For when God almighty, who made all things very good, had founded all things established in their own modes and fitting orders, and had granted them to be able either to abide or to advance by their proper measures, there crept into the rational creature an affection whereby, because it stood the more becomingly made, it put into itself a greater confidence in its own dignity than, as its measure required, in the very Bestower of that dignity; and thus, by seeking the firmness of its own eminence otherwise than its befitting and becoming rule required, it caused itself, by coveting the summit of a more powerful merit beyond the natural order, to break forth.
Which excess indeed, as it brought guilt upon the one exceeding, so it offended the practice of the Creator, against whose order it was straining; and while it ceased from that course by which alone it might advance toward the eternal fellowship of the highest good, consequently, being unable to attain to His stable participation, a defect entered in, as befitted the usages of a rational creature. For that the angels were founded for advancement, so as to earn eternal stability, that very fact indicates, since, if they had been so made that they need do nothing further, no part of them could have had any defect.
For it must not be said that there was a different nature in them, lest that angel who fell by his own will be excused, if it should seem that not the choice of his own insolence, but the necessity of an implanted condition, had imposed this upon him.
Whence, then, the blessed and sublime angels, grateful for what they had received, by the office of devout piety, and by preferring not themselves but rather Him to themselves, fittingly deserved to advance toward His perpetuity and to be carried forward: from that same source these others, who are reprobate, being consequently ungrateful for what they had received, and dissembling the obedience owed, and striving to prefer themselves rather than Him who had founded the substance of so great a dignity, and enticed by delight in their own creation, by ceasing from the honour of the Creator—by as much as they were arrogantly puffed up, by so much, through irreverence in not following, were they withdrawn from His both regard and participation of the rectitude of eternity, and, departing from that which is everlasting, were led back into that which ever fails.
Which, God granting, we trust shall be pursued more fully elsewhere; now meanwhile, as much as suffices for the present business. This is that cause, this that evil, through which, even without bodily vice, the angel, moved by a certain spiritual fornication, fell away from the divine grace and participation by which he was illumined; and in that way, having become degenerate and, for this his defilement, shut out from the heavenly seat, inflamed by envy he overthrew the image of God in the second creation, assailing it, as it dwelt in security, by those same movements by which he himself, having ill trusted, had fallen from the highest to the lowest.
Hence that felicity of paradise could not remain firm for the first human beings; hence that integrity of the first condition, while it so trusted in itself as though it had no need of Him who had created it, neither gave thanks for what it had received—which it is nowhere recorded to have done—nor asked help for preserving what it had taken, nor, even when assailed by the tempter's approach, ran devoutly to Him and took counsel, but entrusted itself amid prosperity to its own will; easily, without the guardianship of the Creator, it lay open to the deceiver's snares, and, drawn into transgression, consequently found the condition of a foredoomed death as the recompense of the forbidden thing, and deservedly was made subject to a fitting punishment—since it had neither been devoted to retaining the good, nor had it guarded beforehand against the evil foretold; while, through ambition for greater power, presuming namely that it would become God, it ran into the pits of the enemy's persuasion; and it, which, had it remained in its own order grateful to its Maker, could have laid hold of the perpetual commerce of the highest deity, fittingly, being cheated of its office toward the highest divinity by a captious promise, could not attain unto divinity.
So then, without the affection of that principal and highest reason, which persists inviolate in ever retaining the good and refusing the contrary—unto whose likeness indeed the rational animal had been established, that by imitating it with fitting actions according to its own small measure, and by keeping reverence toward it and following its grace, so that it might truly remain its likeness and image, it might have been able to obtain it, and might become worthy of the fellowship of the divine reason as of its own parent and author, and thereby, no less, being a partaker of eternity, might stand fast eternal:
while it trusts in its own dignity by which it had been created, and thinks itself to suffice for itself in that which it was made, and does not venerate its Maker with a subject devotion, it both departed from participation in Him, and in itself, without Him in whom it had the power to subsist, it did not stand fast; and thus, exceeding the order of lawful rationality, it was drawn away into the abyss of irrationality through the semblance of a reasoning by which it believed it would become God, and by the privation of Him who is eternal life, it fell back into that life which, without the fount of life, could not retain perpetual life.
