In the ideas
thus deeply implanted, the men who in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries struggled against this mass of folly and
cruelty found the worst barrier to right reason.[[115]]
Such was the treatment of demoniacs developed by theology,
and such the practice enforced by ecclesiasticism for more than a
thousand years.
How an atmosphere was spread in which this belief began to
dissolve away, how its main foundations were undermined by
science, and how there came in gradually a reign of humanity,
will now be related.
II. BEGINNINGS OF A HEALTHFUL SCEPTICISM.
We have now seen the culmination of the old procedure
regarding insanity, as it was developed under theology and
enforced by ecclesiasticism; and we have noted how, under the
influence of Luther and Calvin, the Reformation rather deepened
than weakened the faith in the malice and power of a personal
devil. Nor was this, in the Reformed churches any more than in
the old, mere matter of theory. As in the early ages of
Christianity, its priests especially appealed, in proof of the
divine mission, to their power over the enemy of mankind in the
bodies of men, so now the clergy of the rival creeds eagerly
sought opportunities to establish the truth of their own and the
falsehood of their opponents' doctrines by the visible casting
out of devils.
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