[I] Some have held that there are both good and evil gods; but others, thinking better things of the gods, attributed to them so much honour and praise that they dared not believe any of the gods to be evil. But those who said that some gods are good and some evil called the demons also by the name of gods, and (though more rarely) the gods too by the name of demons — so that they confess that Jupiter himself, whom they will have to be king and chief of the rest, was called a demon by Homer.
But those who assert that all the gods are none but good, and far more excellent than those men who are reputed good, are rightly moved by the deeds of the demons, which they cannot deny, and, thinking that such things can in no way be committed by gods, all of whom they will have to be good, they are compelled to introduce a distinction between gods and demons: so that whatever rightly displeases them in the depraved works or affections by which the hidden spirits manifest their power, this they believe to belong to demons, not to gods.
But since they think these same demons are set as intermediaries between men and gods, such that no god mingles with man, so that from the one side they may carry up men's desires, and from the other bring back what has been obtained — and this is the opinion of the Platonists, the foremost and most noble of philosophers, with whom, as with the more excellent, we thought it good to examine this question, whether the worship of many gods avails toward attaining the blessed life which is to be after death:
in the preceding book we inquired by what means demons, who take delight in such things as good and prudent men abhor and condemn — that is, in the sacrilegious, shameful, and criminal fictions of poets, made not about any ordinary man but about the very gods, and in the wicked and punishable violence of the magic arts — could, as it were, being nearer and more friendly to the good gods, reconcile good men to them; and it was found that this can by no reasoning be done.
[II] Accordingly this book, as we promised at the end of the former, will have to contain a discussion concerning the difference (if they will have there to be any) — not of the gods among themselves, all of whom they call good, nor of the difference between gods and demons, whom they set far and high apart from men, and place these latter between gods and men — but concerning the difference of the demons themselves, insofar as it pertains to the present question. For among most people it is customary to say that some demons are good, others evil;
and whether this be the opinion of the Platonists too, or of any others whatsoever, its examination is by no means to be neglected, lest anyone should suppose that good demons, as it were, are to be followed by him, through whom, as through intermediaries, while he affects and strives to be reconciled to the gods, all of whom he believes to be good — that he may as it were be able to be with them after death — he might, being ensnared by the malignant spirits and deceived by their deceit, stray far from the true God, with whom alone, and in whom alone, and concerning whom alone, the human soul, that is, the rational and intellectual soul, is blessed. [III] What, then, is the difference between good and evil demons?
Since indeed the Platonist Apuleius, discoursing about these things universally and saying so much about their aerial bodies, was silent about the virtues of their souls, with which they would be endowed if they were good. He was silent, therefore, about the cause of blessedness; but the mark of misery he could not keep silent, confessing that their mind — by which he declared them to be rational — is not even imbued and fortified with virtue so as by no means to yield to the irrational passions of the soul, but that it too, as is the manner of foolish minds, is agitated, as it were, by stormy perturbations. For his words on this matter are these: "From this number of demons, in general," he says, "the poets are wont, not at all far from the truth, to fashion gods as haters and lovers of certain men;
prospering and exalting these, opposing and afflicting those; and so they pity and are indignant, are distressed and rejoice, and undergo every aspect of the human soul, tossed with a like motion of the heart and surging of the mind through all the tides of thoughts. All which turmoils and tempests are banished far from the tranquillity of the heavenly gods." Is there in these words any doubt that he said, not some lower parts of the souls, but the very minds of the demons — by which they are rational animals — are troubled, like a stormy sea, by the tempest of the passions?
so that they are not to be compared even to wise men, who, when they suffer perturbations of this kind of the soul — from which human weakness is not immune — even when they undergo them by the condition of this life, resist them with an unperturbed mind, not yielding to them so as to approve or perpetrate anything that would swerve from the path of wisdom and the law of justice; but the demons, like to foolish and unjust mortals not in bodies but in morals (not to say worse, in that they are older and, by their due punishment, incurable), fluctuate also in the very "sea" of the mind, as he called it, nor do they in any part of the soul stand firm in the truth and virtue by which turbulent and depraved affections are resisted.
[IV] There are two opinions of the philosophers concerning these motions of the soul, which the Greeks call *pathē*, but some of ours, as Cicero, call perturbations, some affections or affects, and some, as this man, call passions, expressing the Greek more precisely. These perturbations, then, or affections, or passions, some philosophers say fall even upon the wise man, but moderated and made subject to reason, so that the dominion of the mind imposes upon them laws, as it were, by which they are reduced to the necessary measure. Those who hold this are Platonists or Aristotelians, since Aristotle, the disciple of Plato, founded the Peripatetic school. But to others, as to the Stoics, it does not seem that any passions of this kind at all fall upon the wise man.
But Cicero, in his books On the Ends of Goods and Evils, convicts these — that is, the Stoics — of contending against the Platonists or Peripatetics in words rather than in substance; since indeed the Stoics are unwilling to call the goods and advantages of the body and external things "goods," on the ground that they will have no good of a man except virtue, as it were the art of living well, which is nothing but in the soul. But these things the others call "goods" simply and according to the common usage of speaking; yet in comparison with virtue, by which one lives rightly, small and slight. Whence it comes about that, by whatever name they are called by either party, whether goods or advantages, they are yet weighed with equal estimation, nor do the Stoics delight in this question in anything but the novelty of words.
It seems to me, therefore, that in this matter also, where it is asked whether the passions of the soul befall the wise man, or whether he is wholly a stranger to them, they make a controversy about words rather than about things. For I think that they too feel nothing else in this than what the Platonists and Peripatetics feel, so far as the force of things is concerned, not the sound of words. For, to pass over other proofs by which I might show this, lest I make it long, let me mention one single thing that is most evident. In the books entitled Attic Nights, Aulus Gellius, a man of most elegant eloquence and of much and varied learning, writes that he once sailed with a certain noble Stoic philosopher. This philosopher, as Aulus Gellius narrates more at large and fully, which I shall touch on briefly,
when that ship was being tossed most perilously by a dreadful sky and sea, grew pale with the force of fear. This was noticed by those who were present — though most curiously attentive, in the nearness of death, to whether or not the philosopher was troubled in mind. Then, the storm having passed, as soon as security afforded room for conversing or even for chattering, one of those whom that ship carried, a rich, luxurious Asiatic, assailed the philosopher with mockery, because he had been terrified and had grown pale, whereas he himself had remained undaunted in that destruction which threatened.
