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CHAPTER XXIII.

CONCERNING THE SUBJECTION OF EVIL SPIRITS TO THE COMMAND OF CHRISTIANS.

MOREOVER, if magicians do set before your eyes a scene of spectres, and, by their black arts, or direful forms in necromancy, call up the souls of the dead ; if they throw children into convulsions, and a while after make them vent the fury in oracles; if by their juggling wiles they delude the senses with abundance of mock miracles, and inject dreams in the dead of sleep, by first invoking the assistance of their angels and demons, by whose sophistry even goats and groaning boards are wont to divine: if then these evil spirits will do so much at the impulse of men, what will they not do by their own impulse, and for their own interest ? They will surely collect the whole stock of malicious power into one effort for the defence of themselves and the kingdom of darkness. Or if angels and demons act the same with your gods, pray where is the difference between them and Him you look upon as the Sovereign and supremest of powers? Is it not therefore more becoming to presume those to be gods, who do the things which make others pass for gods, than to bring down the gods to a level with demons ? But perhaps I am to think that it is the difference of places only which causes the distinction of titles, and that your gods are to be looked upon as gods only in their own temples, and he who flies through a sacred turret is begodded; but he who passes through a common house, bedeviled. Or that the priest who cuts off his privities, or lances his arms, is inspired; but he who cuts his throat, possessed; however, the fury of both has a like event, and the instigation is the same.

Hitherto I have argued upon point of reason, and contented myself with words only; I come now to things, and shall give you a demonstration from fact to convince you that your gods and demons both are but the same beings, though of different denominations. Let a demoniac therefore be brought into court, and the spirit which possesses him be commanded by any Christian to declare what he is, he shall confess himself as truly to be a devil as he did falsely before profess himself a god. In like manner, let one of those be produced, who is thought to labour with a god, whom he conceived from the steams of the altar, and of which after many a belch and many a pang he is delivered in oracles. Let the celestial virgin, the great procurer of rain, or Aesculapius, the great improver of medicine, who by the help of scordian, and other sovereign and cordial medicines, recovered those who could not have lived a day longer.