HOW domestic animals affected by sorcery can be healed with remedies, and also storms in the air. First, note is to be made of certain unlawful remedies practiced by certain people. Some do this with superstitious words or acts, like those who use unlawful words and chants to heal worms in the fingers or limbs. (How to recognize whether these chants are lawful or not is treated in the preceding chapter.) There are others who do not sprinkle Holy Water over the domestic animals affected by sorcery, but pour it into their mouths.

To show that the first remedy, which consists of words, is unlawful, there is, in addition to the foregoing, the following demonstration by William of Auvergne (often cited) [Laws 27]. If there were some virtue inherent to the words (and let us speak of words as such), then it would be so in one of five ways, that is, with reference to the material (the air), or the form (the sound), or a method of making the sign, or all of these at once. It is not the first, because air taints only if it is poisonous. It is also not the second, because an aim exceeding the capacity vitiates the potential. Nor the third, because in that case the terms “devil,” “death,” and “hell” would always be harmful, and “health” and “goodness” would always be beneficial. It is also not all of them at once, because when the whole is composed of insufficient elements, it too is insufficient.

It is not valid to object that God bestowed the force upon the words as He did upon plants and stones, because if there were any virtues inherent in certain words or Sacramentals or other blessings and lawful chants, they would possess such virtues within themselves, not as words but as a result of divine arrangement and ordination and as a result of the agreement of God, as if the Lord said, “Whoever does this, I will perform this grace for him.”