City of God 8.18–8.25

Chapter 18. What kind of religion it is in which it is taught that men, to be commended to the good gods, must use demons as advocates.

In vain, then, did Apuleius, and whoever think as he does, confer this honor on them, placing them in the air midway between the ethereal heaven and the earth, so that, since “no god mingles with man,” which they say Plato said, these may carry men's prayers to the gods and bring back from there to men what they ask for. For those who believed these things thought it unworthy for men to mingle with gods and gods with men, but worthy for demons to mingle with both gods and men, to present petitions from here and bring back grants from there. So, evidently, a chaste man, a stranger to the crimes of the magical arts, must employ as patrons, through whom the gods may hear him, those who love the very things by not loving which he becomes more worthy to be heard more readily and more willingly. For they love the indecencies of the stage, which chastity does not love; they love in the sorceries of magicians a thousand arts of doing harm, which innocence does not love. So if chastity and innocence wish to obtain anything from the gods, they will not be able to do so by their own merits, but only through the intercession of their own enemies. There is no reason for him to try to justify the fictions of the poets and the mockeries of the theater. Against these things we have their own master, of such great authority among them, Plato — if human shame deserves so ill of itself as not only to love shameful things but even to think them pleasing to the divinity.

Chapter 19. On the impiety of the magic art, which relies on the patronage of malignant spirits.

Furthermore, against the magic arts, in which some men, too unhappy and too impious, are pleased even to glory, shall I not call the public light of day itself as witness? For why are these things punished so heavily by the severity of the laws, if they are the works of deities to be worshipped? Or did the Christians perhaps establish these laws by which magic arts are punished? In what other sense, except that these sorceries are undoubtedly pernicious to the human race, does the most famous poet say: “I call the gods to witness, dear sister, and you, and your sweet life, that I am girding myself for magic arts against my will”? And that other thing he says about these arts in another place, “and I have seen crops sown elsewhere carried over” — because by this pestilential and criminal teaching the fruits of others are said to be transferred to other lands — does not Cicero record that it was written in the Twelve Tables, that is, the most ancient laws of the Romans, and that a penalty was fixed for anyone who did it? Finally, was Apuleius himself accused of magic arts before Christian judges? If he had known that the arts charged against him were divine and pious and in keeping with the works of divine powers, he ought not only to have confessed them but even to have professed them, blaming rather the laws by which these things were forbidden and thought worthy of condemnation, when they ought to have been held wonderful and venerable. In that way he would either have persuaded the judges of his opinion, or, if they judged according to unjust laws and punished him with death for proclaiming and praising such things, the demons would have repaid his soul with worthy gifts, since for proclaiming their divine works he would not have feared to lose his human life. So our martyrs, when the Christian religion was charged against them as a crime — the religion by which they knew they were made safe and most glorious for eternity — did not choose to escape temporal punishments by denying it, but rather, by confessing, professing, and proclaiming it, and by enduring everything for it faithfully and bravely and dying with pious serenity, they compelled the laws by which it was forbidden to blush, and caused them to be changed. But there is extant a most copious and eloquent speech of this Platonic philosopher, in which he defends himself against the charge of magic arts as foreign to him, and wishes to seem innocent in no other way than by denying the things that cannot be committed by an innocent man. Yet all the wonders of magicians, whom he rightly thinks deserving of condemnation, are done by the teachings and works of demons; let him see why he judges them worthy of honor, asserting that they are necessary for carrying our prayers to the gods, when we ought to avoid their works if we want our prayers to reach the true God. Then I ask: what kind of men's prayers does he think are presented to the good gods through demons — magical ones or lawful ones? If magical, the gods do not want such; if lawful, they do not want them through such beings. And if a repentant sinner pours out prayers, especially if he has committed something magical, does he then receive pardon through the intercession of those at whose instigation or with whose favor he laments that he fell into guilt? Or do the demons themselves, so as to be able to obtain pardon for penitents, first do penance for having deceived them? No one has ever said this of the demons; for if it were so, they would never dare to seek divine honors for themselves, who by repenting would desire to attain the grace of pardon. For there is pride to be detested, here humility to be pitied.

Chapter 20. Whether we are to believe that good gods mingle more willingly with demons than with men.

