An Essay on Demonology 6

An Essay on Demonology 6

Johnson replied, that

'as the happiness or misery of spirits depends not upon place, but is

intellectual, we cannot say, that they are less happy or less

miserable, by appearing upon earth.' Johnson observed, that he makes a

distinction between what a man may experience by the mere strength of

his imagination, and what imagination cannot possibly produce. Thus,

said he, 'suppose I should think that I saw a form, and heard a voice

say, Johnson, you are a very wicked fellow, and unless you repent, you

will certainly be punished; my own unworthiness is so deeply impressed

upon my mind, that I might _imagine_ I thus saw and heard, and

therefore I should not believe that an external communication had been

made to me. But, if a form should appear, and a voice should tell me,

that a particular man had died at a particular place, and a particular

hour, a fact which I had no apprehension of, nor any means of knowing,

and this fact, with all its circumstances, should afterwards be

unquestionably proved, I should in that case be persuaded, that I had

supernatural intelligence imparted to me.' Johnson related a story of

a ghost, said to have appeared to a young woman several times,

advising her to apply to an attorney for the recovery of an old house,

which was done, and at the same time saying the attorney would do

nothing, which proved to be the fact.

 

About the middle of the last century, there were reports of a ghost

visiting a house in Cocklane, in the city of London. The whole city

was, for many weeks, kept in a state of agitation and alarm, and the

magazines and newspapers teemed with strange accounts of the Cocklane

ghost. The story, at length, became so popular, and created such

excitement, as to require a thorough investigation. The purport of the

story was, that a spirit had frequently appeared, and announced to a

girl, that a murder had been committed near that place, by a certain

person, which ought to be detected. For a long time, unaccountable

noises, such as knocking, scratching on the walls of the house, &c,

were heard every night. The supposed spirit had publicly promised, by

an affirmative knock, that it would attend any person into the vault

under the church where the body was deposited, and would give a knock

on the coffin; it was, therefore, determined to make this trial of the

visitation and veracity of the supposed spirit. On this occasion, Dr

Johnson, with several clergymen and other gentlemen and ladies,

assembled about ten o'clock at night, in the house in which the girl

had, with proper caution, been put to bed by several ladies. More than

an hour passed, without hearing any noise, when at length the

gentlemen were summoned into the girl's chamber, by some ladies who

were near her bed, and had heard knocks and scratches. When the

gentlemen entered, the girl declared that she felt the spirit like a

mouse upon her back. She was required to hold her hands out of bed,

and from that time, though the spirit was very solemnly required to

manifest its existence by appearance, by impression on the hand or

body of any one present, by knocks, or scratches, or any other agency,

no evidence of any preternatural power was exhibited. The spirit was

then very seriously advertised, that the person to whom the promise

was made of striking on the coffin, was then about to visit the vault,

and that the performance of the promise was then claimed. The company

at 1 o'clock went into the church, and the gentleman to whom the

promise was made, went with another into the vault. The spirit was

solemnly required to perform its promise, but nothing more than

silence ensued. The person supposed to be accused by the spirit then

went down with several others, but no effect whatever was perceived.

Upon their return they examined the girl, but could draw no confession

from her, and the father of the girl, when interrogated, denied in the

strongest terms, any knowledge or belief of fraud. It was therefore

published by the whole assembly, that the girl had some art of making

or counterfeiting a particular noise, and that there was no agency of

any higher cause. Thus ended this singular affair, which had so long

been permitted to disturb the peace of the city and of the public. The

greatest surprise is, that an artful, mischievous girl, should be

suffered to set at defiance the closest scrutiny to detect her

imposition and deception.

 

The following anecdote may be found in some historical publication,

but is now related from memory without recollecting the authority.

After the execution of Charles the First, the Parliament resolved that

every vestige of royalty should be annihilated. For this purpose,

commissioners were appointed to carry into effect the decree in the

Palace of the late King. While executing their prescribed duties, the

commissioners were from day to day annoyed and disturbed by strange

and frightful noises, in various parts of the house. Logs of wood

rolling over the floor in the kitchen, various utensils clattering

together, dancing and stamping were heard in rooms whose doors were

closed, and to such alarming heights was the deception carried that

the commissioners were about to abandon the house, from the belief

that it was haunted by evil spirits. At length, on close

investigation, the fact was disclosed that the whole deception was the

contrivance of a man of singular art, called _funny Joe_, who was the

acting secretary of the commissioners.

