And [the spirit] cried, and rent him sore
We rightly supply, "the spirit", as do the Syriac and Persic versions, "the demon"; for it was he, and not the child, that cried, and made an hideous noise, at his ejection; being filled with wrath and rage, that he must be obliged to quit the possession he had so long held; and therefore, in spite and malice, before it left him, shook and tore him, and threw him into dreadful convulsions:
and came out of him;
though sore against his will, being obliged to it, by the superior power of Christ:
and he was as one dead:
that is, the child, when the devil had left him, lay as still as if he had no breath, nor life in him:
insomuch that many said, he is dead;
really dead: that there was no life in him, nor any hopes of his coming to himself again.