For who would not marvel that to that same Abraham a barren wife bore a son at that time of old age when she could not bear even were she fruitful; and that in the sacrifice of the same Abraham a flame made from heaven ran between the divided victims; and that to the same Abraham the heavenly burning of Sodom was foretold by angels—angels whom he had received as guests in the likeness of men, and through whom he had held God's promises concerning the offspring to come; and that, when the burning already impended, there was the wondrous deliverance from Sodom, through the same angels, of Lot the son of his brother, whose wife, looking back behind her on the way and suddenly turned into salt, admonished by a great sacrament that no one on the way of his own deliverance ought to long for things left behind?
But how great and how many are those things which were wonderfully wrought through Moses for the people of God, to be drawn out of the yoke of bondage in Egypt, where the magicians of Pharaoh, that is, of the king of Egypt, who oppressed that people by domination, were permitted to do certain marvels, that they might the more marvellously be overcome! For they did it by sorceries and magical incantations, to which the evil angels, that is, the demons, are given; but Moses, by so much the more powerfully as he was the more just, in the name of God, who made heaven and earth, with angels serving him, easily overcame them.
Finally, at the third plague, when the magicians failed, ten plagues through Moses were completed by a great ordering of mysteries, by which the hard hearts of Pharaoh and the Egyptians yielded to let the people of God go. And soon he repented, and when they tried to pursue the departing Hebrews, the latter passing through the sea divided into dry land, while the wave returned upon itself from this side and that, they were covered over and overwhelmed. What shall I say of those miracles which, while that same people was led through the desert, abounded by a stupendous divinity: that the waters which could not be drunk, when a piece of wood was cast into them, as God had commanded, lost their bitterness and satisfied the thirsty;
that manna came from heaven to the hungry, and, when a measure had been appointed for those gathering it, whatever anyone had gathered beyond it putrefied with worms arising, but on the day before the Sabbath a double portion was gathered, because on the Sabbath it was not lawful to gather, and was violated by no rottenness; that to those desiring to feed on flesh, which seemed able to suffice for no such great people, the camp was filled with flying birds, and the ardour of their desire was extinguished by the loathing of satiety; that the enemies who met them and forbade their passage and gave battle, while Moses prayed and his hands were stretched out in the figure of a cross, were laid low with none of the Hebrews falling;
that the seditious among the people of God, who divided themselves from the divinely ordained society, were, as a visible example of invisible punishment, swallowed up alive by the earth gaping open; that a rock struck by a rod poured out abundant streams for so great a multitude; that the deadly bites of serpents, a most just punishment of sinners, were healed by a bronze serpent lifted up on wood and looked upon, so that both the afflicted people might be succoured, and death by death destroyed might be signified as it were by the likeness of a crucified death? Which serpent indeed, preserved for the memory of the deed, when afterward the erring people began to worship it as an idol, Hezekiah the king, serving God with religious power, with great praise of piety broke in pieces. CHAPTER IX.
Concerning the unlawful arts in respect to the worship of demons, in which Porphyry the Platonist, approving some things and as it were disapproving others, is engaged. These and many other things of this kind, which it would be too long to recall in full, were done to commend the worship of the one true God, and to forbid that of the many and false ones.
But they were done by simple faith and the trust of piety, not by incantations and verses composed by the art of a wicked curiosity, which they call either magic, or by a more detestable name goetia, or by a more honourable one theurgy—those who, as it were, try to distinguish these arts, and wish some who are given to unlawful arts to be deemed damnable, whom the common people also call sorcerers (for these, they say, pertain to goetia), but others to seem praiseworthy, to whom they assign theurgy; though both are bound by the deceitful rites of demons under the names of angels. For Porphyry too promises a certain purification of the soul, as it were, through theurgy, yet hesitantly and with a disputation somewhat ashamed;
yet he denies that this art affords to anyone a return to God; so that you may see him wavering, with alternating opinions, between the vice of sacrilegious curiosity and the profession of philosophy. For now he warns that this art is to be avoided as deceitful and dangerous in its very practice and prohibited by the laws; but now, yielding as it were to its praisers, he says it is useful for cleansing a part of the soul—not indeed the intellectual part, by which the truth of intelligible things is perceived, things having no likenesses of bodies; but the spiritual part, by which the images of corporeal things are grasped. For this part, he says, is by certain theurgic consecrations, which they call teletae, made fit and apt for the reception of spirits and angels and for the seeing of gods.
