employment of a common term for three different objects of thought; but that this community of name was itself the result, and a true representative of the ideas and belief, in times when the spiritual, the medical, and the natural, were intimately connected; when, according to Le Croix, in his " Paganism," the first germs of civilization were sown simultaneously in many countries, by bands of priestphysicians, the Rosicrusians, and Paracelsi, and mesmerisers of remote antiquity; who, worshippers and searchers of nature, employed their knowledge in healing and instructing mankind, with all the prestige of a thaumaturgic power.

At such a period, both to the priest, who himself worshipped and searched out her secrets, and to the rude tribes whom he healed and whom he taught, all nature was alive. A living spirit, of evil or of good, was imprisoned in every metal, in every chemical compound, and in every drug. To them the wind was not merely a representative of, but was actually, as in the Vedu, a living spirit; and every blast, and gust, and vapour, and exhalation— nay, every fever and fit of sickness, was a spiritual power, a living wind, a spirit, entering into the nervous tubes and cerebral cells of man's system, and oppressing his own vital spirit tabernacled there. As a consequence of such a belief, the whole practice of medicine by these priest-physicians was a species of religious exorcism ; and the remnants of such a system existed in Syria at the time of our Lord, as it exists at this day all over the East, and even in some of the popular superstitions still prevalent in Europe.

In whichsoever way this figurative language arose, however, it may still be concurrent with, and a true representative of certain facts in the spi ritual world. For although we would show that there is an adequate explanation for this language, without admitting, as a necessary consequence, from its use, the reality of these supposed possessions in their literal sense, we are by no means desirous of excluding their possibility, or of drawing, at present, any conclusion on this point one way or the other. And we most fully admit that they, in common with all the sufferings of man, and all the groaning and travailing of creation,

must, in some true sense, and through some form of mediation, whether instant or remote, be the effects of that dominion, which the author of evil, through the fall of man from his first righteousness, and from the lordship over all God's works, which was his original heritage, has been permitted to obtain in the realms of nature. Our Lord, indeed, though he carefully warns us against judging every natural misfortune to flow immediately and necessarily, and in an exact retributive proportion, from the personal sin of the sufferer or his parents; as in the case of the man born blind-John ix. 3-of those Galileans whose blood Herod mingled with their sacrifices, and of those on whom the tower of Siloam fell-Luke, xiii. 2-4; yet, in more than one passage, seems to indicate, as before observed, that all discase is, in some measure, the work of Satan; and that sin brings man more under the temporal and scourging power of this enemy of our race. Thus, on the one hand, he alleges the spirit of infirmity which bent the woman down, to be a bondage of Satan; on the other, he says to the paralytic whom he heals at the well,

Behold

thou art made whole, sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee."-John, v. 14 thus apparently implying that a connexion does exist betwixt the commission of sin and the subjection to physical evil. And this same idea seems to be in the mind of St. Paul, when he says, "To deliver such an one to Satan, for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus."-1 Cor. v. 5. And again, speaking of Hymeneus and Alexander, "whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme."-1 Timothy, i. 20.

So far for our Lord's language in the Gospels. Let us now consider the phraseology of the other portions of the New Testament. For, although the modes of expression used by the disciples cannot affect the argument drawn from the distinction observable in our Lord's own language, they still merit an examination. Now, although we find in the Epistles the terms daimones and daimonia, the respective plurals of daimon and daimonion, in the phrases which have been translated "sacrifice to devils," "fellowship with devils," "the cup of devils,"

