Section 31

“If the demons pretend to foretell the future, let no one pay attention to them. They often announce several days ahead that certain brothers are coming, and then those brothers do arrive. But the demons do this not because they care about those who hear them. They want to gain their trust so that later, once they have brought them under their influence, they may destroy them.

“So we should not listen to them. Instead, when they speak in this way we should reject them, because we have no need of them. What is astonishing if, having bodies subtler than ours, they see people beginning a journey, outrun them because of their greater speed, and report their coming? A man riding a horse can do the same thing: by overtaking someone traveling on foot, he can announce that person’s arrival beforehand. There is therefore no reason to marvel at the demons for this.

“They know nothing beforehand about things that do not yet exist. God alone knows all things before they come to be. The demons are like thieves: they run ahead with whatever they have seen and announce it first. How many people have they already told about what we are doing here—that we are gathered together and speaking against them—before any one of us could leave and report it? A swift-running boy could do the same by getting far ahead of someone slower.

“What I mean is this: if someone is going to set out from the Thebaid or from another region, the demons do not know that he will travel before he actually begins. But once they see him on the road, they run ahead and report his approach before he arrives. Thus after a few days the travelers do in fact appear. But often the travelers turn back, and then the demons are proved false.