Tertullian, De Anima

Aut optimum est hic retineri secundum aoros aut pessimum secundum biaeothanatos, ut ipsis iam uocabulis utar quibus auctrix opinionum istarum magia sonat, Ostanes et Typhon et Dardanus et Damigeron et Nectabis et Berenice. publica iam litteratura est quae animas etiam iusta aetate sopitas, etiam proba morte disiunctas, etiam prompta humatione dispunctas euocaturam se ab inferum incolatu pollicetur. quid ergo dicemus magian? quod omnes paene, fallaciam. sed ratio fallaciae solos non fugit Christianos, qui spiritalia nequitiae, non quidem socia conscientia, sed inimica scientia nouimus, nec inuitatoria operatione, sed expugnatoria dominatione tractamus multiformem luem mentis humanae, totius erroris artificem, salutis pariter animaeque uastatricem scientiam magiae, secundae scilicet idololatriae, in qua se daemones perinde mortuos fingunt, quemadmodum in illa deos. quidni? cum et dii mortui. itaque inuocantur quidem aori et biaeothanati sub illo fidei argumento, quod credibile uideatur eas potissimum animas ad uim et iniuriam facere quas per uim et iniuriam saeuus. et immaturus finis extorsit, quasi ad uicem offensae. sed daemones operantur sub ostentu earum, et hi uel maxime qui in ipsis tunc fuerunt, cum aduiuerent, quique illas in huiusmodi impegerant exitus. nam et suggessimus nullum paene hominem carere daemonio, et pluribus notum est daemoniorum quoque opera et immaturas et atroces effici mortes, quas incursibus deputant. hanc quoque fallaciam spiritus nequam sub personis defunctorum delitescentis, nisi fallor, etiam rebus probamus, cum in exorcismis interdum aliquem se ex parentibus hominis sui affirmat, interdum gladiatorem uel bestiarium, sicut et alibi deum, nihil magis curans quam hoc ipsum excludere quod praedicamus, ne facile credamus animas uniuersas ad inferos redigi, ut et iudicii et resurrectionis fidem turbet. et tamen ille daemon, postquam circumstantes circumuenire temptauit, instantia diuinae gratiae uictus id quod in uero est inuitus confitetur. sic et in illa alia specie magiae, quae iam quiescentes animas euellere ab inferis creditur et conspectui exhibere, non alia fallaciae uis est operoper atior. plane, quia et phantasma praestatur, quia et corpus affingitur; nec magnum illi exteriores oculos circumscribere, cui interiorem mentis aciem excaecare perfacile est. corpora denique uidebantur Pharaoni et Aegyptiis magicarum uirgarum draco:ų.es. sed Mosei ueritas mendacium deuorauit. multa utique et aduersus apostolos Simon dedit et Elymas magi; sed plaga caecitatis de praestigiis non fuit. quid noui aemulatio ueritatis a spiritu immundo? ecce hodie eiusdem Simonis haeretico.s tanta praesumptio artis extollit, ut etiam prophetarum animas ab inferis mouere se spondeant. et credo quia mendacio possunt. nec enim pythonico tunc spiritui minus licuit animam Samuelis effingere post deum mortuos consulente Saule. absit alioquin, ut animam cuiuslibet sancti, nedum prophetae, a daemonio credamus extractam, edocti quod ipse satanas transfiguretur in angelum lucis, nedum in hominem lucis, etiam deum se adseueraturus in fine signaque portentosiora editurus ad euertendos, si fieri possit, electos. dubitauit, si forte, tunc prophetam se dei adseuerare et utique Sauli, in quo iam ipse morabatur. ne putes alium fuisse qui phantasma administrabat, alium qui commendabat, sed eundem spiritum et in pseudoprophetide et in apostata facile mentiri quod fecerat credi, per quem Saulis thensaurus illic erat ubi et cor ipsius, ubi scilicet deus non erat. et ideo per quem uisurum se credidit uidit, quia per quem uidit et credidit. si et de nocturnis imaginibus opponitur saepe non frustra mortuos uisos (nam et Nasamonas propria oracula apud parentum sepulcra mansitando captare, ut Heraclides scribit uel Nymphodorus uel Herodotus, et Celtas apud uirorum fortium busta eadem de causa abnoctare, ut Nicander affirmat), non magis mortu osos uere patimur in somnis quam uiuos, si eadem ratione mortuos qua et uiu osos. nec omnia, quae uidentur uera sunt. non enim quia uidentur uera sunt, sed quia adimplentur. fides somniorum de effectu, non de conspectu renuntiatur. nulli autem animae omnino inferos patere satis dominus in argumento illo pauperis requiescentis et diuitis ingemiscentis ex persona Abrahae sanxit, non posse inde relegari renuntiatorem dispositionis infernae, quod uel tunc licere potuisset, ut Moysi et prophetis crederetur. sed etsi quasdam reuocauit in corpora dei uirtus in documenta iuris sui, non idcirco communicabitur fidei et audaciae magorum et fallaciae somniorum et licentiae poetarum. atquin in resurrectionis exemplis, cum dei uirtus siue per prophetas siue per Christum siue per apostolos in corpora animas repraesentat, solida et contrectabili et satiata ueritate praeiudicatum est hanc esse formam ueritatis, ut omnem mortuorum exhibitionem incorporalem praestigias iudices.

