Note 144 — Chapter XII
Reading edition
These trials and executions for "witchcraft" were the precursors of those which were carried down almost into our own times; and the above allusions to the "wickedness" of those rites only serve to strengthen the growing belief that the relentless persecution of "witches" was based upon most reasonable grounds, and that the motives actuating the "persecutors" were far higher and more sensible than a mere fanatical and narrow-minded hatred of paganism.