Scotus Academicus, Tomus quartus: De Angelis

Surely it is a wonder how the celestial gold has been obscured, how the finest color has been changed, how those precious stones have been scattered by which the heavenly Jerusalem was to be restored and made whole: I mean those rebellious angels, rebels against God, who, having emulated the divine equality together with their

Prince Lucifer, stripped of all the charisms with which they had been enriched from the beginning of their creation, fell from the sublime heights of the heavens into the depth of hell by an eternal and irrevocable fall. But it would be superfluous to discuss their nature in particular here, since it is not other than that of the holy Angels, as was declared openly enough in the first disputation at the beginning of this Treatise. Yet in addition I wish to warn the Reader here at the threshold that some of the holy Fathers of the Church have taught that the demons obtained a nature other than that of the holy Angels.

For first, most contend that they were clothed from the beginning with body and flesh. Thus especially was Justin Martyr of opinion, who, when he had said that God subjected earthly things to men, but attributed the providence of men and of all other things to the Angels, adds:

The Angels, moreover, having overstepped this order, were taken captive by intercourse with women, and begot sons, whom we call Demons: and moreover they afterward subjected the human race to themselves, partly by magical writings, partly by the terrors and punishments which they inflicted; partly by the institution of sacrifices, incense-offerings, and libations, of which they began to be in need, after they had subjected themselves like slaves to the perturbations of the passions.

By which words, although he signifies that all Angels are clothed with body, he nevertheless openly declares that the nature of the demons is other than that of the rest. His disciple Tatian holds the same in lib. contra Graecos, teaching that the demons are not endowed with flesh, but with very subtle bodies: The demons, he says, are not all endowed with flesh, but there is in them a spiritual concretion, as of fire and air: moreover, by those alone who are united to the Spirit of God can the bodies of the demons be perceived, etc.

— Origen approves the same opinion in lib. 3. contra Celsum, and moreover affirms that the demons are gluttons, and flit about the sacrifices and the blood and the vapors of the sacrifices; but that the good Angels are of a differing nature and purpose from all those demons who dwell on the earth.

Saint Basil teaches the same, or whoever is the Author of the commentary on the first chapter of Isaiah, where we read that for the demons, because of a nature appetitive of pleasures and subject to perturbations, the sacrifices, dissolving into vapor, bring a certain pleasure and use; that the blood, evaporated by burning and in this way rarefied, is taken up into their substance: for they are nourished wholly and in every part by vapors, not by chewing or by the office of the stomach, but just as the hair of all animals, and the nails, and other things of that kind receive nourishment into their whole substance. For this reason they seek after vapors, and vehemently crave the smoke of incense as their nutriment.

Chrysostom also subscribes, in Oration 2. on Saint Babylas: The demons, he says, when they are worshipped with vapor, smoke, and shed blood, run up like dogs devouring blood, and greedy to lick; but when there is no one who provides these things to them, they are killed as it were by a kind of famine.

Jerome also does not dissent, writing thus in Epistle 146. to Damasus: Such is the multitude of demons, which is fed through handmade idols on the blood of cattle and on victims.

— From this very argument Tertullian, in cap. 22. of the Apologeticum, demonstrates that the demons are unclean spirits: Which, he says, must be understood to arise from their feedings on blood and smoke and the putrid funeral pyres of cattle, and from their own most impure tongues.

Finally, Eusebius, in lib. 5. De Praeparatione Evangelica, confirms the same truth, affirming that the demons therefore lead men to frequent sacrifices and to venerate images, so that they may be fattened by the vapor of the offered victims. These, therefore, he says,

dwelling about the earth and its furrow, and wandering through that thick and gloomy terrestrial air, and banished into a dark and earthly habitation …, roaming about the sepulchres and monuments of the dead and all sordid and impure matter, delight in blood and gore, in the bodies of animals of every kind, and in the breath of the vapors and incense that flow from the earth.

— Nor does the opinion of Saint Augustine seem to have been other, although he appears wholly uncertain in determining whether the demons were formed from airy or from some other matter, for in 3. De Genesi ad litteram he writes thus: And these, he says, demons, are airy animals, since they thrive by the nature of airy bodies: and therefore they are not dissolved by death, because in them the element prevails which is more apt for acting than for suffering, etc. And a little after:

In which part perhaps (namely the highest and most pure part of the air) if the transgressors were before their transgression, together with their prince, now the devil, then the Archangel: for some of ours do not think that they were celestial or supercelestial Angels: it is no wonder if after sin they were thrust down into this darkness, etc.

Soon after: But if those transgressors, before they transgressed, bore celestial bodies, neither is this a wonder, if they were changed as a punishment into an airy quality, so that they may now suffer something from fire, that is, from the element of a higher nature.

But that opinion concerning a substantial change, which the aforesaid Fathers suppose to have been made in the Angels by their sinning, long prevailed among the Greeks; for in the Council of Florence we read that they said that the devil, and those who with him fell from the glory of God, almost received flesh,

and those who were devoid of matter have been made material in part: therefore they also run to material bodies, and rest in bodies: of which sort was he who said, Matth. 8. If you cast us out, Lord, permit us to enter into the herd of swine: and he permitted them, and the herd rushed into the precipice, and for that reason they also desire to dwell in human bodies; for in them they rest. Behold how in part they are carnal, and are to be afflicted with punishment, and the matter which they received will be burned up in fire for eternity. But the Angels are wholly devoid of matter, as those who can no longer fall; nor is there any matter in them.

But this opinion is utterly absurd, since in the first disputation of this Treatise we have sufficiently demonstrated that all Angels are wholly devoid of matter and body, and that the demons at the beginning obtained the same nature as the holy Angels, nor did they depart from it by sinning; wherefore, lest we retrace courses already trodden, I have judged that I should abstain from a repeated refutation of this opinion.

We undertake here, therefore, only to inquire into and resolve what the evil of the rebellious Angels was, and how great; and since the Angels generally incurred a twofold evil by sinning, and by turning themselves away from God, the unchangeable good, so that they turned themselves to their own good, namely the evil of guilt and of punishment; concerning both we shall have to treat in the following Questions, of which the First will disclose whether and in what way the Angels were able to sin: the Second, what the primary and capital sin of the Angels was: the Third, whether that sin is altogether inexpiable, and the demons are so obstinate in evil that they can in no way repent: the Fourth, what their punishment is, and in what way they are tormented by God, the avenger of crimes.

Three things above all come to be determined in the present Question: First, whether created angels could have been entirely impeccable; Second, whether they could have sinned in the first instant of their creation; Third, whether they sinned led by some necessity, or by fully free will; and so that these may be resolved more clearly,

Note 1. That no pure creature does in fact exist, or ever existed, impeccable by its nature, and intrinsically so; for every intellectual creature is either angelic or human; but it is certain that both were defiled by sin. Whence it is deservedly said in Job 4: Behold those who serve him are not steadfast, and he found perversity in his angels: how much more those who dwell in houses of clay! As if he would say, says S. Gregory there;

if those Spirits which are weighed down by no infirmity of flesh cannot be immutable, with what rashness do men think that they can remain steadfastly in good, whom, as to that in which intellect lifts them to the highest things, the burdening infirmity of flesh impedes, so that through the vice of corruption they have within themselves that from which they may grow old away from their inner newness!

The only difficulty, therefore, is whether by the absolute power of God there could be formed some rational creature which of itself, and by its nature, would be altogether indefectible.

For the resolution of which difficulty, two most opposed opinions obtain; the First of which contends that it is not repugnant for some rational creature to be impeccable from within. So thinks Ocham in book 1. dist. 44. q. unica art. 1., where he supposes that a man far more essentially perfect than the one who was created could exist, and consequently that such a one could have been produced impeccable by his nature. But there are those who derive the manner of this impeccability from the fact that they think some creature could be produced to whom the beatific vision would be connatural, which, they say, makes a man impeccable by his nature. There are also those who wish the manner of this impeccability to be deduced from the fact that it is not repugnant for a rational creature to be produced by God not free, but determined by necessity to one thing, and consequently unable to sin; since since it could not naturally be determined to evil, it follows that it would be formally determined to good by its nature. The Second opinion, however, denies that a creature can be produced which is intrinsically impeccable, both in natural matter and in supernatural, so that whether left to its nature, or raised to the supernatural order, it could sin.

Note 2. In truth the Angel was not a sinner in the first instant of his creation, since, as we taught above, all Angels were created in the state of sanctifying grace, whence in the Lateran Council under Innocent III it is determined that the devil, and the other demons were indeed created good in nature by God, but made themselves evil by their own act. And in the Fourth Council of Carthage cap. 4., among the other dogmas of faith to be asked of him who is created Bishop, one is whether he believes that the devil was made evil not by condition, but by will. Hence Origen homily on Ezechiel: The Serpent, he says of the devil, was not always a serpent; first indeed created good by God, but made a demon by the own perversity of his will. To this S. Chrysostom accords on the patience of Job: The devil, he says, was not made a devil from the beginning, but an Angel was created. To these accords saint Augustine in many places, especially book 1. De nuptiis et concupiscentiis cap. 23.: The devil, he says, is an unclean spirit, certainly because he is a spirit by nature, unclean by vice: that he is a spirit, is good; and evil, that he is unclean: of which two the former is from God, this from himself. Whence in the book De Civit. c. 13. he says: Nor is even the nature of the devil itself evil, insofar as it is nature; but perversity makes it evil.

— This truth also can be strengthened by reason: for if the demons had been created evil, they would not seem worthy of punishment on account of such evil; for in those things which are from nature, no one is to be judged worthy either of reward or of punishment: then because it would follow that God is the principal Author of such malice: (for indeed he who gives the form gives naturally the consequences consequent upon the form: but that formal malice would follow upon such a nature, as is supposed: therefore it would proceed principally from the Author of such a nature:) then finally because God himself in Genesis 1. approved all the works founded by him as perfect, and good: For God saw all things that he had made, and they were very good. Add that for the assertion of this truth the words of the Apostle Jude suffice, saying: The angels who did not keep their principality, but left their own habitation, have been reserved unto the judgment of the great day in everlasting chains under darkness. They are not, therefore, evil by nature, but have been made so by their own will.

It remains, therefore, to determine whether the Angels in the first instant of their creation could truly have sinned. The Thomists deny this with the Angelic Doctor, prima parte q. 63. art. 5. The Subtle Doctor, however, affirms it in book 2. dist. 5. q. 2. n. 13.

Note 3. That since the Angels could not have been good without free will and its right use with the aid of grace, God not only founded the Angels endowed with liberty, but also infused into them grace whereby they might persevere in good if they willed, so that according to S. Augustine lib. 12. De Civit. Dei, cap. 9. he simultaneously founded in them nature and infused grace. For there was not, as we said, reason why the conferring of grace should be deferred, which was necessary to them for attaining the end for which they were created, and toward which they ought to tend. Yet that grace, although it brought them great light of intellect, nevertheless did not so determine the will to good that they would will and do only what it was just for them to will and do. Therefore it was given to them to persevere if they willed, but not to will to persevere: which would plainly have followed, if God had operated in them and willed to bring it to completion. S. Augustine explains this excellently in the book De correptione et gratia cap. 10.:

Most wholesomely, he says, we confess*, what we believe most rightly, that God, the Lord of all things, who created all things very good, and foresaw that evils would arise from goods, and knew that it pertains more to his most omnipotent goodness even to bring good out of evils, than not to permit evils to be: so ordered the life of angels and men, that in it he might first show what free will could do, then what the benefit of his grace and the judgment of justice could do. Finally certain angels, whose prince is he who is called the devil, were made fugitives from the Lord God by free will: yet fleeing, they could not escape his goodness, by which they were blessed, > nor his judgment, by which they were made most miserable. The rest, however, stood in the truth by that same free will.

By which words S. Augustine openly teaches that all Angels, both good and evil, were from the beginning endowed with the fullest liberty, and that the evil ones were turned away from God most freely: but that the good ones stood in truth and observance by their own will strengthened and illumined by actual grace. Whether, however, the demons went astray by some persuading and morally impelling cause to sin, will here have to be determined.

First conclusion. — In truth no rational creature can be produced which by its nature, and intrinsically, is impeccable. So the Doctor in book 2. dist. 23. q. unica num. 6., where he says: I say therefore, to the question, that such a nature cannot be made, or will, which is impeccable by nature: because the authorities of the Saints are express on this point.

He proves the conclusion, therefore, first by the authority of S. Jerome, Epistle 118. near the end, where, weighing those words of Ps. 142. No living being shall be justified in thy sight, he says:

He does not say every man, but every living being, that is, not the Evangelist, not the Apostle, not the Prophet: I ascend to greater things, not the Thrones, not the Dominations, not the Powers, nor the rest of the Virtues: God alone is he into whom sin does not fall; the rest, since they are of free will, can bend their will in either direction.

S. Augustine teaches the same opinion in book 3. contra Maximinum cap. 12., where from those words of 1. to Timothy 6. in which it is said of God, Who alone has immortality, he concludes that God also alone has impeccability; for men and angels die in some way by sinning: And all, he says, who have not sinned, could have sinned, and to whatever rational creature it is granted that it cannot sin, this is not of its proper nature, but of the grace of God. — S. Gregory declares the matter expressly in book 5. Moral. cap. 27. The Angelic nature, he says, even if by contemplating its Author in adhering to him it remains immutably in its state; yet by that very fact that it is a creature, it has within itself vicissitude of mutability. But S. Anselm defines the matter most evidently of all in book 2. Cur Deus homo cap. 10., where to the Disciple asking him why God could not make a creature impeccable by nature, he answers: Because he could not make it God: therefore (the Doctor subjoins) no creature can be impeccable unless it be God, or assumed by the Word.

The Doctor proves the same truth by a twofold argument; the first of which he forms thus: every will which can appetate its own advantage, and rightly not appetate it, can sin: but there is no created will, nor creatable, which cannot appetate its own advantage, and rightly not appetate it: therefore likewise there is none which is not defectible. The major stands: for by that very fact that the will, in appetating its own advantage, can omit the affect of justice and rectitude, or not appetate that advantage on account of an honest end prescribed by God, it can sin; for sin is nothing else than the lack of rectitude due to an act. The Doctor proves the minor: every will in which those two things are not necessarily joined, namely, to appetate advantage, and to appetate it rightly: can appetate that good advantage rightly, and not rightly: but in no created will can those be necessarily joined; namely, that in appetating its own good advantage, it necessarily appetates it rightly: for no will besides the divine appetates rightly formally from the fact that it appetates: therefore, etc. The Major is plain: for if those two things are not necessarily connected, namely, to appetate advantage, and to appetate it rightly, it is evident that the will will be able to appetate advantage good for itself, and not appetate it rightly. The Doctor proves the Minor: every created will, just as it can appetate advantage for itself, so can it appetate it in a manner not fitting to itself according to the divine ordination; for it could will that advantage in such a way that it would appear to itself to be a greater advantage: so it could appetate and will supreme beatitude, the supreme and greatest of all; because it is better to have supreme beatitude than to have it in a remiss degree: but that appetitus would not be conformable to the divine ordination: because by the prescription of God beatitude must be commensurated to merits: therefore there is no created will which cannot of itself will something against the will of God; and accordingly there is none which cannot sin. — He confirms it: every will which is not its own rule, nor is necessarily conformis to its rule, can fall short of its rectitude: but every created will, if left to its nature, neither is its own rule, nor conformis to its rule: therefore, etc. The major stands: for surely every will which neither is its own rule, nor is conformis to its rule, will without doubt be able to be difform to it; and therefore will not be right, nor accordingly have due rectitude in its acts, and hence will sin: since sin, as we soon said, is nothing else than the lack of due rectitude in acts freely elicited by the will. The minor also is evident; for no created will can be its own rule, since it necessarily has a will superior to itself, namely the divine, on which it depends, and by which it must be regulated: nor is it necessarily conformis to it; inasmuch as it is supposed free, and therefore can will something against the divine will, or at least will in another manner, and another thing on account of an end: therefore, etc.

Proof 2. Every will which is not satiated by love of any object, and which has not necessarily, but by proposal, the infinite good by which it can be satiated, can whenever it pleases cease from any object whatsoever which it loves, and love some objects not in order to that infinite satiating good: but no created will is of itself satiated by love of any object; nor does it have proposed to it necessarily the infinite good always by which alone it can be satiated: therefore every created will can when it pleases cease from love of any object whatsoever which it loves, and love some objects without relation of them to the infinite satiating object: but every will which can do this can sin; because it can cease from love of some object, even when it would be commanded: therefore every created will can sin, and consequently none is of itself impeccable. He notes also that by this reasoning the second and third proof of Alexander of Hales can be confirmed.

This conclusion could be proven further; because to that extent a non-sinnable rational will could be given; either because it would be determined by its nature to pursue any good proposed, such that it would not be free to it to cease from pursuit: or because it would be determined to honest good as such, such that it could not pursue any good other than honest good, although from those very honest goods it could by its freedom choose this before that, just as the will of the Blessed is de facto determined.

But neither of these can be said. Not the first, because then the will would not be free: and moreover, because if it were determined to any good proposed, it ought also to be determined in the same manner to flee any evil proposed: but this is inconvenient: because it would follow that the intellect ought not to have the power of proposing simultaneously good, and evil, nor two goods toward which the will could not tend simultaneously, or two evils; since, inasmuch as the will would be determined to one, the other would be proposed in vain simultaneously, and such a faculty of the intellect would be given in vain. Nor yet the second; because it is absurd that there be any appetite which cannot tend toward any good of its own: but it is impossible that there could be any created will which could not have a good other than the honest: for it is impossible that there be any vital power which does not have some delectable object: therefore it is impossible that it be determined solely to honest good intrinsically by its own nature.

You will say 1. God can make a body which cannot be disordered from its motion, as is the heaven, which naturally cannot be moved otherwise than it is in fact moved: therefore he can make a spirit which cannot be disordered from its motion, and consequently it will be impeccable. — The Doctor answers, denying the antecedent, if we speak of a body according to its intrinsic nature: for without doubt any body whatsoever can be impeded from any motion, at least divinely, and moved by a motion wholly distinct, and opposed. Then, although the antecedent were true, the consequence can be denied: for there is the difference that such a body, since it is devoid of liberty, and cannot be partaker of fault as the will is, could not even be disordered in its motion by a culpable disorder: but not so the will, which since it is endowed with free will, and can have motion not only about one object but also about another, does not need necessarily to have one over the other, and consequently if only motion toward one of them, as toward honest good, be a right and ordered motion of it, it will be able to be disordered from that motion by having another motion toward advantageous good not honest, which motion is inordinate.

You will say 2. God can make some will which tends necessarily toward some good, for instance toward an end; therefore he will be able to make it that such a will tend toward everything ordered to that end: therefore, etc. The antecedent is plain through Aug. book 13. De Trinit. cap. 3., who says, That all will beatitude necessarily. The consequence is proven, because with the same necessity by which something tends toward an end, it tends toward those things which are toward the end. — The Doctor answers, first according to his principles, that a created will does not tend necessarily toward the end shown to it; neither in particular, nor in universal: therefore he denies the antecedent with its proof. — He answers secondly according to the common opinion, granting the antecedent, denying the consequence: for the account is different concerning the last end, and the means ordered to it; for in the last end, since it is infinite good, there is most perfect goodness attracting the will to love of it, but there is not such an account of good in the means ordered to it. The Doctor adds that although such a will would tend necessarily toward the end, it would not thence follow that it ought to tend toward the means in the due mode, and consequently it does not thence follow that it cannot sin.

You will say 3. To be able to sin according to S. Anselm is not liberty nor a part of it: therefore true liberty can exist without the power of sinning: and accordingly God will be able to produce some will altogether impeccable.

The Doctor answers first, explaining S. Anselm, and distinguishing the antecedent: to be able to sin, that is, to be able to produce that act by which one is sinful, or the privation in which the formal account of the sin itself is supposed to consist, grants the antecedent: to be able to sin, that is, to be able to produce the sin itself in that instant in which one is sinful, denies the antecedent: and similarly he distinguishes the first consequence, and denies the second consequence.

The Doctor answers secondly, distinguishing the antecedent otherwise: to be able to sin is not so of the essence of liberty even created, that the concept of liberty cannot be had without the concept of such a power, grants: because one can consider the power as able to choose one good over another at its pleasure, and this concept is of it as it is free, and sufficiently distinctive of it from natural power: to be able to sin is not of the essence of created liberty of itself, such that it would not belong by its intrinsic nature to any created free power: denies the antecedent.

