BOOK NINTH.

Argument

HAVING IN THE PRECEDING BOOK SHOWN THAT THE WORSHIP OF DEMONS MUST
BE ABJURED, SINCE THEY IN A THOUSAND WAYS PROCLAIM THEMSELVES TO
BE WICKED SPIRITS, AUGUSTINE IN THIS BOOK MEETS THOSE WHO ALLEGE
A DISTINCTION AMONG DEMONS, SOME BEING EVIL, WHILE OTHERS ARE
GOOD; AND, HAVING EXPLODED THIS DISTINCTION, HE PROVES THAT TO NO
DEMON, BUT TO CHRIST ALONE, BELONGS THE OFFICE OF PROVIDING MEN
WITH ETERNAL BLESSEDNESS.

1. The point at which the discussion has arrived, and what remains to be
handled.

Some have advanced the opinion that there are both good
and bad gods; but some, thinking more respectfully of
the gods have attributed to them so much honour and praise
as to preclude the supposition of any god being wicked. But
those who have maintained that there are wicked gods as well
as good ones have included the demons under the name
“gods,” and sometimes, though more rarely, have called the
gods demons; so that they admit that Jupiter, whom they
make the king and head of all the rest, is called a demon by
Homer.[329] Those, on the other hand, who maintain that the
gods are all good, and far more excellent than the men who
are justly called good, are moved by the actions of the demons,
which they can neither deny nor impute to the gods whose
goodness they affirm, to distinguish between gods and demons;
so that, whenever they find anything offensive in the deeds or
sentiments by which unseen spirits manifest their power, they
believe this to proceed not from the gods, but from the demons.
At the same time they believe that, as no god can hold direct
intercourse with men, these demons hold the position of mediators,
ascending with prayers, and returning with gifts. This
is the opinion of the Platonists, the ablest and most esteemed
of their philosophers, with whom we therefore chose to debate
this question,—whether the worship of a number of gods is of[Pg 354]
any service towards obtaining blessedness in the future life.
And this is the reason why, in the preceding book, we have
inquired how the demons, who take pleasure in such things
as good and wise men loathe and execrate, in the sacrilegious
and immoral fictions which the poets have written, not of men,
but of the gods themselves, and in the wicked and criminal
violence of magical arts, can be regarded as more nearly related
and more friendly to the gods than men are, and can mediate
between good men and the good gods; and it has been demonstrated
that this is absolutely impossible.

2. Whether among the demons, inferior to the gods, there are any good spirits
under whose guardianship the human soul might reach true blessedness.

This book, then, ought, according to the promise made in
the end of the preceding one, to contain a discussion, not of
the difference which exists among the gods, who, according to
the Platonists, are all good, nor of the difference between gods
and demons, the former of whom they separate by a wide
interval from men, while the latter are placed intermediately
between the gods and men, but of the difference, since they
make one, among the demons themselves. This we shall
discuss so far as it bears on our theme. It has been the
common and usual belief that some of the demons are bad,
others good; and this opinion, whether it be that of the
Platonists or any other sect, must by no means be passed over
in silence, lest some one suppose he ought to cultivate the
good demons in order that by their mediation he may be
accepted by the gods, all of whom he believes to be good, and
that he may live with them after death; whereas he would
thus be ensnared in the toils of wicked spirits, and would
wander far from the true God, with whom alone, and in
whom alone, the human soul, that is to say, the soul that is
rational and intellectual, is blessed.

3. What Apuleius attributes to the demons, to whom, though he does not deny
them reason, he does not ascribe virtue.

What, then, is the difference between good and evil demons?
For the Platonist Apuleius, in a treatise on this whole subject,[Pg 355][330]
while he says a great deal about their aerial bodies, has not
a word to say of the spiritual virtues with which, if they
were good, they must have been endowed. Not a word has
he said, then, of that which could give them happiness; but
proof of their misery he has given, acknowledging that their
mind, by which they rank as reasonable beings, is not only
not imbued and fortified with virtue so as to resist all unreasonable
passions, but that it is somehow agitated with
tempestuous emotions, and is thus on a level with the mind
of foolish men. His own words are: “It is this class of
demons the poets refer to, when, without serious error, they
feign that the gods hate and love individuals among men,
prospering and ennobling some, and opposing and distressing
others. Therefore pity, indignation, grief, joy, every human
emotion is experienced by the demons, with the same mental
disturbance, and the same tide of feeling and thought. These
turmoils and tempests banish them far from the tranquillity of
the celestial gods.” Can there be any doubt that in these
words it is not some inferior part of their spiritual nature, but
the very mind by which the demons hold their rank as rational
beings, which he says is tossed with passion like a stormy sea?
They cannot, then, be compared even to wise men, who with
undisturbed mind resist these perturbations to which they
are exposed in this life, and from which human infirmity is
never exempt, and who do not yield themselves to approve
of or perpetrate anything which might deflect them from
the path of wisdom and law of rectitude. They resemble in
character, though not in bodily appearance, wicked and foolish
men. I might indeed say they are worse, inasmuch as they
have grown old in iniquity, and incorrigible by punishment.
Their mind, as Apuleius says, is a sea tossed with tempest,
having no rallying point of truth or virtue in their soul from
which they can resist their turbulent and depraved emotions.

