"[1]
[Footnote 1: Bullinger, Fourth Decade, 9th Sermon, p. 348, Parker
Society.]
109. It must be remembered, too, that the emancipation from medievalism
was a very gradual process, not, as we are too prone to think it, a
revolution suddenly and completely effected. It was an evolution, not an
explosion. There is found, in consequence, a great divergence of
opinion, not only between the earliest and the later Reformers, but
between the statements of the same man at different periods of his
career. Tyndale, for instance, seems to have believed in the actual
possession of the human body by devils;[1] and this appears to have
been the opinion of the majority at the beginning of the Reformation,
for the first Prayer-book of Edward VI. contained the Catholic form of
exorcism for driving devils out of children, which was expunged upon
revision, the doctrine of obsession having in the mean time triumphed
over the older belief. It is necessary to bear these facts in mind
whilst considering any attempt to depict the general bearings of a
belief such as that in evil spirits; for many irreconcilable statements
are to be found among the authorities; and it is the duty of the writer
to sift out and describe those views which predominated, and these must
not be supposed to be proved inaccurate because a chance quotation can
be produced in contradiction.
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