Subdoubt III: On intercourse with a demon

OF ALL, this crime is the most wicked in this genus against nature, since it has with a spirit a carnal copula of the body, and with a body merely apparent, not however a true one.

FOR it is CERTAIN that demons do not have connatural bodies; otherwise the legion could not have stood in the one body of a man, as is related in Lucae 8. and St. Bonaventure argues there; and I have said enough in the Tract. de Angelis.

MERITELY Innocent VIII. commands the Inquisitors of the Faith to take notice of these persons; for these have joined to them also other abominations: Idolatries, blasphemies, abuses of sacred things, etc., and in the very venereal act there is the vice of superstition and irreligiosity, as Filliucius notes Tract. 30. in 8. praecep. Decal. cap. 8. num. 162.

YET WE DO NOT deny that demons can infuse seed received from elsewhere and cause generation, but that generation must be attributed to the man from whom the seed was emitted. So was Merlin the prophet begotten in England, as the Conimbricenses report de Gener. lib. 1. cap. 4. quaest. 10. art. 3. and concerning Homer Plutarch reports from Aristotle lib. 3. Poët. et Angel. Politianus praefat. in Homerum, and concerning Luther Genebrardus reports lib. 4. canonic. cap. 9.