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POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
the powers of darkness held over those that were entirely 
devoted to the god of this world, it does not appear 
impossible, or inconsistent with the supreme govern¬ 
ment of God, that these subordinate powers should be 
permitted to exert an influence over their persons, and 
that communities, so wholly given to idolatry of the most 
murderous and diabolical kinds, should be considered 
corporeally, as well as spiritually, to be lying in the 
wicked one."’ In addition to the firm belief which many 
who were sorcerers, or agents of the infernal powers, and 
others who were the victims of incantation, still main¬ 
tain, some of the early Missionaries are disposed to 
think this was the fact. Since the natives have em¬ 
braced Christianity, they believe they are now exempt 
from an influence, to which they were subject during the 
reign of the evil spirit. 
Individuals, among the most intelligent of the people, 
sometimes express their deliberate conviction, that it is 
because they live under the dispensation or government 
of Jesus Christ, that they are now exempt from those 
bodily sufferings to which they were exposed while they 
were willing and zealous devotees of the devil. It is, 
I believe, also an indisputable fact, that those kinds of 
violent, terrific, and fatal corporeal agony, which they 
attributed to this agency, have altogether ceased, since 
the subversion of that system, of which it was so dread¬ 
ful a part. I am not prepared to pronounce the opinions 
many of the natives still hold, as altogether imaginative : 
at the same time, the facts that have come to my know¬ 
ledge, during my residence among them, have led me to 
desire the most satisfactory evidence for rejecting their 
sentiments. 
Witchcraft and sorcery they considered the peculiar 
