were good and beneficent,
protected their kingdoms, provinces, towns, and private houses.

They paid them a superstitious and idolatrous worship, as to domestic
divinities; they invoked them, offered them a kind of sacrifice and
offerings of incense, cakes, honey, and wine, &c.--but not bloody
sacrifices.[82]

The Platonicians taught that carnal and voluptuous men could not see
their genii, because their mind was not sufficiently pure, nor enough
disengaged from sensual things; but that men who were wise, moderate,
and temperate, and who applied themselves to serious and sublime
subjects, could see them; as Socrates, for instance, who had his
familiar genius, whom he consulted, to whose advice he listened, and
whom he beheld, at least with the eyes of the mind.

If the oracles of Greece and other countries are reckoned in the
number of apparitions of bad spirits, we may also recollect the good
spirits who have announced things to come, and have assisted the
prophets and inspired persons, whether in the Old Testament or the
New. The angel Gabriel was sent to Daniel[83] to instruct him
concerning the vision of the four great monarchies, and the
accomplishment of the seventy weeks, which were to put an end to the
captivity. The prophet Zechariah says expressly that _the angel who
appeared unto him_[84] revealed to him what he must say--he repeats it
in five or six places; St. John, in the Apocalypse,[85] says the same
thing, that God had sent his angel to inspire him with what he was to
say to the Churches. Elsewhere[86] he again makes mention of the angel
who talked with him, and who took in his presence the dimensions of
the heavenly Jerusalem. And again, St. Paul in his Epistle to the
Hebrews,[87] "If what has been predicted by the angels may pass for
certain."

From all we have just said, it results that the apparitions of good
angels are not only possible, but also very real; that they have often
appeared, and under diverse forms; that the Hebrews, Christians,
Mahometans, Greeks, and Romans have believed in them; that when they
have not sensibly appeared, they have given proofs of their presence
in several different ways. We shall examine elsewhere how we can
explain the kind of apparition, whether of good or bad angels, or
souls separated from the body.

Footnotes:

[69] Jamblic. lib. ii. cap. 3 & 5.

[70]
"Quod te per Genium, dextramque Deosque Penates,
Obsecro et obtestor."--_Horat._ lib. i. Epist.