In what other sense—except that these maleficences are, beyond doubt, ruinous to the human race—did that most illustrious poet say: 'I call to witness the gods, dear one, and you, my sister, and your sweet head, that against my will I gird myself to the magic arts'? That other passage, too, which in another place he says of these arts: 'And I have seen him carry off the standing crops sown into another field'—because by this pestilent and wicked teaching the fruits of one man's field are said to be transferred to other lands—does not Cicero record that it was written down in the Twelve Tables, that is, the most ancient laws of the Romans, and that a punishment was appointed for him who should do this? Finally, was Apuleius himself ever accused of the magic arts before Christian judges?
These charges brought against him—if he had known them to be divine and pious and in accord with the works of divine powers—he ought not only to have confessed, but even to have openly professed, rather blaming the laws by which such things were prohibited and thought worthy of condemnation, which things ought instead to be held marvelous and venerable. For thus he would either have persuaded the judges of his opinion, or, if they judged according to unjust laws and punished with death one who proclaimed and praised such things, the demons would have repaid fitting gifts to his soul—demons for the proclaiming of whose divine works he would not have feared to have his human life taken from him;
just as our martyrs, when the Christian religion was charged against them as a crime—that religion by which they knew themselves to be made saved and most glorious for all eternity—did not choose to escape temporal punishments by denying it, but rather by confessing, professing, and proclaiming it, and by faithfully and bravely enduring all things for its sake, and by dying with pious serenity, compelled the laws by which it was forbidden to blush, and caused them to be changed. But of this Platonic philosopher there is extant a most copious and eloquent oration, in which he defends that the crime of the magic arts is foreign to him, and wishes to be seen as innocent in no other way than by denying those very things which cannot be committed by an innocent man.
But all the miracles of the magicians, whom he rightly judges deserving of condemnation, are wrought by the teachings and works of demons—demons whom let him see why he judges worthy of honor, asserting them to be necessary for conveying our prayers to the gods, though we ought rather to shun their works, if we wish our prayers to reach the true God. Next I ask: what kind of prayers of men does he think are conveyed to the good gods through demons—magical or lawful? If magical, they do not want such; if lawful, they do not want them through such intermediaries. But if a penitent sinner pours forth his prayers, especially if he has committed some act of magic: is it then, forsooth, by the intercession of those very ones at whose instigation or favor he laments having fallen into fault, that he receives pardon?
or do the demons themselves, that they may be able to merit indulgence for the penitent, first do penance, because they have deceived them? No one has ever said this of demons; for if it were so, they would by no means dare to seek divine honors for themselves—they who, by repenting, would desire to belong to the grace of pardon. For there, in the gods' case, is detestable pride; here, in penitence, is pitiable humility. But indeed, they say, an urgent and most straitened cause compels the demons to act as mediators between gods and men, so that they may bring from men the things desired, and bring back from the gods the things obtained. What at last is this cause, and how great the necessity? Because, they say, no god mingles with man. Excellent, then, is the holiness of God, who does not mingle with a supplicating man, yet mingles with an arrogant demon;
does not mingle with a penitent man, yet mingles with a deceiving demon; does not mingle with a man taking refuge in the divinity, yet mingles with a demon feigning divinity; does not mingle with a man seeking indulgence, yet mingles with a demon urging wickedness; does not mingle with a man who, through philosophical books, expels the poets from a well-ordered city, yet mingles with a demon who, through stage-plays, demands from the city's princes and pontiffs the mockeries of the poets; does not mingle with a man forbidding the fabrication of crimes against the gods, yet mingles with a demon delighting in false crimes charged against the gods; does not mingle with a man who punishes the crimes of the magicians by just laws, yet mingles with a demon teaching and carrying out the magic arts;
does not mingle with a man fleeing the imitation of a demon, yet mingles with a demon lying in wait to deceive man. But doubtless there is great necessity for this so great absurdity and unworthiness—namely, that the ethereal gods, who care for human affairs, would surely be ignorant of what earthly men were doing, unless the aerial demons announced it; since the ether is far from the earth and suspended on high, but the air is contiguous to both the ether and the earth. O marvelous wisdom!
