(・Θ・)’s Reviews > Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England > Status Update

"On the Continent the mechanism of prosecution was at times so infallible that, when a contemporary asked some experienced German judges how an innocent person, once arrested for witchcraft, could escape conviction, they were at a loss for an answer."

"Being demanded what he thought of God, he answers that he was a good old man; and what of Christ, that he was a towardly young youth; and of his soul, that it was a great bone in his body; and what should become of his soul after he was dead, that if he had done well he should be put into a pleasant green meadow.

This, says Pemble, was a man who had heard at least two or three thousand sermons in his lifetime."

"There was thus a strong tendency to assume that obedience to God's commandments could conduce to prosperity and safety. No guarantees were given, for the ways of the Lord were inscrutable, and it was not only the sinful who were chastized. But (...) the meteorologist, Robert Dingley, declared that it was relatively unusual for lightning to strike one of God's chosen."

"There was more good in a cask of ale than in the four gospels, declared a fifteenth-century heretic; malt, he thought, did more to justify God's ways to man than the Bible."