Lastly, in considering the incalculable change which took place upon the advent of our Saviour and the announcement of his law, we may observe, that according to many wise and learned men, his mere appearance upon earth, without awaiting the fulfilment of his mission, operated as an act of banishment of such heathen deities as had hitherto been suffered to deliver oracles, and ape in some degree the attributes of the Deity. Milton has, in the Paradise Lost, it may be upon conviction of its truth, embraced the theory which identifies the followers of Satan with the gods of the heathen; and, in a tone of poetry almost unequalled, even in his own splendid writings, he thus describes, in one of his earlier pieces, the departure of these pretended dei. ties on the eve of the blessed Nativity.

"The oracles are dumb,

No voice or hideous hum

Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving;
Apollo from his shrine

Can no more divine,

With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving;
No nightly trance or breathed spell

Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell

"The lonely mountains o'er,
And the resounding shore,

A voice of weeping heard and loud lament;
From haunted spring and dale,
Edged with poplar pale,

The parting Genius is with sighing sent;
With flower-inwoven tresses torn,

The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn

"In consecrated earth,
And on the holy hearth,

The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint;
In urns and altars round,

A drear and dying sound

Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint;
And the chill marble seems to sweat,

While each peculiar Power foregoes his wonted seat.

"Peor and Baalim

Forsake their temples dim,

With that twice-batter'd god of Palestine;

And mooned Ashtaroth,

Heaven's queen and mother both,

Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shine;

The Lybic Hammon shrinks his horn;

In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thamuz mourn.

"And sullen Moloch, fled,

Hath left in shadowe dread
His burning idol all of darkest hue;
In vain with cymbals' ring,
They call the grisly king,

In dismal dance about the furnace blue;
The brutish gods of Nile as fast,

Isis and Orus, and the Dog Anubis, haste."

The quotation is a long one, but it is scarcely possible to shorten what is so beautiful and interesting a description of the heathen deities, whether in the classic personifications of Greece, the horrible shapes worshipped by mere barbarians, or the hieroglyphical enormities of the Egyptian mythology. The idea of identifying the pagan deities, especially the most distinguished of them, with the manifestation of demoniac power, and concluding that the descent of our Saviour struck them with silence, so nobly expressed in the poetry of Milton, is not certainly to be lightly rejected. It has been asserted, in simple prose, by authorities of no mean weight: nor does there appear any thing inconsistent in the faith of those who, believing that, in the elder time, fiends and demons were permitted an enlarged degree of power in uttering predictions, may also give credit to the proposition, that at the Divine advent that power was restrained, the oracles silenced, and those demons who had aped the Divinity of the place were driven from their abode on earth, honoured as it was by a guest so awful.

It must be noticed, however, that this great event had not the same effect on that peculiar class of fiends who were permitted to vex mortals by the alienation of their minds, and the abuse of their persons, in the cases of what is called demoniacal possession. In what exact sense we should understand this word possession, it is impossible to discover: but we feel it

impossible to doubt (notwithstanding learned authorities to the contrary), that it was a dreadful disorder, of a kind not merely natural; and may be pretty well assured that it was suffered to continue after the incarnation, because the miracles effected by our Saviour and his apostles, in curing those tormented in this way, afforded the most direct proofs of his divine mission, even out of the very mouths of those ejected fiends, the most malignant enemies of a power to which they dared not refuse homage and obedience. And here is an additional proof, that witchcraft, in its ordinary and popular sense, was unknown at that period: although cases of possession are repeatedly mentioned in the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles, yet in no one instance do the devils ejected mention a witch or sorcerer, or plead the commands of such a person, as the cause of occupying or tormenting the victim;-whereas, in a great proportion of those melancholy cases of witchcraft with which the records of later times abound, the stress of the evidence is rested on the declaration of the possessed, or the demon within him, that some old man or woman in the neighbourhood had compelled the fiend to be the instrument of evil.

It must also be admitted, that in another most remarkable respect, the power of the Enemy of mankind was rather enlarged than bridled or restrained, in consequence of the Saviour coming upon earth. It is indisputable, that in order that Jesus might have his share in every species of delusion and persecution which the fallen race of Adam is heir to, he personally suffered the temptation in the wilderness at the hand of Satan, whom, without resorting to his divine power, he drove, confuted, silenced, and shamed, from his presence. But it appears, that although Satan was allowed upon this memorable occasion to come on earth with great power, the permission was given expressly because his time was short,

The indulgence which was then granted to him in à case so unique and peculiar soon passed over, and was utterly restrained. It is evident, that after the lapse of the period during which it pleased the Almighty to establish his own Church by miraculous displays of power, it could not consist with his kindness and wisdom, to leave the enemy in the possession of the privilege of deluding men by imaginary miracles calculated for the perversion of that faith, which real miracles were no longer present to support. There would, we presume to say, be a shocking inconsistency in supposing, that false and deceitful prophecies and portents should be freely circulated by any demoniacal influence, deceiving men's bodily organs, abusing their minds, and perverting their faith, while the true religion was left by its great Author devoid of every supernatural sign and token, which, in the time of its Founder and his immediate disciples, attested and celebrated their inappreciable mission. Such a permission on the part of the Supreme Being, would be (to speak under the deepest reverence) an abandonment of his chosen people, ransomed at such a price, to the snares of an enemy, from whom the worst evils were to be apprehended. Nor would it consist with the remarkable promise in Holy Writ, that “God will not suffer his people to be tempted above what they are able to lear." 1 Cor. x. 13. The Fathers of the Faith are not strictly agreed at what period the miraculous power was withdrawn from the Church; but few Protestants are disposed to bring it down beneath the accession of Constantine, when the Christian religion was fully established in supremacy. The Roman Catholics, indeed, boldly affirm, that the power of miraculous interference with the course of nature is still in being; but the enlightened even of this faith, though they dare not deny a fundamental tenet of their Church, will hardly assent to any particular case, without nearly the same evidence which might conquer the incredulity of their

neighbours the Protestants. It is alike inconsistent with the common sense of either, that fiends should be permitted to work marvels which are no longer exhibited on the part of Heaven, or in behalf of religion.

It will be observed that we have not been anxious to decide upon the limits of probability on this question. It is not necessary for us to ascertain in what degree the power of Satan was at liberty to display itself during the Jewish dispensation, or down to what precise period in the history of the Christian Church cures of demoniacal possession, or similar displays of miraculous power, may have occurred. We have avoided controversy on that head, because it comprehends questions not more doubtful than unedifying. Little benefit could arise from attaining the exact knowledge of the manner in which the apostate Jews practised unlawful charms or auguries. After their conquest and dispersion, they were remarked among the Romans for such superstitious practices; and the like, for what we know, may continue to linger about the benighted wanderers of their race at the present day. But all these things are extraneous to our inquiry, the purpose of which was to discover whether any real evidence could be derived from sacred history, to prove the early existence of that branch of demonology which has been the object, in comparatively modern times, of criminal prosecution and capital punishment. We have already alluded to this as the contract of witchcraft, in which, as the term was understood in the middle ages, the demon and the witch or wizard combined their various powers of dcing harm to inflict calami→ ties upon the person and property, the fortune and the fame of innocent human beings; imposing the most horrible diseases, and death itself, as marks of their slightest ill-will; transforming their own persons and those of others at their pleasure; raising tempests to ravage the crops of their enemies, or