"And we affirm indeed the existence of certain spiritual essences; nor is their name unfamiliar. The philosophers acknowledge there are demons; Socrates himself was waiting on a demon's will....
"Their marvelous subtlely and tenuity give them access to both parts of our nature....
"What is daintier food to the spirit of evil, than turning men's minds away from the true God by the illusions of a false divination? ... Their swiftness of motion is taken for divinity, because their nature is unknown . Thus, they would have themselves thought sometimes the author of things which they announce; and sometimes, no doubt, the bad things are their doing, never the good. The purposes of God, too, they took up of old from the lips of the prophets, even as they spoke them; and they gather them still from their works, when they hear them read aloud. Thus getting, too, from this source some intimations of the future, they set themselves up as rivals of the true God, while they steal his divinations... What need, then, to speak of the other artifices, or yet further of their deceptive power which they have as spirits..."
P.42-43, THE APOLOGY by Tertullian (2013)
"And we affirm indeed the existence of certain spiritual essences; nor is their name unfamiliar. The philosophers acknowledge there are demons; Socrates himself was waiting on a demon's will....
"Their marvelous subtlely and tenuity give them access to both parts of our nature....
"What is daintier food to the spirit of evil, than turning men's minds away from the true God by the illusions of a false divination? ... Their swiftness of motion is taken for divinity, because their nature is unknown . Thus, they would have themselves thought sometimes the author of things which they announce; and sometimes, no doubt, the bad things are their doing, never the good. The purposes of God, too, they took up of old from the lips of the prophets, even as they spoke them; and they gather them still from their works, when they hear them read aloud. Thus getting, too, from this source some intimations of the future, they set themselves up as rivals of the true God, while they steal his divinations... What need, then, to speak of the other artifices, or yet further of their deceptive power which they have as spirits..."
P.42-43, THE APOLOGY by Tertullian (2013)
