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These miracles, and many others of the same nature, which it were
tedious to mention, were wrought for the purpose of commending the
worship of the one true God, and prohibiting the worship of a
multitude of false gods. Moreover, they were wrought by simple faith
and godly confidence, not by the incantations and charms composed under
the influence of a criminal tampering with the unseen world, of an art
which they call either magic, or by the more abominable title
necromancy, or the more honorable designation theurgy; for they wish
to discriminate between those whom the people call magicians, who
practise necromancy, and are addicted to illicit arts and condemned,
and those others who seem to them to be worthy of praise for their
practice of theurgy, the truth, however, being that both classes are
the slaves of the deceitful rites of the demons whom they invoke under
the names of angels.
For even Porphyry promises some kind of purgation of the soul by the
help of theurgy, though he does so with some hesitation and shame, and
denies that this art can secure to any one a return to God; so teat
you can detect his opinion vacillating between the profession of
philosophy and an art which he feels to be presumptuous and
sacrilegious. For at one time he warns us to avoid it as deceitful,
and prohibited by law, and dangerous to those who practise it; then
again, as if in deference to its advocates, he declares it Useful for
cleansing one part of the soul, not, indeed, the intellectual part,
by which the truth of things intelligible, which have no sensible
images, is recognized, but the spiritual part, which takes cognizance
of the images of things material. This part, he says, is prepared
and fitted for intercourse with spirits and angels, and for the vision
of the gods, by the help of certain theurgic consecrations, or, as
they call them, mysteries. He acknowledges, however, that these
theurgic mysteries impart to the intellectual soul no such purity as
fits it to see its God, and recognize the things that truly exist.
And from this acknowledgment we may infer what kind of gods these are,
and what kind of vision of them is imparted by theurgic consecrations,
if by it one cannot see the things which truly exist. He says,
further, that the rational, or, as he prefers calling it, the
intellectual soul, can pass into the heavens without the spiritual part
being cleansed by theurgic art, and that this art cannot so purify the
spiritual part as to give it entrance to immortality and eternity. And
therefore, although he distinguishes angels from demons, asserting
that the habitation of the latter is in the air, while the former dwell
in the ether and empyrean, and although he advises us to cultivate the
friendship of some demon, who may be able after our death to assist
us, and elevate us at least a little above the earth, for he owns that
it is by another way we must reach the heavenly society of the angels,
he at the same time distinctly warns us to avoid the society of demons,
saying that the soul, expiating its sin after death, execrates the
worship of demons by whom it was entangled. And of theurgy itself,
though he recommends it as reconciling angels and demons, he cannot
deny that it treats with powers which either themselves envy the soul
its purity, or serve the arts of those who do envy it. He complains
of this through the mouth of some Chaldaean or other: "A good man in
Chaldaea complains," he says, "that his most strenuous efforts to
cleanse his soul were frustrated, because another man, who had
influence in these matters, and who envied him purity, had prayed to
the powers, and bound them by his conjuring not to listen to his
request. Therefore," adds Porphyry, "what the one man bound, the
other could not loose." And from this he concludes that theurgy is a
craft which accomplishes not only good but evil among gods and men; and
that the gods also have passions, and are perturbed and agitated by the
emotions which Apuleius attributed to demons and men, but from which
he preserved the gods by that sublimity of residence, which, in common
with Plato, he accorded to them.
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