You will say 4. God can make a will impeccable by grace, and glory, as is plain in the Blessed, and those confirmed in grace: therefore also by nature: because God can communicate to some creature every finite perfection altogether, identifying it really to her: but that perfection which the state of beatitude has, of confirmation in grace, by reason of which the will becomes impeccable, is a finite perfection: therefore he can identify it to the will: but the will to which it were identified would without doubt be as impeccable as the will of the Blessed, and of one confirmed in grace.

It is confirmed. that what does not repugn to some creature can be co-created with it, and consequently can be connatural to it: but grace, and charity are not opposed to rational creature: therefore they can be connatural to it.

I answer first. by denying the major: for, as we said in the Disputation on the Beatific Vision, there is no creatable spiritual substance to which the beatific Vision would be connatural. The same must be said of grace and charity, and shortly afterwards the confirmation too must be denied.

The Doctor answers secondly. by denying the consequence together with the major of his proof: for God cannot bring it about that any substance, e.g., should have formal heat identified with itself, or that any created intellect should have intellection or the beatific Vision: hence although He could make an intellect more perfect to infinity, yet He could never make it so that any finite thing would really be grace, or that an intellect would be intellection.

You will say 5. A created will is impeccable in the first instant of its creation: because for that instant it has the natural rectitude given to it by God, and a natural motion, and consequently one naturally and necessarily right: but God can conserve a creature for any other instant in the same state in which it was first formed: therefore it could always be impeccable of itself.

The Doctor answers first. by denying the antecedent, whose falsity will be evident from the following Conclusion. The Doctor answers secondly. according to the doctrine of St. Thomas, by denying that that creature ought to be conserved in subsequent instants in the same state in which it was in the first, because for other instants it connaturally requires having operations imputable to itself from itself, and not necessarily imputable to God: but in the first instant all its operations are necessarily imputed to God; consequently, according to that opinion, it cannot have an evil operation for the first instant.

You will say finally. It does not imply a contradiction that a created will be determined necessarily to following the dictate of reason, and therefore God can produce such a will: for whatever does not imply a contradiction can be done by God: but a will following the dictate of reason necessarily is impeccable of itself: therefore, etc. The minor is evident. The major is proved: the voluntary appetite can be determined to the dictate of reason whether right or erroneous, just as the sensitive appetite is determined to the dictate of formal or virtual sense: therefore there can be an appetite determined to the dictate of reason, such that it could not go against the dictate of reason, and yet could freely tend toward diverse objects according to the dictate of reason; namely, when reason dictated several goods and did not prefer one to another, then the will could freely choose one of these and let go another, nor would it sin in this; since indeed it would not act against the dictate of reason.

I deny the major. and to its proof I say that in that case neither the will nor the dictate of reason would have the perfect ratio of will and dictate; just as, for example, if God concurred with someone's intellect only for understanding goods, and not for understanding evils; then the will would necessarily will goods and not evils: yet that determination of the will would not be from within, but from without; but the present question concerns the determination of the will from within.

Second conclusion. — The angel was able to sin in the first instant. So the Doctor in 2. dist. 5. q. 2. num. 13. I hold, therefore, he says, that he could in the first instant have a perfect volitive power, and was not limited to right operation: for he did not have in the second instant any more determining principle than in the first: therefore, etc.

This reasoning of the Doctor can be elucidated thus: a power which can have a perfect operation, and is not limited nor determined necessarily to right operation, can have a non-right operation: but the angel in the first instant of his creation had a perfect volitive power; and therefore he could have a perfect volition; and he was not limited nor determined to right operation: therefore in that instant he could operate non-rightly, and consequently sin. The consequence is most good, with an evident major. I prove the minor: because the will of the angel in the first instant did not have any greater determination than in the second; since it has nothing real and intrinsic in the first which it does not have in the second: therefore, etc.

Secondly. The will in the first instant of creation, prior in nature to sinning, could have all the conditions required for acting and eliciting a sinful act: therefore it truly could sin for that instant. The antecedent is proved: no other conditions are desired for sinning than knowledge of the object under the ratio of a good that is useful or delectable, and prohibited, and the negation of every impediment: but all those things can be in the first instant. Proof: those things which are in the second instant can be in the first apart from the respect to pre-existing being. but that respect contributes nothing at all to the matter: therefore what is required for sinning in the second instant can be in the first.

Proof 3. The angel in the first instant could merit and have everything required for meriting: indeed, as the Thomists confess, they in fact merited: therefore also to sin and to have all the prerequisites for sinning: both because the reason is entirely the same; and because if he could not sin, he could not merit, since whatever prevents him from being able to sin prevents him from being able to merit: indeed more is required for meriting than for demeriting: for to merit is a certain perfect good, but to demerit is an evil: whereas good comes from an integral cause, and evil from any defect whatsoever.

It is confirmed. Hence if the angel had not had in the first instant what was necessary for sinning, it would be because he would not have been perfectly and completely free: but he was sufficiently free so as to be able to sin. Proof: in order that the angel in the instant of his creation could have sinned, it suffices that he was free with the liberty of contradiction and of exercise: but he had at least this liberty in the first instant of creation: therefore he could have sinned in it. Proof of the major: the angel in the first instant of his creation was bound by divine precept to elicit an act of love of God above all things: but since he was free as to exercise with respect to the aforementioned love, he could then not love, or omit that love, especially since God could then deny him efficacious help for eliciting it: for the conferral of this help was not owed to him, but entirely liberal and gratuitous: therefore then the angel could sin at least by the sin of omission: for to be able to sin by the sin of omission is to be able not to elicit the act to which one is bound by precept, or to be able to omit that act.

The Thomists reply with Cajetan. That the angel in the first instant could not omit the act: because, the precept remaining on the part of God concerning the eliciting of such an act by the angel, e.g., that conversion be made to God, there was impressed upon him by the Author of nature a judgment: which indeed could only be a true practical judgment about doing what is commanded by God: and accordingly the will could not act contrariwise, nor cease from the act; and yet was no less free on that account. This they explain by the example of Christ the Lord, who with respect to the act falling under precept was free as to exercise: and yet could not sin: whence although he could elicit that act with antecedent power, and in the divided sense, nevertheless not with consequent power, and in the composite sense. They add that the angels in the first instant could incur the omission of the act, but not the sin of omission: because although they could omit such an act, insofar as omission is a pure negation of the opposite act, nevertheless not as it is the privation of the said act, as of something owed and commanded by God.

Against this, first. this response supposes as certain that a pure culpable omission is not possible, which nevertheless is disputed among theologians: very many of whom affirm that the simple omission of that precept which one is bound to fulfill is sinful: since indeed at that time when the precept obliges to loving God, e.g., or to hearing the sacred rite on Sunday, one can, by reason of some culpable negligence, be merely negatively disposed regarding that act, so that he elicits no act of will by which he positively wills not to love God or to be present at the sacred rite; which negligence will be altogether culpable, seeing that for omission to be a sin it is enough that the negligence be voluntary; moreover, for the negligence to be voluntary in this way it suffices that the will can and is bound to avoid it, by exciting the intellect to an act of solicitude opposed to it, and yet does not avoid it: but for this an act of will is not necessary whereby the negligence itself is willed: for St. Thomas, 2. quaest. 54. says, That negligence arises from a certain remission of the will, through which it happens that reason is not solicitous to perceive those things which it ought, or in the manner in which it ought. And consequently for culpable negligence no act of will is required whereby it be willed.

Then, if the will of the angel could not suspend such an act of conversion to God, it follows that it was necessitated to positing it: therefore in positing that act the angelic will was not free, nor was that act voluntary, and consequently it could not be meritorious: but this consequent they themselves, the Adversaries, deny as false; wherefore they must confess that that act was free, and shortly afterwards could have become sinful through the omission of its production. But as to the example of Christ the Lord, which they adduce in confirmation of their response, I say it is not to the purpose, seeing that Christ the Lord could not sin either in the first or in any other instant of his life: both because he was the first and prince of those confirmed in grace: and because he was gifted with the intuitive vision of God: and finally because he had his humanity united hypostatically to the Word: but the angel in the first instant of his creation enjoyed none of these privileges: therefore from the privileges of Christ, and from his impeccability, the impeccability of the angel in the first instant is not rightly inferred.

You will say 1. If the angel were to sin in the first instant of his creation, such a sin would be attributed specially to God as Author and Mover; but it implies an absurdity for sin to be attributed to God: therefore also that the angel sins in the first instant of creation. The minor is evident. The major is proved: the first operation, which begins with the very being of a thing, is attributed to the productive cause of the thing itself; for on this account the motion of heavy and light bodies to their natural place, or center, is said to inhere in them from the generator, because that motion begins with their being; for immediately they are moved and exist, especially if they are produced outside their natural place. Secondly, the same is suggested by the example of the leg (shin), which if it be born curved and immediately begin to limp, that limping is traced back to the weakness of the generating principle. Thirdly, on this account the motion of the heart in animals is attributed to the generator, because it begins together with the animals themselves. But the reason of all these is, because the operation which begins with the being of the produced thing is like a certain corollary following upon its nature, and so ought to proceed from the Agent and Author of that being; whence that common saying: he who gives being gives also the consequences of being. They confirm it from this, that an operation proceeding from a nature according to the inclination accepted from the Author of nature ought to be attributed to the Author of that nature; for to be moved upward is inherent in fire from the generator, because it is according to the inclination which it has from the generator toward the place above: but an operation, which begins simultaneously with the being of a thing, proceeds from a nature according to the inclination accepted from the Author of nature: therefore it ought to be attributed to the Author of that nature. They prove the minor: when a thing begins to be, it has no other inclination and disposition besides that which it receives from the Author of nature: therefore if in that instant it operates, it is necessary that it operate according to the inclination instilled into it by the Author of nature. — The Doctor denies the major in the place cited above n. 4. First, because according to St. Augustine, book 11. De Civitate Dei c. 3. Those who say the angels were evil from the beginning do not agree with the Manichaeans, who posited that one god was evil was the immediate cause of evil, and another the immediate cause of good: but they would have to hold this if the angels in the first instant of their formation could not be evil and sinners without their sin being thrown back upon God: therefore from St. Aug., even if the angels had sinned in the first instant of their creation, their sin for that reason would not have to be attributed to God. Secondly, the defect of a secondary cause in acting, for whatever instant in which it acts, is not to be attributed to God, but to the secondary cause itself, although it cannot act except with the concurrence of God himself; but the defect which would inhere in the sinful act of the angel sinning in the first instant would be the defect of the angel himself: therefore it would have to be ascribed not to God but to the angels themselves. Thirdly, to that extent would angelic sin in the first instant be thrown back upon God as into the cause of that sin, inasmuch as God for that instant would produce the will, and infuse into it all the principles through whose mediation it could sin, as well as the conditions without which it would not sin: namely, the application of objects, and motion: but if on this account God would have to be called the author of sin, by equal right all sins committed in subsequent instants would have to be thrown back upon him: since it is the very same one who formed the will that sins, and physically concurs with it toward the sinful act, as well as with the object moving it, and with the other causes inducing the sinful act: therefore much more would he have to be called the author of the sin committed in those subsequent instants: which, however, since to assert it is an execrable blasphemy, by equal right neither would he have to be called the author of the sin that occurs in the first instant. Finally, this argument the Doctor turns back upon the Adversaries themselves n. 8. namely, that if the angels could not sin in the first instant without their whole sin being thrown back upon God as its unique author; neither could they merit in that instant; because, they say, the angel could not demerit in the first instant for this reason, that every operation which he has in the first instant is of God producing it, and consequently not his own: but a sinful operation ought to be his own proper act: but a meritorious operation ought no less to be his own proper act than a sinful one: therefore if the operation which he has in the first instant is of God, and consequently not proper to him; it follows that it cannot be meritorious; which since the Adversaries do not admit, neither ought they to admit the other. From these things, therefore, it is established that the major of that argument is false, upon which the opinion of the Adversaries chiefly relies. Whence formally: I deny the antecedent of that proof, and to its first confirmation I say, that the motion of heavy and light bodies is attributed to the generator no otherwise than because he gives them being; for the descent of a produced stone in the middle of the air, e.g., which in the first instant of its formation would fall to the earth, would be no different from its descent during subsequent instants: whence just as the descent in subsequent instants is attributed to the generator no otherwise than because by producing the stone he instilled into it that heaviness which is the immediate principle of that descent: so it would not be unfitting that, by parity of reason, the evil operation of the will be attributed to God both in the first and in subsequent instants solely from this, that he instilled into the rational creature a free will, which will is the immediate and per se principle of the sinful act. It is confirmed. because according to the adversaries, just as the descent of the stone in the first instant is attributed to the generative cause, so it is attributed to the same in other instants: therefore if the same holds of the descent of the stone and of the evil operation of the will, as that operation would be ascribed to God in the first instant, so also in other instants: especially if there were no other causes besides the will from which it might arise in subsequent instants: which since it is absurd, as even the Adversaries confess, they must admit that that example is not to the purpose. Nor does the example of the leg help more: for I concede that its curvature ought to be ascribed to the generative cause, and not to the leg itself; but I deny that the same must be said of all the perfections or imperfections which the creature could acquire for itself by its own proper operation in the first instant of production; for the disparity is very great; because the leg itself does not have the power of producing curvature in itself, and on that account that curvature must be referred back to another cause; but the will has the power of producing in itself an evil operation; and therefore recourse must not be had to another cause. Add that the rectitude of the other leg does not proceed efficiently from the leg itself, but from the generative cause and other circumstances: therefore if there ought to be parity between the limping leg and the will sinning in the first instant; there ought also to be some parity between the leg walking rightly and the will operating well in the first instant: and accordingly just as the rectitude of the leg does not proceed from the leg itself, so neither in the first instant could good operations proceed from the will, which no theologian will admit. The same must be said a pari of the other things they bring forward.

You will say 2. The angel does not have the first willing from himself, but from another: but the angel cannot sin by a willing had from another, and not from himself: therefore his first volition cannot be sinful. The major is proved from St. Anselm, De casu diaboli cap. 13. where he says: If he has the first willing from himself, then either he wills it willingly, or unwillingly: If willingly, therefore that is not the first willing; If unwillingly, the same follows, because before that willing he willed it not: therefore he willed it not to be: therefore he willed something. Therefore the sin which would be in the first instant could not be from the will; and consequently it would have to be from God: which since it cannot come to pass, it follows that the will of the angel cannot be sinful in the first instant.

The Doctor denies the major n. 5. For just as the angel can have the second willing from himself, so he could have the first willing from himself: otherwise there would follow a process to infinity: for, says the Doctor,

I ask from whom he first had willing. Either from himself, through another volition, or without another volition. If without another volition, therefore the will can have from itself a first volition without another: If through another, therefore it must have that other through another, and that again through still another, and thus there will necessarily be a process to infinity.

Whence, as to the authority of St. Anselm, the Doctor says that by the volition which ought to precede the first willing of the angel, St. Anselm understands the will itself in act, which the angel must have from God, on the supposition that he himself could not produce it in himself: which supposition perhaps Anselm makes for the sake of argument. But it is certain that a volition cannot be produced except by a preceding will, and therefore volition must presuppose a will. But if St. Anselm meant something else, he would have to be denied in this matter, seeing that that opinion does not square with philosophical and theological principles. — But to his discourse I respond that the angel has the first willing not through another willing or nilling, but through the very first willing itself: just as a pari the efficient cause has its first action not through another action, or negation of action, but through the very first action itself, whatever it may be. Add that, if the angel could not sin in the first instant because he could not have the first willing from himself; it would follow also that he could not sin in subsequent instants. For I ask from whom in other instants he would have that first sinful willing. If from himself, therefore the same can be said of the first instant: if from another: therefore since, the adversaries say, the first volition which he has in the first instant cannot be sinful, because it is from another, the same follows in any other instant whatsoever.

You will say 3. If the angel were to sin in the first instant, he would sin necessarily; and thus he would sin and not sin: but this is absurd: therefore, etc. The consequence of the major is clear: because if he sinned in the first instant, he could not not-sin: therefore he sinned necessarily, and accordingly since sin must be free, it follows that he sinned, as is supposed, and that he did not sin, because he sinned not freely, but necessarily. But this consequence is proved, namely that if he sinned, he sinned necessarily: because if he could not-sin, it would be either by power before the act, or by power with the act. Not the first, because the angel was not before that instant which is supposed to be the first of his formation. Not even the second, because in the very first instant in which he sinned he could not not-sin; and therefore by that power he could not not-sin: therefore he sinned necessarily. —

The Doctor denies the first consequence n. 6. To whose proof he says, that the will of the angel sinning in the first instant truly could not-sin by power before the act; not indeed by priority of time, but of nature; because the will itself of itself, as conceived prior to the sinful act which it produces, is indifferent and capable of producing or not producing that act; but that it is not necessary that a cause or faculty precede its effect or operation by priority of time, but that priority of nature suffices for both, the Doctor demonstrates: because otherwise there would follow, first, that God himself could not freely will anything from eternity; likewise that a rational creature could not will freely in the first instant, and accordingly it would follow that the angels could not have merited in the first instant of their formation; which nevertheless the adversaries do not admit.

You will say 4. The angel in the first instant could not have deliberation sufficient for sinning: therefore neither could he sin in it. The antecedent is proved: for deliberating several cognitions are desired; for one must perceive various objects and detect in them a varied ratio of amiability or aversion, so that the will pursue one rather than another: but in the first instant the angel could not have various cognitions: therefore neither deliberate. —

The Doctor denies the antecedent n. 7. and likewise the minor of its proof: because for sinning no other cognition is required than that by which the object is known to be a good by useful or delectable goodness; or that it be prohibited: but it is certain that the angel could have such a cognition for the first instant as easily as for any subsequent instant whatsoever. Add that greater deliberation is not required for sinning than for meriting: therefore since in the first instant the angel could have sufficient deliberation for meriting, he could also have sufficient deliberation for sinning.

You will say 5. No one can sin unless he be a debtor of justice: but in the first instant the angel was not a debtor of justice; because according to St. Anselm cited above c. 12. and 14. the angel in the first instant did not receive justice: therefore he could not sin. The major stands, because justice and sin are opposed as habit and disposition: therefore sin privates justice: but it cannot private justice unless justice be owed, and consequently unless the sinner ought to have justice. —

The Doctor denies the major n. 11. and to its proof he says, that if the angel in that first instant was not a debtor of justice, because he did not receive it, it would follow, he says, that one existing always in mortal sin would never be a debtor of justice, because he never received it: therefore of this justice the argument has no force: similarly not of acquired justice either, for that can be admitted in the elicited acts of justice: nor would he who never was just be morally bound to act justly, if he were not a debtor of justice; because he never received it.

• And although the demons at the beginning of their creation were able to sin, it is certain nevertheless that they in truth did not sin in that prior instant. For they stood in grace for some time, but did not persevere in it long; for Christ the Lord says, John VIII. 44: He was a murderer from the beginning, and stood not in the truth. Whence St. Jude says the demons did not keep their principality. They had, therefore, a principality, that is, grace, by which they could have persevered in the received gifts and divine charisms, if they had willed. But their own perversity was the reason that they quickly lacked both holiness and felicity, to which they were ordered. *

Third conclusion. — Lucifer induced the other angels to sin, and was the cause of their rebellion and fall.

This is the more common opinion of the theologians, which the Seraphic Doctor hands down in book 2, dist. 5, art. 2, quaest. 1 and 2. For in the first Question he speaks thus:

It must be noted that the pride of the demons was conformed to the head, the prince of the whole militia, namely of darkness: for the devil himself, attending to the strength, excellence, and pre-eminence of his natural gifts, wished to preside and to rest upon his own authority, that is, without merits and without ministry. But the demons subject to him did not dare to desire so much, but considering the strength of their natural gifts, they wished to rest under his shadow, so that they would not minister, but might enjoy under him a certain voluntary liberty, which they saw they could not have under the divine dominion. Now the angels knew they were made to attain the blessedness of quietude, and to acquire it through merits and ministries: therefore they sinned by pride, because without merits they wished to be blessed, and to rest without ministry, and to fulfill their own will without limit; and all this is to be proud; although it is not a pride so great as was that of desiring to excel over all and be subject to none.

— But in the second Question he explains how the first angel's sin had a certain pre-eminence above the sins of the other angels.

For there was there an order, he says, both with respect to degree, and with respect to occasion, and with respect to duration. With respect to degree, because that of Lucifer was greater: > with respect to occasion, because he furnished the example to others: with respect to duration, because just as it was necessary for Lucifer, before sinning, to have knowledge in time beforehand, since he could not in the same instant have the cognition which is required for sin together with a disordered affection: so in the lesser angels they say there was a delay in sinning, and when they sinned by looking at what the angel willed, and thereafter by looking at his own advantage.

