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35. For in this way it comes to pass that men who lust after evil
things are, by a secret judgment of God, delivered over to be mocked
and deceived, as the just reward of their evil desires. For they are
deluded and imposed on by the false angels, to whom the lowest part of
the world has been put in subjection by the law of God's providence,
and in accordance with His most admirable arrangement of things. And
the result of these delusions and deceptions is, that through these
superstitious and baneful modes of divination many things in the past
and future are made known, and turn out just as they are foretold and
in the case of those who practise superstitious observances, many
things turn out agreeably to their observances, and ensnared by these
successes, they become more eagerly inquisitive, and involve
themselves further and further in a labyrinth of most pernicious error.
And to our advantage, the Word of God is not silent about this
species of fornication of the soul; and it does not warn the soul
against following such practices on the ground that those who profess
them speak lies, but it says, "Even if what they tell you should
come to pass, hearken not unto them." I For though the ghost of the
dead Samuel foretold the truth to King Saul, that does not make such
sacrilegious observances as those by which his ghost was brought up the
less detestable; and though the ventriloquist woman in the Acts of the
Apostles bore true testimony to the apostles of the Lord, the
Apostle Paul did not spare the evil spirit on that account, but
rebuked and cast it out, and so made the woman clean.
36. All arts of this sort, therefore, are either nullities, or
are part of a guilty superstition, springing out of a baleful
fellowship between men and devils, and are to be utterly repudiated and
avoided by the Christian as the covenants of a false and treacherous
friendship. "Not as if the idol were anything," says the apostle;
"but because the things which they sacrifice they sacrifice to devils
and not to God; and I would not that ye should have fellowship with
devils." Now what the apostle has said about idols and the sacrifices
offered in their honor, that we ought to feel in regard to all fancied
signs which lead either to the worship of idols, or to worshipping
creation or its parts instead of God, or which are connected with
attention to medicinal charms and other observances for these are not
appointed by God as the public means of promoting love towards God and
our neighbor, but they waste the hearts of wretched men in private and
selfish strivings after temporal things. Accordingly, in regard to
all these branches of knowledge, we must fear and shun the fellowship
of demons, who, with the Devil their prince, strive only to shut and
bar the door against our return. As, then, from the stars which God
created and ordained, men have drawn lying omens of their own fancy,
so also from things that are born, or in any other way come into
exIstence under the government of God's providence, if there chance
only to be something unusual in the occurrence, as when a mule brings
forth young, or an object is struck by lightning, men have frequently
drawn omens by conjectures of their own, and have committed them to
writing, as if they had drawn them by rule.
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