But the philosopher brought forward the reply of Aristippus the Socratic, who, when in a similar situation he had heard the same words from a similar man, answered that the other had rightly not been anxious for the soul of a most worthless scoundrel, but that he himself had had reason to fear for the soul of Aristippus. That rich man having been repelled by this reply, Aulus Gellius afterward asked the philosopher — not in a spirit of provoking, but of learning — what the reason of his fear might be. And the philosopher, to instruct a man diligently kindled with the zeal of knowing, straightway brought forth from his little bag a book of the Stoic Epictetus, in which were written those things that agreed with the decrees of Zeno and Chrysippus, whom we know to have been the chiefs of the Stoics. In that book Aulus Gellius says he read
that this was approved by the Stoics: that the impressions of the mind, which they call phantasiai, and over which it is not in one's power whether and when they befall the mind, when they come from terrible and formidable things, must needs move even the wise man's mind, so that for a little while he either trembles with fear, or is contracted with sadness, these passions, as it were, forestalling the office of the mind and reason; nor yet is there therefore formed in the mind any opinion of evil, nor are these things approved, nor is consent given to them. For this, they will have it, is in one's power; and they judge this to be the difference between the mind of the wise man and of the fool, that the fool's mind yields to these same passions and accommodates to them the assent of the mind;
But the wise man, though he suffer these things by necessity, nevertheless keeps, with an unshaken mind, a true and stable judgment concerning those things which he ought reasonably to seek after or to shun. These things which Aulus Gellius records that he read in the book of Epictetus—that Epictetus said and held them from the decrees of the Stoics—I have set forth as best I could, not indeed more elegantly than Aulus Gellius, but certainly more briefly and, as I think, more plainly. And if these things are so, then there is no difference, or almost none, between the opinion of the Stoics and that of the other philosophers concerning the passions and disturbances of the soul; for both parties defend the mind and reason of the wise man from the dominion of these passions.
And therefore the Stoics perhaps say that these passions do not befall the wise man, because they in no way becloud with any error, nor overthrow with any blemish, that wisdom by which he is indeed wise. Yet they do come upon the soul of the wise man, while the serenity of his wisdom remains unimpaired, on account of those things which they call advantages or disadvantages, although they are unwilling to call them goods or evils. For assuredly, if that philosopher had counted as nothing the things which he felt he was about to lose in the shipwreck—such as this present life and the health of the body—he would not have so shuddered with dread at that peril as to be betrayed even by the testimony of his pallor.
Yet nonetheless he could both suffer that agitation, and hold fixed in his mind the judgment that that life and bodily health, whose loss the fury of the tempest threatened, are not goods such as would make those who possess them good, as justice does. But as for their saying that these things are not to be called goods but advantages, this is to be reckoned a contest of words, not an examination of things. For what does it matter whether they be more fittingly called goods or advantages, so long as the Stoic, no less than the Peripatetic, dreads and turns pale lest he be deprived of them—naming them unequally, yet valuing them equally?
Both indeed, if by the perils to these goods (or advantages) they were driven toward some shameful or wicked deed, so that they could not otherwise retain them, declare that they would rather lose these things—by which the nature of the body is kept safe and unharmed—than commit those deeds by which justice is violated. Thus the mind, where this judgment is fixed, permits no disturbances, even though they befall the lower parts of the soul, to prevail within it against reason; nay rather, it itself masters them, and by not consenting to them but rather resisting, it exercises the reign of virtue. Such a one Virgil also describes Aeneas to be, where he says: 'The mind remains unmoved; the tears roll down in vain.'
[V] It is not now necessary to show at length and in detail what the divine Scripture, in which Christian teaching is contained, instructs concerning these passions. For it subjects the very mind to God, to be ruled and helped by Him, and subjects the passions to the mind, to be so moderated and bridled that they may be turned to the use of justice. In short, in our discipline it is not so much asked whether a devout soul is angry, but why it is angry; nor whether it is sad, but whence it is sad; nor whether it fears, but what it fears. For to be angry with one who sins, that he may be corrected; to be grieved for one afflicted, that he may be set free; to fear for one in danger, that he may not perish—I know not whether anyone would rightly blame these by any sound consideration. For it is indeed the wont of the Stoics to find fault even with mercy;
but how much more honorably was that Stoic disturbed by the mercy of freeing a man than by the fear of shipwreck! Far better, and more humane, and more suited to the feelings of the devout, did Cicero speak in praise of Caesar, where he says: 'Of your virtues none is either more admirable or more welcome than your mercy.' But what is mercy save a certain fellow-feeling in our heart for another's misery, by which indeed, if we are able, we are compelled to come to his aid? Now this emotion serves reason when mercy is so extended that justice is preserved, whether when something is bestowed on one in need, or when the penitent is pardoned.
This mercy Cicero, that outstanding orator, did not hesitate to call a virtue, which the Stoics are not ashamed to number among the vices—those Stoics who nevertheless, as the book of Epictetus, a most noble Stoic, has taught, from the decrees of Zeno and Chrysippus, who held the first place in this sect, admit passions of this kind into the soul of the wise man, whom they wish to be free from all vices. Whence it follows that they do not think these very things to be vices, when they so befall the wise man that they can avail nothing against the virtue and reason of the mind; and that one and the same is the opinion of the Peripatetics, or even of the Platonists, and of the Stoics themselves—but, as Tully says, a mere verbal controversy has long tormented those little Greeks, more eager for contention than for truth.
