ll Madmen or Lunatiques; or
such as had the Falling Sicknesse; or that spoke any thing, which they
for want of understanding, thought absurd: As also of an Unclean person
in a notorious degree, they used to say he had an Unclean Spirit; of a
Dumbe man, that he had a Dumbe Devill; and of John Baptist (Math. 11.
18.) for the singularity of his fasting, that he had a Devill; and of
our Saviour, because he said, hee that keepeth his sayings should not
see Death In Aeternum, (John 8. 52.) "Now we know thou hast a Devill;
Abraham is dead, and the Prophets are dead:" And again, because he said
(John 7. 20.) "They went about to kill him," the people answered, "Thou
hast a Devill, who goeth about to kill thee?" Whereby it is manifest,
that the Jewes had the same opinions concerning Phantasmes, namely, that
they were not Phantasmes that is, Idols of the braine, but things reall,
and independent on the Fancy.

Why Our Saviour Controlled It Not

Which doctrine if it be not true, why (may some say) did not our Saviour
contradict it, and teach the Contrary? nay why does he use on diverse
occasions, such forms of speech as seem to confirm it? To this I answer,
that first, where Christ saith, "A Spirit hath not flesh and bone,"
though hee shew that there be Spirits, yet he denies not that they are
Bodies: And where St. Paul sais, "We shall rise Spirituall Bodies," he
acknowledgeth the nature of Spirits, but that they are Bodily Spirits;
which is not difficult to understand. For Air and many other things
are Bodies, though not Flesh and Bone, or any other grosse body, to bee
discerned by the eye. But when our Saviour speaketh to the Devill, and
commandeth him to go out of a man, if by the Devill, be meant a Disease,
as Phrenesy, or Lunacy, or a corporeal Spirit, is not the speech
improper? can Diseases heare? or can there be a corporeall Spirit in a
Body of Flesh and Bone, full already of vitall and animall Spirits?
Are there not therefore Spirits, that neither have Bodies, nor are meer
Imaginations? To the first I answer, that the addressing of our Saviours
command to the Madnesse, or Lunacy he cureth, is no more improper, then
was his rebuking of the Fever, or of the Wind, and Sea; for neither
do these hear: Or than was the command of God, to the Light, to the
Firmament, to the Sunne, and Starres, when he commanded them to bee; for
they could not heare before they had a beeing. But those speeches are
not improper, because they