themselves understood forced them to conform to it, or that they
themselves had adopted those opinions. There is, say they, more
likelihood that several infirmities which the Scripture has ascribed
to the demon had simply a natural cause; that in these places the
sacred authors have spoken according to vulgar opinions; the error of
this language is of no importance.

The prophets of Saul, and Saul himself, were never what are properly
termed Prophets; they might be attacked with those (fits) which the
pagans call _sacred_. You must be asleep when you read, not to see
that the temptation of Eve is only an allegory. It is the same with
the permission given by God to Satan to tempt Job. Why wish to explain
the whole book of Job literally, and as a true history, since its
beginning is only a fiction? It is anything but certain that Jesus
Christ was transported by the demon to the highest pinnacle of the
temple.

The Fathers were prepossessed on one side by the reigning ideas of the
philosophy of Pythagoras and Plato on the influences of mean
intelligences, and on the other hand by the language of the holy
books, which to conform to popular opinions often ascribed to the
demon effects which were purely natural. We must then return to the
doctrine of reason to decide on the submission which we ought to pay
to the authority of the Scriptures and the Fathers concerning the
power of the demons.

The uniform method of the Holy Fathers in the interpretations of the
Old Testament is human opinion, whence one can appeal to the tribunal
of reason. They go so far as to say that the sacred authors were
informed of the Metempsychosis, as the author of the Book of Wisdom,
chap. viii. 19, 20: "I was an innocent child, and I received a good
spirit; and as I was already good, I entered into an uncorrupted
body."

Persons of this temper will certainly not read this work of ours, or,
if they do read it, it will be with contempt or pity. I do not think
it necessary to refute those paradoxes here; the Bishop of Senez has
done it with his usual erudition and zeal, in a long letter printed at
Utrecht in 1736. I do not deny that the sacred writers may sometimes
have spoken in a popular manner, and in accordance with the prejudice
of the people. But it is carrying things too far to reduce the power
of the demon to being able to act upon us only by means of suggestion;
and it is a presumption unworthy of a philosopher to decide on the
power of