seeking in Him the true rest, in whom they are to possess everlasting blessedness. And so they do not love temporal goods, which they know will soon pass away; and for this reason, in the use of them, they do not seek that whereby greed may be sated, but that whereby charity may be refreshed and firmness sustained; nor do they seek joy from them as from a domestic delight, but rather a moderate solace, as from provision for the road, according to the opportunity of things. 45.
And because we are now disputing against the opinion of one who does not believe that flies and scorpions, fleas and bugs could have been made by God, this too must be guarded against: lest he should have conceived this notion—utterly foreign to the catholic faith—not from the error of the Manichaeans, but from the reading of the divine Scriptures. For the law is good, if a man use it lawfully (1 Tim. 1:8). But he does not use the law lawfully who does not understand from the words of the law that which he ought to understand. This I have said for the following reason: because we read in Exodus that the rod of Moses which Aaron carried was turned into a serpent by a divine operation;
where it is also said that the magicians of Pharaoh—whom the Apostle calls Jannes and Mambres—did likewise, so that their rods were turned into serpents by magical incantations (2 Tim. 3:8). Then, when Aaron struck the waters of the river and they were turned into blood (Exod. 7:20), Holy Scripture records that the same was done likewise by their enchantments (ibid. 22). Afterward too, when Aaron, having struck the waters, brought forth frogs, which straightway covered the land of Egypt, those workers of evil also are related to have done the like by their abominable arts, striving against him (Exod. 8:6-7).
But after it came to pass that, when the earth was struck, gnats were produced (ibid. 17-18), the malice of magic art could work no such thing. Here, first, let that man who asserts that flies were made by the devil recognize himself to be a liar, since the devil and his angels, although they were permitted to do other things, nevertheless failed in the work of producing flies. Here who does not see that the transgressors made either the serpents from the rods or the frogs produced from the waters only because God permitted it; but that they could not make the gnats—that is, the flies—only because God did not permit it? 46. Sometimes, however, by the hidden and incomprehensible judgment of God, the evil angels are permitted to do certain things, for the testing of the good and the seducing of the wicked; yet not
do they themselves create the things they make; but out of the hidden bosom of God the Creator, which we cannot see, they are permitted to produce something which we can see. Thus the devil could be the creator neither of serpents nor of frogs, although he produced them with God's permission; just as he was not the creator of the fire, when, to test Job, it consumed his sheep along with the shepherds by fire falling from heaven (Job 1:16); nor was he the creator of the wind, when a great wind, rushing from the desert, touched the four corners of the house and crushed all the sons of holy Job together in one and the same ruin. The diverse natures, therefore—that is, the elements of this world—God alone almighty created;
in whose secret and hidden depths He established certain seeds of things, hidden from us but manifest to the angels: out of which certain things, as the opportunity of the work and of the time demands, by His hidden wisdom or counsel, God either commands to be produced through good angels, or permits to be displayed through evil ones. And in thus permitting, God shows how great a power He has caused to be in the holy angels, since He grants even to the evil ones some faculty of doing wondrous things out of that same bodily creation. Hence it is that our Savior also does not cease to forewarn His faithful, saying: For there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall give great signs and wonders, so as to lead into error, if it be possible, even the elect (Mark
13:22). For the blessed Apostle too, speaking of Antichrist, says: Then shall that wicked one be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus shall slay with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: whose coming is according to the working of Satan, in all power and signs and lying wonders, and in all seduction of iniquity to them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. Therefore God shall send them the working of error, that they should believe a lie, and that all may be judged who have not believed the truth, but have consented to iniquity (2 Thess. 2:8ff.). 47.
By these and similar testimonies we shall recognize that all natures were created by the divine work, and that by whatever thing we are harmed, it ought to be called not evil by nature, but found unsuitable for us on account of our weakness. Yet from this a fitting admonition is applied to us, that with a humble heart we may fear the justice of the divine power. But no wise man either believes or says that not only the evil angels, but not even the good angels, are creators of natures. For God, as we said above, made all things in wisdom, which wisdom reaches from end to end mightily, and orders all things sweetly (Wisd. 8:1). And He orders all things for this reason: because in her the Father made all things.
As, therefore, God created the angels in the heavens in wisdom, so in the same wisdom He created the little worms upon the earth; and He who founded on high the Thrones, Dominations, Principalities and Powers, He Himself made upon the earth the scorpions, fleas and bugs. He who created the hen, He Himself created the fly: but the one He gave that the proud man might be confounded, the other that the weak might be refreshed. Hence it is that from the latter, willingly, one receives food; from the former, unwillingly, one suffers nausea: so that at least one may be compelled to see, not only in the latter the solace of God, but also in the former the deserving of one's own sin. 48.
