Assuredly, when he had first separated the gods in the lofty heaven and men on the lowest earth, distinguished by places and by the dignity of their nature, he thus concluded: 'You have,' he says, 'meanwhile two kinds of living beings: gods differing greatly from men by loftiness of place, by perpetuity of life, by perfection of nature, with no near communication between them—since so great an interval of height separates the highest dwellings from the lowest, and the vitality there is eternal and undefaulting, here fleeting and fragmentary, and those natures are exalted to blessedness, these debased to miseries.' Here I see three contraries mentioned concerning the two outermost parts of nature, that is, the highest and the lowest.
For the three praiseworthy things which he set forth concerning the gods, these same he repeated, in other words indeed, so as to render against them three other things drawn from men. The three of the gods are these: loftiness of place, perpetuity of life, perfection of nature. These he repeated in other words, so as to oppose to them three contraries of the human condition. 'Since,' he says, 'so great an interval of height separates the highest dwellings from the lowest,' because he had said loftiness of place; 'and the vitality,' he says, 'is there eternal and undefaulting, here fleeting and fragmentary,' because he had said perpetuity of life; 'and those natures,' he says, 'are exalted to blessedness, these debased to miseries,' because he had said perfection of nature.
Three things, therefore, were set down by him concerning the gods, that is: lofty place, eternity, blessedness; and three contraries of men, that is: lowest place, mortality, misery. [XIII] Among these three-and-three of gods and men, since he placed the demons in the middle, concerning place there is no controversy; for between the lofty and the lowest a middle place is most fittingly held and called. The other two pairs remain, to which more attentive care must be given—in what manner they may either be shown to be alien from the demons, or so distributed to them as the middleness seems to demand. But they cannot be alien from them.
For not as we say that the middle place is neither highest nor lowest, so can we rightly say that the demons, since they are rational living beings, are neither blessed nor wretched, as are shrubs or cattle, which are devoid of sense or of reason. For those in whose minds reason is present must of necessity be either wretched or blessed. Likewise we cannot rightly say that the demons are neither mortal nor eternal. For all living things either live forever, or end by death that which they live. And now this man said that the demons are, in duration, eternal. What then remains, save that these middle beings should have one of the two highest things and the other of the two lowest?
For if they will have both from the lowest, or both from the highest, they will not be middle, but will either leap back or sink down into one or the other side. Since, then, as has been demonstrated, they cannot be without either of these two pairs, having received one from each side, they will be in the middle. And by this, since they cannot have from the lowest things eternity, which is not there, this one thing alone they have from the highest; and therefore there is not the other thing, to complete their middleness, which they might have from the lowest, except misery. And so, according to the Platonists, of the lofty gods there is either blessed eternity or eternal blessedness; of the lowest men, either mortal misery or wretched mortality; but of the middle demons, either wretched eternity or eternal misery.
For also in those five things which he set down in the definition of demons, he did not show them to be middle, as he promised; since he said that they have three things in common with us—that in kind they are living beings, that in mind they are rational, that in soul they are subject to passion; but with the gods one thing, that in duration they are eternal; and one thing proper to themselves, that in body they are airy. In what manner, then, are they middle, when they have one thing with the highest, three with the lowest? Who does not see that, the middleness being abandoned, how far they incline and are pressed down toward the lowest? But plainly even there they can be found to be middle, in that they have one thing proper, namely an airy body—just as those of the highest and the lowest have each their proper things, the gods an ethereal body and men an earthly one;
but two things are common to all, namely that in kind they are living beings and in mind rational. For even he himself, when speaking of gods and men, said: 'You have two kinds of living beings,' and these men are not wont to hold the gods to be anything but rational in mind. Two things remain, namely that they are, in soul, subject to passion, and, in duration, eternal; of which they have one with the lowest, the other with the highest, so that by a proportional reckoning the middleness, being balanced, is neither raised up to the highest nor pressed down to the lowest. But this very thing is that wretched eternity of the demons, or eternal misery. For he who said 'in soul subject to passion' would also have said 'wretched,' had he not blushed before their worshippers.
Further, since by the providence of the most high God—as even they themselves confess—the world is not governed by fortuitous rashness, there would never be an eternal misery of these beings, unless there were a great malice. If, therefore, the blessed are rightly called eudaimones, then those are not eudaimones—the demons whom these men placed in the middle between men and the gods. Where, then, is the place of good demons, who above men and below the gods might afford aid to the former, service to the latter? For if they are good and eternal, they are assuredly also blessed. But eternal blessedness does not suffer them to be middle, since it likens them much to the gods and separates them much from men.
