these strangers were immediately changed
into beasts of burden, without losing their reason, and carried the
loads which were placed upon them; after which they returned to their
former state. He says, moreover, that a certain man, named
Praestantius, related that his father, having eaten of this magic
cheese, remained lying in bed, without any one being able to awaken
him for several days, when he awoke, and said that he had been changed
into a horse, and had carried victuals to the army; and the thing was
found to be true, although it appeared to him to be only a dream.

St. Augustine, reasoning on all this, says that either these things
are false, or else so extraordinary that we cannot give faith to them.
It is not to be doubted that God, by his almighty power, can do
anything that he thinks proper, but that the devil, who is of a
spiritual nature, can do nothing without the permission of God, whose
decrees are always just; that the demon can neither change the nature
of the spirit, or the body of a man, to transform him into a beast;
but that he can only act upon the fancy or imagination of a man, and
persuade him that he is what he is not, or that he appears to others
different from what he is; or that he remains in a deep sleep, and
believes during that slumber that he is bearing loads which the devil
carries for him; or that he (the devil) fascinates the eyes of those
who believe they see them borne by animals, or by men metamorphosed
into animals.

If we consider it only a change arising from fancy or imagination, as
it happens in the disorder called lycanthropy, in which a man believes
himself changed into a wolf, or into any other animal, as
Nebuchadnezzar, who believed himself changed into an ox, and acted for
seven years as if he had really been metamorphosed into that animal,
there would be nothing in that more marvelous than what we see in
hypochondriacs, who persuade themselves that they are kings, generals,
popes, and cardinals; that they are snow, glass, pottery, &c. Like him
who, being alone at the theatre, believed that he beheld there actors
and admirable representations; or the man who imagined that all the
vessels which arrived at the port of Pireus, near Athens, belonged to
him; or, in short, what we see every day in dreams, and which appear
to us very real during our sleep. In all this, it is needless to have
recourse to the devil, or to magic, fascination, or illusion; there
is nothing above