Edition Masquer
De civitate Dei (CCSL)

Caput XVIII: Quod fallacia daemonum, dum sua intercessione uiam spondet ad deum, hoc adnitatur, ut homines a uia ueritatis auertat.

Falsi autem illi fallacesque mediatores daemones, qui, cum per spiritus inmunditiam miseri ac maligni multis effectibus clareant, per corporalium tamen locorum interualla et per aeriorum corporum leuitatem a prouectu animorum nos auocare atque auertere moliuntur, non uiam praebent ad deum, sed, ne uia teneatur, inpediunt. quandoquidem et in ipsa uia corporali - quae falsissima est et plenissima erroris, qua non iter agit iustitia; quoniam non per corporalem altitudinem, sed per spiritalem, hoc est incorporalem, similitudinem ad deum debemus ascendere - in ipsa tamen uia corporali, quam daemonum amici per elementorum gradus ordinant inter aetherios deos et terrenos homines aeriis daemonibus mediis constitutis, hoc deos opinantur habere praecipuum, ut propter hoc interuallum locorum contrectatione non contaminentur humana. ita daemones contaminari potius ab hominibus, quam homines mundari a daemonibus credunt, et deos ipsos contaminari potuisse, nisi loci altitudine munirentur. quis tam infelix est, ut ista uia mundari se existimet, ubi homines contaminantes, daemones contaminati, di contaminabiles praedicantur, et non potius eligat uiam, ubi contaminantes magis daemones euitentur et ab incontaminabili deo ad ineundam societatem incontaminatorum angelorum homines a contaminatione mundentur?

Traduction Masquer
The City of God

Chapter 18.--That the Deceitful Demons, While Promising to Conduct Men to God by Their Intercession, Mean to Turn Them from the Path of Truth.

As to the demons, these false and deceitful mediators, who, though their uncleanness of spirit frequently reveals their misery and malignity, yet, by virtue of the levity of their aerial bodies and the nature of the places they inhabit, do contrive to turn us aside and hinder our spiritual progress; they do not help us towards God, but rather prevent us from reaching Him. Since even in the bodily way, which is erroneous and misleading, and in which righteousness does not walk,--for we must rise to God not by bodily ascent, but by incorporeal or spiritual conformity to Him,--in this bodily way, I say, which the friends of the demons arrange according to the weight of the various elements, the aerial demons being set between the ethereal gods and earthy men, they imagine the gods to have this privilege, that by this local interval they are preserved from the pollution of human contact. Thus they believe that the demons are contaminated by men rather than men cleansed by the demons, and that the gods themselves should be polluted unless their local superiority preserved them. Who is so wretched a creature as to expect purification by a way in which men are contaminating, demons contaminated, and gods contaminable? Who would not rather choose that way whereby we escape the contamination of the demons, and are cleansed from pollution by the incontaminable God, so as to be associated with the uncontaminated angels?