wor

"the table of devils" (1 Cor. x. 20, 21) -"doctrines of devils" (1 Tim. iv. 1) -"the devils believe and tremble" (James, ii. 19); and in the Revelations, in the passages rendered " ship devils" (Rev. ix. 20), and "spirits of devils" (Rev. xvi. 14)—yet, even in these portions of the New Testament, it is to be remarked that, whenever the devil-i. e., the wicked spirit who tempts mankind-is spoken of, it is still diabolos, or Satan, or the dragon, or the serpent, or the wicked one, that is invariably used; never the daimon, or daimonion. Thus, for example, we read in Acts, xiii. 10, "Thou child of the devil [diabolos], and enemy of all righteousness;" in Eph. iv. 27,"neither give place to the devil" [diabolos]; in Eph. vi. 11, "that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil" [diabolos]; in 1 Tim. iii. 6, "the condemnation of the devil" [diabolos]; in 1 Tim. iii. 7, "the snare of the devil" [diabolos]; in 2 Tim. 2-6, "the snare of the devil" [diabolos]; in James, iv. 7, "resist the devil" [diabolos]; in Pet. v. 8, "your adversary the devil" [diabolos]; in 1 John iii. 8, "he that committeth sin is of the devil [diabolos]; for the devil [diabolos] sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil" [diabolos]. In 1 John, iii. 10, "in this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil" [diabolos] in 1 John, ii. 13, "because ye have overcome the wicked one;" in Jude ix., "Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil" [diabolos]; in Rev. xii. 12, to the inhabiters of the earth and of

:

66

woe

the sea, for the devil [diabolos] is come down unto you, having great wrath;" in Rev. xx. 2, "he laid hold on the dragon, and bound him a thousand years;" in Rev. xx. 10, "and the devil [diabolos] that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brim. stone" and so in many other passages which it were needless to quote, there being not one where the word daimon, or daimonion, is applied to the devil. And, in regard to the above phrases, in which these words have been rendered in the plural by "devils," upon examination of the original Greek passages where they occur, and a careful consideration of the context, we shall find that they constitute no real exception to the position which we advance; and that they were written in a sense very different from that which attaches to diabolos, and to our English word devil. Those among our readers who are conversant with the biblical commentators, must be aware that the phrase which has been rendered, from 1 Tim. iv. 1, "doctrines of devils," in the original "doctrines of daimonia," has been very generally understood to mean, not doctrines invented by the enemy of the human race he who is called Satan and diabolos-or by wicked spirits, his ministers; but doctrines inculcating the mediation and worship of daimons, beings higher than man, but inferior to God, that very "worshipping of angels" denounced in Col. ii. 18— though under a different form; the latter applying, apparently, more especially to the Gnostic doctrine and worship of the Eons or inferior emanations of deity;* the former, as understood by most Protestants, referring

to the dulia offered to and the mediation sought from the angelic hierarchy, and canonized saints, in the Greek and Roman Churches; the prophecy itself connecting with these "doctrines of daimons" two other characteristics, the "forbidding to marry and commanding to abstain from meats," and— what seems to overthrow the application usually made by Roman commentators of this passage also, to the Manicheans, Marcionites, and other Gnostic sects-expressly fixing the period of this departure from the faith to "the latter times."

The passage in 1 Cor. x. 20, 21, where St. Paul speaks of the sacrifices to, the fellowship with, the cup and the table of daimons (for daimonia is the word used in these passages) are not only capable of a similar interpretation, but the analogy of the apostle's arguments, and the harmony of his sentiments, demand it. For, although the notion that the sacrifices offered by the heathens, were really offered to and received by actual devils, i.e., by wicked angels, ministers of Satan, and true diaboloi, would fall in most with the popular ideas which prevailed in the patristic Church; and which were salutary, and, one might almost say, providential, inasmuch as they greatly contributed to the extinction of the Pagan idolatry throughout Europe that wonderful fact in the history of the world, which even Gibbon pauses for a moment to contemplate, as meriting the attention of the philosopher; yet, if we weigh well the various passages of St. Paul, and endeavour to raise ourselves to the height of his great argument, we think it must be acknowledged that his ideas were of a different, and of a far more lofty character, as, indeed, they ever are, when brought into comparison with those which predominate in the writings of the Fathers. In Colossians, ii. 18, 19, he warns the members of the Church against that "voluntary humility," which, instead of leading them to "hold the Head," should beguile them into a "worshipping of angels." In the table and cup of the Lord, they held and were united to that Head, and

through him to God the Father-("I in them and thou in me."-John, xvii.

