s are full of prayers and
blessings against the malice and the snares of Satan. But we must not
here confound two very different things. So far from the miracles and
wonders performed by Divine power leading us to believe the truth of
those which are ascribed to the demon, they teach us on the contrary
that God has reserved this power to himself alone. We experience but
too often that there are truly evil spirits, who do not cease to tempt
us. In respect to the order of Exorcists, we know that it was
established in the church in the first ages of Christianity; the most
ancient fathers make mention of them; but from none of them do we
learn that their order was instituted against witchcraft and other
knaveries of the same kind, but only as at this day, to deliver those
possessed; "to expel demons from the bodies of the possessed;" says
the Manual of the Ordination. It is not, then, denied, that for
reasons which it belongs not to us to examine, God sometimes allows
the demon to take hold of some one and to torment him; we only deny
that the spirit of darkness can ever arrive at that to please a
wretched woman of the dregs of the people. We do not deny that to
punish the sins of mankind, the Almighty may not sometimes make use in
different ways of the ministry of evil spirits; for, as St. Jerome
says,[694] "God makes men feel his anger and fury by the ministry of
rebel angels;" but we do deny that it ever happens by virtue of certain
figures, certain words, and certain signs, made by ignoramuses or
scoundrels, or some wretched females, or old mad women, or by any
authority they have over the demon. The sovereign pontiff who at this
day governs the church with so much glory, discourses very fully[695]
in his excellent works on the wonders worked by the demon and related
in the Old Testament, but he nowhere speaks of any effect produced by
magic or by sorcery since the coming of Jesus Christ. In the Roman
ritual we have prayers and orisons for all occasions; we find there
conjurations and exorcisms against demons; but nowhere, if the text is
not corrupted, is there mention made either of persons or things
bewitched, and if they are mentioned therein, it is only in after
additions made by private individuals. We know, on the contrary, that
many books treating of this subject, and containing prayers newly
composed by some individuals, have been prohibited. Thus they have
forbidden the book entitled _Circulus Aureus_, in which