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In ancient times that counterfeit god Aesculapius performed just as many celebrated cures. His temple, Strabo relates, was full of patients every day, and there were as many tablets, inscriptions, hanging objects and votive gifts to be seen in his shrine as there are today at Our Lady of Loreto's in Italy. It was an ancient custom:
“To hang up one's clothes for the mighty god of the sea.” (Horace, Odes 1.5.)
People were seduced and deceived into doing the same things in former times as they are now. It is still the same devil, once called Apollo, Mars, Neptune, Venus, Aesculapius and so forth, as Lactantius observes in On the Origin of Error, book 2, chapter 17. That same Jupiter and those evil angels are now worshipped and adored under the names of St Sebastian, Barbara and others. Christopher and George have taken their places. Our Lady succeeds Venus, in the many functions they assign to her; the other places are filled in other ways, as Lavater writes, and so the people are deceived.
“And God often overlooks these frauds, because people forsake his word and turn to the devil, as those who seek holy water, crosses and so on are doing” (Weyer, book 4, chapter 3). What more can these men plead for themselves than the pagan gods could? The same cures are performed by both; the same spirit deceives. But read more about the effects produced by pagan gods in Augustine's City of God, book 10, chapter 6, and particularly about Aesculapius in Cicogna, book 3, chapter 8.
Or suppose that they could help: why should we turn to them rather than to Christ himself, when he so kindly invites us to him? “Come to me, all of you who are heavily burdened, and I will give you relief” (Matthew 11). We know that there is one God and one mediator between God and humanity, Jesus Christ (1 Timothy 2:5), who gave himself as a ransom for everyone.
We know that we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ (1 John 2:1), and that there is no other name under heaven by which we can be saved but his. He is always ready to hear us, sits at God's right hand and will never turn us away. “He alone is willing, he alone is able; he cares for all as though for each,” and “for each one of us as though for that one alone.” We are all as one to him; he cares for us all as one. Why, then, should we turn to anyone but him?