by R.G.
Originally published in Temple Bar (Ward and Lock) vol.4 #14 (Jan 1862).
The existence of incorporeal beings to which the epithet of 'evil' may be applied with more or less propriety, seems almost a necessary corollary from the admission of the immortality of the spirit itself. The proposition that such beings may exercise an influence upon human affairs requires, indeed, such an admission as an indispensable postulate, but is by no means a logical deduction from it. It may be received upon external authority, such as the interpretation usually given to certain well-known passages in the Gospels; or as an inference from mental experiences, such as that of the existence—which several minds of a high order profess themselves to have suspected—of a psychical agency distinctly distinguishable from any that could be referred to their own personality, and operating in a manner most distressing and repugnant to the latter.[1] Neither of these arguments admit of demonstration, the interpretation being contested and uncertain, and the experience only evidence for those to whom it has been vouchsafed. If we would ascertain the truth of the matter with certainty, we must appeal, as in most other inquiries, to the evidence of external facts. Of such, carelessly and insufficiently observed and recorded, there is a very great abundance; duly authenticated, a most significant penury, if, indeed, any such exist. Undoubtedly the belief in demoniacal possession is a natural growth of the human mind, encountered in every country under the sun. We invariably find, however, that its prevalence is in inverse ratio to the degree of enlightenment existing in any such country; possession being among the most ordinary of phenomena in Negroland, very common in Abyssinia, not unfrequent in Turkey and Arabia, occasional in Spain and Italy, almost unheard of in England. The inference is obvious. Nevertheless there is a certain residue of obstinate facts, or supposed facts, which ought to be scrutinised,—first, that it may be ascertained whether they are really facts at all, then that, in the event of their proving to be such, it may be shown what conclusion they do tend to establish, if it be not that of demoniacal possession. As a contribution to this interesting inquiry, we propose to detail one of the most remarkable of these few cases, after materials furnished by Dr. Justinus Kerner, the well-known writer on the philosophy of the supernatural, on whose authority the whole story rests.[2] We shall then append some observations on Dr. Kerner's qualifications as an observer, premising in this place that we entirely acquit him of the remotest approach to intentional deception. Before entering upon the narrative, it may not be amiss to add a few words in illustration of the exact question at issue. This is not whether people ever believe themselves to be animated by evil spirits,—which is admitted,—but whether the belief is well grounded, The one inquiry to be steadily kept in view is, whether the patient's behaviour is such as to be only explicable on the hypothesis of a supernatural agency, or whether the fact of his belief in such agency may not sufficiently account for it. A man, it may be argued, believes in the existence of demons; he believes that they are sometimes permitted to take possession of a human organism, and convert its physical and intellectual machinery to their own use; he has well-defined ideas as to the probable character of the actions and demeanour of a demon thus incarnated; and so, falling into some strange malady, which he is led to identify with diabolical possession, he naturally adapts his own behaviour to the supposed circumstances of his case. A parallel instance is afforded by the rare, but perfectly authenticated, disorder of lycanthropia, the sufferer from which, imagining himself a wolf, howls inarticulately, roams in churchyards by night, and endeavours to dig up the dead with his hands. Perceiving, however, that his exterior is in no respect metamorphosed, and that he simply imitates the demeanour of a wolf in the same manner that a sane person might if so disposed, we discern in him merely the victim of an hallucination. If, therefore, we find supposed demoniacs merely mimicking the probable behaviour of a demon, as lycanthropists mimic the habits of a wolf, our conclusion must be the same in the former case as in the latter; but if they exhibit phenomena irreconcilable with the idea of a natural mental action, however morbid,—if, for example, they predict events correctly, or speak in language previously unknown to them,—some other explanation must be resorted to.
Anna Maria U—, the subject. of Kerner's narrative, was born in the kingdom of Wurtemburg, Dec. 31, 1799. She is described by him as a pious, cheerful, industrious woman; married, healthy, and the mother of three children. In August 1830, without previous warning, she became subject to convulsive paroxysms, during which she lost the consciousness of her own personality, assuming the character of some deceased individual, and supporting it with entire consistency of voice, speech, and action. On her recovery, she had, or professed to have, no recollection of any thing she had said or done during her fit. The following anecdote is given as an example.