4. The opinion of the Peripatetics and Stoics about mental emotions.

Among the philosophers there are two opinions about these
mental emotions, which the Greeks call πάθη, while some of
our own writers, as Cicero, call them perturbations,[331] some[Pg 356]
affections, and some, to render the Greek word more accurately,
passions. Some say that even the wise man is subject
to these perturbations, though moderated and controlled by
reason, which imposes laws upon them, and so restrains them
within necessary bounds. This is the opinion of the Platonists
and Aristotelians; for Aristotle was Plato’s disciple, and the
founder of the Peripatetic school. But others, as the Stoics,
are of opinion that the wise man is not subject to these perturbations.
But Cicero, in his book De Finibus, shows that
the Stoics are here at variance with the Platonists and Peripatetics
rather in words than in reality; for the Stoics decline
to apply the term “goods” to external and bodily advantages,[332]
because they reckon that the only good is virtue, the art of
living well, and this exists only in the mind. The other
philosophers, again, use the simple and customary phraseology,
and do not scruple to call these things goods, though in comparison
of virtue, which guides our life, they are little and of
small esteem. And thus it is obvious that, whether these
outward things are called goods or advantages, they are held
in the same estimation by both parties, and that in this
matter the Stoics are pleasing themselves merely with a novel
phraseology. It seems, then, to me that in this question,
whether the wise man is subject to mental passions, or wholly
free from them, the controversy is one of words rather than
of things; for I think that, if the reality and not the mere
sound of the words is considered, the Stoics hold precisely the
same opinion as the Platonists and Peripatetics. For, omitting
for brevity’s sake other proofs which I might adduce in support
of this opinion, I will state but one which I consider
conclusive. Aulus Gellius, a man of extensive erudition, and
gifted with an eloquent and graceful style, relates, in his work
entitled Noctes Atticæ,[333] that he once made a voyage with an
eminent Stoic philosopher; and he goes on to relate fully and
with gusto what I shall barely state, that when the ship was
tossed and in danger from a violent storm, the philosopher[Pg 357]
grew pale with terror. This was noticed by those on board,
who, though themselves threatened with death, were curious
to see whether a philosopher would be agitated like other
men. When the tempest had passed over, and as soon as
their security gave them freedom to resume their talk, one
of the passengers, a rich and luxurious Asiatic, begins to
banter the philosopher, and rally him because he had even
become pale with fear, while he himself had been unmoved
by the impending destruction. But the philosopher availed
himself of the reply of Aristippus the Socratic, who, on finding
himself similarly bantered by a man of the same character,
answered, “You had no cause for anxiety for the soul of a
profligate debauchee, but I had reason to be alarmed for the
soul of Aristippus.” The rich man being thus disposed of,
Aulus Gellius asked the philosopher, in the interests of science
and not to annoy him, what was the reason of his fear? And
he, willing to instruct a man so zealous in the pursuit of
knowledge, at once took from his wallet a book of Epictetus
the Stoic,[334] in which doctrines were advanced which precisely
harmonized with those of Zeno and Chrysippus, the founders
of the Stoical school. Aulus Gellius says that he read in
this book that the Stoics maintain that there are certain
impressions made on the soul by external objects which they
call phantasiæ, and that it is not in the power of the soul to
determine whether or when it shall be invaded by these.
When these impressions are made by alarming and formidable
objects, it must needs be that they move the soul even of the
wise man, so that for a little he trembles with fear, or is
depressed by sadness, these impressions anticipating the work
of reason and self-control; but this does not imply that the
mind accepts these evil impressions, or approves or consents
to them. For this consent is, they think, in a man’s power;
there being this difference between the mind of the wise man
and that of the fool, that the fool’s mind yields to these passions
and consents to them, while that of the wise man, though it
cannot help being invaded by them, yet retains with unshaken
firmness a true and steady persuasion of those things which
it ought rationally to desire or avoid. This account of what[Pg 358]
Aulus Gellius relates that he read in the book of Epictetus
about the sentiments and doctrines of the Stoics I have given
as well as I could, not, perhaps, with his choice language, but
with greater brevity, and, I think, with greater clearness.
And if this be true, then there is no difference, or next to
none, between the opinion of the Stoics and that of the other
philosophers regarding mental passions and perturbations, for
both parties agree in maintaining that the mind and reason of
the wise man are not subject to these. And perhaps what
the Stoics mean by asserting this, is that the wisdom which
characterizes the wise man is clouded by no error and sullied
by no taint, but, with this reservation that his wisdom
remains undisturbed, he is exposed to the impressions which
the goods and ills of this life (or, as they prefer to call them,
the advantages or disadvantages) make upon them. For we
need not say that if that philosopher had thought nothing of
those things which he thought he was forthwith to lose, life
and bodily safety, he would not have been so terrified by his
danger as to betray his fear by the pallor of his cheek.
Nevertheless, he might suffer this mental disturbance, and
yet maintain the fixed persuasion that life and bodily safety,
which the violence of the tempest threatened to destroy, are
not those good things which make their possessors good, as
the possession of righteousness does. But in so far as they
persist that we must call them not goods but advantages,
they quarrel about words and neglect things. For what
difference does it make whether goods or advantages be the
better name, while the Stoic no less than the Peripatetic is
alarmed at the prospect of losing them, and while, though they
name them differently, they hold them in like esteem? Both
parties assure us that, if urged to the commission of some
immorality or crime by the threatened loss of these goods or
advantages, they would prefer to lose such things as preserve
bodily comfort and security rather than commit such things
as violate righteousness. And thus the mind in which this
resolution is well grounded suffers no perturbations to prevail
with it in opposition to reason, even though they assail the
weaker parts of the soul; and not only so, but it rules over
them, and, while it refuses its consent and resists them, administers[Pg 359]
a reign of virtue. Such a character is ascribed to
Æneas by Virgil when he says,

“He stands immovable by tears,

Nor tenderest words with pity hears.”[335]

5. That the passions which assail the souls of Christians do not seduce them
to vice, but exercise their virtue.

We need not at present give a careful and copious exposition
of the doctrine of Scripture, the sum of Christian knowledge, regarding
these passions. It subjects the mind itself to God, that
He may rule and aid it, and the passions, again, to the mind,
to moderate and bridle them, and turn them to righteous uses.
In our ethics, we do not so much inquire whether a pious soul
is angry, as why he is angry; not whether he is sad, but what
is the cause of his sadness; not whether he fears, but what he
fears. For I am not aware that any right thinking person
would find fault with anger at a wrongdoer which seeks his
amendment, or with sadness which intends relief to the
suffering, or with fear lest one in danger be destroyed. The
Stoics, indeed, are accustomed to condemn compassion.[336] But
how much more honourable had it been in that Stoic we have
been telling of, had he been disturbed by compassion prompting
him to relieve a fellow-creature, than to be disturbed by
the fear of shipwreck! Far better, and more humane, and
more consonant with pious sentiments, are the words of Cicero
in praise of Cæsar, when he says, “Among your virtues none
is more admirable and agreeable than your compassion.”[337]
And what is compassion but a fellow-feeling for another’s
misery, which prompts us to help him if we can? And this
emotion is obedient to reason, when compassion is shown
without violating right, as when the poor are relieved, or the
penitent forgiven. Cicero, who knew how to use language,
did not hesitate to call this a virtue, which the Stoics are not
ashamed to reckon among the vices, although, as the book
of that eminent Stoic, Epictetus, quoting the opinions of Zeno
and Chrysippus, the founders of the school, has taught us,
they admit that passions of this kind invade the soul of the
wise man, whom they would have to be free from all vice.[Pg 360]
Whence it follows that these very passions are not judged by
them to be vices, since they assail the wise man without
forcing him to act against reason and virtue; and that, therefore,
the opinion of the Peripatetics or Platonists and of the Stoics
is one and the same. But, as Cicero says,[338] mere logomachy
is the bane of these pitiful Greeks, who thirst for contention
rather than for truth. However, it may justly be asked,
whether our subjection to these affections, even while we
follow virtue, is a part of the infirmity of this life? For
the holy angels feel no anger while they punish those whom
the eternal law of God consigns to punishment, no fellow-feeling
with misery while they relieve the miserable, no fear
while they aid those who are in danger; and yet ordinary
language ascribes to them also these mental emotions, because,
though they have none of our weakness, their acts resemble
the actions to which these emotions move us; and thus even
God Himself is said in Scripture to be angry, and yet without
any perturbation. For this word is used of the effect of His
vengeance, not of the disturbing mental affection.

