[63] The authentic documents of the examination, and of the whole process of the cure, are contained at length in a work entitled “The Miraculous Cure of Winifred White,” by the Rev. John Milner, D.D., published by Grace of Dublin, and reprinted, on several occasions and in different forms, in England. It may be added that Winifred White departed this life on the 13th of January, 1824, nineteen years after her cure. She died of consumption.
[64] A well-known clergyman of the Church of England.
[65] The account from which the above was compiled was a formal and authentic statement of the Curé de S. Martin, at Metz (A.D. 1865).
[66] The account given above is taken from a small tractate entitled “The Miracle of Metz, wrought by the Blessed Sacrament, June 14, 1865,” translated from the French, by Lady Georgiana Fullerton. With the imprimaturs of His Grace the Archbishop of Westminster and the Bishop of Metz. London: Burns and Co., 1865.
[67] See a series of most interesting letters, entitled “Is God amongst us?” by a Clergyman of the Church of England, published in the “Union” newspaper, for 1857, vol. ii. pp. 262, 329-330. London: Painter.
[68] “The Measure of Christian Sorrow for the Departed,” a Sermon preached at the funeral of Mary Lisle Phillipps de Lisle, by the Rev. Henry Collins, M.A. Loughborough: J. H. Gray, 1860, pp. 11-13.
[69] “Indulgenced prayers are prayers to the recital of which is attached by the Church the grant of indulgences. By indulgences Catholics understand a remission of sin, that is, of all those temporal pains which God inflicts for sin committed by His servants after baptism; and the Church teaches that the power of remission was conferred by Jesus Christ when He said to the Apostles, ‘Whatsoever ye shall loose on earth, shall be loosed in Heaven.’” S. Matt. xvi. 19.
[70] An anonymous seventeenth-century writer reasons as follows:—“To know things aright and perfectly is to know the causes thereof. A definition doth consist of those causes which give the whole essence, and contain the perfect nature of the thing defined; where that is therefore found out, there appears the very clear light. If it be perfect, it is much the greater; though if it be not fully perfect, yet it giveth some good light. For which respect, though I dare not say I can give a perfect definition in this matter, which is hard to do even in known things, because the essential form is hard to be found, yet I do give a definition which may at the least give notice and make known what manner of persons they be of whom I am to speak:—A witch is one that worketh by the Devil, or by some devilish or curious art, either hurting or healing, revealing things secret, or foretelling things to come, which the Devil hath devised to entangle and snare men’s souls withal unto damnation. The Conjurer, the Enchanter, the Sorcerer, the Diviner, and whatsoever other sort there is, are indeed encompassed within this circle. The Devil doth (no doubt) after divers sorts and divers forms, deal in these. But no man is able to show an essential difference in each of them from the rest. I hold it no wisdom or labour well spent to travel much therein. One artificer hath devised them all.”
[71] “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”—Exodus xxii. 18. “Neither shall ye use enchantment.”—Levit. xix. 26. “Regard not them which have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them.”—Ibid. ver. 31. “When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord: and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee.”—Deut. xviii. 9-12. Of Manasseh is recorded, that “He caused his children to pass through the fire in the valley of the son of Hinnom: also he observed times, and used enchantments, and used witchcraft, and dealt with a familiar spirit, and with wizards.”—2 Chron. xxxiii. 6. Lastly, S. Paul mentions “witchcraft” amongst such “works of the flesh” as “adultery, fornication, heresies, drunkenness, and murders.”—Galat. v. 19-21.
[72] Many of the heathens cordially defended magic and Necromancy. For example, Asclepiades, who lived in the time of Pompey the Great, cured diseases by magic, enjoining upon his patient, in the case of the falling sickness, to bind upon his arm a Cross with a Nail driven into it. Julianus, the magician, is reported to have driven the plague out of Rome by magical power. Apuleius, a disciple of Plato, wrote at length on magic. To him may be added Marcellus and Alexander Trallian. Pliny asserts in very plain language that Necromancy was so prevalent in his day, but was condemned by the wisest, that it was classed with treason and poisoning. And it is notorious that magic was long used as a convenient though inefficient weapon against Christianity.—Vide, likewise, Livy i. 20, and Strabo, lib. vi.