Mark 5:13

If the devil is a murderer, it is clear that the demons who serve him are murderers, too. What Christ did has taught you this lesson. At any rate, he gave the demons leave to enter into the herd of swine and the demons drove the whole herd down the cliff and drowned them. He did this so that you might know that the demons would have done the same thing to human beings and would have drowned them if God had allowed them to do so. But he restrained the demons, stopped them, and permitted them to do no such thing. Once they had gotten power over the swine, the demons made quite clear what they would have done to us. If they did not spare the swine, it is all the more sure they would not have kept their hands off us. Therefore, beloved, do not be swept off by the deceits of the demons but stand firm in your fear of God.

Driven forth, the wily demons, legion named that evil scourge, Seize upon the sordid foulness of a herd of filthy swine And into the muddy waters plunge themselves with maddened beasts.

He agrees to this. Since our life is a warfare, the Lord did not wish to remove the demons from it, so that through their struggle against us they might make us more skilled. He permits them to enter the swine so that we may …

And the unclean spirits, coming out, entered into the pigs, and with great force, the herd rushed into the sea, about two thousand of them, and were drowned in the sea. This signifies that once the Church is glorified and the people of the Gentiles …

(ubi sup.) And He gave them leave, that by the killing of the swine, the salvation of men might be furthered.

Here again the demoniac is the people of the Gentiles, in a most hopeless case, bound neither by the law of nature, nor of God, nor by human fear. Or they are choked in hell without any touch of mercy by the rushing on of an early death; which evils many persons thus avoid, for by the scourging of the fool, the wise is made more prudent.

(ubi sup.) Who dwelt in the tombs, because they delighted in dead works, that is, in sins; who were ever raging night and day, because whether in prosperity or in adversity, they were never free from the service of malignant spirits: again, by the foulness of their works, they lay as it were in the tombs, in their lofty pride, they wandered over the mountains, by words of most hardened infidelity, they as it were cut themselves with stones. But he said, My name is Legion, because the Gentile people were enslaved to divers idolatrous forms of worship. Again, that the unclean spirits going out from man enter into swine, which they cast headlong into the sea, implies that now that the people of the Gentiles are freed from the empire of demons, they who have not chosen to believe in Christ, work sacrilegious rites in hidden places.

Or by this it is signified that devils enter into those men, who live like swine, rolling themselves in the slough of pleasure; they drive them headlong into the sea down the precipice of perdition, into the sea of an evil life where they are choked.

), he did not forbid or restrain them, he let them do as they had a mind. Thus he would let the Gadarenes see what powerful spiteful enemies devils are, that they might thereby be induced to make him their Friend, who alone was able to control and conquer them, and had made it appear that he was so.

quarantine:debris (2026-07-29) — leading-punctuation+unbalanced-parens

And forthwith Jesus gave them leave,....

And forthwith Jesus gave them leave--In Matthew (Mt 8:32) this is given with majestic brevity--"Go!" The owners, if Jews, drove an illegal trade; if heathens, they insulted the national religion: in either case the permission was just.

These verses describe one of those mysterious miracles which the Gospels frequently record — the casting out of a devil. Of all the cases of this kind in the New Testament, none is so fully described as this one. Of all the three evangelists who relate the history, none gives it so fully and minutely as Mark. We see, in the first place, in these verses, that the possession of a man's body by the devil, was a real and true thing in the time of our Lord's earthly ministry . It is a painful fact, that there are never lacking professing Christians who try to explain away our Lord's miracles. They endeavor to account for them by natural causes, and to show that they were not worked by any extraordinary power. Of all miracles, there are none which they assault so strenuously as the casting out of devils. They do not scruple to deny Satanic possession entirely. They tell us that it was nothing more than lunacy, or frenzy, or epilepsy, and that the idea of the devil inhabiting a man's body is absurd. The best and simplest answer to such skeptical objections, is a reference to the plain narratives of the Gospels, and especially to the one before us at this moment. The facts here detailed are utterly inexplicable, if we do not believe Satanic possession. It is notorious that lunacy, and frenzy, and epilepsy are not infectious complaints, and at any rate cannot be communicated to a herd of swine! And yet men ask us to believe, that as soon as this man was healed, two thousand swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, from a sudden impulse, without any apparent cause to account for their so doing! Such reasoning is the height of credulity. When men can satisfy themselves with such explanations, they are in a pitiable state of mind. Let us beware of a skeptical and incredulous spirit in all matters relating to the devil.

These verses describe one of those mysterious miracles which the Gospels frequently record — the casting out of a devil. Of all the cases of this kind in the New Testament, none is so fully described as this one. Of all the three evangelists who relate the history, none gives it so fully and minutely as Mark. We see, in the first place, in these verses, that the possession of a man's body by the devil, was a real and true thing in the time of our Lord's earthly ministry .

Gave them leave - For επετρεψεν, DH, three others, and three copies of the Itala have επεμψεν, sent them.