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| Argument: Recapitulation. Doubtless Here is a Source of Error: Demons Lurk Under the Statues and Images, They Haunt the Fanes, They Animate the Fibres of the Entrails, Direct the Flights of Birds, Govern the Lots, Pour Forth Oracles Involved in False Responses. These Things Not from God; But They are Constrained to Confess When They are Adjured in the Name of the True God, and are Driven from the Possessed Bodies. Hence They Flee Hastily from the Neighbourhood of Christians, and Stir Up a Hatred Against Them in the Minds of the Gentiles Who Begin to Hate Them Before They Know Them. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter
XXVII.—Argument: Recapitulation. Doubtless Here is a
Source of Error: Demons Lurk Under the Statues and Images, They
Haunt the Fanes, They Animate the Fibres of the Entrails, Direct the
Flights of Birds, Govern the Lots, Pour Forth Oracles Involved in False
Responses. These Things Not from God; But They are Constrained to
Confess When They are Adjured in the Name of the True God, and are
Driven from the Possessed Bodies. Hence They Flee Hastily from
the Neighbourhood of Christians, and Stir Up a Hatred Against Them in
the Minds of the Gentiles Who Begin to Hate Them Before They Know
Them.
“These impure spirits, therefore—the
demons—as is shown by the Magi, by the philosophers, and by Plato, consecrated under
statues and images, lurk there, and by their afflatus attain the
authority as of a present deity; while in the meantime they are
breathed into the prophets, while they dwell in the shrines, while
sometimes they animate the fibres of the entrails, control the flights
of birds, direct the lots, are the cause of oracles involved in many
falsehoods. For they are both deceived, and they deceive;
inasmuch as they are both ignorant of the simple truth, and for their
own ruin they confess not that which they know. Thus they weigh
men downwards from heaven, and call them away from the true God to
material things: they disturb the life, render all men1806
1806 Some read
“slumbers” for “all men.” | unquiet; creeping also secretly into human
bodies, with subtlety, as being spirits, they feign diseases, alarm the
minds, wrench about the limbs; that they may constrain men to worship
them, being gorged with the fumes of altars or the sacrifices of
cattle, that, by remitting what they had bound, they may seem to have
cured it. These raging maniacs also, whom you see rush about in
public, are moreover themselves prophets without a temple; thus they
rage, thus they rave, thus they are whirled around. In them also
there is a like instigation of the demon, but there is a dissimilar
occasion for their madness. From the same causes also arise those
things which were spoken of a little time ago by you, that Jupiter
demanded the restoration of his games in a dream, that the Castors
appeared with horses, and that a small ship was following the leading
of the matron’s girdle. A great many, even some of your own
people, know all those things that the demons themselves confess
concerning themselves, as often as they are driven by us from bodies by
the torments of our words and by the fires of our prayers. Saturn
himself, and Serapis, and Jupiter, and whatever demons you worship,
overcome by pain, speak out what they are; and assuredly they do not
lie to their own discredit, especially when any of you are standing
by. Since they themselves are the witnesses that they are demons,
believe them when they confess the truth of themselves; for when
abjured by the only and true God, unwillingly the wretched beings
shudder in1807
1807 “Cling to”
is another reading. | their bodies, and
either at once leap forth, or vanish by degrees, as the faith of the
sufferer assists or the grace of the healer inspires. Thus they
fly from Christians when near at hand, whom at a distance they harassed
by your means in their assemblies. And thus, introduced into the
minds of the ignorant, they secretly sow there a hatred of us by means
of fear. For it is natural both to hate one whom you fear, and to
injure one whom you have feared, if you can. Thus they take
possession of the minds and obstruct the hearts, that men may begin to
hate us before they know us; lest, if known, they should either imitate
us, or not be able to condemn us.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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