442 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



this voice, as the voice of many waters ; ... by his words, ' I am 

 living, who was dead ; and behold, I live forever and ever ; and I 

 have the keys of death and of hell,' I say unto you. Depart, O 

 angels that show the way to eternal perdition ! 



" By the door which John saw open in heaven ; by the twenty- 

 four thrones and the twenty-four elders, . . . and by the light- 

 nings and thunders and voices which proceeded out from the 

 throne ; ... by the sea which he saw, as it were of glass mingled 

 with fire, . . . and by the four living beings full of eyes before 

 and behind ; ... by the words which they incessantly did say, 

 ' Holy, holy, holy. Lord God Almighty, that was, and that is, 

 and that is to come ' ; . . . by the angel who cried out, ' Who is 

 worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals ?' . . . by the 

 Lamb, as it were slain ; ... by the harps and by the vials of gold, 

 full of perfumes, I charge ye, O angels of death, to flee quickly 

 out of this creature ! " 



Besides these, were long litanies of billingsgate, cursing, and 

 threatening. One of these " scourging " exorcisms runs partly as 

 follows : 



"May Agyos strike thee, as he did Egypt, with frogs! . . . 

 May all the devils that are thy foes rush forth upon thee, and 

 drag thee down to hell ! . . . May . . . Tetragrammaton . . . drive 

 thee forth and stone thee, as Israel did to Achan ! . . . May the 

 holy one trample on thee and hang thee up in an infernal fork, as 

 was done to the five kings of the Amorites ! . . . May God set a 

 nail to your skull, and pound it in with a hammer, as Jael did unto 

 Sisera ! . . . May . . . Sother . . . break thy head and cut off 

 thy hands, as was done to the cursed Dagon ! . . . May God hang 

 thee in a hellish yoke, as seven men were hung by the sons of 

 Saul!" And so on, through five pages of close-printed Latin 

 curses.* 



Occasionally the demon is reasoned with, as follows : " O ob- 

 stinate, accursed, fly ! . . . why do you stop and hold back when 

 you know that your strength is lost on Christ ? For it is hard for 

 thee to kick against the pricks ; and, verily, the longer it takes 

 you to go, the worse it will go with you. Begone, then, take 

 flight, thou venomous hisser, thou lying worm, thou begetter of 

 vipers ! " f 



And this procedure and its results were recognized as among 

 the glories of the Church. As typical, we may mention an exor- 

 cism 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 

 * "Thesaurus Exorcismorum," 812-81'7. f Ibid., 859. 



