Perhaps, and probably, the direst and most disastrous of all deluding
misconceptions by our forefathers--the one which engendered, nurtured, and
intensified the greatest evils of witchcraft--was, that neither their huge
devil, nor any subordinate fiendish spirit, could get access to external
nature and human bodies through any other avenue than some man, woman, or
child, who had already _voluntarily made an explicit agreement with him or
his to be his obedient and faithful servant, in consideration of helps and
favors which the devil promised to bestow in requital_. When such a
covenant had been ratified by signature in the devil's book, written with
the blood of the mortal party, then forthwith the devil and his hosts
thereby became subject to his new servant's call, and the servant to the
devil's summons, so that either could command the powers of both for
co-operation in the execution of any malice or deviltry whatsoever, and
upon any designated individual. The assumed fact that the devil could use
the faculties and properties of no human being who had not expressly
covenanted with him, conjoined with belief that he must have the voluntary
help of some human being whenever he molested men, was the specially
murderous ingredient of faith which impelled good and humane men on to
copious shedding of innocent blood. The making of that covenant, and
thereby opening an aperture for the devil's entrance through nature's
barrier, and thus admitting a wolf into the Christian fold, who otherwise
could not possibly have entered, constituted the essence of the crime of
witchcraft. That covenanting act made the covenanting man or woman a
wizard or a witch; and God had said, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to
live."