₦airaland Forum

Pastors are hustlers

Good morning brethren and welcome to today's fellowship of common sense. Shall rise and have some words of prayer, before we listen to the message.

Our lord and God FSM, we are grateful for the blessings of common sense and wokeness. As we listen to your words today, we ask that you grant understanding to gullible, reinforce the perception of the woke and at the end, may we all make the kingdom good without God, ramen.

Who is a hustler?

According to urban dictionary:

Hustlers: People who are forced to use their Brains to make it in this world. They outsmart the smart, cunning and are streetsmarts. They know how to get money and are skilled at doing it. Also they can be so sly that they can sell you stuff you
don't need.

A perfect example of hustlers are the internet fraudstars aka yahoo yahoo guys.

Hustlers make money off people, by manipulating the minds of their victims. They capitalize on the emotion of greed and illusionary tendency of their victims.

To be able to do this, hustlers take their time to design a format (the way in which something is arranged or set out), which will serve as a bait and later as opium.

For instance, Someone calls you from the blues, mentions your name, described certain details about your life and tells you that he works in Chevron and he has a business proposal of supplying oil pipes for you. He says God placed your number on his mind and that he's offering this contract of supply, as a favor.

Because a lot folks are under the spell of the illusion called divine favor or supernatural breakthrough and are greedy, they fall for this format.

I know a retiree, who lost his entire gratuity to this formatted scam.

Now to the format that pastors use.

The format is called GOALPOST SHIFTING.

Goalpost shifting is the mental tricks of using more lies to defend the lies that have be found to be lies.

For example, a pastor tells you that he can heal of any disease INSTANTLY. You come to him, he prays and did all his showmanship, you're not healed.

To cover the lies of the scam called divine healing, pastor goes on to tell you that you're not healed, because you don't have FAITH.

The lies go on till forever...

Pastors tell their mugus that their Goalpost (miracle) is in Gen 2vs4, by the time the mugus get to genesis and no miracle happens, pastor shifts the post to Isaiah 4vs 6.

Let me break it down for you...

Take issue of health for example.....

Pastors will say, according to

3 John 1: 2. Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in HEALTH, even as thy soul prospereth.

God says that you can't be sick. The wish of God is that you be in good health. Therefore, you can't be sick, amen, hallelujah!

Fast forward to two months later...

The mugu discovered a lump in her breast. She went to see the doctor and the doctor says the lump must be removed.

Mugu panicked and went to inform the pastor.

Pastor shifts the goalpost from you can't be sick, to the next Goalpost of God can heal you.... Then pastor quotes.....

Jeremiah 8: 22. Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?

Isaiah 53: 5. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

To reinforce the format, pastor will ask the mugu; whose reports will you believe? Doctor or God? Then he nails it with....

Romans 3: 4. God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged.

And when the lump becomes cancerous, the mugu goes to the pastor again.

Pastors shifts to another goalpost.....

Romans 4: 18. Who against HOPE believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations; according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be.

Pastor will ask the mugu to believe and hope for healing. Just as the fictional Sarah hoped and gave birth at 90 yrs of age.

And when hope becomes hopelessness and the mugu now has breast cancer that has spread to her organs, the pastor still continues.

This time, pastors will quote....

Daniel 3: 17. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.

18. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.

This dying mugu is asked to hold on to her faith in God. She's told not to deny God, even if God looks on, as she suffers the excruciating pains of the cancer.

And when death knocks on the door, the pastor delivers the finishing bullet.

Philippians 1: 21. For to me to live is Christ, and to DIE is gain.

The mugu is told to rejoice in the fact that she's going to heaven, which is the gain of her faith.

The mugu dies and pastor moves on to another mugu.

There are formats for every illusions, ignorance and greed, that plagues the religious folks.

The ultimate losers in this game of fraud, are the gullible followers of pastors, who are mere hustlers.

Conny man will forever continue to die needlessly and Conny man will continue to bury them.

#epihanic

Lolz

madridsta007:
But history will tell you that it is even the black people that sold black people into slavery. If the white people had come and the black people resisted it, they won’t have had their field day. This slavery became a form of entrepreneurship for some set of black people and they gathered some other black people to sell into slavery.

It is sad that this narrative of “black people selling themselves”, which has gained traction within Western academic circles is being perpetuated by blacks— based on an assumption which history in its full context does not support.

Understandably, there would be attempts to revisionise an event as tragic and genocidic as the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade. Anyone strongly linked with that gruesome part of history would certainly look to find a way of riding himself of that history. I recall when this revisionist argument was put forward to Achebe; his reply was succinct; “the white men that were at the shores of Africa, did they come for a summer holiday on the beaches?”

Of course not. They came prepared; guns, metal shackles, bayonets, etc, items you would use to subjugate something which you do not confer similar humanity upon. Items for domination, victimisation and molestation. This they started and found thriving. Vast trading routes were opened up— to Southampton and Liverpool, UK; Portugal; United States and South America. The colonisers, experts at indirect rule, needed to increase their market. It was then that chiefs wee forced to give up and catch the weakest or the most unwanted of their fellow blacks— for money, gold and power as returns.

Chiefs who resisted, like Jaja of Opobo were dethroned and banished, eyes gouged out. Others, seeing that punishment had to comply.

It’s all in history books, if anyone bothers to read. It’s important young blacks own and tell their stories not to be dictates of the revisionists, but to the truth.

In about 100 years time, folks of your leaning, will also say that Nigerians from edo state in particular, who are paying as much as 500k, 1m etc to traffickers, just to risk their lives through Sahara desert and sea, en route to Europe, were enslaved by Europeans.

Notchtrend:
Bishop Oyedepo, The General Overseer of Living Faith Curch (Winners Chapel) reveals this shocking revelation during a prayer session for the nation at 58.

He said politicians should repent and do what is right, if not they will fall for the sake of the nation.

The Man of God also reveals that God is ready turn Nigeria around for good.

Read what he says below,

“Those in leadership should not allow God to kick them into the forest and if they do not key into this warning of today so many of them will not live to see 2019.

No agent of the devil will cause problems for this nation anymore.

God has a plan for a dramatic turn around for Nigeria. The hidden treasure of any nation is in the hands of the believers.