But the Conclusion is proved from various passages of Scripture: first indeed S. Jerome gathers from Ezechiel 31.: All the trees of pleasure, which were in Paradise, emulated him,¹ that the congregation of the damned angels fell through the suggestion of Lucifer. For to emulate is nothing else than to imitate; and so if those words are applied metaphorically to the angels, they signify very well that the inferiors imitated Lucifer by sinning. S. Aug., from Matthew 25.: Depart, you cursed, into eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels. But the devil, he says, is called the one who was the cause or incentive of sinning to others: therefore one of those angels was a devil among the sinning angels: and consequently he who said, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, was a devil among the angels. — But it is proved especially from Apocalypse 12., where it is said:

There was a great battle in Heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon: and the dragon fought and his angels, and they prevailed not, nor was their place found any more in heaven. And that great dragon was cast out, the old serpent, the devil, Satan, who seduces the whole world:

therefore there was someone who first sinned among all the sinners, and induced others to sin and seduced them. The antecedent is proved: there was some ancient dragon among the sinners: therefore there was some first sinner. The inference is evident, because if all had sinned at once, none would have been older than another.

• To these is added that a seducer ought to precede the seduced, and first be baited with the deadly virus before he pours it into others. — All those texts of Scripture confirm these points, in which various names are attributed to the prince of the demons, from which it is easy to gather that he preceded others in rebellion, and was the author to them of perfidy and of rebellion against God. For whoever he was, he is called by antonomasia the devil, and Satan, and perhaps is named by his proper name Beelzebub, prince of the demons. Hence Matthew 25.: those who will hold the left hand at the last judgment will be banished into eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels. Likewise John 12. v. 31., he is called the prince of the world. And 1. Corinth. 2. v. 7., the prince of this world. Wherefore Christ the Lord, John 8. v. 44., speaking of the devil as of one singular individual, says: He was a murderer and a liar from the beginning. Whence one may gather among the demons the same thing that existed among those before the ruin, a difference of order and dignity, whether it arose from the dissimilar and unequal excellence of nature, or from the ordination of God, or from voluntary submission, whereby those falling away from God subjected themselves to that apostate angel as their chief, and suffered themselves to be reduced into order. — Origen confirms this in the preface to the books periarchon, or On First Principles, where he writes: about the devil and his angels, and the contrary powers, the ecclesiastical preaching has decreed that they exist indeed, but what they are, or how they are, it has not explained clearly enough. Among very many, however, this opinion prevails, that an angel was that devil, and after he became such, when he had persuaded very many of the angels to decline with him, who even now are called his angels. *

This same truth the holy Fathers teach, both Greek and Latin; the Greeks indeed, and especially Caesarius, brother of Gregory Nazianzen, in Dialogue 1.: The author of evil, he says, the devil, turned toward malice, drawing with him many of the angels to defection, changed not by nature but by will, led them on by suggestion; who received an appellation suited to his deed. Likewise saint Chrysostom on Psalm 14.: One citizen there, he says, like a lodger, stirred up sedition, and was cast out as an alien, and estranged from God, and with him the demons, who followed him. Damascene has similar things, lib. 2. cap. 4.: The prince of the wicked angels, he says, exalted himself against his maker God, and conceived the mind of rebelling against him. And he subjoins below: Together with him was torn away, and joined herself to him as companion, and fell with him at once, an innumerable multitude of angels subjected to him. — Such is the concordant opinion of the holy Latin Fathers; for S. Ambrose expressly says in Epist. 55. to Demetrias that the devil, because power and dignity, which he had received from his Creator, pleased him, was cast down from heavenly loftiness together with those angels whom he had drawn into the consent of his impiety. Arnobius Junior signifies the same, lib. 2. De Deo trino, et uno, saying: First of all the angels he sinned in his heart, from which time the kinds of all presumptions began then to spring up, when, following the example of no one, he gave from himself the beginning of sinning. Finally S. Bernard indicates the same in the Tractate De grad. humilitatis, speaking of Lucifer: You alone desiring to sit, you harass, as much as in you lies, the concord of brethren, the peace of the whole celestial homeland, the very quietude of the Trinity. Whither does your curiosity lead you, wretch, that by a singular presumption you do not doubt to give scandal to your fellow-citizens, injury to your King? For while he says that Lucifer alone gave scandal to others and disturbed the peace, he indicates certainly that he moved sedition against God. Whence below he says: Lucifer wished to dominate over all the sons of pride, whom he strove to enkindle for the uses of his own malice.

You will say 1. All the good angels were converted to God at once, no other angel suggesting it, nor furnishing the motive and example of that conversion: therefore equally all the wicked turned away from God, with no one suggesting it. — I answer, that the antecedent can be denied: for in whatever way Lucifer furnished to the other rebellious angels the cause of disobedience, on account of which it is said that the dragon fought and his angels; in the same way S. Michael was the exemplar and incentive of fidelity in observance toward God for the other angels subject to him, since it is read Apoc. 12.:² that Michael fought and his angels. — I answer secondly, by denying the parity: for the good angels, through sanctifying grace and through the evident knowledge of their dependence upon God, had sufficient motive and incentive whereby to tend toward God in faithful observance: but the wicked had in themselves no such motive for rebelling; and therefore it is likely that they were excited to rebellion by Lucifer.

You will say 2, with William of Paris, 2. par. De Universo: all the angels sinned through pride: therefore all, not induced by another, but per se and by their own excellence, abstracted and enticed by love, proudly desired something. Secondly: Lucifer could neither persuade them by reasons, nor induce them by error or deception; because he knew they could not be deceived in the knowledge and due esteem of the Creator; nor could he entice them by promises or other objects of concupiscence; because they needed nothing which they could expect from him; nor could they even be deceived in this. Thirdly he adds, because if the sin of the inferior angels had been of rebellion against God, to which they had been induced by Lucifer, Lucifer alone would not have dared to rebel against God unless he had foreknown the wills of the inferiors to be inclined to rebellion against God; just as in human kingdoms no vassal, however powerful, dares to rise up against the King unless the consent of many comes in, and contracts for rebellion precede among them: therefore similarly among the angels it would have been necessary that Lucifer, recognizing the wills of the others, be invited by them to rebellion, or at least that they come together among themselves and treat of rebellion. Fourthly, because all the angels sinned at once with Lucifer: therefore they were not induced by him to sin. —

I deny all the consequences. and to the first reason I say, that although all the angels sinned through pride, nevertheless it does not follow from that that they were not induced to it; for Lucifer first grew proud on account of his excellence: then, expounding to each angel his own excellence, he stimulated them equally to take complacency in him and to grow proud. —

To the second reason. I say that the sin of the angels had some inconsideration annexed to it; for being excessively complacent about their own natural beatitude, they did not render thanks to God for the gifts and excellencies which they had received in the first instant of their creation: for perhaps they were held by some commandment to continue that supernatural and meritorious act which they had begun in the first instant; and Lucifer, too greatly complacent in his natural beatitude, not only did not continue the act begun, but showing it to the inferior angels, and as it were observing that they took complacency in their own natural beatitude, not only he but the others also ceased from such an act; and thus they sinned with the sin of elation and pride. Wherefore when Lucifer solicited others to the evil of pride, he proposed to them no evil on the part of the object, but only in the mode of acting. For he proposed to them the excellence of their own nature, extolling natural felicity and beatitude, with no mention made of supernatural beatitude and felicity; and then, too greatly complacent in such natural beatitude, they referred neither themselves nor their goods to the supernatural, in which there was a certain mode of elation and pride. —

To the third reason. I deny likewise the consequence, for Lucifer and his angels were not rebelling against God as wishing to inflict violence upon him, or attempting to conquer and overcome him by force and strength; after which manner of rebellion secret communication of counsels, or seditious contract and negotiation, usually precedes among men; especially because against God this mode of rebellion was not possible, since no thought can lie hidden from him, which the angels did not ignore. Therefore they rebelled against God by affection alone, which Lucifer could have from his own resources and without the counsel, treatment, or communication of others: and thence he could induce others to a similar or proportionate affection by his own judgment and deliberation, without previous knowledge of their will, determination, or counsel, with only the hope of drawing them into his own opinion and spiritual rebellion. —

Finally to the fourth reason. I say that all the angels sinned at once with Lucifer; because truly the delay between the sin of Lucifer and of the other angels was brief: for suddenly, and in almost imperceptible time, as soon as they perceived the will of the first angel, they at once consented and adhered to it; for if Lucifer had sinned previously with any long priority of time before the remaining angels, since from that sin deformity would have arisen through the stripping away and lack of all supernatural gifts, with which Lucifer himself had been illuminated at the beginning of his creation, and since divine justice had taken notice of him; the other angels observing that, there is no doubt that they would not have consented, nor stood by his side. — From these Alensis infers, quaest. 98. n. 6., that the sin of Lucifer was far graver than that of the others, on a twofold head; first, because the appetite's lust in him was greater. Secondly, because he had before himself no exemplar, since he sinned in imitation of no sinner, but he himself was the inventor and principle of the whole sin.

• You will ask first. — How many angels fell, at the instigation of Lucifer? William, bishop of Paris, answers in the book De Universo, part 3. cap. 8., that the opinion of the theologians of his age was that a third part fell:

A third part of the angels fell, the christian theologians, he says, suppose that the tenth order fell, understanding thus not according to the plain letter, because there never was a tenth order, but according to equality, that is to say, because as many fell as one order contains. They fell, I say, according to them, in such wise that from each of the orders some fell, from all of which taken together the sum of one is completed; wherefore it is manifest that with that intention of order there cannot be twelve orders of malignant spirits, since according to this position of christian sages only a tenth part of the celestial spirits fell, and depraved from natural goodness degenerated into malignity.

Such are his words. Weighing these words, Antonius Rusca, lib. 5. De inferno et statu damnatorum, infers from them this:

Since therefore, he says, according to the mind of this author, there are as many legions in each order of abstract substances as there are angels in one legion; and the number of a legion be six thousand six hundred sixty-six; it appears evidently, if we say that the multitude of the sinning demons rises to the number of a whole order of angels, that six thousand six hundred sixty-six legions of wicked angels fell, which constitute the number 44.435.556.

— But just as these things are brought forward gratuitously and without any foundation, so several judge more probable that only a third part of the angels fell from sanctifying grace, or innocence, and the state of felicity, resting on this conjecture, that Apocalypse XII. 3. says the great dragon, that is, the devil, drew with his tail a third part of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. Yet although it be conceded that by that great dragon the devil is to be understood, nevertheless it would not follow that the discourse is there about his first sin and that of his companions. For it is probable that by those words is signified the pernicious power of the demons, because twisting a notable number of the doctors and bishops of the Church, whom God established in his Church for the instruction and illumination of others, away from the profession of truth and sincere piety, he dragged them over into the parts of error and wickedness. Nor indeed can those words, if they are taken according to the literal sense, be understood of the fallen angels themselves; otherwise hell, and not earth, would have to be held as the dwelling and retreat of the devils; for it is expressly said that the dragon cast the third part of the stars of heaven not into hell, but into the earth. — Therefore it is certain that very many angels transgressed, since their prince was that demon who called himself the legion of the wretched man of whom mention is made Marc. 5. v. 9.; Luc. 8. v. 30.; asked by Christ what his name was, he answered: My name is legion, for we are many. How many precisely there are, no one can determine with certainty, since it is settled neither from sacred Scripture nor from tradition. Nevertheless it is probable that more angels stood in truth, or faithful service, than revolted; for, says S. Thomas, 1. part. quaest. 63. art. 3., sin is against the natural inclination; but things done against nature happen in the fewer; for nature attains its effect either always or in the majority.

You will ask secondly. — Whether the demons preserve among themselves the same order which they held before their fall?

I answer. that the demons properly preserve no order among themselves; for as S. Job testifies, in hell there is no order, but everlasting horror inhabiteth. Nevertheless, since the transgression of these angels inflicted on them no prejudice in natural things, they also preserve among themselves a certain natural pre-eminence as before; so that those who had been constituted of a more excellent nature obtain a certain superiority over the others, corresponding, as it were, to the orders of the holy spirits, although they are diametrically opposed to them. Hence William of Paris says in the place cited above, they must be designated by contrary names, namely antiseraphim, anticherubim, etc.:

Antiseraphim are called those who burn with a greater hatred of the Creator; anticherubim, those who excel the rest in greater cunning; antithroni, those who devote their utmost effort to perverting the paths of judgments and the corruption of judges or tribunals, and who undertook for themselves, or received from the prince of malice, that most pestilential office of acting so wickedly; and you will understand antidominationes, antiprincipatus, antipotestates in opposition to the office of the holy orders. And after these manners antivirtutes, those who bear or counsel the monsters of vices and stupendous weaknesses; thus antiarchangels, who suggest to men the greater deceits, which are properly called crimes. This therefore is the ordering of the Church of the malignant, and of the synagogue of Satan, according to the prophetic words both in Hebrew and of the christian law. This is that most ridiculous ape, ignominious with horrifying deformity, in whose likeness the princes of the malignant spirits glory against the glorious Church of God, as if that likeness were a likeness of the true name, and not rather a dissimilitude of manifest distance and discrepancy; as if precisely to such a throng of the damned and adjudged to eternal torments there belonged any praise and glory, whereas in truth it has any praise or glory only insofar as someone presides over them to torment them; but this is not there, since their very prince is not only in the same damnation, but even in so much the greater, inasmuch as he is known to be more criminal than all the others.

Such are the words of Guiltelmus. — Nevertheless he adds in cap. 15. that the demons, subject to the just judgment of God, are subjected to a certain prince among them, as to a most cruel tyrant, in vengeance for their rebellion against the Creator, whose most sweet yoke they had cast off. For no punishment, he says, is more just for so iniquitous an excellence than the most vile trampling, whereby they are most wickedly oppressed by their most vile prince. But they obey their prince not from humility or obedience, of which there is none among them, but from hatred and anger against the Creator and men; whence it comes about that they aid one another in tempting and assailing men, as sometimes happens among men who, although they burn with mutual hatred, nevertheless agree in the ruin of a third. — So great an enmity do the demons disagree among themselves, with such hatred do they rage, that they do not feel even the least spark of natural love:

for just as, says Guillelmus, it appears in men, that anger and hatred, pride, envy, and other most pestilential passions of this kind so impede natural love, and as it were suffocate it, that scarcely from it does it send forth into act a small spark or the thinnest scintilla of good desire; so you need not wonder if the vehemence of the malignity of such spirits does not permit them to will or desire any good toward one another, nor even to think of it, especially since malignity so occupies and possesses them that almost nothing remains to them, if nevertheless it has left them anything of good affection. And this very thing is manifest to you in men whom anger violently agitates, who while they rage against those with whom they are angry, prevail to think neither of themselves nor of those others, that they are men, nor of the justice or judgments of the Creator. Yet most truly of these it was said in prophetic discourse, that there is no fear of God before their eyes, likewise neither love. Nor is it a wonder if all good affections are lulled to sleep, or even extinguished in them, because with so great perversity they are alienated from their natural goodness, that they could hate the very fountain of goodness, namely the blessed Creator, and still can, as it was said in prophetic discourse: the pride of those who hate you ascends always. But if anyone should ask whether they are moved by any piety or compassion toward one another, since they know the miseries and torments of the others, and by which they are tormented at present, and by which they are to be crucified in the future judgment; nothing else seems to me to be answered in this, except what one of them is said to have answered of himself in a certain apparition, namely, that he never had piety. You now know by manifold experience, that the passions which I have named to you either lull to sleep or utterly extinguish good affections in those whom they have seized, as is manifest to you in the case of envy: namely, that it permits no love of the envious man toward him whom he envies, unless someone should call love itself the natural power of loving, which although it remains radically in them, is so wounded and so impeded that its due fruit can neither be born nor go forth from it. Moreover this power of theirs has the strongest impediment, the torments which they suffer.

And although Sacred Scripture says nothing distinctly about the first sin of the demons, yet from it the Princes of Theology have taken the occasion for establishing various opinions on this matter. For there are more sins that can be

thought possible, which the utterly hostile Angels could have committed from the beginning of their rebellion; for instance, the sin of presumption regarding their own powers and excellences; of envy toward men; of hatred of God; likewise a certain disordered desire of beatitude, insofar as it is precisely a certain delightful good; and finally of excessive complacency in their own perfections, which the Subtle Doctor calls the sin of luxury; just as, he says, the sin by which someone takes disordered delight in the speculation of a Geometrical conclusion is reduced to luxury.

But which of all these was the primary and capital one, the Authors disagree among themselves; indeed they are split chiefly into two parties, of whom some will, with our Alensis, 2. part q. 98. membr. 2., S. Bonaventure in 2. dist. 5. art. 1. q. 1., and S. Thomas 1. p. q. 63. art. 1., that the first sin of the Angels was nothing other than pride properly so called. But others contend, with the Subtle Doctor, that the first sin of the Angel was disordered love of self, and a certain pride of luxury improperly so called, or rather spiritual, by which the Angels, taking excessive complacency in their gifts, disorderedly coveted the delightful spiritual good, namely their natural beatitude. For just as disordered desire of a bodily delightful good constitutes the species of luxury; so a disordered appetite of a spiritual good supremely delightful effects the species of spiritual luxury. Which of these opinions, then, is the truer is to be resolved here.

Note 2. The holy Fathers held various views on the first sin of the devil; for a fourfold diversity of their opinion on this matter can be distinguished. First, all those who thought the Angels endowed with bodies judge that their sin was of such a kind, that when they had been set over the governing of this world by God, captivated by the beauty of women, they had intercourse with them in lust, and on account of their impurity and crime were cast out from Heaven and the fellowship of God; for so they thought that passage of Genesis 6. was to be interpreted: The Sons of God, or as other codices have it, the Angels of God, seeing the daughters of men that they were beautiful, took to themselves wives from all whom they chose. Thus in the first place judged Justin in the Apologeticus, praised by us at the beginning of the present Article. Clement of Alexandria subscribed in the fifth book of the Stromata, where he says that the Angels, captivated by the beauty of women, disclosed to them certain secret and hidden things: Those Angels, he says, to whom the heavenly lot had fallen, having slipped down into pleasures, announced secrets to women, and whatever came to their knowledge, etc. The same Tertullian taught in the book De idololatria cap. 9., affirming that the demons, deserters of God, lovers of women, taught men the vain curiosity of astrology. And in the book De habitu muliebri, he asserts that the demons were the teachers and inventors of all those things which women proudly assume for their adornment: Properly, he says, and as it were peculiarly they furnished that instrument of womanly glory; the gleam of gemstones with which necklaces are varied, and rings of gold with which the arms are bound: and dyes of rouge with which faces are crowned: and that very black powder with which the beginnings of the eyes are drawn out. Hence in the book De Virginibus velandis, he admonishes that the heads of women are to be veiled, as the Apostle teaches 1. ad Corinth. 11., on account of the Angels: Whom, he says, we read fell from God and from Heaven on account of their desire for women... Therefore so dangerous a face must be veiled, so long as it hurls scandal even toward Heaven. But what is marvelous, holy Ambrose went over into the same opinion, who in lib. 1.¹ De Virginibus says: How glorious, he says, that Angels on account of their intemperance fell from Heaven into the world, while a Virgin on account of her chastity passed from the world into Heaven! — Nor are they lacking who think the Angels first fell through envy; which they indeed explain threefold, for some will that he envied man, because he had been made and fashioned to the image of God. Thus Gregory of Nyssa in the Catechesis cap. 6.: Now man, he says, was that animal in which the beauty of the divine intelligible nature was tempered with a certain inexplicable power; which the daemon bore unworthily, nor did he judge tolerable that he who had received the care of earthly things, that a substance should be fashioned out of the nature subject to him, which would be fashioned to the likeness of that most excellent dignity. The same holds Cyprian in the book De zelo, et livore, and also August. in the book De Genesi ad litteram, cap. 11. But Lactantius thought the daemon envied the Son of God, whom the Father had brought forth as a Spirit like himself, endowed with the virtues of God the Father. Finally Bernard in Sermon 17. on the Canticles, thinks he envied the incarnation of the Word, and the God-man, as we have already declared once and again from that very source. — There are also very many who think the first and capital sin of the daemon was pride; these indeed we shall cite and refute in the objections; but the rest teach that that sin was nothing other than excessive love of self, and disordered complacency in their own gifts. Therefore it is established that the opinion of the SS. Fathers is not concordant on this matter; and so it is lawful for us to embrace either party.