Accordingly, let that man take heed lest he be seduced even by that name by which the prince of demons is called Beelzebub in the Gospel, which is interpreted 'prince of flies.' For this was not said because the devil could create flies: for the angel, speaking to the prophet Daniel, says: And behold, Michael, one of the first princes, came to help me (Dan. 10:13); and a little after: There is no one that helpeth me in all these things, but Michael your prince (ibid. 21). And not only angels, but even men we find named princes. For it is written: The princes of the peoples are gathered together with the God of Abraham (Ps. 46:10); and to the Church it is said:
Instead of thy fathers, sons are born to thee; thou shalt make them princes over all the earth (Ps. 44:17). And in the book of Moses (Gen. 25:16) we know that the princes of the tribes are named. Yet not because men or angels are called princes are they on that account to be called creators—not only of angels or of men, but even of any irrational souls whatever, or of any bodies whatever. For Beelzebub himself, whose name is interpreted 'prince of flies,' is certainly called the prince of demons: over whom nevertheless he rules as the first author and instigator of wickedness, not as the creator and founder of nature. For the evil angels have God as the maker of their nature; but of their wickedness they have the devil as prince.
For the whole multitude of the apostate angels was made good by God, by whose free kindness it came to be that they existed; but by their own will they clung to the devil, so that they fell. Accordingly, he is called their prince, not because he created them, but because he drew them along with himself into the precipice of perdition. In this, then, that the devil is called the prince of flies, he is shown to be the prince of the wicked, whom another Scripture signifies, saying: Dying flies spoil the sweetness of the ointment (Eccles. 10:1). Who spoil it, but those who grieve the Holy Spirit, either by the crime of unbelief or by the filthy obscenity of unclean works, while they defile themselves either by perverse credulity or by depraved conduct?
Forbidding this with solicitude, the Apostle says: Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby you are sealed unto the day of redemption (Eph. 4:30). 49. They spoil in themselves the sweetness of the ointment, therefore, who do not use the sacrament of spiritual grace in a right order of life. But while they thus spoil it, the ointment itself cannot be spoiled; just as, while these same men grieve according to their evil will, the Holy Spirit can feel no sadness whatever. For of the very Son of God it is said to the Hebrews: How much more, think you, does he deserve worse punishments, who has trodden underfoot the Son of God! (Heb. 10:29). But the Son of God is Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God, which is in no way trodden underfoot, because it is in no way defiled.
For concerning it, it is said in the book of Wisdom: For she reaches everywhere by reason of her purity; and therefore no defiled thing comes into her. For she is the brightness of eternal light, and the unspotted mirror of God's majesty, and the image of his goodness (Wisd. 7:24ff.). The wicked, therefore, grieve the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit cannot be grieved; the wicked tread underfoot the Son of God, but the Son of God is in no way trodden underfoot. 50. But such is the sense in which the wicked are said to grieve the Holy Spirit and to tread underfoot the Son of God, that both the Son of God and the Holy Spirit remain incapable of being grieved and incapable of being trodden underfoot; as the Savior says in the Gospel:
Whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her, has already committed adultery with her in his heart (Matt. 5:28). But if, while he commits adultery, she remains chaste, how much more, while the wicked grieve and tread underfoot, does the divine substance of the Son of God and of the Holy Spirit remain without sadness and blessed! 51. Let no one of the faithful, therefore, say that any nature could have been originally created by the devil: lest, while he affirms that any animals came into being by the devil's creating, he consequently ascribe also to the works of the devil those things from which they take their origin. For certain kinds of flies arise either from the refuse of bodies, or from rotted herbs or flesh. Very often we see certain flies born even from vegetables.
For the weevil too is wont to come into being from grain. Whoever, then, asserts that animals of this kind were created not by God but by the devil, why does he not also assert that the wood, the grain, the vegetables, the herbs and the flesh, from which they are born, were made by him? Whereupon consequently, when he sees that worms have their origin not only from human corpses but even from living bodies—since in the worms of human mortality a carnal sense is sometimes displayed—he will without doubt proclaim the devil to be the author even of human bodies.
But since one who believes rightly and understands rightly concerning the good angels dares not to assign to those very good angels the origin of any creature whatever, how does this man assign to a cast-down angel—one excluded from his dignity by the vice of his own depravity—the power or authority of creating any animal whatever? which no one would dare assign to him, even if he had remained in angelic dignity and goodness without any vice. 52. Not in vain, moreover, does Scripture, at the very beginning of Genesis, speaking of all things that were made, affirm that God made all things, saying of each one: And God made, and God saw that it was good (Gen. 1): all of which He completed on the sixth day, in which nothing could be lacking that should afterward come to be.