Nigeria shall be healed and the wounds have been cured because Nigeria is not a private business of anybody but a God’s own nation”

For more details: http://notchtrend.com/many-politicians-will-not-live-to-see-2019-bishop-oyedepo/

The only "dramatic turnaround" is how oyedepo has over the years, manipulated the sheeples in winner's chapel, to turn their monies, time and future into his pocket.

Seun:
So agnostics don’t ask for evidence of claims? And atheists don’t doubt claims?

Atheist don't "doubt" claims!

You know why?

It's only "evidence" that can be "doubted"

Since theist can't provide evidence, atheist can't doubt!

PastorAIO:
I think his point is that like detergent where you have to purchase it and use it to wash your clothes, also with Christ you have to actively put it to use by accepting the sacrifice.

What he missed out is the fact that we didn't have to actively accept the Sin of Adam before we all supposedly became tainted by sin. So why must we actively accept the sacrifice of Jesus? As Adam's tainting was automatic why can't Christ's sacrifice be automatic too.

Meanwhile the man with a bacterial infection does not have to actively accept the power of antibiotics injection before it can heal him.

What a beautiful logical submission! God bless you brother!

adontcare:
Oga stop mis interpreting d bible. In eph 5:21, it said submit to one another before admonishing wives to submit to husbands and husbands to love wives as Christ love church by dying for it. And stated also that for that reason, a man should leave his mum n dad and join with his wife to become one. That no one will hate his own flesh.

Verse 21 wasn't talking to couple, but to believers. If your misunderstanding of verse 21 were to be true, why will command to the wife to submit to the husband in everything, come up, having commanded mutual submission?

You know not the scriptures. It's a book of absurdities! Go figure!

Olulizabeth:
It was all balanced when God instruct men to love their wives. Submission to the man and love to the woman...that is deep!

You know not the scriptures. The love of husband is conditional on the submission of the wife in EVERYTHING.

If the wife doesn't submit on the condition of the whims and caprices of the husband, she shall be called a satanic wife and be treated as such.

Just like your God, its love for you is conditional on your TOTAL submission to all the absurdities it commanded you.

Part one:

The absurd biblical counsel on marriage!

I welcome you all today's fellowship in the name of God, the father of our lord Reason, who freely gave us the spirit of common sense without measure. To God be all the glory and adoration, amen. Today, will shall be looking at one of the biblical absurdities, as it concerns marriage.

Please open your Bible and let's read together, 1......, 2...go��

Eph 5:22 Wives, SUBMIT yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the LORD

Eph 5:23 For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.

Eph 5:24 Therefore as the church is SUBJECT unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in EVERYTHING.

The operative words are:

submission (Noun)
1. the action of accepting or yielding to a superior force or to the will or authority of another person.

Head:
Director, Leader: such as
a : Headmaster
b : one in charge of a division or department in an office or institution.

eg: the head of the English department · met with the other department heads

Pastor Chris Oyakhilome once said:
................................................................................................................................................
"When you say you are marrying a man, you are coming under his authority. The Bible says, the man is the head of the woman (1 Corinthians 11:3) so when you marry him you come under his authority, you are not authority sharers even though you are both heirs to the kingdom of God.

When you decide not to subject yourself to that authority, you are a rebel and God is not going to accept what you are doing because you are not functioning correctly. Why did God make the woman?

Making woman was not God’s original plan because after God created Adam and before He made Eve, He said in Genesis 1:31 “Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good”. God made woman because of man so woman was not His original idea. This is reality".
................................................................................................................................................
Just before we proceed, i like to remind you that of all the Gods created by humans, Yahweh appears to be the most ridiculously asininic and utterly nauseating. An evidence of that, is the above excerpt from Chris.

Yahweh demands that you make deliberate effort, to suppress and deny the normal functions of your senses, if you desire to worship it. You must behave without and against rational reasons, to be acceptable as its saint. It's on this basis, that your admittance to paradise is guaranteed.

Yahweh demand that you behave in such a way that your liberty, freedom of choice and pursuit of peace and happiness, are exchanged for religious practices that bear no benefits, as far as human experience is concerned. You're to deny your father, mother, wife, children, friends etc, of love, affection and compassion, if you must serve Yahweh. You must accept that some people are your enemies and you must pray evil against them or ask Yahweh to visit them with misery.

You must submit to this authority of Yahweh. Submission demands that you obey whatever (rational or irrational) it asked you to do. Remember, Yahweh told prophet Ezekiel to bake cake with feces and eat it. Again, Jesus once said that you shouldn't take responsibility for your life, but leave that to Yahweh.

It's this this nature of submission, that the Bible demand from wives to their husband. According to the Bible (as quoted above), the wives must submit to their husbands in EVERYTHING, just as submission to Yahweh is total. The husband is called an authority or force.

Like the the university authority, that can unilaterally(or override other stakeholders) increase school fees, compel dress code, restrict movement, ban associations etc. The husband has authority to increase the burden of the wife, by not helping out with any chores. He can command the wife to unfriend her friends, demand that she stop wearing trousers, jewelry etc.

The husband can command sex, even when the woman isn't disposed. The husband can stay off condom, but demand that wife go on pills. He can decide to have the number of kids he wishes, without the consent of the wife. The list of primitive and animalistic cravings granted the husband under the biblical "authority", over the wife is endless.

What manner of authority is this brethren! That two humans (husband and wife) who have functional brains, be set against each other, as if the wife is a slave or robot. The very reason therefore, that the rate of divorce, tumultuous and extremely dysfunctional marriage relationship is ever increasing amongst the Christians.

The Christians women (singles and married) are now "woke" (possessed by spirit of rebellion and "arrogance" and either outrightly rejecting these biblical commands or using Feminist version of the Bible, that clearly have no such verses (remember that some verses found in King James are not found in some other Bible version).

Now you know why Christian ladies who have been praying for "marital settlement" are not settled. They are not ready to marry a man of "authority". Some of will rather cleave to atheists, than "authority brother".

To be continued.........

Seun:
Do you believe that moin-moin causes cancer? No. This is not to say that you are certain that moin moin doesn’t cause cancer, but until you read a medical report or study from a reputable organization which links moin-moin to cancer, you’ll continue to eat it and enjoy every bite.

