wonderful subtleness and tenuity they find their way into both parts of our composition. Their spirituality enables them to do much harm to men, for being invisible and impalpable they appear rather in their effects than in their action. They blight the apples and the grain while in the flower, as by some mysterious poison in the breeze, and kill them in the bud, or nip them before they are ripe, as though in some inexpressible way the tainted air poured forth its pestilential breath. In the same way demons and angels breathe into the soul and excite its corruptions, and especially mislead men by inducing them to sacrifice to false deities in order that they may thus obtain their peculiar food of fumes of flesh and blood. Every spirit, whether angel or demon, has wings; therefore they are everywhere in a moment. The whole world is but one place to them, and all that takes place anywhere they can know and report with equal facility. Their swiftness is believed to be divine because their substance is unknown, and thus they seek to be considered the authors of effects which they merely report, as, indeed, they sometimes are of the evil, but never of the good. They gather intimations of the future from hearing the Prophets read aloud, and set themselves up as rivals of the true God by stealing His divinations. From inhabiting the air, and from their proximity to the stars and commerce with the clouds, they know the preparation of celestial phenomena, and promise beforehand the rains which they already feel coming. They are very kind in reference to the cure of diseases, Tertullian ironically says, for they first make people ill, and then, by way of performing a miracle, they prescribe remedies either novel or contrary to common experience, and then, removing the cause, they are {126}