Supernatural Religion Volume I Part 16

function of the angels. The heretical Bishop Natalius having in vain been admonished by G.o.d in dreams, was at last lashed through the whole of a night by holy angels, till he was brought to repentance, and, clad in sackcloth and covered with ashes, he at length threw himself at the feet of Zephyrinus, then Bishop of Rome, pointing to the marks of the scourges which he had received from the angels, and implored to be again received into communion with the Church.(1) Augustine says that demons inhabit the atmosphere as in a prison, and deceive men, persuading them by their wonderful and false signs, or doings, or predictions, that they are G.o.ds.(2) He considers the origin of their name in the sacred Scriptures worthy of notice: they are called [--Greek--] in Greek on account of their knowledge.(3) By their experience of certain signs which are hidden from us, they can read much more of the future, and sometimes even announce beforehand what they intend to do. Speaking of his own time, and with strong expressions of a.s.surance, Augustine says that not only Scripture testifies that angels have appeared to men with bodies which could not only be seen but felt, but what is more, it is a general report, and many have personal experience of it, or have learned it from those who have knowledge of the fact, and of whose truth there is no doubt, that satyrs and fauns, generally called "Incubi," have frequently perpetrated their peculiar wickedness;(4) and also that certain demons called by the Gauls _Dusii_ every day attempt and effect the same uncleanness, as

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witnesses equally numerous and trustworthy a.s.sert, so that it would be impertinence to deny it.(1)

Lactantius, again, ridicules the idea that there can be antipodes, and he can scarcely credit that there can be any one so silly as to believe that there are men whose feet are higher than their heads, or that grain and trees grow downwards, and rain, snow, and hail fall upwards to the earth. After jesting at those who hold such ridiculous views, he points out that their blunders arise from supposing that the heaven is round, and the world, consequently, round like a ball, and enclosed within it.

But if that were the case, it must present the same appearance to all parts of heaven, with mountains, plains, and seas, and consequently there would be no part of the earth uninhabited by men and animals.

Lactantius does not know what to say to those who, having fallen into such an error, persevere in their folly (_stult.i.tia_), and defend one vain thing by another, but sometimes he supposes that they philosophize in jest, or knowingly defend falsehoods to display their ingenuity.

s.p.a.ce alone prevents his proving that it is impossible for heaven to be below the earth.(2) St. Augustine, with equal boldness, declares that the stories told about the antipodes, that is to say, that there are men whose feet are against our footsteps, and upon whom the sun rises when it sets to us, are not to be believed. Such an a.s.sertion is not supported by any historical evidence,

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but rests upon mere conjecture based on the rotundity of the earth. But those who maintain such a theory do not consider that even if the earth be round, it does not follow that the opposite side is not covered with water. Besides, if it be not, why should it be inhabited, seeing that on the one hand it is in no way possible that the Scriptures can lie, and on the other, it is too absurd (_nimisque absurdum est_) to affirm that any men can have traversed such an immensity of ocean to establish the human race there from that one first man Adam.(1)

Clement of Rome had no doubt of the truth of the story of the Phoenix,(2) that wonderful bird of Arabia and the adjoining countries, which lives 500 years; at the end of which time, its dissolution being at hand, it builds a nest of spices, in which it dies. From the decaying flesh, however, a worm is generated, which being strengthened by the juices of the bird, produces feathers and is transformed into a Phoenix.

Clement adds that it then flies away with the nest containing the bones of its defunct parent to the city of Heliopolis in Egypt, and in full daylight, and in the sight of all men, it lays them on the altar of the sun. On examining their registers, the priests find that the bird has returned precisely at the completion of the 500 years. This bird, Clement considers, is an emblem of the Resurrection.(1) So does Tertullian, who repeats the story with equal confidence.(2) It is likewise referred to in the Apostolic Const.i.tutions.(3) Celsus quotes the narrative in his work against Christianity as an instance of the piety of irrational creatures, and although Origen, in reply, while admitting that the story is indeed recorded, puts in a cautious "if it be true," he proceeds to account for the phenomenon on the ground that G.o.d may have made this isolated creature, in order that men might admire, not the bird, but its creator.(4) Cyril of Jerusalem, likewise, quotes the story from Clement.(5) The author of the almost canonical Epistle of Barnabas, explaining the typical meaning of the code of Moses regarding clean and unclean animals which were or were not to be eaten, states as a fact that the hare annually increases the number of its _foramina_, for it has as many as the years it lives.(6) He also mentions that the hyena changes its s.e.x every year, being alternately male and female.(7) Tertullian also points out as a recognized fact the annual change of s.e.x of the hyena, and he adds: "I do not mention the stag, since itself is the witness of its own age; feeding on the serpent it languishes into youth from the working of the poison."(8) The geocentric