“But,” they say, “an urgent and most pressing cause compels the demons to act as intermediaries between gods and men, to carry men's desires to the gods and bring back from the gods what they have obtained.” What, pray, is this cause, and how great the necessity? “Because,” they say, “no god mingles with man.” What splendid holiness in God, then, who does not mingle with a man who entreats him, but mingles with a demon who is arrogant; does not mingle with a man who repents, but mingles with a demon who deceives; does not mingle with a man who takes refuge in the divinity, but mingles with a demon who feigns divinity; does not mingle with a man who asks for pardon, but mingles with a demon who urges wickedness; does not mingle with a man who through philosophical books expels the poets from a well-ordered city, but mingles with a demon who demands from the princes and pontiffs of the city the mockeries of the poets through stage plays; does not mingle with a man who forbids the invention of crimes of the gods, but mingles with a demon who delights in false crimes of the gods; does not mingle with a man who punishes the crimes of magicians by just laws, but mingles with a demon who teaches and practices magic arts; does not mingle with a man who flees from imitating a demon, but mingles with a demon who lies in wait to deceive a man!

Chapter 21. Whether the gods use demons as messengers and interpreters, and whether they are ignorant of being deceived by them or willing to be.

But, of course, there is a great necessity for this great absurdity and unworthiness: namely, that the ethereal gods, who care for human affairs, would certainly not know what earthly men were doing unless the aerial demons reported it, since the ether is far from the earth and suspended on high, while the air borders on both ether and earth. O wonderful wisdom! What else do these men think of the gods, whom they want all to be supremely good, except that they both care for human affairs, so as not to seem unworthy of worship, and, because of the distance of the elements, do not know human affairs — so that demons may be believed necessary and for this reason be thought worthy of worship themselves, as those through whom the gods can learn what is happening in human affairs and where they ought to help men? If this is so, a demon is better known to these good gods through a neighboring body than a man through a good mind. O necessity much to be lamented — or rather vanity to be laughed at or detested, so that divinity may not be vain! For if the gods, with a mind free from the obstacle of a body, can see our mind, they do not need demons as messengers for this; but if the ethereal gods perceive, through their own bodies, the bodily signs of minds, such as speech, facial expression, and movement, and from these gather what the demons report, they can also be deceived by the lies of demons. Further, if the divinity of the gods cannot be deceived by demons, then by that same divinity what we do cannot be unknown. I should like these men to tell me whether the demons reported to the gods that the poets' fictions about the crimes of the gods displeased Plato, and concealed that they pleased the demons themselves; or concealed both, and preferred the gods to be ignorant of the whole matter; or disclosed both, both Plato's religious prudence toward the gods and their own lust, injurious to the gods; or wished Plato's opinion, by which he refused to have the gods defamed with false crimes through the impious licence of the poets, to be unknown to the gods, while not blushing or fearing to betray their own wickedness, by which they love the stage plays in which those disgraces of the gods are celebrated. Of these four, which I have put forward by questioning, let them choose whichever they please, and let them notice in whichever it is how much evil they think of the good gods. For if they choose the first, they will have to confess that the good gods could not dwell with the good Plato when he forbade injuries to them, but dwelt with the bad demons when they exulted in injuries to them; for the good gods would know the good man, placed far from them, only through bad 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 either of Plato's most religious law or of the demons' sacrilegious delight, what can the gods usefully know of human affairs through demons as intermediaries, when they do not know those things which are decreed in honor of the good gods by the religion of good men against the lust of bad demons? But if they choose the third, and answer that not only Plato's opinion forbidding injuries to the gods, but also the demons' wickedness exulting in injuries to the gods, became known to the gods through these same demons as messengers — is this reporting or insulting? And do the gods hear and know both in such a way that they not only do not keep the malignant demons, who desire and do things contrary to the dignity of the gods and to Plato's religion, from approaching them, but even send gifts through these bad neighbors to the good Plato far away? For the chained series of the elements, as it were, has so bound them that they can be joined to those by whom they are slandered, but not to him by whom they are defended — knowing both, but unable to shift the weights of air and earth. Now, what remains, if they choose the fourth, is worse than the rest. For who could bear it if the demons reported to the gods the poets' criminal fictions about the immortal gods and the unworthy mockeries of the theaters, and their own most burning desire and sweetest pleasure in all these things, and kept silent about the fact that Plato, with philosophical gravity, judged that all these things should be removed from the best commonwealth? So the good gods would be compelled to know, through such messengers, the evils of the worst beings — not those of others, but of those same messengers — and would not be allowed to know the contrary goods of the philosophers, though the former are an injury and the latter an honor to the gods themselves.

Chapter 22. On rejecting the worship of demons, against Apuleius.

