An essay for the recording of illustrious providences

Ans• 1. It is confessed that Satan does take great advantage from the ill humours and diseases which are in the Bodies of Men greatly to molest their Spirits. Especially it is true concerning Melancholy, which has therefore been called Balneum Diaboli, the Devils Bath, wherein he delights to be stirring.

Ans• 1. It is confessed that Satan does take great advantage from the ill humors and diseases which are in the Bodies of Men greatly to molest their Spirits. Especially it is true concerning Melancholly, which has therefore been called Balneum Diaboli, the Devils Bath, wherein he delights to be stirring.

2. When Bodily Diseases are removed by the use of natural means, the matter upon which the Evil Spirit was wont to operate being gone, he does no more disturb and disquiet the minds of men as before that he did. The passive disposition in the Body ceasing, the active affliction caused by the Devil ceaseth also. Rulandus Writes of possessed persons who were cured by Emetic Medicines, clearing them of those melancholy humours, by means whereof the Evil Spirit had sometimes ⟨p. 263⟩great advantages over them. This also Po•p•natius does by many Instances confirm. S•nn•rtus likewise has divers passages to the same purpose. Also we see by frequent experience, persons strangely hurried by Satan, have by the blessing of God upon the endeavour of the Physician been delivered from those woeful molestations. Ferrarius, Delrio, Burgensis, and others, Commenting on 1 Sam. 16. conceive that the Ingress and Egress of Evil Spirits depends upon the humours and dispositions of the Body; which Assertion is not unive sally true: For sometimes the Devil hath laughed at the Physicians, who have thought by Medicinal Applications to dispossess him. Examples for this may be seen in Fernelius and Codronchus. Wherefore Voetius in his Disputation, de Emergumenis, Page 1025. speaketh cautiously and judiciously, in asserting that we may not suppose that the Devils taking bodily possession of this or that person, depends wholly upon corporeal dispositions; nevertheless that natural Distempers sometimes are an occasion thereof.