A Plea for the Christians 27

What, then, is the explanation? First, the irrational and fanciful movements of the soul in forming opinions produce different images at different times: some they draw from matter, others they shape and conceive for themselves. The soul suffers this especially when it takes on the material spirit and is blended with it, looking not up to heavenly things and their Maker but down to earthly things, wholly toward the earth, becoming mere blood and flesh and no longer pure spirit. These irrational and fanciful movements of the soul, then, give birth to fantasies mad for idols. And when a tender and impressionable soul, which has never heard sound teaching and has no experience of it, which has never contemplated the truth or considered the Father and Maker of all things, has false opinions about him stamped upon it, the demons who hover about matter, greedy for the smell of burnt fat and the blood of victims, and deceivers of human beings, seize on these deluded movements of the souls of the many. Usurping their thoughts, they make fantasies flow into them as if from the idols and statues; and whenever the soul, being immortal, moves rationally by its own power, either foretelling the future or healing present ills, the demons reap the glory for it.