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| His confession of faith is unsatisfactory. No one asked him about the Trinity, but about Origen's doctrines of the Resurrection, the origin of souls, and the salvability of Satan. As to the Resurrection and to Satan he is ambiguous. As to souls he professes ignorance.
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7. To proceed:
“This is a great spear
with which the devil is pierced, he, ‘who is the universal cause
of sin,’ if he is to render account of his works, like a man, and
‘with his angels possess the inheritance of eternal fires.’
This, no doubt, was what was lacking to him, that, having brought
mankind into torment, he should himself ‘possess the eternal
fires’ which he had all the while been longing
for.”
You seem to me here to speak a
little too hardly of the devil, and to assail the accuser of all with
false accusations. You say ‘he is the universal cause of
sin;’ and, while you make him the author of all crimes, you free
men from fault, and take away the freedom of the will. Our Lord says
that3091
‘from our heart come forth evil
thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witnesses,
railings,’ and of Judas we read in the Gospel;3092
“After the sop Satan entered into
him,” that is, because he had before the sop sinned voluntarily,
and had not been brought to repentance either by humbling himself or by
the forbearance of the Saviour. So also the Apostle says;3093
“Such men I delivered to Satan,
that they might be taught not to blaspheme.” He delivered to
Satan as to a torturer, with a view to their punishment, those who,
before they had been delivered to him learned to blaspheme by their own
will. David also draws the distinction in a few words between the
faults due to his own will and the incentives of vice when he says3094
“Cleanse thou me from my secret
faults, and keep back thy servant from alien sins.” We read also
in Ecclesiastes3095
“If the
spirit of a ruler rise up against thee, leave not thy place;”
from which we may clearly see that we commit sin if we give opportunity
to the power which rises up, and if we fail to hurl down headlong the
enemy who is scaling our walls. As to your threatening your brothers,
that is, those who accuse you, with eternal fire in company with the
devil, it seems to me that you do not so much drag your brethren down
as raise the devil up, since he, according to you, is to be punished
only with the same fires as Christian men. But you well know, I think,
what eternal fires mean according to the ideas of Origen, namely, the
sinners’ conscience, and the remorse which galls their hearts
within. These ideas he thinks are intended in the words of Isaiah:3096
“Their worm shall not die neither
shall their fire be quenched.” And in the words addressed to
Babylon:3097
| 3097 Is. xlvii. 14,
15.
“There shall not be a coal to warm at nor fire to sit before it.
Thus shall they be unto thee for whom thou hast laboured.” A.V.
in almost exact agreement with Vulgate. Jerome must have quoted
memoriter from an older version. | “Thou hast coals of fire,
thou shalt sit upon them, these shall be thy help.” So also in
the Psalm it is said to the penitent;3098
“What shall be given to thee, or
what shall be done more for thee against the false tongue? Sharp arrows
of the mighty, with desolating coals;” which means (according to
him) that the arrows of God’s precepts (concerning which the
Prophet says in another place,3099
“I lived
in misery while a thorn pierces me”) should wound and strike
through the crafty tongue, and make an end of sins in it. He also
interprets the place where the Lord testifies saying:3100
“I came to send fire on the earth, and
how I wish that it may burn” as meaning “I wish that all
may repent, and burn out through the Holy spirit their vices and their
sins; for I am he of whom it is written,3101
“Our God is a consuming fire;” it is no great thing then to
say this of the devil, since it is prepared also for men.” You
ought rather to have said, if you wished to avoid the suspicion of
believing in the salvation of the devil;3102
“Thou hast become perdition and shalt not be for ever;” and
as the Lord speaks to Job concerning the devil,3103
“Behold his hope shall fail him and in the sight of all shall he
be cast down. I will not arouse him as one that is cruel, for who can
resist my countenance? Who has first given to me that I may return it
to him? for all things beneath the heaven are mine. I will not spare
him and his words that are powerful and fashioned to turn away
wrath.” Hence, these things may pass as the work of a plain man.
Their bearing is evident enough to those who understand these matters;
but to the unlearned they may wear the appearance of
innocence.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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