finally, it became a capital offence to teach any other doctrines than those sanctioned by the Church.  The beliefs of the members of these councils being, as we have already seen, a mixture of heathen and Christian ideas, the Church thus became a great conservator of superstition; and to show that this was really so, we may adduce one example:—­Pope Innocent VIII. issued a Bull as follows:—­“It has come to our ears that members of both sexes do not avoid to have intercourse with the infernal fiends, and that, by this service, they afflict both man and beast, that they blight the marriage bed, destroy the births of women and the increase of cattle, they blast the corn on the ground, the grapes of the vineyard and the fruits of the trees, and the grass and herbs of the field.”  The promulgation of this Bull is said to have produced dreadful consequences, by thousands being burned and otherwise put to death, for having intercourse with the fiends.

We regret to say such beliefs and such means of repressing free enquiry were not confined to one branch of the Christian Church.  Protestants as well as Roman Catholics, when they had the power, suppressed many of the practices of heathenism after a cruel fashion, but at the same time fostered the superstitions and Pagan beliefs which had originated these practices, and punished those who protested against these beliefs.  The same method of procedure is in operation at the present day.  Nevertheless, the introduction of Christianity into the heathen world made a wonderful revolution in their religious practices as well as in their beliefs.  Their idols and the symbols of their divinities were abolished, along with the sacrifices offered to these.  Their great festivals, at which human sacrifices were offered and abominable practices committed, were so modified as to be stripped of their immorality and cruelty, and while being retained—­retained because they could not be utterly abolished—­they were Christianized,—­that is, a Christian colouring was given to them,—­and they became Church festivals or holydays,—­a subject I will treat more fully of in another chapter.

It is not, as I have already said, my intention to trace the gradual development of our modern idea of Providence, our ascription of universal government, of all direction of the phenomena of nature and of life to the one only omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent God, but rather to place before the reader the practices and beliefs which prevailed in this country during the early years of the present century.  And from this survey we shall discover what a mass of old Pagan ideas still survived and influenced the minds and practice of the people,—­how they yet clung to the notion that many of the phenomena of nature and life were under the control of supernatural agents, although they did not regard these agents, as what in olden times they were considered to be—­divinities, but believed them to be a class of beings living upon or within the earth, and endowed by the devil with supernatural powers.