nt by evil
spirits.

From all these sources, but especially from our sacred books and the
writings of Plato, this theory that mental disease is caused largely
or mainly by Satanic influence passed on into the early Church. In the
apostolic times no belief seems to have been more firmly settled. The
early fathers and doctors in the following age universally accepted it,
and the apologists generally spoke of the power of casting out devils as
a leading proof of the divine origin of the Christian religion.

This belief took firm hold upon the strongest men. The case of St.
Gregory the Great is typical. He was a pope of exceedingly broad mind
for his time, and no one will think him unjustly reckoned one of the
four Doctors of the Western Church. Yet he solemnly relates that a
nun, having eaten some lettuce without making the sign of the cross,
swallowed a devil, and that, when commanded by a holy man to come forth,
the devil replied: "How am I to blame? I was sitting on the lettuce,
and this woman, not having made the sign of the cross, ate me along with
it."(345)

(345) For a striking statement of the Jewish belief in diabolical
interference, see Josephus, De Bello Judaico, vii, 6, iii; also his
Antiquities, vol. viii, Whiston's translation. On the "devil cast out,"
in Mark ix, 17-29, as undoubtedly a case of epilepsy, see Cherullier,
Essai sur l'Epilepsie; also Maury, art. Demonique in the Encyclopedie
Moderne. In one text, at least, the popular belief is perfectly shown as
confounding madness and possession: "He hath a devil, and is mad," John
x, 20. Among the multitude of texts, those most relied upon were Matthew
viii, 28, and Luke x, 17; and for the use of fetiches in driving out
evil spirits, the account of the cures wrought by touching the garments
of St. Paul in Acts xix, 12. On the general subject, see authorities
already given, and as a typical passage, Tertullian, Ad. Scap., ii.
For the very gross view taken by St. Basil, see Cudworth, Intellectual
System, vol. ii, p. 648; also Archdeacon Farrar's Life of Christ. For
the case related by St. Gregory the Great with comical details, see the
Exempla of Archbishop Jacques de Vitrie, edited by Prof. T. F. Crane,
of Cornell University, p. 59, art. cxxx. For a curious presentation
of Greek views, see Lelut, Le demon Socrate, Paris, 1856; and for
the transmission of these to Christianity, see the same, p. 201 and
following.

As a result of this idea, the