But it may still with reason be asked whether it belongs to the infirmity of the present life to endure affections of this kind even in whatsoever good offices; whereas the holy angels punish without anger those whom they receive to be punished by the eternal law of God, and come to the aid of the wretched without any fellow-feeling of misery, and succor without fear those whom they love when they are in danger; and yet, by the custom of human speech, the names of these passions are applied even to them, on account of a certain likeness of works, not on account of any infirmity of affections—just as God Himself, according to the Scriptures, is angry, and yet is disturbed by no passion. For it is the effect of vengeance, not the turbulent affection of Him who takes vengeance, that this word has borrowed.
[VI] Deferring meanwhile this question about the holy angels, let us see in what manner the Platonists say that the middle demons, set between gods and men, are tossed by these surging passions. For if, with the mind free from these and ruling over them, they suffered motions of this kind, Apuleius would not say that they are tossed with a like agitation of heart and swell of mind through all the surges of thought. Their very mind, then—that is, the higher part of the soul, whereby they are rational, in which virtue and wisdom, if they had any, would rule and moderate the turbulent passions of the lower parts of the soul—their very mind, I say, as this Platonist confesses, is tossed by the swell of the disturbances.
The mind of the demons, therefore, is subject to the passions of lusts, fears, angers, and the rest of this kind. What part, then, in them is free and possessed of that wisdom by which they might please the gods and, after the likeness of good morals, take counsel for men—when their mind, subjugated and oppressed by the vices of the passions, directs whatever reason it naturally has toward deceiving and beguiling all the more keenly, the more the desire of doing harm possesses it? [VII] But if anyone says that these are not of the number of all the demons, but of the evil ones—whom the poets, not far from the truth, feign to be gods who hate and love certain men (for these Apuleius said are tossed by the swell of mind through all the surges of thought)—
how shall we be able to understand this, when, in saying it, he was describing the middleness—on account of their airy bodies—not of certain ones, that is of the evil, but of all the demons between gods and men? For he says that the poets feign this: that out of the number of these demons they make gods, and impose upon them the names of gods, and, with the unpunished license of fictitious song, assign from among them friends and enemies to whatever men they please—whereas he maintains that the gods are far removed from these demonic ways, from the celestial abode, and from the abundance of blessedness. This, then, is the fiction of the poets: to call gods those who are not gods, and to make them, under the names of gods, contend among themselves on account of men, whom they love or hate out of partisan zeal.
But he says that this fiction is not far from the truth, since, though called by the names of gods those who are not gods, such demons are nevertheless described as they actually are. Finally, hence he says comes that Homeric Minerva, 'who in the midst of the assemblies of the Greeks intervened to restrain Achilles.' That this was that Minerva, he wishes to be a poetic invention, on the ground that he thinks Minerva a goddess, and places her among the gods—whom he all believes to be good and blessed—in the high ethereal seat, far from intercourse with mortals;
but that some demon, favoring the Greeks and hostile to the Trojans, existed—just as another, an aider of the Trojans against the Greeks, whom the same poet commemorates under the name of Venus or of Mars, gods whom, since they do not do such things, he places in the celestial dwellings—and that these demons contended among themselves on behalf of those whom they loved, against those whom they hated: this he has confessed the poets to have said not far from the truth. For it was of such beings that they said these things—beings whom he testifies to be tossed, with a like agitation of heart and swell of mind, through all the surges of thought—so that they can exercise loves and hatreds, not on behalf of justice, but as a mob resembling them does among huntsmen and charioteers, in accordance with the zeal of their factions, for some men against others.
For this the Platonist philosopher seems to have taken care of: that, when these things were sung by the poets, they should not be believed to be done by the middle demons, but by the very gods, whose names the poets in their feigning employ. [VIII] What? Is that very definition of demons too little to be considered (wherein assuredly, by determining, he embraced them all), when he says that demons are, in kind, living beings; in soul, subject to passion; in mind, rational; in body, airy; in duration, eternal? In these five things mentioned he said nothing at all whereby demons would seem to have anything in common with good men at least, which was not also in the bad.
For when he embraced men themselves in a somewhat broader description, speaking of them in their place as of the lowest and earthly beings—having first spoken of the celestial gods, so that, the two parts having been set forth from the highest and the lowest as the extremes, he might in the third place speak of the middle demons:
'Men, therefore,' he says, 'rejoicing in reason, mighty in speech, with immortal souls, with mortal members, with fickle and anxious minds, with dull and frail bodies, with unlike morals, with like errors, of headstrong audacity, of stubborn hope, of fruitless toil, of tottering fortune—each singly mortal, yet all as a whole race perpetual, changeable through offspring successively to be supplied, of fleeting time, of tardy wisdom, of swift death, of querulous life—inhabit the lands.' When he here said so many things which pertain to most men, did he by any means keep silent about that too which he knew to be of few, when he says 'tardy wisdom'?
But if he had passed this over, he would by no means rightly have concluded the human race with so intent a diligence of this description. And when he was commending the excellence of the gods, he affirmed that very blessedness, to which men wish to attain through wisdom, to be excellent in them. Accordingly, if he wished any demons to be understood as good, he would have put something also in their description whereby they might be thought to have in common either with the gods some part of blessedness, or with men some sort of wisdom. But now he commemorated no good of theirs, whereby the good are distinguished from the bad. Although he also spared to express their malice more freely, not so much lest he should offend them, as lest he should offend their worshippers, before whom he was speaking:
yet to the prudent he signified what they ought to feel about them, since indeed he separated the gods—whom he wished all to be believed good and blessed—in every way from their passions and, as he himself says, from their turbulences, joining those gods to them only by eternity of bodies, but most plainly inculcating that the demons are, in soul, like not to the gods but to men; and this not by the good of wisdom, of which even men can be partakers, but by the disturbance of the passions, which lords it over the foolish and the wicked, but is so ruled by the wise and the good that they would rather not have it than conquer it.
