Post by Deleted on Dec 12, 2022 18:01:44 GMT -6
"The sacred books, or writings, say there are a kind of demons who enjoy women. Hermes in his physics testifies as much and all our learning, both open and occult, confirms the account. What the ancient divine writings relate, is, that the angels, inflamed with the desire of women, instructed them in all the works and mysteries of nature."
"The doctrine of demons here mention'd by Zosimos, is also delivered by Plato, Philo-Judaeus, and other philosophers ; who represent them as endowed with a penetrating mind, and boundless knowledge ; not confined to our ways of conceiving things relatively, but fitted to perceive them as they are in themselves ; not incumbered with a solid body, like us; but a penetrable one like air. Zosimos, who adopts the doctrine with a peculiar fondness, observes further, that, beside the intuitive knowledge of the demons, there was even in the antediluvian world, a kind of human sciences acquired only by reason and experiments ; adding, that they in whom the latter knowledge was alone found, were denominated the sons of men and the former the sons of God. The same notion of demons prevails among many to this day; under the name of apparitions, or spirits, who roam about with their penetrable matter, capable of discovering themselves to men ; and even of possessing them after the same manner as the soul does the body. Many instances of the like belief might be given from the ancient adam sandlers, and the earliest Christians ; to say nothing of the current opinion of the Mahametans, Arabs, and other Asiatics and Africans. These demons too of the ancients were supposed subject to human passions ; they saw the daughters of men, loved them, and courted them in marriage ; and, as an equivalent for their virginity, offer'd them a book containing the whole body of their science."
