I shall add to this story that which is related by Philip Melancthon,[[366]] whose testimony in this matter ought not to be doubted. He says that his aunt having lost her husband when she was enceinte and near her time, she saw one day, towards evening, two persons come into her house; one of them wore the form of her deceased husband, the other that of a tall Franciscan. At first she was frightened, but her husband reassured her, and told her that he had important things to communicate to her; at the same time he begged the Franciscan to pass into the next room, whilst he imparted his wishes to his wife. Then he begged of her to have some masses said for the relief of his soul, and tried to persuade her to give her hand without fear; as she was unwilling to give it, he assured her she would feel no pain. She gave him her hand, and her hand felt no pain when she withdrew it, but was so blackened that it remained discolored all her life. After that, the husband called in the Franciscan; they went out, and disappeared. Melancthon believes that these were two spectres; he adds that he knows several similar instances related by persons worthy of credit.
If these two men were only spectres, having neither flesh nor bones, how could one of them imprint a black color on the hand of this widow? How could he who appeared to the tailor Bauh imprint his hand on the board which he presented to him? If they were evil genii, why did they ask for masses and order restitution? Does Satan destroy his own empire, and does he inspire the living with the idea of doing good actions and of fearing the pains which the sins of the wicked are punished by God?
But on looking at the affair in another light, may not the demon in this kind of apparitions, by which he asks for masses and prayers, intend to foment superstition, by making the living believe that masses and prayers made for them after their death would free them from the pains of hell, even if they died in habitual crime and impenitence? Several instances are cited of rascals who have appeared after their death, asking for prayers like the bad rich man, and to whom prayers and masses can be of no avail from the unhappy state in which they died. Thus, in all this, Satan seeks to establish his kingdom, and not to destroy it or diminish it.
We shall speak hereafter, in the Dissertation on Vampires, of apparitions of dead persons who have been seen, and acted like living ones in their own bodies.
The same Melancthon relates that a monk came one day and rapped loudly at the door of Luther's dwelling, asking to speak to him; he entered and said, "I entertained some popish errors upon which I shall be very glad to confer with you." "Speak," said Luther. He at first proposed to him several syllogisms, to which he easily replied; he then proposed others, that were more difficult. Luther, being annoyed, answered him hastily, "Go, you embarrass me; I have something else to do just now besides answering you." However, he rose and replied to his arguments. At the same time, having remarked that the pretended monk had hands like the claws of a bird, he said to him, "Art not thou he of whom it is said, in Genesis, 'He who shall be born of woman shall break the head of the serpent?'" The demon added, "But thou shalt engulf them all." At these words the confused demon retired angrily and with much fracas; he left the room infested with a very bad smell, which was perceptible for some days.
Luther, who assumes so much the esprit fort, and inveighs with so much warmth against private masses wherein they pray for the souls of the defunct,[[367]] maintains boldly that all the apparitions of spirits which we read in the lives of the saints, and who ask for masses for the repose of their souls, are only illusions of Satan, who appears to deceive the simple, and inspire them with useless confidence in the sacrifice of the mass. Whence he concludes that it is better at once to deny absolutely that there is any purgatory.
He, then, did not deny either apparitions or the operations of the devil; and he maintained that Ecolampadius died under the blows of the devil,[[368]] whose efforts he could not rebut; and, speaking of himself, he affirms that awaking once with a start in the middle of the night, the devil appeared, to argue against him, when he was seized with moral terror. The arguments of the demon were so pressing that they left him no repose of mind; the sound of his powerful voice, his overwhelming manner of disputing when the question and the reply were perceived at once, left him no breathing time. He says again that the devil can kill and strangle, and without doing all that, press a man so home by his arguments that it is enough to kill one; "as I," says he, "have experienced several times." After such avowals, what can we think of the doctrine of this chief of the innovators?
Footnotes:
[[366]] Philipp. Melancth. Theolog. c. i. Oper. fol. 326, 327.
[[367]] Martin Luther, de Abroganda Missa Privata, part. ii.