For if he wished it to be understood that the demons have in common with the gods not eternity of bodies but of souls, he would surely not separate men from the fellowship of this thing, since even men have eternal souls, as the Platonist beyond doubt holds. Therefore, when he described this kind of living being, he said that men are 'with immortal souls, with mortal members.' And by this, if for this reason men do not have eternity in common with the gods, because they are mortal in body, then for this reason the demons have it, because they are immortal in body. [IX] What sort of mediators, then, are these between men and the gods, through whom men are to seek the friendships of the gods—who have this worse in common with men, namely what is better in a living being, that is, the soul;
but have this better in common with the gods, namely what is worse in a living being, that is, the body? For since a living being—that is, an animal—consists of soul and body, of which two the soul is assuredly better than the body, even if it be vicious and weak, yet certainly better than even the most healthy and most sturdy body (since its nature is more excellent and is not, by the taint of vices, ranked below the body—just as gold, even when soiled, is esteemed dearer than silver or lead, however pure): these mediators of gods and men, through whom, interposed, things human are joined to things divine, have with the gods an eternal body, but with men a vicious soul—as though the religion by which they wish men to be joined to the gods through the demons were placed in the body, not established in the soul.
What wickedness or penalty, then, has hung up these false and deceitful mediators as it were head downward, so that they have the lower part of the living being, that is the body, in common with the higher beings, but the higher, that is the soul, in common with the lower—joined with the celestial gods in the serving part, but with earthly men in the ruling part, wretched? For the body is a slave, as Sallust also says: 'We use rather the command of the soul, the servitude of the body.' And he added: 'The one we have in common with the gods, the other with the beasts,' since he was speaking of men, who have, like the beasts, a mortal body.
But these beings, whom the philosophers have provided for us as mediators between us and the gods, can indeed say concerning soul and body: 'The one we have in common with the gods, the other with men'; but, as I have said, being as it were bound and hung up upside down, they have the servile body in common with the blessed gods, the lordly soul in common with the wretched men—exalted in the lower part, cast down in the higher. Whence, even if anyone should think that for this reason they have eternity in common with the gods, because their souls are not by any death, as those of earthly animals, released from the body: not even so is their body to be esteemed as an eternal vehicle of the honored, but as an eternal chain of the condemned.
[X] Plotinus certainly, in times near to our own memory, is praised for having understood Plato more excellently than the rest. He, when treating of human souls, says: 'The merciful Father made for them mortal bonds.' Thus he judged that this very thing, that men are mortal in body, pertains to the mercy of God the Father, lest they should be held forever by the misery of this life. Of this mercy the iniquity of the demons was judged unworthy, which, in the misery of a passible soul, received not a mortal body as men do, but an eternal one. For they would indeed be happier than men, if they had, along with them, a mortal body and, along with the gods, a blessed soul. And they would be equal to men, if, together with a wretched soul, they had deserved to have at least a mortal body along with them;
if at least they should acquire something of piety, so that they might rest from their afflictions even in death. But now they are not only not happier than men, having a wretched soul, but are even more wretched, by the perpetual chain of the body. For he did not wish it to be understood that, by any discipline of piety and wisdom, they advance so as to become gods out of demons, since he most plainly said that the demons are eternal. [XI] He says indeed that the souls of men also are demons, and that out of men become lares, if they are of good desert; lemures, if bad, or larvae; and that they are called manes-gods, if it is uncertain whether they be of good or of evil desert. In which opinion, what a great abyss they open for the pursuit of depraved morals, who does not see, if he but a little attend?
Since indeed, however wicked men have been, either while they imagine themselves to become larvae, or while they imagine themselves to become manes-gods, they become so much the worse as they are the more desirous of doing harm—so that they even imagine themselves to be invited, by certain sacrifices as by divine honors after death, that they may do harm. For he says that larvae are noxious demons made out of men. But hence is another question. And thence he alleges that the blessed are called in Greek eudaimones, because they are of good soul, that is, good daemones—thus confirming that the souls of men also are demons. [XII] But we now deal with those whom he described, in their proper nature, between gods and men, as—in kind, living beings; in mind, rational; in soul, subject to passion; in body, airy; in duration, eternal.
Assuredly, when he had first separated the gods in the lofty heaven and men on the lowest earth, distinguished by places and by the dignity of their nature, he thus concluded: 'You have,' he says, 'meanwhile two kinds of living beings: gods differing greatly from men by loftiness of place, by perpetuity of life, by perfection of nature, with no near communication between them—since so great an interval of height separates the highest dwellings from the lowest, and the vitality there is eternal and undefaulting, here fleeting and fragmentary, and those natures are exalted to blessedness, these debased to miseries.' Here I see three contraries mentioned concerning the two outermost parts of nature, that is, the highest and the lowest.
For the three praiseworthy things which he set forth concerning the gods, these same he repeated, in other words indeed, so as to render against them three other things drawn from men. The three of the gods are these: loftiness of place, perpetuity of life, perfection of nature. These he repeated in other words, so as to oppose to them three contraries of the human condition. 'Since,' he says, 'so great an interval of height separates the highest dwellings from the lowest,' because he had said loftiness of place; 'and the vitality,' he says, 'is there eternal and undefaulting, here fleeting and fragmentary,' because he had said perpetuity of life; 'and those natures,' he says, 'are exalted to blessedness, these debased to miseries,' because he had said perfection of nature.
Three things, therefore, were set down by him concerning the gods, that is: lofty place, eternity, blessedness; and three contraries of men, that is: lowest place, mortality, misery. [XIII] Among these three-and-three of gods and men, since he placed the demons in the middle, concerning place there is no controversy; for between the lofty and the lowest a middle place is most fittingly held and called. The other two pairs remain, to which more attentive care must be given—in what manner they may either be shown to be alien from the demons, or so distributed to them as the middleness seems to demand. But they cannot be alien from them.
