ABSTRACT
Christians, like pagans, want health, wealth and success in love and war; and they look to their religion to help them obtain these mundane benefits. Some Christian practices have been intended to control or avert demons. These will be thought superstitious today by Christians who do not believe that any demons exist. In the sixteenth century some Christians who believed in demons objected to practices which were apotropaic in character. Christian prayers use corporeal metaphors: washing away stains of sin, illuminating blindness, pouring or breathing grace into the soul. There is no obvious alternative to this way of speaking but it offers a physical model, the causal action of one thing upon another, for the operation of grace. A good theology of grace and the sacraments should help to keep Christians free from superstition, whereas confused ideas of quasi-physical interaction between the natural and the supernatural might lead to Professor Flint's 'Christian magic'.
