Limitations of the Devil’s Powers.
Creed-makers before the Reformation conceived, what is probably true, that natural barriers at all times have effectually debarred even the mightiest devil, as well as each and all of his disembodied imps, from coming directly into such close contact with a human body, or any other material object, as enabled them to produce effects perceptible by man’s physical senses. Being themselves spirits, whether primarily earth-born or foreign, devils could effect direct access to, and could harm the minds and souls of men, and, unaided by mortals, could incite human beings to evil actions and self-debasement, while yet, so long as they were unaided by voluntary human alliance, they were absolutely unable to act upon matter—unable to subject human forms to fits, twitchings, tumblings, transformations, sicknesses, pains, &c., such as the bewitched of old experienced, and such as await many mediumistic persons to-day. Devils, formerly, and spirits now, to make the effects of their powers observable, or to make themselves felt by men’s external senses, usually must act first and directly upon the equivalent to such nervous fluid or aura as enables man’s mind to actuate his own body. Any disembodied spirit, of whatsoever grade or character, may be, and probably is, seldom able to command that intermediate aura—or that something—excepting when in or near an animal organism which possesses those properties or conditions, whatever they are, which render a person mediumistic. Constructors of the witchcraft creed probably had learned that nature always and everywhere makes matter intangible by spirit directly, and they thence inferred that the devil could never get into close contact with human bodies without the aid of some spirit, or of appendages to some spirit, who holds living alliance with matter, and consequently has in or around itself nervous fluid, or its equivalent, which is usable by mind not its own—is loanable, or at least liable to be abstracted.
Transpiring observation now quite distinctly perceives that control of human organisms by disembodied spirits is usually attended by conditions fundamentally analogous to an antecedent covenant. The old creed-makers may have reasoned from facts of experience and observation much more generally and logically than the present age imagines. No special desire is felt, and we do not see that any special obligation rests upon us, to palliate the doings of those monastics who in dark ages both fabricated and shackled the devil of witchcraft. Still we do not begrudge them such justification as may flow out that passing facts. We have already stated the probability that nature makes physical man intangible by spirits directly. Because of protracted observations of their doings, we assume that spirits are able to read at a glance the properties of each form to which they give special attention, and are at no loss to determine what organisms are controllable by them when conditions are all favorable. One and an important condition is, absence of resistance to control by the mind to which the susceptible organism pertains. The genuine owner generally can withhold his or her nervous fluids, or auras, or those properties, of whatever kind or name, which a spirit must use in the controlling process; and, consequently, a quasi agreement, amounting at least to acquiescence on the part of the medium, is generally a necessary preliminary to any modern spirit-manifestation, especially with mediums not much accustomed to be controlled.
When and where belief prevailed that all disembodied spirits who ever actuated human forms were the devil or his imps, the inference that those whom he and his controlled had entered into an agreement with him, was natural and almost necessary. For an agreement or consensus between a controlling spirit and the will of the person controlled is very common now, and, no doubt, has been in all past ages. The assumption, however, which seems to have been prevalent formerly, that such consensus involved eternal reciprocal obligation between the devil and a human soul, or the sale of that soul to the Evil One, could not be required or suggested by any facts perceivable by modern observation. No doubt each successive use of properties of a particular body by an intelligence from outside itself, generally enables the foreign spirit subsequently to manage that body with increasing ease to itself, and with more satisfaction probably to both parties; and the practice, if mutually pleasurable, renders prolonged co-operation probable; but co-operation for a time imposes no obligation or necessity that the parties shall remain forever conjoined. Common use of the same magnetism, nervous elements, or whatever they use in common, may tend to make a spirit and a mortal assimilate in their tastes, emotions, motives, and characters. This co-operation may evoke such sympathy between them, that each may often be drawn to the of other’s aid, and conjointly they may manifest both physical and mental powers which neither could put forth alone. And it is possible that a liberated spirit may be so linked in sympathy with numerous other spirits, that the joint powers of many are at his service, so that through a single human form there may be manifested to the outer world the effects of the combined forces of legions of ascended spirits, either good or bad, in one accordant band.
Obviously, spiritual beings, of whatever quality, are generally dependent, for any manifestation to the outer world, on one or more of a class of mortals possessing special properties or susceptibilities. Nature seems to impose such necessity. She does not let even man’s own spirit act upon his stable body directly, but through something evanescent before microscope and scalpel.
Covenant with the Devil
Perhaps, and probably, the direst and most disastrous of all deluding misconceptions by our forefathers—the one which engendered, nurtured, and intensified the greatest evils of witchcraft—was, that neither their huge devil, nor any subordinate fiendish spirit, could get access to external nature and human bodies through any other avenue than some man, woman, or child, who had already voluntarily made an explicit agreement with him or his to be his obedient and faithful servant, in consideration of helps and favors which the devil promised to bestow in requital. When such a covenant had been ratified by signature in the devil’s book, written with the blood of the mortal party, then forthwith the devil and his hosts thereby became subject to his new servant’s call, and the servant to the devil’s summons, so that either could command the powers of both for co-operation in the execution of any malice or deviltry whatsoever, and upon any designated individual. The assumed fact that the devil could use the faculties and properties of no human being who had not expressly covenanted with him, conjoined with belief that he must have the voluntary help of some human being whenever he molested men, was the specially murderous ingredient of faith which impelled good and humane men on to copious shedding of innocent blood. The making of that covenant, and thereby opening an aperture for the devil’s entrance through nature’s barrier, and thus admitting a wolf into the Christian fold, who otherwise could not possibly have entered, constituted the essence of the crime of witchcraft. That covenanting act made the covenanting man or woman a wizard or a witch; and God had said, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
The Devil’s Defense.
The custom is humane and equitable which permits the accused to be heard in their own behalf. It is a common saying, that even the prisoner now at our bar is always entitled to his due and we cheerfully grant him opportunity to defend himself. Under his alias, Satan, and using a cultured Englishman as his amanuensis, he has recently favored the world with his autobiography; in which he says,—
“I am a power. I am a power under God, and as such I perform a task which, however unlovely and however painful, is destined to put forward God’s wise and benignant purposes for the good of man.... I am an image of the evil that is in man, arising from his divinely-given liberty of moral choice. That evil I discipline and correct, as well as represent; and so I am also a divine school-master to bring the world to God. My origin is human, my sphere of action earthly, my final end dissolution. Evil must cease when good is universal. While, then, I cannot boast of a heavenly birth, I disown fiendish dispositions. Worse than the worst man I cannot be. I am indeed a sort of mongrel, born, bred, reared, and nurtured of human fancy, folly, and fraud. As such I possess a sort of quasi omnipresence and a quasi omniscience, for I exist wherever man exists, and, dwelling in human hearts, know all that men think, feel, and do. Hence I have power to tempt and mislead; and that power, when in my worst moods, I am pleased to exercise.... I am a personification of the dark side of humanity and the universe.... I exist in every land, and occupy a corner in every human heart.... I am the child of human speculation: I came into existence on the first day that man asked himself, ‘Whence this world in which I live and of which I am a part?’”[1]