Whence these men will strive in vain to show in what manner good demons, if they be both immortal and blessed, are rightly constituted as middle between the immortal and blessed gods and mortal and wretched men. For since they have both things in common with the gods—namely blessedness and immortality—but nothing of these with men, who are both wretched and mortal: how are they not rather removed from men and joined to the gods, than constituted as middle between the two? For then they would be middle, if they had themselves also two things of their own, in common not with a pair of one or the other side, but with a single thing of each side;
just as man is something middle, but between beasts and angels—so that, since a beast is an irrational and mortal animal, while an angel is rational and immortal, man is middle: inferior to the angels, superior to the beasts, having mortality in common with the beasts, reason in common with the angels—a rational mortal animal. So therefore, when we seek a middle between the blessed immortals and the wretched mortals, we ought to find this: something that is either mortal and blessed, or immortal and wretched. [XIV] Whether a man can be both blessed and mortal is a great question among men. For some, inspecting their condition more humbly, have denied that man can be capable of blessedness so long as he lives mortally.
But some have exalted themselves and have dared to say that mortals, when possessed of wisdom, can be blessed. But if this is so, why are not these themselves rather constituted as middle between the wretched mortals and the blessed immortals, having blessedness in common with the blessed immortals, mortality with the wretched mortals? For assuredly, if they are blessed, they envy no one (for what is more wretched than envy?), and therefore they take counsel, as far as they can, for the wretched mortals, that they may attain to blessedness—so that they may be able even to be immortal after death, and to be joined to the immortal and blessed angels.
[XV] But if, as is disputed with much more credibility and probability, all men, so long as they are mortal, are of necessity also wretched, then a mediator must be sought who is not only man, but also God, so that by the blessed mortality of this mediator, interposing itself, men may be led from mortal misery to blessed immortality; a mediator whom it behooved neither not to become mortal, nor to remain mortal. Mortal indeed He was made, not by the divinity of the Word being weakened, but by the infirmity of the flesh being assumed; yet He did not remain mortal in that very flesh, which He raised again from the dead; since He Himself is the fruit of His mediation, that not even those, for whose deliverance He was made mediator, should remain in perpetual death, even of the flesh.
Accordingly, it behooved the mediator between us and God to have a passing mortality and an abiding blessedness, so that by that which passes He might be conformed to those about to die, and to that which abides He might carry them over from among the dead. Good angels, therefore, cannot be middle between the wretched mortals and the blessed immortals, because they themselves also are both blessed and immortal; but evil angels can be middle, because they are immortal along with the former, wretched along with the latter. Contrary to these is the good Mediator, who, against their immortality and misery, willed both to be mortal for a time, and was able to persist blessed in eternity;
and thus both the immortal proud and the wretched harmful ones—lest by the boastfulness of immortality they should seduce men to misery—He destroyed in them, by the humility of His death and the kindness of His blessedness, in those whose hearts, cleansing them through His faith, He freed from the most unclean dominion of those beings. Man, therefore, mortal and wretched, far sundered from the immortal and blessed, what middle shall he choose, by which he may be coupled to immortality and blessedness? That which might delight in the immortality of the demons is wretched; that which might offend in the mortality of Christ, is now no more. There, therefore, everlasting misery is to be shunned; here death is not to be feared, which could not be everlasting, and everlasting blessedness is to be loved.
For to this end the immortal and wretched one interposes himself as a middle, that he may not permit men to pass over to blessed immortality, since that which hinders persists, namely misery itself; but to this end the mortal and blessed One interposed Himself, that, His mortality having been accomplished, He might make immortals out of the dead—which He showed by rising again in Himself—and blessed ones out of the wretched, from which state He Himself never departed. There is, therefore, one middle who is evil, who separates friends; another who is good, who reconciles enemies. And therefore the middle separators are many, because the multitude which is blessed is made blessed by participation in the one God;
By the privation of this participation the wretched multitude of evil angels—who set themselves rather as a hindrance than interpose themselves as a help toward blessedness—by their very multitude, in a certain manner, raise an uproar, lest one be able to attain to that one beatific good. To be led to it, there was need not of many mediators, but of one, and of that very One by participation in whom we are made blessed, that is, the Word of God, not made, through whom all things were made. Yet He is not Mediator on this account, that He is the Word; for the Word, supremely immortal and supremely blessed, is far removed from wretched mortals.
