" Under this proclamation they
all came in, like reconstructed rebels, and signed whatever document was
put before them. Toward the middle of the seventeenth century, the safe
thing was still to believe, or at any rate to profess belief. Sir Thomas
Browne, though he had written an exposure of "Vulgar Errors," testified
in court to his faith in the possibility of witchcraft. Sir Kenelm Digby,
in his "Observations on the Religio Medici," takes, perhaps, as advanced
ground as any, when he says: "Neither do I deny there are witches; I only
reserve my assent till I meet with stronger motives to carry it." The
position of even enlightened men of the world in that age might be called
semi-sceptical. La Bruyere, no doubt, expresses the average of opinion:
"Que penser de la magie et du sortilege? La theorie en est obscurcie, les
principes vagues, incertains, et qui approchent du visionnaire; mais il y
a des faits embarrassants, affirmes par des hommes graves qui les ont
vus; les admettre tous, ou les nier tous, parait un egal inconvenient, et
j'ose dire qu'en cela comme en toutes les choses extraordinaires et qui
sorteut des communes regles, il y a un parti a trouver entre les ames
credules et les esprits forts."[117] Montaigne, to be sure, had long
before declared his entire disbelief, and yet the Parliament of
Bourdeaux, his own city, condemned a man to be burned as a _noueeur
d'aiguillettes_ so lately as 1718.
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