Oration to the Greeks 14

You too, Greeks, are like this: glib in words but with a strange way of thinking. You have practiced the rule of many rather than monarchy, supposing that you are following powerful demons. For just as a robber, inhuman as he is, usually overpowers those like himself by his daring, so the demons, having run aground on great wickedness, have deceived the souls among you that are left alone, through ignorance and illusions. They do not die easily, for they have no share in flesh; but while they live they practice the works of death, dying themselves as often as they train their followers in sins. So what they now have as an advantage, not dying as human beings do, will still be theirs when they come to be punished: they will not share in eternal life, but will receive instead death in immortality. And just as we, for whom dying now comes easily, will afterwards receive either immortality with enjoyment or suffering with immortality, so the demons, who use their present life for wrongdoing and are dying continually even while they live, will hereafter have the same immortality as during the time they lived, but in its nature like that of the human beings who willingly did what the demons prescribed for them during their lifetime. And is it not the case that fewer kinds of sin blossom among human beings because they do not live long, while the demons' wrongdoing has grown greater because their life has no end?