But He is Mediator through that whereby He is man, thereby indeed showing that toward that good which is not only blessed but also beatifying, no other mediators are to be sought, through whom we might suppose that steps to attainment must be contrived; for the blessed and beatifying God, being made a partaker of our humanity, has furnished a short way to the partaking of His divinity. For in freeing us from mortality and misery He does not lead us to the immortal and blessed angels in such a way that by participation in them we too become immortal and blessed, but to that Trinity by participation in which the very angels are blessed. Therefore, when in the form of a servant, that He might be Mediator, He willed to be lower than the angels, in the form of God He remained above the angels.
The same is in lower things the way of life, who in higher things is life itself. [XVI] For it is not true, as the same Platonist says Plato declared, that "No god mingles with man"; and he says this is the chief mark of their sublimity, that they are defiled by no contact with men. Therefore he admits that demons are defiled, and so cannot cleanse those by whom they are defiled, and all become alike unclean—both the demons by contact with men and the men by the worship of demons. Or, if demons can both be touched and mingle with men and yet not be defiled, then surely they are better than the gods, since the gods, if they mingled, would be defiled.
For this is said to be the chief thing about the gods, that being sublimely set apart, human contact cannot defile them. Indeed he affirms that the supreme God, creator of all, whom we call the true God, is so proclaimed by Plato that He alone is one who cannot, through the poverty of human speech, be comprehended by any discourse even moderately; but that scarcely even to wise men, when by vigor of mind they have withdrawn themselves as far as was permitted from the body, does the understanding of this God—and that too only at intervals—flash forth like a white light gleaming as with a most rapid coruscation amid deepest darkness.
If, then, above all things the truly supreme God, by a certain intelligible and ineffable presence—even though at intervals, even though like a most rapid coruscation of white light flashing forth—is nonetheless present to the minds of the wise when they have withdrawn themselves as far as was permitted from the body, and yet cannot be defiled by them: what is the reason that these gods are placed far away in a lofty region, lest they be defiled by human contact? As though it were anything other than to see, that suffices for those ethereal bodies, by whose light the earth is illumined as much as suffices. Moreover, if the stars are not defiled when they are seen—and he calls them all visible gods—neither are the demons defiled by the gaze of men, although they be seen from close at hand.
Or perhaps they would be defiled by human voices, who are not defiled by the keenness of the eyes, and therefore have demons as intermediaries, through whom the voices of men are reported to them—men from whom they are far distant, that they may remain wholly undefiled? What now shall I say of the other senses? For by smelling neither could the gods be defiled, if they were present, nor can the demons be defiled when present by the vapors of living human bodies, if they are not defiled by so great a stench of the carrion of sacrifices. But in the sense of taste they are pressed by no necessity of restoring their mortality, so as to be driven by hunger to seek food from men. And touch, indeed, is in their own power.
For although contact seems to be named chiefly from that sense, yet thus far, if they wished, they might mingle with men, so as to see and be seen, to hear and be heard. But what necessity is there of touching? For neither would men dare to desire this, when they enjoyed the sight or converse of the gods or of good demons; and if curiosity were to go so far that they should wish it: by what means could anyone touch against its will a god or a demon, who cannot even touch a sparrow unless it be caught? Therefore by seeing and offering themselves to sight, and by speaking and hearing, the gods could mingle bodily with men. But if in this manner the demons mingle, as I have said, and are not defiled, while the gods would be defiled if they mingled:
then they are saying that demons are incapable of defilement and gods capable of it. But if demons too are defiled, what do they confer on men toward a blessed life after death, when, being themselves defiled, they cannot cleanse them so as to join them, cleansed, to the undefiled gods among whom they are set as intermediaries? Or if they confer this benefit not on them, what does the friendly mediation of demons profit men? Is it that after death men may not pass over to the gods through demons, but rather that both may live together defiled, and so neither be blessed? Unless perhaps someone should say that, after the manner of sponges or such things, the demons cleanse their friends in such a way that they themselves become the more sordid in proportion as men are made cleaner by them, as it were, wiping them.