For God, foreknowing things to come, just as He knew that man would sin, so out of all the things He made He salutarily prepared for him not only solaces, but also scourges. For one is the hand of a good father that gives to his son both food and the scourge: the one that he may live, the other that he may live well; the one that he may not fail through weakness, the other that, being undisciplined, he may not despise his father's precepts: For whom the Lord loves He corrects, and He scourges every son whom He receives (Heb. 12:6). Nor does it profit anything to abound in temporal goods, if by living wickedly one lack the everlasting ones: and when he shall have lacked these, he must needs be assigned to perennial evils, which he cannot lack. 53. Let everyone, therefore, restrain the rashness of his own thought;
and let him not doubt that, just as the things in which he delights, so also the things by which he is offended, were made naturally by God: whose wisdom, reaching from end to end mightily and ordering all things sweetly, shows the beauty of His work even in those things which corruption destroys; displaying also in those very tiniest animals the grace of each several kind—He who made the tiniest flies as much more agile as they are smaller than great elephants, and, although the size of the members is unequal in both, yet the praise of the divine works is not unequal.
For who that is soundly wise, and beholding the invisible things of God understood through the things that are made, would not praise God Himself as the Maker in the little worm, whom he praises in the elephant? Or would not praise the same in the flea, whom he praises in the ox? Since even those figures which the industry of craftsmen is wont to form in gems, the mind is wont to praise the more, the more minute the sight beholds them. 54. It must therefore be confessed that God created all things;
but as to those things by which human transgression is scourged at the divine command, when it is asked whether they were created by God before Adam sinned, or after he sinned, the fitting answer is that those things which are begotten either from the waters or from the earth were then instituted primordially by God's creating, by that very Creator who not only knew the nature of the man He was making, but also wondrously foreknew that the man himself would sin. Nor did He make those things in such a way that man, before sin, should either feel them as harmful or fear them. For thus no act of any earthly animal could harm him, just as he himself had been constituted lord of all things by the divine gift.
This transgression, then, harmful and pernicious to man, was the work of man himself, not the making of the Creator. For it was not the kindness of the Creator that wrought this, but the equity of the Judge. 55. But those things which we see arise from the corruption of flesh or of fruits, we do not indeed say came into being at that time when, in those six days, God made all things very good; but they were made temporally in such a way that from them these should afterward be born. To which corruption human flesh too has fallen away, when it was thus written: Man, when he was in honor, did not understand; he is compared to the senseless beasts, and is become like to them (Ps. 48:13);
so that now the body of sinful man is held by the necessity of corruption and death: from which two evils the bodies of the just are to be freed through the grace of God; not in this time, in which, just as God makes His sun to rise upon the good and the evil, and rains upon the just and the unjust (Matt. 5:45), He not only caused the unbelieving Herod to be consumed by worms (Acts 12:23), but also permitted His servant Job to boil over with gore and worms (Job 2:8); but in the future the bodies of the just shall feel no trouble of corruption or mortality, when in them this corruptible shall put on immortality (1 Cor. 15:53). In that life of the good and misery of the evil, whatever there shall be, whether for the good or for the evil, shall be full and eternal.
There, torments shall not be mingled with solaces, nor solaces inserted among torments. There the eternity of joys and of punishments shall remain without end; neither shall the evil hope for joys, nor the good dread sadness: in the good, an eternal exultation shall abide, ever remaining; but in the evil, weeping and gnashing of teeth shall abide forever; the fellowship of the demons shall hold the wicked wretched to eternity, but the equality of the holy angels shall receive the just, blessed to eternity. 56. Accordingly, singing of mercy and judgment to God, let us not despise the time of mercy, that we may come to judgment without dread. Let us hope in the Judge whom we have known as Redeemer. Let such be our works, for which everlasting rewards may be repaid.
In that we fear and avoid the troubles of the present time, from this we ought to consider how greatly we ought to flee the eternal punishments. Let us therefore turn aside from evils, and do good: for every man shall find, in the time of the divine recompense, this same thing which he shall have had here in his works, as the Apostle says: For whatsoever a man shall sow, that also shall he reap: because he that soweth in his flesh, of the flesh also shall reap corruption; but he that soweth in the spirit, of the spirit shall reap life everlasting (Gal. 6:8). Wherefore the same Apostle admonishes us, saying: For if you live according to the flesh, you shall die; but if by the spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh, you shall live (Rom. 8:13).
Here, then, let us by the spirit mortify the deeds of the flesh, and, being dead to sin, let us live to God. Let neither the prosperity of the world corrupt us, nor its adversity break us. In heart let us migrate from the dwelling of this world, from which we are soon to migrate also in body: that that heavenly house may receive us, of which the Apostle says that we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens (2 Cor. 5:1). Of this it is written: Blessed are they that dwell in thy house, O Lord; they shall praise thee for ever and ever (Ps. 84:5). There, as the dwelling is eternal, so is the praising eternal. There those who dwell always praise God, because in the Lord and concerning the Lord they always exult;