Anf-02 vi.iii.iii.xii Pg 64.1
Anf-02 vi.iv.i.viii Pg 14.1
Anf-03 vi.vii.x Pg 3
See Gal. v. 26; Phil. ii. 3.
and malice, on the other, is always9112 9112 Nunquam non.
odious to the Lord; in this case indeed most of all, when, being provoked by a neighbour’s malice, it constitutes itself superior9113 9113 i.e. perhaps superior in degree of malice.
in following out revenge, and by paying wickedness doubles that which has once been done. Revenge, in the estimation of error,9114 9114 i.e. of the world and its erroneous philosophies.
seems a solace of pain; in the estimation of truth, on the contrary, it is convicted of malignity. For what difference is there between provoker and provoked, except that the former is detected as prior in evil-doing, but the latter as posterior? Yet each stands impeached of hurting a man in the eye of the Lord, who both prohibits and condemns every wickedness. In evil doing there is no account taken of order, nor does place separate what similarity conjoins. And the precept is absolute, that evil is not to be repaid with evil.9115 9115
Anf-03 v.iv.v.xxiv Pg 45
Isa. xi. 8, 9.
And, indeed, we are aware (without doing violence to the literal sense of the passage, since even these noxious animals have actually been unable to do hurt where there has been faith) that under the figure of scorpions and serpents are portended evil spirits, whose very prince is described4457 4457 Deputetur.
by the name of serpent, dragon, and every other most conspicuous beast in the power of the Creator.4458 4458 Penes Creatorem.
This power the Creator conferred first of all upon His Christ, even as the ninetieth Psalm says to Him: “Upon the asp and the basilisk shalt Thou tread; the lion and the dragon shalt Thou trample under foot.”4459 4459
Anf-01 ix.vi.xxxix Pg 4
1 Cor. iii. 3.
That is, that the Spirit of the Father was not yet with them, on account of their imperfection and shortcomings of their walk in life. As, therefore, the apostle had the power to give them strong meat—for those upon whom the apostles laid hands received the Holy Spirit, who is the food of life [eternal] —but they were not capable of receiving it, because they had the sentient faculties of the soul still feeble and undisciplined in the practice of things pertaining to God; so, in like manner, God had power at the beginning to grant perfection to man; but as the latter was only recently created, he could not possibly have received it, or even if he had received it, could he have contained it, or containing it, could he have retained it. It was for this reason that the Son of God, although He was perfect, passed through the state of infancy in common with the rest of mankind, partaking of it thus not for His own benefit, but for that of the infantile stage of man’s existence, in order that man might be able to receive Him. There was nothing, therefore, impossible to and deficient in God, [implied in the fact] that man was not an uncreated being; but this merely applied to him who was lately created, [namely] man.
