These things, according to Justin, the poets (unaware that they were due to sinning angels) ignorantly ascribed to God (Jupiter), and to those who were called his brothers, Neptune and Pluto, and to the Olympian deities in general.
Lactantius lays the blame principally upon Satan. Speaking of the repeated efforts of the serpent ("who from his deeds received the name of devil, that is, accuser or informer") to corrupt mankind, he adds:
"But when God saw this, He sent His angels to instruct the race of men, and to protect them from all evil. He gave these a command to abstain from earthly things, lest, being polluted by any wily accuser, while they tarried among men, allured these also to pleasures, so that they might defile themselves with women. Then, being condemned by the sentence of God, and cast forth on account of their sins, they lost both the name and the substance of angels. Thus, having become ministers of the devil, that they might have a solace of their ruin they betook themselves to the ruining of men, for whose protecting they had come."
Lactantius Epitome of the Divine Institutes. Chap. XXVII.
Thus from angels the devil makes them to become his Satellites and attendants. But they who were born from these, because they were neither angels nor men, but bearing a kind of mixed (middle) nature, were not admitted into hell as their fathers were not into heaven. Thus there came to be two kinds of demons, one of heaven, the other of the earth.
Lactantius: The Divine Institutes, Book II, 15.
(To Be Continued.)
