# An Examen of Witches/Chapter 54

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Chapter LIV.
Against those who Mock at the Exorcisms and Conjurations of our Priests.
Cf. Richer, Discours des Miracles, c. 33.Here I Cannot but marvel at those mock at the exorcisms and conjurations used by our priests towards demoniacs. What reason can they have? Did not Jesus Christ cast out devils when He was upon earth? The New Testament gives us countless examples of it; but I will be content to quote the case of him who had a legion of devils, Mark 5.of whom St. Mark writes in his Gospel. Besides, do we not know that Jesus Christ gave the same power to men? Matth. 17.“Ye shall know them that believe on Me by this sign, that they shall cast out devils in My name.” And again; “This sort goeth not out save by prayer and fasting.”
Acts 16.It was thus that St. Paul delivered a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination from the devil which tormented her; Acts 19.and in another place it is said that God wrought special miracles by the hands of St. Paul, so that from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them. St. Gregor. 1. 1. Dial. c. 10. St. Jerome, in vita D. Hilario.After the Apostles, holy men did likewise. We read that St. Fortunatus and St. Hilarion used by their prayers to cast devils out of men, and that the latter cast out two hundred in the Isle of Cyprus. The like is told of St. Bernard, St. Martin, St. Gall and many other holy men. Then why ​should not our priests do the same? The hand of God is as powerful now as it was in days of old.
I say further that the devils themselves have made use of conjurations. For one of them speaking to Jesus Christ, in the Gospel of St. Mark, said: Mark 5.“I adjure Thee by the living God that Thou torment me not”; and in fact he obtained his request, which was that he and his companions should not be sent out of the country of the Gadarenes. But the countless examples of those who are daily delivered in the sight of all, and of whom I have elsewhere made mention, should suffice to shut the mouths of these atheists and heretics; to whom I would further point out that the ceremonies of our priests are holy and religious, and shall put before them a thing which happened not far from here some eight years ago, which should quite put them to confusion.
The son of a Huguenot gentleman was possessed of a devil, and they brought the local minister to conjure it. But this minister had no power against devils, as was at once recognised by the father; who, being more anxious for his son’s health than strict in the observance of his own religion, secretly sent for a Catholic priest, who used the accustomed exorcisms of the Roman Church with such sincerity that the possessed was soon delivered. I would name the gentleman if I were not afraid of his being arrested by the Governors of the Canton to which he is subject. It is enough to say that I have this story from a most reliable source; and that I do not marvel that the minister of whom we have spoken could not cast out the devil from the ​body of the possessed, for no minister has ever had that power, any more than we read that any heretic has ever performed a miracle. I refer the reader to what I have said in Chapter 17.
But to resume the thread of our argument; is it not in the name of Jesus Christ that our priests conjure the evil spirits to depart? Did not St. Paul do the same?Acts 16. “I command thee,” he said, “in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her”; and he came out the same hour.
And as for the Cross and the Holy Water which the priests use, are not these the flails of the Devil?