6. Of the passions which, according to Apuleius, agitate the demons who are
supposed by him to mediate between gods and men.

Deferring for the present the question about the holy angels,
let us examine the opinion of the Platonists, that the demons
who mediate between gods and men are agitated by passions.
For if their mind, though exposed to their incursion, still
remained free and superior to them, Apuleius could not have
said that their hearts are tossed with passions as the sea by
stormy winds.[339] Their mind, then,—that superior part of their
soul whereby they are rational beings, and which, if it actually
exists in them, should rule and bridle the turbulent passions
of the inferior parts of the soul,—this mind of theirs, I say, is,
according to the Platonist referred to, tossed with a hurricane
of passions. The mind of the demons, therefore, is subject to
the emotions of fear, anger, lust, and all similar affections.
What part of them, then, is free, and endued with wisdom,
so that they are pleasing to the gods, and the fit guides of
men into purity of life, since their very highest part, being the
slave of passion and subject to vice, only makes them more[Pg 361]
intent on deceiving and seducing, in proportion to the mental
force and energy of desire they possess?

7. That the Platonists maintain that the poets wrong the gods by representing
them as distracted by party feeling, to which the demons, and not the gods,
are subject.

But if any one says that it is not of all the demons, but
only of the wicked, that the poets, not without truth, say that
they violently love or hate certain men,—for it was of them
Apuleius said that they were driven about by strong currents
of emotion,—how can we accept this interpretation, when
Apuleius, in the very same connection, represents all the
demons, and not only the wicked, as intermediate between
gods and men by their aerial bodies? The fiction of the poets,
according to him, consists in their making gods of demons,
and giving them the names of gods, and assigning them as
allies or enemies to individual men, using this poetical licence,
though they profess that the gods are very different in character
from the demons, and far exalted above them by their
celestial abode and wealth of beatitude. This, I say, is the
poets’ fiction, to say that these are gods who are not gods, and
that, under the names of gods, they fight among themselves
about the men whom they love or hate with keen partisan
feeling. Apuleius says that this is not far from the truth,
since, though they are wrongfully called by the names of the
gods, they are described in their own proper character as demons.
To this category, he says, belongs the Minerva of Homer,
“who interposed in the ranks of the Greeks to restrain
Achilles.”[340] For that this was Minerva he supposes to be
poetical fiction; for he thinks that Minerva is a goddess, and
he places her among the gods whom he believes to be all good
and blessed in the sublime ethereal region, remote from intercourse
with men. But that there was a demon favourable
to the Greeks and adverse to the Trojans, as another, whom
the same poet mentions under the name of Venus or Mars
(gods exalted above earthly affairs in their heavenly habitations),
was the Trojans’ ally and the foe of the Greeks, and
that these demons fought for those they loved against those
they hated,—in all this he owned that the poets stated something[Pg 362]
very like the truth. For they made these statements
about beings to whom he ascribes the same violent and tempestuous
passions as disturb men, and who are therefore
capable of loves and hatreds not justly formed, but formed in a
party spirit, as the spectators in races or hunts take fancies
and prejudices. It seems to have been the great fear of this
Platonist that the poetical fictions should be believed of the
gods, and not of the demons who bore their names.

8. How Apuleius defines the gods who dwell in heaven, the demons who occupy
the air, and men who inhabit earth.

The definition which Apuleius gives of demons, and in
which he of course includes all demons, is that they are in
nature animals, in soul subject to passion, in mind reasonable,
in body aerial, in duration eternal. Now in these five qualities
he has named absolutely nothing which is proper to good men
and not also to bad. For when Apuleius had spoken of the
celestials first, and had then extended his description so as to
include an account of those who dwell far below on the earth,
that, after describing the two extremes of rational being, he
might proceed to speak of the intermediate demons, he says,
“Men, therefore, who are endowed with the faculty of reason
and speech, whose soul is immortal and their members mortal,
who have weak and anxious spirits, dull and corruptible
bodies, dissimilar characters, similar ignorance, who are obstinate
in their audacity, and persistent in their hope, whose
labour is vain, and whose fortune is ever on the wane, their
race immortal, themselves perishing, each generation replenished
with creatures whose life is swift and their wisdom slow, their
death sudden and their life a wail,—these are the men who
dwell on the earth.”[341] In recounting so many qualities which
belong to the large proportion of men, did he forget that which
is the property of the few when he speaks of their wisdom
being slow? If this had been omitted, this his description
of the human race, so carefully elaborated, would have been
defective. And when he commended the excellence of the
gods, he affirmed that they excelled in that very blessedness
to which he thinks men must attain by wisdom. And therefore,
if he had wished us to believe that some of the demons[Pg 363]
are good, he should have inserted in his description something
by which we might see that they have, in common with the
gods, some share of blessedness, or, in common with men, some
wisdom. But, as it is, he has mentioned no good quality by
which the good may be distinguished from the bad. For
although he refrained from giving a full account of their
wickedness, through fear of offending, not themselves but their
worshippers, for whom he was writing, yet he sufficiently indicated
to discerning readers what opinion he had of them; for
only in the one article of the eternity of their bodies does he
assimilate them to the gods, all of whom, he asserts, are good
and blessed, and absolutely free from what he himself calls the
stormy passions of the demons; and as to the soul, he quite
plainly affirms that they resemble men and not the gods, and
that this resemblance lies not in the possession of wisdom, which
even men can attain to, but in the perturbation of passions
which sway the foolish and wicked, but is so ruled by the good
and wise that they prefer not to admit rather than to conquer
it. For if he had wished it to be understood that the demons
resembled the gods in the eternity not of their bodies but of
their souls, he would certainly have admitted men to share in
this privilege, because, as a Platonist, he of course must hold
that the human soul is eternal. Accordingly, when describing
this race of living beings, he said that their souls were immortal,
their members mortal. And, consequently, if men
have not eternity in common with the gods because they have
mortal bodies, demons have eternity in common with the gods
because their bodies are immortal.

