as an acquaintance of Peter_; and because Dr. Henderson
would be reviled by other Dissenters, if he doubted it."

* * * * *

About this time, the great phenomenon of these gospels,--the casting
out of devils,--pressed forcibly on my attention. I now dared to
look full into the facts, and saw that the disorders described were
perfectly similar to epilepsy, mania, catalepsy, and other known
maladies. Nay, the deaf, the dumb, the hunchbacked, are spoken of as
devil-ridden. I farther knew that such diseases are still ascribed to
evil genii in Mussulman countries: even a vicious horse is believed by
the Arabs to be _majnun_, possessed by a Jin or Genie. Devils also
are cast out in Abyssinia to this day. Having fallen in with Farmer's
treatise on the Demoniacs, I carefully studied it; and found it
to prove unanswerably, that a belief in demoniacal possession is a
superstition not more respectable than that of witchcraft. But Farmer
did not at all convince me, that the three Evangelists do not share
the vulgar error. Indeed, the instant we believe that the imagined
possessions were only various forms of disease, we are forced to draw
conclusions of the utmost moment, most damaging to the credit of the
narrators.[3]

Clearly, they are then convicted of misstating facts, under the
influence of superstitious credulity. They represent demoniacs as
having a supernatural acquaintance with Jesus, which, it now becomes
manifest, they cannot have had. The devils cast out of two demoniacs
(or one) are said to have entered into a herd of swine. This must have
been a credulous fiction. Indeed, the casting out of devils is so very
prominent a part of the miraculous agency ascribed to Jesus, as at
first sight to impair our faith in his miracles altogether.

I however took refuge in the consideration, that when Jesus wrought
one great miracle, popular credulity would inevitably magnify it into
ten; hence the discovery of foolish exaggerations is no disproof of a
real miraculous agency: nay, perhaps the contrary. Are they not a sort
of false halo round a disc of glory,--a halo so congenial to human
nature, that the absence of it might be even wielded as an objection?
Moreover, John tells of no demoniacs: does not this show his freedom
from popular excitement? Observe the great miracles narrated by
John,--the blind man,--and Lazarus--how different in kind from those
on demoniacs! how incapable of having been