ave made a wax image of him, or given his name
with some superstitious ceremonies, and have devoted him or her, so
that the persons feel themselves dying as their image melts away, is
ascribing to the demon too much power, and to magic too much might.
God can, when he wills it, loosen the reign of the enemy of mankind,
and permit him to do us the harm which he and his agents may seek to
do us; but it would be ridiculous to believe that the Sovereign Master
of nature can be determined by magical incantations to allow the demon
to hurt us; or to imagine that the magician has the power to excite
the demon against us, independently of God.

The instance of that peasant who gave his child to the devil, and
whose life the devil first took away and then restored, is one of
those extraordinary and almost incredible circumstances which are
sometimes to be met with in history, and which neither theology nor
philosophy knows how to explain. Was it a demon who animated the body
of the boy, or did his soul re-enter his body by the permission of
God? By what authority did the demon take away this boy's life, and
then restore it to him? God may have permitted it to punish the
impiety of the wretched father, who had given himself to the devil to
satisfy a shameful and criminal passion. And again, how could he
satisfy it with a demon, who appeared to him in the form of a girl he
loved? In all that I see only darkness and difficulties, which I leave
to be resolved by those who are more learned or bolder than myself.

CHAPTER LXII.

REMARKS ON THE DISSERTATION CONCERNING THE SPIRIT WHICH REAPPEARED AT
ST. MAUR DES FOSSES.

The following Dissertation on the apparition which happened at St.
Maur, near Paris, in 1706, was entirely unknown to me. A friend who
took some part in my work on apparitions, had asked me by letter if I
should have any objection to its being printed at the end of my work.
I readily consented, on his testifying that it was from a worthy hand,
and deserved to be saved from the oblivion into which it was fallen. I
have since found that it was printed in the fourth volume of the
Treatise on Superstitions, by the Reverend Father le Brun, of the
Oratoire.

After the impression, a learned monk[645] wrote to me from Amiens, in
Picardy, that he had remarked in this dissertation five or six
propositions which appeared to him to be false.

1st. That the author says, all the holy doctors agree that no means of
dec