Yet from these theurgic rites he would confess that no purification accrues to the intellectual soul, such as would make it fit to see its God and to behold those things which truly are. From which it can be understood of what sort of gods, or of what sort of vision, he says is wrought by theurgic consecrations, in which those things are not seen which truly are. Finally, he says that the rational soul—or, as he prefers to call it, the intellectual—can escape into its own region, even if that which is spiritual in it has been purified by no theurgic art; but moreover that the spiritual is purified by the theurgist only to this extent, that it does not from this attain to immortality and eternity.
Although therefore he distinguishes angels from demons, asserting that the airy regions are of demons, but the ethereal or empyrean regions of angels, and although he admonishes that the friendship of some demon is to be used, by whose carrying anyone may after death be lifted up even a little from the earth, while he declares that there is another way to the supernal fellowships of the angels: yet he testifies, with an expressed confession as it were, that the society of demons is to be avoided, where he says that the soul after death, paying its penalties, shudders at the worship of the demons by whom it was beset; and that theurgy itself,
which he commends as a conciliatrix, as it were, of angels and gods, he could not deny operates among such powers as either themselves envy the purification of the soul, or serve the arts of the envious, expressing a complaint about this matter from some Chaldean or other: 'A good man in Chaldea,' he says, 'complains that his great efforts at purifying a soul were frustrated of success for him, since a man powerful for the same things, touched by envy, had bound the powers, adjured by sacred prayers, that they should not grant what was requested. Therefore both that one bound,' he says, 'and this one did not loose.' By which token he said it appears that theurgy is a discipline both for accomplishing good and evil, both among gods and among men;
and that the gods also suffer, and are brought down to those perturbations and passions which Apuleius attributes in common to demons and to men; yet separating the gods from these by the loftiness of their ethereal seat, and asserting in that distinction the opinion of Plato. CHAPTER X. Concerning theurgy, which promises to souls a false purification by the invocation of demons.
Behold now another Platonist, whom they report to be more learned, namely Porphyry, who through some theurgic discipline declares that even the very gods are bound by passions and disturbances; for they could, he says, be adjured and terrified by sacred prayers so as not to bestow the purification of the soul, and they were so frightened by one who commanded an evil thing that, by another who sought a good thing through the same theurgic art, they could not be released from that fear nor set free to grant the benefit. Who does not see that all these are the fabrications of deceiving demons, unless he be their most wretched slave and a stranger to the grace of the true Deliverer? For if these things were transacted among good gods, surely there the beneficent purifier of the soul would prevail more than the malevolent obstructer.
Or if to the just gods the man, on whose behalf the matter was being transacted, seemed unworthy of purification, then surely they ought not to have been frightened by an envious one, nor (as he himself says) hindered through fear of a more powerful divinity, but should have refused it by free judgement. It is strange, moreover, that that kindly Chaldean, who desired to purify the soul by theurgic rites, found no higher god who might either terrify the terrified gods still more and compel them to do good, or restrain the one who terrified them, so that they might freely do good — if indeed the good theurgist lacked sacred rites by which he might first purify those very gods, whom he invoked as purifiers of the soul, from that plague of fear. For what reason is there why a more powerful god can be employed by whom they are terrified, yet cannot be employed by whom they are purified?
Is there found a god who hearkens to the envious and strikes fear into the gods that they may not do good; and yet no god is found who hearkens to the well-wishing and removes fear from the gods that they may do good? O splendid theurgy! O purification of the soul worthy to be proclaimed, where unclean envy commands more than pure beneficence obtains! Nay rather, the deceit of malignant spirits is to be guarded against and detested, and the saving doctrine to be heeded. For as to the fact that those who perform these filthy purifications by sacrilegious rites behold certain marvellously beautiful forms — whether images of angels or of gods, as this man records — as though seen by a purified spirit (if indeed they see any such thing), this is what the apostle says: 'Satan transforms himself into an angel of light.'
For those phantasms belong to him who, desiring to ensnare the wretched souls of men by the deceiving rites of many false gods, and to turn them away from the true worship of the true God, by which alone they are cleansed and healed — as was said of Proteus — 'turns himself into all shapes,' assailing as an enemy, succouring deceitfully, in both ways doing harm. CHAPTER XI. Concerning the letter of Porphyry to Anebo the Egyptian, in which he asks to be instructed about the diversity of demons. This Porphyry judged more wisely when he writes to Anebo the Egyptian, where, in the guise of one consulting and inquiring, he both betrays the sacrilegious arts and overthrows them.