Note 3. With the Subtle Doctor in 2. dist. 6. quaest. 2., all acts of the will are adequately divided into nolition and volition; so that there is no act of the will, neither good nor evil, except the act by which it pursues the fitting or good, which act is called volition, or to will; or the act by which it flees the unfitting, or evil, which act is called nolition, or to not will. The Doctor notes besides that between each act there is this order, that nolition cannot first be had before volition; for I flee from nothing, he says, except because it cannot stand together with something which I accept as fitting; which words are not to be so used, as if no nolition whatever could be had absolutely without a prior act of volition; for it does not appear why someone could not refuse a molestation or torment proposed to him without any formal volition whatever of the delight, or of the fitting good opposed; but the Doctor only wills that no one can refuse the unfitting under the formal reason of the unfitting, and insofar as it is opposed to the fitting good and impedes its attainment, unless because he first wills that fitting good. — He admonishes besides that the act of volition is distinguished into love of friendship, by which we love someone for himself; and of concupiscence, by which we will something for someone, or as he himself says: Twofold is the willing, which can be named of friendship, and of concupiscence; and the willing of friendship may be said to be of that object to which I will the good; and the willing of concupiscence of that object which I will to someone beloved. Which indeed is not to be taken thus, as if the love of friendship were precisely the volition by which one loves a person without willing a good to him; while the other, namely of concupiscence, were the volition by which one wills only the good of the beloved person; for the love of friendship is also the act by which I will the good of the person whom I love; for I would not truly love her if I did not wish a good to her; but by the love of friendship the Doctor understands that by which one wills a good to someone on account of his love, dilection alone, without being moved to it by the love of another; but the love of concupiscence is the volition by which one wills a good to someone on account of the love he has toward another: thus e. g. while one loves his neighbor because he loves God, who commands the love of the neighbor and commands that good be done to him, that volition by which he wills a good to the neighbor can be called love of concupiscence; since he does not will the good to him precisely because he loves him, but only on account of the love he has toward God, who commands that the good be procured for the neighbor.

Finally the Doctor observes in the same place. that the love of concupiscence of these two presupposes the love of friendship: For since, he says, the beloved is with respect to the coveted as the end, to which I will the good; for on account of the beloved I covet for him the good which I will to him; and since the end of the will has the first reason of the object willed; it is evident that the willing of friendship precedes the willing of concupiscence.

These things thus prenoted, three things remain to be determined in this Question: First, whether the primary and capital sin of the Angel was disordered love of friendship of self; Second, what he desired by disordered love of concupiscence; Third, whether each of those loves, of friendship and of concupiscence, was pride properly so called, or rather spiritual luxury.

First conclusion. — The first sin of the Angel was disordered love of friendship of himself. So the Subtle Doctor in the place praised above, num. 4., where he says, that absolutely the first disordered act of the will of the Angel was the first willing of friendship of his will, which willed the good:

but this object was not God, because he could not love God disorderedly from intention with the love of friendship; for God is such an amable, that from the sole reason of himself, as object, he gives the complete reason of goodness to the act perfectly intense; nor is it likely that he loved something other than himself too intensely with the actual love of friendship; both because the natural inclination inclined more to himself, than to any other created thing to be so loved; and because it does not seem that he so understood any other created thing as himself; therefore the first disordered act was the act of friendship with respect to himself.

These things the Doctor, by which he openly indicates the first sin of the Angel to have been disordered love of friendship of himself; which indeed thus

He proves: The first sin of the Angel was disordered love of self: but it was not love of concupiscence, insofar as that is distinguished from love of friendship: therefore it was truly disordered love of friendship. The minor stands; for the love by which the Angel loved himself was not that by which he loved himself on account of the love of another, since it is not likely that he loved any other creature either before, or more, than himself. Nor did he love himself on account of God; for that love would not have been disordered: but that love by which he loved himself, and not on account of the love of another, is truly love of friendship; and consequently that love by which the Angel disorderedly loved himself was not love of concupiscence, insofar as that is distinguished from love of friendship.

But the Doctor proves the minor. First indeed by the authority of S. Augustine lib. 12. De Civit. c. 6., where, having said that the cause of the beatitude of the holy Angels is that they adhere to him who is supreme, he adds: But when the cause of the misery of the evil Angels is sought, it deservedly occurs that, averted from him who is supreme, they turned to themselves. But this adhesion, or conversion, is made primarily through love; and therefore he judges S. Augustine that the first sin of the Angel was disordered love of self. He repeats the same, and explains it more evidently, lib. 14. cap. ult., where he asserts that two loves made two cities: The city of God, the love of God even to contempt of self; the city of the devil, the love of self even to contempt of God. Therefore the first root of the city of the devil, says the Doctor, was disordered love of friendship of self, which root germinated even to contempt of God, in which that malice was consummated. He teaches the same besides lib. 11. De Genesi ad litteram cap. 15., where he says: The Angel sinned by loving, not money, but his own power; and therefore perverted love of self deprived the swollen spirit of holy fellowship.

— The Doctor confirms the same major by reason: the first sin of the Angel was either volition or nolition: if volition, chiefly either that by which he took disordered complacency in himself, or that by which he willed some good undue to himself: if the first, it plainly stands that that volition was disordered love of self. If the second, either that volition presupposed another, by which he took disordered complacency in himself; for no one wills a good to another, unless he first loves him, and thus that first volition of complacency in himself was necessarily the first sin: or it did not presuppose, and thus the volition itself was disordered love of self; since the volition by which one wills a good to himself, and not on account of the love of another person, is either love of his own, or presupposes love of his own. If it be said that it was nolition, which however no one has hitherto affirmed, since all teach that the first sin of the Angel was of commission, and not of omission alone; nevertheless even if there had been some nolition, it must necessarily have presupposed volition, or must not have presupposed: if it presupposed, that presupposed volition would have been disordered love of his own; if it did not presuppose, that nolition was love of his own either formally or equivalently: because when one does not will evil to himself, and that not on account of the love of another person, he is doubtless to be judged to will that evil not to himself on account of the love of himself.

• Therefore the demons, elated and inflated from the contemplation of their own excellence, their will began to swell with disordered love of self, and with a perverse affectation of loftiness they began to abandon and turn away from God, to whom they ought to have been subject and to adhere, indeed even to struggle against him and to rival his supreme divinity and majesty. For if there is so great a force of flattery, that it persuades even things most manifestly false and incredible, in him who offers himself to be deceived; of what virtue must that be thought, by which from the very heart or intellect it fabricates for each one an unbelievable false persuasion, when the same one is to himself both orator and judge, and both deceiver and deceived? But from this disordered love pride issued forth: this in turn gave birth to envy in them. For, as S. Augustine rightly notes lib. 2. De Genesi ad litt., envy follows pride, it does not precede it. For envy is not the cause of pride, but pride the cause of envying. Since therefore pride is love of one's own excellence: but envy hatred of the happiness of another, what is born from thence is sufficiently in view. For each one, loving his own excellence, envies either equals, that they be made equal to him: or inferiors, lest they be made equal to him: or superiors, that he not be made equal to them. Therefore by priding one is envious, not by envying is each one proud. The progress of which the same one describes excellently in the commentary on Ps. 121:

He who willed to have from himself the same thing, that as it were he might be the same to himself, fell. The Angel fell and became a devil. He proffered pride to man: envy cast down with him him who stood. They willed to be the same thing to themselves; they willed to rule themselves, to lord over themselves. Averted therefore from him who is supreme, they turned to themselves and willed to become for themselves a principle.

Therefore from unexpected, from disordered complacency in their own gifts and prerogatives the will began to deviate, and to effervesce into pride; whence, aspiring to the divine equality, it emulated that dominion of his over men, which that it might obtain, he set about to cast them down from the received sanctity and innocence. *

You will say. Love of friendship is that by which the Angel does not covet any good distinct from himself: but he takes complacency only in his intrinsic perfections: but that love cannot have any malice joined to itself: therefore it could not be the first sin of the Angel. The major stands: the minor is proved: that love cannot be evil whose object is not evil; nor does it have any circumstance by which it be deordered or infected: but that love, by which the Angel loved himself, had a good object, namely the gifts of the Angel, as well natural as supernatural; nor does it seem to have had any infecting or deordering circumstance. For if any could be assigned, chiefly some greater intensio of the love itself than ought to be: but whenever an act according to its substance is good, and has a good object, its intensio does not seem able to be evil: therefore such love could not be evil, nor consequently could it be the first sin of the Angel.

I answer 1. by denying the major: for love of friendship according to the Subtle Doctor, as we declared in the third Notable, is not only that by which one wills to himself some intrinsic good, but also that by which one can will some extrinsic good distinct from himself, not on account of the love of another, but on account of the love of self. Hence although the Angel could not sin by taking too much complacency in his intrinsic perfections, and loving them most intensely; it would not follow thence that his love of friendship could not be disordered; since by this love he could will to himself some extrinsic goods which he ought not to will: but this love, since it did not presuppose another love, it would not follow thence that it was not love of friendship; since according to the Subtle Doctor, love of friendship is not distinguished from love of concupiscence in this, that by the former the Angel wills only an intrinsic good to himself, while by the latter he covets an extrinsic good for himself, as not so rightly interpreted it Suarez lib. 1. num. 9. cap. 14. For according to the opinion of the Doctor, by the love of friendship the Angel could also will to himself some external good, distinct from himself.

I answer 2. by denying the minor; for it is false that love of intrinsic perfections cannot be evil, and disordered, by reason of a greater intensio than it ought to have; for each one is held to love God above himself, and more than all things; and consequently he can sin as often as he can elicit a greater love toward himself than toward God: but someone also, without coveting to himself external and distinct goods, can elicit a greater love toward himself than toward God; and therefore that love of himself can be evil.

But it is more likely, that the first sin of the Angel was the very disordered love of himself, not by which he willed some extrinsic goods to himself; for the Doctor in num. 15. seems to suppose, that the Angel sinned by love of concupiscence, desiring those extrinsic goods; and straightway he indicates that the love of friendship, by which he first sinned, was some disordered love by which he took too much complacency in himself: and this appears consonant to reason; both because the Angel had no less perfect knowledge of himself than of other things; and therefore it is likely that the very knowledge of his perfections led his will to excessive complacency in himself: and because from thence it is easily conceived how that disordered love of himself stimulated him to commit the other sins: and finally because S. Augustine, praised by us above, seems plainly to feel this very thing, affirming that the Angel was therefore segregated from the fellowship of the Saints because, loving his own power, he took complacency in himself with perverted love.

• But that an axe be laid to the forest of objections which the Thomists elicit and germinate from the premise, I compose this syllogism: he who constitutes his beatitude in a creature, by finally enjoying it in willing it, sins gravely; but the Angel thus willed to enjoy himself: for, having seen his own natural excellence, he so loved it that he altogether wished to enjoy it, and to be finally delighted in it, as if he himself were sufficient to himself for beatitude. Therefore he sinned gravely; for this act of complacency is perverse and depraved, and contrary to right reason, and offensive to God, who is the last end of all, and in whose fruition alone beatitude consists. *

Second conclusion. — The Angel sinned by love of concupiscence, chiefly by disorderedly desiring supernatural beatitude.

So the Doctor in the same qu. 2. num. 5. It seems, he says, to be said, that they first immoderately coveted beatitude for themselves. But although he does not openly explain of which beatitude, whether natural or supernatural, he speaks, yet I judge it must more truly be said that he is to be understood of the supernatural: both because that is what is accustomed to be called absolutely, simply beatitude by the Scholastics: and because the Doctor there speaks of the beatitude which the Angel did not have: but he did not lack natural beatitude, and straightway he did not chiefly sin by disorderedly desiring it, although nevertheless he could have sinned in desiring it disorderedly, namely by desiring it with independence from God, or by making so much of it that he would not tend to supernatural beatitude, although he knew himself to have been created and ordered by God for procuring it.

But the Doctor proves the Conclusion: first indeed by a reason drawn from S. Anselm De casu diaboli cap. 4. The first disordered act of concupiscence of the Angel either proceeded from the affect of justice, or from the affect of the advantageous, that is, it proceeded from the will, either according as it has an inclination to the honest good, which can justly, and according to the dictate of right reason, be desired and acquired: or according as it has an inclination to the advantageous good. Not the first: for what is loved and coveted justly and according to reason is not disorderedly loved: Therefore the second. But it is likely that the will acting, and desiring something from the affect of the advantageous against the prescription of justice, is first exercised about the greatest advantageous good of all those which are manifested to it: but this greatest advantageous good is supernatural beatitude itself: therefore the first disordered concupiscence of the angelic will, the advantageous goods not being had, was chiefly exercised about supernatural beatitude. The major stands, the minor is proved: as often as the will in desiring the advantageous good follows no other rule than the impulse of the disordered appetite of the same advantageous good; since that appetite is natural; and a natural agent bursts forth into its act with its whole striving, and with all its forces; the consequence is, that that immoderate appetite of the angelic will stimulated it with all its forces to willing, and desiring the advantageous good; and straightway impelled it to the greatest advantageous good among those which were proposed and manifested to it; but such advantageous and greatest good was supernatural beatitude: therefore, etc.

Some Thomists reply. that this reason proves nothing; because, they say, the first appetite of the advantageous in the Angel could be about some particular delightful thing: but it is not necessary that it be exercised about the supremely delightful, or advantageous.

On the contrary. the will of the Angel was not regulated except by the disordered and immoderate appetite of the advantageous: but, as such, it tended with all its forces, and with the highest affect, to that which seemed to itself most advantageous: for the appetite impels with all its forces to the advantageous good, and therefore impels to the greatest advantageous good; for natural agents, such as that appetite of the advantageous was, burst forth with their whole impetus into acts, unless impeded; but there was nothing there impeding: for if anything could have repressed that impulse, chiefly the affect of justice, and the dictate of right reason; but neither was present there, and therefore there was nothing by which that impulse was restrained; and consequently it was borne with its whole striving to the advantageous good proposed to it, and straightway it desired the greatest advantageous good, which is supernatural beatitude.

He proves secondly. The first disordered concupiscence of the Angel was some act of volition: therefore it was exercised about an honest, useful, or delightful good. Not about the honest, otherwise it would be honest and ordered: nor about the useful, because concupiscence, and love of the useful good, presupposes concupiscence, and love of the good for the sake of which that seems useful to be attained: therefore that volition was exercised about a delightful good: but it is more likely that it was exercised about the greatest delightful good, such as beatitude; for although that is also an honest good, and can be desired honestly, nevertheless because it is also a most delightful good, it could be desired disorderedly: namely, either by desiring it with such ardor, that there was grief that it would not be so quickly conferred by God, and therefore he wished to possess it otherwise than God had ordained: or also he wished to possess it independently of God.

He proves thirdly. Every appetite most desires that which is proposed to it as most fitting and delightful; for thus the appetite, which is borne to the visible, most desires that which is perceived by the eye as the visible more delighting: therefore since the will of the Angel has no sensitive appetite, by which it is moved to desire sensible things, it most desires that which is proposed by the intellect as the supreme delightful good: but such is supernatural beatitude: therefore the angelic appetite tends most to it: but it is likely that the disordered appetite of the Angel was borne about that which it most desired: therefore it was borne about supernatural beatitude.

He proves fourthly. That is first desired by a will not regulated by the affect of justice, but of the advantageous, which would be desired although other desirable things were not, and which, if the others were absent, would be desired no less: but such is the delightful object: therefore it is borne by its first appetite to the delightful object: but if it be borne to the delightful object by its first appetite, it is likely that it is borne to the greatest delightful good: therefore, etc. The major seems manifest, because the will, destitute of the affect, and rule of justice, altogether follows its advantageous, and wills no disadvantage: since we will and desire the disadvantageous only by the affect of justice, as is evident in martyrs, and penitents. The minor also appears true; for a good however excellent, if it were saddening and not delightful, it is certain that it would not be desired by the appetite of the advantageous.

Finally the Conclusion is proved. It is most certain that the Angel had some act about supernatural beatitude: for he knew it as possible to himself, and knew the means by which he could attain it; otherwise he would not have been a perfect wayfarer: therefore either that act was ordered, and thus he did not sin, but merited; or it was a neutral act, that is, neither good nor evil, neither ordered nor disordered, which no Theologian admits; or it was disordered: but it was not ordered, nor neutral; therefore it is necessary that it was disordered; and consequently that it was sin. But that it was the first sin stands from this, that since that object was most delightful, and the power was led and impelled by the natural appetite to the good, it necessarily seems to follow that the first act of concupiscence of that will was about supernatural beatitude.

The aforesaid reasons are confirmed and explained by the same Doctor num. 6. where he admonishes that it is to be observed, that every cognitive power has an appetite corresponding to itself: whence since the soul has a cognitive power, namely the intellect, it has also an appetite corresponding to itself, which resides in the will; which, although it be free, nevertheless is most conformed to the natural appetite in acting; and therefore, says the Doctor, in men according to the diversity of complexions, there is the dominion of the sensitive appetites, and since every cognitive power has its own appetite, then according to the diversity of complexions there is a diversity of dominion in the diverse cognoscitives, and in their appetitives: in each one, I say, the will according to the dominion of the sensitive appetite is most inclined to its act. And therefore some, following the first inclination without the rule of justice, are first inclined to luxury, some first to pride: therefore the will in acting follows the natural appetite for the most part. But although the will separated from all sense, and sensitive appetite, cannot be inclined to some sensible object; nevertheless since it is a natural power, it has a natural inclination to the object most fitting to itself, insofar as it is a natural power; but that is beatitude; because the same is the object of the appetitive, and cognitive faculty. Since therefore beatitude is the greatest object of the intellective virtue, it will also be the supreme, and most motive object of the intellective appetite, which is the will; and consequently although the will be a free power, nevertheless since in acting it follows the natural appetite, unless it be regulated and restrained by the affect of justice, and the dictate of reason, the consequence is, that with its whole conatus it first covets the first delightful object, not orderly; therefore disorderedly; and straightway the first disordered affect of that angelic will desiring was about beatitude. So the Doctor.

You will say 1. From St. Augustine lib. 13. De Trinitate, cap. 5. beatitude is desired by all; but what is desired by all uniformly is natural; therefore beatitude is desired naturally: but natural desire is always right, because it is from God: hence the will, conformable to natural desire, is always right; for what is conformable to what is right is right: therefore in desiring beatitude no one can sin; and so the first sin of the angel's love of concupiscence was not a disordered desire of beatitude.

The Subtle Doctor denies this, n. 10. Since indeed volition is free, and can have the character of evil, even though it were consonant with a natural inclination, that is, with the volition of such an object toward which there would be a natural inclination, it follows from that, that although the will may tend toward an object toward which it tends naturally, its affection can nonetheless be disordered no less; for inclination toward anything delectable, e.g., is natural, and yet it is certain that desires for many delectables are disordered and evil: it is not true, then, that an elicited act of will conformed to a right natural inclination is always right and ordered: because the will, as it is free and elicits an act concerning its object, is bound to conform itself to justice, and to the higher rule, which commands and ordains that that natural desire be regulated and moderated according to the dictate of right reason, and the precepts of the rule of justice.

You will say 2. No intellect errs about first principles: therefore neither can the will err about the last end, such as beatitude. The antecedent is Aristotle's, Metaphysics book 2, text 1. The consequence is proved from the same author, Physics book 2, text 5, where he says: As the principle stands in speculative matters, so the end stands in practical, or operative matters.

The Doctor answers, n. 11, denying the consequence; and he offers the reason for the disparity, namely that first principles determine the intellect toward a right act; but the end does not always determine the will toward a right act: rather the will of itself can have either an evil or a good act concerning the end, at its own choice; since indeed the intellect is a natural power, and operates naturally, therefore it cannot fail to assent to the principles proposed to it, but it assents to them insofar as their truth is manifested to it more and more: it is otherwise, however, with the will, since indeed it is free, and therefore can moderate its own desire lest it dominate it, and prevail in eliciting its acts — nay more, lest the act be elicited absolutely; for it can turn the intellect away from thinking about that delectable object concerning which it itself is occupied.

You will say 3. If the angels who fell from friendship sinned out of appetite and affection for the advantageous, namely by desiring beatitude inasmuch as it was a good advantageous to them; it follows also that the obedient angels sinned in the same way; but that consequent is absurd: therefore also that whence it follows. The sequel of the major is clear, seeing that according to St. Anselm, book De Concordia, chaps. 26 and 13, the will cannot not will what is advantageous: therefore since all, both good and bad, had the affection for the advantageous, and especially for the highest advantage, such as beatitude; it follows that if sin be in that affection, even the good angels sinned.

