I am considerably surprised that such learned men, men who pronounce all material and sensible things to be altogether inferior to those that are spiritual and intelligible, should mention bodily contact in connection with the blessed life.Is that sentiment of Plotinus forgotten?--"We must fly to our beloved fatherland.There is the Father, there our all.What fleet or flight shall convey us thither? Our way is, to become like God."(2) If, then, one is nearer to God the liker he is to Him, there is no other distance from God than unlikeness to Him.And the soul of man is unlike that incorporeal and unchangeable and eternal essence, in proportion as it craves things temporal and mutable.And as the things beneath, which are mortal and impure, cannot hold intercourse with the immortal purity which is above, a mediator is indeed needed to remove this difficulty; but not a mediator who resembles the highest order of being by possessing an immortal body, and the lowest by having a diseased soul, which makes him rather grudge that we be healed than help our cure.We need a Mediator who, being united to us here below by the mortality of His body, should at the same time be able to afford us truly divine help in cleansing and liberating us by means of the immortal righteousness of His spirit, whereby He remained heavenly even while here upon earth.Far be it from the incontaminable God to fear pollution from the man(1) He assumed, or from the men among whom He lived in the form of a man.For, though His incarnation showed us nothing else, these two wholesome facts were enough, that true divinity cannot be polluted by flesh, and that demons are not to be considered better than ourselves because they have not flesh.(2) This, then, as Scripture says, is the "Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus,"(3) of whose divinity, whereby He is equal to the Father, and humanity, whereby He has become like us, this is not the place to speak as fully as I could.
CHAP.18.--THAT THE DECEITFUL DEMONS, WHILE PROMISING TO CONDUCT MENTO GOD BY
THEIR INTERCESSION, MEAN TO TURN THEM FROM THE PATH OF TRUTH.
As to the demons, these false and deceitful mediators, who, though their uncleanness of spirit frequently reveals their misery and malignity, yet, by virtue of the levity of their aerial bodies and the nature of the places they inhabit, do contrive to turn us aside and hinder our spiritual progress; they do not help us towards God, but rather prevent us from reaching Him.Since even in the bodily way, which is erroneous and misleading, and in which righteousness does not walk,--for we must rise to God not by bodily ascent, but by incorporeal or spiritual conformity to Him,--in this bodily way, I say, which the friends of the demons arrange according to the weight of the various elements, the aerial demons being set between the ethereal gods and earthy men, they imagine the gods to have this privilege, that by this local interval they are preserved from the pollution of human contact.
Thus they believe that the demons are contaminated by men rather than men cleansed by the demons, and that the gods themselves should be polluted unless their local superiority preserved them.Who is so wretched a creature as to expect purification by a way in which men are contaminating, demons contaminated, and gods contaminable? Who would not rather choose that way whereby we escape the contamination of the demons, and are cleansed from pollution by the incontaminable God, so as to be associated with the uncontaminated angels?
CHAP.19.--THAT EVEN AMONG THEIR OWN WORSHIPPERS THE NAME "DEMON" HASNEVER A
GOOD SIGNIFICATION.
But as some of these demonolators, as I may call them, and among them Labeo, allege that those whom they call demons are by others called angels, I must, if I would not seem to dispute merely about words, say something about the good angels.The Platonists do not deny their existence, but prefer to call them good demons.But we, following Scripture, according to which we are Christians, have learned that some of the angels are good, some bad, but never have we read in Scripture of good demons; but wherever this or any cognate term occurs, it is applied only to wicked spirits.And this usage has become so universal, that, even among those who are called pagans, and who maintain that demons as well as gods should be worshipped, there is scarcely a man, no matter how well read and learned, who would dare to say by way of praise to his slave, You have a demon, or who could doubt that the man to whom he said this would consider it a curse? Why, then, are we to subject ourselves to the necessity of explaining away what we have said when we have given offence by using the word demon, with which every one, or almost every one, connects a bad meaning, while we can so easily evade this necessity by using the word angel?
CHAP.20.--OF THE KIND OF KNOWLEDGE WHICHPUFFS UP THE DEMONS.
However, the very origin of the name suggests something worthy of consideration, if we compare it with the divine books.They are called demons from a Greek word meaning knowledge.(1) Now the apostle, speaking with the Holy Spirit, says, "Knowledge puffeth up, but charity buildeth up."(2) And this can only be understood as meaning that without charity knowledge does no good, but inflates a man or magnifies him with an empty windiness.The demons, then, have knowledge without charity, and are thereby so inflated or proud, that they crave those divine honors and religious services which they know to be due to the true God, and still, as far as they can, exact these from all over whom they have influence.Against this pride of the demons, under which the human race was held subject as its merited punishment, there was exerted the mighty influence of the humility of God, who appeared in the form of a servant;but men, resembling the demons in pride, but not in knowledge, and being puffed up with uncleanness, failed to recognize Him.