For not as we say that the middle place is neither highest nor lowest, so can we rightly say that the demons, since they are rational living beings, are neither blessed nor wretched, as are shrubs or cattle, which are devoid of sense or of reason. For those in whose minds reason is present must of necessity be either wretched or blessed. Likewise we cannot rightly say that the demons are neither mortal nor eternal. For all living things either live forever, or end by death that which they live. And now this man said that the demons are, in duration, eternal. What then remains, save that these middle beings should have one of the two highest things and the other of the two lowest?
For if they will have both from the lowest, or both from the highest, they will not be middle, but will either leap back or sink down into one or the other side. Since, then, as has been demonstrated, they cannot be without either of these two pairs, having received one from each side, they will be in the middle. And by this, since they cannot have from the lowest things eternity, which is not there, this one thing alone they have from the highest; and therefore there is not the other thing, to complete their middleness, which they might have from the lowest, except misery. And so, according to the Platonists, of the lofty gods there is either blessed eternity or eternal blessedness; of the lowest men, either mortal misery or wretched mortality; but of the middle demons, either wretched eternity or eternal misery.
For also in those five things which he set down in the definition of demons, he did not show them to be middle, as he promised; since he said that they have three things in common with us—that in kind they are living beings, that in mind they are rational, that in soul they are subject to passion; but with the gods one thing, that in duration they are eternal; and one thing proper to themselves, that in body they are airy. In what manner, then, are they middle, when they have one thing with the highest, three with the lowest? Who does not see that, the middleness being abandoned, how far they incline and are pressed down toward the lowest? But plainly even there they can be found to be middle, in that they have one thing proper, namely an airy body—just as those of the highest and the lowest have each their proper things, the gods an ethereal body and men an earthly one;
but two things are common to all, namely that in kind they are living beings and in mind rational. For even he himself, when speaking of gods and men, said: 'You have two kinds of living beings,' and these men are not wont to hold the gods to be anything but rational in mind. Two things remain, namely that they are, in soul, subject to passion, and, in duration, eternal; of which they have one with the lowest, the other with the highest, so that by a proportional reckoning the middleness, being balanced, is neither raised up to the highest nor pressed down to the lowest. But this very thing is that wretched eternity of the demons, or eternal misery. For he who said 'in soul subject to passion' would also have said 'wretched,' had he not blushed before their worshippers.
Further, since by the providence of the most high God—as even they themselves confess—the world is not governed by fortuitous rashness, there would never be an eternal misery of these beings, unless there were a great malice. If, therefore, the blessed are rightly called eudaimones, then those are not eudaimones—the demons whom these men placed in the middle between men and the gods. Where, then, is the place of good demons, who above men and below the gods might afford aid to the former, service to the latter? For if they are good and eternal, they are assuredly also blessed. But eternal blessedness does not suffer them to be middle, since it likens them much to the gods and separates them much from men.
Whence these men will strive in vain to show in what manner good demons, if they be both immortal and blessed, are rightly constituted as middle between the immortal and blessed gods and mortal and wretched men. For since they have both things in common with the gods—namely blessedness and immortality—but nothing of these with men, who are both wretched and mortal: how are they not rather removed from men and joined to the gods, than constituted as middle between the two? For then they would be middle, if they had themselves also two things of their own, in common not with a pair of one or the other side, but with a single thing of each side;
just as man is something middle, but between beasts and angels—so that, since a beast is an irrational and mortal animal, while an angel is rational and immortal, man is middle: inferior to the angels, superior to the beasts, having mortality in common with the beasts, reason in common with the angels—a rational mortal animal. So therefore, when we seek a middle between the blessed immortals and the wretched mortals, we ought to find this: something that is either mortal and blessed, or immortal and wretched. [XIV] Whether a man can be both blessed and mortal is a great question among men. For some, inspecting their condition more humbly, have denied that man can be capable of blessedness so long as he lives mortally.
But some have exalted themselves and have dared to say that mortals, when possessed of wisdom, can be blessed. But if this is so, why are not these themselves rather constituted as middle between the wretched mortals and the blessed immortals, having blessedness in common with the blessed immortals, mortality with the wretched mortals? For assuredly, if they are blessed, they envy no one (for what is more wretched than envy?), and therefore they take counsel, as far as they can, for the wretched mortals, that they may attain to blessedness—so that they may be able even to be immortal after death, and to be joined to the immortal and blessed angels.
[XV] But if, as is disputed with much more credibility and probability, all men, so long as they are mortal, are of necessity also wretched, then a mediator must be sought who is not only man, but also God, so that by the blessed mortality of this mediator, interposing itself, men may be led from mortal misery to blessed immortality; a mediator whom it behooved neither not to become mortal, nor to remain mortal. Mortal indeed He was made, not by the divinity of the Word being weakened, but by the infirmity of the flesh being assumed; yet He did not remain mortal in that very flesh, which He raised again from the dead; since He Himself is the fruit of His mediation, that not even those, for whose deliverance He was made mediator, should remain in perpetual death, even of the flesh.
Accordingly, it behooved the mediator between us and God to have a passing mortality and an abiding blessedness, so that by that which passes He might be conformed to those about to die, and to that which abides He might carry them over from among the dead. Good angels, therefore, cannot be middle between the wretched mortals and the blessed immortals, because they themselves also are both blessed and immortal; but evil angels can be middle, because they are immortal along with the former, wretched along with the latter. Contrary to these is the good Mediator, who, against their immortality and misery, willed both to be mortal for a time, and was able to persist blessed in eternity;
and thus both the immortal proud and the wretched harmful ones—lest by the boastfulness of immortality they should seduce men to misery—He destroyed in them, by the humility of His death and the kindness of His blessedness, in those whose hearts, cleansing them through His faith, He freed from the most unclean dominion of those beings. Man, therefore, mortal and wretched, far sundered from the immortal and blessed, what middle shall he choose, by which he may be coupled to immortality and blessedness? That which might delight in the immortality of the demons is wretched; that which might offend in the mortality of Christ, is now no more. There, therefore, everlasting misery is to be shunned; here death is not to be feared, which could not be everlasting, and everlasting blessedness is to be loved.
