Editorial note — Observations, and arguments, in proof of the American Indians being descended from the Jews. (continued 4)

XLIV. They imagined incense also to be a sure means to banish the devil; though asafœtida, or the devil’s dung, might have been much better. On Cant. iv. 6. “I will get me to the hill of incense,” the Chaldee paraphrast says, that, while the house of Israel kept the art of their holy fore-fathers, both the morning and mid-day evil spirits fled away, because the divine glory dwelt in the sanctuary, which was built on Mount Moriah; and that all the devils fled when they smelled the effluvia of the fine incense that was there. They likewise believed that herbs and roots had a power to expel dæmons. And Josephus tells us, that the root Bara, immediately drives out the devil. I suppose it had such a physical power against fevers and agues, as the jesuit’s bark.

The church of Rome, in order to have powerful holy things, as well as the Jews, applies salt, spittle, holy-water, and consecrated oil, to expel the devils from the credulous of their own persuasion; and the oil alone is used as a viaticum, on account of its lubricous quality, to make them slippery, and thereby prevent the devil from laying hold, and pulling them down when they ascend upward. They reckon that observance a most religious duty, and an infallible preservative against the legions of evil spirits who watch in the aerial regions; and also necessary to gain celestial admission for believers.