Page:Three Books of Occult Philosophy (De Occulta Philosophia) (1651).djvu/426

 the Prophet saith, because the dust of the earth is his bread; hence the Cabalists think, that even some devils shall be saved, which opinion also it is manifest that Origen was of.

Chapter xix. Of the bodies of the Devils. Concerning the bodies of Angels, there is a great dissension betwixt the late Divines, and Philosophers; for Thomas affirms that all angels are incorporeall, yea evil angels, yet that they do assume bodies sometimes, which after awhile they put off again; Dionysius in Divine Names strongly affirms that Angels are incorporeal. Yet Austin upon Genesis delivers his opinion, that Angels are said to be Aery, and Fiery Animals: because they have the nature of Aeriall bodies, neither can they be dissolved by death, because the element which is more active than passive is predominant in them; the same seem to affirm, that all Angels in the beginning of their creation had Aeriall bodies, being formed of the more pure, and superiour part of the air, being more fit to act, then to suffer; and that those bodies were after the confirmation preserved in good Angels, but changed in the evil in their fall, into the quality of more thick air, that they might be tormented in the fire: Moreover Magnus Basilius doth attribute bodies not only to Devils, but also to pure angels, as certain thin, Aeriall, pure spirits; to which Gregory Nazianzen doth agree. Apuleius was of opinion, that all angels had not bodies; for in the book of the Demon of Socrates, he saith, that there is a more propitious kind of spirits, which being alwayes free from corporeal bonds, are procured by certain prayers. But Psellus the Platonist, and Christianus do think that the nature of spirits is not without a body; but yet not that the body of angels, & devils are the same; for that is without matter; but the bodies of devils are in a manner materiall, as shadows, and subject to passion,