9. Whether the intercession of the demons can secure for men the friendship
of the celestial gods.

How, then, can men hope for a favourable introduction to
the friendship of the gods by such mediators as these, who
are, like men, defective in that which is the better part of
every living creature, viz. the soul, and who resemble the gods
only in the body, which is the inferior part? For a living
creature or animal consists of soul and body, and of these two
parts the soul is undoubtedly the better; even though vicious
and weak, it is obviously better than even the soundest and
strongest body, for the greater excellence of its nature is not[Pg 364]
reduced to the level of the body even by the pollution of vice,
as gold, even when tarnished, is more precious than the purest
silver or lead. And yet these mediators, by whose interposition
things human and divine are to be harmonized, have an
eternal body in common with the gods, and a vicious soul in
common with men,—as if the religion by which these demons
are to unite gods and men were a bodily, and not a spiritual
matter. What wickedness, then, or punishment has suspended
these false and deceitful mediators, as it were head downwards,
so that their inferior part, their body, is linked to the gods
above, and their superior part, the soul, bound to men beneath;
united to the celestial gods by the part that serves, and miserable,
together with the inhabitants of earth, by the part that
rules? For the body is the servant, as Sallust says: “We
use the soul to rule, the body to obey;”[342] adding, “the one we
have in common with the gods, the other with the brutes.”
For he was here speaking of men; and they have, like the
brutes, a mortal body. These demons, whom our philosophic
friends have provided for us as mediators with the gods, may
indeed say of the soul and body, the one we have in common
with the gods, the other with men; but, as I said, they
are as it were suspended and bound head downwards, having
the slave, the body, in common with the gods, the master,
the soul, in common with miserable men,—their inferior part
exalted, their superior part depressed. And therefore, if any
one supposes that, because they are not subject, like terrestrial
animals, to the separation of soul and body by death, they
therefore resemble the gods in their eternity, their body must
not be considered a chariot of an eternal triumph, but rather
the chain of an eternal punishment.

10. That, according to Plotinus, men, whose body is mortal, are less wretched
than demons, whose body is eternal.

Plotinus, whose memory is quite recent,[343] enjoys the reputation
of having understood Plato better than any other of his
disciples. In speaking of human souls, he says, “The Father
in compassion made their bonds mortal;”[344] that is to say, he[Pg 365]
considered it due to the Father’s mercy that men, having a
mortal body, should not be for ever confined in the misery of
this life. But of this mercy the demons have been judged
unworthy, and they have received, in conjunction with a soul
subject to passions, a body not mortal like man’s, but eternal.
For they should have been happier than men if they had, like
men, had a mortal body, and, like the gods, a blessed soul.
And they should have been equal to men, if in conjunction
with a miserable soul they had at least received, like men, a
mortal body, so that death might have freed them from
trouble, if, at least, they should have attained some degree
of piety. But, as it is, they are not only no happier than men,
having, like them, a miserable soul, they are also more wretched,
being eternally bound to the body; for he does not leave us
to infer that by some progress in wisdom and piety they can
become gods, but expressly says that they are demons for ever.

11. Of the opinion of the Platonists, that the souls of men become demons
when disembodied.

He[345] says, indeed, that the souls of men are demons, and
that men become Lares if they are good, Lemures or Larvæ if
they are bad, and Manes if it is uncertain whether they deserve
well or ill. Who does not see at a glance that this is
a mere whirlpool sucking men to moral destruction? For,
however wicked men have been, if they suppose they shall
become Larvæ or divine Manes, they will become the worse
the more love they have for inflicting injury; for, as the Larvæ
are hurtful demons made out of wicked men, these men must
suppose that after death they will be invoked with sacrifices
and divine honours that they may inflict injuries. But this
question we must not pursue. He also states that the
blessed are called in Greek εὐδαίμονες, because they are good
souls, that is to say, good demons, confirming his opinion that
the souls of men are demons.

12. Of the three opposite qualities by which the Platonists distinguish between
the nature of men and that of demons.

But at present we are speaking of those beings whom he
described as being properly intermediate between gods and
men, in nature animals, in mind rational, in soul subject to[Pg 366]
passion, in body aerial, in duration eternal. When he had
distinguished the gods, whom he placed in the highest heaven,
from men, whom he placed on earth, not only by position but
also by the unequal dignity of their natures, he concluded in
these words: “You have here two kinds of animals: the
gods, widely distinguished from men by sublimity of abode,
perpetuity of life, perfection of nature; for their habitations
are separated by so wide an interval that there can be no
intimate communication between them, and while the vitality
of the one is eternal and indefeasible, that of the others is
fading and precarious, and while the spirits of the gods are
exalted in bliss, those of men are sunk in miseries.”[346] Here
I find three opposite qualities ascribed to the extremes of
being, the highest and lowest. For, after mentioning the three
qualities for which we are to admire the gods, he repeated,
though in other words, the same three as a foil to the defects of
man. The three qualities are, “sublimity of abode, perpetuity
of life, perfection of nature.” These he again mentioned so
as to bring out their contrasts in man’s condition. As he had
mentioned “sublimity of abode,” he says, “Their habitations
are separated by so wide an interval;” as he had mentioned
“perpetuity of life,” he says, that “while divine life is
eternal and indefeasible, human life is fading and precarious;”
and as he had mentioned “perfection of nature,” he says, that
“while the spirits of the gods are exalted in bliss, those of
men are sunk in miseries.” These three things, then, he predicates
of the gods, exaltation, eternity, blessedness; and of
man he predicates the opposite, lowliness of habitation, mortality,
misery.

13. How the demons can mediate between gods and men if they have nothing
in common with both, being neither blessed like the gods, nor miserable like
men.

If, now, we endeavour to find between these opposites the
mean occupied by the demons, there can be no question as to
their local position; for, between the highest and lowest place,
there is a place which is rightly considered and called the
middle place. The other two qualities remain, and to them
we must give greater care, that we may see whether they are[Pg 367]
altogether foreign to the demons, or how they are so bestowed
upon them without infringing upon their mediate position.
We may dismiss the idea that they are foreign to them. For
we cannot say that the demons, being rational animals, are
neither blessed nor wretched, as we say of the beasts and
plants, which are void of feeling and reason, or as we say of
the middle place, that it is neither the highest nor the lowest.
The demons, being rational, must be either miserable or blessed.
And, in like manner, we cannot say that they are neither
mortal nor immortal; for all living things either live eternally
or end life in death. Our author, besides, stated that
the demons are eternal. What remains for us to suppose,
then, but that these mediate beings are assimilated to the gods
in one of the two remaining qualities, and to men in the other?
For if they received both from above, or both from beneath,
they should no longer be mediate, but either rise to the gods
above, or sink to men beneath. Therefore, as it has been
demonstrated that they must possess these two qualities, they
will hold their middle place if they receive one from each
party. Consequently, as they cannot receive their eternity
from beneath, because it is not there to receive, they must get
it from above; and accordingly they have no choice but to
complete their mediate position by accepting misery from men.

According to the Platonists, then, the gods, who occupy the
highest place, enjoy eternal blessedness, or blessed eternity;
men, who occupy the lowest, a mortal misery, or a miserable
mortality; and the demons, who occupy the mean, a miserable
eternity, or an eternal misery. As to those five things which
Apuleius included in his definition of demons, he did not
show, as he promised, that the demons are mediate. For three
of them, that their nature is animal, their mind rational, their
soul subject to passions, he said that they have in common
with men; one thing, their eternity, in common with the gods;
and one proper to themselves, their aerial body. How, then,
are they intermediate, when they have three things in common
with the lowest, and only one in common with the highest?
Who does not see that the intermediate position is abandoned
in proportion as they tend to, and are depressed towards, the
lowest extreme? But perhaps we are to accept them as[Pg 368]
intermediate because of their one property of an aerial
body, as the two extremes have each their proper body,
the gods an ethereal, men a terrestrial body, and because
two of the qualities they possess in common with man they
possess also in common with the gods, namely, their animal
nature and rational mind. For Apuleius himself, in speaking
of gods and men, said, “You have two animal natures.” And
Platonists are wont to ascribe a rational mind to the gods.
Two qualities remain, their liability to passion, and their
eternity,—the first of which they have in common with men,
the second with the gods; so that they are neither wafted to
the highest nor depressed to the lowest extreme, but perfectly
poised in their intermediate position. But then, this is the
very circumstance which constitutes the eternal misery, or
miserable eternity, of the demons. For he who says that
their soul is subject to passions would also have said that
they are miserable, had he not blushed for their worshippers.
Moreover, as the world is governed, not by fortuitous haphazard,
but, as the Platonists themselves avow, by the providence
of the supreme God, the misery of the demons would
not be eternal unless their wickedness were great.

If, then, the blessed are rightly styled eudemons, the demons
intermediate between gods and men are not eudemons. What,
then, is the local position of those good demons, who, above
men but beneath the gods, afford assistance to the former,
minister to the latter? For if they are good and eternal,
they are doubtless blessed. But eternal blessedness destroys
their intermediate character, giving them a close resemblance
to the gods, and widely separating them from men. And
therefore the Platonists will in vain strive to show how the
good demons, if they are both immortal and blessed, can justly
be said to hold a middle place between the gods, who are
immortal and blessed, and men, who are mortal and miserable.
For if they have both immortality and blessedness in common
with the gods, and neither of these in common with men, who
are both miserable and mortal, are they not rather remote
from men and united with the gods, than intermediate between
them? They would be intermediate if they held one of their
qualities in common with the one party, and the other with[Pg 369]
the other, as man is a kind of mean between angels and
beasts,—the beast being an irrational and mortal animal, the
angel a rational and immortal one, while man, inferior to the
angel and superior to the beast, and having in common with
the one mortality, and with the other reason, is a rational and
mortal animal. So, when we seek for an intermediate between
the blessed immortals and miserable mortals, we should find
a being which is either mortal and blessed, or immortal and
miserable.

14. Whether men, though mortal, can enjoy true blessedness.

It is a great question among men, whether man can be
mortal and blessed. Some, taking the humbler view of his
condition, have denied that he is capable of blessedness so
long as he continues in this mortal life; others, again, have
spurned this idea, and have been bold enough to maintain
that, even though mortal, men may be blessed by attaining
wisdom. But if this be the case, why are not these wise men
constituted mediators between miserable mortals and the
blessed immortals, since they have blessedness in common
with the latter, and mortality in common with the former?
Certainly, if they are blessed, they envy no one (for what
more miserable than envy?), but seek with all their might
to help miserable mortals on to blessedness, so that after
death they may become immortal, and be associated with the
blessed and immortal angels.

15. Of the man Christ Jesus, the Mediator between God and men.

But if, as is much more probable and credible, it must
needs be that all men, so long as they are mortal, are also
miserable, we must seek an intermediate who is not only man,
but also God, that, by the interposition of His blessed mortality,
He may bring men out of their mortal misery to a
blessed immortality. In this intermediate two things are
requisite, that He become mortal, and that He do not continue
mortal. He did become mortal, not rendering the divinity
of the Word infirm, but assuming the infirmity of flesh.
Neither did He continue mortal in the flesh, but raised it from
the dead; for it is the very fruit of His mediation that those,
for the sake of whose redemption He became the Mediator,[Pg 370]
should not abide eternally in bodily death. Wherefore it
became the Mediator between us and God to have both a
transient mortality and a permanent blessedness, that by that
which is transient He might be assimilated to mortals, and
might translate them from mortality to that which is permanent.
Good angels, therefore, cannot mediate between
miserable mortals and blessed immortals, for they themselves
also are both blessed and immortal; but evil angels can mediate,
because they are immortal like the one party, miserable like
the other. To these is opposed the good Mediator, who, in
opposition to their immortality and misery, has chosen to be
mortal for a time, and has been able to continue blessed in
eternity. It is thus He has destroyed, by the humility of
His death and the benignity of His blessedness, those proud
immortals and hurtful wretches, and has prevented them from
seducing to misery by their boast of immortality those men
whose hearts He has cleansed by faith, and whom He has
thus freed from their impure dominion.