23). Why, then, worship or seek union with these Eons or secondary emanations of divinity, which the Gnostics, "intruding into the things which they had not seen," proclaimed as the chain of celestial intelligences descending from the Deity to man, and forming the ladder by which, on the other hand, man must reascend up to the Deity; and which Eons, from their professed analogy to, and identity with the Jewish SEPHIROTH, or angelic emanations, the apostle, with great propriety, calls angels? And as it was in regard of these Sephiroth, Eons, or angelic powers of the half judaizing half philosophising Gnostic, so was it in respect of the daimons, not devils, but secondary divinities, and subordinate ministering powers of the supreme God, worshipped by the Gentiles. For according to the belief of the polite and educated Gentiles, with which St. Paul, it is manifest, was well acquainted, their whole pantheon consisted of these daimoniac or secondary numina, operating intermediately between man and the inaccessible God; and their sacrifices and divinations reached no higher than the former. This is evident from the following passage from Plato, Sympos I. e.-"Through this (the daimon agency) doth the whole of the divining art hold its course; and the skill of the priests, and of those engaged about the sacrifices, and initiations, and incantations, and the whole of divination and sorcery. But God doth not mingle with man”—and the whole Platonic system presents the same view of those gods whom man worships, that they are merely duimons, genii, or angels.

Thus also we read in Leslie's "Case Stated," section 32:

"The word gods is frequently given in Scripture to angels; and to men, as understood it, and supposed their gods to ministers of God; and thus the heathens be such ministers; as Eolus to govern the winds, Neptune the sea, &c. Therefore they called them Dii Medioxumi, inferior gods, as standing in the middle between the supreme God and us, to

succour or punish us according to his orders."

And St. Augustine, whom Leslie quotes, represents the heathens as thus declaring, in their own defence, on this point:

"Non colimus mala dæmonia; angelos quos dicitis, ipsos et nos colimus, virtutes Dei Magni et mysteria Dei Magni."

"We do not worship EVIL DEMONS or spirits, but we worship those whom you (Christians) call ANGELS, the POWERS of the Great God, and the MYSTERIES of the Great God."

And this is precisely the sense in which St. Paul everywhere employs the word daimons, viz., as supposed inferior numina or ministering powers, standing in the middle betwixt the Supreme God and man.

Nowhere does

the apostle, as St. Augustine and the fathers did, assert that these daimons were devils, or evil spirits. He condemns, indeed, everywhere the worship of any but the one God; and the acknowledgment of, or fellowship with, any other intermediate protecting or interceding power, standing in the middle betwixt the Supreme God and man, than the one mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ. He condemns, therefore, as alike opposed to this single worship, and this one mediation, the two kindred forms of error, that of the Gnostics worshipping and depending on the mediation of angels, and that of the heathens worshipping and depending on the mediation of daimons, or Dii medioxumi. The error was in essence the same. For what, in reality, were the daimoniac powers worshipped by the Gentiles what were these Dii medioxumi, these powers and mysteries of the Great God, but another name for the divine emanations of the Gnostics? And as St. Paul, on account of the latter claiming to be identical with the angelic Sephiroth of the Jews, condemns them under the Jewish phraseology of angels; so, in condemning the Gentile error, he employs that term which the Gentiles themselves used to denote an inferior divinity or angelic power, namely, the term daimon; and he employs it, beyond all question, in a Gentile sense.

Let us examine carefully the apostle's language regarding the eating and

drinking of things offered to idols:"We know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one. For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth (as there be gods many and lords many); but to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him. Howbeit there is not in every man that knowledge, for some, with conscience of the idol unto this hour, eat it as a thing offered unto an idol, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled."-1 Cor. viii. 4-7.

Now what, we would here ask, is meant by the conscience being weak, or by eating with conscience of the idol? This scrupulosity, which proceeded from deficiency of knowledge, could not refer to any deliberate and voluntary worship, either of the material idol, or of the power supposed to be tabernacled in, or represented by it; for these had been manifest sins against the first and second commandments, which no amount of knowledge could render less sinful-sins, too, unlikely to have been committed by these converts, who are represented not as wicked, but only as unenlightened, and, in consequence, scrupulous. This weakness of conscience, therefore, this eating with conscience of the idol unto this hour, must refer to those converts who, still imagining the idol to be really and truly something in the world, felt it wrong to eat of the meat and drink of the cup offered to it, lest this act, which was held of a sacramental character, might involve some constructive worship, some religious connexion, some spiritual fellowship, with that inferior numen, whom they still supposed to be a true existence, either inherent in, or represented by, the material idol. And such a scruple nothing but the knowledge to which St. Paul alludes, of the utter nothingness of an idol in the world-of there being but one God, and but one Lord and Mediator between God and man -and that, consequently, all other gods, and lords, and mediating numina, were absolutely nonentities in the universe to him who held these two fast-could suffice to remove. Although, therefore," meat commendeth us not to God, for neither if we eat are we the better, neither if we eat

