And when it strikes it does its work with such a venomous, exultant splutter, that there seems something animate, demoniac in it.

They represent demoniacs as having a supernatural acquaintance with Jesus, which, it now becomes manifest, they cannot have had.

For instance, he is silent as to the healing of the demoniac at Capernaum, but, instead of this, he gives us two Gadarene demoniacs, at the same time modifying the language in which he describes this latter incident after the pattern of the former; in like manner he speaks of the healing of two blind men at Jericho, but only because he had passed over the healing of the blind man at Bethsaida.