mistake of Apuleius._
How much more tolerable and accordant with human feeling is the
error of your Platonist co-sectary Apuleius! for he attributed the
diseases and storms of human passions only to the demons who occupy a
grade beneath the moon, and makes even this avowal as by constraint
regarding gods whom he honours; but the superior and celestial gods,
who inhabit the ethereal regions, whether visible, as the sun, moon,
and other luminaries, whose brilliancy makes them conspicuous, or
invisible, but believed in by him, he does his utmost to remove
beyond the slightest stain of these perturbations. It is not, then,
from Plato, but from your Chaldæan teachers you have learned to
elevate human vices to the ethereal and empyreal regions of the world
and to the celestial firmament, in order that your theurgists might
be able to obtain from your gods divine revelations; and yet you make
yourself superior to these divine revelations by your intellectual
life, which dispenses with these theurgic purifications as not
needed by a philosopher. But, by way of rewarding your teachers, you
recommend these arts to other men, who, not being philosophers, may
be persuaded to use what you acknowledge to be useless to yourself,
who are capable of higher things; so that those who cannot avail
themselves of the virtue of philosophy, which is too arduous for the
multitude, may, at your instigation, betake themselves to theurgists
by whom they may be purified, not, indeed, in the intellectual, but
in the spiritual part of the soul. Now, as the persons who are unfit
for philosophy form incomparably the majority of mankind, more may
be compelled to consult these secret and illicit teachers of yours
than frequent the Platonic schools. For these most impure demons,
pretending to be ethereal gods, whose herald and messenger you have
become, have promised that those who are purified by theurgy in the
spiritual part of their soul shall not indeed return to the Father,
but shall dwell among the ethereal gods above the aerial regions. But
such fancies are not listened to by the multitudes of men whom Christ
came to set free from the tyranny of demons. For in Him they have
the most gracious cleansing, in which mind, spirit, and body alike
participate. For, in order that He might heal the whole man from the
plague of sin, He took without sin the whole human nature. Would that
you had known Him, and would that you had committed yourself for
healing to Him rather than to your own frail and infirm human virtue,
or to pernicious and curious arts! He would not have deceived you;
for Him your own oracles, on your own showing, acknowledged holy
and immortal. It is of Him, too, that the most famous poet speaks,
poetically indeed, since he applies it to the person of another, yet
truly, if you refer it to Christ, saying, "Under thine auspices,
if any traces of our crimes remain, they shall be obliterated, and
earth freed from its perpetual fear."[423] By which he indicates
that, by reason of the infirmity which attaches to this life, the
greatest progress in virtue and righteousness leaves room for the
existence, if not of crimes, yet of the traces of crimes, which are
obliterated only by that Saviour of whom this verse speaks. For that
he did not say this at the prompting of his own fancy, Virgil tells
us in almost the last verse of that 4th Eclogue, when he says, "The
last age predicted by the Cumæan sibyl has now arrived;" whence it
plainly appears that this had been dictated by the Cumæan sibyl. But
those theurgists, or rather demons, who assume the appearance and
form of gods, pollute rather than purify the human spirit by false
appearances and the delusive mockery of unsubstantial forms. How
can those whose own spirit is unclean cleanse the spirit of man?
Were they not unclean, they would not be bound by the incantations
of an envious man, and would neither be afraid nor grudge to bestow
that hollow boon which they promise. But it is sufficient for our
purpose that you acknowledge that the intellectual soul, that is, our
mind, cannot be justified by theurgy; and that even the spiritual
or inferior part of our soul cannot by this act be made eternal
and immortal, though you maintain that it can be purified by it.
Christ, however, promises life eternal; and therefore to Him the
world flocks, greatly to your indignation, greatly also to your
astonishment and confusion. What avails your forced avowal that
theurgy leads men astray, and deceives vast numbers by its ignorant
and foolish teaching, and that it is the most manifest mistake to
have recourse by prayer and sacrifice to angels and principalities,
when at the same time, to save yourself from the charge of spending
labour in vain on such arts, you direct men to the theurgists, that
by their means men, who do not live by the rule of the intellectual
soul, may have their spiritual soul purified?