This I know, that these mockers of ours are fewer this year than they were the year before. For from the time when 'the nations raged and the peoples imagined vain things' against the Lord and against His Christ — when by them the blood of the saints was being shed and the Church laid waste — up to this present time and henceforth, they are daily diminished. But us, against their reproaches and proud mockeries, the oracles of our God render most steadfast — oracles which we see and rejoice to be fulfilled in this matter also. For thus speaks the prophet: 'Hearken unto me, ye who know judgment, my people, in whose heart is my law; fear ye not the reproach of men, and be not overcome by their detraction, nor count it a great thing that they despise you.'
'For like a garment shall they be consumed by time, and like wool shall they be eaten by the moth; but my righteousness abideth for ever.' Let them, however, read these our writings, if they deign to. When their contradictions reach us, we shall answer, as far as the Lord aids us. Passages of the book of Retractations. On the divination of demons, p. 608, 3-5. Retractations II 30. But in a certain passage of it, where I said that the demons sometimes learn with all facility the dispositions of men, not only those uttered by the voice, but even those conceived in thought, when certain signs from the mind are expressed in the body, I stated a most hidden matter with bolder assertion than I ought. For it has been ascertained, even by some experiments, that these things do come to the knowledge of the demons;
but whether certain signs are given forth from the bodies of those thinking, signs perceptible to them but hidden from us, or whether they know these things by some other and that a spiritual power, either can only with the greatest difficulty be found out by men, or cannot be found out at all.