Moralia in Job 1214

18. The pride and fall of Antichrist. Angel and man fell, because they wished to be like God through power, not through justice.—For what else is understood by the 'high arm' but the proud loftiness of Antichrist, which is raised over the reprobate minds of men by the pomp of worldly glory, so that a man, a sinner, and yet disdaining to be reckoned a man, lyingly makes himself a God over men? Whence also the Apostle Paul says: 'So that he sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself as if he were God' (2 Thess. 2:4). And that he might more fully show his swelling, he premised: 'Who opposeth and is lifted up above all that is called God, or that is worshipped' (ibid.). For 'God' can sometimes be said even of a man, according to what is said to Moses:

'Behold, I have appointed thee the god of Pharaoh' (Exod. 7:1). But a mere man cannot be worshipped as God. And because Antichrist exalts himself both above all holy men and above the very power of divinity, he attempts, through the name of glory exacted for himself, to pass beyond both that which is called God and that which is worshipped as God. But it is to be noted into how great a pit of pride he has fallen, who did not remain within the measure of the ruin by which he fell. For the devil, or man, fell through an elated mind from the state of their own condition, so that the one said: 'I will ascend above the height of the clouds; I will be like the Most High' (Isa. 14:13); and the other, hearing, believed: 'Your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods' (Gen. 3:5).

Therefore each fell for this reason, that he coveted to be like God not through justice, but through power. But man, freed by grace, who had fallen by perversely coveting the likeness of God, recognising himself in the guilt of his crime to be far unequal to God, cries out: 'Lord, who is like unto Thee?' (Ps. 88:8). But the devil, left in the fall of his crime by a just dismissal, in no way remained within the measure of his ruin; but the longer he was absent from the grace of the Almighty, the more he heaped up the guilt of his crime.

For he who fell for this reason, that by a perverse order he wished to be like God, was brought to such a point that, coming into Antichrist, he disdains to seem like God, and, condemned, thinks him inferior whom, in his pride, he could not have as equal. For when it is said of him what we have already premised, 'Lifting himself up above all that is called God, or that is worshipped' (2 Thess. 2:4), it is openly shown that, by coveting long ago the likeness of God, he wished to raise himself as it were next to God; but growing in the fault of pride, he now exalts himself above all that is called and worshipped as God. Since therefore this pride of his is to be struck at the coming of the strict Judge, as it is written:

'Whom the Lord Jesus shall slay with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming' (2 Thess. 2:8), rightly is it said: 'And the high arm shall be broken.' 19. The more the word of God is ground, the more its virtue is increased.—Yet all these things which have been twice discussed can still be understood otherwise also. For the words of God are, as it were, certain spices of our help. And as with a spice, the more it is ground, the more its virtue is increased in its draught, so with the divine eloquences: the more we grind them by expounding, the more do we help our hearers, as it were, in their drinking. [Old

Recension V.] Since therefore the merciful God long tolerates the sins of men, and, when He now regards the near end, for the most part changes the minds of those who sin, rightly, intimating concerning Himself the power of so great a tenderness, He says: