ems have been propounded to explain the return, and these
apparitions of the vampires. Some persons have denied and rejected
them as chimerical, and as an effect of the prepossession and
ignorance of the people of those countries, where they are said to
come back or return.

Others have thought that these people were not really dead, but that
they had been interred alive, and returned naturally to themselves,
and came out of their tombs.

Others believe that these people are very truly dead, but that God, by
a particular permission, or command, permits or commands them to come
back to earth, and resume for a time their own body; for when they are
exhumed, their bodies are found entire, their blood vermilion and
fluid, and their limbs supple and pliable.

Others maintain that it is the demon who causes these _revenans_ to
appear, and by their means does all the harm he occasions both men and
animals.

In the supposition that vampires veritably resuscitate, we may raise
an infinity of difficulties on the subject. How is this resurrection
accomplished? It is by the strength of the _revenant_, by the return
of his soul into his body? Is it an angel, is it a demon who
reanimates it? Is it by the order, or by the permission of God that he
resuscitates? Is this resurrection voluntary on his part, and by his
own choice? Is it for a long time, like that of the persons who were
restored to life by Jesus Christ? or that of persons resuscitated by
the Prophets and Apostles? Or is it only momentary, and for a few days
and a few hours, like the resurrection operated by St. Stanislaus upon
the lord who had sold him a field; or that spoken of in the life of
St. Macarius of Egypt, and of St. Spiridion, who made the dead to
speak, simply to bear testimony to the truth, and then left them to
sleep in peace, awaiting the last, the judgment day.

First of all, I lay it down as an undoubted principle, that the
resurrection of a person really dead is effected by the power of God
alone. No man can either resuscitate himself, or restore another man
to life, without a visible miracle.

Jesus Christ resuscitated himself, as he had promised he would; he did
it by his own power; he did it with circumstances which were all
miraculous. If he had returned to life as soon as he was taken down
from the cross, it might have been thought that he was not quite dead,
that there remained yet in him some remains of life, that they might
have been revi