Breviloquium

Concerning the apostasy of the demons, this must be held: God made all the Angels good, yet placed them midway between himself, the highest good, and mutable good, which is the creature; so that, if they were turned to love what is above, they would ascend to the state of grace and glory; but if to mutable good, which is below, by that very fact they would fall into the evil of guilt and punishment; because "there is no disgrace of sin without the beauty of justice."¹ — The first among the Angels, Lucifer, presuming on his private good, sought private excellence, wishing to be exalted above the others; and therefore he fell, with the others consenting to him. In falling, however, he became impenitent, obstinate, blinded, excluded from the contemplation of God, and disordered in action, striving with all his might to overthrow man through manifold temptation.

The reason for understanding the foregoing is this: since the first principle is supremely good, it makes nothing that is not good; for nothing but good proceeds from good;² which yet, being made by it, is thereby less than it, and therefore cannot be the highest good. The Angel was therefore created good by God, certainly, but not supreme; yet he was to be perfected if by his affection he tended toward the highest good.

And since by free choice of the will he could tend toward the highest good or turn toward private good, Lucifer, stirred by consideration of his beauty and loftiness to love himself and his private good, presumed on the loftiness he possessed and coveted an excellence of his own, which he had not yet obtained; and thus, by presuming, he made himself his own principle, glorying in himself; and by coveting, he made himself his own highest good, resting in himself. But since he was neither the highest principle nor the highest good, it was necessary that he rush downward by his disordered ascent; and by the same reasoning did all who consented in this.³ — And because "there is no disgrace of sin without the beauty of justice," therefore, as soon as he fell into sin, he and the others who adhered to him lost the highest place, namely, the empyrean, descending to the lowest, namely, the dark air, or hell, so that the fall into guilt was through free choice, but the fall into punishment through divine judgment. — And since he possessed immutability after the choice, therefore he immediately became obstinate in evil, and thereby was blinded away from the truth, disordered in action, and weakened in virtue: thus his impious will and action, turned away from God, were converted to hatred and envy of man; and the perspicacity of reason, blinded away from the true light, was converted to deceptions through divinations and wiles;⁴ and his readiness to minister, removed from true ministry, was converted to temptations; and his diminished and constrained virtue, insofar as permitted, was converted to working wonders through sudden transformations, which it performs with respect to corporeal creatures. — And because all these things are disordered through a will depraved by pride, therefore he turns them all toward the nourishment of his pride, seeking to be honored and adored by human beings in the manner of God. Hence it is that "he does all things evilly";⁵ yet God now justly permits all this for the vengeance of evil-doers and the praise of the good, as will appear through the final judgment.