And there indeed he reprobates all the demons, whom he says, through their want of prudence, draw up humid vapour, and therefore are not in the ether but in the air beneath the moon, and even in the very globe of the moon; yet he does not dare to assign to all demons all the deceits and malices and follies by which he is justly disturbed. For he calls certain ones benign demons, after the manner of others, although he confesses that all in general are imprudent. He marvels, moreover, that not only are the gods enticed by victims, but are even compelled and forced to do what men wish; and if the gods are distinguished from demons by body and incorporeality, how it is to be supposed that the sun and moon and the other visible things in heaven are gods, which he does not doubt to be bodies; and if they are gods,
how some are said to be beneficent and others maleficent; and how, being corporeal, they are joined to incorporeal beings. He inquires also, as one in doubt, whether in those who divine and work certain wonders there are passions of the souls, or whether some spirits come from without through whom they have power to do these things; and he rather conjectures that they come from without, on the ground that by applying stones and herbs they both bind certain persons and open closed doors, or work some such thing marvellously. Whence he says that some are of the opinion that there is a certain kind of being whose property it is to hearken — a nature deceitful, of every form, of manifold guise, simulating gods and demons and the souls of the departed; and that this is what effects all those things which seem to be either good or evil;
but that, concerning the things which are truly good, it gives no help at all — nay rather, does not even know them — but also evilly procures and falsely accuses and sometimes hinders the diligent followers of virtue; and that it is full of rashness and pride, delights in the savour of burnt offerings, is captivated by flatteries, and the rest which is said concerning this kind of deceitful and malignant spirits, who come from without into the soul and delude human senses, whether asleep or awake. Yet he does not confirm these things as matters of which he himself is persuaded, but surmises or doubts so faintly that he represents others as holding this opinion. For it was indeed difficult for so great a philosopher either to know the whole diabolical society or confidently to refute it — which any little Christian old woman does not hesitate to declare exists, and most freely detests.
Unless perchance this man is even ashamed to offend the very one to whom he writes, Anebo, as the most distinguished hierophant of such rites, and others who are admirers of such works as divine and pertaining to the worship of the gods. Yet he goes on, and as if by way of inquiry mentions also those things which, soberly considered, cannot be ascribed except to malignant and deceitful powers. For he asks why, when the better are invoked, it is the worse, as it were, who are commanded, so that they may carry out the unjust commands of a man; why they do not hearken to one who prays after he has handled a thing of Venus, while they themselves do not delay to lead any persons whatever to any incestuous embraces;
why they enjoin that their hierophants must abstain from living creatures, lest forsooth they be polluted by bodily vapours, while they themselves are allured by other vapours and by the savours of the victims; and why, though the inspector is forbidden the touching of a corpse, those rites are for the most part celebrated with corpses; what it means that a man, subject to any vice whatever, directs threats not against a demon or some soul of a departed one, but against the sun and moon themselves or any of the heavenly bodies, and falsely terrifies them, so as to extort the truth from them. For he even threatens to dash the heaven together, and other things impossible to a man, so that those gods, like the most foolish boys, terrified by false and ridiculous threats, may do what is commanded.
He says also that a certain Chaeremon, skilled in such rites — or rather such sacrileges — wrote that the things celebrated by report among the Egyptians, whether concerning Isis or Osiris her husband, have the greatest power of compelling the gods to do what is commanded, when he who compels by incantations threatens to betray or overthrow them, where he terribly declares that he will even scatter the members of Osiris, if they neglect to do what is bidden. That a man should utter these and such-like empty and insane threats against the gods — and not against any whatever, but against the very heavenly ones, shining with starry light — and that not without effect, but compelling them by violent power, and by these terrors bringing them to do what he wished: this Porphyry justly marvels at;
nay rather, under the appearance of one marvelling and seeking the causes of such things, he gives to understand that those spirits do these things, whose kind he above described under the opinion of others — spirits deceitful not, as he himself stated, by nature, but by vice, who simulate gods and the souls of the departed, but who, as he himself says, do not simulate demons, but plainly are demons.
And as for what seems to him — that by herbs and stones and living creatures and certain fixed sounds and voices and figurations and figments, and by certain motions of the stars observed in the revolution of the heaven, powers are fashioned on earth by men, suited to accomplishing various effects — all this pertains to those same demons, mockers of the souls subjected to themselves, and exhibiting to themselves voluptuous sport out of the errors of men. Either therefore Porphyry, truly doubting and inquiring, nevertheless mentions these things, by which they may be convicted and refuted, and shown to pertain not to those powers which favour us for the attaining of the blessed life, but to deceiving demons;
or — that we may suppose better things of the philosopher — he wished in this manner to offend the Egyptian man, given over to such errors and thinking that he knew some great things, not by a proud authority as of a teacher, nor to disturb him by the contention of one openly opposing, but by the humility, as it were, of one inquiring and desiring to learn, to turn him to the consideration of these matters and to show how worthy of contempt and even of avoidance they are. Finally, towards the end of the letter, he asks to be taught by him what the way to blessedness is, out of the Egyptian wisdom.
