IN addition, the fact that sorceresses change humans into the forms of wild beasts through the virtue of demons, who are the fundamental workers of these transformations, has been sufficiently explained in Part One of the work, in the question discussing whether sorceresses are able to bring about such things, but because that question with its arguments and solutions may seem to some excessively obscure, especially since deeds and events regarding these matters were not cited and because the method by which the sorceresses transform themselves was not described, it is necessary to add the present explanation by means of solutions to many doubtful points.

The first is that this well-known Canon (26, Q. 5, “Episcopi”) is not to be understood with reference to this topic in the bare way in which even a fair number of learned men – would that they were properly learned! – are deceived, as are those who do not hesitate to claim publicly in their sermons that these sorts of transformations carried out through conjuring can in no way happen, even by the virtue of demons. (This clearly results in great damage to the Faith, as has often been mentioned, and in the encouragement of the sorceresses, who in fact greatly rejoice at such sermons.)

This happens to these preachers because they busy themselves with the surface and not the marrow of the Canon's words. For when it says, “Whoever believes|that some creature can be made or changed for the better or for the worst or transformed into another variety or into another likeness, except by the Creator Himself, Who made all things, is without a doubt an infidel,” at this point the pious reader should pay attention to two fundamental points, the first concerning the word “be made,” and the second concerning the words “turned into another likeness.” Regarding the first passage, let his mind be resolved that “be made” is understood in two ways: as “created” and as “through the natural production of some thing.”