Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| The Devil the Mediator of Death, Christ of Life.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter 12.—The Devil the
Mediator of Death, Christ of Life.
15. In no wise therefore are souls
cleansed and reconciled to God by sacrilegious imitations, or
curious arts that are impious, or magical incantations; since the
false mediator does not translate them to higher things, but rather
blocks and cuts off the way thither through the affections,
malignant in proportion as they are proud, which he inspires into
those of his own company; which are not able to nourish the wings
of virtues so as to fly upwards, but rather to heap up the weight
of vices so as to press downwards; since the soul will fall down
the more heavily, the more it seems to itself to have been carried
upwards. Accordingly, as the Magi did when warned of God,505
whom the
star led to adore the low estate of the Lord; so we also ought to
return to our country, not by the way by which we came, but by
another way which the lowly King has taught, and which the proud
king, the adversary of that lowly King, cannot block up. For to us,
too, that we may adore the lowly Christ, the “heavens have
declared the glory of God, when their sound went into all the
earth, and their words to the ends of the world.”506
A way was
made for us to death through sin in Adam. For, “By one man sin
entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon
all men, in whom all have sinned.”507
Of this way the devil was the
mediator, the persuader to sin, and the caster down into death. For
he, too, applied his one death to work out our double death. Since
he indeed died in the spirit through ungodliness, but certainly did
not die in the flesh: yet both persuaded us to ungodliness, and
thereby brought it to pass that we deserved to come into the death
of the flesh. We desired therefore the one through wicked
persuasion, the other followed us by a just condemnation; and
therefore it is written, “God made not death,”508
| 508 Wisdom 1.13" id="iv.i.vi.xiii-p6.1" parsed="|Wis|1|13|0|0" osisRef="Bible:Wis.1.13">Wisd. i. 13 | since He was
not Himself the cause of death; but yet death was inflicted on the
sinner, through His most just retribution. Just as the judge
inflicts punishment on the guilty; yet it is not the justice of the
judge, but the desert of the crime, which is the cause of the
punishment. Whither, then, the mediator of death caused us to pass,
yet did not come himself, that is, to the death of the flesh, there
our Lord God introduced for us the medicine of correction, which He
deserved not, by a hidden and exceeding mysterious decree of divine
and profound justice. In order, therefore, that as by one man came
death, so by one man might come also the resurrection of the
dead;509
because men
strove more to shun that which they could not shun, viz. the
death of the flesh, than the death of the spirit, i.e.
punishment more than the desert of punishment (for not to sin is a
thing about which either men are not solicitous or are too little
solicitous; but not to die, although it be not within reach of
attainment, is yet eagerly sought after); the Mediator of life,
making it plain that death is not to be feared, which by the
condition of humanity cannot now be escaped, but rather
ungodliness, which can be guarded against through faith, meets us
at the end to which we have come, but not by the way by which we
came. For we, indeed, came to death through sin; He through
righteousness: and, therefore, as our death is the punishment of
sin, so His death was made a sacrifice for sin.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