"After she had been afflicted for four months, a strange voice said out of her to her brother, 'Do you know who I am?' 'No,' was the reply. 'Do you remember having ever stolen pears?' 'Once, when a boy, from such a one.' 'I am he!' On her recovery from her paroxysm, she declared herself ignorant both of what she had said, and of her brother's boyish theft. From this time, whenever she was afflicted, the voice of this person spoke continually out of her, howling, raving, and pouring forth execrations against God and every thing holy. Several medical men were called in, who treated her with belladonna, stramonium, and all the most drastic remedies in the pharmacopceia, which were altogether ineffectual."
Indeed, Kerner's words might be taken to mean that they did not even produce any physical effect; but he expresses himself so ambiguously as to render it doubtful whether this is really what he intends to imply. Prayer was found more efficacious, also "magical application," whatever this may mean. On two occasions she was taken on a pilgrimage to a Roman Catholic chapel, to the immense disgust of the demon, who shrieked, cursed, threw her into the most fearful convulsions, and tossed her up and down like a ball. The priests, however, refused to exorcise her, as she did not belong to their communion, but allowed her to go in and pray before the altar, which had the effect of quelling the evil spirit for a while. At one time he seemed to have forsaken her altogether, but soon returned accompanied by another, as was inferred from her speaking with two distinct voices. Sometimes a legion of fiends appeared to take possession of her, and the clamour on such occasions is compared to that of a pack of hounds. Amid all these horrors her confinement occurred, which was the means of procuring her some respite, as the demon appeared to have no power over her while her innocent babe was in her arms.[3] How, under these circumstances, she ever came to part with it is a question which it would be useless to address to the worthy Kerner, who, an enthusiastic cultivator of demonology in all its branches, has neither eyes nor ears for any thing at variance with his preconceived opinions.
The woman having now suffered more than two years, medicine having proved a delusion, and prayer only a palliative, recourse was had to a peasant, a match for the best medium in Massachusetts in piety, faith, and mesmeric influence. This veteran in diabolic warfare altered the plan of attack, and sought to ameliorate the physical condition of the patient by raising the moral standard of the demons. After eleven weeks of incessant supplication, fasting, and magnetism, he brought the first of them to prayer and repentance, and ultimately ejected him "with an audible explosion." A concentrated attack was about to be made upon the second and more obstinate intruder, when an unforeseen impediment presented itself in the shape of the police, who (doubtless suadente diabolo) came down upon the exorcist and locked him up. The charge was swindling, the defence able, the result his release, and the condition of it that he should make no further attempt to cast out any devil or devils. Dr. Kerner now took the command, the patient becoming an inmate of his house on Feb. 23, 1833. He found her to all appearance a very excellent woman, honest and pious. As might be expected, she was greatly emaciated from her protracted and strange disorder. Her eyes had a peculiarly spectral appearance, like that by which Italians profess to recognise a jettatore, and gave her continual pain, which she attributed to the demon's looking out of them. She took no offence when the diabolical origin of her malady was disputed, merely expressing a natural wish that the medical gentlemen would relieve her sufferings first and discuss the cause of them afterwards. Except when under the influence of her paroxysms, there was not the slightest symptom of insanity in her demeanour. Her attacks were usually sudden, commencing with violent tremors; she would then close her eyes, and the demon, hurling her violently to and fro, began to pour forth a torrent of execrations. According to his own account, this personage was by no means a fallen angel, but simply a good-for-nothing miller who had hanged himself about fifteen years previously, and whom she had never known in her life. When the paroxysm had abated, she gladly turned to prayer; a proceeding highly obnoxious to the evil spirit, who would thrust out her tongue, dilated to a preternatural bulk, distort every muscle of her countenance, and convert her words to blasphemies. An exorcist (it is not said who) was at hand to lend assistance on such occasions; and Kerner protests most solemnly that every injunction he laid upon the demon in Latin, a language of which the patient was entirely ignorant, was understood, and, if it suited the fiend's humour, obeyed. This might, Kerner assures us, be authenticated by numerous witnesses, but, as he does not produce them, the assertion must be taken for what it is worth.
