nose on his "face;

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face; there is no way to deal with him, but "to pull him by the tip of the one and put his finger into the other."

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In an age of superstition, men of the greatest judgment are infected: in an enlightened age, superstition is confined among the vulgar. Would one imagine that the great Louis of France is an exception? It is hard to say, whether his vanity or his superstition was the most eminent. The Duke of Luxembourg was his favourite and his most successful general. In order to throw the Duke out of favour, his rivals accused him of having a compact with the devil. The King permitted him to be treated with great brutality, on evidence no less foolish and absurd, than that on which old women were some time ago condemned as witches.

There are many examples of the attributing extraordinary virtue to certain things, in themselves of no significancy. The Hungarians were possessed of a golden crown, sent from heaven with the peculiar virtue, as they believed, of bestowing upon the person who wore it, an undoubted title to be their king.

But the most extraordinary effort of absurd superstition, is a persuasion, that one may controul the course of Providence, by making a downright bargain with God Almighty to receive from him quid pro quo. A herd of Tartars in Siberia, named by the Russians Baravinskoi, have in every hut a wood

en

en idol about eighteen inches high; to which they address their prayers for plenty of game in hunting, promising it, if successful, a new coat or a new bonnet: a sort of bargain abundantly brutish; and yet more excusable in mere savages, than what is made with the Virgin Mary by enlightened Roman Catholics; who, upon condition of her relieving them from distress, promise her a waxen taper to burn on her altar. Philip II. of Spain made a vow, that, upon condition of gaining the battle of St Quintin, he would build the monastery of Escurial; as if an establishment for some idle monks, could be a motive with the Great God to vary the course of his Providence *. Beside the absurdity of thinking that such vows can have the effect to alter the established laws of Providence ; they betray a most contemptible notion of the Deity, as if his favours, like a horse or a cow, could be purchased with money,

But, however loose and disjointed events appear to the ignorant, when viewed as past or as passing; future events take on a very different appearance. The doctrine of prognostics, is evidently founded upon

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*Having gained the battle of St Quintin on the festival of St Laurence, Philip reckoned himself obliged to the saint for this victory, as much as to God Almighty; and accordingly, he b not only built the monastery he had vowed, but also a church for the saint, and a palace for himself, all under one roof: and, what is not a little ludicrous, the edifice is built in resemblance of a gridiron, which, according to the legend, was the instrument of Laurence's martyrdom.

upon a supposition that future events are unalter ably fixed; for otherwise that doctrine would ap pear absurd, even to the ignorant. No bias in human nature has greater influence, than curiosity about futurity; which in dark ages governs without controul: men with no less folly than industry have ransacked the earth, the sea, the air, and even the stars, for prognostics of future events. The Greeks had their oracles, the Romans their augurs, and all the world their oméns. The Gre cian oracles and the Roman auguries, are evidently built upon their belief of tutelar deities; and the numberless omens that influence weak people in every country, seem to rest upon the same foundation*. Ancient histories are stuffed with omens, prodigies, and prognóstics:. Livy overflows with fooleries of that kind. Endless are the adverse omens reported by Appian of Alexandria, that are said to have given warning of the defeat of Crassus by the Parthians; and no fewer in number are those which happened at the death of the Emperor Hadrian, if we believe Spartianus, Lampridius, with great gravity, recites the omens which prognosticated

* It is no wonder that the Romans were superstitiously addicted to omens and auguries: like mere savages, they put no value upon any science but that of war; and, for that reason, they banished all philosophers, as useless members of society. Thus, that nation, so fierce and so great in war, surrendered themselves blindly to superstition, and became slaves to imaginary evils. Even their greatest historians were deeply tainted with that disease.