The Doctor answers, n. 12, denying the sequel; because although the good had as great a natural inclination toward beatitude inasmuch as it is an advantageous good as the bad had — nay, perhaps a greater, namely they had a more excellent nature; because that inclination, says the Doctor, is according to natural perfection: nevertheless, because the good acted from an affection of justice in desiring beatitude, they also tempered their affection concerning it, and regulated it according to the dictate of reason and the rules of the Superior, whence they desired it in an honest and due manner: For, says the Doctor, they did not use the will according to its imperfect character, insofar namely as it is merely an intellectual appetite, acting, namely, in such manner as befitted an intellectual appetite to act; but they used the will according to its perfect character, which is liberty, willing, namely, with the will in that manner in which it befits one to act freely insofar as he acts freely: but this was according to the rule of the superior will determining, and this justly. — But to the proof of the sequel, I deny that the will cannot not will an advantageous good; for daily it happens that we do not will advantageous goods, for the reason that we know them to be forbidden us. Or I say, that although perhaps the will could not not will an advantageous good, especially the highest, such as beatitude, nevertheless the angel's will could will it inordinately, or orderly; orderly, namely, if it willed to obtain it only when, and how God had ordained, or if it desired to have it only so that it might love God with a more excellent love.

— Now it could desire it inordinately:

and that in three ways, says the Doctor, n. 9.: either as to intensity, for instance by willing it with a greater effort than befits it; or as to acceleration, for instance by willing it for himself sooner than befits him; or as to cause, for instance by willing it for himself otherwise than suits him; e.g., without merits, or perhaps in other ways, concerning all of which it is not necessary to take care here.

In some one of these modes it is probable that his will transgressed, namely either by desiring for himself beatitude inasmuch as it is a good for him more than by loving that good in itself: or by desiring that good, that the beatific object be his own good as good for him, more than by desiring it to belong to another, namely to his God: and herein is the supreme perversity of the will, which is to use things to be enjoyed, and to enjoy things to be used, according to St. Augustine, book 83 Questions, q. 30. Or secondly he could desire to have it at once, whereas God wills it to be had after a brief delay of the way. Or thirdly, by desiring to have it from natural resources, not having it graciously, whereas God wills it to be had from merits. Therefore free will ought to have moderated the affection as to those circumstances which right reason shows forth: because beatitude ought to be less desired for oneself than for God, and it ought to be desired for the time for which God willed: and from merits, for which God willed it to be desired: therefore if in any of these modes he followed the affection for the advantageous, not moderating it through justice — that is, through infused justice, if he had it, or acquired, or innate, whether natural, which is liberty itself — he sinned.

But what the objects of the angels' appetites were will be resolved at the end of this Question. Whether, however, each of those disordered loves of the angel, both of friendship and of concupiscence, is pride properly so called, or rather should be reduced to spiritual lust, will be opened up

Third conclusion. — The disordered love of the angel, both of friendship and of concupiscence, was pride: not formally, and properly so called. But radically, and improperly so called.

This seems to be the genuine opinion of the Subtle Doctor in the aforesaid q. 2, n. 14, where, having premised the opinion of St. Thomas and others who say that that disordered love of the angel was pride properly so called, he concludes: Therefore I say that his first sin was not pride properly so called: but on account of the deformity which they import, they seem rather to be reduced to lust: as the sin whereby anyone takes disordered pleasure in speculation upon a geometrical conclusion is called calumny.

In which words two things are especially to be noted: First, that the Doctor does not absolutely deny that love to be pride, according to some extension of the term pride, but only that it is not pride properly so called. Second, that he did not say that love was formally lust, but that if it must be referred to any one of the seven capital crimes, it is more fittingly referred to lust than to pride. That however that disordered angelic love was not pride properly so called.

It is proved 1. The first sin of the angel was immoderate complacency in his own perfections: but pride properly so called is not such immoderate complacency, says St. Augustine, lib. 11, cap. 15. For what is pride, but the appetite of perverse height? Now the appetite of height is not formally love of self, but follows from it: because no one can desire immoderately his own excellence and beatitude except because he loves himself inordinately: therefore the first sin of the angel was not formally pride. Next, disordered love of friendship toward self is not formally pride: therefore neither disordered love of self: for the same account seems to hold. Finally, pride properly so called is the disordered appetite of excellence with respect to others: whence St. Augustine lib. 19. De Civit. Dei, cap. 12. says: Pride imitates God perversely: for he hates equality with his fellows under him, but he wishes to impose his dominion upon his fellows in place of him: by which words he signifies that the formal character of pride consists in the appetite of excellence, as bearing a relation of dominion over others: but that affection of dominion cannot be the primary sin of the angel: for it was because he wished to dominate above the others that he inordinately loved himself; which disordered love was indeed the root and origin of pride, but not pride itself formally: therefore, etc.

First the Thomists object various contexts of Scripture, by which they contend it is signified that the first sin of the angel was pride formally so called. Above all that of Isaiah 11, where the sin of the prince of the demons is described allegorically in the person of the King of the Assyrians in these words: Thy pride has been cast down to hell: how have you fallen from Heaven, Lucifer, who said in your heart: I shall ascend into Heaven? etc., which words are manifest indications of pride. Second, that of Ezekiel 28, where under the person of the King of Tyre the sin of the devil is described, and among other things it is said of him: Iniquity was found in you. And what that iniquity was he declares, saying: Your heart was lifted up in your beauty, etc. Now elevation of heart is pride, or an effect of pride properly so called. They add that of Ecclesiasticus 10, Pride is the beginning of every sin. Whence St. Augustine lib. 14. De Civit. Dei, cap. 13. adds: What else could the beginning of an evil will have been but pride?

— They confirm it from Tobias, where Tobias the father says to his son: Never permit pride to rule in your mind, or in your word, for in it all perdition took its beginning: now all perdition of men, indeed even of angels, took its beginning from the sin of the prince of the demons: therefore that one's sin was pride.

— They strive to prove this same thing by various oracles of the holy Fathers: above all St. Ambrose, or another Author, Epistle to Demetrias, Epist. 33.

This pride, he says, took its origin from the devil; who, since he had received his life from the Creator, pleased himself in his power, and dignity, and compared this with the glory of his Author, and together with the angels whom he had drawn into consent to his impiety he was cast down from heavenly sublimity. Therefore accordingly, both in the fall of the devil and in the transgression of man, the beginning of sin is pride, which is fittingly also called avarice, because both appellations signify that appetite which both covets to exceed its own measure; and does not deign to be rich unless from his own goods. As though he possessed this likeness to God, that he himself should be to himself the fountain of his goods, himself the abundance for himself.

— St. Athanasius consents in his Oration on Virginity; Satan, he says, was not cast down from heaven on account of fornication or adultery or theft: but pride precipitated him into the lower parts of the abyss. Jerome subscribes on chapter 16 of Ezekiel, where he calls pride the proper, and first sin of the devil.

St. Augustine teaches this same thing in many places, especially lib. 14. De Civit. Dei, cap. 13. where he says:

Of an evil will, what could it be but pride? Pride is the beginning of every sin: but what is pride, but the appetite of perverse height? For perverse height is, the principle which he ought to adhere to being deserted, to become and be in some sort a principle for oneself. This happens when one pleases himself too much: but he so pleases himself when he falls short of that unchangeable good, which ought to please him more than he pleases himself.

Fulgentius subscribes, lib. ad Monimum, cap. 17.

If the beginning of sin is sought, he says, nothing else is found but pride: for Scripture says, Pride is the beginning of every sin; which therefore then took its beginning, when the Angel, elated against God, and prostrated by that very elation through concupiscence, which is the root of all evils, wishing to usurp what was not given to him by God, departed from God, and fell, in which, had he stood, he would not have fallen.

Finally Bernard, lib. De modo bene vivendi, serm. 37. Pride, he says, is the root of all evils. It cast down the angels, laid low the mighty, hurled down the proud. Hence pride is commonly called the sin of the demons, and Job 41² calls Lucifer king over all the children of pride. It is established, therefore, both from Scripture and from the oracles of the holy Fathers, that pride was the first, and capital sin of the demons.

The Doctor denies the consequence, n. 17, and in answer to the authorities of Scripture and the holy Fathers replies, that presumption was simply the first sin of the angel, not inasmuch, he says, as it is the first species of pride properly taken: but inasmuch as it signifies excessive complacency, and disordered love of self, the sin of complacency, and presumption, which was the root of pride, as St. Augustine explains, and opens up more clearly, lib. De Genesi ad litteram, chap. 15³ where he says: That the Devil loved his own power, and by a perverted love of himself, turgid spirit deprived of holy fellowship. And chap. 23. certainly he immediately turned himself away from the light of truth, swollen with pride, and corrupted by delight in his own power.

Therefore the aforesaid authorities both of Scripture and of the holy Fathers can be explained thus: First, that they signify the first sin of the devil to have been pride, not formal, and properly so called, but radical and effective, namely inasmuch as that disordered love of himself led the Angel to presume of himself, to affect divine preeminence and dominion, and finally to despise being subject to God. Or that the pride of the devil was the cause of the whole sin, which the devil derived from the first Parent upon the whole human race, as St. Augustine explains on Psalm 121: The Angel, he says, fell, and became the devil: he offered pride to man: he cast down with himself by envy him who stood: these wished not to be the same, but wished to dominate.

Finally I say with the Seraphic Doctor, in 2 dist. 5, art. 1, q. 1, that the sin of the devil must be considered as to a threefold state: namely, as to its initiation, consummation, and confirmation: it was initiated in complacency and presumption; for as soon as he saw his own beauty, he presumed: it was consummated in ambition, because presuming of himself, he desired what was wholly above him, and to which he could not attain: but it was confirmed in envy, and the aversion of hatred: because from the moment he could not obtain what he desired, therefore he began to envy, and to go against it with an affection of hatred, and herein it was confirmed, because this wholly separated him from God, and set up a perfect obstacle, just as charity perfectly joins to God.

You will say 2. According to St. John, all that is in the world is either the concupiscence of the flesh, or the concupiscence of the eyes, or the pride of life: but the first sin of the angel was not the concupiscence of the flesh, or of the eyes: therefore it was the pride of life.

The Doctor denies the consequence, because that division comprehends only the ordinary sins of men, not indeed those of angels. But if the sin of angels must be reduced to some one of those three members, it is rather to be referred to the concupiscence of the eyes than to the other two members: for as, says the Doctor, in us immoderate appetites of some visible beautiful thing pertain to the concupiscence of the eyes: so also in angels the immoderate appetite of the delectable must pertain to the concupiscence of the eyes.

You will say 3. The sin of the angels must be reduced to some one of the seven capital vices: but it can be conveniently referred to none other than to pride: therefore it must be pride properly so called.

The Doctor answers first, n. 17, denying the major: for that division of sins into seven genera is neither adequate, nor even congruous: which he proves best; because if the division of sins is made according to the number of evil habits opposed to the seven virtues, namely the three Theological and four Moral virtues, certainly it is not good, because seven distinct sins separate from those seven would have to be assigned; for infidelity, and presumption would have to be numbered among them, and some others of those seven omitted. But if the division of sins is not taken thus, but as they oppose good acts, by which the ten precepts of the decalogue are observed, there would have to be ten sins. Whence he concludes, that that division ought not to be admitted as adequate, nor as comprehending all genera of sins, nor even perhaps all roots of sins; since, he says, infidelity, and despair are opposed to hope, and are graver sins than the sin of gluttony, or sloth, yet they are not comprehended properly, and directly under those members: hence he infers, that this division is of sins which occur ordinarily, and which are the roots, and occasions of many sins.

He answers secondly by denying the consequence, because that division is not adequate; nor must every sin be some one of those formally and properly: for there are many sins which belong to those seven only reductively.

He answers thirdly by denying the minor; for if the sin of the angels is traced back reductively to one of those seven, it will rather belong to lust than to pride; just as, says the Doctor, every disordered appetite for a pleasurable good is traced back to the concupiscence of the eyes.

You will insist. The disordered affection for pleasure is found not only in lust but also in gluttony and other similar vices of intemperance: therefore, given that the first sin of the angel consisted in a disordered affection of pleasure concerning his own excellence, it should be called spiritual gluttony no less than spiritual lust.

He answers 1. That even if the consequence were true, it would not conflict with the Doctor's opinion: for the Doctor does not contend that the angel's disordered complacency should be traced rather to lust than to gluttony; but that it could be traced rather to lust than to pride.

He answers 2. Yet it is to be traced more fittingly to lust than to any other sin; for since lust is concerned with an object more pleasurable than gluttony, and that pleasure conceived disorderly by the angel concerning his own excellence and perfection was supreme—otherwise it would not have moved the angel to commit so many grave sins—it follows that it ought to be reduced to lust more than to other sins, inasmuch as he had a greater proportion of excess in pleasure with lust than with any other sin whatsoever.

• Hence the Subtle Doctor rightly reduces this excessive complacency of the prevaricating angel in his own gifts and preeminences to the species of spiritual lust, and explains it by the example of the pleasure of a geometrical demonstration devised by some mathematician; yet with this difference: that the pleasure from the discovery of a new geometrical demonstration is neither unclean, nor darkens the mind, nor dulls reason, as spiritual or sensual lust does when in that complacency someone places his beatitude therein.

You will ask. Whether the demons truly desired equality with God, that is, to be gods?

I answer. Truly they desired equality with God considered in itself. So the Doctor in dist. 6, q. 1, n. 2, where, after attacking the opinion and arguments of St. Thomas, who teaches that the excellent object desired by the angel when he first sinned through the love of concupiscence was not every kind of equality with God in nature, the Doctor concludes: the question can be answered otherwise: namely, that the angel could desire the equality of God; and he proves this by a fourfold argument. But first our answer must be established here by the authority both of Scripture and of the holy Fathers.

For first, from Scripture it is deduced that Lucifer in fact desired this equality: therefore he truly could desire it. The antecedent is proved from Isaiah 14, where Lucifer says: I will ascend above the height of the clouds, I will be like the Most High; for although the words there concern likeness, which can be less than equality, nevertheless likeness without perfect equality is not. Add that if the preceding words be considered, they seem to denote and demand perfect similitude.

• Ezekiel too sings of him, chapter 28, verse 2, where under the type and inscription of the king of Tyre he represents the pride and fall of Lucifer and of his allied enemy angels: Your heart was lifted up, and you said: I am God; and verse 12: You are the seal of similitude, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty, etc.; and verse 17: Your heart was lifted up in your beauty, namely even to the desire for divinity.

Hence Michael, who first of the faithful angels resisted the proud Lucifer, is so called—that is, Who is like God?—because, reproaching Lucifer's audacity, he hurled those words against him like thunderbolts.

To this also pertains what St. Paul said of Christ the Lord, Philippians 2: He did not think it robbery to be equal with God, as if to say that he wished to claim divinity and the same equality and majesty with the eternal Father not by theft or arrogance, as Lucifer and his proud companions attempted, but he vindicated it to himself by the right of his eternal nativity and procession from the Father.

Nor slight evidence of this desire for divinity appears in the character of that temptation which Satan employed to ensnare the primeval woman when he said: You shall be as gods, knowing good and evil, Gen. 3, v. 5. For if, as St. James rightly infers, chapter 1, v. 13, God, being incapable of tempting to evils, himself tempts no one, it is a sign of one who wishes to entice another to some sin either that he has fallen into that sin or that he is prone to it; we may gather that Satan was already guilty before that sin—the one into whose fellowship he strove to draw the first men—namely of affecting similitude with God.

Hence the Master of the Sentences, dist. 6, citing Isidore:

Lucifer, he says, after he was created, weighing the eminence of his nature and the depth of his knowledge, grew proud against his Creator to such a degree that he even willed to make himself equal with God, as is said in Isaiah: I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, and I will be like the Most High.

Indeed he wished to be like God, not by imitation, but by equality of power. *

The holy Fathers teach the same: above all St. Ambrose, epistle 33, where he says: Because he was pleased with the power and dignity he had received, and compared himself with the author of his glory, he was cast down from celestial sublimity. The Author of Scholia on Psalm 118 indicates this more clearly: He, he says, so exalted himself that he wished to be made equal to the Most High. St. Chrysostom subscribes, homily 3 On the Words of Isaiah: He hoped for, he says, the equality of God, a thing which expelled him from heaven. St. Augustine concedes it in De Civitate Dei, book 14, chapter 11, where he says that Lucifer rejoiced, as it were, with a kind of tyrannical haughtiness in having subjects rather than chose to be subject. As if to say that Lucifer coveted equality with God in authority and power, since he wished to preside over all others and to be subject to none.

Nazianzen clearly indicates the matter, oration 17, where he expounds the elation of Lucifer in these words: He said, he declares, that it was unworthy and intolerable for him, since he was divine, not also to be thought God; which he elegantly expressed in verse in the poem On things endowed with mind, where among other things he writes:

Wherefore Lucifer first, his sound mind swelling (for the surpassing honor he enjoyed gave hope of God's own regal throne and glory) fell, losing all his splendor, vile and wretched; while craving to be God, engulfed entire in earth's dark gloom he sank.

But the Doctor proves this answer. First indeed: the will, according to the act of the love of friendship and the act of the love of concupiscence, has all being for its object, such that just as it can love any being whatever with the love of friendship, so it can pursue it with the love of concupiscence: but the equality of God according to essence is some good desirable in itself: therefore, since the angel could love himself with the love of concupiscence, he could desire for himself every desirable good, and consequently could desire the equality of God.

He proves secondly, and confirms the former argument: if anything impeded the angel from being able to affect that equality, it would be above all because it is not only impossible in itself but also apprehended by the angel as impossible—for it is absurd to assert that he was so blinded by malice that he did not recognize that divine equality to be altogether impossible for a creature; yet that impossibility does not prevent the angel from having been able to desire the Divinity itself: therefore, etc. The Adversaries concede the major; but the Doctor proves the minor, first indeed by the authority of Aristotle, book 3, Ethics, chapter 2, who says: Choice indeed is not of impossibles. But will is of impossibles, for instance immortality. Moreover, the damned hate God, according to Psalm 73: The pride of those who hate you ascends always; but one who hates wills the object of his hatred not to exist: therefore the damned wish God not to exist: but this is impossible: therefore something impossible can be desired.

• The Doctor confirms these points in the same place, number 2; because, he says, the willing sin can will God not to exist; indeed it can even will the eminence of divinity to be in another. Therefore it can will it to be in itself as in another, and thus it can will for itself the eminence of God or divinity.

To these is added the most ardent ardor of the love of God and charity with which the holiest men sometimes burn, and which St. Augustine himself expressed in these words: Lord, if you were Augustine, and I could be God, I would rather have you than myself be God. Moreover, the just often wish that it were better to love God with an infinite love, and penitents desire that they had never sinned: but these things, as is evident, are impossible: therefore the will can will what the intellect judges impossible.

The Thomists distinguish a twofold impossible: one indeed per se and absolute; the other per accidens and ex suppositione. The first is that which from its very terms involves contradiction, as that man should be a stone: for this is deservedly said to be impossible absolutely and simply, because it is not so with respect to this or that place, time, or cause, but with respect to all things absolutely. The second, however, is that which involves contradiction not from its very terms or from the nature of the thing, but from some hypothesis only: as, for example, that Peter has not sinned. For this does not conflict absolutely, since Peter could have not sinned; but it conflicts now by hypothesis, that he has sinned, because by reason of time it is impossible that he did not sin after he sinned.

Between these two impossibles, however, they establish this difference: that the impossible per se, whatever supposition be made and condition added, has no entity or goodness from which it follows that it cannot be desired—not only by efficacious election tending to execution, but not even by simple willing, that is, by an inefficacious act of will, even under the condition: if it were possible. But the impossible per accidens, although, as it stands under that position of impossibility, and in the composite sense of it, is not possible, nor consequently has any aspect of good and fittingness; nevertheless taken in itself, and by purely precissive abstraction abstracted from such supposition and impossibility—or in the divided sense of it—has per se some possibility and goodness: and so considered, although it cannot be formally willed by an act of election, because election tends to execution, yet it can be willed by a simple act of will, which is called velleity: because, since this act does not tend to execution, it can terminate in the object in itself, abstracting from particular circumstances; hence for this reason a sinner ineffectually wills that he had not sinned, although by supposition that he has sinned, it is impossible. Thus Gonet after Cajetan.

With these things premised, they answer that the impossible per se and absolute can in no way be desired, but well indeed the impossible per accidens: therefore, they say, since divine equality is impossible for a creature, it can by no means be desired by an angel.

Against this. The impossible per accidens, according to them, can be desired: therefore also the impossible per se. The consequence is evident; for to desire an apprehended good as impossible it makes no difference whether it is impossible per se or per accidens, since the apprehender knows that neither can ever be obtained by himself: therefore, if the impossible per se is undesirable precisely because it can in no way be obtained by the desirer, by parity of reason the impossible per accidens will be undesirable, since the desirer knows he shall never attain such a good. Thus the penitent who wishes he had not sinned knows this to be impossible, even by divine power, since God is deprived of this alone, that things which have been done cannot become undone. Again, the damned, as has been said, desire God not to exist, and yet that he not exist is simply impossible.

