Wesley Corpus

7. But “it is very hard to believe what Origen declares, that the devils used to possess and destroy cattle.” You might have said, what Matthew and Mark declare concerning the herd of swine; and yet we shall find you, by and by, believing far harder things than this. Before you subjoined the silly story of Hilarion and his camel, you should, in candour, have informed your reader, that it is disputed, whether the life of Hilarion was wrote by St. Jerome or no. But, be it as it may, I have no concern for either: For they did not live within the three first ages. 8. I know not what you have proved hitherto, though you have affirmed many things, and intimated more. But now we come to the strength of the cause, contained in your five observations. You observe, First, “that all the primitive accounts of casting out devils, though given by different Fathers, and in different ages, yet exactly agree with regard to all the main circumstances.” (Page 91.) And this you apprehend to be a mark of imposture. “It looks,” you say, “as if they copied from each other !” Now, a vulgar reader would have imagined that any single account of this kind must be rendered much more (not less) credible, by parallel accounts of what many had severally seen, at different times, and in different places. 9. You observe, Secondly, “that the persons thus possessed were called sy/aspiu.uffol, ‘ventriloquists;’” (some of them were;) “because they were generally believed to speak out of the belly. Now, there are, at this day,” you say, “those who, by art and practice, can speak in the same manner. If we suppose, then, that there were artists of this kind among the ancient Christians, how easily, by a corre spondence between the ventriloquist and the exorcist, might they delude the most sensible of their audience 1” (Page 92.) But what did the ventriloquist do with his epilepsy in the mean time? You must not let it go, because many of the circumstances wherein all these accounts agree cannot be tolerably accounted for without it. And yet, how will you make these two agree? It is a point worthy your serious consideration. But cheats, doubtless, they were, account for it who can.