The celebrated Robert Boyle flourished in the latter half of the seventeenth century.  He is allowed by all to have done much towards the introduction of an improved philosophy, and the promotion of experimental science.  But he could not entirely shake off the superstition of his age.

A small city in Burgundy, called Mascon, was famous in the annals of witchcraft.  In a work called “The Theatre of God’s Judgments,” published, in London, by Thomas Beard in 1612, there is the following passage:  “It was a very lamentable spectacle that chanced to the Governor of Mascon, a magician, whom the Devil snatched up in dinner-while, and hoisted aloft, carrying him three times about the town of Mascon, in the presence of many beholders, to whom he cried in this manner, ‘Help, help, my friends!’ so that the whole town stood amazed thereat; yea, and the remembrance of this strange accident sticketh at this day fast in the minds of all the inhabitants of this country.”  A malicious and bigoted monk, who discharged the office of chief legend-maker to the Benedictine Abbey, in the vicinity of Mascon, fabricated this ridiculous story for the purpose of bringing the Governor into disrepute.  An account of another diabolical visitation, suggested, it is probable, by the one just described, was issued from the press, under the title of “The Devil of Mascon,” during the lifetime of Boyle, who gave his sanction to the work, promoted its version into English, and, as late as 1678, publicly declared his belief of the supernatural transaction it related.

The subject of demonology, in all its forms and phases, embracing witchcraft, held a more commanding place throughout Europe, in the literature of the centuries immediately preceding the eighteenth, than any other.  Works of the highest pretension, elaborate, learned, voluminous, and exhausting, were published, by the authority of governments and universities, to expound it.  It was regarded as occupying the most eminent department of jurisprudence, as well as of science and theology.

Raphael De La Torre and Adam Tanner published treatises establishing the right and duty of ecclesiastical tribunals to punish all who practised or dealt with the arts of demonology.  In 1484, Sprenger came out with his famous book, “Malleus Maleficarum;” or, the “Hammer of Witches.”  Paul Layman, in 1629, issued an elaborate work on “Judicial Processes against Sorcerers and Witches.”  The following is the title of a bulky volume of some seven hundred pages:  “Demonology, or Natural Magic or demoniacal, lawful and unlawful, also open or secret, by the intervention and invocation of a Demon,” published in 1612.  It consists of four books, treating of the crime of witchcraft, and its punishment in the ordinary tribunals and the Inquisitorial office.  Its author was Don Francisco Torreblanca Villalpando, of Cordova, Advocate Royal in the courts of Grenada.  It was republished in 1623, by command of Philip III. of Spain, on the recommendation