8. Jesus addresses the demons (Matt. viii. 32 ; Mark v. 18 ; ix. 25 ; Luke iv. 35) ; so does Paul (Acts xvi. 18). Jesus bids them be silent (Mark i. 25) ; to depart, and enter no more into the person (Mark ix. 25).
9. In Luke x. the seventy are related to have returned to Jesus, saying, Lord, even the demons are subject to us through thy name ;' and Jesus re plies, ver. 18, ' I beheld Satan, as lightning, fall from heaven.' to. When Jesus was accused by the Pharisees of casting out demons by Beelzebub, the prince of the demons, he argued that there could be no dis cord among demoniacal beings (Matt. xii. 25, etc.) s. Jesus makes certain gratuitous observations respecting demons (see Matt. xii. 43, 44) ; which seem like facts in their natural history. In regard I to the demon cast out of the youth, which the disciples could not cast out, he says, this kind (i.e., of demons) goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.' Can these words be understood otherwise than as revealing a real and particular fact respecting the nature of demons (Matt. xvii. 21) ? 12. The woman which had a spirit of infirmity, and was bowed together (Luke xiii. i I), is, by our Lord himself, said to have been bound by Satan (ver. 16). In the same way St. Peter speaks of all the persons who were healed by Jesus as being oppressed of the devil' (Acts x. 38).
13. It is further pleaded that it sinks the im portance and dignity of our Saviour's miracles to suppose that when he is said to have cast out devils, all that is meant is that he healed diseases.
To these arguments the opponents of the theory of real demoniacal possessions reply, generally, that there can be no doubt that it was the general belief of the Jewish nation, with the exception of the Sadducees, and of most other nations, that the spirits of dead men, especially of those who had lived evil lives, and died by violent deaths; were permitted to enter the bodies of men, and to pro duce the effects ascribed to them in the popular creed ; but the fact and real state of the case was, that those who were considered to be possessed were afflicted with some peculiar diseases of mind or body, which, their true causes not being generally understood, were, as is usual in such cases, ascribed to supernatural powers, and that Jesus and his Apostles, wishing of course to be understood by their contemporaries, and owing to other reasons which can be pointed out, were under the necessity of expressing themselves in popular language, and of seeming to admit, or at least of not denying, its correctness. They further plead that the fact,
admitted on all hands, that the demon so actuated the possessed, as that whatever they did was not to be distinguished from his agency, reduces the question, so far as phenomena are concerned, to one simple inquiry, namely, whether these phenomena are such as can be accounted for without resorting to supernatural agency. They assert that the symptoms predicated of demoniacs correspond with the ordinary symptoms of disease, and especially of hypochondria, insanity, and epilepsy ; that the sacred writers themselves give intimations, as plain as could be expected under their circumstances, that they employed popular language ; that conse quently they are not to be considered as teaching doctrines, or asserting facts, when they use such language ; and that the doctrine of the agency of departed spirits on the bodies of men is inconsistent with certain peculiar and express doctrines of Christ and his Apostles.
With regard to the symptoms related of the de moniacs, it is urged that such persons as were called demoniacs in other countries, and who seem to have laboured under precisely the same symp toms, are recorded to have been cured by the use of medicines. Helleboro quoque purgatur lym phaticns error (Seren. Sammon. c. 27, v. 5o7), ' Insane delusion is remedied by hellebore.' Jose phus and the Jewish physicians speak of medicines composed of stones, roots, and herbs, being useful to demoniacs (Gittei , f. 67). The cure of diseases by such methods is intelligible, but is it rational to believe that the spirits of dead men were dislodged from human bodies by medical prescriptions ? Maimonides (in Sabat. ii. 5) says, all kinds of diseases which are called melancholy they call an evil spirit' (comp. Matt. xi. 18; John vii. 2o ; x. 2o).