Man, then, mortal and miserable, and far removed from the
immortal and the blessed, what medium shall he choose by
which he may be united to immortality and blessedness?
The immortality of the demons, which might have some
charm for man, is miserable; the mortality of Christ, which
might offend man, exists no longer. In the one there is
the fear of an eternal misery; in the other, death, which
could not be eternal, can no longer be feared, and blessedness,
which is eternal, must be loved. For the immortal and
miserable mediator interposes himself to prevent us from
passing to a blessed immortality, because that which hinders
such a passage, namely, misery, continues in him; but the
mortal and blessed Mediator interposed Himself, in order that,
having passed through mortality, He might of mortals make
immortals (showing His power to do this in His own resurrection),
and from being miserable to raise them to the blessed
company from the number of whom He had Himself never departed.
There is, then, a wicked mediator, who separates friends,
and a good Mediator, who reconciles enemies. And those who
separate are numerous, because the multitude of the blessed are
blessed only by their participation in the one God; of which[Pg 371]
participation the evil angels being deprived, they are wretched,
and interpose to hinder rather than to help to this blessedness,
and by their very number prevent us from reaching that one
beatific good, to obtain which we need not many but one
Mediator, the uncreated Word of God, by whom all things
were made, and in partaking of whom we are blessed. I do
not say that He is Mediator because He is the Word, for as
the Word He is supremely blessed and supremely immortal,
and therefore far from miserable mortals; but He is Mediator
as He is man, for by His humanity He shows us that, in
order to obtain that blessed and beatific good, we need not
seek other mediators to lead us through the successive steps
of this attainment, but that the blessed and beatific God,
having Himself become a partaker of our humanity, has
afforded us ready access to the participation of His divinity.
For in delivering us from our mortality and misery, He does
not lead us to the immortal and blessed angels, so that we
should become immortal and blessed by participating in their
nature, but He leads us straight to that Trinity, by participating
in which the angels themselves are blessed. Therefore,
when He chose to be in the form of a servant, and lower than
the angels, that He might be our Mediator, He remained
higher than the angels, in the form of God,—Himself at once
the way of life on earth and life itself in heaven.

16. Whether it is reasonable in the Platonists to determine that the celestial gods
decline contact with earthly things and intercourse with men, who therefore
require the intercession of the demons.

That opinion, which the same Platonist avers that Plato
uttered, is not true, “that no god holds intercourse with men.”[347]
And this, he says, is the chief evidence of their exaltation, that
they are never contaminated by contact with men. He admits,
therefore, that the demons are contaminated; and it follows
that they cannot cleanse those by whom they are themselves
contaminated, and thus all alike become impure, the demons
by associating with men, and men by worshipping the demons.
Or, if they say that the demons are not contaminated by
associating and dealing with men, then they are better than the
gods, for the gods, were they to do so, would be contaminated.[Pg 372]
For this, we are told, is the glory of the gods, that they are so
highly exalted that no human intercourse can sully them.
He affirms, indeed, that the supreme God, the Creator of all
things, whom we call the true God, is spoken of by Plato as
the only God whom the poverty of human speech fails even
passably to describe; and that even the wise, when their
mental energy is as far as possible delivered from the trammels
of connection with the body, have only such gleams of
insight into His nature as may be compared to a flash of
lightning illumining the darkness. If, then, this supreme
God, who is truly exalted above all things, does nevertheless
visit the minds of the wise, when emancipated from the body,
with an intelligible and ineffable presence, though this be
only occasional, and as it were a swift flash of light athwart
the darkness, why are the other gods so sublimely removed
from all contact with men, as if they would be polluted by it?
as if it were not a sufficient refutation of this to lift up our
eyes to those heavenly bodies which give the earth its needful
light. If the stars, though they, by his account, are visible
gods, are not contaminated when we look at them, neither are
the demons contaminated when men see them quite closely.
But perhaps it is the human voice, and not the eye, which
pollutes the gods; and therefore the demons are appointed to
mediate and carry men’s utterances to the gods, who keep
themselves remote through fear of pollution? What am I to
say of the other senses? For by smell neither the demons,
who are present, nor the gods, though they were present and
inhaling the exhalations of living men, would be polluted if they
are not contaminated with the effluvia of the carcases offered
in sacrifice. As for taste, they are pressed by no necessity of
repairing bodily decay, so as to be reduced to ask food from men.
And touch is in their own power. For while it may seem that
contact is so called, because the sense of touch is specially
concerned in it, yet the gods, if so minded, might mingle with
men, so as to see and be seen, hear and be heard; and where
is the need of touching? For men would not dare to desire
this, if they were favoured with the sight or conversation of
gods or good demons; and if through excessive curiosity they
should desire it, how could they accomplish their wish without[Pg 373]
the consent of the god or demon, when they cannot touch
so much as a sparrow unless it be caged?

There is, then, nothing to hinder the gods from mingling in
a bodily form with men, from seeing and being seen, from
speaking and hearing. And if the demons do thus mix with
men, as I said, and are not polluted, while the gods, were they
to do so, should be polluted, then the demons are less liable to
pollution than the gods. And if even the demons are contaminated,
how can they help men to attain blessedness after
death, if, so far from being able to cleanse them, and present
them clean to the unpolluted gods, these mediators are themselves
polluted? And if they cannot confer this benefit on
men, what good can their friendly mediation do? Or shall
its result be, not that men find entrance to the gods, but that
men and demons abide together in a state of pollution, and
consequently of exclusion from blessedness? Unless, perhaps,
some one may say that, like sponges or things of that sort, the
demons themselves, in the process of cleansing their friends,
become themselves the filthier in proportion as the others
become clean. But if this is the solution, then the gods, who
shun contact or intercourse with men for fear of pollution, mix
with demons who are far more polluted. Or perhaps the
gods, who cannot cleanse men without polluting themselves,
can without pollution cleanse the demons who have been contaminated
by human contact? Who can believe such follies,
unless the demons have practised their deceit upon him? If
seeing and being seen is contamination, and if the gods, whom
Apuleius himself calls visible, “the brilliant lights of the
world,”[348] and the other stars, are seen by men, are we to believe
that the demons, who cannot be seen unless they please, are
safer from contamination? Or if it is only the seeing and not
the being seen which contaminates, then they must deny that
these gods of theirs, these brilliant lights of the world, see
men when their rays beam upon the earth. Their rays are
not contaminated by lighting on all manner of pollution, and
are we to suppose that the gods would be contaminated if
they mixed with men, and even if contact were needed in
order to assist them? For there is contact between the earth[Pg 374]
and the sun’s or moon’s rays, and yet this does not pollute
the light.