After duly reconnoitring the scene of operations, Kerner determined upon the employment of magnetism as his principal remedy. The ordinary method of magnetising (making passes from head to foot) proved entirely ineffective, but no sooner had the process been reversed than results began to manifest themselves. Three passes usually sufficed to throw the sufferer into a condition between sleeping and waking, when a voice, supposed to be that of a guardian angel,[4] was heard speaking within her, and promising her deliverance. She used to declare while in her trance that the good spirit was strengthened by magnetism, and the demon enfeebled. The latter seemed to be of the same opinion, as he did all he could to interrupt her slumbers, and overwhelmed the guardian spirit with abuse. Being asked on one occasion where the soul of the woman was while he had possession of the body, he answered that it was away with "the beggar," meaning the angel. He opposed an equally active resistance to the attempted administration of medicine, rarely allowing the patient to partake of any thing but soup, and frequently avowing his intention to famish her to death. It was nevertheless evident that the remedial measures adopted were not without effect upon him: after long-continued adjuration and magnetism, he would appear so far subdued as to permit the patient to be brought to an open window, which afforded her much relief; although, indeed, he seldom failed to start up when least expected and hurl her violently backwards, where she would lie for a quarter of an hour senseless and apparently inanimate. Yet the power of the benevolent spirit appeared on the increase, and after a while the patient began to fall from time to time into a magnetic trance spontaneously, without any external application of mesmeric agency. During these trances the voice of the angel was distinctly heard comforting her, and promising: ultimate relief.
At this stage of the narrative Kerner resigns his pen to a medical friend, on whose confirmation of his own statements he seems to rely as an effectual antidote to any scepticism the reader may hitherto have entertained. As, however, he neither gives this person's name, residence, nor any thing tending in the smallest degree to authenticate his assertions, it is hardly likely that any other effect will be produced than an additional distrust of the observations of one so imperfectly sensible of the nature and value of testimony. The change in the narrator is so far advantageous that the story gains in clearness and vividness. The new witness describes the patient as a mild quiet woman, fond of knitting and domestic employments, whose natural condition presented nothing peculiar. "She is communicative without being loquacious, and prays frequently, especially in the open air. Her frame is much emaciated, but there is less alteration in her features than might have been expected. A spasmodic closing of the eyes is frequently observable. She complains principally of the misrepresentations to which her disorder exposes her; of the sorrow which her husband, children, and other connexions suffer on her account; and of being a burden to her physician and his benevolent family. Her appearance when magnetised is that of a quiet sleeper, except that she sits quite erect and immovable, the eyes gently shut, her visage composed, but without that entranced expression which I have noticed in many somnambulists." This last remark is of importance, as showing that Kerner's friend was already a student of mesmeric phenomena, not, therefore, the sceptical, or even the unbiased observer, whose testimony it would have been so desirable to obtain. It is a general remark, applicable to all narratives of demoniacal possession, that, although many have been compelled to acknowledge the manifestation of symptoms respecting which they were previously incredulous, no one seems inclined to resort to the hypothesis of a supernatural agency unless already prejudiced in its favour.
After repeating and confirming Kerner's statements in the main, the second physician continues:
"Between one and two in the morning (of March 23d) the paroxysms lost something of their dreadful character, and the speech of the demon became mild, sometimes plaintive. 'He felt,' he said, 'that he must quit the woman's body, and would do so, only we must give him time, and not make such a dead set at him (meaning the adjurations in the name of Jesus); if one did but know how terrible it was outside (here the body shuddered) one would have pity upon him, and not press him so hard.'"
The next time the patient was magnetised, her guardian spirit was understood to confirm all the assertions of the demon, to declare that he was fast becoming a real penitent, to recommend a milder method of treatment, and to predict that he would be dislodged between eleven and twelve a.m. What follows reminds us of the stage-direction: "Villain leans against side-scenes, and becomes virtuous." The convulsions gradually decreased in violence, the demon's conversation began to take an edifying turn, and at length he voluntarily declared that, he would go that very day, but could not do so until he had made a full confession of the sins of his earthly existence, to which end he required to be continually questioned and admonished to tell the truth. Kerner and his friend accordingly set to work, and extracted the diabolical autobiography piecemeal. During his examination, the evil spirit made perceptible advances in moral excellence, and manifested an especial desire to be thoroughly acquainted with the nature of sin. A little before noon, his confession being ended, the woman swooned thrice, and the demon took his departure with a loud sound like blowing. On recovering from her trance, the patient was tested with some additional exorcisms; but these being void of effect, and the improvement in her appearance and manner unmistakable, her recovery, rather prematurely as it proved, was, considered certain.