Since none of these four is to be chosen, lest in any of them such evil be thought of the gods, it remains that we must in no way believe what Apuleius, and any other philosophers of the same opinion, try to persuade us: that demons are intermediaries between gods and men, as go-betweens and interpreters, to carry our petitions from here and bring back the help of the gods from there. Rather, they are spirits most eager to do harm, wholly foreign to justice, swollen with pride, livid with envy, cunning in deceit. They dwell indeed in this air, because, cast down from the height of the higher heaven for the guilt of a transgression from which there is no return, they have been condemned beforehand to this region as to a prison suited to them. Yet they are not, because the place of the air is above the earth and waters, therefore themselves superior in merit to men, who very easily overcome them — not by an earthly body, but by a devout mind that has chosen the true God as its helper. But they plainly lord it over many who are unworthy of sharing in the true religion, as over captives and subjects; and the greatest part of these they have persuaded that they are gods, by wonderful and deceitful signs, either of deeds or of predictions. Some, however, who looked somewhat more attentively and carefully at their vices, they could not persuade that they were gods; and so they pretended to be go-betweens between gods and men and obtainers of benefits. That is, if men thought that at least this honor should be paid them, who did not believe them to be gods, because they saw that they were bad, while they held all gods to be good; and yet did not dare to say that they were altogether unworthy of divine honor, chiefly so as not to offend the peoples by whom they saw them served, through an inveterate superstition, with so many rites and temples.

Chapter 23. What Hermes Trismegistus thought about idolatry, and how he could know that the Egyptian superstitions would be abolished.

Hermes the Egyptian, whom they call Trismegistus, thought and wrote differently about them. For Apuleius indeed denies that they are gods; but when he says that they occupy a middle position between gods and men, so that they seem necessary for men with the gods themselves, he does not separate their worship from the religion of the gods above. But that Egyptian says that some gods were made by the supreme God and others by men. Whoever hears this, as I have put it, thinks it is said of images, because they are the work of men's hands. But he asserts that the visible and tangible images are, as it were, the bodies of the gods, and that certain spirits invited into them dwell in them, which have some power either to harm or to fulfil some desires of those by whom divine honors and the services of worship are paid them. To join these invisible spirits by a certain art to visible things of bodily matter, so that images dedicated and subject to those spirits may be like animated bodies — this, he says, is to make gods; and men, he says, have received this great and wonderful power of making gods. I shall set down the words of this Egyptian as they have been translated into our language. “And since,” he says, “our discourse concerns the kinship and fellowship of men and gods, know, O Asclepius, the power and strength of man. As the Lord and Father,” he says, “or, what is highest, God, is the maker of the heavenly gods, so man is the fashioner of the gods who are in the temples, content to be near to men.” And shortly after: “So humanity,” he says, “always mindful of its nature and origin, persists in that imitation of divinity, so that, as the Father and Lord made the gods eternal to be like himself, so humanity fashioned its gods in the likeness of its own countenance.” Here, when Asclepius, to whom he was chiefly speaking, had answered him and said, “You mean statues, O Trismegistus?” he said: “Statues, O Asclepius. You see how far you yourself distrust. Statues animated, full of sense and spirit, and doing such great things; statues foreknowing the future and foretelling it by lot, by seer, by dreams and by many other things; statues that bring infirmities on men and cure them, giving sadness and gladness according to 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 exercised 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 to foreknow all things, it is not right that you should be ignorant of this: a time is to come when it will appear that the Egyptians have kept the divinity with pious mind and diligent religion in vain.” Then Hermes follows up this passage at length, in which he seems to foretell this time in which the Christian religion, the truer and holier it is, the more vehemently and freely overturns all deceitful fictions, so that the grace of the most true Savior may free man from the gods whom man makes, and subject him to the God by whom man was made. But when Hermes foretells these things, he speaks as a friend of those same delusions of the demons, and does not express the Christian name plainly; but, as if those things were being taken away and destroyed by whose observance the likeness of heaven was preserved in Egypt, he bears witness to them, lamenting that they will come, by a kind of mournful prophecy. For he was one of those of whom the apostle says that, “knowing God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks, but became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened; for, claiming to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man,” and the rest, which it would be long to mention. For he says many such things about the one true God, the maker of the world, as the truth holds; and somehow, by that darkening of the heart, he slides down to these things, so that he would always have men subject to the gods whom he confesses are made by men, and laments that these will be taken away in the future — as if anything were more unhappy than man when his own fictions lord it over him. For it is easier for man, by worshipping as gods those whom he has made, to cease to be a man himself, than for those whom man has made to become gods through his worship. For it happens more readily that “man, when placed in honor, not understanding, is compared to the beasts,” than that the work of man should be preferred to the work of God made in his image, that is, to man himself. Therefore man rightly falls away from him who made him, when he sets over himself what he himself has made. Hermes the Egyptian grieved over these empty, deceptive, pernicious, sacrilegious things because he knew that the time was coming when they would be taken away; but he grieved as shamelessly as he knew imprudently. For the Holy Spirit had not revealed these things to him as to the holy prophets, who, foreseeing them, said with exultation: “If man makes gods, behold, they are not gods”; and in another place: “It shall be in that day, says the Lord, I will destroy the names of the idols from the earth, and there shall be no more remembrance of them.” And concerning Egypt in particular, as far as this matter is concerned, holy Isaiah prophesies thus: “And the works of Egypt's hands shall be moved at his presence, and their heart shall be overcome in them,” and so on. Of this kind also were those who rejoiced that what they knew was to come had come: such as Simeon, such as Anna, who at once recognized Jesus when he was born; such as Elizabeth, who recognized him in the Spirit even when he was conceived; such as Peter, saying by the Father's revelation, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” But to this Egyptian the times of their own destruction had been indicated by those spirits who, trembling, said to the Lord when he was present in the flesh: “Why have you come to destroy us before the time?” — either because it came suddenly on them, which they thought would indeed come, but later; or because they called this very thing their destruction, that being known they were despised; 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 men too who are held in their fellowship — as the religion says which neither deceives nor is deceived, not as this man says, who, blown this way and that as if by every wind of doctrine and mixing false with true, grieves as though over a perishing religion, which he afterwards confesses to be error.