17. That to obtain the blessed life, which consists in partaking of the supreme
good, man needs such mediation as is furnished not by a demon, but by
Christ alone.

I am considerably surprised that such learned men, men
who pronounce all material and sensible things to be altogether
inferior to those that are spiritual and intelligible,
should mention bodily contact in connection with the blessed
life. Is that sentiment of Plotinus forgotten?—”We must fly
to our beloved fatherland. There is the Father, there our all.
What fleet or flight shall convey us thither? Our way is, to
become like God.”[349] If, then, one is nearer to God the liker
he is to Him, there is no other distance from God than unlikeness
to Him. And the soul of man is unlike that incorporeal
and unchangeable and eternal essence, in proportion as
it craves things temporal and mutable. And as the things
beneath, which are mortal and impure, cannot hold intercourse
with the immortal purity which is above, a mediator is indeed
needed to remove this difficulty; but not a mediator who resembles
the highest order of being by possessing an immortal
body, and the lowest by having a diseased soul, which makes
him rather grudge that we be healed than help our cure. We
need a Mediator who, being united to us here below by the mortality
of His body, should at the same time be able to afford us
truly divine help in cleansing and liberating us by means of
the immortal righteousness of His spirit, whereby He remained
heavenly even while here upon earth. Far be it from the
incontaminable God to fear pollution from the man[350] He assumed,
or from the men among whom He lived in the form
of a man. For, though His incarnation showed us nothing
else, these two wholesome facts were enough, that true
divinity cannot be polluted by flesh, and that demons are not
to be considered better than ourselves because they have not
flesh.[351] This, then, as Scripture says, is the “Mediator between
God and man, the man Christ Jesus,”[352] of whose divinity,[Pg 375]
whereby He is equal to the Father, and humanity, whereby
He has become like us, this is not the place to speak as fully
as I could.

18. That the deceitful demons, while promising to conduct men to God by their
intercession, mean to turn them from the path of truth.

As to the demons, these false and deceitful mediators, who,
though their uncleanness of spirit frequently reveals their
misery and malignity, yet, by virtue of the levity of their aerial
bodies and the nature of the places they inhabit, do contrive
to turn us aside and hinder our spiritual progress; they do
not help us towards God, but rather prevent us from reaching
Him. Since even in the bodily way, which is erroneous and
misleading, and in which righteousness does not walk,—for we
must rise to God not by bodily ascent, but by incorporeal or
spiritual conformity to Him,—in this bodily way, I say, which
the friends of the demons arrange according to the weight of
the various elements, the aerial demons being set between the
ethereal gods and earthy men, they imagine the gods to have
this privilege, that by this local interval they are preserved
from the pollution of human contact. Thus they believe that
the demons are contaminated by men rather than men cleansed
by the demons, and that the gods themselves should be polluted
unless their local superiority preserved them. Who is
so wretched a creature as to expect purification by a way in
which men are contaminating, demons contaminated, and gods
contaminable? Who would not rather choose that way whereby
we escape the contamination of the demons, and are cleansed
from pollution by the incontaminable God, so as to be associated
with the uncontaminated angels?

19. That even among their own worshippers the name “demon” has never a
good signification.

But as some of these demonolators, as I may call them,
and among them Labeo, allege that those whom they call
demons are by others called angels, I must, if I would not
seem to dispute merely about words, say something about the
good angels. The Platonists do not deny their existence, but
prefer to call them good demons. But we, following Scripture,
according to which we are Christians, have learned that some
of the angels are good, some bad, but never have we read in[Pg 376]
Scripture of good demons; but wherever this or any cognate
term occurs, it is applied only to wicked spirits. And this
usage has become so universal, that, even among those who
are called pagans, and who maintain that demons as well as
gods should be worshipped, there is scarcely a man, no matter
how well read and learned, who would dare to say by way of
praise to his slave, You have a demon, or who could doubt
that the man to whom he said this would consider it a curse?
Why, then, are we to subject ourselves to the necessity of
explaining away what we have said when we have given
offence by using the word demon, with which every one, or
almost every one, connects a bad meaning, while we can so
easily evade this necessity by using the word angel?

20. Of the kind of knowledge which puffs up the demons.

However, the very origin of the name suggests something
worthy of consideration, if we compare it with the divine
books. They are called demons from a Greek word meaning
knowledge.[353] Now the apostle, speaking with the Holy Spirit,
says, “Knowledge puffeth up, but charity buildeth up.”[354]
And this can only be understood as meaning that without
charity knowledge does no good, but inflates a man or magnifies
him with an empty windiness. The demons, then, have
knowledge without charity, and are thereby so inflated or
proud, that they crave those divine honours and religious services
which they know to be due to the true God, and still,
as far as they can, exact these from all over whom they have
influence. Against this pride of the demons, under which the
human race was held subject as its merited punishment, there
was exerted the mighty influence of the humility of God, who
appeared in the form of a servant; but men, resembling the
demons in pride, but not in knowledge, and being puffed up
with uncleanness, failed to recognise Him.

21. To what extent the Lord was pleased to make Himself known to the demons.

The devils themselves knew this manifestation of God so
well, that they said to the Lord, though clothed with the[Pg 377]
infirmity of flesh, “What have we to do with Thee, Jesus of
Nazareth? Art Thou come to destroy us before the time?”[355]
From these words, it is clear that they had great knowledge,
and no charity. They feared His power to punish, and did not
love His righteousness. He made known to them so much
as He pleased, and He was pleased to make known so much
as was needful. But He made Himself known, not as to the
holy angels, who know Him as the Word of God, and rejoice
in His eternity, which they partake, but as was requisite to
strike with terror the beings from whose tyranny He was going
to free those who were predestined to His kingdom and the
glory of it, eternally true and truly eternal. He made Himself
known, therefore, to the demons, not by that which is life
eternal, and the unchangeable light which illumines the pious,
whose souls are cleansed by the faith that is in Him, but by
some temporal effects of His power, and evidences of His
mysterious presence, which were more easily discerned by the
angelic senses even of wicked spirits than by human infirmity.
But when He judged it advisable gradually to suppress these
signs, and to retire into deeper obscurity, the prince of the
demons doubted whether He were the Christ, and endeavoured
to ascertain this by tempting Him, in so far as He permitted
Himself to be tempted, that He might adapt the manhood He
wore to be an example for our imitation. But after that
temptation, when, as Scripture says, He was ministered to[356] by
the angels who are good and holy, and therefore objects of
terror to the impure spirits, He revealed more and more distinctly
to the demons how great He was, so that, even though
the infirmity of His flesh might seem contemptible, none dared
to resist His authority.