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theory of the Church, which elevated man into the supreme place in the universe, and considered creation in general to be solely for his use, naturally led to the misinterpretation of all cosmical phenomena. Such spectacles as eclipses and comets were universally regarded as awful portents of impending evil, signs of G.o.d's anger, and forerunners of national calamities.(1) We have already referred to the account given by Josephus of the portents which were supposed to announce the coming destruction of the Holy City, amongst which were a star shaped like a sword, a comet, and other celestial phenomena. Volcanoes were considered openings into h.e.l.l, and not only does Ter-tullian hold them to be so, but he asks who will not deem these punishments sometimes inflicted upon mountains as examples of the judgments which menace the wicked.(2)

CHAPTER V. THE PERMANENT STREAM OF MIRACULOUS PRETENSION

We have given a most imperfect sketch of some of the opinions and superst.i.tions prevalent at the time of Jesus, and when the books of the New Testament were written. These, as we have seen, continued with little or no modification throughout the first centuries of our era.

It must, however, be remembered that the few details we have given, omitting most of the grosser particulars, are the views deliberately expressed by the most educated and intelligent part of the community, and that it would have required infinitely darker colours adequately to have portrayed the dense ignorance and superst.i.tion of the ma.s.s of the Jews. It is impossible to receive the report of supposed marvellous occurrences from an age and people like this without the gravest suspicion. Even so thorough a defender of miracles as Dr. Newman admits that: "Witnesses must be not only honest, but competent also; that is, such as have ascertained the facts which they attest, or who report after examination;"l and although the necessities of his case oblige him to a.s.sert that "the testimony of men of science and general knowledge"

must not be required, he admits, under the head of "deficiency of examination," that--"Enthusiasm, ignorance, and habitual credulity

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are defects which no number of witnesses removes."(1) We have shown how rank were these "defects" at the commencement of the Christian era, and among the chief witnesses for Christianity. Miracles which spring from such a hot-bed of superst.i.tion are too natural in such a soil to be objects of surprise and, in losing their exceptional character, their claims upon attention are proportionately weakened if not altogether destroyed. Preternatural interference with the affairs of life and the phenomena of nature was the rule in those days, not the exception, and miracles, in fact, had lost all novelty, and through familiarity had become degraded into mere commonplace. The Gospel miracles were not original in their character, but were substantially mere repet.i.tions of similar wonders well known amongst the Jews, or commonly supposed to be of daily occurrence even at that time. In fact, the idea of such miracles, in such an age and performed amongst such a people, as the attestation of a supernatural Revelation, may with singular propriety be ascribed to the mind of that period, but can scarcely be said to bear any traces of the divine. Indeed, antic.i.p.ating for a moment a part of our subject regarding which we shall have more to say hereafter, we may remark that, so far from being original either in its evidence or form, almost every religion which has been taught in the world has claimed the same divine character as Christianity, and has surrounded the person and origin of its central figure with the same supernatural mystery. Even the great heroes of history, long before our era, had their immaculate conception and miraculous birth. There can be no doubt that the writers of the New Testament shared the popular superst.i.tions of the Jews.

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We have already given more than one instance of this, and now we have only to refer for a moment to one cla.s.s of these superst.i.tions, the belief in demoniacal possession and origin of disease, involving clearly both the existence of demons and their power over the human race. It would be an insult to the understanding of those who are considering this question to pause here to prove that the historical books of the New Testament speak in the clearest and most unmistakable terms of actual demoniacal possession. Now, what has become of this theory of disease? The Archbishop of Dublin is probably the only one who a.s.serts the reality of demoniacal possession formerly and at the present day,(1) and in this we must say that he is consistent. Dean Milman, on the other hand, who spoke with the enlightenment of the 19th century, "has no scruple in avowing _his_ opinion on the subject of demoniacs to be that of Joseph Mede, Lardner, Dr. Mead, Paley, and all the learned modern writers. It was a kind of insanity.... and nothing was more probable than that lunacy should take the turn and speak the language of the prevailing superst.i.tion of the times."(2) The Dean, as well as "all the learned modern writers" to whom he refers, felt the difficulty, but in seeking to evade it they sacrifice the Gospels. They overlook the fact that the writers of these narratives not only themselves adopt "the prevailing superst.i.tion of the times," but represent Jesus as doing so with equal completeness. There is no possibility, for instance, of evading such statements as those in the miracle of the country of the Gadarenes, where the objectivity of the demons is so fully recognized that,

