To this impressive dissertation of the “saint,” we will add that no magician has ever denied that he had learned the _art_ from “spirits,” whether, being a medium, they acted independently on him, or he had been initiated into the science of “evocation” by his fathers who knew it before himself. But who was it then that taught the exorcist? The priest who clothes himself with an authority not only over the magician, but even over all these “spirits,” whom he calls demons and _devils_ as soon as he finds them obeying any one but himself? He must have learned somewhere from some one that power which he pretends to possess. For, “... _how could one know had he not been taught by the demons themselves ... the name which attracts, or that which forces them into obedience?_” asks Augustine. Useless to remark that we know the answer beforehand: “Revelation ... _divine_ gift ... the Son of God; nay, God Himself, through His direct Spirit, who descended on the apostles as the Pentecostal fire, and who is now alleged to overshadow every priest who sees fit to exorcise for either glory or a gift. Are we then to believe that the recent scandal of public exorcism, performed about the 14th of October, 1876, by the senior priest of the Church of the Holy Spirit, at Barcelona, Spain, was also done under the direct superintendence of the Holy Ghost?[94] It will be urged that the “bishop was not cognizant of this freak of the clergy;” but even if he were, how could he have protested against a rite considered since the days of the apostles, one of the most holy prerogatives of the Church of Rome? So late as in 1852, only twenty-five years ago, these rites received a public and solemn sanction from the Vatican, and a new _Ritual of Exorcism_ was published in Rome, Paris, and other Catholic capitals. Des Mousseaux, writing under the immediate patronage of Father Ventura, the General of the Theatines of Rome, even favors us with lengthy extracts from this famous ritual, and explains the reason _why_ it was enforced again. It was in consequence of the revival of Magic under the name of Modern Spiritualism. The bull of Pope Innocent VIII. is exhumed, and translated for the benefit of des Mousseaux’s readers. “We have heard,” exclaims the Sovereign Pontiff, “that a great number of persons of both sexes have feared not to enter into relations with the spirits of hell; and that, by their practice of sorcery ... they strike with sterility the conjugal bed, destroy the germs of humanity in the bosom of the mother, and throw spells on them, and set a barrier to the multiplication of animals ... etc., etc.;” then follow curses and anathemas against the practice.