Finally their very answer does not stand with the doctrine of St. Thomas: for he teaches, q. 16, De Malo, art. 3, ad primum, and I-II, q. 13, art. 5, ad primum, that there is a twofold act of will: one indeed efficacious and complete; the other inefficacious and incomplete. Whence he adds in the latter place:

Complete will is only of the possible, which is a good for the one willing; but incomplete will is of the impossible, which according to some is called velleity, namely because someone would will it if it were possible; but election names the act of will already determined to that which is here to be done, and therefore it is in no way except of possibles.

therefore St. Thomas admits that will also can be of impossibles.

It is confirmed. This attack, and the prior arguments of the Doctor, are again confirmed by the Doctor from St. Augustine, book 83 Questions, q. 30, where he teaches that the will can use things to be enjoyed, and enjoy things to be used: therefore created will can enjoy itself; but it cannot enjoy except the highest good: therefore it can covet for itself the highest good, wherein together with itself it may enjoy: but this highest good is equality with God: therefore created will can desire equality with God, not indeed by an efficacious desire, but at least by an inefficacious one. For, as the Doctor observes in the same place n. 8, there is a twofold act of willing, or volition: for, he says, one volition is efficacious, another is a volition of complacency; e.g., two sick men, one of whom hopes to have his health restored, while the other despairs, both long for and will health, but differently; for the first wills health because he hopes it will be restored, and therefore he seeks and applies means conducive to its restoration; but the second, because he does not hope to attain health, neither seeks nor applies such means. The first volition is called efficacious; the second is called inefficacious, or complacency merely. The first is concerned only with the possible; the second, however, is occupied also with the impossible. This, he says, suffices for merit and demerit, because although it be impossible, yet one can consent to it with full consent: and by that volition the angel could desire divine equality. But of the first volition, which is efficacious, I say that the angel could not desire it; yet by simple volition he could covet for himself so great a good, and with such desire as he would have coveted it, if it had been possible.

The Thomists object first, that the angel's sin was not from passion, nor from ignorance, because passion and ignorance are a punishment of sin; and therefore he sinned only from choice: but choice is not of impossible things: therefore he did not sin by desiring for himself a divine equality impossible to him.

The Doctor distinguishes the minor: the choice that is an efficacious willing, by which means are applied to the attainment of an end, he concedes; choice insofar as it means only complacency, and the appetite of the will, by which it would freely will something proposed to it under the aspect of good, whether impossible, cannot be directed toward an impossible good by one desiring it, he denies. For it was proven above that in truth an inefficacious will can be occupied with impossibles.

You will insist. the choice by which the angel sinned ought to have been demeritorious: but that inefficacious volition, or velleity, cannot be a merit, or demerit: therefore by this the angel could not sin.

I deny the minor. for who would deny that to be a meritorious act, and of the most perfect charity, by which St. Augustine, speaking with God, used to say: if I could be God, I would rather that you than I be God? yet this act is of simple complacency, and velleity, and is even about an impossible thing: therefore some velleity can be meritorious. Moreover, an act is meritorious when someone, after he has sinned, thinks of himself as if he had not sinned, and delights in this, and would will that he had in no way sinned, and were in the former state of innocence, that he might serve God with greater affection and acceptance; yet this act is of simple affection, which they call velleity. Similarly, in this simple affection there can be most grave sin: as if someone hating God not only wished that God did not exist, but also desired that some evil should befall him; in which kind of sin I do not doubt that the demons and the damned are occupied.

You will say 2. that the angel be equal to God is impossible, and therefore it is a non-being: but a non-being is not appetible, for something is appetible insofar as it is good, but a non-being cannot be good: nor consequently appetible: therefore the angel could not desire equality with God.

I answer first. that if anything proved this argument, it would also establish that the impossible per accidens cannot be desired, which the Thomists nevertheless deny, for both the impossible per se and the impossible per accidens are non-being.

He answers second by distinguishing the major: it is not some one being, having in itself a possible goodness, I concede; it is not some multiple being including two things, one of which is good absolutely, and would be good also respectively to the other, if it could be joined with it, I deny: and so although the angelic will cannot desire the equality of God with an absolute volition, by which it would be borne toward it as toward one possible object, because it is not proposed to it by the intellect: nevertheless it can with a comparative volition be borne toward that divine equality as to be desired, inasmuch as it would be good for it, if it could attain it.

You will say 3. The angelic will cannot desire the equality of God, unless it is proposed to it by the intellect: but it cannot be proposed by the intellect: for it would be proposed either by an erring intellect, or by a non-erring intellect. Not the first, because since he had not yet sinned, he had no error in the intellect, otherwise the punishment would have preceded the fault: for that error could not have been in the angel, except by way of an inflicted punishment. Nor the second, because a non-erring intellect cannot propose anything false to the will: but it is false that the angel can be equal to God: therefore, etc.

The Doctor denies the minor, toward whose proof he says that that equality can be proposed by a non-erring intellect: For the equality of God, he says, can be apprehended without error, because it is in someone without fault, because the Son of God is equal to the Father, and that can be apprehended. Then the angel could apprehend that equality to be good for him, if it were possible: and supposing such an apprehension, and judgment, the will could desire that equality: certainly we apprehend the equality of God without error, and also judge that if that equality were possible for the angel, as it is possible and in fact belongs to the Son of God, that in truth the angel would be far more perfect than he now is, however great a perfection he now has; therefore much more can the angel apprehend that equality, and form such a judgment.

They object 4. No one can desire his non-existence, from St. Augustine book 3 De libero arbitrio: but if the angel desired the equality of God, consequently he would desire himself not to be an angel, because the angel being God is his very not being an angel; for the angel to be is for the creature to be subject to God: therefore the angel cannot desire himself to be equal to God. It is confirmed from that passage of St. Anselm in the book De similitudinibus c. 6. where he says: For if anyone should wish to be like another in his own person, he would wish himself not to be, which he cannot will.

The Doctor answers first, that although perhaps someone cannot directly will his own non-existence, nevertheless he can will it indirectly, namely by willing something from which, once posited, his non-existence would follow: thus, he says, anyone sinning mortally wills something in which he does not will God to be underlying, and in this he wills consequentially his own non-existence, because he cannot be, unless God underlie him.

He answers second by denying the minor: because although the destruction of himself would follow from equality with God, nevertheless it is not necessary that one willing equality will formally, and explicitly his own non-being, or its own destruction: for it does not follow, he says, that if someone wills the antecedent, he wills also the consequent, when the consequent can be understood without the antecedent: just as, for example, someone can desire the episcopate, not willing the priesthood: but in the present case the consequent is not necessarily connected with the antecedent: for it does not follow absolutely, that if the angel wills equality with God, he also wills his own destruction; for he could desire equality with God on the supposition, impossible indeed, that that equality would not entail the destruction of the angel.

To St. Anselm the Doctor responds, that he is speaking of an ordered will; but no one, he says, can in an ordered way will himself not to be, because an ordered will is not willing something, and not willing that which necessarily follows upon it, whether that be intrinsic to it or not: but these things are not true of an inordinate will.

You will insist. The angel knew himself to be a created being, and by participation; he knew equally that no being by participation could be of the same nature with a being by essence, and therefore he knew perfectly that he could not wish for divine equality without wishing himself not to be.

I deny the consequence, for although the angel knew himself to be a being by participation, nevertheless he could apprehend that divine equality as some good appetible; and thereupon he could desire it for himself; not indeed with an efficacious appetite, but with an inefficacious one: whence he could be displeased that he was subject to God and inferior to him, and could wish for independence with respect to God, and superiority with respect to the other angels; which, as is apparent, is to will equality with God according to nature.

• You will press. That which wholly repugns and contradicts natural reason, and from which it utterly recoils, can in no way be desired: but for a creature to be equal to God wholly repugns to natural reason: therefore etc.

I answer. that in that hypothesis two things are to be distinguished, namely that which in that object seems unpleasing and worthy of horror, and that which is found in it amiable; for the good and its excellence is loved; but the disproportion with the one enjoying it, or coveting it, is abhorred. But this horror is tempered and taken away by the heat of the one desiring, for those burning and glowing with love toward the thing loved and coveted do not suffer themselves to be torn from it on any account: and against every dictate of reason they struggle, and they contrive and devise many things, even desiring base and obscene things, however much natural reason may protest: whence it happens that love, boiling over, scarcely retains judgment. Therefore the will of the demon, already exceeding the bounds of its inordinate self-love and complacency, and as it were raging madly, could desire divinity, however much natural reason suggested that it was repugnant to it.

You will insist again. That which involves a manifest contradiction cannot be represented as amiable nor desirable by any reason, even one exorbitant and deviant: but the equality of a creature with its Creator involves a contradiction: for it is the conjunction of a creature with a non-creature, namely with God: therefore etc.

I answer first, that the conjunction of a creature with the Creator does not repugn by means of the hypostatic union, as appears in the mystery of the Incarnation. Then I say that the angel in that simple desire of divinity did not attend to its impossibility or contradiction, but only to the excellence of the coveted good, which was represented as desirable, prescinding from whether it would be possible or impossible to acquire. For a spiritual creature is borne toward a good in one way by appetite, and in another by fruition. For that looks to the effect of the will, but this tends to the effect and to the application of the means conducing to the attainment of that good. The former is a simple complacency, inefficacious with respect to the fruition and attainment of the good, although in itself it is vehement and glowing: the latter is an efficacious application of the will toward the end to be obtained. The former can stand together with contradiction and the impossibility of attaining the object: the latter cannot, since it tends efficaciously to the attainment of the object by applying fitting means.

You will say at last. * Someone can desire to be God without any sin: therefore although the angel coveted divine equality, on that account he is not judged to have sinned. The antecedent is proved: someone could desire to become God, that is, that like God he might be immune from sin, and that he might love God as much as God is in himself lovable: but that appetite would not be sinful: nay truly it would be pious, and innocent: therefore the appetite for the equality of God is not culpable: nor therefore was it the first sin of the angel's concupiscent love.

I deny the antecedent, and I distinguish the minor of its proof: that appetite is not culpable, if it be hypothetical and conditional, I concede: if absolute, I deny. * Therefore a pious man could have this affection conditionally, namely if this were possible, and without any prejudice to the Divinity: but the angel who coveted the Divinity did not have a like affection; rather he affected it absolutely, as is to be gathered from the words both of Isaiah and of Ezekiel cited by us above.

You will ask 2. Whether also the angels coveted the hypostatic union, and in truth envied man for being assumed to it?

I answer 1. That in truth the angels sinned through envy, as St. Augustine admirably teaches in book 11 De Genesi ad litteram cap. 14.

Some, he says, say that he himself fell from his supernal seats because he envied man, who was made to the image of God. Moreover this envying follows pride, it does not precede it. For envying is not the cause of pride, but pride the cause of envying. Therefore since pride is the love of one's own excellence, but envy the hatred of another's happiness: what is born from that is sufficiently manifest. For by loving his own excellence, each one envies either equals, that they be made equal to him, or inferiors, lest they be made equal to himself, or superiors, that he is not made equal to them. Therefore each one is envious by being proud, not proud by being envious.

St. Bernard subscribes in sermon 17. Therefore in Heaven she conceived grief, and in Paradise she gave birth to iniquity, the offspring of malice, the mother of death, and the parent of all miseries, Pride.

I answer 2. That in fact the devil inordinately desired beatitude, and therefore envied human nature; as St. Bernard teaches in various places, especially in sermon 17. on the Canticles:

but it could have happened, he says, if it nevertheless not be thought incredible, that one full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty, could have foreknown that men would be future, and indeed would advance to an equal glory; but if he foreknew it, he without doubt saw it in the Word of God, and in his envy he envied it, and he schemed to have subjects, disdaining companions. They are weaker, he says, and inferior by nature: it is not fitting that they be partners, nor equals in glory. And below, addressing the devil himself, he says: You, wretched one, place your seat in the north, a cloudy and cold region, and behold there are raised up from the dust the needy, and from the dung the poor, that they may sit with Princes, and hold the throne of glory, and you grieve that this be fulfilled: The poor and needy shall praise your name.

Although there St. Bernard makes no express mention of the devil's envy toward the incarnation of Christ, nevertheless not a light foundation can be drawn from it a fortiori. For if from the fact that Lucifer foreknew that men were going to advance to an equal glory, St. Bernard gathers that it is credible that Lucifer grieved, and sinned through envy toward men; much more indeed can it be believed, if Lucifer foreknew that some man was going to be far more excellent than himself, not only in glory, but also in the grace of union, and in the majesty of the divine Person: that he was therefore indignant, and grieved vehemently, and wasted away with envy.

I answer 3. That it also seems probable, that he inordinately coveted the hypostatic union. For we are not accustomed to envy others goods, except those which we wish for ourselves, when we do not have them: and then it is not more to be believed of the malice of the devil, that he envied that dignity to men, than that he inordinately coveted it for himself. Whence as many of the Fathers, or Doctors as say that the devil envied man his dignity, can be cited for this assertion; because either they directly mean the dignity of the hypostatic union, or if they speak expressly of another, certainly from the fact that he envied any other dignity whatsoever, it is gathered as most verisimilar that he envied this one also, which is the greatest of all.

It must be known at the outset, that there are especially two opinions among Authors concerning the resolution of the first part of this Question. The first was that of Origen, reported by St. Thomas in 1. par. qu. 64. art. 2, asserting that every created will, both of the blessed and of the damned, is flexible toward good or evil; excepting however the will of Christ's soul.

The second is that of all Catholic Doctors affirming that the wills of demons and of the damned are so hardened in evil that they can in no way repent. But they do not all put forward the same cause of this obstinacy; indeed, in assigning it they split into various opinions. First, then, St. Thomas in 1. p. quaest. 64. art. 2., inquiring into the cause of the obstinacy of the demons, after saying that the apprehensive power is proportioned to the appetitive power, with this difference: that the sensitive appetite is for a particular good, while the will is for a universal good — just as also the apprehensive sense is of singulars, but the intellect of universals — adds:

Now the apprehension of an angel differs from the apprehension of a man. For an angel apprehends immovably by his intellect, just as we immovably apprehend first principles, which are the object of intellect; but man apprehends movably by reason, discoursing from one thing to another, having a way of proceeding to either of two opposites. Hence too the will of man adheres to something movably, as being able even to depart from that adherence and adhere to the contrary: whereas the will of an angel adheres fixedly and immovably. Therefore if it be considered before adherence, it can freely adhere both to this and to its opposite, namely in those things which it does not will naturally. But after it has already adhered, it adheres immovably; and hence it is said that man's free will is flexible toward the opposite both before and after election, while the angel's free will is flexible toward either opposite before election, but not after. Thus therefore the good angels, ever adhering to justice, are confirmed in it: but the wicked are obstinate in sin.

— He says the same in 2. dist. 7. quaest. 1. art. 2., where, rejecting five arguments concerning this obstinacy of the wicked angels:

it must be said, he says, that just as it is impossible for a will adhering to the right end to proceed to a work of sin, so conversely it is impossible for any upright work to proceed from a will adhering inseparably to a perverse end... Hence just as men after death are confirmed in good or in evil, so also angels after conversion or aversion.

— The Angelic Doctor therefore holds that the cause of the obstinacy of the demons must be placed in this: that their will immovably adheres to a perverse end, namely that complacency in their own gifts and natural excellences, to the prejudice of the divine Majesty, to whom alone they ought to have adhered, grows fast upon them immovably. — Not far from this opinion is Henry of Ghent, quodlibet 8. qu. 11., teaching that an angel is for this reason immutable from the act he once elicited, because a separate will so deeply immerses itself in its object that it cannot recoil from it.

Secondly, Aureolus asserts that this obstinacy arises from a certain vicious habit which God produces in the will of the damned as punishment for their offenses, and that by means of it they are inclined to evil in such a way that they are utterly unable to perform any good work.

Thirdly, there are those who teach with Marsilius in 2. qu. 5. art. 3. that the cause of the obstinacy of the damned in evil is drawn from this: that God does not will to concur with them for eliciting any good work.

Fourthly, Ocham in 2. dist. 29. contends that this obstinacy arises from this: that some act is admitted in a damned angel which is not in his power; whence he infers that God totally and immediately causes some act in the will of the wicked angel.

Finally, last of all, there is the opinion of the Subtle Doctor, teaching that the cause of the obstinacy of the demons and other damned is to be drawn from nothing else than from the denial of divine aid for repenting, and from the perverse will of the damned, from which follows a certain depraved affection of the will by which each of the damned immovably adheres to the perverse end into which they fell in the final state of the way. That this opinion may become clearer

Note 1. The state of Wayfarers, of Comprehensors, and of the Damned is far different. The state of Wayfarers is that general and universal law of God by which he decreed to concur with the will for the act of penance and of disposition to sanctifying grace, as well as for its increase, whenever man should wish to repent and elicit some good work, according to that of Ezekiel 18. I desire not the death of the sinner, etc. The state of Comprehensors is the divine law by which God decreed so to preserve those Comprehensors that they can neither decline from him nor ever cease from a good work, according to that saying of Christ the Lord, John 10. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no man shall pluck them out of my hand. Finally, the state of the Damned is that universal law of God itself by which he decreed that he will in no way concur with the damned for any meritorious act, nor for disposition to justifying grace, on account of their final demerits, according to that of Ecclesiasticus 11. If a tree fall to the south, or to the north, in what place soever it shall fall, there shall it be. That is, as the Doctor explains, in whatever perverse love of a rational creature it stood at the end of the way, it will remain forever.

Note 2. From the same Doctor, dist. 7. n. 11.: that in a created will, besides its entity and natural goodness, which belongs to it insofar as it is a positive being according to the degree of its entity more or less perfect, there is a threefold other moral goodness, namely objective, circumstantial, and gratuitous; the first comes from the object; the second from circumstance; the third from grace. The first is called goodness from the genus, and belongs to the act from the fact that it is exercised about an object according to the dictate of right reason; so that the object appears by probable or certain reason to be so fitting and congruous that a rational creature can tend toward it without sin. Circumstantial goodness is that which belongs to an elicited act together with all the circumstances which right reason dictates it ought to possess. I say "with all," because if any required circumstance were lacking, or another present which ought not to be present, the act would not have this goodness; for according to St. Dionysius, book De Divinis Nominibus c. 4. good comes from an integral cause, but evil from any defect whatsoever. Finally, the third goodness is that from which the act has the character of meritorious with respect to some reward; which goodness it has both from sanctifying grace and from divine acceptation; for no act can precisely be meritorious except through mediation of ordination, pact, or divine acceptation: but this goodness necessarily presupposes the two former; for an act, in order to be meritorious, must be occupied about a congruous object and have all the circumstances due to it. — The Doctor proposes an example of these goodnesses; for when one gives alms, it has goodness from the object, since right reason dictates it good to relieve the need of one's neighbor: it likewise has goodness from the circumstances, if he bestows that alms with the due circumstances: for instance, if from his own goods and not from another's, if at an opportune time, if for a good end, such as the love of God, etc. But it will have meritorious goodness if, besides the two aforementioned goodnesses, it is done from sanctifying grace and supernatural charity.

Note 3. From the same Doctor: that against this threefold goodness there is opposed a threefold malice. The first indeed is malice from the genus: namely when an act, which has only natural goodness, is directed to an object which according to right reason is unbefitting a rational creature: for instance if hatred tend toward God. The second is malice from some circumstance disordering the act, for instance if one bestow alms for the sake of vainglory. Finally, the third is demeritorious malice, which accrues to an act when it is not only not meritorious of eternal life, but rather of punishment. The Doctor notes moreover that each of those three malices can be considered as opposed to the goodness corresponding to it either privatively or contrarily. If it be considered in the first way, it signifies nothing else than the privation or negation of goodness in a free human act, for that instant in which a good act could be elicited by the will; and for an act to be evil is nothing else than for it to lack some such goodness: hence if one elicited an act without any good circumstances, the act so elicited would be evil with a malice privatively opposed to circumstantial goodness, because it would not have circumstantial goodness; and if one elicited an act not according to the inclination of charity, by that very fact the act would be evil with a malice privatively opposed to meritorious goodness; and in the same way, if one elicited an act without objective goodness, it would be evil with a malice privatively opposed to objective goodness. But if the act has not only a fitting object, but an unfitting object, then the act will have not only objective malice privative, but contrary objective malice. Similarly, if the act not only lacks the good circumstances it could have, but also has some circumstance it ought not to have, then it will have circumstantial malice not only privative but contrary; and finally, if it not only lacks meritorious goodness but has demeritorious malice, then it will be evil with a malice contrary to meritorious goodness.

