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They that have seene further¹⁵⁰ of the inquisitors orders and customes, saie also; that There is no waie in the world for these poore women to escape the inquisitors hands, and so consequentlie burning: but to gild their hands with monie, wherby oftentimes they take pitie upon them, and deliver them, as sufficientlie purged. For they have authoritie to exchange the punishment of the bodie with the punish- ment of the pursse, applieng the same to the office of their inquisi- tion: whereby they reape such profit, as a number of these seelie women paie them yeerelie pen- sions, to the end they may not be punished againe.

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The opinion of Cornelius Agrippa concerning witches, of his pleading for a poore woman accused of witchcraft, and how he convinced the inquisitors.

C. Agrippa replieng¹⁵¹ against the inquisitors follie & superstitious blindnesse, said; O thou wicked preest! Is this thy divinitie? Doost thou use to drawe poore guiltlesse women to the racke by these forged devises? Doost thou with such sentences judge others to be heretikes, thou being a more heretike than either Faustus or Donatus? Be it as thou saiest, dooest thou not frustrate the grace of Gods ordinance; namelie baptisme? Are the words in baptisme spoken in vaine? Or shall the divell remaine in the child, or it in the power of the divell, being there and then consecrated to Christ Jesus, in the name of the father, the sonne, and the holie ghost? And if thou defend their false opinions, which affirm, that spirits accompanieng with women, can ingender; yet dotest thou more than anie of them, which never beleeved that anie of those divels, togither with their stolne seed, doo put part of that their seed or nature into the creature. But though indeed we be borne the children of the divell and damnation, yet in baptisme, through grace in Christ, sathan is cast out, and we are made new creatures in the Lord, from whome none can be separated by another mans deed. The inquisitor being hereat offended, threatened the advocate to proceed against him, as a supporter of heretikes or witches; yet neverthelesse he ceased not to defend the seelie woman, and through the power of the lawe he delivered hir/37. from the clawes of the bloodie moonke, who with hir accusers, were condemned in a great summe of monie to the charter of the church of Mentz, and remained infamous after that time almost to all men.