As typical, we may mention an exorcism
directed by a certain Bishop of Beauvais, which was so effective
that five devils gave up possession of a sufferer and signed
their names, each for himself and his subordinate imps, to an
agreement that the possessed should be molested no more. So,
too, the Jesuit fathers at Vienna, in 1583, gloried in the fact
that in such a contest they had cast out twelve thousand six
hundred and fifty-two living devils. The ecclesiastical annals of
the Middle Ages, and, indeed, of a later period, abound in boasts
of such "mighty works."[[109]]
Such was the result of a thousand years of theological
reasoning, by the strongest minds in Europe, upon data partly
given in Scripture and partly inherited from paganism, regarding
Satan and his work among men.
Under the guidance of theology, always so severe against
"science falsely so called," the world had come a long way indeed
from the soothing treatment of the possessed by him who bore
among the noblest of his titles that of "The Great Physician.
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