at men, who were worshipped for services
done to mankind in general, or to their native country in particular.
And this daemoniac religion being propagated from the Chaldaeans to the
Phoenicians, then to the Egyptians, came afterwards to the Greeks,
thence to the Romans, and in progress of time to the other nations.

[108] _Tusc. quaest. Lib. i. 13._

[109] _Cap. i. p. 5._

[110] _See Sir Isaac Newton's Chronology, p. 160._

But the jews, accustomed to ascribe every uncommon or wonderful work
of nature to the agency of angels, as ministers of the supreme deity,
could easily work up their minds to believe, that some dreadful
diseases, which injured the mind and body together, the causes whereof
they could not investigate, arose from the operation of evil angels.
For we learn from Philo Judaeus,[111] with whom Josephus also agrees in
opinion, _that they believed there were bad as well as good angels;
that the good executed the commands of God on men, that they were
irreprehensible and beneficent; but the bad execrable, and every way
mischievous_.[112] But a more illustrious example of this matter
cannot be given, than in the narrative of Saul's disease,[113] of
which I have already treated.[114] Nor were madness and the epilepsy
the only diseases, which they imputed to devils. When Jesus had
restored speech to the _furious dumb man_, he is said to have done it
by _casting out a devil_.[115] And when he had cured another furious
person, who was _blind and dumb_, the pharisees reproached him _with
casting out devils by beelzebub the prince of the devils_.[116] In
fine, Christ himself uses this common way of expression, on occasion
of the _woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, whom he
freed from that infirmity_; by saying, that _satan had held her bound
these eighteen years_.[117]

[111] _Lib. de gigantibus._

[112] _De bello judaico, Lib. vii. Cap. 6._

[113] _See Samuel (or Kings) Book i. Chap. xvi._

[114] _Chap. iii. page 28, &c._

[115] _Matthew, Chap. ix. Verse 32._

[116] _Ib. Chap. xii. Verse 22._

[117] _Luke, Ch. xiii. v. 16._

And this custom of taking madmen for demoniacs, was not so peculiar to
the jews, but that it prevailed in other nations also. Hence in
Herodotus king Cleomenes is said to be driven into madness, not by any
daemon, but by a habit of drunkenness, which he had contracted among
the Scythians, whereby he became frantic.[118] A