devil, or in neither.  A further feature also uniform in such cases, has been that a small element of truth may furnish a substructure for a considerable edifice of falsehood; human credulity being always an insatiable faculty, and its powers being unlimited when once the path of ordinary experience has been transcended.  We have seen in our own time to what excesses occurrences of this kind may tempt the belief, even when defended with the armour of science.  In the sixteenth century, when demoniacal possession was the explanation usually received even of ordinary insanity, we can well believe that the temptation must have been great to recognise supernatural agency in a manifestation far more uncommon; and that the difficulty of retaining the judgment in a position of equipoise must have been very great not only to the spectators but still more to the subject of the phenomenon herself.  To sustain ourselves continuously under the influence of reason, even when our faculties are preserved in their natural balance, is a task too hard for most of us.  We cannot easily make too great allowance for the moral derangement likely to follow, when a weak girl suddenly found herself possessed of powers which she was unable to understand.  Bearing this in mind, for it is only just that we should do so, we continue the story.

This Elizabeth Barton, then, “in the trances, of which she had divers and many,[310] consequent upon her illness, told wondrously things done and said in other places whereat she was neither herself present, nor yet had heard no report thereof.”  To simple-minded people who believed in Romanism and the legends of the saints, the natural explanation of such a marvel was, that she must be possessed either by the Holy Ghost or by the devil.  The archbishop’s bailiff, not feeling himself able to decide in a case of so much gravity, called in the advice of the parish priest, one Richard Masters; and together they observed carefully all that fell from her.  The girl had been well disposed, as the priest probably knew.  She had been brought up religiously; and her mind running upon what was most familiar to it, “she spake words of marvellous holyness in rebuke of sin and vice;"[311] or, as another account says, “she spake very godly certain things concerning the seven deadly sins and the Ten Commandments."[312] This seemed satisfactory as to the source of the inspiration.  It was clearly not a devil that spoke words against sin, and therefore, as there was no other alternative, it was plain that God had visited her.  Her powers were assuredly from heaven; and it was plain, also, by a natural sequence of reasoning, that she held some divine commission, of which her clairvoyance was the miracle in attestation.