Page:Philochristus, Abbott, 1878.djvu/141

Rh stones to cast at us, so that we feared to approach him; and certain shepherds from afar off beckoned to us to go back from him. But Jesus went before the rest of us and accosted him. And lo, at the voice of Jesus, the man straightway let the stones fall from his hands; and, for a moment, he stood as one astonied and in a trance. Then he shrieked aloud and made answer to Jesus in two voices, after the manner of those possessed with unclean spirits. For at one time the man spake, and at another the devils. But the devils, speaking in a deep hollow voice, declared that they were swine, and three thousand in number, and that their name was Legion. Moreover they besought Jesus that he would not send them into the abyss (for by this name do the evil spirits use to call that place wherein they must needs wander so long as they have no bodies of men to dwell in), but that he would suffer them to remain in the man's body. But Jesus drove them out, and the Legion went forth into the abyss, to the number of three thousand, and in the shapes of swine. But Jesus did not suffer the man to accompany him, but bade him return to his friends, and to tell them what great things the Lord had done for him.

This mighty work of Jesus I have set down the more exactly, because no such unclean spirit as this was ever cast out by any other exorcist. For other men have been possessed with swine, or toads, or scorpions, or serpents, but not with many in number, seldom with more than seven. But this man was possessed with three thousand swine. For I not only heard him say this to Jesus, but he also repeated it to me; for I conversed with him. He told me also that he himself saw the three thousand swine go forth and run, first upward, and then violently down from the cliff, even to the abyss. Now the man was a Gadarene, a Jew by birth, and a patriot, one of the sect of the