Demons hide in idols and deceive through false miracles
Octavius is continuing his reply to Caecilius, explaining how demons work through pagan idols, oracles, and possessions to deceive people and turn them from the true God.
These impure spirits, then, are demons, as the magi, the philosophers, and Plato have shown. They hide beneath consecrated statues and images, and by their breath they gain the authority of a deity who seems to be present. Meanwhile they inspire prophets, linger in shrines, sometimes animate the fibers of entrails, guide the flight of birds, control lots, and produce oracles wrapped in many falsehoods.
For they are both deceived and deceive. They do not know the pure truth, and what truth they do know they do not confess, to their own destruction. So they weigh us down from heaven and call us away from the true God to material things. They disturb life, trouble sleep, and creeping secretly into bodies as fine spirits, they feign diseases, terrify minds, and twist limbs. They do this to force people to worship them, so that, fattened by the smell of altars or by sacrifices of cattle, they may seem to have cured what they themselves had bound.
From these same demons come also the madmen you see running through public places, prophets themselves even without a temple. That is how they rave, how they revel like Bacchants, how they whirl about. The demon's goading is the same in them, but the display of madness is different.
From these same demons come the stories I told you a little earlier: that Jupiter demanded games through a dream, that Castor and Pollux were seen with their horses, that a matron's girdle followed a little boat.
Most of you know that the demons themselves confess all this about themselves, whenever they are driven out of bodies by our torments of words and the fire of prayer. Saturn himself, and Serapis, and Jupiter, and whatever demons you worship, overcome by pain, speak out what they are. They do not lie to their own shame, especially when some of you are standing by.
Believe their own testimony, when they admit they are demons. For when they are adjured by the one true God, they shudder unwillingly in their wretched bodies, and either leap out at once or vanish gradually, as the faith of the sufferer helps or the grace of the healer breathes upon them. That is why they flee Christians at close range, though from a distance they attack them through you in your assemblies.
For this reason they creep into the minds of the ignorant and secretly sow hatred of us through fear. It is natural to hate someone you fear, and to attack someone you dread, if you can. So they seize souls and block hearts, so that people begin to hate us before they know us, lest, once they know us, they might either imitate us or be unable to condemn us.
Latin
Isti igitur impuri spiritus, daemones , ut ostensum a magis, a philosophis et a Platone, sub statuis et imaginibus consecratis delitescunt et adflatu suo auctoritatem quasi praesentis numinis consequuntur, dum inspirant interim uates, dum fanis inmorantur, dum nonnumquam extorum fibras animant, auium uolatus gubernant, sortes regunt, oracula efficiunt, falsis pluribus inuoluta.
nam et falluntur et fallunt, ut et nescientes sinceram ueritatem et quam sciunt, in perditionem sui non confitentes. sic a caelo deorsum grauant et a Deo uero ad materias auocant, uitam turbant, somnos inquietant, inrepentes etiam corporibus occulte ut spiritus tenues morbos fingunt, terrent mentes, membra distorquent, ut ad cultum sui cogant, ut nidore altarium uel hostiis pecudum saginati, remissis quae constrinxerant, curasse uideantur.
hinc sunt et furentes, quos in publicum uidetis excurrere, uates et ipsi absque templo, sic insaniunt, sic bacchantur, sic rotantur: par et in illis instigatio daemonis, sed argumentum dispar furoris.
de ipsis etiam illa, quae paulo ante tibi dicta sunt, ut Iuppiter ludos repeteret ex somnio, ut cum equis Castores uiderentur, ut cingulum matronae nauicula sequeretur.
haec omnia sciunt pleraque pars uestrum ipsos daemonas de semetipsis confiteri, quotiens a nobis tormentis uerborum et orationis incendiis de corporibus exiguntur.
ipse Saturnus et Serapis et Iuppiter et quicquid daemonum colitis, uicti dolore quod sunt eloquuntur, nec utique in turpitudinem sui, nonnullis praesertim uestrum adsistentibus, mentiuntur.
ipsis testibus, esse eos daemonas, credite fassis: adiurati enim per Deum uerum et solum inuiti miseris corporibus inhorrescunt et uel exiliunt statim uel euanescunt gradatim, prout fides patientis adiuuat aut gratia curantis adspirat. sic Christianos de proximo fugitant, quos longe in coetibus per uos lacessebant.
ideo inserti mentibus imperitorum odium nostri serunt occulte per timorem: naturale est enim et odisse quem timeas, et quem metueris infestare, si possis. sic occupant animos et obstruunt pectora, ut ante nos incipiant homines odisse quam nosse, ne cognitos aut imitari possint aut damnare non possint.