For to this end the immortal and wretched one interposes himself as a middle, that he may not permit men to pass over to blessed immortality, since that which hinders persists, namely misery itself; but to this end the mortal and blessed One interposed Himself, that, His mortality having been accomplished, He might make immortals out of the dead—which He showed by rising again in Himself—and blessed ones out of the wretched, from which state He Himself never departed. There is, therefore, one middle who is evil, who separates friends; another who is good, who reconciles enemies. And therefore the middle separators are many, because the multitude which is blessed is made blessed by participation in the one God;
By the privation of this participation the wretched multitude of evil angels—who set themselves rather as a hindrance than interpose themselves as a help toward blessedness—by their very multitude, in a certain manner, raise an uproar, lest one be able to attain to that one beatific good. To be led to it, there was need not of many mediators, but of one, and of that very One by participation in whom we are made blessed, that is, the Word of God, not made, through whom all things were made. Yet He is not Mediator on this account, that He is the Word; for the Word, supremely immortal and supremely blessed, is far removed from wretched mortals.
But He is Mediator through that whereby He is man, thereby indeed showing that toward that good which is not only blessed but also beatifying, no other mediators are to be sought, through whom we might suppose that steps to attainment must be contrived; for the blessed and beatifying God, being made a partaker of our humanity, has furnished a short way to the partaking of His divinity. For in freeing us from mortality and misery He does not lead us to the immortal and blessed angels in such a way that by participation in them we too become immortal and blessed, but to that Trinity by participation in which the very angels are blessed. Therefore, when in the form of a servant, that He might be Mediator, He willed to be lower than the angels, in the form of God He remained above the angels.
The same is in lower things the way of life, who in higher things is life itself. [XVI] For it is not true, as the same Platonist says Plato declared, that "No god mingles with man"; and he says this is the chief mark of their sublimity, that they are defiled by no contact with men. Therefore he admits that demons are defiled, and so cannot cleanse those by whom they are defiled, and all become alike unclean—both the demons by contact with men and the men by the worship of demons. Or, if demons can both be touched and mingle with men and yet not be defiled, then surely they are better than the gods, since the gods, if they mingled, would be defiled.
For this is said to be the chief thing about the gods, that being sublimely set apart, human contact cannot defile them. Indeed he affirms that the supreme God, creator of all, whom we call the true God, is so proclaimed by Plato that He alone is one who cannot, through the poverty of human speech, be comprehended by any discourse even moderately; but that scarcely even to wise men, when by vigor of mind they have withdrawn themselves as far as was permitted from the body, does the understanding of this God—and that too only at intervals—flash forth like a white light gleaming as with a most rapid coruscation amid deepest darkness.
If, then, above all things the truly supreme God, by a certain intelligible and ineffable presence—even though at intervals, even though like a most rapid coruscation of white light flashing forth—is nonetheless present to the minds of the wise when they have withdrawn themselves as far as was permitted from the body, and yet cannot be defiled by them: what is the reason that these gods are placed far away in a lofty region, lest they be defiled by human contact? As though it were anything other than to see, that suffices for those ethereal bodies, by whose light the earth is illumined as much as suffices. Moreover, if the stars are not defiled when they are seen—and he calls them all visible gods—neither are the demons defiled by the gaze of men, although they be seen from close at hand.
Or perhaps they would be defiled by human voices, who are not defiled by the keenness of the eyes, and therefore have demons as intermediaries, through whom the voices of men are reported to them—men from whom they are far distant, that they may remain wholly undefiled? What now shall I say of the other senses? For by smelling neither could the gods be defiled, if they were present, nor can the demons be defiled when present by the vapors of living human bodies, if they are not defiled by so great a stench of the carrion of sacrifices. But in the sense of taste they are pressed by no necessity of restoring their mortality, so as to be driven by hunger to seek food from men. And touch, indeed, is in their own power.
For although contact seems to be named chiefly from that sense, yet thus far, if they wished, they might mingle with men, so as to see and be seen, to hear and be heard. But what necessity is there of touching? For neither would men dare to desire this, when they enjoyed the sight or converse of the gods or of good demons; and if curiosity were to go so far that they should wish it: by what means could anyone touch against its will a god or a demon, who cannot even touch a sparrow unless it be caught? Therefore by seeing and offering themselves to sight, and by speaking and hearing, the gods could mingle bodily with men. But if in this manner the demons mingle, as I have said, and are not defiled, while the gods would be defiled if they mingled:
then they are saying that demons are incapable of defilement and gods capable of it. But if demons too are defiled, what do they confer on men toward a blessed life after death, when, being themselves defiled, they cannot cleanse them so as to join them, cleansed, to the undefiled gods among whom they are set as intermediaries? Or if they confer this benefit not on them, what does the friendly mediation of demons profit men? Is it that after death men may not pass over to the gods through demons, but rather that both may live together defiled, and so neither be blessed? Unless perhaps someone should say that, after the manner of sponges or such things, the demons cleanse their friends in such a way that they themselves become the more sordid in proportion as men are made cleaner by them, as it were, wiping them.
But if it is so, then the gods mingle with the more defiled demons, who, lest they be defiled, shunned the nearness and contact of men. Or perhaps the gods can cleanse the demons defiled by men, and yet not be defiled by them, and in that manner could not men also be so cleansed? Who would think such things, save one whom the most deceitful demons have deceived? What of this—that if to be seen and to see defiles, the gods are seen by men, whom he calls visible, "the brightest lights of the world" and the other stars, and the demons are safer from this defilement of men, since they cannot be seen unless they wish?
