[38] The present Michilstadt, thirty miles N.E. of
          Heidelberg.

     [39] In the Middle Ages one of the most favourite
          accusations against witches was that they committed
          just these enormities.

     [40] It is pretty clear that Eginhard had his doubts about
          the deacon, whose pledges he qualifies as sponsiones
          incertae.  But, to be sure, he wrote after events which
          fully justified scepticism.

     [41] The words are scrinia sine clave, which seems to mean
          “having no key.”  But the circumstances forbid the idea
          of breaking open.

     [42] Eginhard speaks with lofty contempt of the “vana ac
          superstitiosa praesumptio” of the poor woman’s
          companions in trying to alleviate her sufferings with
          “herbs and frivolous incantations.”  Vain enough, no
          doubt, but the “mulierculae” might have returned the
          epithet “superstitious” with interest.

     [43] Of course there is nothing new in this argument:  but it
          does not grow weaker by age.  And the case of Eginhard
          is far more instructive than that of Augustine, because
          the former has so very frankly, though incidentally,
          revealed to us not only his own mental and moral
          habits, but those of the people about him.

     [44] See 1 Cor. xii. 10-28; 2 Cor. vi. 12; Rom. xv. 19.

     [45] A Journal or Historical Account of the Life, Travels,
          Sufferings, and Christian Experiences, &c., of George
          Fox, Ed. 1694, pp. 27, 28.

VI:  POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES

[1891]

In the course of a discussion which has been going on during the last two years,[46] it has been maintained by the defenders of ecclesiastical Christianity that the demonology of the books of the New Testament is an essential and integral part of the revelation of the nature of the spiritual world promulgated by Jesus of Nazareth.  Indeed, if the historical accuracy of the Gospels and of the Acts of the Apostles is to be taken for granted, if the teachings of the Epistles are divinely inspired, and if the universal belief and practice of the primitive Church are the models which all later times must follow, there can be no doubt that those who accept the demonology are in the right.  It is as plain as language can make it, that the writers of the Gospels believed in the existence of Satan and the subordinate ministers of evil as strongly as they believed in that of God and the angels, and that they had an unhesitating faith in possession and in exorcism.  No reader of the first three Gospels can hesitate to admit that, in the opinion of those persons among whom the traditions out of which they are compiled arose, Jesus held, and constantly acted upon, the same theory of the spiritual world.  Nowhere do we find the slightest hint that he doubted the theory, or questioned the efficacy of the curative operations based upon it.