Cases of Conscience

A third Scripture passage for our purpose is found in Revelation 12
10 where the Devil is called the Accuser of the Brothers.
Such is the malice and impudence of the Devil that
he accuses good men even before God. He does this
not only for such faults as they are actually guilty
of—as he accused Joshua for his filthy garments,
when through his indulgence some of his family had
transgressed by entering into unlawful marriages (see
Zechariah 3:2–3 along with Ezra 10:18)—but also for crimes of which
they are altogether innocent. He represented the pri-
mitive Christians as the vilest of men, as if at
their meetings they committed the most wicked nefandous: unspeakably vile or abominable
villainies that were ever known. And it is no new thing
that not only innocent but even eminently pious persons
should, through the malice of the Devil, be accused of the
crime of witchcraft. The Lord saw fit to exercise the great
Athanasius A 4th-century bishop and theologian who was famously accused of sorcery and murder by his political enemies. with such an affliction (t), though Divine Providence
wonderfully vindicated him from that as well as from
some other foul aspersions. The Waldenses A proto-Protestant Christian movement in the Middle Ages that was frequently persecuted and accused of witchcraft and devil worship. (although
the Scriptures call them saints in Revelation 13:7) have
been slandered by Satan and by the world as horri-
ble witches. Others in other places have been treated the same,
simply because they have done extraordinary things through
their prayers. It is related by many authors that
a city in France was molested by a diabolical
spectre, which the people were accustomed to calling Hugon.

(t) Binsfeld, On the Confessions of Witches, page 187. original: "Binsfield de Confess. Sag."; Peter Binsfeld (c. 1540–1598) was a German bishop and suffragan who wrote influential treatises on witchcraft and the reliability of confessions.