Or if it is not being seen, but seeing, that defiles, let them deny that men are seen by those brightest lights of the world which they suppose to be gods, since these extend their rays even to the earth. Yet those rays of theirs, diffused through all unclean things, are not defiled; and would the gods be defiled if they mingled with men, even if contact were necessary in giving aid? For the earth is touched by the rays of the sun and moon, nor does it defile that light. [XVII] But I greatly wonder that men so learned, who judged that all corporeal and sensible things must be set below the incorporeal and intelligible, when the blessed life is in question, should make mention of corporeal contacts. Where is that saying of Plotinus, where he says:
"We must flee, therefore, to our most beloved fatherland; there is the Father, and there are all things. What fleet, then, or what flight?" he asks. "To become like unto God." If, then, the more like one becomes to God, the nearer one draws to Him, there is no distance from Him other than unlikeness to Him. But the soul of man is the more unlike that incorporeal, eternal, and unchangeable Being, the more it desires things temporal and mutable. That this may be healed—since the things below, which are mortal and unclean, cannot be joined to the immortal purity which is on high—there is indeed need of a mediator;
yet not such a one as has indeed an immortal body akin to the highest, but a diseased mind like the lowest (by which disease he would rather envy us, that we be not healed, than help us that we be healed); but such a one as, fitted to us who are lowest by the mortality of body, yet by the immortal justice of spirit—whereby He remained in the highest, not by distance of place, but by excellence of likeness—might furnish a truly divine help for our cleansing and liberation. And He, being an incontaminable God, far be it that He should have feared defilement from the man with which He was clothed, or from the men among whom in that man He dwelt.
For these two things, meanwhile, are not small, which by His incarnation He wholesomely showed: that true divinity cannot be defiled by flesh, and that demons are not therefore to be thought better than we because they have no flesh. This is He whom, as Holy Scripture proclaims, is the Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus—of whose divinity, whereby He is ever equal to the Father, and of whose humanity, whereby He was made like unto us, this is not the place to speak fittingly according to our capacity.
[XVIII] But those false and deceitful mediators, the demons, who—although through the uncleanness of spirit they are conspicuous, being wretched and malignant, in many workings—yet through the intervals of corporeal places and through the lightness of aerial bodies strive to call and turn us away from the advancement of our souls, do not furnish a way to God, but rather hinder, lest the way be held. Since indeed even in that corporeal way itself (which is most false and most full of error, by which justice makes no journey;
since not by corporeal height, but by spiritual, that is, incorporeal, likeness ought we to ascend to God)—yet in that very corporeal way, which the friends of the demons order through the grades of the elements, with the aerial demons set as intermediaries between the ethereal gods and the earthly men, they suppose the gods to have this as their chief privilege: that on account of this interval of places they are not defiled by human contact. Thus they believe that demons are defiled by men rather than that men are cleansed by demons, and that the gods themselves could have been defiled, had they not been protected by the loftiness of place. Who is so wretched as to suppose himself cleansed by that way, where men are proclaimed as defiling, demons as defiled, gods as capable of defilement;
and would not rather choose the way where the defiling demons are the more avoided, and where men are cleansed from defilement by the incontaminable God, to enter into the fellowship of the undefiled angels? [XIX] But lest we too seem to be contending about words—since some of those, so to speak, demon-worshippers, among whom is Labeo, hold that those whom they themselves call demons are called angels by others—I see that I must now discourse somewhat concerning the good angels, whose existence these men do not deny, but prefer to call them good demons rather than angels. But we, as Scripture speaks, according to which we are Christians, read of angels indeed as partly good, partly bad, but never of good demons;
but wherever in those writings this name is found placed, whether they be called daemones or daemonia, none but malignant spirits are signified. And this manner of speaking the peoples everywhere have so far followed, that even among those who are called pagans and contend that many gods and demons are to be worshipped, there is scarcely anyone so lettered and learned who would dare, in praise even of his own slave, to say: "You have a demon"; but whoever should wish to say this to anyone cannot doubt that he meant it to be taken in no other way than as a curse.
What cause, then, compels us, after the offense of so many ears—so that now they are almost of all men who have grown accustomed to hear this word only in a bad sense—to be forced to expound what we have said, when we could, by using the name of angels, avoid the very offense that could arise from the name of demons? [XX] Although the very origin of this name, if we look into the divine books, brings something most worthy of knowledge. For demons are so called (since the word is Greek) as being named from knowledge. But the Apostle, speaking by the Holy Spirit, says: "Knowledge puffs up, but charity edifies"; which is rightly understood in no other way than that knowledge profits only when charity is present;
but without this it puffs up, that is, it lifts one up into the pride of the emptiest windiness, as it were. There is therefore in demons knowledge without charity, and therefore they are so puffed up, that is, so proud, that they have taken pains that divine honors and the service of religion, which they know to be owed to the true God, should be exhibited to themselves, and, as far as they can and among whom they can, they still do this. But against the pride of demons, whereby the human race was justly held in possession according to its deserts, how great a power the humility of God, which appeared in Christ, has—the souls of men, puffed up with the uncleanness of exaltation, know not, being like the demons in pride, not in knowledge. [XXI] But the demons themselves know even this so well, that they said to the same Lord, clothed in the weakness of flesh:
"What have we to do with Thee, Jesus of Nazareth? Art Thou come to destroy us?" It is clear in these words that in them there was both so great knowledge and yet no charity. For they dreaded their own punishment from Him, they did not love justice in Him. But He became known to them only as much as He willed; and He willed as much as was fitting. Yet He became known not as to the holy angels, who enjoy Him, according to that which is the Word of God, in participated eternity, but as He had to be made known to those who were to be terrified—out of whose tyrannical power, in a certain manner, He was to free those predestined into His kingdom and glory, ever true and truly everlasting.
