RECENT RECRUDESCENCE OF SUPERSTITION. 769 



quod me absente in ea faciebatis in nomine Pa+tris, etc. While 

 repeating this formula, which, is efficacious only in Latin, the 

 priest is to lay his hand or, better still, some holy relic on the 

 person possessed. " This conjuration/' says our author, " may 

 make the ungodly laugh, but the devil must obey and make his 

 presence known, so great is the potency of these words." If the 

 evil spirit were ordered to come out of the person, the command 

 might not be obeyed, owing to some moral or physical obstacle 

 to the demon's exit, which must first be removed ; but if told to 

 give a sign of his presence he must do so ; otherwise (and mark 

 the peculiar cogency of the priest's logic) there would be no truth 

 in the apostle Paul's assertion that " at the name of Jesus every 

 knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and 

 things under the earth. . . . The inhabitants of heaven," he adds, 

 " bow the knee in rapturous devotion, the pious children of the 

 Church in humble faith, and the spirits of hell with repugnance 

 and gnashing of teeth, but they yield to compulsion and bow the 

 knee." 



Herr Bischofberger prudently leaves many a loophole of es- 

 cape in case of failure : the demon may refuse to obey if the priest 

 lacks faith, or utters the words in jest, or lives an evil life, or if 

 the patient has little or no faith, or by the commission of a deadly 

 sin has fallen into the toils of Satan, who has thus acquired an 

 irreversible right to his soul. One would think that these excep- 

 tions would cover most instances of obstinacy on the part of the 

 demon. Our author states that often, in his own experience, " the 

 prozceptum probativum did not produce any effect until the pa- 

 tient had made a general confession and received full absolution." 

 He also notes that devils, like all evil-doers, are fond of going 

 about in disguise, and if they perceive that they hold possession 

 by a precarious tenure, and that their incognito is endangered, 

 they will sometimes depart before the exorcist asks their names, 

 or practice all sorts of equivocations and evasions, like a criminal 

 under inquisition of the police. 



If the demoniac infestation is connected with a physical mala- 

 dy of any sort, the case becomes exceedingly complicated, and the 

 exorcism is attended with great difficulty, since the evil spirits 

 obstinately resist all efforts to expel them by intrenching them- 

 selves in the ills that flesh is heir to. Diabolical possession, if per- 

 mitted to continue for a long time, finally gets to be chronic and 

 inveterate, and develops into an organic and incurable disease. 

 Yery often, too, it is quite impossible to determine whether the 

 demon is the originary cause of the malady or merely takes occa- 

 sion of it to get possession of the person through the breach made 

 by illness, like an enemy lying in wait and ready to seize every 

 opportunity to assault the temporary citadel of the soul. Worn- 