The communications of the evil spirit were to the following effect: His name had been Kaspar B—r, and he had been born in 1783. From his infancy he had shown an evil disposition, and in particular a great propensity to falsehood. His father spoiled him by over-severity, his mother by over-indulgence, and a limited capacity prevented his profiting by the instruction he received at school. As he grew up his conduct became more and more dissolute, till at length he killed one of his companions in a drunken scuffle. "The matter was not inquired into; I had no peace, and yet did not repent. Once I robbed a miller's lad of his watch, and was never suspected; I sold it for a trifle, which I wasted. I continually falsified the reckonings in the mill; yet I did some good, as I sometimes gave the embezzled meal to the poor." It was here objected that he had no right to claim any merit on this ground, the meal not having been his own. "I cannot think," he replied, "that it was a sin; it did no harm to the rich, and profited the poor." It was very difficult to convince him on this point, but at length he was brought to express a sort of conditional repentance, and continued his narrative as follows:
"I was now married, and had a mill of my own. We had no children. My wife was a dear, good woman, who always dealt kindly with me, and admonished me to reform my course of life. I paid no heed to her warnings, nor regarded her trouble; yet I was, at least, not unfaithful to her. I went about from tavern to tavern, and, so long as I received my money myself, it remained but a very short time with me. At last my wife took it into her own hands, but gave me all she was able, and continued to speak kindly with me. Oh, she was a good woman! But I paid no regard to her, and became worse and worse. At length she lost patience, and told me that she was ashamed to look her friends in the face, they having always been against the match, and if I did not reform, she must procure a divorce. This greatly angered and terrified me. I would not be divorced, and yet would not stay with her, as I felt ashamed in her presence. The devil entered me, and drove me out of the house. I ran to Ellevargen, called in two or three debts, and turned the money into drink. The people did not pay me much, as they knew my wife was housekeeper. I could not resolve what to do. Sometimes I thought of returning, but felt too much ashamed; sometimes of going abroad and taking service in a mill, but for this I was too proud. I thus came to Westhausen, where I spent the night. I could not sleep, and, urged on by my troubled mind, came at length to a coppice, where it occurred to me to hang myself, thinking that this would be the best way to vex my wife."
On being asked whether he had not regarded suicide as a sin, he replied that he had never thought of that, and had at the time no belief in a future life. "I fastened a handkerchief about my neck, and hung myself to a tree, so low that the extremities of my feet touched the ground. It was soon over; but meanwhile I recollected with sorrow that I should not be buried. After being found, I was taken away and dissected."
Here the demon and the patient respectively went to sleep. On the former again giving signs of existence, his depositions[5] were formally read over to him, and he amended them by admitting that, notwithstanding his assertions to the contrary, he had been unfaithful to his wife. He then continued:
"Since I hung myself in 1818, I have been obliged to dwell in the air in the shape of a wasp, till, sixteen weeks since, I was able to enter the body of this woman, and have tormented her dreadfully ever since. I hardly knew her before; she was only a child, and I never troubled myself about children, nor any one but the companions of my debaucheries. Her father never employed me, but was good to me in other respects, and a very worthy man. I have occasioned him much care and trouble; and how I have tormented this woman's mother and children and husband! I could not help it; I must do it; but was it not a great sin? Oh, how I repent!—yes, I now see my wickedness, and repent it bitterly, and beg the pardon of all I have injured. Oh, if I could but pray! The woman can, I cannot, and never could. If I could, I might get a little step higher, and might hope not to be rejected for ever."
"On hearing this, I" (Kerner's friend) "asked, 'Canst thou not say penitently, "God be merciful to me a poor sinner"?' 'Yes,' cried a voice from the patient joyfully, 'yes, I can!' and added in a tone of indescribable pathos, 'God be merciful to me a poor sinner, strengthen me in my repentance and penance, and suffer me to find mercy!' Whereupon ensued the final convulsions, and the deliverance of the patient, as already described. In the course of the evening Kerner took occasion to ask her whether it was not permissible to take something from the rich in order to relieve the poor. Visibly astonished, she answered without hesitation, 'How can this be?—theft is theft, however the stolen goods may be applied.'"
Kerner's colleague concludes by assuring us that the inquiries set on foot had already resulted in the verification of a great portion of the demon's confession. They were still in progress when he wrote, but we hear no more of them. To expect either him or Kerner, with their notions of testimony, to condescend to authenticate this assertion by the production of any sort of tangible evidence, would clearly be as unreasonable as to receive it while this confirmation is withheld.
