An essay for the recording of illustrious providences

And a Child playing abroad, a Cart wheel run over him and bruised him, so that it was thought he would immediately expire; but his Mother carrying him into the House that was built to honour the memory of St. Stephens life and health were miraculously continued. Many other wonderful cures doth Austin there mention, as done by Stephen's Relics. But who seeth not that the hand of Joab was in all these things? For by this means Satan hath filled the World with Superstition. The Cross is worshipped; The Relics of Martyrs are adored; The honour due to God alone is given to the creature. The same method has the grand Enemy observed, that so he might bring that Superstition of Iconolatry or Image Worship, which is so provoking to the jealous God, into repute amongst Christians. It would be endless to enumerate how many in Popish Countries have been cured of Diseases which for their sins God hath suffered the Devil to punish them with, by touching the Image of this or that Saint. Nay, some whose bodies have been possessed with evil Spirits, have in that way of Superstition found relief; in a ⟨p. 274⟩more especial manner, when the Image of the Virgin Mary hath been presented before persons Possessed, the Devil in them hath cried out, and shrieked after a fearful manner, as if he had been put to horrible torture at the sight of that Image, and so hath seemed to depart out of the miserable creature molested by him; and all this that so deluded Papists might be hardened in their Superstitious opinion of that Image. Many such devices hath Satan to ensnare and ruin the Souls of Men. Some report that the Bodies of Excommunicates in the Greek Churches at this day, are strangely handled by the Devil, after Death hath taken hold of them. M. Ricaut in his Relation of the present state of the Greek Churches, Page 279.&c. saith that a grave Kaloir told him that to his own certain knowledge, a person who fell under their Church-censure, after he had been for some time buried, the People where his corps lay interred, were affrighted with strange Apparitions, which they concluded arose from the Grave of the accursed Excommunicate, which thereupon was opened, and they found the Body uncorrupted, and replete with Blood, the Coffin furnished with Grapes, Nuts, &c. brought thither by infernal Spirits. The Kaloirs resolved to use the common remedy ⟨p. 275⟩in those cases, viz.