nd whereas [Greek:
daimonan] signifies the same thing as [Greek: daimonion echein],
Xenophon uses this word for _furere_, to be raging mad or
furious.[119] Moreover Aristophanes, intending to express a high
degree of the same disease, employs the word [Greek: kakodaimonan],
and calls the highest degree of madness, not [Greek: manian], but
[Greek: kakodaimonian][120]. Hence also, as Aretaeus observes, this
disease was called _morbus sacer_, or the sacred disease, _because it
was imagined that some daemon had entered into the man_.[121] Wherefore
the physicians found it absolutely necessary to oppose this false
notion with all their might. Because the people were generally
persuaded, that diseases, which they believed to be caused by evil
spirits, were to be expelled, not by medical skill, but by religious
rites and ceremonies. Upon this account the prince of physicians
Hippocrates, or at least some one of his scholars, wrote a very useful
piece,[122] wherein he asserts that no diseases are inflicted on man,
immediately, by any divine power; and that those persons ought to be
accounted magicians and jugglers, who cover their ignorance with a
veil of sanctity, by infusing such notions into the minds of the
people.

[118] _Lib. vi. Cap. 84._

[119] _Memorabil. Lib. i._

[120] _Vid. Plutum, Act. ii. Scen. 3. v. 38. & Act. ii. Scen.
5. v. 15._

[121] [Greek: Dia tes doxes daimonos es ton anthropon
eisodou.] _De causis morbo diuturn. Lib. i. Cap. 4._

[122] _De morbo sacro._

But with regard to this power of the devils over human bodies,
believed equally by the jews and other nations, I have already said,
that the divinity ought not to be made a party concerned in imposing
diseases, which may possibly have natural causes; unless it be
expresly declared, that they were inflicted immediately by the hand of
God.[123] For of all the diseases, with which miserable mortals are
tormented, there are none so wonderful and dreadful to appearance, but
may be the natural consequences of bodily indispositions. Wherefore
God himself, if he thinks proper, can employ either natural causes, or
the ministry of good angels, to inflict all sorts of diseases on
mankind. And I hope nobody will believe, that the devils have had the
power granted them of torturing men at their wanton pleasure. But to
say more on this subject seems the less necessary; because two very
learned divines of our nation have already trea