have
done their endeavors to support it by different passages from St.
Augustine, St. Jerome, and St. Thomas, it is certain that all these
fathers speak only of the return of the blessed to manifest the glory
of God; and of St. Augustine says precisely, that if it were possible
for the souls of the dead to appear to men, not a day would pass
without his receiving a visit from Monica his mother.

"Tertullian, in his Treatise on the Soul, laughs at those who in his
time believed in apparitions. St. John Chrysostom, speaking on the
subject of Lazarus, formally denies them; as well as the law
glossographer, Canon John Andreas, who calls them phantoms of a sickly
imagination, and all that is reported about spirits which people think
they hear or see, vain apparitions. The 7th chapter of Job, and the
song of King Hezekiah, reported in the 38th chapter of Isaiah, are all
full of the witnesses which the Holy Spirit seems to have desired to
give us of this truth, that our souls cannot return to earth after our
death until God has made them angels.

"But in order to establish this still better, we must reply to the
strongest objections of those who combat it. They adduce the opinion
of the Jews, which they pretend to prove by the testimony of Josephus
and the rabbis; the words of Jesus Christ to his apostles, when he
appeared to them after his resurrection; the authority of the council
of Elvira;[665] some passages from St. Jerome, in his Treatise against
Vigilantius; of decrees issued by different Parliaments, by which the
leases of several houses had been broken on account of the spirits
which haunted them daily, and tormented the lodgers or tenants; in
short an infinite number of instances, which are scattered in every
story.

"To destroy all these authorities in a few words, I say first of all,
that it cannot be concluded that the Jews believed in the return of
spirits after death, because Josephus assures us that the spirit which
the Pythoness caused to appear to Saul was the true spirit of Samuel;
for, besides that the holiness of this prophet had placed him in the
number of the blessed, there are circumstances attending this
apparition which have caused most of the holy fathers[666] to doubt
whether it really was the ghost of Samuel, believing that it might be
an illusion with which the Pythoness deceived Saul, and made him
believe that he saw that which he desired to see.

"What several rabbis relate of patriarchs,