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| Whether All the Angels Were So Created in One Common State of Felicity, that Those Who Fell Were Not Aware that They Would Fall, and that Those Who Stood Received Assurance of Their Own Perseverance After the Ruin of the Fallen.
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Chapter 13.—Whether All the
Angels Were So Created in One Common State of Felicity, that Those
Who Fell Were Not Aware that They Would Fall, and that Those Who
Stood Received Assurance of Their Own Perseverance After the Ruin
of the Fallen.
From all this, it will readily
occur to any one that the blessedness which an intelligent being
desires as its legitimate object results from a combination of
these two things, namely, that it uninterruptedly enjoy the
unchangeable good, which is God; and that it be delivered from all
dubiety, and know certainly that it shall eternally abide in the
same enjoyment. That it is so with the angels of light we piously
believe; but that the fallen angels, who by their own default lost
that light, did not enjoy this blessedness even before they sinned,
reason bids us conclude. Yet if their life was of any duration
before they fell, we must allow them a blessedness of some kind,
though not that which is accompanied with foresight. Or, if it
seems hard to believe that, when the angels were created, some were
created in ignorance either of their perseverance or their fall,
while others were most certainly assured of the eternity of their
felicity,—if it is hard to believe that they were not all from
the beginning on an equal footing, until these who are now evil did
of their own will fall away from the light of goodness, certainly
it is much harder to believe that the holy angels are now uncertain
of their eternal blessedness, and do not know regarding themselves
as much as we have been able to gather regarding them from the Holy
Scriptures. For what catholic Christian does not know that no new
devil will ever arise among the good angels, as he knows that this
present devil will never again return
into the fellowship of
the good? For the truth in the gospel promises to the saints and
the faithful that they will be equal to the angels of God; and it
is also promised them that they will “go away into life
eternal.”474
But if we
are certain that we shall never lapse from eternal felicity, while
they are not certain, then we shall not be their equals, but their
superiors. But as the truth never deceives, and as we shall be
their equals, they must be certain of their blessedness. And
because the evil angels could not be certain of that, since their
blessedness was destined to come to an end, it follows either that
the angels were unequal, or that, if equal, the good angels were
assured of the eternity of their blessedness after the perdition of
the others; unless, possibly, some one may say that the words of
the Lord about the devil “He was a murderer from the beginning,
and abode not in the truth,”475
are to be understood as if he was
not only a murderer from the beginning of the human race, when man,
whom he could kill by his deceit, was made, but also that he did
not abide in the truth from the time of his own creation, and was
accordingly never blessed with the holy angels, but refused to
submit to his Creator, and proudly exulted as if in a private
lordship of his own, and was thus deceived and deceiving. For the
dominion of the Almighty cannot be eluded; and he who will not
piously submit himself to things as they are, proudly feigns, and
mocks himself with a state of things that does not exist; so that
what the blessed Apostle John says thus becomes intelligible:
“The devil sinneth from the beginning,”476
—that is, from the time he was
created he refused righteousness, which none but a will piously
subject to God can enjoy. Whoever adopts this opinion at least
disagrees with those heretics the Manichees, and with any other
pestilential sect that may suppose that the devil has derived from
some adverse evil principle a nature proper to himself. These
persons are so befooled by error, that, although they acknowledge
with ourselves the authority of the gospels, they do not notice
that the Lord did not say, “The devil was naturally a stranger to
the truth,” but “The devil abode not in the truth,” by which
He meant us to understand that he had fallen from the truth, in
which, if he had abode, he would have become a partaker of it, and
have remained in blessedness along with the holy angels.477
| 477 Cf. Gen. ad Lit. xl. 27 et
seqq. | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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