 

In Southey's life of Wesley, we have another instance of supposed

preternatural noises in the parsonage house of Wesley's father, in the

year 1716. The mysterious noises were said to be as various as

unaccountable; such as knocking at the door, lifting up the latch, and

a groaning, like a person in distress; a clatter among a number of

bottles, as if all at once they had been dashed in pieces; footsteps

as of a man going up and down stairs, at all hours of the night;

sounds like that of dancing in a room, the door of which was locked;

but most frequently, a knocking about the beds at night, and in

different parts of the house. Mr Wesley was once awakened a little

after midnight, by nine loud and distinct knocks which seemed to be in

the next room, with a pause at every third stroke. He and his wife

rose, and went below; a noise was now heard, like that of a bag of

money poured on the floor at their feet. At one time, the servant

heard his hand-mill in rapid motion, without any visible hand to move

it. Mr Wesley made every exertion to ascertain the real cause of the

noises, without success. He at length became so impatient with the

unusual annoyances, that he prepared a pistol, which he was about to

discharge at the place where the noise was heard, but was dissuaded

from it by a neighboring clergyman, who had been called in to his

assistance. But he upbraided the goblin for disturbing the family, and

challenged it to appear to him while alone in his study, after which,

on entering his study, the door was pressed against him, but no object

was seen. At length, the family became so familiar with this invisible

spirit, that one of the daughters gave it the name of Old Jeffrey, and

they treated it as matter of curiosity and amusement. This

unaccountable affair excited much speculation throughout the country.

The celebrated Dr Priestley, and many others, undertook to investigate

the circumstances, but were unable to make any satisfactory discovery,

and it remains inexplicable.

 

A reviewer of Wesley's life observes, that few will regard the

circumstances as anything more than creatures of imagination, the

offspring of credulity and superstition; but I should strongly suspect

that some one of the family was the prime mover in the business, as

was funny Joe in the Royal Palace of King Charles the First.

 

 

 

 

SUPERSTITION.

 

 

Historical records furnish innumerable instances of superstition,

fraught with circumstances of inexpressible horror. It is an infirmity

inherent in our nature, and extremely difficult to eradicate; no

lesson on moral evil, or lecture on physical destiny, can sever the

spell or dissolve the dark enchantment. So peculiarly fascinating is

the love of the marvellous, that when ignorance and bigotry cooperate,

the pure fountain of truth is polluted, and the most preposterous

tales of antiquity are held in veneration by every fiery zealot. From

this cause, millions of innocent lives have been sacrificed. The

intellects of thousands have been shackled, and their energies

perverted by irrational fears, and by degrading conceptions of the

nature of Deity, and of the purposes and modes of religious worship

and obedience. It was in the darkest days of superstition, that the

rack was in exercise to chain down the understanding, to sink it into

the most abject and sordid condition, punishing imaginary crimes, and

repressing truth and philosophical research.

 

The science of medicine had to encounter the scourge of superstition

at an early period; the epithet of magician was applied to the

physician, who appeared to be endowed with superior genius and

knowledge. The inquisition was constantly prepared to take holy

cognizance of those who distinguished themselves by extraordinary

cures, and hundreds of miserable wretches were dragged to the stake

for this cause alone. Galileo, in the 17th century, was condemned by

the inquisition to a rigorous punishment, for his noble and useful

discoveries in astronomy and geometry; and about the same period, Dr

Bartolo suffered a similar fate at Rome, because he unexpectedly cured

a nobleman of the gout.

 

The University of Salamanca decreed that no physician should dare to

bleed his patient in a pleurisy in the arm of the affected side;

declaring that such practice was of no less pernicious consequences to

medicine, than Luther's heresy had been to religion. The inquisition

having adopted the irrational and foolish doctrine that diseases

should be ascribed to fascination, a physician who opposed that

doctrine was compelled to accede to it, and to declare that he had

seen a beautiful woman break a steel mirror to pieces, and blast trees

by a single glance of her fascinating eyes. Superstitious opinions

prevailed in regard to the cure of diseases, also. Some were supposed

to be cured by a song. Josephus asserted that he saw a certain Jew,

named _Eleazer_, draw the devil out of an old woman's nostrils, by the

application of Solomon's seal to her nose, in the presence of the

Emperor Vespasian. Numerous remedies were employed for expelling the

devil, among which was flagellation, purgatives, and antispasmodics.

Several bewitched persons being cured by a plaster of assafœtida, the

question arose, in what way this article excited so much efficacy.

Some supposed, that the devil considered so vile an application an

insult, and ran off in a passion; but others very sagely observed,

that as devils are supposed to have eyes and ears, it is possible that

they have noses also, and that it proved offensive to their olfactory

nerves. It may be observed that superstition is not confined to those

who are ignorant of the laws of the physical world; but through the

infirmity of human nature, it has prevailed to the perversion of the

profoundest understanding, and the purest intellect. It has arrested

the progress of literature and science, and shackled the mind with

vulgar fictions, errors, and prejudices. Even the sublime genius of

Lord Bacon was subjected to its influence; he believed in witchcraft,

and asserted that he was cured of warts by rubbing them with a piece

of lard with the skin on, and then exposing it to the sun. Dr More,

and the enlightened Cudworth, applied the epithet _Atheist_ to those

who opposed the belief of witchcraft. The celebrated Dr Hoffman, the

father of the modern theory and practice of medicine, in the large

edition of his work in 1742, says, that the devil can raise storms,

produce insects, and act upon the animal spirits and imagination; and,

in fine, that he is an excellent optician, and natural philosopher, on account of his long experience.