directed. Unlawful and detested words and mysteries were called into
action to conjure up demons who should yield their powerful and
tremendous assistance. Songs of a wild and maniacal character were
chaunted. Noisome scents and the burning of all unhallowed and odious
things were resorted to. In later times books and formulas of a
terrific character were commonly employed, upon the reading or recital
of which the prodigies resorted to began to display themselves. The
heavens were darkened; the thunder rolled; and fierce and blinding
lightnings flashed from one corner of the heavens to the other. The
earth quaked and rocked from side to side. All monstrous and deformed
things shewed themselves, "Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire,"
enough to cause the stoutest heart to quail. Lastly, devils, whose
name was legion, and to whose forms and distorted and menacing
countenances superstition had annexed the most frightful ideas,
crowded in countless multitudes upon the spectator, whose breath was
flame, whose dances were full of terror, and whose strength infinitely
exceeded every thing human. Such were the appalling conceptions which
ages of bigotry and ignorance annexed to the notion of sorcery, and
with these they scared the unhappy beings over whom this notion had
usurped an ascendancy into lunacy, and prepared them for the
perpetrating flagitious and unheard-of deeds.

The result of these horrible incantations was not less tremendous,
than the preparations might have led us to expect. The demons
possessed all the powers of the air, and produced tempests and
shipwrecks at their pleasure. "Castles toppled on their warder's
heads, and palaces and pyramids sloped their summits to their
foundations;" forests and mountains were torn from their roots, and
cast into the sea. They inflamed the passions of men, and caused them
to commit the most unheard-of excesses. They laid their ban on those