Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Clementine Homilies/Homily I/Chapter 5

Chapter V.&#8212;A Resolution.

What, then, am I to do, unless this?&#160; I shall go into Egypt, and I shall become friendly with the hierophants of the shrines, and with the prophets; and I shall seek and find a magician, and persuade him with large bribes to effect the calling up of a soul, which is called necromancy, as if I were going to inquire of it concerning some business.&#160; And the inquiry shall be for the purpose of learning whether the soul is immortal.&#160; But the answer of the soul that it is immortal shall not give me the knowledge from its speaking or my hearing, but only from its being seen; so that, seeing it with my very eyes, I may have a self-sufficient and fit assurance, from the very fact of its appearing, that it exists; and never again shall the uncertain words of hearing be able to overturn the things which the eyes have made their own.&#160; However, I submitted this very plan to a certain companion who was a philosopher; and he counselled me not to venture upon it, and that on many accounts.&#160; &#8220;For if,&#8221; said he, &#8220;the soul shall not listen to the magician, you will live with an evil conscience, as having acted against the laws which forbid the doing of these things.&#160; But if it shall listen to him, then, besides your living with an evil conscience, I think that matters of piety will not be promoted to you on account of your making this attempt.&#160; For they say that the Deity is angry with those who disturb souls after their release from the body.&#8221; &#160; And I, when I heard this, became indeed more backward to undertake such a thing, but I did not abandon my original plan; but I was distressed, as being hindered in the execution of it.