ludicrous. My lamented friend, John Sterling, has thus summed up
Dr. Henderson's arguments about Mark. "Mark was probably inspired,
_because he was an acquaintance of Peter_; and because Dr. Henderson
would be reviled by other Dissenters, if he doubted it."

* * * * *

About this time, the great phenomenon of these gospels,--the casting
out of devils,--pressed forcibly on my attention. I now dared to
look full into the facts, and saw that the disorders described were
perfectly similar to epilepsy, mania, catalepsy, and other known
maladies. Nay, the deaf, the dumb, the hunchbacked, are spoken of as
devil-ridden. I farther knew that such diseases are still ascribed to
evil genii in Mussulman countries: even a vicious horse is believed by
the Arabs to be _majnun_, possessed by a Jin or Genie. Devils also
are cast out in Abyssinia to this day. 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. This must have