[40] It is pretty clear that Eginhard had his doubts about the deacon, whose pledges he qualifies as _sponsiones incertæ_. But, to be sure, he wrote after events which fully justified scepticism.
[41] The words are _scrinia sine clave_, which seems to mean "having no key." But the circumstances forbid the idea of breaking open.
[42] Eginhard speaks with lofty contempt of the "vana ac superstitiosa præsumptio" of the poor woman's companions in trying to alleviate her sufferings with "herbs and frivolous incantations." Vain enough, no doubt, but the "mulierculæ" might have returned the epithet "superstitious" with interest.
[43] Of course there is nothing new in this argument: but it does not grow weaker by age. And the case of Eginhard is far more instructive than that of Augustine, because the former has so very frankly, though incidentally, revealed to us not only his own mental and moral habits, but those of the people about him.
[44] See 1 Cor. xii. 10-28; 2 Cor. vi. 12; Rom. xv. 19.
[45] _A Journal or Historical Account of the Life, Travels, Sufferings, and Christian Experiences, &c., of George Fox_, Ed. 1694, pp. 27, 28.
In the course of a discussion which has been going on during the last two years,[46] it has been maintained by the defenders of ecclesiastical Christianity that the demonology of the books of the New Testament is an essential and integral part of the revelation of the nature of the spiritual world promulgated by Jesus of Nazareth. Indeed, if the historical accuracy of the Gospels and of the Acts of the Apostles is to be taken for granted, if the teachings of the Epistles are divinely inspired, and if the universal belief and practice of the primitive Church are the models which all later times must follow, there can be no doubt that those who accept the demonology are in the right. It is as plain as language can make it, that the writers of the Gospels believed in the existence of Satan and the subordinate ministers of evil as strongly as they believed in that of God and the angels, and that they had an unhesitating faith in possession and in exorcism. No reader of the first three Gospels can hesitate to admit that, in the opinion of those persons among whom the traditions out of which they are compiled arose, Jesus held, and constantly acted upon, the same theory of the spiritual world. Nowhere do we find the slightest hint that he doubted the theory, or questioned the efficacy of the curative operations based upon it.