Note 5 — Chapter XIX · The Man of Sin.

This belief was general among the Christian Fathers,5 lasted a very long time even among the educated, and is still the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, as any one may see by reading the authorised work of Mgr. Gaume on ‘Holy Water’ (p. 305). So long as it was admitted among thinking people that the mind was as competent to build facts upon theory as theories on fact, a great deal might be plausibly said for this atmospheric diabolarchy. In the days when witchcraft was first called in question, Glanvil argued ‘that since this little Spot is so thickly peopled in every Atome of it, ’tis weakness to think that all the vast spaces Above and hollows under Ground are desert and uninhabited,’ and he anticipated that, as microscopic science might reveal further populations in places seemingly vacant, it would necessitate the belief that the regions of the upper air are inhabited.6 Other learned men concluded that the spirits that lodge there are such as are clogged with earthly elements; the baser sort; dwelling in cold air, they would like to inhabit the more sheltered earth. In repayment for broth, and various dietetic horrors proffered them by witches, they enable them to pass freely through their realm—the air.