What else do these men think concerning the gods—whom they wish to be all most good—except that they both care for human affairs, lest they should seem unworthy of worship, and, because of the distance of the elements, are ignorant of human affairs, so that the demons may be believed necessary, and on this account they too be thought worthy of worship, being the ones through whom the gods can both learn what is done in human affairs and where they ought to succor men? If this is so, then to these good gods a demon is better known through its neighboring body than a man through his good soul. O most lamentable necessity!—or rather, ridiculous and detestable vanity, lest the divinity be vain! For if the gods can see our soul with a soul free from the obstacle of the body, they have no need of demons as messengers for this;
but if the ethereal gods perceive, through their own body, the corporeal signs of souls—such as speech, expression, and movement—and from these gather also what the demons report, then they can be deceived by the lies of demons as well. On the other hand, if the divinity of the gods cannot be deceived by demons, then by that same divinity what we do cannot be unknown to them.
But I would wish these men to tell me whether the demons announced to the gods, concerning the crimes charged against the gods, that the poetic fictions displease Plato, while concealing that these same fictions please themselves; or whether they hid both, and preferred that the gods be ignorant of the whole matter; or whether they disclosed both—both Plato's reverent prudence toward the gods and their own lust injurious to the gods; or whether they wished Plato's judgment—by which he refused that the gods be defamed with false crimes through the impious license of the poets—to remain unknown to the gods, yet were not ashamed or afraid to betray their own wickedness, by which they love the stage-plays in which those disgraces of the gods are celebrated.
Of these four possibilities which I have set forth by way of questioning, let them choose whichever they please, and in each of them let them mark how much evil they suppose concerning the good gods. For if they choose the first, they will confess that it was not permitted to the good gods to dwell with the good Plato, when he forbade injuries against them, but that they dwelt with the evil demons, when these exulted in injuries against them—since the good gods knew a good man set far from them only through the evil demons, whom, though near, they could not know. But if they choose the second, and say that both were concealed by the demons, so that the gods knew nothing at all, neither Plato's most reverent law nor the demons' sacrilegious delight:
what can the gods usefully know in human affairs through demon go-betweens, when they are ignorant of those very things which are decreed in honor of the good gods, by the religion of good men, against the lust of the evil demons? But if they choose the third, and answer that not only Plato's judgment forbidding injuries against the gods, but also the demons' wickedness exulting in injuries against the gods, became known to the gods through those same demon messengers—is this to report, or to insult? And do the gods hear both, and know both, in such a way that they not only do not bar from their approach the malignant demons who desire and do things contrary to the gods' dignity and to Plato's religion, but even through those evil neighbors send gifts to the good Plato, though he is far off?
for they suppose that a kind of chained sequence of elements has so bound these gods together, that they can be joined to those demons by whom they are accused, but cannot be joined to him by whom they are defended—knowing both, yet unable to alter the weights of air and earth. And now, for what remains: if they choose the fourth, it is worse than the rest. For who could bear it, if the demons reported to the gods the poets' criminal fictions concerning the immortal gods, and the unworthy mockeries of the theaters, and their own most ardent desire and sweetest pleasure in all these, yet kept silent about the fact that Plato, with philosophical gravity, judged that all these things must be removed from the best republic;
so that now the good gods are compelled, through such messengers, to know the evils of the worst—not the evils of others, but of those very messengers—yet are not allowed to know the things contrary to these, the good deeds of the philosophers, since the former are to the injury, the latter to the honor, of the gods themselves? Since, therefore, none of these four is to be chosen, lest in any one of them so ill be thought concerning the gods, it remains that in no way is it to be believed—what Apuleius strives to persuade, and whatever other philosophers are of the same opinion—that demons are thus mediators between gods and men, as go-betweens and interpreters, who carry our petitions from here, and bring back the aid of the gods from there;
but rather that they are spirits most greedy to do harm, utterly estranged from justice, swollen with pride, livid with envy, cunning in deceit, who indeed dwell in this air because, cast down from the sublimity of the higher heaven, they have been condemned beforehand—by the just desert of their irreversible transgression—to this air as to a prison suited to them; nor yet, because the region of the air is above the earth and the waters, are they therefore superior in merits to men, who most easily surpass them, not by an earthly body, but by a mind that has chosen the true God for its aid. But over many, who are plainly unworthy of participation in the true religion, they lord it as over captives and subjects, to the greatest part of whom they have persuaded, by marvelous and deceptive signs whether of deeds or of predictions, that they themselves are gods.
