He in his day, like those in every
age and country who dare to hold convictions opposed to the creed of the
majority, was a dangerous sceptic; his book was publicly burnt by the
common hangman;[2] and not long afterwards a royal author wrote a
treatise "against the damnable doctrines of two principally in our age;
whereof the one, called Scot, an Englishman, is not ashamed in public
print to deny that there can be such a thing as witchcraft, and so
mainteines the old error of the Sadducees in denying of spirits."[3] The
abandoned impudence of the man!--and the logic of his royal opponent!
[Footnote 1: p. 507. See also Hutchinson, Essay on Witchcraft, p. 13;
and Harsnet, p. 71.]
[Footnote 2: Bayle, ix. 152.]
[Footnote 3: James I., Daemonologie. Edinburgh, 1597.]
41. Spenser has clothed with horror this conception of the appearance of
a fiend, just as he has enshrined in beauty the belief in the guardian
angel. It is worthy of remark that he describes the devil as dwelling
beneath the altar of an idol in a heathen temple. Prince Arthur strikes
the image thrice with his sword--
"And the third time, out of an hidden shade,
There forth issewed from under th' altar's smoake
A dreadfull feend with fowle deformed looke,
That stretched itselfe as it had long lyen still;
And her long taile and fethers strongly shooke,
That all the temple did with terrour fill;
Yet him nought terrifide that feared nothing ill.
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