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on being cast out of the man, they are represented as requesting to be allowed to go into the herd of swine, and being permitted by Jesus to do so, the entry of the demons into the swine is at once signalized by the herd running violently down the cliff into the lake, and being drowned.(1) Archbishop Trench adopts no such ineffectual evasion, but rightly objects: "Our Lord Himself uses language which is not reconcilable with any such explanation. He everywhere speaks of demoniacs not as persons of disordered intellects, but as subjects and thralls of an alien spiritual might; He addresses the evil spirit as distinct from the man: 'Hold thy peace and come out of him;'" and he concludes that "our idea of Christ's absolute veracity, apart from the value of the truth which He communicated, forbids us to suppose that He could have spoken as He did, being perfectly aware all the while that there was no corresponding reality to justify the language which He used."(2) The Dean, on the other hand, finds "a very strong reason,"

which he does not remember to have seen urged with sufficient force, "which may have contributed to induce our Lord to adopt the current language on the point. The disbelief in these spiritual influences was one of the characteristics of the unpopular sect of the Sadducees. A departure from the common language, or the endeavour to correct this inveterate error, would have raised an immediate outcry against Him from His watchful and malignant adversaries as an unbelieving Sadducec."(3) Such ascription of politic

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deception for the sake of popularity might be intelligible in an ordinary case, but when referred to the central personage of a Divine Revelation, who is said to be G.o.d incarnate, it is perfectly astounding.

The Archbishop, however, rightly deems that if Jesus knew that the Jewish belief in demoniacal possession was baseless, and that Satan did not exercise such power over the bodies or spirits of men, there would be in such language "that absence of agreement between thoughts and words in which the essence of a lie consists."(1) It is difficult to say whether the dilemma of the Dean or of the Archbishop is the greater,--the one obliged to sacrifice the moral character of Jesus, in order to escape the admission for Christianity of untenable superst.i.tion, the other obliged to adopt the superst.i.tion in order to support the veracity of the language. At least the course of the Archbishop is consistent and worthy of respect. The attempt to eliminate the superst.i.tious diagnosis of the disease, and yet to preserve intact the miraculous cure, is quite ineffectual.

Dr. Trench antic.i.p.ates the natural question, why there are no demoniacs now, if there were so many in those days,(2) and he is logically compelled to maintain that there may still be persons possessed. "It may well be a question, moreover," he says, "if an apostle or one with apostolic discernment of spirits were to enter into a mad-house now, how many of the sufferers there he might not recognize as possessed?"(3) There can scarcely be a question upon the point at all, for such a person issuing direct

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from that period, without subsequent scientific enlightenment, would most certainly p.r.o.nounce them all, "possessed." It did not, however, require an apostle, nor even one with apostolic discernment of spirits, to recognize the possessed at that time. All those who are represented as being brought to Jesus to be healed are described by their friends as having a devil or being possessed, and there was no form of disease more general or more commonly recognized by the Jews. For what reason has the recognition of, and belief in, demoniacal possession pa.s.sed away with the ignorance and superst.i.tion which were then prevalent?

It is important to remember that the theory of demoniacal possession, and its supposed cure by means of exorcism and invocations, was most common among the Jews long before the commencement of the Christian era.

As casting out devils was the most common type of Christian miracles, so it was the commonest belief and practice of the Jewish nation.

Christianity merely shared the national superst.i.tion, and changed nothing but the form of exorcism. Christianity did not through a "clearer perception of spirits," therefore, originate the belief in demoniacal possession, nor first recognize its victims; nor did such superior enlightenment accompany the superior morality of Christianity as to detect the ignorant fallacy. In the Old Testament we find the most serious evidence of the belief in demonology and witchcraft. The laws against them set the example of that unrelenting severity with which sorcery was treated for so many centuries. We read in Exodus xxii. 18: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Levit. xix. 31: "Regard not them which have familiar spirits, neither

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seek after wizards, to be defiled by them." Levit. xx. 6: "And the soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards to go a-whoring after them, I will even set my face against that soul, and cut him off from among his people;" and verse 27: "A man also or a woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death; they shall stone them with stones; their blood shall be upon them." Deut. xviii. 10: "There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pa.s.s through the fire, or an enchanter, or a witch; 11. Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer; 12. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord," &c. The pa.s.sages which a.s.sert the reality of demonology and witchcraft, however, are much too numerous to permit their citation here. But not only did Christianity thus inherit the long-prevalent superst.i.tion, but it transmitted it intact to succeeding ages; and there can be no doubt that this demonology, with its consequent and inevitable belief in witchcraft, sorcery, and magic, continued so long to prevail throughout Christendom, as much through the authority of the sacred writings and the teaching of the Church as through the superst.i.tious ignorance of Europe.

It would be impossible to select for ill.u.s.tration any type of the Gospel miracles, whose fundamental principle,--belief in the reality, malignant action, and power of demons, and in the power of man to control them,--has received fuller or more permanent living acceptance from posterity, down to very recent times, than the cure of disease ascribed to demoniacal influence. The writings of the Fathers are full of the belief; the social

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history of Europe teems with it. The more pious the people, the more firm was their conviction of its reality. From times antecedent to Christianity, until medical science slowly came into existence and displaced miracle cures by the relics of saints, every form of disease was ascribed to demons. Madness, idiotcy, epilepsy, and every shape of hysteria were the commonest forms of their malignity; and the blind, the dumb, and the deformed were regarded as unquestionable victims of their malice. Every domestic calamity, from the convulsions of a child to the death of a cow, was unhesitatingly attributed to their agency. The more ignorant the community, the greater the number of its possessed. Belief in the power of sorcery, witchcraft, and magic was inherent in the superst.i.tion, and the universal prevalence shows how catholic was the belief in demoniacal influence. The practice of these arts is solemnly denounced as sin in the New Testament and throughout Patristic literature, and the church has in all ages fulminated against it. No accusation was more common than that of practising sorcery, and no cla.s.s escaped from the fatal suspicion. Popes were charged with the crime, and bishops were found guilty of it. St. Cyprian was said to have been a magician before he became a Christian and a Father of the Church.(1) Athanasius was accused of sorcery before the Synod of Tyre.(2) Not only the illiterate but even the learned, in the estimation of their age, believed in it. No heresy was ever persecuted with more unrelenting hatred. Popes have issued bulls vehemently anathematising witches and sorcerers, councils have proscribed them, ecclesiastical

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courts have consigned tens of thousands of persons suspected of being such to the stake, monarchs have written treatises against them and invented tortures for their conviction, and every nation in Europe and almost every generation have pa.s.sed the most stringent laws against them. Upon no point has there ever been greater unanimity of belief.

Church and State have vied with each other for the suppression of the abominable crime. Every phenomenon of nature, every unwelcome occurrence of social life, as well as every natural disease, has been ascribed to magic and demons. The historical records of Europe are filled with the deliberate trial and conviction, upon what was deemed evidence, of thousands of sorcerers and witches. Hundreds have been found guilty of exercising demoniacal influence over the elements, from Sopater the philosopher, executed under Constantino for preventing, by adverse winds, the arrival of corn ships at Constantinople, to Dr. Fian and other witches horribly tortured and burnt for causing a stormy pa.s.sage on the return of James I. from Denmark.(1) Thousands of men and tens of thousands of women have been done to death by every conceivable torment for causing sickness or calamity by sorcery, or for flying through the air to attend the witches' sabbath. When scepticism as to the reality of the demoniacal powers of sorcery tardily began to arise, it was fiercely reprobated by the Church as infidelity. Even so late as the 17th century, a man like Sir Thomas Browne not only did not include the belief amongst the vulgar errors which he endeavoured to expose, but on the contrary wrote: "For my part, I have ever believed, and do now know that there are

1 Pitcairn's Criminal Trials of Scotland, i. pp. 213, 223.

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witches. They that doubt of them, do not only deny them, but spirits; and are obliquely, and upon consequence, a sort not of infidels, but atheists."(1) In 1664 Sir Thomas Hale, in pa.s.sing sentence of death against two women convicted of being witches, declared that the reality of witchcraft was undeniable, because "first, the Scriptures had affirmed so much; and secondly, the wisdom of all nations had provided laws against such persons, which is an argument of their confidence of such a crime."(2) Even the 18th century was stained with the blood of persons tortured and executed for sorcery.

Notwithstanding all this persistent and unanimous confirmation, we ask again: What has now become of the belief in demoniacal possession and sorcery? It has utterly disappeared. "Joseph Mede, Lardner, Dr. Mead, Paley, and all the learned modern writers" with Dean Milinan, as we have seen, explain it away, and such a theory of disease and elemental disturbance is universally recognized to have been a groundless superst.i.tion. The countless number of persons tormented and put to death for the supposed crime of witchcraft and sorcery were mere innocent victims to ignorance and credulity. Mr. Buckle has collected a ma.s.s of evidence to show that "there is in every part of the world an intimate relation between ignorance respecting the nature and proper treating of a disease, and

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the belief that such disease is caused by supernatural power, and is to be cured by it."(1) At the commencement of our era every disease was ascribed to the agency of demons simply because the nature of disease was not understood, and the writers of the Gospels were not, in this respect, one whit more enlightened than the Jews. The progress of science, however, has not only dispelled the superst.i.tious theory as regards disease in our time; its effects are retrospective. Science not only declares the ascription of disease to demoniacal possession or malignity to be an idle superst.i.tion now, but it equally repudiates the a.s.sumption of such a cause at any time. The diseases referred by the Gospels, and by the Jews of that time, to the action of devils, exist now, but they are known to proceed from purely physical causes. The same superst.i.tion and medical ignorance would enunciate the same diagnosis at the present day. The superst.i.tion and ignorance, however, have pa.s.sed away, and with them the demoniacal theory. In that day the theory was as baseless as in this. This is the logical conclusion of every educated man.

It is obvious that, with the necessary abandonment of the theory of "possession" and demoniacal origin of disease, the largest cla.s.s of miracles recorded in the Gospels is at once exploded. The a.s.serted cause of the diseases of this cla.s.s, said to have been miraculously healed, must be recognized to be a mere vulgar superst.i.tion, and the narratives of such miracles, ascribing as they do in perfect simplicity distinct objectivity to the supposed "possessing" demons, and reporting their very words and actions, at once a.s.sume the character of mere imaginative and fabulous writings based upon superst.i.tious

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tradition, and cannot be accepted as the sober and intelligent report of eye-witnesses. We shall presently see how far this.inference is supported by the literary evidence regarding the date and composition of the Gospels.

The deduction, however, does not end here. It is clear that, this large cla.s.s of Gospel miracles being due to the superst.i.tion of an ignorant and credulous age, the insufficiency of the evidence for any of the other supposed miraculous occurrences narrated in the same doc.u.ments becomes at once apparent. Nothing but the most irrefragable testimony could possibly warrant belief in statements of supernatural events which contradict all experience, and are opposed to all science. When these statements, however, are not only rendered, _a priori_, suspicious by their proceeding from a period of the grossest superst.i.tion and credulity, but it becomes evident that a considerable part of them is due solely to that superst.i.tion and credulity, by which, moreover, the rest may likewise be most naturally explained, it is obvious that they cannot stand against the opposing conviction of invariable experience.

The force of the testimony is gone. We are far from using this language in an offensive sense concerning the Gospel narratives, which, by the simple faith of the writers, present the most n.o.ble aspect of the occurrences of which superst.i.tion is capable. Indeed, viewed as compositions gradually rising out of pious tradition, and representing the best spirit of their times, the Gospels, even in ascribing such miracles to Jesus, are a touching ill.u.s.tration of the veneration excited by his elevated character. Devout enthusiasm surrounded his memory with the tradition of the highest exhibitions of power within the range of Jewish imagination,

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and that these conceptions represent merely an idealized form of prevalent superst.i.tion was not only natural but inevitable. We shall hereafter fully examine the character of the Gospels, but it will be sufficient here to point out that none of these writings lays claim to any special inspiration, or in the slightest degree pretends to be more than a human composition,(1) and subject to the errors of human history.