On Blackstone and Demons

I was not deeply perusing, but I was revisiting his thought.

William Blackstone is regarded as one of the key intellectual influences on the America Revolution. His Commentaries on the Law of England were de rigueur reading for all educated colonial lawmakers. Adams, Jefferson, Madison, George Mason, James Wilson, all of them were deeply familiar with his work. His four volumes were the first comprehensive study and explanation of the Common Law as it had developed since Magna Charta. It was published in 1770, the very same years as the Boston Massacre.

Blackstone’s thinking will be one of the firebrand proximate causes of the America Revolution. His clear explanation of the Natural Law will shape our Declaration of Independence. That idea that” All Men are Created Equal and Endowed by our Creator” is a restatement of the Natural Law.

Natural Law is the idea that God has underwritten and informed the world, His entire universe, with moral order—inescapably, indisputably (self-evidently). It is the indelibly etched law that all human beings have written on their hearts that we “cannot not know” to use a famous double negative. Indeed, that natural law is a reflection of the Image of God. It is, in part, what makes us all equal—our common natural moral sensibility. This is what gives us the means of governing ourselves.

While I was reading Blackstone, I found this. It pertains to something I often think, but fear to speak. I, like many of us, today, alive in a post-Christian age, think things of similar content but refrain from saying, lest we seem odd.

To speak of demons and evil spirits is not the parlance of our time, but I am reminded by one of the greatest thinkers in the history of liberty, by William Blackstone, that such things are appropriate to think, even by children of the Enlightenment, and by declension are matters we must speak aloud, even if it makes us uncomfortable.

This is what Blackstone said:

To deny the possibility, nay, the actual existence of witchcraft and sorcery, is at once flatly to contradict the revealed word of God in various passages both of the Old and New Testament, and the thing itself is a Truth to which every nation in the world hath, in its turn, borne testimony, by either example seemingly well attested or by prohibitory laws, which at least suppose the possibility of a commerce with evil spirits.

What should we, as children of the “Enlightenment” make of this? I will say what I have thought but have never spoken openly until now.

There are evil spirits in our world. There are witches. There are demons.

The events that are presently unfolding in our country—the lies, the defamations, the open bold conspiracies, the perjuries, the “manufactured narratives” the wickedness in high places, all appear to me, a demonstration of this spiritual witchcraft.

I believe, I’ve never said this before in public—but those forces, those realities of the invisible world are moving together, like an invisible army of evil, in unison, all obeying some inaudible voice, with intent and malice, the rest of us cannot hear.

But you and I CAN HEAR it in their lies. We can SEE it in their faces. Without telling you who, you know who I speak of. Because WE have a voice THEY cannot hear!

We need to return and genuflect before that Truth that tells us about the ancient enemy and his minions. Evil is real. It is here. Now.

But fear not.

There is a natural law—a just and omniscient and omnipotent God. And all the work of these servants of evil will be found out. Will be judged.

To quote Brother Martin, “Darkness cannot overcome darkness, only light can do that.”

Stay in the light. The darkness will fail. It will fail so long as we remain in the light of Christ and the natural law that we all know in our hearts.

Thank you William Blackstone for giving credibility to that which we think but fear to speak.