BOOK NINTH.
ARGUMENT.
HAVING IN THE PRECEDING BOOK SHOWN THAT THE WORSHIP OF DEMONS MUST BE ABJURED, SINCE THEY IN A THOUSAND WAYS PROCLAIM THEMSELVES TO BE WICKED SPIRITS, AUGUSTINE IN THIS BOOK MEETS THOSE WHO ALLEGE A DISTINCTION AMONG DEMONS, SOME BEING EVIL, WHILE OTHERS ARE GOOD; AND, HAVING EXPLODED THIS DISTINCTION, HE PROVES THAT TO NO DEMON, BUT TO CHRIST ALONE, BELONGS THE OFFICE OF PROVIDING MEN WITH ETERNAL BLESSEDNESS.
- 1. The point at which the discussion has arrived, and what remains to be handled.
- 2. Whether among the demons, inferior to the gods, there are any good spirits under whose guardianship the human soul might reach true blessedness.
- 3. What Apuleius attributes to the demons, to whom, though he does not deny them reason, he does not ascribe virtue.
- 4. The opinion of the Peripatetics and Stoics about mental emotions.
- 5. That the passions which assail the souls of Christians do not seduce them to vice, but exercise their virtue.
- 6. Of the passions which, according to Apuleius, agitate the demons who are supposed by him to mediate between gods and men.
- 7. That the Platonists maintain that the poets wrong the gods by representing them as distracted by party feeling, to which the demons, and not the gods, are subject.
- 8. How Apuleius defines the gods who dwell in heaven, the demons who occupy the air, and men who inhabit earth.
- 9. Whether the intercession of the demons can secure for men the friendship of the celestial gods.
- 10. That, according to Plotinus, men, whose body is mortal, are less wretched than demons, whose body is eternal.
- 11. Of the opinion of the Platonists, that the souls of men become demons when disembodied.
- 12. Of the three opposite qualities by which the Platonists distinguish between the nature of men and that of demons.
- 13. How the demons can mediate between gods and men if they have nothing in common with both, being neither blessed like the gods, nor miserable like men.
- 14. Whether men, though mortal, can enjoy true blessedness.
- 15. Of the man Christ Jesus, the Mediator between God and men.
- 16. Whether it is reasonable in the Platonists to determine that the celestial gods decline contact with earthly things and intercourse with men, who therefore require the intercession of the demons.
- 17. That to obtain the blessed life, which consists in partaking of the supreme good, man needs such mediation as is furnished not by a demon, but by Christ alone.
- 18. That the deceitful demons, while promising to conduct men to God by their intercession, mean to turn them from the path of truth.
- 19. That even among their own worshippers the name "demon" has never a good signification.
- 20. Of the kind of knowledge which puffs up the demons.
- 21. To what extent the Lord was pleased to make Himself known to the demons.
- 22. The difference between the knowledge of the holy angels and that of the demons.
- 23. That the name of gods is falsely given to the gods of the Gentiles, though Scripture applies it both to the holy angels and just men.
