Which doctrine,if it be not true,why,may some say,did not our Saviour contradict it,and teach the contrary?Nay,why does He use on diverse occasions such forms of speech as seem to confirm it?To this I answer that,first,where Christ saith,"A spirit hath not flesh and bone,"though he show that there be spirits,yet he denies not that they are bodies.And where St.Paul says,"We shall rise spiritual bodies,"he acknowledgeth the nature of spirits,but that they are bodily spirits;which is not difficult to understand.For air and many other things are bodies,though not flesh and bone,or any other gross body to be discerned by the eye.But when our Saviour speaketh to the devil,and commandeth him to go out of a man,if by the devil be meant a disease,as frenzy,or lunacy,or a corporeal spirit,is not the speech improper?Can diseases hear?Or can there be a corporeal spirit in a body of flesh and bone,full already of vital and animal spirits?Are there not therefore spirits,that neither have bodies,nor are mere imaginations?To the first I answer that the addressing of our Saviour's command to the madness or lunacy he cureth is no more improper than was his rebuking of the fever,or of the wind and sea;for neither do these hear:or than was the command of God to the light,to the firmament,to the sun,and stars,when He commanded them to be;for they could not hear before they had a being.But those speeches are not improper,because they signify the power of God's word:no more therefore is it improper to command madness or lunacy,under the appellation of devils by which they were then commonly understood,to depart out of a man's body.To the second,concerning their being incorporeal,Ihave not yet observed any place of Scripture from whence it can be gathered that any man was ever possessed with any other corporeal spirit but that of his own by which his body is naturally moved.
Our Saviour,immediately after the Holy Ghost descended upon Him in the form of a dove,is said by St.Matthew to have been "led up by the Spirit into the wilderness";and the same is recited,Luke,4.
1,in these words,"Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost,was led in the Spirit into the wilderness":whereby it is evident that by Spirit there is meant the Holy Ghost.This cannot be interpreted for a possession;for Christ and the Holy Ghost are but one and the same substance,which is no possession of one substance,or body,by another.And whereas in the verses following he is said "to have been taken up by the devil into the holy city,and set upon a pinnacle of the temple,"shall we conclude thence that he was possessed of the devil,or carried thither by violence?And again,"carried thence by the devil into an exceeding high mountain,who showed him thence all the kingdoms of the world":wherein we are not to believe he was either possessed or forced by the devil;nor that any mountain is high enough,according to the literal sense to show him one whole hemisphere.What then can be the meaning of this place,other than that he went of himself into the wilderness;and that this carrying of him up and down,from the wilderness to the city,and from thence into a mountain,was a vision?Conformable whereunto is also the phrase of St.Luke,that he was led into the wilderness,not by,but in the Spirit:whereas,concerning his being taken up into the mountain,and unto the pinnacle of the temple,he speaketh as St.Matthew doth,which suiteth with the nature of a vision.
Again,where St.Luke says of Judas Iscariot that "Satan entered into him,and thereupon that he went and communed with the chief priests,and captains,how he might betray Christ unto them";it may be answered that by the entering of Satan (that is,the enemy)into him is meant the hostile and traitorous intention of selling his Lord and Master.For as by the Holy Ghost is frequently in Scripture understood the graces and good inclinations given by the Holy Ghost;so by the entering of Satan may be understood the wicked cogitations and designs of the adversaries of Christ and his Disciples.For as it is hard to say that the devil was entered into Judas,before he had any such hostile design;so it is impertinent to say he was first Christ's enemy in his heart,and that the devil entered into him afterwards.Therefore the entering of Satan,and his wicked purpose,was one and the same thing.
But if there be no immaterial spirit,nor any possession of men's bodies by any spirit corporeal,it may again be asked why our Saviour his Apostles did not teach the people so,and in such clear words as they might no more doubt thereof.But such questions as these are more curious than necessary for a Christian man's salvation.Men may as well ask why Christ,that could have given to all men faith,piety,and all manner of moral virtues,gave it to some only,and not to all:and why he left the search of natural causes and sciences to the natural reason and industry of men,and did not reveal it to all,or any man supernaturally;and many other such questions,of which nevertheless there may be alleged probable and pious reasons.