ver matter
than the soul of man has over its own body. They can neither modify
matter, change it, nor impress it with action and motion, save by the
power of God, and with his concurrence both necessary and immediate;
our knowledge does not permit us to judge otherwise; there is no
physical proportion between the spirit and the body; those two
substances cannot act mutually and immediately one upon the other;
they can act only occasionally, by determining the first cause, in
virtue of the laws which wisdom has judged it proper to prescribe to
herself for the reciprocal action of the creatures upon each other, to
give them being, to preserve it, and perpetuate movement in the mass
of matter which composes the universe, in himself giving life to
spiritual substances, and permitting them with his concurrence, as the
First Cause, to act, the body on the soul, and the soul on the body,
one on the other, as secondary causes.

Porphyry, when consulted by Anebo, an Egyptian priest, if those who
foretell the future and perform prodigies have more powerful souls, or
whether they receive power from some strange spirit, replies that,
according to appearance, all these things are done by means of certain
evil spirits that are naturally knavish, and take all sorts of shapes,
and do everything that one sees happen, whether good or evil; but that
in the end they never lead men to what is truly good.

St. Augustine,[415] who cites this passage of Porphyry, lays much
stress on his testimony, and says that every extraordinary thing which
is done by certain tones of the voice, by figures or phantoms, is
usually the work of the demon, who sports with the credulity and
blindness of men; that everything marvellous which is transacted in
nature, and has no relation to the worship of the true God, ought to
pass for an illusion of the devil. The most ancient Fathers of the
Church, Minutius Felix, Arnobius, St. Cyprian, attribute equally all
these kinds of extraordinary effects to the evil spirit.

Tertullian[416] had no doubt that the apparitions which are produced
by magic, and by the evocation of souls, which, forced by
enchantments, come out, say they, from the depth of hell (or Hades),
are but pure illusions of the demon, who causes to appear to those
present a fantastical form, which fascinates the eyes of those who
think they see what they see not; "which is not more difficult for the
demon," says he, "than to seduce and blind the souls