Satan has the Power of Disease by Dudley Marvin Canright

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 21, 1868

Satan has the Power of Disease.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

The Bible teaches that Satan afflicts men with disease and death. This we believe to be true. The early fathers believed so, too, as will be plainly seen by the following extract from Tatian's address to the Greeks, written about A. D. 150.

“There are, indeed, diseases and disturbances of the matter that is in us; but, when such things happen, the demons ascribe the causes of them to themselves, and approach a man whenever disease lays hold on him. Sometimes they themselves disturb the habit of the body by a tempest of folly; but, being smitten by the word of God, they depart in terror, and the sick man is healed.” Chap. xvi.

Again: “The demons do not cure, but by their arts make men their captives. And the admirable Justin has denounced them as robbers. For, as it is the practice of some to capture persons and then to restore them to their friends for a ransom, so those who are esteemed gods, invading the bodies of certain persons, and producing a sense of their presence by dreams, command them to come forth into the public, and in the sight of all, when they have taken their fill of this world, fly away from the sick, and, destroying the disease which they had produced, restore men to their former state.” Chap. xviii.

They occasionally do a little good to cover their evil deeds. D. M. CANRIGHT.

Curtis' Corner, R. I.