the help of the Devil? Ps. 135.
S. Thom.
Grilland, de Sortileg. 10. 1.
Richer, des Images, c. 38.This cannot be except by a miracle, which belongs only to God and not to Satan, who only works by secondary and natural causes and therefore has no power to raise the dead to life. For although one of the poets has written that Erichtho, a witch of Thessaly, brought to life a dead soldier who foretold to Sextus Pompeius the success of the Pharsalian war, this must not be believed as the truth; it was the Devil who had entered into the dead man’s body and spoke through his mouth; or perhaps made use of some fantastic body as he did when Saul consulted the witch of Endor to summon the spirit of Samuel, that he might know whether he should give battle to the Philistines or postpone it to some other time.
I am aware also that it is written that at Rome Apollonius of Tyana raised from the dead a girl on the day of her wedding; but who shall say that this philosopher, who had no other object but to glorify himself, did not first cause the bride to fall into a sleep so deep that she seemed to be dead and that when the strength of the drug had been spent and the girl awoke, he gave out that it was he who had brought her to life?
I for my part stoutly maintain that in every case where it has been a plain question of raising the dead, witches have proved utterly powerless. We read of such as Simon Magus, Eunomianus and Polychronius Monothelita, who laboured to bring certain dead men to life, and lost their whole repute in the attempt. Certain heretics also have meddled in this matter, such as Luther, as Cochlæus tells us in his Life of him; but what are we to think when such men have effected the converse of what they set out to do? For we