It’s a position of living your life without any concerns about what God may or may not want until someone proves that he even exists. Atheists are doubting Thomases. Thomas wasn’t certain that Jesus had not risen from the dead, but he didn’t believe the claim until he 'saw Jesus'.

You speak of agnosticism here, not atheism. The question about moinmoin causing cancer can't be "no". Not when you immediately said "until medical journal....". "i don't know" or "i doubt" is the right and logical answer. This describes agnosticism!

*Ask atheist, do you believe that God(moin moin) caused the existence of life?

*Atheist will respond, by demanding for evidence to support such claim, before à "yes" or "no" response can arise.

*agnostist will respond, by saying "i don't know and can't possibly know".

Difference.....

Atheists ask for evidence of claims
Agnostist doubts claims

How to identify a Femisandrist!

By Akingbade Thomas

A femisandrist is a psychologically dented female, who transfers her miserable life on men. These irritants are found mostly among the following groups of females:

*ladies who are above 30yrs old and really wished to be married, but are not.
*ladies who by reason of being cantankerous, are now divorcees.
*baby mamas who became one, through olosho and long-throat lifestyle.
*single mothers, raised by psycho mothers and sociopathic fathers.

Generally, their temperament is strongly choleric and spiced up with melancholic grains. They are quick to mad anger and filthy words. They're embodiment of chaos and disruption of peace and happiness.

You can spot one in the following cases:

*they are the ones, that pushes the married woman, to harass their husbands, to put their kids in school the husband can't afford.

*when a wife chooses to forgive or ignore the flirtatious misdeeds of her husband, Femisandrist will start calling such a wife, a fool, idiot, etc. They say something like; "how can you take that shit from a man" ? "Like seriously" ?...... "Noooo, you're a disgrace to womanhood" ... Blablabla...... The femisandrists spew their frustration and miseries...

*if a wife chooses to support her husband financially, the femisandrists will immediately start barking... Wow wow wow.... "You're being foolish" ! "How can you trust a man with your money" ? "A man is suppose to be financially capable" !............

*they tell a wife who is having conflict with her husband, never to take "nonsense" from a man. "Stand up to him and tell him you're not a dummy" ....... Says the femisandrists.

*a typical femisandrist of the variant that desires marriage, have the behavior of a cat, that's lurking to catch rat. These variants hunt for cool, calm and collected bachelors. Once they catch one and get married, the life of that man, will start experiencing what cat does to rat.

*a femisandrist on SM will be like; "i don't need a man to live my dreams".... Even when the subject matter isn't about men. "men are goats".... Just because the topic is about polygamous tendencies of men.

Advice..........
Dear young men and good wives, stay away from these enemies of peace and happiness. Just tell them to seek help for their frustration!

#epihanic

Rashduct4luv:
.
.
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In order to criticise and bring Islam down see how you brought yourself down laughing like a toddler even without anything funny!

Nothing is more ridiculous like knowing, that a pedophile called Mohammad, actually claim a scarecrow called Allah, spoke to him.

Rashduct4luv:
Are they living in toilets? or on the dumpsites? I don't think so. Any Muslim can own a Qur'an wherever s/he lives. We are bound to treat it with utmost care!
.
This your logic is false. Allah knew all that happened and He has written everything in the Books of decree thousands of years before events takes place. What can a human brain like ours comprehend? How many percent of your brain can you use in your lifetime? Abeg! Leave things you can't understand!

... Kikikikikikiki...... Did your Allah wrote about ICT in your Quran? Since it wrote EVERYTHING..... Lol

Rashduct4luv:
Correction:

Allah is everywhere by His Knowledge and not physically! I guess this is beyond logic so you need evidence to believe in it.

How can Qur'an be everywhere? Toilets, bath,....filthy places.

Check out how logical you're first. So, those Muslims that live in filthy environment(like slums), shouldn't own Quran bah ?

If Allah is everywhere by his knowledge, then Allah is dead. Since it can't intervene in all the horrific and ridiculous things done, based on knowledge of Allah.

McXponent:
DO YOU KNOW: EVANS CAN STILL MAKE HEAVEN WHILE YOU ROT IN HELL?

It's no more news that Chidumeme Onwuamadike aka Evans, a notorious and a billionaire kidnapper was arrested.
Despite the charges levied against him due to the atrocities he has committed, condemnations from all Nigerians both home and abroad, who want in one way or the other his Crucifixion, death by hanging or even life sentence.

1. Only God can forgive and can judge, though a sinner cannot go un punished, but he doesn't want the death of a sinner if he or she repents.
2. He can still make heaven despite the gravity of sin if he repent before death.
3. God might be using him as a punishment to those who fell his victim. (Only God knows how his victims made there money).
4. Crucify him!!! At worse he'll die, but remember you'll die one day, you'll die too and as a sinner, you might burn in the same lake of fire, no matter the gravity of your sin. No VIP section.
5. Some atrocities most politicians now adays have committed secretly and has affected the economy of the nation is much more than that of Evans. Everyone knows how he makes his or her wealth.

N.B
Are you still a sinner?
Irrespective of your religion or faith,
Repent and change your ways...

Nowadays people die like flies... You might not be granted the grace to repent at point of death.. Different people with different grace..
May we not die Young and live to fulfil purpose and destinies.

The very reason your God, will increasingly become a filthy idea, to the rational and intelligent minds.

This poo you put up here, would have nauseated you, to the point that you will vomit your intestine, if you or your relations, had fallen victims of the lunatic called Evans.

asuustrike2009:
The air you're breathing have you fathom how it came about? How you grow on daily basis from toddler to adulthood. The artificial one created by man can't last long when it finishes yet Mortal man is ungrateful.

Bad education is to blame. Is this how you answer a question?

Your score = 0/10

asuustrike2009:
Life can't create life.

Firstly, what's life?
How did life come to be?

Ayomibare:
yes he can.. U wanna test him?

.

Ayomibare:
yes he can.. U wanna test him?

Either you or the Olowogbogboro is in denial of reality!
Pathetic!

asuustrike2009:
Things of the spirit are different from the flesh. Mortal man science can't solve everything in this wicked world. Science has it's limits

What's the limit of science?

