whether we will hearken to them or not, it is, nevertheless, an undoubted fact, that God's inspired messengers do constantly represent all demons without distinction as mere fictions of the human imagination, and clearly demonstrate their inability to produce any single effect.

Was it possible then for them to believe that Beelzebub or Apollo, or any other demon, possessed mankind? So far were they from entertaining and countenancing this opinion, that they have subverted the foundation on which it was built. This method of proceeding, which was dictated by divine wisdom, seems to be (as we have reason to expect it would be) the wisest that could be taken. To explain the physical causes of those distempers which were imputed to possession, did

as it was improper. While the eye of the mind is closed by prejudice, the brightest evidence shines before it in vain. The plainest language in which Christ taught that a man could contract no moral defilement by what only passed through his body, and the clearest prophecies concerning his own death and resurrection, were not understood by the apostles, because repugnant to their preconceived opinions. Though St. Paul declared, that he “knew and was persuaded by the Lord Jesus Christ, that there is nothing unclean of itself," (Rom. xiv. 14.) many Jewish Christians did not regulate their conduct by his opinion, but practised themselves, and even enforced upon others, the rites of Judaism, from a previous persuasion of their perpetual obligation. The very corruptions of the Gospel which were foreseen by the publishers of it, and which they have in express terms guarded us against, still prevail amongst those Christians whose minds are blinded by prejudice. Thus it is in the case before us: many, being previously persuaded that demons are powerful spirits, cannot receive the doctrine of St. Paul, confirmed as it is by all the antient prophets, that demons are nothing in the world. See above, p. 113, &c.

not

not lie within the province of the apostles; and to describe the case of the demoniacs in new language was needless and improper. But to rectify the mistaken conceptions mankind had entertained of demons, and hereby to destroy not one error only, but the whole fabric of Gentile idolatry and superstition; this fell within the limits of their commission, and was indeed one principal intention of it. They proposed and established their opinion of demons when they were instructing mankind in the doctrines of the Gospel, or confirming Christians in the belief of them. Indeed, the arguments in proof of the nullity of demons, drawn from their authority as the divinely appointed teachers of Christianity, and from those fundamental principles of it, there being but one God, and one mediator between God and man, are such as can be offered only for the conviction of believers. These arguments produced their effect on those whose minds were in any measure open to conviction*.

Let us now lay together the several foregoing particulars, which have been urged in answer to the capital objection against our explication of the Gospel demoniacs. It is urged, "that if reputed possessions were altogether natural distempers, Jesus and his apostles, instead of rectifying, have riveted in the minds of men a very dangerous error and superstition, by the manner in which they described the case of the demoniacs, and performed their cures upon them." In answer to this objection it hath been observed, that in speaking of

*See above, p. 135-138.

these

these persons, though they made use of the common popular language of the age and country in which they lived, yet they did not hereby give their sanction to the opinion to which it owed its rise. For it was customary with all sorts of persons, with the sacred writers in particular, and our Saviour himself, to speak in the language of the vulgar, though known to have been originally grounded on a false philosophy. Our Lord and his apostles, when speaking on the very subject before us, do certainly on some occasions use the vulgar language, as their contemporaries also do, when they did not design to countenance the vulgar opinion; and therefore they may have done so on other occasions. Consequently their sentiments concerning demoniacs can never be inferred from the bare expressions they have used to describe them. There could be no impropriety in their adopting the common phraseology, because it was universally applied to outward and sensible effects, to the symptoms of the demoniacs and their cure, and often to these only, though originally borrowed from the apprehended cause of their disorders. They were not commissioned by God to instruct mankind in the nature of those distempers which they were empowered to cure, or to rectify any physical mistakes concerning them; and therefore could not deliver any instructions on this head without exceeding their commission. Nay, the question concerning possessions could not be directly and immediately determined by the authority of Christ and his apostles without great impropriety; the miracles performed upon the possessed being a part of

that evidence of the Gospel which must for ever be judged of by natural reason alone. The first publishers of the Gospel, however, though they did not enter into any philosophical disquisitions concerning the nature of diseases, yet did effectually subvert the entire system of superstition which then prevailed, by asserting the nullity of demons, and clearly showing that to allow their power was to contradict the first principles of the Go-. spel. This they did on the most proper occasion, viz. when instructing men in the doctrines of Christianity. Now, as you learn a man's system of astronomy or physic from the account he professedly gives of it, not from his describing certain celestial appearances or bodily diseases in the language of the vulgar; so the real sentiments of the apostles concerning demons are to be gathered from their professed doctrine concerning them, not from their description of demoniacs, in which they employed, as it was fit they should, the language which then prevailed.

CHAP

CHAPTER III.

Ir still remains that we point out the inconveniencies attending the common explication of the Gospel demoniacs, and the advantages which result from the account given of them in the two preceding chapters.

Some may be ready to ask, "Whence this zeal to show that revelation doth not countenance the doctrine of real possessions? What prejudice can the Gospel suffer from this doctrine? And what advantage can it de-rive from the contrary one? The very adversaries* of real possessions allow that it was a matter of indifference with respect to the evidence of Christianity, whether those esteemed demoniacs were really such, or only laboured under a natural disease, inasmuch as in either case a real miracle was performed when their cure was effected." But what can be more evident than that the ejection of devils from the bodies of men is a greater miracle than the cure of natural disorders? What a lustre doth it reflect on the character of Christ, to see him first compelling them to confess his name, and then condemning them to silence! Was it not a wise dispensation, to permit the devil, about this time, to give some unusual proofs of his existence, power, and malice, in attacking men's bodies, in order to convince them what a dangerous enemy he was to their souls? Above all, was it not fit, and even necessary, that he who came into * Dr. Sykes's Inquiry, preface, p. 2..

the