Although, therefore, it was worthy of a fitting vengeance for these transgressions, yet the just Judge, God, so chastened this creature by the equity of the appointed law—and dismissed it, which had disdained to follow the divine path amid felicities, to itself in a deserved balance—that nevertheless, because it had also been deceived by the assault of a more powerful creature (namely, that creature which chafed that an earthly substance could advance where it, the spiritual, had itself fallen from, and desired to take as it were a consolation from the ruin of another creature, or that it might not only put forward itself as blameworthy but also from another's transgression, but might refer its own fall to the Creator's workmanship, as though His other work could by no means have stood firm), He might, with ineffable mercy, take counsel for the beguiled one—
and might show by this reasoning that both creatures were rightly created, because both the degenerate angels are confuted by the blessedness of the holy angels—since by those same means by which the latter (that is, by the office of due piety and by praising their Creator with the due proclamation) through the increases of His regard and the advancement of participation in fitting reverence attained the good of their good Parent and the perpetual stability of everlasting glory, so these others too, if they had striven by the same course, could have come to a like blessedness, had they not, being slothful from the praise of their Maker and not following fitting reverence, being withdrawn from the affection of participation in Him, been unable to receive the increments and perfection of their own dignity—while, held fast by the brightness of their own establishment, they presume that they need nothing further and can suffice for themselves, and, trusting to obtain through their own selves whatever they could have gained through the sole grace of the Creator, which they could by no means possess in the condition of their own mutability—;
and man too may be convicted, by manifest tokens concerning himself, of having been rightly made in so great a measure, that he who through divine grace can rise after his fall is taught to have been much more able, had he followed that same grace with a devout mind, to remain whole; and how greatly this grace prevails is thence the more to be known, since he could neither stand unharmed without it, and yet is able to return to that same soundness after his lapse. God, therefore, is a good craftsman, who ever has an eternal and highest being, because He is good, and therefore never bears any further appetite of increasing, since there is nothing above that which is ever the eternal and highest good, nor can He by any inclination be diminished from this very thing which as the highest good and eternal He is at one with.
Whence also He was said to be established in the form of God not by robbery, who assuredly had this by nature, just as that spirit, who had what he was neither eternal at all nor highest, chose rather to seize by robbery than to obtain through the Author's grace a perpetual dignity, from whom he had received the substance of angelic brightness—even as the blessed angels, remaining in the divine grace, obtained the firmness of everlasting blessedness; but the wicked spirit could neither obtain that which he strove unfittingly to invade, and, exceeding the tenor of his own condition, could not persevere even in this, that he had been made.
The good Author, therefore, that He might establish that He had founded His work good, if it should persist in its own condition, having pitied the offence of His inferior creature—since the spiritual substance, which had proceeded as the deceiver both of itself and of another, and persisting in its own wickedness had been altogether unworthy to be recovered—mercifully took upon Himself alike the nature of the earthly condition and of the substance deceived through fraud, and its cause; and thus, that we may now briefly set it forth, purposing to repair by a fitting dispensation the fallen one, so that in Himself this same nature, which through disobedience had been of death, might return to life:
He alone, knowing no sin, in the substance which He had taken up with mighty benignity to be restored after sin, that He might reckon the undue death, which without sin He assuredly did not owe, on behalf of those who through sin had become debtors of death; and at the same time that He might subject the devil, the deceiver of man, who held the subject consenting to him by a just sentence through the divine judgment—the devil, by justice now owing Him nothing—and when he had slain Him over whom, being without sin, he had no license, deservedly by mutual turn he should be subjugated as one condemned; and he who boasted himself lord and god of the human substance as of his captive, should in mutual turn be made subject to this same One who is alike just and true God.
For it belonged to boundless equity that the devil should be conquered not abruptly by divine power, but by the justice of that very man too whom he boasted he had laid low. With which the exalted Restorer was not content, that He alone should carry off this triumph over the enemy of the human race in that nature which He had taken up (for what would be bestowed upon our whole creation, if Christ alone existed as conqueror of the devil?): He therefore granted to His faithful ones, condescendingly, with boundless piety, a fellowship; He granted, through His grace and the faith bestowed, that thousands of men, by the compendium of an ineffable sacrament, should acquire participation in Him, and, made like to Him in their nature renewed in their Saviour, should themselves also become conquerors of their deceiver, his lot being changed.