Can OLOWOGBOGBORO make amputated limb, grow back suddenly?
#hogwash

Onnasucs1:
I've been...where do I start from now?

.

asuustrike2009:
Yes I am

Take a minute, look at the mirror, what did you see?
Keep the illusion up...

asuustrike2009:
You don't understand the things of the spirit so I understand were you are coming from

Are you a spirit?

Amberon11:
So as an atheist what concerns you? Are we complaining?

Is it a crime to deride jester and con artists, in the persons of Christians?

Why are you Christians concerned about witches and wizards? Are they complaining?

asuustrike2009:
Did you see were I said so? The answer is no. I only said the accuser Satan himself will always find fault which most churches have of which MFM isn't excluded.How can someone shout Holy fire when he or she has just fornicated, lie, cheat, fight, kept malice, segregate, e.t.c,you expect holy fire to come?

You're kidding. Bishop Oyedepo claims he can deploy Angel on assignment. Yet, the human security that guides his church offering and tithes, surpass that of CBN.

Angel Micheal, Gabriel and Uriel are myths.

And these BS about purity, is your Christian way of arguing fairytale.

asuustrike2009:
Angel Micheal I know but Uriel I don't know. The angels of Yahweh are presence but it boils down to the church to use them. Angels don't fight except they get permission or go ahead from Yahweh. Secondly purity in and out of the church is required for angels to act because Satan the accuser of the brethren will stand to accuse

so, you're saying that there's no purity in MFM.

asuustrike2009:
Are you OK at all? Do you expect people to be carrying cash up and down on daily basis. With the rate of robbery going on you still expect the church to still use an archaic means to collect offering. Smh

Where's Angel Micheal and uriel? Are they not supposed to provide security with flaming sword?

Why are you folks of little faith?

I really find the diabolical aspect, of the Yoruba mysticism, amusingly interesting. There exist, the concept of Esu (Satan/devil), which in yoruba traditional religion(YTR), is believed to be a messenger of olodumare (God).

According to the YTR, one might have to appease (by offering sacrifice) Esu, so that prayers offered to olodumare, might sail successfully. But this is the gist about Esu, that i wish to focus on in this piece.

One of the taboos of Esu, is adin (Palm kennel oil). The witch doctor, who wish to cast an evil spell on adversary, can offer sacrifice of adin to Esu, in the name of the adversary. Esu is believed to hold the adversary responsibility, for presenting a taboo. Esu then becomes raged, and visit all kinds of misfortunes on the adversary.

Here's the interesting part, a witch doctor, can also fortify his client against the anger of Esu. He does this by offering a pleasing sacrifice to Esu. After which, he can invoke the following incantation on the client:

Ibi won'ri, won ki'gbe e lo
Ori kii fo ahun
Edo kii d'un igbin
Otutu kii m'eja lale odo
Ibi won ri, won ki'gbe e lo

Transliteration:

Wherever they like, they can seek enchantment
Tortoise never suffers headache
Snail never suffers stomach upset
Fish never catches cold in the river
Wherever they like, they can seek enchantment

The combination of the sacrifice and the incantation, is believed to make impossible for another witch doctor, to cast a spell on the client.

How does all these connect pastor Tunde Bakare (President of latter rain assembly)?

The above incantation, was at one time, part of lyrics of King Sunny Ade's album. Now to the gist.

Last Sunday, i stumbled on pastor Bakare's preaching on channels TV, during which he sang the above incantation, just as KSA did. He not only sang alone, he lead his members also, to sing with him.

Bakare is a Christian, and Christianity claims that the YTR is diabolical. Incantation is also said to be inspired by Esu. It's therefore surprising, to hear pastor Bakare, singing an incantation, that was inspired by Satan.

This goes to show the falsehood, called Abrahamic religion. All religions are the same. What separates them under different groups, is the nomenclature by which they define their concepts.

Rationalism and the final end of the witch trials

By 1700, witch trials had become rare things across much of Europe although they remained reasonably common in Poland until 1725 [NOTE]. When they did occur, they excited a good deal of interest and usually ended with the liberty of the witch. The position of even the lower judiciary was now that maleficia was extremely hard to prove and it was not acceptable to accept lower standards of evidence simply because the crime was so serious. But from time to time, for one reason or another, a conviction was achieved and the statutory punishment was usually death. There were ways around this, such as the judge in England’s last case personally and successfully petitioning for a royal pardon for the accused in 1712 but even ten years after that the Scots executed Janet Horne [NOTE].

Positivist historians have long looked upon the end of witch trials as victory for rationalism over superstition. Michael de Montaigne’s scepticism about reports of witchcraft and the veracity of confessions in his essay On the Lame (1588) is a popular example of Renaissance humanism. However, closer examination of the rationalists has frequently found them to be something of a disappointment for their champions who do not share their mentality. Learned sceptics are often advocates of a mystical or hermetic point of view and are seeking to defend magic from the taint of diabolism rather than claiming that it is impossible. The best known sixteenth century critic of witch trials, Johann Weyer, was a pupil of the great neo-Platonist magician Cornelius Agrippa as well as being a radical Protestant. In his De praestigiis daemonum (1583), Weyer was completely orthodox in his belief in devils and his condemnation of almost any kind of magical practice, but just did not think it was the kind of thing that old ladies got up to. His English contemporary, Reginald Scot appears at first sight to be more conducive to the views of modern sceptics, but on closer examination his thought also turns out to be almost entirely a function of his Puritan theology [NOTE]. A century later John Webster had a remarkably similar outlook as he too is a sectarian and defender of alchemy. The argument was between, on one side Aristotelians and their heirs, the mechanical philosophers, and on the other neo-Platonists and hermetists. As we have seen, it was usually the former, with what we might call the more scientific attitude, who defended belief in witchcraft. This causes a serious problem for traditional explanations for the end of witch trials as there is almost nobody whose particular bundle of motivations and beliefs are entirely comfortable to positivist sensibilities. There certainly is a rise in scepticism as Glanville and More (who was a mechanistic Platonist and thus demonstrates the impossibility of fitting anyone’s beliefs into a neat box) are both keen to combat it but, as far as the positivist is concerned, it is not always the right people being sceptics. Likewise, Cotton Mather manages to receive both execration and exoneration for his conduct in the Salem witch trials and later his work on smallpox immunisation. Even a bona fide freethinker like Thomas Hobbes thought that it was justified to convict someone of witchcraft if they had knowingly tried to carry out malefacia even if they were incapable of it [NOTE].

