ARGUMENT.
HAVING IN THE PRECEDING BOOK SHOWN THAT THE WORSHIP OF DEMONS MUSTBE ABJURED, SINCE THEY IN A THOUSAND WAYS PROCLAIM THEMSELVES TO BE WICKEDSPIRITS, AUGUSTIN IN THIS BOOK MEETS THOSE WHO ALLEGE A DISTINCTION AMONGDEMONS, SOME BEING EVIL, WHILE OTHERS ARE GOOD; AND, HAVING EXPLODED THISDISTINCTION, HE PROVES THAT TO NO DEMON, BUT TO CHRIST ALONE, BELONGS THEOFFICE OF PROVIDING MEN WITH ETERNAL BLESSEDNESS.
CHAP.1.--THE POINT AT WHICH THE DISCUSSIONHAS ARRIVED, AND WHAT REMAINS TO BE HANDLED.
SOME have advanced the opinion that there are both good and bad gods;but some, thinking more respectfully of the gods, have attributed to them so much honor and praise as to preclude the supposition of any god being wicked.But those who have maintained that there are wicked gods as well as good ones have included the demons under the name "gods," and sometimes though more rarely, have called the gods demons; so that they admit that Jupiter, whom they make the king and head of all the rest, is called a demon by Homer.(1) Those, on the other hand, who maintain that the gods are all good, and far more excellent than the men who are justly called good, are moved by the actions of the demons, which they can neither deny nor impute to the gods whose goodness they affirm, to distinguish between gods and demons; so that, whenever they find anything offensive in the deeds or sentiments by which unseen spirits manifest their power, they believe this to proceed not from the gods, but from the demons.At the same time they believe that, as no god can hold direct intercourse with men, these demons hold the position of mediators, ascending with prayers, and returning with gifts.This is the opinion of the Platonists, the ablest and most esteemed of their philosophers, with whom we therefore chose to debate this question,--whether the worship of a number of gods is of any service toward obtaining blessedness in the future life.And this is the reason why, in the preceding book, we have inquired how the demons, who take pleasure in such things as good and wise men loathe and execrate, in the sacrilegious and immoral fictions which the poets have written not of men, but of the gods themselves, and in the wicked and criminal violence of magical arts, can be regarded as more nearly related and more friendly to the gods than men are, and can mediate between good men and the good gods; and it has been demonstrated that this is absolutely impossible.
CHAP.2.--WHETHER AMONG THE DEMONS, INFERIORTO THE GODS, THERE ARE ANY GOOD.SPIRITS UNDER WHOSE GUARDIANSHIP THE HUMANSOUL MIGHT REACH TRUE BLESSEDNESS.
This book, then, ought, according to the promise made in the end of the preceding one, to contain a discussion, not of the difference which exists among the gods, who, according to the Platonists, are all good, nor of the difference between gods and demons, the former of whom they separate by a wide interval from men, while the latter are placed intermediately between the gods and men, but of the difference, since they make one, among the demons themselves.This we shall discuss so far as it bears on our theme.It has been the common and usual belief that some of the demons are bad, others good; and this opinon, whether it be that of the Platonists or any other sect, must by no means be passed over in silence, lest some one suppose he ought to cultivate the good demons in order that by their mediation he may be accepted by the gods, all of whom he believes to be good, and that he may live with them after death; whereas he would thus be ensnared in the toils of wicked spirits, and would wander far from the true God, with whom alone, and in whom alone, the human soul, that is to say, the soul that is rational and intellectual, is blessed.
CHAP.3.--WHAT APULEIUS ATTRIBUTES TO THEDEMONS, TO WHOM, THOUGH HE DOES NOT DENY THEM REASON, HE DOES NOT ASCRIBEVIRTUE.
What, then, is the difference between good and evil demons? For the Platonist Apuleius, in a treatise on this whole subject,(1) while he says a great deal about their aerial bodies, has not a word to say of the spiritual virtues with which, if they were good, they must have been endowed.Not a word has he said, then, of that which could give them happiness; but proof of their misery he has given, acknowledging that their mind, by which they rank as reasonable beings, is not only not imbued and fortified with Virtue so as to resist all unreasonable passions, but that it is somehow agitated with tempestuous emotions, and is thus on a level with the mind of foolish men.His own words are: "It is this class of demons the poets refer to, when, without serious error, they feign that the gods hate and love individuals among men, prospering and ennobling some, and opposing and distressing others.Therefore pity, indignation, grief, joy, every human emotion is experienced by the demons, with the same mental disturbance, and the same tide of feeling and thought.These turmoils and tempests banish them far from the tranquility of the Celestial gods." Can there be any doubt that in these words it is not some inferior part of their spiritual nature, but the very mind by which the demons hold their rank as rational beings, which he says is tossed with passion like a stormy sea? They cannot, then, be compared even to wise men, who with undisturbed.mind resist these perturbations to which they are exposed in this life, and from which human infirmity is never exempt, and who do not yield themselves to approve of or perpetrate anything which might deflect them from the path of wisdom and law of rectitude.They resemble in character, though not in bodily appearance, wicked and foolish men.I might indeed say they are worse, inasmuch as they have grown old in iniquity, and incorrigible by punishment.
Their mind, as Apuleius says, is a sea tossed with tempest, having no rallying point of truth or virtue in their soul from which they can resist their turbulent and depraved emotions.