But let us suppose for the sake of argument that the Jews at the time of our Lord did generally entertain these monstrous demoniacal beliefs: to what conclusion, I ask, would such a fact, if true, indubitably point? Credulous and superstitions people, invariably invent stories that are the counterparts of their own credulity. This is proved by the whole mass of existing mythology. Mythological inventions give us the precise measure of the beliefs of those who have originated them. If then the demonology of those who have elaborated these portions of the Gospels was of the character that this writer and others assert it to have been, the Gospels would have contained an embodiment of such demoniacal beliefs as those which the author has so industriously collected, and has endeavoured to fasten upon their writers. Now the idea of demonology having been present in the minds of the writers, it is obvious that they did not omit all reference to these absurd beliefs, merely because they were outside the subject on which they were writing. But while demoniacal action is repeatedly alluded to, it is an undeniable fact that no stories of the description given by this writer are to be found in them. The author therefore has furnished the most conclusive proof, without intending to do so, that these forms of thought, to whomsoever else they may have appertained, were neither those of the original followers of Jesus, nor of the authors of the Gospels. It follows therefore that this attempt to prove that the followers of our Lord and the authors of the Gospels were a prey to such a mass of grotesque beliefs respecting demons, as to invalidate their historical testimony, falls to the ground, and that the data on which this has been attempted to be established, afford proof on the contrary that they did not entertain the beliefs in question. CHAPTER X. THE EXISTENCE AND MIRACLES OF SATAN. I fully admit that a difficulty is involved in the idea that a being like Satan is permitted to perform actions which bear even a remote analogy to divine miracles. I have already shown that the New Testament only apparently ascribes to him a supernatural action of a very limited and special kind, differing widely from our usual conception of a miracle. I now proceed to inquire how far this limited action, thus attributed to him, if we suppose that possession was an objective fact, and not a form of madness, interferes with the validity of the attestation of miracles to the Christian revelation.