22. The difference between the knowledge of the holy angels and that
of the demons.

The good angels, therefore, hold cheap all that knowledge
of material and transitory things which the demons are so
proud of possessing,—not that they are ignorant of these things,
but because the love of God, whereby they are sanctified, is
very dear to them, and because, in comparison of that not
merely immaterial but also unchangeable and ineffable beauty,[Pg 378]
with the holy love of which they are inflamed, they despise
all things which are beneath it, and all that is not it, that they
may with every good thing that is in them enjoy that good
which is the source of their goodness. And therefore they
have a more certain knowledge even of those temporal and
mutable things, because they contemplate their principles and
causes in the word of God, by which the world was made,—those
causes by which one thing is approved, another rejected,
and all arranged. But the demons do not behold in the wisdom
of God these eternal, and, as it were, cardinal causes of things
temporal, but only foresee a larger part of the future than
men do, by reason of their greater acquaintance with the signs
which are hidden from us. Sometimes, too, it is their own intentions
they predict. And, finally, the demons are frequently,
the angels never, deceived. For it is one thing, by the aid
of things temporal and changeable, to conjecture the changes
that may occur in time, and to modify such things by one’s
own will and faculty,—and this is to a certain extent permitted
to the demons,—it is another thing to foresee the
changes of times in the eternal and immutable laws of God,
which live in His wisdom, and to know the will of God, the
most infallible and powerful of all causes, by participating in
His spirit; and this is granted to the holy angels by a just
discretion. And thus they are not only eternal, but blessed
And the good wherein they are blessed is God, by whom they
were created. For without end they enjoy the contemplation
and participation of Him.

23. That the name of gods is falsely given to the gods of the Gentiles, though
Scripture applies it both to the holy angels and just men.

If the Platonists prefer to call these angels gods rather than
demons, and to reckon them with those whom Plato, their
founder and master, maintains were created by the supreme
God,[357] they are welcome to do so, for I will not spend strength
in fighting about words. For if they say that these beings
are immortal, and yet created by the supreme God, blessed
but by cleaving to their Creator and not by their own power,
they say what we say, whatever name they call these beings
by. And that this is the opinion either of all or the best of[Pg 379]
the Platonists can be ascertained by their writings. And regarding
the name itself, if they see fit to call such blessed and
immortal creatures gods, this need not give rise to any serious
discussion between us, since in our own Scriptures we read,
“The God of gods, the Lord hath spoken;”[358] and again, “Confess
to the God of gods;”[359] and again, “He is a great King
above all gods.”[360] And where it is said, “He is to be feared
above all gods,” the reason is forthwith added, for it follows,
“for all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made
the heavens.”[361] He said, “above all gods,” but added, “of the
nations;” that is to say, above all those whom the nations
count gods, in other words, demons. By them He is to be
feared with that terror in which they cried to the Lord, “Hast
Thou come to destroy us?” But where it is said, “the God of
gods,” it cannot be understood as the god of the demons; and
far be it from us to say that “great King above all gods”
means “great King above all demons.” But the same Scripture
also calls men who belong to God’s people “gods:” “I have said,
Ye are gods, and all of you children of the Most High.”[362] Accordingly,
when God is styled God of gods, this may be understood
of these gods; and so, too, when He is styled a great
King above all gods.

Nevertheless, some one may say, if men are called gods
because they belong to God’s people, whom He addresses by
means of men and angels, are not the immortals, who already
enjoy that felicity which men seek to attain by worshipping
God, much more worthy of the title? And what shall we
reply to this, if not that it is not without reason that in holy
Scripture men are more expressly styled gods than those immortal
and blessed spirits to whom we hope to be equal in
the resurrection, because there was a fear that the weakness
of unbelief, being overcome with the excellence of these beings,
might presume to constitute some of them a god? In the
case of men this was a result that need not be guarded against.
Besides, it was right that the men belonging to God’s people
should be more expressly called gods, to assure and certify
them that He who is called God of gods is their God; because,[Pg 380]
although those immortal and blessed spirits who dwell
in the heavens are called gods, yet they are not called gods of
gods, that is to say, gods of the men who constitute God’s
people, and to whom it is said, “I have said, Ye are gods, and
all of you the children of the Most High.” Hence the saying
of the apostle, “Though there be that are called gods, whether
in heaven or in earth, as there be gods many and lords many,
but to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all
things, and we in Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom
are all things, and we by Him.”[363]

We need not, therefore, laboriously contend about the name,
since the reality is so obvious as to admit of no shadow of
doubt. That which we say, that the angels who are sent to
announce the will of God to men belong to the order of blessed
immortals, does not satisfy the Platonists, because they believe
that this ministry is discharged, not by those whom they call
gods, in other words, not by blessed immortals, but by demons,
whom they dare not affirm to be blessed, but only immortal,
or if they do rank them among the blessed immortals, yet only
as good demons, and not as gods who dwell in the heaven of
heavens remote from all human contact. But, though it may
seem mere wrangling about a name, yet the name of demon
is so detestable that we cannot bear in any sense to apply it
to the holy angels. Now, therefore, let us close this book in
the assurance that, whatever we call these immortal and
blessed spirits, who yet are only creatures, they do not act as
mediators to introduce to everlasting felicity miserable mortals,
from whom they are severed by a twofold distinction. And
those others who are mediators, in so far as they have immortality
in common with their superiors, and misery in
common with their inferiors (for they are justly miserable in
punishment of their wickedness), cannot bestow upon us, but
rather grudge that we should possess, the blessedness from
which they themselves are excluded. And so the friends of
the demons have nothing considerable to allege why we should
rather worship them as our helpers than avoid them as traitors
to our interests. As for those spirits who are good, and who
are therefore not only immortal but also blessed, and to whom[Pg 381]
they suppose we should give the title of gods, and offer worship
and sacrifices for the sake of inheriting a future life, we
shall, by God’s help, endeavour in the following book to show
that these spirits, call them by what name, and ascribe to them
what nature you will, desire that religious worship be paid to
God alone, by whom they were created, and by whose communications
of Himself to them they are blessed.

[Pg 382]