Either it is best to be held back here, as with the aōroi [the untimely dead], or worst, as with the biaiothanatoi [those dead by violence] — to use now the very terms with which magic, the author of these opinions, resounds: Ostanes and Typhon and Dardanus and Damigeron and Nectabis and Berenice. There is by now a public literature which promises that it will call up from their dwelling in the underworld even souls laid to rest at a due age, even souls parted from the body by an honest death, even souls discharged by prompt burial. What then shall we call magic? What almost everyone calls it: deception. But it is Christians alone whom the reason behind the deception does not escape, for we know the spiritual forces of wickedness, not indeed by a conscience in league with them but by a knowledge hostile to them, and we handle, not by an operation that invites but by a mastery that subdues, that many-shaped plague of the human mind, the craftsman of all error, the destroyer alike of salvation and of the soul: the science of magic, a second idolatry, that is, in which demons pretend to be dead men just as in the other they pretend to be gods. And why not? Since the gods too are dead men. And so the aōroi and the biaiothanatoi are indeed invoked on the strength of that belief, that it seems credible that those souls above all should work violence and injury which a cruel and untimely end tore away by violence and injury, as if in requital for the wrong. But it is demons who work under the show of them, and especially those who were in them at the time when they were alive, and who had driven them to deaths of this kind. For we have also suggested that hardly any man is without a demon, and it is known to many that untimely and atrocious deaths too are brought about by the work of demons, deaths which are put down to ‘assaults’. This deception too, of the wicked spirit lurking under the persons of the dead, we prove, unless I am mistaken, by facts as well, when in exorcisms it sometimes declares itself to be one of the kinsmen of the man it possesses, sometimes a gladiator or a beast-fighter, just as elsewhere a god, caring about nothing more than to shut out the very thing that we preach, so that we may not readily believe that all souls are brought down to the underworld, and so that it may unsettle faith in both the judgement and the resurrection. And yet that demon, after it has tried to deceive the bystanders, is overcome by the insistence of divine grace and unwillingly confesses what is true. So too in that other kind of magic, which is believed to tear out of the underworld souls already at rest and to show them to sight, the force of deception is no different, only more active. Clearly so, because a phantom is supplied as well, because a body is counterfeited as well; and it is no great matter for him to deceive the outer eyes, for whom it is very easy to blind the inner sight of the mind. Indeed the serpents of the magic rods seemed bodies to Pharaoh and the Egyptians. But the truth of Moses swallowed up the lie. Simon and Elymas, magicians, certainly produced many things against the apostles too; but the stroke of blindness did not come from conjuring tricks. What is new in an unclean spirit's rivalry with the truth? See, today such presumption in their art lifts up the heretics of that same Simon that they guarantee to move even the souls of prophets from the underworld. And I believe that they can — by a lie. For no less was the pythonic spirit permitted then to counterfeit the soul of Samuel, when Saul consulted the dead after God. Otherwise, far be it from us to believe that the soul of any saint, let alone a prophet, was drawn out by a demon, since we have been taught that Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light, still more easily into a man of light, and that at the end he will even assert himself to be God and will produce more portentous signs to overthrow, if it could be done, the elect. He hesitated, I suppose, at that time to declare himself a prophet of God, and to Saul especially, in whom he himself was already dwelling! Do not suppose that it was one who managed the phantom and another who vouched for it, but that the same spirit, in the false prophetess and in the apostate alike, easily lied so that what it had produced was believed; through it Saul's treasure was there where his heart also was, namely where God was not. And so he saw through the one through whom he believed he would see, because he believed through the one through whom he saw. If it is also objected, concerning images in the night, that the dead have often been seen not in vain (for the Nasamones too seek their own oracles by staying at their parents' tombs, as Heraclides writes, or Nymphodorus, or Herodotus, and the Celts spend the night at the graves of brave men for the same reason, as Nicander affirms), we no more truly experience the dead in dreams than the living, if [we see] the dead on the same principle as the living. Nor is everything that is seen true. For they are true not because they are seen but because they are fulfilled. The reliability of dreams is declared from the outcome, not from the sight. But that the underworld lies open to no soul at all, the Lord has sufficiently established in that example of the poor man at rest and the rich man groaning, through the person of Abraham: that no messenger can be sent from there to report the order of the underworld — which might have been permitted then if ever, so that Moses and the prophets might be believed. But even if the power of God has called some souls back into bodies as proofs of his right, it will not on that account be shared with the credulity and audacity of magicians, the deception of dreams and the licence of poets. On the contrary, in the examples of resurrection, when the power of God, whether through prophets or through Christ or through apostles, restores souls to bodies, it has been settled in advance by a truth solid, touchable and fed, that this is the form of truth, so that you are to judge every bodiless exhibition of the dead to be conjuring.