The pamphlet wars give us some idea of the motivations of both sides of the argument. Defenders of the belief in witches, such as Sir Thomas Browne in Religio Medici (1634), seemed more worried about atheists than the devil. Similarly, in Saducismus Triumphantus (1681), Glanvill did not appear to be so much concerned about witchcraft being a serious threat to life and limb, especially after his careful investigations revealed rather feeble examples, but instead that a denial of the witch was a big step towards the denial of all religion. Even a hundred years later John Wesley had much the same concerns saying “giving up witchcraft is in effect giving up the bible” [NOTE]. Clearly the intention of these writers is not the same as earlier demonologists like Jean Bodin. So, while Cotton Mather’s The Wonders of the Invisible World (1693) fits the bill as a the work of old fashioned cleric, seeing devils under the bed, convinced there is a vast diabolical conspiracy that justifies desperate retaliatory measures, many of the learned defenders had a much narrower interest. Ultimately it was these learned men, who simply did not care about old women and their muttered curses, who had to be won around for the prosecutions to stop altogether. What eventually defeated the likes of More and Glanville was the same thing that has invalidated so many of the last ditch defences conducted in the name of religion. There are always a few people who become fixated on a piece of doctrine and insist that the world will be imperilled by giving it up. This happened over the movement of the earth and is happening today over women priests. But once the dogma has in fact been dropped de facto despite the protestations of its defenders, it usually becomes clear that the terrible consequences of which they warned have not come to pass and a new generation has no concerns about amending the writ to conform with practice. Essentially, most people were able to see that the church could sail serenely on despite the loss of an occasional doctrine and that its problems were rather more fundamental than just a matter of believing in witches.

While the contention of some scholars that there was a wholesale withdrawal of the elite from popular culture seems to me to be thrown into doubt by the enormous unifying effect of the English bible, it is true that certain beliefs can drop out of ‘high’ culture – especially when they become associated with vulgarity or lack of sophistication. In late seventeenth century England this happened to nearly all magical ideas as the New Philosophy became the in-thing. While actually understanding the scientific results of Boyle or Newton was beyond most people, anyone could attack the superstitions of peasants and thus reassure themselves of their membership of the intelligentsia. Just as the learned ideas about the devil were absorbed by the middling classes who then put them into practice by hunting witches, so the New Philosophy, percolating into the middle class consciousness, helped instil them with scepticism. Even those who were willing to accept the existence of witches in principle did not feel they could countenance any specific examples. As Joseph Addison wrote in the Spectator in 1711 “I believe in general that there is and has been such a thing as witchcraft; but at the same time can give credit to no particular instance of it” [NOTE].

To actually abolish the crime required more than the belief that proof was difficult to obtain. The twin pillars of witchcraft were maleficia and the pact with the devil - both aspects needed to be dealt with. Witchcraft had to be thought impossible (in the case of maleficia) and irrelevant (in the case of the pact with the devil). Belief in magic was largely absent from the elite long before the existence of the devil himself was being denied although he was becoming a spiritual being whose abilities were far more limited than they had been in the past. He could not really do anything miraculous but only foster illusions in the gullible. Eventually, his power became merely the ability to tempt Christians into sin by mental suggestion and so his threat was but a moral challenge. It is also possible that the near complete lack of any solid evidence for devil worship finally began to make itself felt and that consequently fears of a fifth column in the midst of society faded but they would reappear from time to time, most recently in Orkney and Rochdale in the 1991. Neutering Satan and turning him into a more transcendent figure is often ascribed to Protestantism although Luther himself claims he suffered many physical encounters with the devil who threw excrement at him. Whatever the causes, the devil faded from view and this turned the question of what to do about his alleged disciples into a purely religious matter.

The process was a drawn out one that should perhaps be studied in parallel with the decline of heresy and blasphemy as a crime against the state. This slowly faded as the eighteenth century wore on although there were isolated prosecutions, such as the La Barre case of 1766 in France made famous by Voltaire [NOTE]. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries there might simply have been a change in the jurisdiction for witch trials from secular to ecclesiastical courts but during the seventeenth century heresy had gradually ceased to be seen as a crime deserving temporal punishment and the church courts could no longer expect the secular arm to carry out their orders. Even in countries which retained strong church courts, most especially Spain and Portugal, sentences became lighter as the eighteenth century progressed with a return to the medieval idea of penance and reconciliation rather than punishment. The stalemate that had ended the wars between Catholics and Protestants, coupled with the fostering of national over religious identity, meant the ideals of tolerance expressed as early as Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) were finally implemented. This is not to say that atheism or devil worship were socially acceptable, but rather that if a man or woman minded their own business and kept their views quiet, nobody would hunt them down. Essentially ones private religion became a private matter and, as long as one did not cause a public disturbance, the public sphere had little interest.

Conclusion

Witchcraft is an imaginary crime. It has, as Robin Briggs says, a hole in the middle which demonologists were able to fill with their speculations [NOTE]. They were then able to persuade others, including the actual accused, of the veracity of these ideas. As Briggs says, after Alasdair MacIntyre, a rational thought is one that coheres with the thoughts around it and, to the mentality of the demonologists and enough of those around them, their writings made perfect sense. We do not need to call them superstitious charlatans to say that they were wrong. A defendant, accused of a non-existent crime, should expect that any effective legal process will find them not guilty and in witch trials this is eventually what happened. It remained possible that someone could (and perhaps should) be convicted if, believing they have the power, they bewitched a person who then conveniently started to ail, but this will be a very rare case.

