Summary

Portrait of Lactantius Lactantius Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol. VII, The Divine Institutes… (1885)

If, on the other hand, they are enemies, how is it that the demons do not fear the gods, or that the gods cannot put to flight the demons? Behold, some one excited by the impulse of the demon is out of his senses, raves, is mad: let us lead him into the temple of the excellent and mighty Jupiter; or since Jupiter knows not how to cure men, into the fane of Æsculapius or Apollo. Let the priest of either, in the name of his god, command the wicked spirit to come out of the man: that can in no way come to pass. What, then, is the power of the gods, if the demons are not subject to their control?
Source: Wikisource

Portrait of Lactantius Lactantius Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol. VII, The Divine Institutes… (1885)

But, in truth, the same demons, when adjured by the name of the true God, immediately flee. What reason is there why they should fear Christ, but not fear Jupiter, unless that they whom the multitude esteem to be gods are also demons? Lastly, if there should be placed in the midst one who is evidently suffering from an attack of a demon, and the priest of the Delphian Apollo, they will in the same manner dread the name of God; and Apollo will as quickly depart from his priest as the spirit of the demon from the man
Source: Wikisource

Portrait of Lactantius Lactantius Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol. VII, The Divine Institutes… (1885)

Therefore the demons, whom they acknowledge to be objects of execration, are the same as the gods to whom they offer supplications.
If they imagine that we are unworthy of belief, let them believe Homer, who associated the supreme Jupiter [10] with the demons; and also other poets and philosophers, who speak of the same beings at one time as demons, and at another time as gods,—of which names one is true, and the other false. For those most wicked spirits, when they are adjured, then confess that they are demons; when they are worshipped, then falsely say that they are gods
Source: Wikisource

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