Page:The history of Witchcraft and demonology.djvu/113

 in Sextum Decalogi Præceptum (p. 78) writes: “All theologians speak of … evil spirits who appear in the shape of a man, a woman, or even some animal. This is either a real and actual presence, or the effect of imagination. They decide that this sin … incurs particular guilt which must be specifically confessed, to wit an evil superstition whereof the essence is a compact with the Devil. In this sin, therefore, we have two distinct kinds of malice, one an offence against chastity; the other against our holy faith.” Dom Dominie Schram, O.S.B., in his Institutiones Theologiæ Mysticæ poses the following: “The inquiry is made whether a demon … may thus attack a man or woman, whose obsession would be suffered if the subject were wholly bent upon obtaining perfection and walking the highest paths of contemplation. Here we must distinguish the true and the false. It is certain that—whatever doubters may say—there exist such demons, incubi and succubi: and S. Augustine asserts (The City of God, Book XV, chapter 23) that it is most rash to advance the contrary. … S. Thomas, and most other theologians maintain this too. Wherefore the men or women who suffer these impudicities are sinners who either invite demons … or who freely consent to demons when the evil spirits tempt them to commit such abominations. That these and other abandoned wretches may be violently assaulted by the demon we cannot doubt … and I myself have known several persons who although they were greatly troubled on account of their crimes, and utterly loathed this foul intercourse with the demon, were nevertheless compelled sorely against their will to endure these assaults of Satan.”

It will be seen that great Saints and scholars and all moral theologians of importance affirm the possibility of commerce with incarnate evil intelligences. The demonologists also range themselves in a solid phalanx of assent. Hermann Thyraus, S.J., in his De Spirituum apparitione says: “It is so rash and inept to deny these (things) that so to adopt this attitude you must needs reject and spurn the most weighty and considered judgements of most holy and authoritative writers, nay, you must wage war upon man’s sense and consciousness, whilst at the same time you expose your ignorance of the power of the Devil and the empery evil spirits may obtain over man.” Delrio, in his