But if it is so, then the gods mingle with the more defiled demons, who, lest they be defiled, shunned the nearness and contact of men. Or perhaps the gods can cleanse the demons defiled by men, and yet not be defiled by them, and in that manner could not men also be so cleansed? Who would think such things, save one whom the most deceitful demons have deceived? What of this—that if to be seen and to see defiles, the gods are seen by men, whom he calls visible, "the brightest lights of the world" and the other stars, and the demons are safer from this defilement of men, since they cannot be seen unless they wish?
Or if it is not being seen, but seeing, that defiles, let them deny that men are seen by those brightest lights of the world which they suppose to be gods, since these extend their rays even to the earth. Yet those rays of theirs, diffused through all unclean things, are not defiled; and would the gods be defiled if they mingled with men, even if contact were necessary in giving aid? For the earth is touched by the rays of the sun and moon, nor does it defile that light. [XVII] But I greatly wonder that men so learned, who judged that all corporeal and sensible things must be set below the incorporeal and intelligible, when the blessed life is in question, should make mention of corporeal contacts. Where is that saying of Plotinus, where he says:
"We must flee, therefore, to our most beloved fatherland; there is the Father, and there are all things. What fleet, then, or what flight?" he asks. "To become like unto God." If, then, the more like one becomes to God, the nearer one draws to Him, there is no distance from Him other than unlikeness to Him. But the soul of man is the more unlike that incorporeal, eternal, and unchangeable Being, the more it desires things temporal and mutable. That this may be healed—since the things below, which are mortal and unclean, cannot be joined to the immortal purity which is on high—there is indeed need of a mediator;
yet not such a one as has indeed an immortal body akin to the highest, but a diseased mind like the lowest (by which disease he would rather envy us, that we be not healed, than help us that we be healed); but such a one as, fitted to us who are lowest by the mortality of body, yet by the immortal justice of spirit—whereby He remained in the highest, not by distance of place, but by excellence of likeness—might furnish a truly divine help for our cleansing and liberation. And He, being an incontaminable God, far be it that He should have feared defilement from the man with which He was clothed, or from the men among whom in that man He dwelt.
For these two things, meanwhile, are not small, which by His incarnation He wholesomely showed: that true divinity cannot be defiled by flesh, and that demons are not therefore to be thought better than we because they have no flesh. This is He whom, as Holy Scripture proclaims, is the Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus—of whose divinity, whereby He is ever equal to the Father, and of whose humanity, whereby He was made like unto us, this is not the place to speak fittingly according to our capacity.
[XVIII] But those false and deceitful mediators, the demons, who—although through the uncleanness of spirit they are conspicuous, being wretched and malignant, in many workings—yet through the intervals of corporeal places and through the lightness of aerial bodies strive to call and turn us away from the advancement of our souls, do not furnish a way to God, but rather hinder, lest the way be held. Since indeed even in that corporeal way itself (which is most false and most full of error, by which justice makes no journey;
since not by corporeal height, but by spiritual, that is, incorporeal, likeness ought we to ascend to God)—yet in that very corporeal way, which the friends of the demons order through the grades of the elements, with the aerial demons set as intermediaries between the ethereal gods and the earthly men, they suppose the gods to have this as their chief privilege: that on account of this interval of places they are not defiled by human contact. Thus they believe that demons are defiled by men rather than that men are cleansed by demons, and that the gods themselves could have been defiled, had they not been protected by the loftiness of place. Who is so wretched as to suppose himself cleansed by that way, where men are proclaimed as defiling, demons as defiled, gods as capable of defilement;
and would not rather choose the way where the defiling demons are the more avoided, and where men are cleansed from defilement by the incontaminable God, to enter into the fellowship of the undefiled angels? [XIX] But lest we too seem to be contending about words—since some of those, so to speak, demon-worshippers, among whom is Labeo, hold that those whom they themselves call demons are called angels by others—I see that I must now discourse somewhat concerning the good angels, whose existence these men do not deny, but prefer to call them good demons rather than angels. But we, as Scripture speaks, according to which we are Christians, read of angels indeed as partly good, partly bad, but never of good demons;
but wherever in those writings this name is found placed, whether they be called daemones or daemonia, none but malignant spirits are signified. And this manner of speaking the peoples everywhere have so far followed, that even among those who are called pagans and contend that many gods and demons are to be worshipped, there is scarcely anyone so lettered and learned who would dare, in praise even of his own slave, to say: "You have a demon"; but whoever should wish to say this to anyone cannot doubt that he meant it to be taken in no other way than as a curse.