For the rest, he says that those whose intercourse with the gods was for this purpose — that they might disquiet the divine mind for the finding of a runaway slave, or the procuring of an estate, or on account of a marriage or trade or anything of this sort — seem to have cultivated wisdom in vain; and that even those very divinities with whom they held intercourse, though they foretold true things about other matters, yet, since concerning blessedness they gave no sure nor sufficiently fitting counsel, were not gods, nor benign demons, but either that which is called the deceitful one, or wholly a human contrivance. CHAPTER XII. Concerning the miracles which the true God works through the ministry of the holy angels. But since such and so great things are wrought by these arts as to exceed the whole measure of human capacity:
what remains, except that those things which are wondrously seen to be foretold or done as if by divine power, and yet are not referred to the worship of the one God — to whom simply to cleave is the sole beatific good, as even the Platonists confess and testify by many arguments — be prudently understood to be the mockeries of malignant demons and seductive hindrances, which by true piety are to be guarded against? But moreover, whatever miracles, whether through angels or in whatever manner, are so wrought by divine power as to commend the worship and religion of the one God, in whom alone is the blessed life — these are to be believed to be truly wrought by them, or through them, who love us according to truth and piety, God Himself working in them.
For neither are those to be heeded who deny that the invisible God works visible miracles, since He, even according to them, made the world, which they certainly cannot deny to be visible. Whatever marvel, therefore, is done in this world, is assuredly less than this whole world — that is, than the heaven and the earth and all that is in them, which God certainly made. But as He Himself who made it, so the manner in which He made it, is hidden and incomprehensible to man. Although, therefore, the miracles of visible natures have grown cheap by the constancy of beholding them, yet, when we contemplate them wisely, they are greater than the most unusual and rarest. For man himself is a greater miracle than any miracle that is wrought through man.
Wherefore God, who made the visible heaven and earth, does not disdain to work visible miracles in heaven or on earth, by which He may rouse the soul, still given over to visible things, to worship Him who is invisible; but where and when He does it, the immutable counsel rests with Him, in whose disposition all things that are to come have already been made as to their times. For moving temporal things, He is not moved temporally, nor does He know things to be done otherwise than things already done, nor does He hearken to those who invoke Him otherwise than He sees those who will invoke Him. For even when His angels hearken, He hearkens in them, as in His true temple, not made with hands, just as in His holy men; and His commands, beheld by His eternal law, are temporally fulfilled. CHAPTER XIII.
Concerning the invisible God, who has often shown Himself visible — not according to what He is, but according to what the beholders were able to bear. Nor ought it to disturb us that, though He is invisible, He is recorded often to have appeared visibly to the fathers. For just as the sound by which a thought established in the silence of the understanding is heard is not the same as the thought itself, so also the appearance by which God, established in an invisible nature, was seen, was not the same as He Himself. Yet He Himself was seen in that same corporeal appearance, just as that thought itself is heard in the sound of the voice; nor were they ignorant that they saw the invisible God in a corporeal appearance which He Himself was not. For He even spoke with Moses, who spoke with Him, and yet He said to him:
'If I have found grace before Thee, show me Thyself, that I may see Thee with understanding.' Since therefore it behoved that the law of God should be given terribly in the proclamations of angels, not to one man or to a few wise men, but to a whole nation and an immense people: in the presence of that same people great things were done on the mount, where the law was given through one man, while the multitude beheld the fearful and tremendous things that were being done. For the people Israel did not so believe Moses as the Lacedaemonians their Lycurgus, that he had received from Jove or Apollo the laws which he established.