But to certain others, who looked somewhat more attentively and carefully upon their vices, they could not persuade that they were gods, and so they feigned themselves to be go-betweens between gods and men and procurers of benefits—if indeed men thought this honor at least should be conferred upon them, men who neither believed them to be gods, because they saw they were evil, and yet wished all the gods to be good, nor dared, however, to declare them altogether unworthy of divine honor, chiefly lest they should offend the peoples, by whom they saw them served with inveterate superstition through so many rites and temples. For Hermes the Egyptian, whom they call Trismegistus, thought and wrote differently concerning them. For Apuleius indeed denies that they are gods;
but when he says that they are so engaged in a certain middle station between gods and men, that they seem to men to be necessary in dealing with the gods themselves, he does not separate their worship from the religion of the supernal gods. But that Egyptian says that some gods were made by the supreme God, others by men. Whoever hears this, as it has been stated by me, supposes it is said of images, because they are the works of men's hands; but he asserts that the visible and tangible images are, as it were, the bodies of the gods, and that within them are certain invited spirits, which have power either to do harm or to fulfill some of the desires of those by whom divine honors and services of worship are rendered to them.
To couple these invisible spirits, then, by a certain art, with visible things of corporeal matter, so that they may be as it were animated bodies—images dedicated and made subject to those spirits—this, he says, is to make gods; and this great and marvelous power of making gods, men have received. I will set down the words of this Egyptian, as they have been translated into our language. 'And since,' he says, 'a discourse is set before us concerning the kinship and fellowship of men and gods, know, O Asclepius, the power and might of man. The Lord,' he says, 'and Father, or that which is highest, God, as He is the maker of the heavenly gods, so man is the fashioner of the gods who dwell in the temples, content with human nearness.' And a little after:
'Thus humanity, ever mindful of its nature and its origin, perseveres in that imitation of divinity, so that, just as the Father and Lord made the eternal gods to be like Himself, so humanity fashioned its own gods after the likeness of its own countenance.' Here, when Asclepius, to whom he was chiefly speaking, had answered him and said, 'Do you mean statues, O Trismegistus?' he then said: 'Statues, O Asclepius—you see how far you yourself waver in doubt; statues animated, full of sense and spirit, and doing such great things and of such a kind; statues that foreknow future things and foretell them by lot, by seer, by dreams, and by many other means; that bring infirmities upon men and cure them, [dispensing] sadness and gladness according to men's deserts.
Or do you not know, O Asclepius, that Egypt is the image of heaven, or, what is truer, the transference or descent of all things that are governed and set in motion in heaven? And if it must be said more truly, our land is the temple of the whole world. And yet, since it befits the prudent man to foreknow all things, it is not right for you to be ignorant of this:
There shall be a time when it will appear that in vain did the Egyptians, with pious mind, guard the divinity with sedulous religion.' Then Hermes pursues this passage with many words, in which he seems to foretell that time in which the Christian religion, by how much it is more truthful and holier, by so much the more vehemently and freely overthrows all deceptive fictions—so that the grace of the most true Savior may set man free from those gods whom man makes, and subject him to that God by whom man was made.
But Hermes, when he foretells these things, speaks as a friend to those same delusions of demons, nor does he plainly express the Christian name, but, as though those things were being taken away and destroyed by whose observance the celestial likeness was kept in Egypt, so, bewailing these future events, he attests them with a kind of mournful prediction. For he was among those of whom the Apostle says that, knowing God, they did not glorify Him as God nor give thanks, but became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened; for professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of corruptible man—and the rest, which it would be long to recount.
For he says many such things concerning the one true God, the fabricator of the world, such as the truth holds; and, I know not how, by that darkening of the heart he slips down to these other things, so that he wishes men ever to be subject to the gods which he confesses to be made by men, and laments that these things are to be taken away in a time to come—as though anything could be more unhappy than a man over whom his own fictions domineer; whereas it would be easier that, by worshiping as gods the things he has made, he should himself cease to be a man, than that, through his worship, the things which man has made should be able to be gods. For it comes to pass more readily that a man set in honor, when he lacks understanding, is likened to the beasts, than that to the work of God made after His own image—that is, to man himself—the work of man should be preferred.
