Wesley Corpus

2. And yet I cannot but apprehend there was a much shorter way. Would it not have been readier to overthrow all those testimonies at a stroke by proving there never was any devil in the world Then the whole affair of casting him out had been at an end. But it is in condescension to the weakness and prejudices of mankind that you go less out of the common road, and only observe 'that those who were said to be possessed of the devil may have been ill of the falling sickness.' And their symptoms, you say, 'seem to be nothing else but the ordinary symptoms of an epilepsy' (page 81). If it be asked, But were 'the speeches and confessions of the devils and their answering to all questions nothing but the ordinary symptoms of an epilepsy' you take in a second hypothesis, and account for these 'by the arts of imposture and contrivance between the persons concerned in the act' (page 82). But is not this something extraordinary, that men in epileptic fits should be capable of so much art and contrivance To get over this difficulty, we are apt to suppose that art and contrivance were the main ingredients; so that we are to add only quantum sufficit of the epilepsy, and sometimes to leave it out of the composition. But the proof, sir where is the proof I want a little of that too. Instead of this we have only another supposition--'that all the Fathers were either induced by their prejudices to give too hasty credit to these pretended possessions or carried away by their zeal to support a delusion which was useful to the Christian cause' (ibid.). I grant they were prejudiced in favour of the Bible; but yet we cannot fairly conclude from hence, either that they were one and all continually deceived by merely pretended possessions, or that they would all lie for God--a thing absolutely forbidden in that book.