Martyr[325] thought that the demons were the fruit of
this commerce of the angels with the daughters of men.

But these ideas are now almost entirely given up, especially since the
belief in the spirituality of angels and demons has been adopted.
Commentators and the fathers have generally explained the passage in
Genesis which we have quoted as relating to the children of Seth, to
whom the Scripture gives the name of _children of God_, to distinguish
them from the sons of Cain, who were the fathers of those here called
_the daughters of men_. The race of Seth having then formed alliances
with the race of Cain, by means of those marriages before alluded to,
there proceeded from these unions powerful, violent, and impious men,
who drew down upon the earth the terrible effects of God's wrath,
which burst forth at the universal deluge.

Thus, then, these marriages between the _children of God_ and the
_daughters of men_ have no relation to the question we are here
treating; what we have to examine is--if the demon can have personal
commerce with man or woman, and if what is said on that subject can be
connected with the apparitions of evil spirits amongst mankind, which
is the principal object of this dissertation.

I will give some instances of those persons who have believed that
they held such intercourse with the demon. Torquemada relates, in a
detailed manner, what happened in his time, and to his knowledge, in
the town of Cagliari, in Sardinia, to a young lady, who suffered
herself to be corrupted by the demon; and having been arrested by the
Inquisition, she suffered the penalty of the flames, in the mad hope
that her pretended lover would come and deliver her.

In the same place he speaks of a young girl who was sought in marriage
by a gentleman of good family; when the devil assumed the form of this
young man, associated with the young lady for several months, made her
promises of marriage, and took advantage of her. She was only
undeceived when the young lord who sought her in marriage informed her
that he was absent from town, and more than fifty leagues off, the day
that the promise in question had been given, and that he never had the
slightest knowledge of it. The young girl, thus disabused, retired
into a convent, and did penance for her double crime.

We read in the life of St. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux,[326] that a
woman of Nantes, in Brittany, saw, or thought she saw the demon every
night, even whe