Having fallen in with Farmer's treatise on the Demoniacs, I carefully studied it; and found it to prove unanswerably, that a belief in demoniacal possession is a superstition not more respectable than that of witchcraft.

But Farmer did not at all convince me, that the three Evangelists do not share the vulgar error.

Indeed, the instant we believe that the imagined possessions were only various forms of disease, we are forced to draw conclusions of the utmost moment, most damaging to the credit of the narrators.[3] Clearly, they are then convicted of misstating facts, under the influence of superstitious credulity.

They represent demoniacs as having a supernatural acquaintance with Jesus, which, it now becomes manifest, they cannot have had.

The devils cast out of two demoniacs (or one) are said to have entered into a herd of swine.