— Finally, the Doctor adds that demeritorious, objective, and contrary malice are mutually convertible, but not circumstantial and demeritorious; for an act which is evil through lack of objective goodness must necessarily be evil with a malice contrary to that goodness. It is otherwise, however, with circumstantial and demeritorious malice; for it can happen that an act is evil through lack of circumstantial and meritorious goodness without having a malice contrary to them: for it can well happen that an act is not meritorious because it is not elicited from the inclination of charity, and yet is not demeritorious; for a morally good act elicited by a sinner, or by a man placed in the state of pure nature, would be neither meritorious nor demeritorious. Next, an act elicited about a good object without the addition of any good circumstance, whether from inconsiderateness, or from the fact that one was not bound to join any further good circumstance, would be evil with a circumstantial malice privative, not indeed positive or contrary, because it would not have any circumstance by reason of which it ought simply to be called evil, sufficient to found the ground of demerit.

— These things thus premised, three things remain to be determined: First, whether the will of the demons has been so obstinate in evil that they can in no way repent; Second, whence this hardening arises; Third, whether by reason of this hardening in evil the demons can elicit no good work.

First conclusion. — The will of the demons and of the other damned is so hardened in evil that it can nowhere truly be recalled to the state of justice.

This is common among all Catholic Doctors, and it is proved first by all those texts of Scripture by which it is signified that the damned are subjected to perpetual punishments never ending, and that presently they will nowhere obtain forgiveness of admitted sin, nor perform a salutary penance for their offenses: thus Matthew 25. Of the Reprobate it is said: Depart into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels: and further on: These shall go into everlasting punishment: and Mark 9. Of these same Reprobate Christ says: Their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished. Hence Apocalypse 20. Of the Devil it is said: He was cast into the pool of fire and brimstone, where both the beast and the false prophet shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

Secondly, this truth was defined in the 5th Synod, and also in the 6th action 16., where the Letter of Sophronius was approved, condemning Origen because he taught that the punishments of the damned would sometime end and that they themselves would be restored to the state of innocence. The same was determined in the Council of Lateran under Innocent III, chapter Firmiter, where it is decreed of the Reprobate that with the devil they shall receive eternal punishment. The same truth holy Athanasius teaches in his Symbol, where he says: They that have done good shall go into life everlasting, but they that have done evil into everlasting fire.

The same truth is proved from the Holy Fathers, who constantly say that the demons are utterly incapable of salutary penance and of recovering grace. So St. Gregory of Nyssa, book 1. Philosoph. cap. 3.: Man alone, he says, among intellectual creatures had the principle of doing penance so as to become worthy of pardon: for neither demons nor Angels can become worthy of pardon by doing penance: and lower down he says: What death is to men, the fall is to Angels.

— St. Damascene confirms it, book 2. De Fide c. 3., where he says absolutely that an angel is not capable of penance, because it lacks a body, which reason he explains thus: For what enables man to emerge from the mire of vices and turn himself to better fruit, that he has obtained on account of the weakness of the body. By which he openly declares that he speaks of fruitful penance, and of that which depends on a special aid and benignity of God.

To these St. Fulgentius subscribes, De Fide ad Petrum c. 3., where, after saying that God created all the angels with love of himself and with such liberty that each could have it and lose it, yet so that whoever lost it spontaneously could thereafter not resume it by his own choice and without the aid of grace, he adds: And of the angels indeed he so disposed and fulfilled it, that if any of them should lose the goodness of his will, he would never repair it by a divine gift. St. Gregory confirms and explains this very thing, book 2. Moralia c. 3.: God, he says, in no wise calls back the apostate spirit to penance, but cutting off the way of his pride, condemns him: and book 4. c. 9. and 10. he says absolutely: An angel fell by pride in such a way that he cannot be repaired, because he is recalled to the light of restoration by no hope of pardon, by no amendment of conversion.

The Seraphic Doctor confirms this truth in 2. dist. 7. art. 1. qu. 1., from St. Damascene book 2. De Fide c. 4., where he says: That what the fall is to angels, death is to men: but man after death cannot recover the good and right will which he lost in life: therefore, etc.

Secondly, similar is the reason of confirmation in good and of obstinacy in evil: but the angels, as soon as they were well moved, were confirmed in good: therefore also the wicked, as soon as they sinned, were obstinate in evil: just as therefore the good cannot fall, so neither can the wicked rise again.

Thirdly, the angel sinned more gravely than man: therefore he also ought to be punished more gravely: but the sin of man was punished with some irremediable punishment, such as the punishment of death, from which none escapes: therefore it is necessary that the sin of the angel, which was the death of the spirit, be punished with the punishment of death: but it could not be punished with the punishment of the death of nature: therefore it was necessary that he be punished with the punishment of eternal damnation.

You will say 1. St. Cyril of Jerusalem in Catechesis 2., after having magnified the benignity of God toward men in remitting their sins, subjoins: But we know not how much he has pardoned even the Angels; for he forgives them also: he holds therefore that the blessed angels can sin, and consequently that the demons can repent.

I deny the consequence, and to the antecedent I say that St. Cyril is to be understood as speaking of an indulgence anticipated through efficacious preventing grace and preservation; just as St. Augustine says that the grace of God is to be credited for the many sins we do not commit, which we would commit if God permitted. But that this was his mind, he himself declares, adding: He forgives them, since he alone is the one who cannot sin. For by this argument he proves that God grants indulgence to the holy Angels by sustaining them lest they sin, because certainly they are not impeccable by nature, as God is: but he does not signify that he pardons them after they have sinned.

You will say 2. If the angels could not repent, nor their will be rectified, that impotence would be sought either on the part of God, or on the part of the angel, or on the part of sin: but neither can be said. Not indeed on the part of God: both because the obstinacy of an evil will, or its impossibility of rectitude, is only a defect, not indeed an effect: therefore it has not an efficient but a deficient cause: but God is the deficient cause of nothing: therefore he is not the cause or reason of this impossibility; and because God antecedently wills all men and angels to be saved, and therefore the perpetual perdition of the angels is not to be drawn from him; and because if the devil asked pardon, he would obtain it from God, for God rejects no one who repents: therefore that impossibility does not arise on the part of God. Nor does it arise on the part of the will of the angelic nature: both because the angel by sinning did not lose the liberty of choice, because liberty of choice is natural to him: but by reason of free choice the angelic will was susceptible of rectitude before sin: therefore as much as lies in its nature, it is still susceptible of rectitude. And because angelic sin does not exceed the sin of man infinitely: therefore neither did it remove the angel from God infinitely: but the sin of man did not take away from him the possibility of recovering that beatitude: therefore neither did angelic sin take it away: and accordingly he can be restored. Finally, not on the part of sin; both because whatever sanctifying grace, were it in the will of the demon, would dissolve and purge away every sin from it; and consequently that sin is not of itself incurable. And because no guilt induces necessity in the will: therefore it does not take away the possibility of recovering rectitude, and accordingly there is no impossibility on the part of sin preventing the angelic will from obtaining its pristine integrity.

— The Seraphic Doctor answers that indeed that impossibility of recovering prior integrity is not to be sought precisely and formally from the damned, neither on the part of God, nor from the nature of the angel, nor from the gravity of sin: but from the state: Because, he says, since the will of the angel is outside the state of merit, therefore it is deprived of all grace; and because it is in the state of damnation, therefore there is present to it a most certain despair, which are two conditions altogether disposing the will to the impossibility of rectitude.

— We shall adduce another argument of the Subtle Doctor under the following Conclusion.

You will say 2. For the rectification of the will and the restitution of innocence two things are especially desired, namely indulgence on the part of the divine mercy, and the act of penance on the part of the sinner: but both are possible in the fallen angels. The first indeed, because the mercy of God is infinite, but the guilt of the demons finite; and the infinite cannot be overcome by the finite: therefore the divine mercy can remit and forgive the sin committed by the fallen angels. The second appears equally true, since the fallen angels preserved their natural powers intact, and therefore have a truly perfect and flexible liberty; and thus, as they were able to determine themselves to sin, so they can divest themselves of its affection: therefore from neither side does the restitution of their innocence involve a contradiction.

— The Seraphic Doctor answers by denying the consequence: for their impenitence arises not only from God denying grace and indulgence: but also from the fact that they are outside the state and time of meriting.

For, he says, it must be noted that in the formation and ordering of things the account is taken not principally of Mercy and Justice, but of Wisdom. For divine Wisdom decreed to make in the Universe a twofold rational creature, so that the Universe might be complete: one united to a body, as the rational soul; the other spiritual, as an angel: and since a substance wholly spiritual is wholly incorruptible and ingenerable, one angel could not be produced from another; and therefore they were produced all at once, and because they were produced at once, therefore they were to be glorified at once, or disposed to be glorified at once. And because they are spiritual and incorporeal, having in no way any retardative; hence it is that they were created in the place of glory, namely in the Empyrean; and so disposed to glory from the outset, both by reason of nature and of place; and therefore the time of merit was fixed for them as briefly as possible: namely up to the first deliberative aversion and conversion. But man, because he was created in an animal body for the begetting of offspring for the worship of God, and thus in a disposition more remote from glory, was given a distant place for meriting from his creation, namely the earthly Paradise; and a long-lasting term was fixed for him on account of the office of begetting offspring: and therefore when the Angel sinned, at once the time of the appointed merit went out, but not for man: and therefore this one could be rectified, but that one could not.

And this is what S. Augustine said, De mirabilibus sacrae Scripturae (or whoever is the Author): The Angel fell from the most sublime state of his order: therefore he could not rise again. It is evident, therefore, that the will of the Angel is not rectifiable, nor has it been from the time at which it fell; for since it was outside the state of merit, its damnation was most certainly revealed to it: and therefore just as the Blessed cannot fear damnation, so the evil Angel, on account of the certainty of damnation, cannot hope for salvation, and on account of the absence of grace cannot repent, and therefore cannot be good either.

Second conclusion. — The formal reason for which the demons and the damned cannot repent is not the inflexibility, or immobility, of their will in the evil end apprehended.

So the Subtle Doctor, in book 2, dist. 7, single question, where, having proposed the opinion of S. Thomas and of Henry, he attacks both, n. 1, first indeed by authority taken from chapter 3 of the book De Fide ad Petrum, which he praises under the name of S. Augustine, because in his time it was thought to be the work of Augustine, although in truth it has S. Fulgentius for its author. He writes:

If it were possible for human nature, which after it turned away from God lost the goodness of its will, to have it again of itself: far more possible would it be for the angelic nature to have this, since the less it is weighed down by the weight of an earthly body, the more it would be endowed with this faculty, and could have it.

Therefore, according to the mind of S. Fulgentius, the angelic will is not inflexible and immobile with respect to an object once apprehended; rather it is more flexible than the human; since liberty of choice arises from the dignity and subtilty of the nature, which since it is greater in the Angels than in men, imports an even greater flexibility. Add that inflexibility and immobile adherence to one part is a sign of earthly grossness and bodily weight, whereas flexibility is an argument of the subtilty of a spiritual nature. For brute animals, since they are wholly corporeal and have no spirituality at all, also lack that mobility and flexibility in operating with which men are endowed. Hence, weighed down by the weight of an earthly body, they tend toward the earth as toward a center. Hence the lighter and more subtle the elements are, the more flexible and subtle they are, as appears in fire and air. Therefore, according to the mind of S. Fulgentius, confirmed by experience, it is established that the will of perverse Angels is no more immobile and irrevocable from evil once apprehended than the will of impious men.

The Doctor proves the conclusion first because not only is the will of the damned Angel obstinate in evil, but also that of the damned man: but the cause of the obstinacy of man is not his immobility in operating, as the Thomists confess; therefore neither is it the cause of the obstinacy of the Angel. Nor indeed can a reason be assigned why the obstinacy of each damned one should be of a different kind, unless perhaps because the Angel recalls himself with greater difficulty from an election once made than a man: but from that greater difficulty it does not follow that he cannot be recalled at all; therefore there is no difference simpliciter between the two.

— The Doctor confirms this by the example of Lazarus, who, having died, was made inflexible and indeed immobile, whence afterwards, as long as he was separated, he neither merited nor demerited. But if you say that he, recalled to life, lost that immobility connaturally: I will reply that even if the evil angel were again placed in the state of the way and had the fitting means for rebounding from sin, in truth he could turn away from it.

If you had said. The soul of Lazarus, separated from the body, was not immobile in its apprehension, because God suspended his concurrence with respect to its operation; I will reply that just as this is asserted gratis and without foundation, so it is denied with reason and foundation. For it is not probable that his soul lay in the tomb with the body, but that as soon as it was loosed from it, it was carried into the bosom of Abraham, as is narrated in the Gospel of the soul of the parabolic Lazarus: and accordingly that soul had its operations, as the others have as soon as they exit from their bodies.

The Doctor proves, 2.: Therefore the angelic will would be immobile in the act which it once chose, because indeed its appetite must be proportioned to its cognitive power; but the cognitive faculty of the Angel, or intellect, apprehends immobilely, and without discourse, every object about which it is engaged: but this foundation is false: therefore also that from which it follows.

— The Thomists admit the major; the Doctor proves the minor: First indeed because they suppose what is false, affirming that the intellect is the sufficient mover of the will: for the intellect cannot otherwise move the will to act, except insofar as it proposes to it the object under the aspect of good and evil, or insofar as some practical imperium follows upon that propensity, determining the will to the pursuit of good or the flight from evil: but before the first sin it was proposing to the will those objects about which it operated under the aspect of a delightful good, and of dishonest evil; nor did there follow any imperium rather in order to the pursuit of the delightful good than to the flight of the dishonest evil, or the pursuit of another honest good, which was being proposed at the same time to the Angel; because otherwise all the Angels would be determined to act badly; because the intellect proposed objects of this kind under these aspects equally to all, and similar practical judgments followed in all; for there is no reason of diversity on the part of the intellect; indeed, if the intellect were to determine to anything, it ought rather to determine to the honest good than to the dishonest delightful good in that prior instant.

— Then, if from the reason of mover and moved, the intellect, immobile in apprehending, should make the will immobile, it would follow that the angelic will would be immobile not only after the first election of the will, but also in the very first, or before the first, because the intellect of them, just as immobilely it shows something after the first election, so also before it, even if it, immobilely apprehending, moves the appetite immobilely: therefore it will also move immobilely in the first act, and consequently, it makes the will immobile.

— Finally, the evil Angel had grace in the first instant: therefore in that instant he operated well: therefore if he is immobile, as the Thomists will, he ought always to have persevered in good operation. It is proved; because if in the first instant he did not have the good operation of the love of God above all things, he would sin mortally, especially according to the Thomists, who teach that the rational creature is held to love God above all things in the first instant of the use of reason: but he did not have mortal sin in that first instant, because he cannot have such with sanctifying grace: therefore he had such love, and therefore he operated well: and accordingly, if the will of the Angels is immobile in the first election, it necessarily ought always thus to have operated well; which consequent, since it is false, it must be confessed that his will is not invertible from its nature.

— Nor does that disparity avail which S. Thomas attempts to institute between the will of man and of the Angel, namely that the angelic intellect is immobile and moves the will necessarily, because it understands without discourse; but the human understands through discourse. For although this opinion would be true, which however we attacked above as false with the Doctor, nevertheless from that it would not follow that the intellect of the Angels is more immobile in its assent than the human. For so certitudinally, says the Doctor, that is, without doubting, does it hold the conclusion to which it runs by discourse, as the Angel holds it by seeing it in principle without discourse: therefore that immobility of the human intellect, that is, certitude, would equally make the will immobile, as that other which is posited in the Angel. Then, the human intellect adheres so immobilely, and without discourse, to the first principles, namely, that the honest good is to be loved and dishonest evil to be fled, as the Angel adheres without discourse to that proposition. Therefore the will ought to operate immobilely with respect to such an object, so that if it once willed to pursue the honest good, it ought always to will it: which is also false: therefore that disparity is nothing. Finally, although the Angel would not discourse, he could no less on that account change his apprehension on account of new motives previously not known; as is clear from the example of the demons, who first persuaded the killing of Christ, and afterwards dissuaded it, as the SS. Fathers testify, because they first did not know that death would be to their prejudice; but afterwards they knew it.

— These things are confirmed, first because when the Angel sinned he previously merited according to the doctrine of S. Thomas. Therefore by sinning he changed his will, nor did he stand immobilely in the prior apprehension. Then, when he sinned, either reasons occurred to him why he should not obey God and be subjected, nor continue his merit, or they did not occur. If the first, therefore his intellect did not at once represent to his will the object as immutably apprehensible, and thereupon the foundation of S. Thomas falls. If the second, therefore his will does not follow infallibly the dictamen of the intellect, since it adheres to the object even though the intellect supplies it with more urgent reasons by which it ought to be recalled from it. Moreover, if better reasons did not occur to him, but he sinned from a lesser consideration, how did he adhere more tenaciously to the object which moved him less? Finally, it is established by example that the devil in truth changed his will, for John 13. he persuaded Judas to betray Christ to death, but Matthew 27. he inspired the wife of Pilate to press for the liberation of Christ. Therefore the will of the demon is not immobile.

Third conclusion. — The obfirmation of the demon and of the damned in evil does not proceed even from an infused vitious habit in their will: nor from an act produced in them by God: but from the denial of the divine aid by which they could repent.

This conclusion contains three parts, of which

The first is proved. Namely, that that obduration does not proceed from an infused vitious habit: for if that habit concurred with the will, it would be either partly or totally. If partly, therefore since it does not by its own reason change the will, it follows, that if that will is not of itself determined to hatred of God, e.g. nor by such a habit could it be determined to that hatred: but if it be the total cause of that hatred, so that the will be related only merely passively with respect to that hatred produced by such a habit; it follows, that that hatred is not sinful, for that hatred would be caused totally by God at least immediately: but what is from God cannot be sin, since God cannot be the author of sin; therefore, etc. But the consequent is most false: therefore the will of the damned is not related merely passively with respect to that hatred of God; and therefore it has no habit which is the total cause of that hatred, and of the other sins of the demons.

By the same reasoning the second part is evinced; namely, that that obfirmation in evil is not made through any act produced by God in the will of the demons: for since such obfirmation is the cause of the continuation of the hatred of God, and of all the sins which the demons persevere in operating, if God were the total and only author of this obduration, he would likewise be held to be the author of their sins: which since it is absurd, that also from which it follows is absurd.

Therefore the third part is proved, namely, that the obstinacy of the demons proceeds partly from the will, partly from the denied grace, not dividedly but conjointly. For if that obstinacy of the evil will were from God, says the Doctor, n. 20.

therefore that malice will be from God, and thus God is the cause of sin; but if also from the will, it seems that it can of itself rebound from it, just as it could of itself will that evil badly. For by what power it moves itself to something, by the same it rests in it, and equally it can withdraw itself from it, and move to another more inclining, which is that opposite: therefore it is necessary that it proceed from both.

Wherefore the Doctor, replying below to this principle, says,

Since therefore it is argued, that if this is from the will alone: therefore the will alone can rebound to the opposite, namely from that object into which it has inordinately inclined itself; I answer: I say, that for meritoriously rebounding there is required another principle than the will, namely grace, which the Angel cannot have of himself, and God, according as he deserted him, disposed not to give it to him.

— S. Fulgentius confirms this same truth in book De Fide ad Petrum, c. 3. where he says that God so disposed the cause of the Angels and of men, that if by the choice of their own will they should strive to make their own will against the command of the Creator, there would be left to them for punishment a miserable eternity, to be tormented in errors and pains. And he adds: And concerning the Angels indeed he disposed and fulfilled this, that if any of them should lose the goodness of the will, he would never repair it by a divine gift. And below he adds: So that the evil Angels can neither ever be without the evil of the will nor of punishment; but while the evil of unjust aversion remains in them, the eternal damnation of just retribution remains also. And again, below he says, that no Angel, from the time they were cast out of heaven by the merit of their fall, can resume a good will.

Therefore not as it was free for the Angels to abstain from sin before they had sinned, so, sin committed, it is no longer free for them to abstain from it. For they fell by their transgression into the most miserable and adamantine necessity and servitude of sinning, from which, since all the doors of grace have been shut to them, they cannot extricate themselves by liberty of choice alone. Nor indeed is there given to them, as to men, a place for pardon, or any grace of rising again from their fall; but they are immersed so deeply in sin that every faculty of extricating themselves from it has been taken away from them.

While Gregory curiously searches out the cause of so horrible a judgment, he brings forward this in book 9. Moralia c. 18:

The spirits of the Angels, he says, sinned therefore irremissibly, because the more robustly they could stand, insofar as the commixture of flesh did not hold them. But man therefore merited pardon after his fault, because he received it through the carnal body, by which he is lesser than himself. Thus he whose degree was higher, his fall was made more grievous. And he who was bore no human flesh at all, persuading or deceiving himself alone, from which, though unjustly, he could contract matter of sinning, but was by his own iniquity the author of the perdition of his pride, and had the reason of another fault, in which his pride took its beginning, so that its punishment lacked an end. Thus he who was the author of deception for man, will deservedly bear both his own and that one's punishment, whose author he was of falling. For he sins more gravely, who is the author of sinning not only for himself, but also for another.

