light of demoniacal delusions, yet, for many centuries they possessed
great influence over the minds of the vulgar. The notion of every man
being attended by an evil genius was abandoned much earlier than the far
more agreeable part of the same doctrine which taught that, as an
antidote to their influence, each individual was also accompanied by a
benignant spirit. "The ministration of angels," says a writer in the
Athenian Oracle, "is certain; but the manner _how_, is the knot to be
untied." It was an opinion of the early philosophers that not only
kingdoms[1] had their tutelary guardians, but that every person had his
particular genius or good spirit, to protect and admonish him through
the medium of dreams and visions. Such were the objects of superstitious
reverence derived from the Pantheons of Greece and Rome, the whole synod
of which was supposed to consist of demons, who were still actively
bestirring themselves to delude mankind. But in the west of Europe, a
host of other demons, far more formidable, were brought into play, who
had their origin in Celtic, Teutonic, and even in Eastern fables; and as
their existence, as well as influence, was boldly asserted, not only by
the early christians, but even by the reformers, it was long before the
rites to which they were accustomed were totally eradicated.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] Thus the Penates, or household gods presided over new-born infants.
Every thing had its guardian or peculiar genius: cities, groves,
fountains, hills, were all provided with keepers of this kind, and to
each man was allotted no less than two--one good, the other bad (Hor.
Lib. II. Epist. 2.) who attended him from the cradle to the grave. The
Greeks called them _demons_. They were named _Praenestites_, from their
superintending human affairs.