Luke 8. 33. the word we translate Devils is <...> called v. 29. <...>, and the same, Matth. 8. 29. <...>. Besides the force of which words, I have shewn that the Story also determines them to a Substantive and Personal meaning.
But the Author saith, That Δαίμόνιον can hardly with propriety signifie any thing else but an extraordinary affliction from God, because of its derivation from <...>, p. 37. One would wonder at the confidence of these Men, especially in their pretended Criticisms, by which they would impose what sense upon words they please. <...> it is notoriously known signifies Dæmon, taken often in the ill sense, and so particularly in the place newly mentioned, deriving from <...>, which degenerates here, as in Saga, Witch, Wizard and the like, and what then should this Author by this mean?
SECT. XI.
Whether there were no feats performed by the Demoniacks in the Gospels, but Mad-men might perform.
It is further Objected by this Writer, that there are no Feats Recorded of those supposed Demoniacks, but what Mad-men could perform and often do. In which he considered not the Spirits in the Possest, in the Country of the Gorgasens, Matth. 8. 29. St. Mark and St. Luke write Gadarens, the Countries lye near together. Josephus reckons Gadara among the Grecian Cities which Pompey took from the Jews, and according to him the People were mostly Syrians.
In this Country where our Saviour had not been before nor after, that we read, two possest with Devils who had lived among the Tombs, out of the Conversation of Mankind met him, and presently cried out; What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God, art thou come to torment us before the time. Was there nothing now beyond the rate of ordinary Mad-men in this? How did they, who lived in such a dismal solitude among the Tombs, in a place where no Man passed, come to know this was Jesus, who never had been thereabout before, as far as we can hear? Or how came those Mad-men to know,
