Читать книгу Dæmonologia Sacra; or, A Treatise of Satan's Temptations. In Three Parts онлайн

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(6.) Sixthly, In some the possession was so strong, and so firmly seated, that ordinary means and ways could not dispossess them: ‘This kind comes not out but by prayer and fasting,’ Mat. xvii. 21; which shews that all possession was not of one kind and manner, nor alike liable to ejection.

(7.) Seventhly, To all these may be added obsessions: where the devil afflicts the bodies of men, disquiets them, haunts them, or strikes in with their melancholy temper, and so annoys by hideous and black representations. Thus was Saul vexed by ‘an evil spirit from the Lord,’ which as most conceive was the devil working in his melancholy humour. That the devil should take possession of the bodies of men, and thus act, drive, trouble, and distress them, so distort, distend, and rack their members; so seat himself in their tongues and minds that a man cannot command his own faculties and powers, but seems to be rather changed into the nature of a devil than to retain anything of a man, this shews a power in him to be trembled at.