which he leads
into sin. Pharaoh thought he saw real serpents produced by his
magicians: it was mere illusion. The truth of Moses devoured the
falsehood of these impostors."

Is it more easy to cause the fascination of the eyes of Pharaoh and
his servants than to produce serpents, and can it be done without
God's concurring thereto? And how can we reconcile this concurrence
with the wisdom, independence, and truth of God? Has the devil in this
respect a greater power than an angel and a disembodied soul? And if
once we open the door to this fascination, everything which appears
supernatural and miraculous will become uncertain and doubtful. It
will be said that the wonders related in the Old and New Testament are
in this respect, in regard both to those who are witnesses of them,
and those to whom they happened, only illusions and fascinations: and
whither may not these premises lead? It leads us to doubt everything,
to deny everything; to believe that God in concert with the devil
leads us into error, and fascinates our eyes and other senses, to make
us believe that we see, hear, and know what is neither present to our
eyes, nor known to our mind, nor supported by our reasoning power,
since by that the principles of reasoning are overthrown.

We must, then, have recourse to the solid and unshaken principles of
religion, which teach us--

1. That angels, demons, and souls disembodied are pure spirit, free
from all matter.

2. That it is only by the order or permission of God that spiritual
substances can appear to men, and seem to them to be true and tangible
bodies, in which and by which they perform what they are seen to do.

3. That to make these bodies appear, and make them act, speak, walk,
eat, &c, they must produce tangible bodies, either by condensing the
air or substituting other terrestrial, solid bodies, capable of
performing the functions we speak of.

4. That the way in which this production and apparition of a
perceptible body is achieved is absolutely unknown to us; that we have
no proof that spiritual substances have a natural power of producing
this kind of change when it pleases them, and that they cannot produce
them independently of God.

5. That although there may be often a great deal of illusion,
prepossession, and imagination in what is related of the operations
and apparitions of angels, demons, and disembodied souls, there is
still some reality in many of these things; and we cannot r