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were difgraced and difpirited by the public detection of their impofture. The disappointment and difgrace of these magicians ferved to vindicate the credit of St. Paul's miracles, to create an high reverence of Jefus, in confirmation of whofe divine authority they were performed, and to deter others from profaning his facred name, by using it only as a charm *.

* Hence it appears, that if this demoniac was affifted by a fupernatural power, this affistance must have proceeded from God, not from the evil fpirit, who could have no other aim, that to leffen the credit both of our Saviour and his apostle. Nor could a display of the power of the demon on this occafion, produce any other effect, than creating a fufpicion in the people, that Jefus and Paul were confederates with himself. If with this malicious view, he was willing to bear teftimony to Chrift, what occafion was there for being compelled to bear it by God? and would God favour his malicious views? The occurrence related, feems to have been providentially defigned to bring disgrace upon the Jewish exorcifts, and thereby to answer the purposes mentioned above.

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The more carefully I examine the language and behaviour of the New Teftament demoniacs, the more difficult doth it appear to me to draw from them a proof of the reality of demoniacal poffeffions. I cannot discover in them clear and certain marks of the interpofition of any fuperior agents, much lefs of infernal fpirits, who certainly could have no great zeal to affert the honour of their enemy and avenger. In a word, if you will afcribe the conduct of the demoniacs to the agency of demons, you must allow that the latter acted out of character, and were as mad as the demoniacs themselves could be.

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SECT. II.

Farther argument in favour of real poffeffions is taken from the deftruction of the herd of swine, which the demons are faid to have entered, and stimulated to inftantaneous madness ". This cafe is confidered by fome as a decifive proof of the power of demons, both over the human and brutal race, and is thought even to have been purpofely defigned by Providence, to convince us of this principle, and to refute the oppofite opinion.

To enervate this argument, Dr. Sykes fuggefted, and Dr. Lardner' ftrenuously contended, that the fwine were frighted by the two madmen, and fo driven down the precipice into the fea. On the other hand, the advocates of the common hypothefis

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P. 17.

Mat. viii. 30. Mark v. 11. Luke viii. 32.

Inquiry, p. 52.

Cafe, p. 17, 101. and Remarks on Dr. Ward,

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infift upon it, (to my apprehenfion, with great reafon,) that it was impoffible for two men, however fierce, to put so vaft a herd of fwine as two thoufsand into motion in an instant, and to cause them all to rush with violence down a precipice into the fea; fwine, contrary to the nature of moft other animals, running different ways when they are driven. But this part of the controversy might well be fpared; it not appearing from the history, that the men ever fell upon the herd, or made any attempt to drive them into the fea. Nay, the hiftory exprefly refers their deftruction to a different caufe from the behaviour of the madmen.

To understand the true ftate of the cafe, which doth not seem to have been attended to by the writers on either fide

z Not to add, that it was next to impoffible, that these two men fhould overcome all those who tended the swine; efpecially as, in order to compass the herd, they must have separated from each other. And indeed had they, under the influence of their diforder, driven the fwine into the fea, it is ftrange they did not follow them there.

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of the question, we must recollect that those persons who were anciently thought to be poffeffed, were disordered in their understandings. These two, poffeffion and madness, were imagined to bear to each other the relation of cause and effect, and accordingly to commence and cease together. When demons were fuppofed to enter any creature, immediately he grew mad; when they departed, this diforder was removed. The evidence of their entrance was madnefs; and a compofed behaviour was the evidence of their departure. And therefore, when it is faid, in the cafe under confideration, that the demons went out of the madmen, and entered the fwine; the evangelifts, if you interpret their language agreeably to the popular opinion on which it is founded, must mean, that the madmen, in confequence of the departure of the demons, were cured, and restored to their right mind'; and that the fwine, in conse

'This appears from Mark v. 1 5. Luke viii. 35. where the man is defcribed as being in his right mind,

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