Renaissance magicians never won their argument with the demonologists as they were both swept aside by the intellectual changes of the seventeenth century. The devil found himself relegated to the role assigned for him by Milton in Paradise Lost (1667) as a tempter who must rely on God to effect any real change. Milton also gives us an idea of the penetration of the New Philosophy, although he hardly approves of it, with his running joke about the configuration of the solar system and Raphael’s admonition of Adam for being too curious about the heavens. To the New Philosophers, the rhetorical purpose of a defence of witchcraft was completely different to that of the earlier demonologists, which shows how attitudes had already changed. Perhaps the decline of the trials taking place without the world being overwhelmed by devilry had made the issue seem less urgent. On the same note, once it became clear that most people were already sceptical about witches and this had not led to a collapse of the Christian religion, intellectuals had no further use for witchcraft except for English Tories who wanted to do a bit of Whig baiting. As moral and religious matters were assigned more to the private than the public sphere, a pact with the devil ceased to be a crime against the state and maleficia ceased to be anything at all.

Bibliography

Briggs, Robin Witches and Neighbours London 1996

Clark, Stuart 'Inversion, Misrule and the Meaning of Witchcraft' Past and Present 87 1980

Clark, Stuart Thinking with Demons Oxford 1997

Guskin, Phyllis J 'The Context of Witchcraft: The Case of Jane Wenham (1712)' Eighteenth-Century Studies 15:1 1981

Horsley, Richard A 'Who Were the Witches? The Social Roles of the Accused in European Witch Trials' Journal of Interdisciplinary History 9:4 1979

Jobe, Thomas Harmon 'The Devil in Restoration Science: the Glanvill-Webster Witchcraft Debate' Isis 72:3 1981

Levack Brian P The Witch-hunt in Early Modern Europe Harlow 1995

MacFarlane, Alan Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England: A Regional and Comparative Study London 1999

Monter, E William 'The Historiography of European Witchcraft: Progress and Prospects' Journal of Interdisciplinary History 2:4 1972

Monter, E William 'Witchcraft in Geneva, 1537 - 1662' Journal of Modern History 43:2 1971

Parker, Geoffrey ‘Some Recent Work on the Inquisition in Spain and Italy’ Journal of Modern History 54:3 1982

Peters, Edward Inquisition Berkeley 1989

Soman, Alfred 'The Parlement of Paris and the Great Witch Hunt (1545-1640)' Sixteenth Century Journal 9:2 1978

Thomas, Keith Religion and the Decline of Magic London 1971

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© James Hannam 2016



http://jameshannam.com/witchtrial.htm

That is not to say that one could not be punished in other ways where the proof was deficient and the grounds of suspicion that could lead to the application of torture were considerably wider. Simply having a bad local reputation could land someone in a lot of official trouble. This was due to an important reform in the legal system in the late Middle Ages when the accusatio was gradually replaced with the inquisitio. To modern ears this immediately summons up images of the Inquisition although it was secular rather than clerical courts and certainly not papal inquisitors that were responsible for the vast majority of fatal witch trials. When before the Inquisition, a confession and willingness to do penance was always supposed to be sufficient to avoid the death penalty for a first offence while no such leeway existed in most secular courts [NOTE]. Instead, iniquisitio was a method of legal proceedings used in all courts outside England which dropped the dependence on an accuser to bring a complaint. The accuser (who could be punished himself if the defendant was acquitted) was replaced by an inquirer whose role was slowly taken over by professional magistrates. This inquirer was expected to investigate matters brought to their attention or the subject of rumour, and was equipped with various powers to enable them to do so. Once they had a case it was presented before a court for consideration and sentence. Provided the procedures were followed and the magistrate was fair and competent, this was a huge improvement over the system of personal accusation and trial by ordeal that preceded it.

But it is clear that during the great hunts the rules were not followed. Torture was liberally applied and the atmosphere was one of siege where it was felt the circumstances demanded extreme action. It is interesting to note that the Matthew Hopkins episode, where pseudo-torture such as sleep deprivation and ‘pricking’ was used, was the closest example to a full-scale continental witch hunt that occurred in England. The most prolific hunters tended to be lay magistrates and middle ranking clerics of some education while in the higher and appeal courts such as at Paris the conviction rate was much lower, mainly because the sense of panic was absent, torture kept to the statutory limits and evidence examined with a cooler eye [NOTE]. The actual abolition of torture took place too late in most jurisdictions to have had a significant effect on reducing convictions of witches [NOTE]. Neither was it the case that most senior judges denied the very possibility of witchcraft for if they had it is hard to see how they could have countenanced any executions at all. Rather, they were removed from the panic on the ground so they could take a more objective and professional stance. It was not just lawyers who could become more lenient as they became more expert in their subjects. In Geneva, when the devil’s mark became an accepted form of evidence, the city’s surgeons were delegated to carry out the examination. However, no doubt as a result of having seen a huge range of moles, growths and boils on patients of unimpeachable character, they simply refused to be drawn as to whether a particular lump was of diabolic or purely natural origin. This made a capital prosecution almost impossible and only one witch was executed after 1625 [NOTE].

So the reduction of witch trials from epidemic to endemic proportions requires little else than the assertion of central control over convictions to ensure the legal forms were being adhered to and that local courts could not execute people without sufficient evidence. This central control could be achieved either through allowing appeals to higher courts (or even making them mandatory) or else by ensuring the proper training and oversight of local magistrates. In particular, the strict controls over the use of torture had to be reinstated, notwithstanding the status of witchcraft as a crimen exceptum (an exceptional crime) in most states, and confessions achieved through torture treated with the necessary scepticism. In either case, this was extremely difficult during times of political upheaval, which explains the prevalence of hunts in the areas of the Holy Roman Empire most affected by the fragmentation of control up to the Thirty Years War and the same situation in France during the Wars of Religion. Although war itself distracted from witch trials as they were no longer the most pressing concern, the feelings of uncertainty and insecurity engendered by possible conflict could increase them.

