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| Of the Angels and Men Who Sinned, and that Their Wickedness Did Not Disturb the Order of God’s Providence.
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Chapter 27.—Of the Angels and Men
Who Sinned, and that Their Wickedness Did Not Disturb the Order of
God’s Providence.
The sins of men and angels do
nothing to impede the “great works of the Lord which accomplish
His will.”762
For He who
by His providence and omnipotence distributes to every one his own
portion, is able to make good use not only of the good, but also of
the wicked. And thus making a good use of the wicked angel, who,
in punishment of his first wicked volition, was doomed to an
obduracy that prevents him now from willing any good, why should
not God have permitted him to tempt the first man, who had been
created upright, that is to say, with a good will? For he had
been so constituted, that if he looked to God for help, man’s
goodness should defeat the angel’s wickedness; but if by proud
self-pleasing he abandoned God, his Creator and Sustainer, he
should be conquered. If his will remained upright, through
leaning on God’s help, he should be rewarded; if it became
wicked, by forsaking God, he should be punished. But even this
trusting in God’s help could not itself be accomplished without
God’s help, although man had it in his own power to relinquish
the benefits of divine grace by pleasing himself. For as it is
not in our power to live in this world without sustaining ourselves
by food, while it is in our power to refuse this nourishment and
cease to live, as those do who kill themselves, so it was not in
man’s power, even in Paradise, to live as he ought without
God’s help; but it was in his power to live wickedly, though thus
he should cut short his happiness, and incur very just
punishment. Since, then, God was not ignorant that man would
fall, why should He not have suffered him to be tempted by an angel
who hated and envied him? It was not, indeed, that He was unaware
that he should be conquered. but because He foresaw that by the
man’s seed, aided by divine grace, this same devil himself should
be conquered, to the greater glory of the saints. All was brought
about in such a manner, that neither did any future event escape
God’s foreknowledge, nor did His foreknowledge compel any one to
sin, and so as to demonstrate in the experience of the intelligent
creation, human and angelic, how great a difference there is
between the private presumption of the creature and the Creator’s
protection. For who will dare to believe or say that it was not
in God’s power to prevent both angels and men from sinning? But
God preferred to leave this in their power, and thus to show both
what evil could be wrought by their pride, and what good by His
grace.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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