Wherefore man deservedly falls away from Him who made him, when he sets above himself the very thing which he himself has made. These vain, deceptive, pernicious, and sacrilegious things Hermes the Egyptian grieved over, because he knew the time was coming in which they would be taken away; but he grieved as shamelessly as he foreknew imprudently. For the Holy Spirit had not revealed these things to him, as to the holy prophets, who, foreseeing them, said with exultation: 'If a man makes gods, behold, these are no gods' (and in another place: 'It shall be in that day, says the Lord, that I will exterminate the names of the idols from the earth, and there shall be no more remembrance of them'); but properly concerning Egypt, so far as pertains to this matter, thus does the holy Isaiah prophesy:
'And the things made by the hands of Egypt shall be shaken before His face, and their heart shall be overcome within them,' and other things of this kind. Of this same kind were also those who rejoiced that what they knew was to come had come—such as Simeon, such as Anna, who received the newly born Jesus; such as Elizabeth, who by the Spirit recognized Him even when conceived; such as Peter, who, by the Father's revelation, said: 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.' But to this Egyptian those spirits had disclosed the coming times of their own destruction—the same spirits who, trembling before the Lord present in the flesh, said: 'Why have you come to destroy us before the time?'
either because it was sudden to them—that which they indeed supposed would come, but more slowly—or because they called this very thing their destruction, whereby it came to pass that, once recognized, they were spurned; and this was 'before the time,' that is, before the time of judgment, when they are to be punished with eternal damnation together with all the men also who are held fast in their fellowship, even as religion speaks, which neither deceives nor is deceived—not as this man, who, as though blown hither and thither by every wind of doctrine, and mingling true things with false, grieves as though a religion were about to perish, which he afterwards confesses to be an error. For after many words he returns to this very point, so as to speak again of the gods whom men have made, saying: 'But now let such things have been said enough concerning such matters.
Again,' he says, 'let us return to man and to reason, from which divine gift man has been called a rational animal. For less to be marveled at—though marvelous they are—are the things that have been said of man. For it has surpassed the wonder of all wonders, that man was able to discover the divine nature and to bring it into effect. Since, therefore, our forefathers erred greatly concerning the nature of the gods, being unbelieving and not giving heed to divine worship and religion, they discovered an art whereby they might make gods.'
'To this discovered art they joined a power drawn fittingly from the nature of the world, and, mingling these together—since they could not make souls—they called forth the souls of demons or of angels and put them into holy images and divine mysteries, through which the idols might have power both to do good and to do harm.' I do not know whether the demons themselves, when adjured, would confess as this man has confessed. 'Since,' he says, 'our forefathers erred greatly concerning the nature of the gods, being unbelieving and not giving heed to divine worship and religion, they discovered an art whereby they might make gods.' Did he say that they erred at least moderately, so as to discover this art of making gods? Or was he content to say, 'They erred,' without adding and saying:
'They erred greatly'? This great error, then, and the unbelief of those not giving heed to divine worship and religion, discovered the art whereby they might make gods. And yet, that which great error and unbelief and the soul's turning away from divine worship and religion discovered—namely, that man should by art make gods—this the wise man grieves over, as though a divine religion were to be taken away at a certain, appointed time to come. See whether he is not compelled, both by a divine power to betray the past error of his forefathers, and by a diabolic power to grieve over the coming punishment of the demons. For if their forefathers, by erring greatly concerning the nature of the gods through unbelief and the soul's turning away from divine worship and religion, discovered an art whereby they might make gods:
what wonder is it if this detestable art—whatever it has wrought, being turned away from divine religion—is taken away by divine religion, when truth amends error, faith refutes unbelief, and conversion corrects aversion? For if he had said, with the causes left unspoken, that his forefathers had discovered an art whereby they might make gods, it would surely have been for us, if we understood anything right and pious, to attend and see that they would by no means have arrived at this art—by which man makes gods—had they not strayed from the truth, had they believed those things which are worthy of God, had they turned their mind to divine worship and religion;
And yet, if it were we who named the causes of this art as the great error of men, their unbelief, and the turning-away of a wandering and faithless mind from the divine religion, the impudence of those who resist the truth would still have to be borne, however grudgingly. But when this very man, who marvels at the power of this art above all else in man, the power by which it was granted him to make gods, and who grieves that a time is coming in which all these fabrications of gods, set up by men, shall by law also be commanded to be taken away, nevertheless confesses and sets forth the causes why men came to such things, saying that his own forefathers, by great error and unbelief and by not turning the mind to the divine worship and religion, discovered this art by which they might make gods:
what ought we to say, or rather what ought we to do, but to render such thanks as we can to the Lord our God, who has taken these things away by causes contrary to those by which they were set up? For what the multitude of error set up, the way of truth has taken away; what unbelief set up, faith has taken away; what turning-away from the worship of the divine religion set up, conversion to the one true and holy God has taken away — and not in Egypt alone, over which alone the spirit of the demons here laments, but in all the earth, which sings to the Lord a new song, as the truly sacred and truly prophetic writings foretold, where it is written: Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth. For the title of this psalm is:
When the house was being built after the captivity. For a house is built for the Lord — the City of God, which is the holy Church — in all the earth after that captivity in which the demons held captive and possessed those men out of whom, when they believe in God, the house is built as of living stones. For it was not the case that, because a man made gods, he was therefore not himself possessed by them, he who had made them, when by worshipping he was drawn into their fellowship — I mean the fellowship, not of stupid idols, but of crafty demons. For what are idols but that which the same Scripture declares: They have eyes, and shall not see; and whatever of that sort had to be said of materials, however skillfully fashioned into shapes, yet lacking life and sense?
