Discovery of Witches

gest 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