He became known, then, to the demons not through that which is eternal life and the unchangeable light which illumines the godly, and by seeing which through the faith that is in Him hearts are cleansed, but through certain temporal effects of His power and most hidden signs of His presence, which could be discernible to the angelic senses even of malignant spirits rather than to the weakness of men. Finally, when He judged that these should be somewhat suppressed and He lay hidden a little more deeply, the prince of the demons doubted concerning Him and tempted Him, seeking to discover whether He were the Christ—so far as He Himself permitted Himself to be tempted, that He might temper the man which He bore to the example of our imitation.
But after that temptation, when the angels, as it is written, ministered to Him—good angels surely and holy, and thereby to be feared and dreaded by the unclean spirits—it became more and more known to the demons how great He was, so that none dared to resist Him when He commanded, although in Him the weakness of flesh seemed contemptible. [XXII] To these good angels, therefore, all knowledge of corporeal and temporal things, by which the demons are puffed up, is cheap;
not that they are ignorant of them, but because the charity of God, whereby they are sanctified, is dear to them, before whose not only incorporeal but also unchangeable and ineffable beauty—with whose holy love they burn—all things that are below, and that are not what He is, and even themselves among those things, they hold in contempt, that from the whole of what they are good, they may enjoy that good from which they are good. And therefore they know even these temporal and mutable things more surely, because they behold their principal causes in the Word of God, through whom the world was made; by which causes some things are approved, some reproved, all ordered.
But the demons do not contemplate the eternal and in a certain manner cardinal causes of times in the wisdom of God, but through greater experience of certain signs hidden from us they foresee far more of future things than men do; sometimes also they foretell their own dispositions. Finally, these are often, those never at all, deceived. For it is one thing to conjecture temporal things by temporal and mutable by mutable, and to insert into them the temporal and mutable mode of one's own will and power—which is permitted to the demons by a fixed order;
but it is another thing to foresee the changes of times in the eternal and unchangeable laws of God, which live in His wisdom, and to know the will of God—which is the most certain as well as the most powerful of all—by participation in His Spirit; which is granted to the holy angels by a right discernment. And so they are not only eternal, but also blessed. And the good whereby they are blessed is God, by whom they were created. For by unswerving participation and contemplation of Him they enjoy their fill. [XXIII] If the Platonists prefer to call these gods rather than demons, and to number them among those whom Plato, their author and master, writes were made gods by the supreme God, let them say what they will; for we need not labor over a controversy of words with them.
For if they say that these are immortal in such a way as nonetheless to have been made by the supreme God, and that they are blessed not through themselves, but by adhering to Him by whom they were made, they are saying what we say, by whatever name they call them. That this is the opinion of the Platonists, whether of all or of the better, can be found in their writings. For even concerning the very name, that they call this sort of immortal and blessed creature gods, there is almost no disagreement between us and them, because in our sacred writings too it is read: "The God of gods, the Lord, has spoken"; and elsewhere: "Give thanks to the God of gods"; and elsewhere: "A great King above all gods." But where it is written: "He is terrible above all gods," why it is said is shown thereafter. For it follows:
"For all the gods of the nations are demons, but the Lord made the heavens." "Above all gods," then, He said—but of the nations, that is, those whom the nations hold for gods, which are demons; therefore "terrible," under which terror they said to the Lord: "Art Thou come to destroy us?" But that where it is said: "The God of gods," it cannot be understood as "the God of demons"; and "a great King above all gods"—far be it that it should be said "a great King above all demons." But the same Scripture calls men also in the people of God gods. "I have said," it says, "You are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High." It can therefore be understood as the God of these gods, who is called the God of gods, and above these gods a great King, who is called a great King above all gods. Yet when it is asked of us:
If men are called gods, because they are in the people of God, whom God addresses through angels or through men, how much more are the immortals worthy of that name, who enjoy that blessedness to which men, by worshipping God, desire to attain—what shall we answer, save that it was not in vain that in the holy Scriptures men were more expressly named gods than those immortal and blessed beings, to whom we are promised to be equal in the resurrection, lest, forsooth, on account of their excellence, unbelieving weakness should dare to set up any one of them as a god for us? Which in the case of a man is easy to avoid.
And men in the people of God ought to have been called gods more evidently, that they might become certain and confident that He is their God who is called the God of gods; because, although those immortal and blessed ones who are in the heavens be called gods, they are nevertheless not called gods of gods, that is, gods of men established in the people of God, to whom it was said: "I have said, You are gods and sons of the Most High, all of you." Hence it is that the Apostle says: "For although there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth—as indeed there are many gods and many lords—yet to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things and we in Him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and we through Him."
But as for our saying that angels are sent from that number of the immortal and blessed to announce the will of God to men, while it does not please them—because they believe this ministry is performed not through those whom they call gods, that is, immortal and blessed, but through demons, whom they dare to call only immortal, not also blessed, or at any rate immortal and blessed in such a way as nonetheless to be good demons, not gods loftily placed and removed from human contact—although it may seem a controversy of the name, yet the name of demons is so detestable that we ought by all means to keep ourselves away from it in dealing with the holy angels.
Now, then, let this book be closed in such a way that we may know that the immortal and blessed, by whatever name they be called, who nevertheless have been made and created, are not intermediaries for leading wretched mortals to immortal blessedness, from whom they are separated by both differences. But those who are intermediaries, having immortality in common with the higher and misery with the lower, since by the desert of malice they are wretched, can rather envy us the blessedness which they do not possess than furnish it. Whence the friends of the demons have nothing worthy to offer us, why we should worship them as helpers, whom we ought rather to shun as deceivers.
But as for those whom they think good, and therefore not only immortal but also blessed, and to be worshipped under the name of gods with sacred rites and sacrifices for the sake of attaining a blessed life after death—of whatever kind they may be and worthy of whatever appellation—that they do not wish, through such an obeisance of religion, any to be worshipped save the one God, by whom they were created and by participation in whom they are blessed, we shall, with His own help, discuss more diligently in the following book.