Nowadays, perhaps, she would have been termed a very powerful ‘medium,’ but as the property still continued in an abnormal condition, and its destruction was proceeding at a very rapid rate, it was thought better to discharge her, ‘and no disturbances have happened since.’ CHAPTER VII. Possession by, and casting out, Devils--The Church and Exorcisms--Earlier Exorcists--‘The Strange and Grievous Vexation by the Devil of 7 Persons in Lancashire.’ The New Testament, especially the Gospels, decidedly and authoritatively teach that the Devil, or Devils, had power to enter into and possess men, and Jesus not only cast them out, but gave His disciples power to do the same; and, in order that this possession by the Devil should not be ascribed to disease, it is expressly classified apart, Matt. iv. 24: ‘And they brought unto Him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatick, and those that had the palsy, and He healed them.’ And even the Revised Version does not materially alter the text: ‘And they brought unto Him all that were sick, holden with divers diseases and torments, _possessed with aevils_ (or, _demoniacs_) and epileptic and palsied; and He healed them.’ [Illustration] The early Christian Church fully believed in its powers of casting out devils, and holy-water, accompanied with the sign of the cross, was very efficacious in this matter. Now, in these latter days, it seems to be of no effect of itself. In Addis and Arnold’s ‘Catholic Dictionary,’ a work which has received the _imprimatur_ of Cardinal Manning, we read, under the heading ‘Holy-water’: ‘Water and salt are exorcised by the priest, and so withdrawn from the power of Satan, who, since the fall, has corrupted and abused even inanimate things; prayers are said that the water and salt may promote the spiritual and temporal health of those to whom they are applied, and may drive away the Devil with his rebel angels; and, finally, the water and salt are mingled in the name of the Trinity. The water thus blessed becomes a means of grace.... The reader will observe that we do not attribute to holy-water any virtue of its own. It is efficacious simply because the Church’s prayers take effect at the time it is used.’ But this was not the belief of the Roman Catholic Church of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as we may read in Boguet[13]: ‘But it was a frightful thing to hear the Demon cry and yell when the priest had pronounced the holy name of Jesus, and when he invoked the assistance of the holy Virgin Mary, or when he approached the Demoniac with the Cross, or when he sprinkled him with holy-water, or made him drink some. For he said sometimes _that they were burning him_, and at others, _that they had given him enough holy-water, and that if they persisted in throwing any more over him, he would not go out, and would torment Roland’s body still further_.’