For when the law was given to the people, by which the one God was commanded to be worshipped, in the sight of that very people — as much as the divine providence judged sufficient — the creature appeared, by marvellous signs and motions of things, to serve the Creator in the giving of that same law. CHAPTER XIV. Concerning the worship of the one God not only for the sake of eternal, but also for the sake of temporal benefits, since all things rest in the power of His providence. But as in the case of one man, so in that of the human race, which pertains to the people of God, the right education advanced through certain articulations of times, as it were of ages, by gradual steps, that there might be a rising from temporal things to the grasping of eternal things, and from visible to invisible things;
yet so indeed that even in that time, when visible rewards were divinely promised, the one God alone was nevertheless commended to be worshipped, lest the human mind, even for the sake of those earthly benefits of this transitory life, should be subjected to any other than the true Creator and Lord of the soul. For whoever denies that all things which either angels or men can bestow upon men are in the power of the one Almighty, is mad. Concerning providence, certainly, the Platonist Plotinus disputes, and proves that it reaches from the most high God, whose intelligible and ineffable beauty it is, even down to these earthly and lowest things, by the beauty of little flowers and leaves;
all of which things, as though cast aside and most swiftly perishing, he affirms could not have the most fitting numbers of their forms, unless they were formed from thence, where the intelligible and immutable form, having all things together, abides. This the Lord Jesus showed there where He says: 'Consider the lilies of the field; they neither toil nor spin. But I say unto you that not even Solomon in all his glory was so arrayed as one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is and tomorrow is cast into the oven: how much more you, O ye of little faith?'
Therefore the human soul, still infirm with earthly desires, does best when it accustoms itself to expect from the one God alone those very things which it temporally desires — the lowest and earthly goods, necessary to this transitory life, and to be despised in comparison with the everlasting benefits of that other life — so that even in desiring them it may not depart from His worship, to whom it attains by the contempt of them and by turning away from them. CHAPTER XV. Concerning the ministry of the holy angels, by which they serve the providence of God. Thus, therefore, it pleased the divine providence so to order the course of the times that, as I have said and as is read in the Acts of the Apostles, the law might be given in the proclamations of angels, concerning the worship of the one true God,
in which both the Person of God Himself appeared visibly — not indeed through His own substance, which always remains invisible to corruptible eyes, but by certain signs through the creature subjected to the Creator — and spoke syllable by syllable, through the transient little delays of times, with the voices of human language: He who in His own nature neither begins nor ceases to speak, not corporeally but spiritually, not sensibly but intelligibly, not temporally but, so to say, eternally; whom His ministers and messengers — who enjoy His immutable truth, immortally blessed — hear more sincerely, not with the ear of the body, but of the mind:
and what they hear is to be done by ineffable means, and to be carried out even into these visible and sensible things, they accomplish without hesitation and without difficulty. But this law was given by the distribution of the times, which first had, as has been said, earthly promises, by which nevertheless eternal things were signified — things which many celebrated by visible sacraments, but few understood. Yet the worship of the one God is there most openly enjoined by the testimony of both words and of all things — not of one out of the throng, but of Him who made heaven and earth and every soul and every spirit, who is not that which He Himself is. For He made, but these were made; and that they may exist and fare well, they have need of Him by whom they were made. CHAPTER XVI.
Whether, for the obtaining of the blessed life, those angels are to be believed who demand to be worshipped with divine honour; or rather those who enjoin that holy religion be rendered not to themselves but to the one God. To which angels, then, do we judge that we ought to believe concerning the blessed and everlasting life? Whether to those who wish themselves to be worshipped with the rites of religion, demanding that sacred things and sacrifices be offered to themselves by mortals; or to those who say that all this worship is owed to the one God, the Creator of all, and enjoin that it be rendered to Him with true piety — by whose contemplation both they themselves are blessed, and they promise that we shall be?
For that vision of God is a vision of such great beauty, and so worthy of supreme love, that without it Plotinus does not hesitate to call most miserable one who is endowed and abounding with any other goods whatsoever. Since therefore some angels by wondrous signs rouse men to worship this one God, while certain others rouse them to worship themselves with the worship of latria — and this in such wise that the former forbid these latter to be worshipped, while the latter dare not forbid Him to be worshipped: whom rather ought we to believe? Let the Platonists answer, let the philosophers of every sort answer, let the theurgists answer — or rather the periurgists; for of these names all those arts are more worthy; finally let men answer, if any sense of their own nature, that they were created rational, in any part lives in them;
let them answer, I say, whether sacrifice ought to be made to those gods or angels who command that sacrifice be made to themselves, or to that one God, to whom those command who forbid it to be made both to themselves and to those others. If neither these nor those wrought any miracles, but only gave commands — the one sort that sacrifice should be made to themselves, the other sort forbidding this, but commanding that it be made to the one God only: piety itself ought to discern sufficiently which of these proceeded from the haughtiness of pride, and which from true religion. I will even say more: if only those who demand sacrifices for themselves moved human souls by marvellous deeds, while those who forbid this and command that sacrifice be made to the one God alone deigned by no means to work these visible miracles: