Demonology and witchcraft : with especial reference to modern spiritualism, so-called, and the doctrines of demons / by Robert Brown.

Robert Brown

Date:: 1889

Credit: Demonology and witchcraft : with especial reference to modern spiritualism, so-called, and the doctrines of demons / by Robert Brown. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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$demoniacal agency. The Eomish Church has exorcisms for the casting out of devils ; a,nd Liguori in his Chap. X., Sec. 5, upon The Adjuration of Devils, speaks against ''holding useless conversations with the possess- ing de^dl; and cautions the exorciser to bev/are lest he shouldyoA'e loith the devil:'' but as Bishop Taylor f ruly says, when speaking of the Romish adjuration :— ^' This is the manner of their devotion, described for the use of their exorcists ; in which is such a heap of folly, madness, superstition, blasphemy, and ridicu- lous guises and i^layings with the devil, that if any man amongst us should use such things, he would be in danger of being tried at the next Assizes for cc loitch or a conjuror ; however, certain it is, whatever the devil loses [?] by pretending to obey the exorcist, he gains more by this horrible debauchery of Chris- tianity ! It is certain, hov/ever, that the devil loses nothing by it; for he cannot thus be cast out: because our Lord Himself has expressly told us that If Saltan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself; hov\^ shall then his Kingdom stand? ^ III.—And this leads me to the third division of my subject : in which I propose to enter into some de- tails, respecting the more modern manifestations of Spiritualism, so-called. Mesmerism, which is essentially allied with Spiri- tualism, has been supposed to have originated vvdtli 1 Mat. xii. 2Q.$