does he inspire the living with the idea of doing good
actions and of fearing the pains which the sins of the wicked are
punished by God?

But on looking at the affair in another light, may not the demon in
this kind of apparitions, by which he asks for masses and prayers,
intend to foment superstition, by making the living believe that
masses and prayers made for them after their death would free them
from the pains of hell, even if they died in habitual crime and
impenitence? Several instances are cited of rascals who have appeared
after their death, asking for prayers like the bad rich man, and to
whom prayers and masses can be of no avail from the unhappy state in
which they died. Thus, in all this, Satan seeks to establish his
kingdom, and not to destroy it or diminish it.

We shall speak hereafter, in the Dissertation on Vampires, of
apparitions of dead persons who have been seen, and acted like living
ones in their own bodies.

The same Melancthon relates that a monk came one day and rapped loudly
at the door of Luther's dwelling, asking to speak to him; he entered
and said, "I entertained some popish errors upon which I shall be very
glad to confer with you." "Speak," said Luther. He at first proposed
to him several syllogisms, to which he easily replied; he then
proposed others, that were more difficult. Luther, being annoyed,
answered him hastily, "Go, you embarrass me; I have something else to
do just now besides answering you." However, he rose and replied to
his arguments. At the same time, having remarked that the pretended
monk had hands like the claws of a bird, he said to him, "Art not thou
he of whom it is said, in Genesis, 'He who shall be born of woman
shall break the head of the serpent?'" The demon added, "But _thou_
shalt engulf them all." At these words the confused demon retired
angrily and with much fracas; he left the room infested with a very
bad smell, which was perceptible for some days.

Luther, who assumes so much the _esprit fort_, and inveighs with so
much warmth against private masses wherein they pray for the souls of
the defunct,[367] maintains boldly that all the apparitions of spirits
which we read in the lives of the saints, and who ask for masses for
the repose of their souls, are only illusions of Satan, who appears to
deceive the simple, and inspire them with useless confidence in the
sacrifice of the mass. Whence he concludes that it is better at once
to deny absolutely