not are we the worse;" although the mere eating, to those who had knowledge, was no sin in itself, and on their own account, St. Paul adds, "Take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumbling-block to them that are weak. For, if any man see thee, which hast knowledge, sit at meat in the idol's temple, shall not the conscience of him which is weak be emboldened to eat those things which are offered to idols; and through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died" (v. 9, 11). But how perish, if there be intrinsically no sin in the action? By violating, or, as it is said in the above quotation, defiling his own weak conscience; by doing that which he fears is wrong, which he is not firmly persuaded is lawful, according to that imperishable canon of the conscience, contained in the concluding words of the subjoined extract words so often misunderstood, so often quoted isolated from their context, and applied in a doctrinal sense to an intellectual belief; but which, read with that context, contain the sum and essence of a conscientious morality, and clearly mean, that whatever we do with the least doubt or scruple, without a full persuasion of its being right, is thereby alone sin to us because, however intrinsically innocent, we thereby violate our conscience, and go on to do, when the internal monitor, devoid of knowledge, but faithful, commands us to refrain.

"Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind, Rom xiv. 5; there is nothing unclean of itself: but, to him that esteemeth anything unclean, to him it is unclean, v. 14-he that doubteth is damned, [condemned], if he eat, because he eateth not of faith, [not fully persuaded in his own mind of its being lawful]: for, whatsoever is not of faith, is sin," v. 23.

Thus, therefore, in the foregoing passage from 1 Cor. viii., St. Paul, maintaining the absolute nothingness of idols in the world-which he could hardly have done, were they the real tabernacles of evil spirits-yet counsels the enlightened brethren to abstain from eating meats offered to them, out of tenderness to the weak consciences of the unenlightened. But, in chap. x. of the same epistle he returns to the subject, and advances another argument, grounded upon the

effect such otherwise innocent participation would have, and the infidelity it would apparently imply to their own Lord, in a sphere where the Gentile ideas regarding the power, ministra tion, and mediation of daimons, or a multitude of intermediate secondary deities, prevailed. It is true, argues the apostle, that the material idol itself is nothing in the world: and that which is offered in sacrifice to idols is nothing. But, though this be so, what are the ideas connected with these things? What is the belief and intention of the Gentiles in sacrificing? The things which they sacrifice they sacrifice not to God-not to that one only supreme God, the Father whom we worship; but to daimons; to a multitude of inferior numina-of those that are called gods, whether in heaven, or in earth (viii. 5)—to the powers and mysteries of the great God-to Di Mediorumi, or inferior ministering and mediating powersstanding in the middle betwixt the supreme God and man.-The worship of such mediate ministering powers, or inferior gods, whether called, as by the Manichean, and other Gnostic sects, who adopted a Persian and Jewish phraseology, angels; or, as by the Greek Gentiles, daimons-the apostle everywhere condemns, pronouncing it an intruding into those things which we have not seen, and an abandoning of the Head. Everywhere he preaches the ONE GOD, and the ONE MEDIATOR between God and man, to the exclusion of all other. And, as the partaking of the meats, and the cup, offered to these idols, would have symbolized, both to the Christian devoid of knowledge, and weak in conscience, and who eat with conscience of the idol unto this hour; and to the Gentiles who performed and assisted at the sacrifice, and witnessed the subsequent participation on the part of the Christians-an acknowledgment of, and a sacrificial fellowship with these daimons, or secondary mediating gods, would have been inconsistent, therefore, and incompatible with that fellowship which they had with their own Lord, by the broken bread, which was the partaking of his body-and the cup of blessing, which was the communion of his blood; would have been, in the face of the Gentile world, a treason against,