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| Of the Friendship of the Holy Angels, Which Men Cannot Be Sure of in This Life, Owing to the Deceit of the Demons Who Hold in Bondage the Worshippers of a Plurality of Gods.
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Chapter 9.—Of the Friendship of
the Holy Angels, Which Men Cannot Be Sure of in This Life, Owing to
the Deceit of the Demons Who Hold in Bondage the Worshippers of a
Plurality of Gods.
The philosophers who wished us to
have the gods for our friends rank the friendship of the holy
angels in the fourth circle of society, advancing now from the
three circles of society on earth to the universe, and embracing
heaven itself. And in this friendship we have indeed no fear that
the angels will grieve us by their death or deterioration. But as
we cannot mingle with them as familiarly as with men (which itself
is one of the grievances of this life), and as Satan, as we read,1277
sometimes
transforms himself into an angel of light, to tempt those whom it
is necessary to discipline, or just to deceive, there is great need
of God’s mercy to preserve us from making friends of demons in
disguise, while we fancy we have good angels for our friends; for
the astuteness and deceitfulness of these wicked spirits is
equalled by their hurtfulness. And is this not a great misery of
human life, that we are involved in such ignorance as, but for
God’s mercy, makes us a prey to these demons? And it is very
certain that the philosophers of the godless city, who have
maintained that the gods were their friends, had fallen a prey to
the malignant demons who rule that city, and whose eternal
punishment is to be shared by it. For the nature of these beings
is sufficiently evinced by the sacred or rather sacrilegious
observances which form their worship, and by the filthy games in
which their crimes are celebrated, and which they themselves
originated and exacted from their worshippers as a fit
propitiation.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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