le and pliable. Those persons who return
either by night or by day, disturb the living, suck their blood, kill
them, appear in their clothes, in their families, sit down to table,
and do a thousand other things; then return to their graves without
any one seeing how they re-enter them. This is a kind of momentary
resurrection, or revival; for whereas the other dead persons spoken of
in Scripture have lived, drank, eaten and conversed with other men
after their return to life, as Lazarus, the brother of Mary and
Martha,[450] and the son of the widow of Shunem, resuscitated by
Elisha.[451] These appeared during a certain time, in certain places,
in certain circumstances; and appear no more as soon as they have been
impaled, or burned, or have had their heads cut off.

If this last order of resuscitated persons were not really dead, there
is nothing wonderful in their revisiting the world, except the manner
in which it is done, and the circumstances by which that return is
accompanied. Do these _revenans_ simply awaken from their sleep, or do
they recover themselves like those who fall down in syncope, in
fainting fits, or in swoons, and who at the end of a certain time come
naturally to themselves when the blood and animal spirits have resumed
their natural course and motion.

But how can they come out of their graves without opening the earth,
and how re-enter them again without its appearing? Have we ever seen
lethargies, or swoons, or syncopes last whole years together? If
people insist on these resurrections being real ones, did we ever see
dead persons resuscitate themselves, and by their own power?

If they are not resuscitated by themselves, is it by the power of God
that they have left their graves? What proof is there that God has
anything to do with it? What is the object of these resurrections? Is
it to show forth the works of God in these vampires? What glory does
the Divinity derive from them? If it is not God who drags them from
their graves, is it an angel? is it a demon? is it their own spirit?
Can the soul when separated from the body re-enter it when it will,
and give it new life, were it but for a quarter of an hour? Can an
angel or a demon restore a dead man to life? Undoubtedly not, without
the order, or at least the permission of God. This question of the
natural power of angels and demons over human bodies has been examined
in another place, and we have shown that neither revelation nor reason
th