Chapter 24. How Hermes confessed the error of his forefathers, which he nevertheless grieved was to be destroyed.

For after much else he returns to this very point, speaking again about the gods whom men made, thus: “But now let such things suffice on such matters. Let us return again,” he says, “to man and to reason, by which divine gift he has been called a rational animal. For the things that have been said about man are less wonderful, though they are wonderful. For what surpasses the wonder of all wonders is that man has been able to discover the divine nature and to make it. Since, then, our forefathers erred greatly concerning the account of the gods, being unbelieving and not turning their minds to worship and divine religion, they discovered an art by which to make gods. To this discovery they joined a suitable power from the nature of the world; and mixing it, since they could not make souls, they called up the souls of demons or angels and put them into sacred images and divine mysteries, through which the idols might have the power of doing both good and evil.” 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 account of the gods, being unbelieving and not turning their minds to worship and divine religion, they discovered an art by which to 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, “they erred greatly”? This great error, then, and the unbelief of those who did not turn their minds to worship and divine religion, discovered the art by which to make gods. And yet what great error, unbelief, and a mind turned away from worship and divine religion discovered — that man should make gods by art — this the wise man laments as divine religion being taken away at a certain time to come. See whether he is not compelled by divine power to disclose the past error of his ancestors, and by diabolical power to lament the coming punishment of the demons. For if their forefathers, by erring greatly about the account of the gods, through unbelief and a mind turned away from worship and divine religion, discovered the art by which to make gods, what wonder if whatever this detestable art made, turned away from divine religion, is taken away by divine religion — when truth corrects error, faith refutes unbelief, and conversion corrects aversion? For if he had said, without mentioning the causes, that his forefathers discovered the art by which to make gods, it would certainly have been our part, if we had any right and pious sense, to notice and see that they would never have come to this art by which man makes gods if they had not strayed from the truth, if they had believed what is worthy of God, if they had turned their minds to worship and divine religion. And yet, if we ourselves said that the causes of this art were the great error of men, their unbelief, and the aversion of an erring and unfaithful mind from divine religion, the shamelessness of those who resist the truth would be somewhat tolerable. But when this same man, who admires above all else in man the power of this art by which he is granted to make gods, and grieves that a time is coming when all these fictions of gods instituted by men will be ordered by law to be taken away, nevertheless confesses and expresses the causes by which men came to these things, saying that his forefathers, through great error and unbelief and not turning their minds to worship and divine religion, discovered this art by which to make gods — what ought we to say, or rather to do, but give as great thanks as we can to the Lord our God, who has taken these things away by causes contrary to those by which they were instituted? For what the multitude of error instituted, the way of truth took away; what unbelief instituted, faith took away; what aversion from the worship of divine religion instituted, conversion to the one true and holy God took away — not in Egypt alone, which alone the spirit of the demons laments in this man, 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 the city of God, which is the holy church, is being built as a house for the Lord in all the earth after that captivity in which the demons held captive those men of whom, as they believe in God, the house is built as of living stones. For it was not the case that, because man was making gods, he who made them was not himself possessed by them, when by worshipping he was drawn into fellowship with them — fellowship, I mean, not with stupid idols but with cunning demons. For what are idols but what the same Scripture says: “They have eyes and will not see,” and whatever else of the kind had to be said of materials that, however skillfully shaped, lack life and sense? But the unclean spirits, bound to these same images by that wicked art, had pitiably taken captive the souls of their worshippers by bringing them into fellowship with themselves. Hence the apostle says: “We know that an idol is nothing; but what the gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God; I do not want you to become partners of demons.” After this captivity, then, in which men were held by malignant demons, the house of God is being built in all the earth; hence 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; announce the good news of his salvation from day to day. Declare his glory among the nations, his wonders among all peoples; for the Lord is great and exceedingly to be praised, he is terrible above all gods. For all the gods of the nations are demons, but the Lord made the heavens.” He, then, who grieved that a time was to come in which the worship of idols and the dominion of the demons over their worshippers would be taken away, driven by an evil spirit, always wanted this captivity to remain, at the end of which the psalm sings that the house is being built in all the earth. Hermes foretold those things with grief; the prophet foretold these with joy. And because the Spirit is victorious who sang these things through the holy prophets, even Hermes himself was compelled in wonderful ways to confess that the things he did not want to be taken away, and grieved to see taken away, were instituted not by the prudent, the faithful, and the religious, but by those who erred, disbelieved, and were turned away from the worship of divine religion. Though he calls them gods, yet when he says that they were made by such men as we certainly ought not to be, he shows, willing or unwilling, that they are not to be worshipped by those who are not such as those by whom they were made, that is, by the prudent, the faithful, the religious; showing at the same time that the very men who made them brought it on themselves to have as gods those who were not gods. For that prophetic word is true: “If man makes gods, behold, they are not gods.” When Hermes, then, called such gods, the gods of such men, made by art by such men — that is, when he called demons bound to idols by some art or other through the chains of their own desires “gods made by men” — he did not, however, give them what the Platonist Apuleius gave (about which we have said enough already and shown how unfitting and absurd it is): that they should be interpreters and intercessors between the gods whom God made and the men whom the same God made, carrying vows from here and bringing back gifts from there. For it is too foolish to believe that gods whom men made have more influence with the gods whom God made than men themselves have, whom the same God made. For a demon bound to an image by an impious art has been made a god by a man, but for such a man, not for every man. What kind of god, then, is this, whom a man would not make unless he were erring, unbelieving, and turned away from the true God? Further, the demons who are worshipped in temples, put into images, that is, visible statues, by some art or other, by those men who made gods by this art when they strayed and were turned away from worship and divine religion, are not go-betweens and interpreters between men and gods — both because of their most wicked and shameful morals, and because men, however erring, unbelieving, and turned away from worship and divine religion, are without doubt better than those whom they themselves made gods by art. It remains, then, that what they can do, they can do as demons — either doing more harm by seeming to confer benefits, since they deceive more, or by openly doing evil (and neither of these except when they are permitted by the deep and secret providence of God) — but not that they have great influence with men as mediators between men and gods through the friendship of the gods. For they can in no way be friends to the good gods, whom we call holy angels and rational creatures of the holy heavenly dwelling — whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers — from whom they are as far removed in the affection of their minds as vices are from virtues and malice from goodness.

Chapter 25. On the things that can be common to the holy angels and good men.

In no way, then, is the good will or beneficence of the gods, or rather of the good angels, to be courted through the supposed mediation of demons, but through likeness of good will, by which we are with them, live with them, and worship with them the God whom they worship, even if we cannot see them with the eyes of the flesh. But in so far as we are wretched through unlikeness of will and the frailty of weakness, so far are we distant from them by the merit of our life, not by the place of our body. For it is not because we dwell on the earth by the condition of the flesh, but if by uncleanness of heart we savor earthly things, that we are not joined to them. But when we are healed so as to be such as they are, we draw near to them meanwhile by faith, if, with their favor too, we believe that we are made happy by him by whom they also were made happy.