And so, against the proud spirit that persists, this cure was provided for those to be saved: that they might advance by fitting means to the integrity of their condition and to heavenly dignity, in such wise that by the necessary humanity He might medicinally turn aside the affection of that deadly exaltation—which had laid low not only the human but also, as has been said, the very angelic nature—unto the restoring of integrity; since, after the fall, one had need to be without that evil by which he had been unable to stand whole. But it behoved that the rational human creature too should receive back by its own will, even according to the grace of God, that which it had lost by its own will, and that what was being healed without merit should be granted to it in such a way that this too should follow from merit.
For this reason that singular Saviour chose rather that virtue be perfected in weakness than that the human substance, wholly without weakness, be made either self-confident or negligent of its Author, secure without weakness. Hence it is, therefore, that the blessed Paul, who intimated more abundantly than the rest both the ruin of the human condition and its restoration, cries out even concerning himself: 'Lest the greatness of the revelations should exalt me, there was given me a goad of my flesh, an angel of Satan to buffet me; concerning which I besought the Lord three times, that it might depart from me, and He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for strength is perfected in weakness.' Gladly therefore will I glory in my weaknesses, that the strength of Christ may dwell in me.' And likewise he himself:
'For the creation was made subject to vanity'—still, to be sure, to vanity, inasmuch as it is still entangled by worldly senses and pressed down by the corruptible condition; that creation, assuredly, of which the same one says elsewhere: 'If therefore there be any new creation, the old things have passed away; behold, all things are made new'; and of which the same one says elsewhere: 'For we are His workmanship, created in Christ in good works'; and likewise he himself concerning the same: 'For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision avails anything nor uncircumcision, but a new creation': this creation, assuredly, by which we have been remade in Christ, not that by which we were made from the beginning. Of which too the blessed apostle James thus speaks:
'Of His own will He begot us by the word of truth, that we might be some beginning of His creation'—not of that creation which was founded in Adam, but that which, begotten by the will of the Father of lights, from whom is every good gift and every perfect gift, took its beginning by the word of truth in Christ; and this for the very reason that the human substance should not trust in any goods of its own, but should weigh that whatever of righteousness it recognized to be in itself came down from above, from that unchangeable and, without shadow of vicissitude, ever boundless Light, through which it should perceive the gift of the true light to be bestowed upon itself, mutable and darkened by the shadow of vicissitudes.
This, therefore, is that creation which, living spiritually, unwillingly endures the affections of mortal assault, against which fighting unceasingly it would rather not have those which it conquers than be forever in conflict with a hostile enemy. Unwilling therefore it is subject to vain desires in so far as they are, without doubt, to perish (whence the apostle says: 'The flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, so that you do not do the things that you will'), 'but by reason of Him,' he says, 'who subjected it in hope,' that no one, namely, in this life should again be arrogant of full felicity, and lest again perchance he should succumb in despair. Thus He subjected it to the enduring of these troubles, yet so that it may be consoled by hope uplifted.
This, therefore, without ambiguity, is the creation of which he says: 'Because the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God.' He made clear of what creation he would be understood to speak, saying 'into the liberty of the children of God': which in this world now serves in that part whereby it is assailed by human vices, but then is to come into the liberty of the children of God in perfect security, when 'this corruptible shall put on incorruption and this mortal shall put on immortality,' that the saying may come to pass which is written: 'Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your sting?' Now the sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gave us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Wherefore the blessed apostle, wishing more manifestly to show both of what creation he was treating, and of what bondage or of what liberty of it he was discoursing—inasmuch as it was through him that Christ spoke—still impresses it and says: 'For we know that every creature groans and travails': it is none other than the rational creature, and that rational creature which, being now reborn, recognizes what it groans over or what it travails to bring forth, and, bewailing its own weakness, awaits the promise of perpetual tranquillity. To what end the excellent teacher may lead this, must be more diligently observed.
