[[317]] S. Aug. de Civ. lib. xxii. 8.
[[318]] S. Greg. Mag. Dial. cap. 39.
[[319]] Alexander ab Alexandro, lib. v. 23.
[[320]] Causes Célèbres, tom. xi. p. 374.
[[321]] Mém. de Cardinal de Retz, tom. i. pp. 43, 44
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
PRODIGIOUS EFFECTS OF IMAGINATION IN THOSE MEN OR WOMEN WHO BELIEVE THEY HOLD INTERCOURSE WITH THE DEMON.
As soon as we admit it as a principle that angels and demons are purely spiritual substances, we must consider, not only as chimerical but also as impossible, all personal intercourse between a demon and a man, or a woman, and consequently regard as the effect of a depraved or deranged imagination all that is related of demons, whether incubi or succubi, and of the ephialtes of which such strange tales are told.
The author of the Book of Enoch, which is cited by the fathers, and regarded as canonical Scripture by some ancient writers, has taken occasion, from these words of Moses,[[322]] "The children of God, seeing the daughters of men, who were of extraordinary beauty, took them for wives, and begat the giants of them," of setting forth that the angels, smitten with love for the daughters of men, wedded them, and had by them children, which are those giants so famous in antiquity.[[323]] Some of the ancient fathers have thought that this irregular love of the angels was the cause of their fall, and that till then they had remained in the just and due subordination which they owed to their Creator.