The Journals & Notebook of
 Nathan Bangs 1805-1806, 1817

 

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John Carroll on Darius Dunham's exorcism of a young woman
Carroll Case and His Cotemporaries 38-39

30. Dunham was distinguished for fidelity, and faith, and prayer, as well as wit and sarcasm. A pious man informed the writer, that a relation of his own, who first lost her piety and then her reason, was visited by Dunham and pronounced him to be "possessed of the Devil." He kneeled down in front of her, and, although she blasphemed and spit in his face till the spittle ran down on the floor, never flinched, but went on praying and exorcising by turns—shaming the devil for getting into the weaker vessel, and commanding him to get out of her, till she became subdued, fell on her knees, began to pray and wrestle with God for mercy, and never rose till she got up from her knees in possession of her reason, and rejoicing in the light of God's countenance. The narrator was a truly good man, a class-leader, the late William Rose, of Belleville, and we give the incident as we received it from him, without presuming to pronounce on the precise psycological [sic] diagnosis of the case.

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Edited by Scott McLaren
Book History Practicum
University of Toronto