Nor did Bekker, a Protestant divine in Holland, fare
any better in the following century. For his _World Bewitched_,
in which he ventured not only to question the devil's power over
the weather, but to deny his bodily existence altogether, he was
solemnly tried by the synod of his Church and expelled from his
pulpit, while his views were condemned as heresy, and
overwhelmed with a flood of refutations whose mere catalogue
would fill pages; and these cases were typical of many.
The Reformation had, indeed, at first deepened the superstition;
the new Church being anxious to show itself equally orthodox and
zealous with the old. During the century following the first
great movement, the eminent Lutheran jurist and theologian
Benedict Carpzov, whose boast was that he had read the Bible
fifty-three times, especially distinguished himself by his skill
in demonstrating the reality of witchcraft, and by his cruelty
in detecting and punishing it. The torture chambers were set at
work more vigorously than ever, and a long line of theological
jurists followed to maintain the system and to extend it.
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