Kerner proceeds to detail the unfortunate relapses of his patient, which at first appeared calculated to bring no small scandal upon the art and mystery of exorcism. It appeared that while demon No. 1 had been victoriously combated as above, demon No. 2 had been lying perdu, and upon the disappearance of his comrade, he came forth and asserted himself. When eventually overcome by the usual means, demon No. 2 (a smith guilty of perjury and poisoning') only made room for demon No. 3, who far surpassed his fellows in power and wickedness. Kerner, who had known this personage in his life, relates, with evident sincerity, how the woman was nearly destroyed, and the observers reduced to despair.
"It is certain," he says, "that my patient neither had, nor could have ever heard or seen any thing of this man. So often, however, as he had possession of her, her features assumed the precise cast of his, which were very peculiar, and she related circumstances from his former life which could not possibly have been known to her."
After every attempt by the ordinary means had proved fruitless, the woman was eventually delivered by the interposition of "a stranger of great experience in such matters," respecting whom, and his method of operation, Kerner expresses himself very mysteriously. His success was so great as not only to rescue the patient from this particular demon, but to insure her against all similar attacks for the future. A year afterwards, her husband wrote to Kerner: "My wife continues perfectly well, prays and works without any disturbance, and joins with me in thanking God, who, through your instrumentality, has freed us from the affliction that had weighed so heavily upon us for so many years."
The fact of our having undertaken the consideration of this narrative at all, will of itself indicate that we are not among those who regard demoniacal possession as a thing essentially incredible. Such a conclusion is a necessary corollary from the denial of the possibility of abstract spiritual existence apart from the body, but very illogical on any other hypothesis. If spirits exist in a disembodied condition, they must necessarily operate in some way or other upon something; and upon what should they operate except upon beings analogous to themselves,—that is, other spirits, whether associated with a corporeal envelope or not? The real à priori objections to demoniacal agency upon mankind repose on a totally different basis—the extreme difficulty of reconciling it with the wisdom, order, and harmony observed in all other departments of the material and spiritual creation. This argument would be unanswerable, were it not that experience teaches us that, although fair judges of the general scope and tendency of Providential arrangements, the imperfection of our vision frequently blinds us to the significance of particular portions of them; while the invariable tendency of augmented knowledge is to clear up apparent difficulties, and display what at first appeared chaotic and discordant contributing in its turn to the universal harmony. Such considerations may convince us that we are not justified in summarily rejecting any opinion on the ground of its clashing with our preconceived impressions of the beneficence of Nature, but by no means relieve us from the duty of subjecting any thing thus apparently inharmonious to the most severe scrutiny. It must be apparent how ill-fitted Kerner's narrative is to sustain any such test. From first to last, not one single incident is properly authenticated. The patient is anonymous, the witnesses are anonymous, the demons are anonymous. It is true that Kerner's colleague assures us that the confessions of the last had been substantially verified; but who is to verify the verification? What might possibly be good evidence in Wurtemburg in 1833, where and when the witnesses may have been known to several persons, is no evidence to foreigners in 1861. Moreover, on the hypothesis of imposture, and the supposition that the woman designedly adapted her revelations to her previous knowledge, it is clear that the result of inquiry must be to confirm them. There is little in the narrative to relieve the patient from such a suspicion; and it is certain that even more ingenious and deliberate schemes of deception have at various times been conceived, and successfully carried out, with less apparent motive, at equal personal inconvenience, and under the eyes of far more penetrating observers. We do not ourselves think it necessary to resort to this explanation; the existence of demonomania appearing to be established by other instances, and the admission of it not in itself involving any irrational consequences, since, if one hypochondriac may imagine himself a bottle, and insist on being decanted, it is difficult to see why another may not take himself for a demon, and invoke the aid of an exorcist, provided always that the existence of a demon is as much an article of belief with him as that of a bottle with his fellow-patient. In justice to the woman, moreover, we should make large allowance for the manner in which her proceeding's must have been coloured by the observers' state of mind. Nothing can be more probable, for example, than that half her speeches were indirectly suggested to her. It is sufficiently amusing to find the devil asking for leading questions; and we should have entertained a poor opinion of the exorcists' ingenuity if, with so liberal an invitation, they had failed in eliciting any answers they thought proper. It would also much gratify us to learn how often the Latinising exorcist had to speak, and what gesticulations he may have used, before he succeeded in conveying a distinct impression of his meaning to the mind of the patient or her diabolical representative,—after which, we have no doubt, he was obeyed with all imaginable docility. Similar feelings would also influence the preparation of the narrative; and if the observers' recollections ever varied, we may be certain that they would act upon the Christian principle of giving the devil the benefit of the doubt Worst of all, where are those most indisputable testimonies of the victory of truth, the converted sceptics? Incredulous medical men are by no means hard to find in Germany or elsewhere, and we should have thought the rumour of this case would have brought them about Kerner's house like astronomers about a comet. Can it be that the worthy Kerner shut the door in their faces? or, more horrible yet to imagine, that they came, and saw, and were not convinced? We cannot tell; certain it is that he would have paraded their testimony, if he could in any wise have got it. The only strong part of his case is the extreme vraisemblance of the confessions of the demon, which must be acknowledged to be worthy in this respect of the authoress of Adam Bede herself.
