Augustine of Hippo, Harmony of the Gospels I.15: Of the Fact that the Pagans, When Constrained to Laud Christ, Have Launched Their Insults Against His Disciples

Chapter XV.—Of the Fact that the Pagans, When Constrained to Laud Christ, Have Launched Their Insults Against His Disciples.

23. But what shall be said to this, if those vain eulogizers of Christ, and those crooked slanderers of the Christian religion, lack the daring to blaspheme Christ, for this particular reason that some of their philosophers, as Porphyry of Sicily has given us to understand in his books, consulted their gods as to their response on the subject of [the claims of] Christ, and were constrained by their own oracles to laud Christ? Nor should that seem incredible. For we also read in the Gospel that the demons confessed Him; and in our prophets it is written in this wise: “For the gods of the nations are demons.” Thus it happens, then, that in order to avoid attempting aught in opposition to the responses of their own deities, they turn their blasphemies aside from Christ, and pour them forth against His disciples. It seems to me, however, that these gods of the Gentiles, whom the philosophers of the pagans may have consulted, if they were asked to give their judgment on the disciples of Christ, as well as on Christ Himself, would be constrained to praise them in like manner.