'Not only it' (that is, the creation of the Christian people), he says, 'but we ourselves, having the firstfruits of the Spirit' (the apostles themselves, assuredly, the very princes and parents of the churches, who primordially received the gifts of the Holy Spirit, that they might minister to the ecclesiastical increases spiritually; where, without controversy, he places even themselves too, endowed though with one and the same, albeit greater, grace—whence too he says 'having the firstfruits of the Spirit,' as it were the chief men of the grace of God—yet in one and the same general condition he establishes himself and the whole church)—'but we ourselves also,' saying 'having the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan within ourselves,' he disclosed, whose groaning that was known to be which he had spoken of above; and what he groaned over he evidently set forth:
'awaiting the adoption.' Surely by the sacrament of regeneration he has already received the pledge of adoption: what then is this adoption, which after the adoption begun is still awaited, or what is the 'redemption of our body,' which is set forth as to come? Have you not, then, received that which you say you await? 'I have received,' he says, 'but I have been renewed and initiated by the heavenly mysteries, by which, surviving and yet still standing in this mortality, when the things that are theirs work fittingly in me, I may avail unto their fullness and perfection, and here the victory of those who fight, there be consummated, where it must be said: 'Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your sting?' Now we are saved by hope; but hope that is seen is not hope;
for what a man sees, why does he yet hope for? But if we hope for that which we do not see, we wait for it with patience.' With sufficiently clear light he made plain what is the state of the faithful in this life, what they hold in faith, what they sustain in hope, what they desire with their whole charity. All of which comes to pass, without hesitation, for this reason, as a certain teacher of the church has wisely taught, saying:
For the occasion of these struggles has been preserved for the great benefit of the faithful, so that holiness may not grow proud while weakness is assailed; namely, that our human condition, warned at least by its own frailty, may after its fall not trust in itself but may run unceasingly back to that Mercy which alone can restore it. For our nature, when it did not seek His grace, could not stand firm even in the inviolate happiness of paradise; and let it learn that, apart from such protection, it fell from that state through which it is now instructed, after its toils, to return to everlasting joys, and that with this support it could far better have continued unharmed. By this it is not only brought back to the design of its own creation but is prepared for a heavenly dwelling.
But let it in no way be thought that this discussion is contradicted by what the blessed apostle and evangelist John set forth in his epistle: that whoever is born of God does not sin — as though from this it should be believed that those who have been regenerated do not sin. For if indeed, in the sense which certain persons, judging wrongly, suppose, that eminent man had made such a promise, then assuredly everyone who had been reborn would already be unable to sin. Next, whoever alleges that he laid this down as a definition is shown to hold an opinion contrary to this same apostle. For the same John says elsewhere: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. And again:
If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us. And it was surely so great and so eminent an apostle who said this; and if anyone contends that he reckons himself superior in merits to that man, let him look to it and beware lest he fall into the precipice of deadly headlong ruin. For assuredly he himself who said these things had indeed been born of God, and yet he taught and preached, saying: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the rest which was set down above. But let this man full of God himself rather explain in what manner one who is born of God cannot sin. If we say, he says, that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar;
but if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just, to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all iniquity. He has made plain in what manner one who is born of God cannot sin: namely, that each of the faithful, after he has been born of God, just as he ought not to declare that he has no sin, so likewise the sin which he has contracted by committing it cannot remain in him, being removed by remission when he confesses it — as the apostle himself further added: These things I write to you, that you sin not; but if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the just; and He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for those of the whole world.
This having been briefly indicated, the prudent reader will be able throughout the whole body of the Scriptures to find it attested by abundant testimonies, and to prove more clearly that the antidote of our salvation is so tempered that, all insolence laid aside, he that glories may glory not in himself but in the Lord. Moreover, this too must be considered more carefully, which we have observed disturbs certain persons: namely, what the apostle says, when he was speaking of faithful and unfaithful spouses, that the unfaithful husband or wife is sanctified through partnership with a faithful spouse of either sex. And in the first place it not unfittingly comes to mind what was said concerning the covenant of marriage:
They shall be two in one flesh. From this it can consequently be understood that, since the body of any faithful spouse is a temple of God, purged by regeneration and hallowed by the divine purification of the mystery, in a certain manner, through the unity of conjugal flesh, the sanctification touches even the body of the unfaithful spouse; and that such a fellowship stands far removed from that partnership in which both spouses are enslaved to idols and defiled by the dwelling of an unclean spirit. For in that kind of marriage, through the law and covenant of wedlock, the divine blessing comes to the other partner — even though perhaps unknowing and unwilling — through the faith of the other, the flesh united to it; whereas in the latter case both that primal fornication, by which the soul is estranged from God, and the contagion of the wicked spirit render each spouse stained with detestable defilement, and estranged from that faith which purifies hearts, an outcast from the supreme Godhead.
