Michael Psellus on the Operation of Daemons

to be malignant spirits. They are exhibited as the causes of the most direful calamities to the unhappy person whom they possess—dumbness, deafness, madness, palsy, and the like. The descriptive titles given them always denote some ill quality or other; most frequently they are called pneumata akatharta (unclean spirits); sometimes pneumata ponēra (malignant spirits); they are represented as conscious that they are doomed to misery and torments, though their punishment be for a while suspended. ‘Art thou come hither, basanizai hēmas (to torment us) before the time?’ (Matthew 8:29).”

Calmet seems to be of opinion that the demons are identical with the apostate angels. We cannot but believe that such as were connected with demonic possession were the same as the apostate angels, especially as we find not the remotest allusion to their origin as a distinct class, and as both they and the apostate angels are represented as destined to future torment. The possessed with demons at Gadara cry out, on our Lord's approach, “Art thou come to torment us before the time?” (Matthew 8:29)—whilst our Lord says, in delivering the future judgment, “Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” From these passages, it would appear that neither Satan nor the demons are yet enduring the extreme punishment prepared for them. Indeed, the scriptural opinion appears to be that, as the devil walketh about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, going to and fro in the earth, so his emissaries, the apostate angels, the demons, roam through every part of it, inflicting diseases, tempting to sin, and blasting physical as well as moral good. If it be said that such a supposition is irreconcilable with the power and beneficence of the Divine Being, will those who make such objection venture to deny the existence of moral and physical evil? And if that be reconcilable with the power and beneficence of the Supreme, why may not the doctrine