The Mystery of Witchcraft - History, Mythology & Art. William Godwin. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: William Godwin
Издательство: Bookwire
Серия:
Жанр произведения: Социология
Год издания: 0
isbn: 4064066051785
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trial at Frome, in Somersetshire, they were acquitted, not without difficulty, by the exertion of the better reason of the presiding judge, Lord Chief Justice Holt. Fortunately for the accused, Lord Chief Justice Holt was a person of sense, as well as legal acuteness; for he sat as judge at a great number of the trials in different parts of the kingdom. Both prosecutors and juries were found who would willingly have sent the proscribed convicts to death. But the age was arrived when at last it was to be discovered that fire and torture can extinguish neither witchcraft nor any other heresy; and the princes and parliaments of Europe seemed to begin to recognise in part the philosophical maxim that, 'heresy and witchcraft are two crimes which commonly increase by punishment, and are never so effectually suppressed as by being totally neglected.'