25. At first the interpreters of the stars were called _magi_, as is read of those who announced the birth of Christ in the Gospel; later they had only the name of _mathematici_.
26. A knowledge of this art was granted up to the time of the Gospel, that when Christ was born no one after that should read the nativity of anyone from heaven.
30. To these belong also the _ligatures_, with their accursed remedies, which medical science condemns, whether in charms or in signs or in suspending and binding articles.
31. In all these the demonic art has arisen from a pestilential association of men and bad angels. Whence all must be avoided by Christians and rejected and condemned with thorough-going malediction.
2. The Gentiles are they who are without the law and have not yet believed. Moreover they are called Gentiles because they are in their con-genital state, that is, just as in the flesh they have plunged down into sin, to wit, serving idols and not yet regenerate.
1. They whom the pagans assert to be gods are known to have been men at one time, and in accordance with the life and services of each one they began to be worshiped among their own people after their death, as, in Egypt, Isis; in Crete, Jove; among the Moors, Juba; among the Latins, Faunus; among the Romans, Quirinus.
2. ... And in their praises the poets, too, have helped, and by writing poems have raised them up to the heavens.
3. It is said that the invention of certain arts has given rise to worship, as medicine for Aesculapius, craftsmanship for Vulcan. And they get their names from their activities, as Mercurius because he is in charge of merchandise; Liber from liberty.
4. There were also certain brave men and founders of cities, upon whose death men, because they loved them, made images of them, so as to have some comfort from the contemplation of their likenesses, but this error, it is now plain, so insinuated itself among later men by the influence of demons, that the persons whom earlier men honored for the sake of memory and nothing else, were believed by their successors to be gods, and were worshiped.
5. The use of images arose when, because of longing for the dead, likenesses or representations were made of them as if they had been received into heaven. And demons substituted themselves to be worshiped on earth in their place, and persuaded deceived and wretched men that sacrifices should be made to them.