Dissertation on the Natural Knowledge of Angelic Existence

answer suitably, rather than to betray or reveal things that are either future, past, or present, yet hidden. It is also clear that these things do not proceed from God, from the fact that the use of a foreign language and the prediction of hidden things are for the most part joined with blasphemy or lies. That these things cannot be ascribed to separated souls will have to be demonstrated below; for now, I argue as follows.

If those things which are done by the possessed and those seized by spirits—such as the pronunciation of very remote languages of which they were previously ignorant, as well as divinations and miserable tortures which they are forced to experience—derive their origin neither from God, nor from any separated soul, much less from the human himself, it follows necessarily that there exists some spiritual, intelligent substance, possessed of great powers, which is neither God nor a soul. A.

Those acts of the possessed do not have God, nor a separated soul, nor the human himself as their author. E. It follows necessarily that there exists some intermediate spiritual substance, intelligent and instructed with great powers, which is neither God nor a separated soul.

(μ) Comp. Metaphysics of P. Sp. D. 16. & Coll. Publ. P. Sp. D. 6, S. I.

Those who oppose this argument do not agree among themselves, nor do they feel the same way about this matter. For some contend that those actions—whose cause we argue to be demons—could be God, or if they are evil, a separated soul; others, however, take refuge in natural causes. Ebelius defends the part of the former original: "Ebelius tuetur" (μ), who calls this argument, taken from effects, only a probable conjecture, not an evident argument, unless we are speaking of moral evidence. For whence, he says, will it be evidently proven that these things are not done by God immediately, or, if they are evil, by separated souls? These certainly do not lack the skill of many languages, which they learned in this life, nor the will to do evil, nor the potential and power to move other bodies. Truly, Ebelius cannot move me in this place, since he has the most learned men against him in this matter: Scheibler (ν), Vossius (ξ), Clasenius (ο), Martin Delrio (π), Alstedius (ρ), and others, by whose judgment the words of Ebelius just alleged are to be judged by us, which are surely not approved by us. For that which is said first about God has no difficulty. For when the question is about the possessed, who commit such things as cannot by any means be performed by a human through his own faculty, those actions are for the most part conjoined with circumstances which do not permit one to take refuge in God as their cause. For besides the fact that those men are often so deprived of their minds for a certain interval of time that they do not know what is being done by them, when the use of reason returns, they are also tortured and tormented in wondrous ways, and they abuse God himself, the cause of all good, and utter most foul speeches. Hence Clasen. (σ) rightly says,