THERE are three methods that the demons use more than the others to overturn the innocent through sorceresses and as a result of which that form of breach of the Faith is constantly increased. The first | is the exhaustion that results from them relentlessly causing losses in temporal matters. As St. Gregory says, the Devil tempts repeatedly in order that the feeling of exhaustion at least should make him victorious. You should understand that this temptation does not surpass the strength of the one tempted. As for the divine permission, explain that God gives His permission so that humans will not grow sluggish through laziness. In token of this it is said, “The reason why God did not destroy these races was in order that he might educate Israel with them” (Judges 2). This passage is speaking of the neighboring Canaanite, Jebusite and other nations, and in the present day the Hussites and other heretics are given permission, so that they cannot be destroyed. Thus, the demons use the sorceresses to afflict the innocent neighbors of the sorceresses with losses in temporal matters that are so great that as if under compulsion the neighbors must first beg for the help of the sorceresses and finally submit to their advice.

Experience has often taught us this. We know an inn-keeper in the diocese of Augsburg who within one year had forty-four horses affected with sorcery, one after the other. Being afflicted with the feeling of exhaustion, his wife consulted sorceresses. By following their advice, which was clearly not wholesome, she rescued | the other horses that he had subsequently bought since he was a carter. When we were in the Office of the Inquisition, how many women complained to us that when they had consulted suspected sorceresses because of losses inflicted on cows though the deprivation of milk and on other domestic animals, they received remedies offered on the condition that they were willing to make some promise to a spirit! When they asked what promise had to be made, the sorceresses answered that it was not much.