Wesley Corpus

But cheats, doubtless, they were, account for it who can. Yet it is strange none of the Heathens should find them out; that the imposture should remain quite undiscovered till fourteen hundred years after the impostors were dead! He must have a very large faith who can believe this; who can suppose that not one of all those impostors should, either through inadvertence, or in the midst of tortures and death, have once intimated any such thing. 10. You observe, Thirdly, “that many demoniacs could not be cured by all the power of the exorcists; and that the cures which were pretended to be wrought on any were but temporary, were but the cessation of a particular fit or access of the distemper. This,” you say, “is evident from the testimony of antiquity itself, and may be clearly collected from the method of treating them in the ancient Church.” (Ibid.) Sir, you are the most obliging disputant in the world: For you continually answer your own arguments. Your last observation confuted all that you had advanced before. And now you are so kind as to confute that. For if, after all, these demoniacs were real epileptics, and that in so high a degree as to be wholly incurable, what becomes of their art and practice, and of the very good correspondence between the ventriloquist and the exorcist? Having allowed you your supposition just so long as may suffice to confute yourself, I must now observe, it is not true. For all that is evident from the testimony of antiquity, is this: That although many demoniacs were wholly delivered, yet some were not, even in the third century; but continued months or years, with only intervals of ease, before they were entirely set at liberty. 11.