It comes, then, to this, that, anonymous witnesses being as good as none, a fact in itself difficult of belief, pregnant with the most momentous corollaries, and on both these grounds requiring to be established by the strongest and most precise testimony, rests altogether upon the assertions of the most notorious visionary in Europe, a man who has been more successful than any other in reconciling the maximum of integrity with the minimum of credibility. The utmost that such evidence can accomplish is to raise a sort of vague uneasy suspicion that the belief to which it points may be true; and this is the feeling which, of all others, the serious inquirer after truth most abominates. It is, however, one to which he is usually compelled to submit when he directs his investigations towards what are termed the occult sciences. A general immunity from the rules which govern testimony in other instances seems to have been vouchsafed to all demons, ghosts, witches, chairs, and tables. Because no evidence will satisfy some, others seem determined to redress the balance by being themselves satisfied without a particle. Who ever saw a ghost-story authenticated by the names and addresses of living persons, or a "medium" with any conception that the demand upon testimony rose in proportion to the importance of the conclusions involved in it? It seems probable that such subjects may become themes of much more general investigation and comment than has hitherto been the case; and if this paper should induce one person to inquire into them in a philosophic spirit, and to publish, if any thing, every name, date, and incident connected with them, it will not have been written in vain. Darkness is an evil certainly; "more light" was alike the prayer of the combating Ajax and of the dying Goethe. But better substantial honest. darkness than the ambiguous twilight in which every thing may be any thing, and any thing nothing.
1. See Professor Maurice's Theological Essays, and the remarks of his able critic in the Prospective Review.
2. Geschichten Besessener neuerer Zeit, &c. Karlsruhe, 1835.
3. This ancient, general, and beautiful superstition is graphically illustrated in the legend of Twardowski, the Polish Faust. Satan, weary of the services the magician is continually requiring at his hands, decoys him to a house in Cracow, where, for some unexplained reason, he expects to have him at a disadvantage. Put on his guard by the indiscretion of a flock of ravens and owls, who cannot suppress their satisfaction at seeing him enter the house, Twardowski snatches a new-born child from the cradle, and paces the room with it in his arms. In rushes the devil, as terrible as horns, tail, and hoofs can make him; but confronted with the infant, recoils and collapses instanter. This suggests to him the propriety of resorting to "moral suasion;" and after a while he thus addresses the magician, "Thou art a gentleman, and knowest that verbum nobile debet esse stabile." Twardowski feels that he cannot break his word of honour as a gentleman, replaces the child in the cradle, and flies up the chimney with his companion. In the confusion of his faculties, however, the demon would seem to have mistaken the way; at all events, the pair fly upwards instead of downwards, Twardowski lustily intoning a hymn, till suddenly he finds his companion gone, and himself fixed at an immeasurable height in the air, and hears a voice above him saying, "Thus shalt thou hang until the day of judgment!" He has, however, changed one of his disciples into a spider, and is in the habit of letting him down to collect the news of earth. When, therefore, we see any floating threads of gossamer, we may suspect that "a chiel's amang us taking notes," though it is not equally probable that he will ever "prent them."
4. "During this attempt a small faint voice was heard saying, 'Why don't you adjure?' (This was heard in a small sweet voice, supposed to be that of a good spirit.) On which the clergyman commanded," &c. (A Narrative of the late extraordinary Case of Geo. Lukins, &c., Bristol, 1788.)
5. It is said that similar documents obtained in the proceedings against the priest Urbain Grandier—proceedings in which we presume the stanchest believers in demoniacal agency now see nothing diabolical except the wickedness of those who set them on foot—are still preserved in the French Archives, authenticated by the autographs of the demons.