Next, as I judge, this too not unreasonably applies: that by the prayer of the faithful spouse some measure of mercy, however great, is granted even to the unfaithful one — or at least that mercy which pertains to temporal salvation. In which mercy that unfaithful partner gains no small share of the divine loving-kindness, and thereby is declared to be made in a certain manner a partaker of the divine favor. For if the apostle testifies that foods, which by the sacred law are described as unclean, are sanctified through the word of God (whence also comes that saying:
What God has cleansed, do not you call common), then it will not be absurd nor unfitting that, through the prayer of the faithful spouse — which it is certain is offered for that spouse out of conjugal affection — the unfaithful spouse also should obtain something of sanctification through the divine mercy which the faithful spouse's supplication implores, and should stand far apart, as has been said, from that marriage in which both spouses are strangers to the purity of the true Godhead and removed from its visitation, but, both invoking unclean spirits, are filled with equal uncleanness.
For if, by comparison of light or grave sins, one who is entangled in a lesser guilt is said to be justified in respect to him who is involved in greater vices (as it is said to Jerusalem, which then seethed with the enormity of crimes and transgressions: You have justified your sister Sodom): how much more is justification or sanctification — even if not full and perfect, yet in a certain manner fittingly received — where not only is there less sinning by the faithful spouse, but even a remedy of the supreme Godhead is entreated by that spouse for the sinful partner, than where sin is committed by both spouses?
For that in a certain manner this sanctification reaches even the unfaithful spouse through the faithful one, these very words of the apostle testify — since he affirms that the unfaithful spouse has not yet received a lawful sanctification, though through the faithful spouse it acquires something of sanctification; and finally, on what condition it is to be reckoned, he added, following on: For if the unbeliever depart, let him depart — thereby signifying that such a one is not thenceforth to be received as a believer; for although through these things which have been said something reaches that person — namely, the fellowship or the prayer of the faithful spouse — of divine sanctification and grace, yet unless he himself also become faithful, he is beyond doubt to be judged as an unbeliever.
There is also that manner of imparting sanctification to the unfaithful spouse through the now-faithful spouse, if the latter instills into the former an exhortation to conversion to God and to belief in the supreme Godhead, urges upon him His majesty and power, and through conjugal affection more easily forms and inclines him to the faith, setting forth what hope there is for those who believe in the one God — whether in the course of this life, or, after its passing, what rest is to come. When the faithful spouse frequently instills these things by holy words through the confidence of the marriage, knocking upon the other's heart with unremitting voice, he administers to him the effect of divine sanctification, both to his mind and to his body, as the blessed apostle Peter says:
Likewise, let wives be subject to their husbands, that, if any believe not the word, they may without the word be won through the conversation of the wives, considering your chaste conversation in fear. And if the unfaithful spouse receives this through conjugal intimacy, and does not receive in vain nor reject the grace of God ministered to him through conjugal affection, then the sanctification of the unfaithful spouse comes about through the faithful spouse, while by these means he is drawn from unbelief into the fellowship of sanctification;
otherwise, if he neither receives through conjugal affection the grace offered to him, but, forgetful of both the divine favor and the singular human affection, and receiving it in vain, judges it must be refused, and on this account strives even to renounce the very affection of his spouse and to depart from the law of that holy partnership, then leave to depart is fittingly permitted him, because he is not worthy of that marriage of which he himself judged himself unworthy. And let the faithful spouse patiently bear having been deprived of that marriage which commits fornication against God — to whom, by cleaving to Him, that same faithful spouse retains the primary chastity of God, and thus is free both of the adulterer and of the one who refuses to become truly one flesh with a now-faithful spouse. Nor let the faithful spouse reckon that marriage to have been lawful which he despised to have joined to himself by the divine law, but rather let the faithful spouse gladly accept that the one who is separated in soul from God has been divided also in body from him.