Letters on demonology and witchcraft / [Sir Walter Scott].

  • Walter Scott
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letters on demonology and witchcraft / [Sir Walter Scott]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    with the deluded persons who consulted them. Most of the fathers of the Christian church have inti- mated such an opinion. This doctrine has the ad- vantage of affording, to a certain extent, a confirma- tion of many miracles related in pagan or classical history, which are thus ascribed to the agency of evil spirits. It corresponds also with the texts of Scripture, which declare that the gods of the heathen are all devils and evil spirits; and the idols of Egypt are classed, as in Isaiah, chap. xix. ver. 2, with charmers, those who have familiar spirits, and with wizards. But whatever license it may be supposed was permitted to the evil spirits of that period,—and although, undoubtedly, men owned the sway of dei- ties who were, in fact, but personifications of certain evil passions of humanity, as, for example, in their sacrifices to Venus, to Bacchus, to Mars, &c., and therefore, might be said, in one sense, to worship evil spirits—we cannot, in reason, suppose that every one, or the thousandth part of the innumerable idols worshipped among the heathen, was endowed with supernatural power; it is clear that the greater num- ber fell under the description applied to them in another passage of Scripture, in which the part of the tree burned in the fire for domestic purposes is treated as of the same power and estimation, as that carved into an image, and preferred for Gentile homage. This striking passage, in which the impo- tence of the senseless block, and the brutish igno- rance of the worshipper, whose object of adoration is the work of his own hands, occurs in the 44th chapter of the prophecies of Isaiah, verse 10, et seq. The precise words of the text, as well as common sense, forbid us to believe that the images so con- structed by common artisans, became the habitation or resting-place of demons, or possessed any mani- festation of strength or power, whether through de- moniacal influence or otherwise. The whole system of doubt, delusion, and trick exhibited by the oracles, F 2