[16] So if you realize that souls and demons and angels are but different names for the same one underlying object, you will cast from you that most grievous burden, the fear of demons or superstition. The common usage of men is to give the name of demon to bad and good demons alike, and the name of soul to good and bad souls. And so, too, you also will not go wrong if you reckon as angels, not only those who are worthy of the name, who are as ambassadors backwards and forwards between men and God and are rendered sacred and inviolate by reason of that glorious and blameless ministry, but also those who are unholy and unworthy of the title.
[17] I have as witness to my argument the words of the Psalmist, where in one of the psalms we read “He sent out upon them the anger of His wrath, wrath and anger and affliction, a mission by evil angels” (Ps. 78:49). These are the evil ones who, cloaking themselves under the name of angels, know not the daughters of right reason, the sciences and virtues, but court the pleasures which are born of men, pleasures mortal as their parents—pleasures endowed not with the true beauty, which the mind alone can discern, but with the false comeliness, by which the senses are deceived.
[18] They do not all take all the daughters, but some choose these, some those, out of the vast multitude. Some take the pleasures of sight, others those of hearing, others again those of the palate and the belly, or of sex, while many, setting no bound to their inward desires, seize upon the pleasures which lie furthest beyond the common range. For as pleasures are manifold, the choices of pleasures must needs be manifold also. One here, another there, they each have their affinities.