The existence of this compact was supposed to confer great additional power on the Devil, as well as on his new subject; for the doctrine seems to have prevailed, that, for him to act with effect upon men, the intervention, instrumentality, and co-operation of human beings was necessary; and almost unlimited potency was ascribed to the combined exertions of Satan and those persons in league with him.  A witch was believed to have the power, through her compact with the Devil, of afflicting, distressing, and rending whomsoever she would.  She could cause them to pine away, throw them into the most frightful convulsions, choke, bruise, pierce, and craze them, subjecting them to every description of pain, disease, and torture, and even to death itself.  She was believed to possess the faculty of being present, in her shape or apparition, at a different place, at any distance whatever, from that which her actual body occupied.  Indeed, an indefinite amount of supernatural ability, and a boundless freedom and variety of methods for its exercise, were supposed to result from the diabolical compact.  Those upon whom she thus exercised her malignant and mysterious energies were said to be bewitched.

Beside these infernal powers, the alliance with Satan was believed to confer knowledge such as no other mortal possessed.  The witch could perform the same wonders, in giving information of the things that belong to the invisible world, which is alleged in our day, by spirit-rappers, to be received through mediums.  She could read inmost thoughts, suggest ideas to the minds of the absent, throw temptations in the path of those whom she desired to delude and destroy, bring up the spirits of the departed, and hear from them the secrets of their lives and of their deaths, and their experiences in the scenes of being on which they entered at their departure from this.

When we consider that these opinions were not merely prevalent among the common people, but sanctioned by learning and philosophy, science and jurisprudence; that they possessed an authority, which but few ventured to question and had been firmly established by the convictions of centuries,—­none can be surprised at the alarm it created, when the belief became current, that there were those in the community, and even in the churches, who had actually entered into this dark confederacy against God and heaven, religion and virtue; and that individuals were beginning to suffer from their diabolical power.  It cannot be considered strange, that men looked with more than common horror upon persons against whom what was regarded as overwhelming evidence was borne of having engaged in this conspiracy with all that was evil, and this treason against all that was good.

Elaborate works, scientific, philosophical, and judicial in their pretensions and reputation,—­to some of which reference has been made,—­defined and particularized the various forms of evidence by which the crime of confederacy with Satan could be proved.