ulsed, who fled the presence of
mankind, who were violent and dangerous, so that they were obliged to
be chained to prevent them from striking and maltreating other people;
these kinds of persons were simply beset, or obseded by the devil.

Opinions are much divided on the matter of obsessions and possessions
of the devil. The hardened Jews, and the ancient enemies of the
Christian religion, convinced by the evidence of the miracles which
they saw worked by Jesus Christ, by his apostles, and by Christians,
dared neither dispute their truth nor their reality; but they
attributed them to magic, to the prince of the devils, or to the
virtue of certain herbs, or of certain natural secrets.

St. Justin,[245] Tertullian, Lactantius, St. Cyprian, Minutius, and
the other fathers of the first ages of the church, speak of the power
which the Christian exorcists exercised over the possessed, so
confidently and so freely, that we can doubt neither the certainty nor
the evidence of the thing. They call upon their adversaries to bear
witness, and pique themselves on making the experiment in their
presence, and of forcing to come out of the bodies of the possessed,
to declare their names, and acknowledge that those they adore in the
pagan temples are but devils.

Some opposed to the true miracles of the Saviour those of their false
gods, their magicians, and their heroes of paganism, such as those of
Esculapius, and the famous Apollonius of Tyana. The pretended
freethinkers dispute them in our days upon philosophical principles;
they attribute them to a diseased imagination, the prejudices of
education, and hidden springs of the constitution; they reduce the
expressions of Scripture to hyperbole; they maintain that Jesus Christ
condescended to the understanding of the people, and their
prepossessions or prejudices; that demons being purely spiritual
substances could not by themselves act immediately upon bodies; and
that it is not at all probable God should work miracles to allow of
their doing so.

If we examine closely those who have passed for being possessed, we
shall not perhaps find one amongst them, whose mind had not been
deranged by some accident, or whose body was not attacked by some
infirmity either known or hidden, which had caused some ferment in the
blood or the brain, and which, joined to prejudice, or fear, had given
rise to what was termed in their case obsession or possession.

The possession of King Saul is e