At first sight, the abuse of judicial process was not so prevalent in England and a crack down on the use of torture can hardly explain anything in a jurisdiction in which torture was not used. The reasons for the hotspots of witch prosecutions in Essex and Lancashire also remain a mystery now that the theory of proxy persecutions of religious minorities has been called into question. It is ironic that English witch trials faded at much the time that a king who was personally interested in them came to the throne. The North Berwick trials and his publication of Demonologie (1597) suggest that when he became James I of England, he would have been as concerned in his new realm as he was in his old. Perhaps the events surrounding the state opening of Parliament in 1605 focused his mind on more concrete threats to the royal person. The constant danger from Spain that was present during the rule of Elizabeth, as well as fears about the succession, might well have contributed to an atmosphere that encouraged trials. The ascension of James solved the later problem as well as closing off Scotland as a bridgehead for foreign invaders. While the lack of judicial torture in England made witch prosecutions more difficult, the use of juries of laymen probably had the opposite effect. Whereas in the higher continental courts, the entire trial process, including reaching a verdict, was in the hands of professionals, in England a conviction had to be obtained through a jury of commoners (although they were landowners and burghers) who were often more credulous than the judge. The judge did have a considerable ability to influence the juror and, as he was a professional travelling around the circuit, could considerably reduce the number of convictions. In the mid-seventeenth century guides like Robert Filmer’s An Advertisement to the Jurymen of England Touching Witches (1653) and reprints of Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of Witches (1584) were used as guides to the evidence that took a much more sceptical line than Perkins’ effort. But the jury could also reach a verdict of guilty no matter what directions came from the bench as happened during the last successful prosecution in England in 1712 [NOTE].

THE DECLINE OF WITCH TRIALS IN EUROPE

Preliminary considerations


Alice Molland was sent to the gallows at Exeter in 1684 and became the last witch to be executed in England. Scotland closed its account with Janet Horne in 1722 while trials wound down across Europe. However, it would not be until 1782 that the last witch to be legally executed met her fate at Glarus in Switzerland. But by the late 17th century witch trials were already reasonably rare occurrences even in the same localities where, in the earlier part of that century, the greatest hunts had taken place. The crime itself was extinguished in France by royal edict in 1682, repealed in England in 1736 and abolished in Poland as late as 1776. However, the decline in trials and hunts did not necessarily presage a corresponding decline in the belief in witches just as their start did not correspond to any increase. Belief is a notoriously hard thing to measure, but almost all societies appear to have some tradition of witches and fear of magic has been nearly universal. The questions about witches in early modern Europe are not so much why people believed in them at that time and place, but why that belief manifested itself into the hunts and executions. The purpose of this essay, therefore, is to examine the reasons that trials for the crime of witchcraft, from being relatively common before 1650, had, across Europe, become a rarity fifty years later and had died out altogether within another century. This rapid decline and then extinction is at least as puzzling as the widespread appearance of the phenomena in the first place at the end of the fifteenth century. Witch trials only became common during the Renaissance and the fiercest hunts took place in the 1620s and 1630s in German speaking areas. Contrary to popular belief, they were not a phenomenon of the Middle Ages. Although magical belief and practice were just as common during this earlier period, they did not often lead to trials, let alone executions.

Until recently popular views of this subject were confused both by the agendas of rationalists who wanted to find examples of superstition and by neo-pagans seeking their own foundation myth. The “Burning Times”, when, according to the most extreme polemicists, nine million women lost their lives after dreadful torture, has become an essential part of neo-paganism’s self identity. They also had Margaret Murray to assure them that witches really were the survivors of the old religion that neo-pagans were continuing in the present day [NOTE]. Murray’'s thesis of the existence of a pre-Christian fertility cult remains influential outside the academy but, despite seeming to have gained some support from Carlo Ginzberg’s work on the benandanti who do appear to have had some of the attributes of a religious cult, it is dismissed by noted modern authority Robin Briggs as having “just enough marginal plausibility to be hard to refute completely, yet is almost wholly wrong [NOTE]. This reassessment of the myth of the Burning Times has even reached neo-paganism’'s own scholarship span class="tooltip">[NOTE]Jenny Gibbons, "Recent Developments in the Study of the Great European Witch Hunt" Pomegranate 5 (1998) which is challenging the idea that the validity of their religion depends on its antiquity. Meanwhile, estimates of the total number of executions over three centuries has shrunk to about 60,000 or so [NOTE] which is of a similar order of magnitude to what the Jacobins managed in just three years of terror during the French Revolution.

There is very little agreement about the reasons for the end of witch trials and the scholars have tended each to be an advocate for their own ideas based on the study of particular localities rather than trying a more synoptic approach to bring some order to the myriad of available suggestions. It is not even clear whether we are looking for some new causes that helped end witch trials or simply the absence of whatever it was that had started them in the first place. So, if we could identify the conditions that brought about the trials, the subsequent decline might simply be explained by their later disappearance. An example of this would be the religious confusion and violence of the Reformation that had largely worked itself out after the Treaty of Westphalia in the mid-seventeenth century. It has also been widely noticed that hunts tended to take place in areas and periods where central control had largely broken down or during interregnums between regimes. For example, the activities of Matthew Hopkins took place in the chaos of the English Civil War, the Great Hunt in Scotland in 1661 when English justices were replaced, and even the Salem of 1692 outbreak occurred in a temporary vacuum of authority. When control was restored, goes this theory, the witch hunts largely ceased. On the other hand, the original causes might long since have been removed without their effects likewise disappearing so that the decline of witch trials will be brought about by entirely different means. Examples frequently cited are the rise of secular rationalism or social trends that led to the discounting of devilry. It has been suggested that witchcraft simply became too old hat for the intelligentsia of the early Enlightenment to countenance and that they were wont to sneer at such outdated nonsense so as to reassure themselves of their own intellectual superiority.

A good deal of recent work has concentrated on the social reasons for witchcraft accusations and has looked for the causes of both their rise and fall at a local level. For instance, Alan MacFarlane and Keith Thomas set out a complex web of interactions between vulnerable single women and other villagers motivated by guilt [NOTE]. They suggested that the full implementation of the Poor Laws sufficiently alleviated the situation so that the accusations ceased. While their careful research of depositions suggests they have accurately portrayed the mechanism by which social tensions manifested themselves, I do not think that they have explained why, at that particular place and time, it should be through witchcraft accusations. The era of the witch trials was one of great change and disruption but we must not forget that it was bracketed by the disastrous fourteenth century and the enormous social upheavals of enclosure and the industrial revolution. Any social explanation for witch hunts has to be specific enough to differentiate between the early modern period and those on each side of it, while also being general enough to apply to much of Europe over two centuries. The commonalties of witch beliefs are greater enough to make having lots of different social explanations for different environments unconvincing. For this reason I will be looking for general reasons for the decline that can be applied across Europe rather than seeking an individual cause for each locale.