But the unclean spirits, bound to those same images by that abominable art, had wretchedly taken captive the souls of their worshippers by drawing them into their own fellowship. Whence the Apostle says: We know that an idol is nothing; but the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God; I would not that you should be partakers with demons. After this captivity, therefore, in which men were held by the malignant demons, the house of God is built in all the earth; whence that psalm received its title, where it is said: Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth. Sing to the Lord, bless his name; show forth his salvation from day to day. Declare his glory among the Gentiles, his wonders among all peoples;
for great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; he is terrible above all gods. For all the gods of the Gentiles are demons, but the Lord made the blind to see. He, therefore, who grieved that a time was coming in which the worship of idols and the dominion of demons over those who worshipped them would be taken away, being incited by the evil spirit, ever wished that this captivity should remain — that captivity which, once past, the psalm sings that a house is built in all the earth. Hermes foretold those things with grief; the prophet foretold these things with joy.
And because the Spirit is victorious who sang these things through the holy prophets, even Hermes himself was by wondrous means compelled to confess that those very things which he did not wish and grieved to see taken away had been instituted, not by the prudent and faithful and religious, but by the erring and the unbelieving and by those turned away from the worship of the divine religion. For although he calls them gods, yet when he says they were made by such men — men such as we surely ought not to be — he shows, willy-nilly, that they are not to be worshipped by those who are not such as those were by whom they were made, that is, by the prudent, the faithful, the religious; showing at the same time also that the very men who made them brought upon themselves the having as gods those who were not gods. For that prophetic saying is true:
If a man shall make gods, behold, they themselves are not gods. Such gods, therefore, the gods of such men, made by art by such men — that is (when Hermes called them so), demons bound by the chains of their own lusts through some art or other into idols — when he called them gods made by men, yet he did not grant them what the Platonist Apuleius did (concerning which we have already said enough, and shown how unfitting and absurd it is), namely, that they themselves should be interpreters and intercessors between the gods whom God made and the men whom the same God made, carrying prayers hither and bringing back gifts thither. For it is exceedingly foolish to believe that gods whom men have made are of more avail with the gods whom God made than the very men are who were themselves made by that same God.
For a demon, bound to an image by an impious art, was made a god by man — but by such a man, not by every man. What sort of god, then, is this, whom no man would make save one who was erring and unbelieving and turned away from the true God? Moreover, if the demons who are worshipped in temples, set into images (that is, into visible idols) by some art or other by those men who by this art made gods — while they were straying and turned away from the divine worship and religion — are not go-betweens nor interpreters between men and the gods, both because of their own most wicked and most shameful ways, and because men, though erring and unbelieving and turned away from the divine worship and religion, are nevertheless without doubt better than those whom they themselves made gods by art:
it remains that whatever they can do, they can do it as demons, either by conferring seeming benefits — being all the more harmful because all the more deceiving — or by doing open harm (yet neither of these except when they are permitted by the deep and secret providence of God); but not that, as mediators between men and gods, they should through the friendship of the gods avail much with men. For these can in no way be friends of the good gods, whom we call holy angels and rational creatures of the holy heavenly habitation, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers — from whom they are as far removed in the disposition of the mind as vices are far from virtues and malice from goodness.