Witchcraft. It is not unusual for Satanists to go to Holy
Communion in various churchs of a town, and instead of consuming the Host
they spit God's Body from their mouths into a handkerchief or cloth and take
it away to abuse in their horrid worship. In the notorious case of the
Lancashire witches, at the first trial, 1612, James Device confessed
that upon Sheare Thursday was two yeares, his Grand-Mother Elizabeth
Souternes alias Demdike, did bid him this Examinate goe to the Church to
receive the Communion (they next day after being Good Friday), and then not
to eate the Bread the Minister gave him, but to bring it and deliver it to
such a thing as should meet him in his way homewards; Notwithstanding her
perswasions thie Examinate did eate the Bread: and so in his comming
homeward some fortie roodes off the said Church, there met him a thing in
the shape of a Hare, who spoke unto this Examinate, and asked him whether
he had brought the Bread.
The toad constantly appears as a familiar. In 1579 at Windsor one
Mother Dutton dwellyng in Cleworthe Parishe keepeth a Spirite or Feende in
the likenesses of a Toade, and fedeth the same Feende lying in a border of
greene Hearbes, within her garden, with blood whiche she causeth to issue
from her owne flancke. Ursley Kemp, a S. Osyth witch (1582), had a
familiar, Pygine, black like a Toad. Ales Hunt of the same
coven nourished two familiars, the which she kept in a little lowe
earthen pot. Margerie Sammon, another S. Osyth's witch, hath
also two spirites like Toades, the one called Tom, and the
other Robbyn. When Ursley Kemp peeped through Mother
Hunt's window she espied a spirite to looke out of a porcharde from
under a clothe, the nose thereof being brown like unto a Ferret.