By a witch, I mean someone who is believed to have received magical power by some form of diabolical means. The diabolical source of this power is important because the mentality of most Christian intellectuals allowed only the devil as a source of supernatural power, except of course from God, and it led witchcraft to be viewed in much the same way as heresy. The connection between diabolism andmagic is found in the documents of the Christian elite including, most famously, the Malleus Malificium (1486) of Kramer and Sprenger, but has an older provenance. The straightforward dichotomy between God and the devil was already present in late antiquity with the labelling of all pagan gods as demons but once they had been seen off, the church took a more sceptical attitude. Belief in magic was considered to be a sin but consequently actually practising it was nothing more than delusion. This attitude is very much an intellectual one and reflects the continuing rejection of most forms of supernatural belief by theologians even when witchcraft was accepted. That is to say that rather than believing in the innate potency of ritual magic or in nature spirits, they insisted that God and the devil were the only possible agencies for magical or miraculous power. This was not just a question of theology but also arose from the Aristotelian paradigm of natural science that had no room for spirits, magic or other such phenomena. We should note, however, that the word ‘magic’ was also used in medieval works like the Speculum Astronomiae of St Albertus Magnus to describe certain legitimate natural practices. Later, the hermetic systems that became popular during the Renaissance did allow for spirits and angels to be summoned so consequently their practitioners were always vulnerable to accusations of devilry. This ambiguity about what was and was not acceptable remained a feature of intellectual debate throughout the Middle Ages and Early Modern period with both sides using magic to make their own polemical points. In the late seventeenth century we find Joseph Glanvill and Henry More, representing learned science and theology, defending the belief in witchcraft against occultist and radical sectarian John Webster [NOTE]. Webster is keen to deny diabolic involvement in great part because he does not want his own ‘natural magic’ to be confused with witchcraft while Glanville and More are defending the mechanistic new philosophy which, like Aristotelianism, insists all magic must be supernatural - and that can only mean God or the devil.

At a popular level, beliefs about the supernatural were far more varied and indeed, one of the only commonalties appears to be that they did not involve the devil, at least without prompting from educated interrogators. MacFarlane mentions that the devil hardly figured at all in the depositions to the Essex assizes and in other English cases, he makes few appearances even in confessions [NOTE]. Elsewhere, especially in confessions under torture, diabolic themes are much more prevalent. This seems likely to have been due to the use of torture, together with leading questions, causing the defendants to start echoing the more learned views of their prosecutors. Restrictions in space make a discussion of how witch trials started impossible here, but it seems likely that a key factor was the overlaying of the elite mentality of diabolism and its associated perversions onto the pre-existing magical beliefs and social tensions among the people. This had happened before with the heretics of the Middle Ages when much of what was believed about them came from ancient authorities rather than their actual activities. It was the combination of learned thought with real factors on the ground (as there really were heretics and people claiming magical powers) that turned deadly.

Many, but by no means all, so-called witches seem to have been healers, wise women and cunning men who previously would have been of no interest to the higher clergy or secular legal authorities. If they were brought before any authority it would tend to be the local church court that would prescribe some penance like walking around the parish wearing sackcloth. The village healers indulged in a wide variety of ritual magic, healing or mediation with spirits but they had little or no idea of any theory attached to these actions. In other words, to the lower orders, magic was a question of practice while to the elite it was something that required explanation with the devil usually the only explanation available.

The topography of the decline in trials and executions strongly suggests there were two distinct phases. The first phase, which takes place from the first half of the seventeenth century, is a large falling of in the number of accusations and a corresponding decrease in the proportion of capital convictions obtained. Thomas states that the large majority of executions in England had already taken place by 1620 [NOTE] and in Spain the Basque hunt marks the end of large scale prosecutions. Appeals heard by the Parlement of Paris after about 1610 show a large reduction in the number of capital sentences that were confirmed and after about 1630 an equally precipitous drop in the number of cases heard (even though all witchcraft cases at this time were subject to automatic appeal to Paris) [NOTE]. The pattern is repeatedly seen in almost all localities although the time scales are often different. The last hunt in Scotland took place 1661 – 2, large-scale scares continued to claim many lives in parts of Germany through the 1630s but became much rarer thereafter. This is not the end of the prosecution of witches - that continued even with sporadic outbursts of panic - but it is rather the normalisation of the crime as it fades into the background of early modern life.

The second phase is the complete cessation or abolition of prosecutions for witchcraft and this tends to take place in the eighteenth century. It can either take the form of a gradual petering out; some form of legislative act such as Louis XIV’s decree extinguishing the crime after a poisoning plot panic; or the English Act of Parliament abolishing it in 1736 [NOTE]. Often, it had become impossible to secure a conviction before the crime itself was removed from the statute book. It seems extremely likely that in looking for causes we must treat these two phases as separate events to be handled individually and that consequently we will not find any single reason for the end of witch trials.

Explaining the decline of witch trials and executions

Under Roman law, to achieve a capital conviction required a full proof consisting of material evidence, witnesses of good standing or a free confession. Torture could be used to extract a confession if sufficient partial proofs had been accumulated but the defendant had to repeat themselves after they recovered and then again in court. Even if they later retracted their confession they were not supposed to be put to the question again [NOTE]. English common law forbade the use of torture in criminal cases altogether unless with the permission of the privy council (effectively meaning only for treason) but had similar systems of evidences and proofs of witchcraft as codified by William Perkins [NOTE]. In the case of witches, material evidence was usually lacking, as the village healers did not go in for the kind of occult paraphernalia that characterised higher magic. It is also hard to see how the social interactions thought to lead to the initial accusation by Thomas and Briggs could give rise to witnesses able to say they had caught the witch casting a spell red handed, let alone flying through the air. That said, when a witness was produced before the dubious English judge Sir John Powell, declaring that the defendant had been seen travelling on her broomstick, his lordship is said to have dryly remarked that there was no law against flying (sadly the provenance of the story is doubtful [NOTE]. In short, to get a capital conviction if the proper procedures were followed was extremely difficult.