What cause, then, compels us, after the offense of so many ears—so that now they are almost of all men who have grown accustomed to hear this word only in a bad sense—to be forced to expound what we have said, when we could, by using the name of angels, avoid the very offense that could arise from the name of demons? [XX] Although the very origin of this name, if we look into the divine books, brings something most worthy of knowledge. For demons are so called (since the word is Greek) as being named from knowledge. But the Apostle, speaking by the Holy Spirit, says: "Knowledge puffs up, but charity edifies"; which is rightly understood in no other way than that knowledge profits only when charity is present;
but without this it puffs up, that is, it lifts one up into the pride of the emptiest windiness, as it were. There is therefore in demons knowledge without charity, and therefore they are so puffed up, that is, so proud, that they have taken pains that divine honors and the service of religion, which they know to be owed to the true God, should be exhibited to themselves, and, as far as they can and among whom they can, they still do this. But against the pride of demons, whereby the human race was justly held in possession according to its deserts, how great a power the humility of God, which appeared in Christ, has—the souls of men, puffed up with the uncleanness of exaltation, know not, being like the demons in pride, not in knowledge. [XXI] But the demons themselves know even this so well, that they said to the same Lord, clothed in the weakness of flesh:
"What have we to do with Thee, Jesus of Nazareth? Art Thou come to destroy us?" It is clear in these words that in them there was both so great knowledge and yet no charity. For they dreaded their own punishment from Him, they did not love justice in Him. But He became known to them only as much as He willed; and He willed as much as was fitting. Yet He became known not as to the holy angels, who enjoy Him, according to that which is the Word of God, in participated eternity, but as He had to be made known to those who were to be terrified—out of whose tyrannical power, in a certain manner, He was to free those predestined into His kingdom and glory, ever true and truly everlasting.
He became known, then, to the demons not through that which is eternal life and the unchangeable light which illumines the godly, and by seeing which through the faith that is in Him hearts are cleansed, but through certain temporal effects of His power and most hidden signs of His presence, which could be discernible to the angelic senses even of malignant spirits rather than to the weakness of men. Finally, when He judged that these should be somewhat suppressed and He lay hidden a little more deeply, the prince of the demons doubted concerning Him and tempted Him, seeking to discover whether He were the Christ—so far as He Himself permitted Himself to be tempted, that He might temper the man which He bore to the example of our imitation.
But after that temptation, when the angels, as it is written, ministered to Him—good angels surely and holy, and thereby to be feared and dreaded by the unclean spirits—it became more and more known to the demons how great He was, so that none dared to resist Him when He commanded, although in Him the weakness of flesh seemed contemptible. [XXII] To these good angels, therefore, all knowledge of corporeal and temporal things, by which the demons are puffed up, is cheap;
not that they are ignorant of them, but because the charity of God, whereby they are sanctified, is dear to them, before whose not only incorporeal but also unchangeable and ineffable beauty—with whose holy love they burn—all things that are below, and that are not what He is, and even themselves among those things, they hold in contempt, that from the whole of what they are good, they may enjoy that good from which they are good. And therefore they know even these temporal and mutable things more surely, because they behold their principal causes in the Word of God, through whom the world was made; by which causes some things are approved, some reproved, all ordered.
But the demons do not contemplate the eternal and in a certain manner cardinal causes of times in the wisdom of God, but through greater experience of certain signs hidden from us they foresee far more of future things than men do; sometimes also they foretell their own dispositions. Finally, these are often, those never at all, deceived. For it is one thing to conjecture temporal things by temporal and mutable by mutable, and to insert into them the temporal and mutable mode of one's own will and power—which is permitted to the demons by a fixed order;
but it is another thing to foresee the changes of times in the eternal and unchangeable laws of God, which live in His wisdom, and to know the will of God—which is the most certain as well as the most powerful of all—by participation in His Spirit; which is granted to the holy angels by a right discernment. And so they are not only eternal, but also blessed. And the good whereby they are blessed is God, by whom they were created. For by unswerving participation and contemplation of Him they enjoy their fill. [XXIII] If the Platonists prefer to call these gods rather than demons, and to number them among those whom Plato, their author and master, writes were made gods by the supreme God, let them say what they will; for we need not labor over a controversy of words with them.