Fourth conclusion. — Neither the Angels nor men who are damned can elicit in any way a good meritorious work: yet they have the power to elicit a natural act, which could be morally good: which however they will nowhere elicit on account of the will obfirmated in evil.

This is the Doctor's, as to the three parts; of which he declares the First at n. 14. where he first premises that it does not repugn that the demon can have a meritorious act: neither logical power; because indeed it does not imply a contradiction that the demon can have grace, and with it operate; nor real passive power; because what is of its nature capable of receiving right volition, as long as it remains the same in itself, cannot become non-receptive of it: but the will of the demon was once receptive of good volition, and of meritorious act, because before damnation he could have merited, and have been blessed: nor finally real active power, because, he says, n. 15. the will with respect to right volition is an active partial principle; and it has it integral, according to Dionysius, and the same which it had in the state of innocence; and consequently it is not true that there is denied to him the power, that is, the active partial principle of meritorious volition: but this principle is not total, because the will alone does not suffice for meritoriously willing; but grace is required as a cooperating principle.

Nor is that will a principal partial principle, or sufficient for positing the partial principle, namely grace, in being. For although grace, once had, the will using it is the principal agent with respect to the act: grace not had, it itself is not sufficient for positing grace in being: because grace cannot inhere except from God alone creating. And thus the Angel has not the total active principle for acting such an act, nor is he the principal partial active principle, in whose power it is to produce the remaining partial active principle in being, and to remove the impediment of the use of itself, and of its co-principle, for eliciting the act, and the common effect of them.

— And he confirms this by this example:

If someone possessing sight were in darkness: although he would then have the partial principle of the act of seeing, and the principal principle of seeing, when light and the visual power come together: he still does not then have the total principle, nor a principal principle sufficient to produce that which is required for the effect of those two partial principles; nor can he > even remove the impediments, and therefore although this man has the visual power, insofar as he has a diminished principle with respect to vision, it would nevertheless not be within his power to see. So I say that it is not within an angel's power to will meritoriously, because it is not within his power to have grace, nor consequently to use grace; nor even to use his will together with that grace so as to elicit his act, and all these negations are true: because it is not within his power to have the form which he might use, nor to remove the impediments.

Hence he concludes n. 17:

accordingly, then, as regards all the members, of power, inasmuch as it is a principle, it does not seem it should be denied that angels can will meritoriously, except because they do not have the total principle of meriting; nor the principal partial principle with respect to good volition; nor with respect to the special grace which is required for good volition.

He subjoins, moreover, that between the devil and meritorious work there is no intrinsic repugnance, but only extrinsic; namely, because God cannot grant grace to the devil, from absolute impotence, as though the devil's having grace indeed involved a contradiction:

For since, he says at n. 18, angelic nature is capable of grace, it follows that there is no contradiction in this, that grace should inform that nature: but it is repugnant only by reason of God's ordinary power, who must be conformable in acting to the rules predetermined by divine wisdom, or rather by divine will, which with respect to the rational creature to be beatified or punished established these rules: namely, that wherever the tree falls, there shall it be; that is, in whosoever rational creature's love it shall have remained, in him it shall remain: and their fire shall not be extinguished, and their worm shall not die, and these shall go into everlasting punishment; but the just into life eternal: and from such rules of Scripture Augustin concludes in book 21 De Civitate Dei chs. 23 and 24, that it is certain God will never give them grace: Accordingly, then, it is impossible for them to will well: because it is impossible for God (I speak of ordinary power) to give them grace.

Thus the Doctor.

The second part is also evident from the same Doctor, namely, that demons can have a morally good act; indeed, after he had impugned the opinion of St. Thomas, who says that demons can elicit no good act whatsoever, because they deform every act by some inordinate circumstance, referring it inordinately to love of self; and because they cannot cease from evil on account of their vehement inclination to it, he concludes at n. 24 that they do not necessarily have some evil act, neither speaking of any determinate act, nor of an indeterminate or vague one. He proves the first part, because supposing that it is not of the nature of the angelic will to persevere perpetually in an act once elicited, nothing else determinative of it toward any determinate act can be assigned unless it be supposed that they have some habit determining them to it: but such a habit is asserted above all most agreeably; and besides it is absurd that all the evil acts which a demon can have, he should have simultaneously, and also conserve simultaneously; which would follow from the opposite opinion: therefore neither a habit, nor his very will itself, is determined to all of them: therefore he can at times subsist without some one of them.

He proves also the third part, namely, that the will of the demon has no indeterminate evil act; because at least with respect to the act in general, it can have some indifferent act, that is, one which has neither all the circumstances required for an act morally good, nor even any evil circumstance positively opposed to the good circumstances, for absolutely nothing prevents its having such. For it seems wonderful, says the Doctor, to deny a natural power in that excellent nature, where nothing appears for which it should be denied. Nevertheless the Doctor infers that it is probable that by this power they do not go forth into act, on account of their vehement malice, according to which it is more probable that they act than according to natural power, according to which they could act into acts somehow opposed. From these things it is clear how badly certain persons accuse the Doctor, as though he had truly taught that demons sometimes elicit an honest work; for although he judges this not to be impossible, and shows that all the arguments which St. Thomas brings forward to prove it are of no moment, yet he holds that in fact demons can elicit no good moral work, on account, namely, of that supreme malice with which their will is affected.

You will say 1. From St. James ch. 2, The demons believe, and tremble: but to believe and to tremble are good acts: therefore they sometimes elicit good acts, and thus not every act of theirs is evil.

He denies the minor. The Doctor, n. 25. Because although that act of believing would be good diminutively, inasmuch, namely, as it would have a good object, and would not be affected by any evil circumstance, yet it would not for that very reason be good simply, since some circumstance could be wanting to it which would be required for it to be good: whence it could be an indifferent act. Or as the Doctor says, although they believe, still that act of believing is evil in them, because they hate the thing believed.

You will say 2. In demons and the damned there remains the image of God, by reason of which they are capable of the love of God himself: but they are not capable of him except by a good act: therefore they have a good act.

The Doctor answers, denying the minor. For they are participators of the image of God, and capable of it through this, that they have an intellectual nature, even if they had no good act whatever, and even if they did not have proximate potency for such an act, in which there is no difficulty.

You will say 3. Nothing violent is perpetual, because it is against the inclination of the subject in which it inheres; hence it is established, because if it were left to itself, it would immediately regain its pristine natural state, as is evident in heated water: but sin is against the inclination of rational nature: therefore it cannot be perpetual, and consequently they will be able at some time to work good.

He answers 1. The Doctor, distinguishing the major: nothing violent is perpetual in merely natural causes — I concede; in causes partly natural, partly free — I deny.

True indeed it is, he says, that in merely natural agents, the impediments ceasing, there is a return to the natural disposition, the violent action not preventing it. And the reason is, because the intrinsic principle is necessary with respect to natural goodness, insofar as it is of itself: and therefore it always causes it unless it be overcome by what dominates. In this way the will is not the perpetual cause of its goodness in its act, but only has a certain natural, quasi passive inclination to goodness in act; which although it could give to the act, it is nevertheless not inclined to give it with natural necessity, as a heavy body is inclined to descend downward.

He answers 2. distinguishing the minor: sin is against the inclination of nature, insofar as it is against the right act to which nature inclines — I concede; insofar as nature itself of itself, according to the affection for the advantageous, would have no inclination toward sin — I deny.

You will say 4. The damned in hell repent of their past sins, according to that passage of Wisdom 5¹ where the damned, repenting, and groaning through anguish of spirit, etc. — It is confirmed: for that rich man Epulo, who was buried in hell, desired that Abraham send someone to his brothers living in the world, inasmuch as he might admonish them to do penance, lest after death they rush with him into the place of torments: but this was an honest and good work: therefore truly the damned can work some good work.

I deny the consequence, and to the authority of Scripture I say, that the damned in hell repent of their past sins not from a good end, but from malice: wherein such repentance signifies nothing other than a certain remorse of conscience, which is always in all the damned, avenging the past sins; which remorse is not sin, but the punishment of sin.

To the confirmation. I say, that that compassion of the rich man arose not from natural piety, nor from love of his brothers, but from self-love: for he feared lest he himself be punished more severely, if his brothers were damned together with him, on account of the sins which they had committed while he either instigating, or setting an evil example.

You will object 5. No intellect can be so perverse, nor constituted in such a state, that it cannot understand the first principles proposed: therefore neither can the will be so corrupted that it cannot will the ultimate end: but in willing the ultimate end, it will elicit a good act, for volition of the ultimate end is a right operation: therefore the will of the damned will at some time be able to will well. The sequel of the major is proved: as the principle stands in speculative matters, so the end stands in moral matters. Next: every evil man is ignorant: therefore no malice can be in the will unless a prior error be in the intellect; and consequently where such error cannot be in the intellect — that it not understand the object inasmuch as it is intelligible — there too the will can fail to be so perverted that it cannot rightly will the good.

The Doctor answers, denying the sequel, which, he says, can press only Thomists asserting the intellect to be the sufficient mover of the will; for thence it follows that the intellect of the first angel cannot rightly conceive any practical principle without moving the will conformably, and therefore toward willing rightly.

To the first proof of the sequel. I say, that proposition is to be understood thus; that as principles stand to conclusions in speculative matters, so the end stands to the means in operable matters: not indeed as regards everything, but as regards this, that just as one cannot assent to a conclusion without assenting to the principles, and therefore must first assent to the principle than to the conclusion: so also one cannot will the means unless he wills the end; and therefore must first will the end rather than the means: but the sense is not that if error cannot be had in the intellect concerning the principle, error likewise cannot be had in the will concerning the end. But the reason why the will can err concerning the end, although the intellect cannot err concerning the first principles, is manifest: because the intellect is a natural cause, and is naturally determined by the proposed principle to right cognition, whence it must necessarily have it: but the will is a free cause, and is not determined by the proposed end to the right act: therefore, says the Doctor, it can be so averse that however great a good is shown to it, it does not move it to loving it, at least orderly; whence it does not follow: the intellect cannot err concerning the first principles: therefore the will cannot sin: for although there cannot be error in the intellect, the will can no less fail; otherwise it would follow that the will could not err in any state whatsoever.

You will object 6. If the demons and the damned necessarily will evil, it follows that they are always in the act of willing evil: therefore they increase their malice infinitely, and consequently will always increase punishment, so that just as they will never arrive at the term of malice, so nowhere will they have a term of punishment. — It is confirmed: if punishment and malice can always be increased in the damned, similarly goodness and reward can be increased in the blessed: but the consequent is absurd, for thence it would follow that the blessed would never arrive at the term of beatitude: therefore, etc.

He denies the major. The Doctor, n. 27. because, he says, when a habit is at its summit, and has everything required for its complement in such a subject, or according to the term fixed for it by divine wisdom, all subsequent acts add nothing, but proceed only from the habit already generated; just as the acts of an angel do not augment his habit of charity, neither effectively nor meritoriously, because it is at its term, either according to the nature of the habit, or according to the capacity of the subject, or at least according to the term fixed for it by God, but all those acts proceed from the fullness of that habit thus perfect: so it is in the case at hand: for the perfection, or complement, of the malice of the damned is at its term according to the rule of divine wisdom, which does not permit them to grow in malice intensively: and therefore subsequent acts do not augment the aforementioned habit, but stand to it as its effects. Thus the Doctor; whereby he signifies that although the damned always will evil, yet they do not for that reason increase their malice intensively, since plainly their malice is at its term. — Whence it follows that equally their punishment ought not to be increased, just as the glory of the blessed is not increased: because, he says, at num. 28. as the substantial reward in the first instant in which some angel is blessed is determined, and does not thereafter grow, because the good acts which follow are not meritorious, although they be good; so in a damned angel, in the first instant of his damnation, there is determined to him a certain punishment, which does not grow intensively: nevertheless the evil acts which he elicits will not go unpunished, just as neither will the good acts of the good angel go unrewarded: for as the acts of the holy angels are included in the first act, because they proceed from the perfection of the beatific act; but as regards the accidental reward which they can have, each act is a reward to him: so also the evil acts which the damned elicits are included in the first punishment certainly determined to him: whence each, just as he could have an accidental and proper punishment, so has himself for punishment, according to that saying of St. Augustine book one of the Confessions ch. 12. Thou hast commanded, O Lord, and so it is, that every sinner be a punishment to himself: for the most powerful and greatest punishment is the privation of the greatest good, such as is formally in the evil act the malice of fault, averting the sinner from God. Therefore their punishment will grow infinitely extensively, as also their malice, but neither intensively. Thus the Doctor.

You will insist. The acts of the damned are demeritorious because they are evil: therefore they ought to have a punishment corresponding to them.

The Doctor answers, it can be conceded that the act of the damned can be culpable, yet not properly demeritorious: because it is not elicited by a wayfarer, whose alone it is to merit and demerit: whence more properly that act can be called the act of one damned than of one demeriting: as on the other side the act of the blessed, although acceptable to God, is nevertheless not properly meritorious, but is rather called a beatific act, or the act of one blessed, or proceeding from beatitude.

For the more evident solution, however, of this last difficulty, it pleases us to set down what the Seraphic Doctor teaches, dist. 7. art. 1. quest. 2. where, speaking of the evil will of the demons, he says:

It can be considered threefoldly: namely, as regards deformity, as regards proneness, and as regards actuality. As regards deformity, the devil is continually in an evil will, so that no variation intervenes through a cessation or lessening of the deformity: for the stain of sin so adhered to the devil's will that in no way can it be separated from it. As regards proneness, it is a continuation of the same; yet in such a way that variation intervenes as to the manner of inclining; for the devil has proneness even now toward that which he first coveted, but in a different manner than before: for he formerly coveted it with the intention of obtaining it, whence he said, I will set my seat to the north, etc.; now however he covets, insofar as lies in him, like the ambitious man who hopes to obtain the episcopate; even if he does not obtain it, ambition does not depart, but the manner of aspiring varies: so it is also in the devil. As regards actuality, there is continuation in the act of sinning; yet variation intervenes as to genus, for he does not sin continuously with the sin of one genus, since he is not moved at once by diverse motions; for now he sins by pride, now by envy, etc.; nevertheless his will never rests; because it is never wearied, since it is incorruptible; and since perversity reigns in it, it always deforms and depraves every act which it elicits, and thus sins continuously.

But in what manner the malice of the demons is augmented, he discloses in the following Question, teaching that it is always increased as regards administrative power, namely in comparison with man: but not as regards contemplative power, whereby there is a simple and necessary aversion from God; whence he concludes that the demon's demerit is not augmented.

For unto the increase, he says, of an evil will, or demerit, an inordinate affection does not suffice, because this is in the damned and will be unto eternity: but beyond the time of merit there is required the state of meriting and demeriting: but the devil is in the state of demeriting as regards administrative power, not indeed as regards the contemplative. But the reason of this is, because God so founded the universe that the greater and mightier aid the lesser; therefore he gave to the angel not only contemplative power, whereby he might merit and be converted to God, but also administrative, whereby he might assist man. Therefore since the contemplative power was of the angel in himself, as regards that there was prefixed to him a space of meriting and de>meriting up to the first conversion, or aversion. But because the administrative has respect to man; therefore there was prefixed to the angel a space of meriting and demeriting, until men should be assumed wholly into glory: there remained therefore as regards that power the state of meriting and demeriting, and it remains even unto the day of judgment; but since merit and demerit is not in administrative power except through contemplative power, and in goods the contemplative is so converted into good that it cannot be turned away, therefore the administrative has only the place of meriting: on the contrary, because in evils the contemplative is so averted that it cannot be converted; therefore as regards the administrative there is only the place and space of demeriting. And herein it is manifest that the divine decree remains just and inviolate; because the time which he had prefixed from creation he ought not take away, neither from the good nor from the wicked; and for those indeed loving God that space was converted into good; but for impious ones, and sinning angels, it was converted into evil; and therefore it is manifest in what manner evil will grows in the wicked, namely as regards administrative power only.

Such the Seraphic Doctor, whereby he teaches the same as the Subtle Doctor, namely that the demerit of the demons is increased extensively, not intensively, since plainly their malice is increased through various acts against men whom they infest, but is not increased by reason of the aversion which they have toward God, whom from the beginning they pursue with supreme hatred.

All Theologians agree that there is a twofold punishment of the damned: one which they call the punishment of loss, the other which they name the punishment of sense.

The first consists in the lack of the vision and enjoyment of the supreme good, toward which the rational creature tends by its natural inclination as toward its ultimate end: and for this reason it is called the punishment of loss, because this lack surely inflicts the greatest loss upon the creature, since it strips it of every perfection, rest, and delight.

But the punishment of sense, or accidental punishment, is that which consists in the privation of any other good whatsoever besides the beatific vision, and in the pain or torment which they perceive from hellfire, or even from elsewhere.

Now here the word "sense" is taken in a broad meaning, so that it extends not only to the sensible appetite of animals, but also to the rational or intellectual appetite, and to the created will: in demons, however, this appetite is admitted by the consensus of all, just as in separated souls; and hence it comes about that they are capable of no delight or joy.

That both punishments exist Christ teaches in Matthew 25, for at the last judgment he will say to the reprobate: Depart from me, you cursed, behold the punishment of loss; into eternal fire, behold the punishment of sense.

— This twofold punishment moreover corresponds to the twofold disorder which is in mortal sin; for by mortal sin we are turned away from God and turned toward the creature; therefore the punishment of loss corresponds to the aversion from God, and for this reason it consists in the lack of God himself; the punishment of sense corresponds to the conversion toward the creature, and therefore it is inflicted by a creature; for he who inordinately desires created things deserves to be tormented by them.

And since the demons, having spurned their Creator, turned themselves away from him so as to turn themselves toward creatures — that is, toward Lucifer and themselves, loving themselves and their own excellence excessively and inordinately, complacent in themselves and in their own loftiness, loving intemperately their liberty, beauty, nobility, and the other gifts of God, and in a word preferring created things to their Creator — they deserve, by the decree of divine justice, to be tormented forever by a creature, that is, by fire, just as their crimes remain forever; For their pride ascends always, as the Royal Psalmist says: and thus God makes use of created things to repress their pride, to bring upon them a horrible deformity, and to shut them up in an everlasting prison.

— In the preceding Question we have sufficiently explained the punishment of loss of the demons; now their punishment of sense must be investigated; therefore

Note 1. It was the common opinion of very many of the holy Fathers that the demons were not precipitated at once into the lowest depths of Tartarus after their sin; but that they dwell in the air and above the earth until the final close of the world and the day of judgment arrive.

So first Athenagoras in his Embassy for the Christians, where after teaching that the angels burned with lust through desire for women, and that giants were propagated from them, he immediately adds: Those angels, then, who had fallen along with the heavens, wandering about the air and the earth, can no longer be raised above the heavens, etc.

Tertullian subscribed to this in his Apology, chapter 22, where he acknowledges the demons to be inhabitants of the air: They have, he says, from their dwelling in the air, and from their proximity to the stars, and from their commerce with the clouds, a knowledge of heavenly creatures.

— That S. Augustine held this same opinion can be gathered from various of his writings, but especially from his Enarration on Psalm 149, where he says:

Therefore to that darksome region, that is, to this air, the devil was condemned as to a prison, when he fell from the array of the higher angels together with his angels: For the Apostle says this of him, Ephesians 2¹ According to the prince of the power of this air, who now works in the children of unbelief; And the other Apostle says (namely S. Peter, 2. Epistle chapter 2.) For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but thrusting them down into the prisons of gloomy hell delivered them to be reserved unto judgment under punishment: calling this hell, because it is the lower part of the world.

— Nor does S. Jerome dissent. For in his Commentary on the Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians, explaining those words of chapter 6, against the spirits of wickedness in the heavenly places, he interprets the word "heavenly places" of the air: This, he says, is the opinion of all the Doctors, that this air, which dividing heaven and earth is called the void, is full of opposing powers.

— Rupert agrees with these, book 1. on Genesis, chapter 17, where he teaches that all the demons cast down into the air remain in it until the day of the last judgment:

He, he says, shaken out of Heaven terribly by the indignation of God while all the orders of Angels trembled, fell wretched into this air, and extinguished from all light, never again to see the light of God: and that he has now been cast down into this air, together with all his satellites whom we call the aerial bands, we have everywhere in the Scriptures: for example, in the Apostle saying: Our wrestling is not, etc. But it is to come to pass that, when all see it, he shall be precipitated into the lower Hell, into eternal fire, which was prepared for him and his angels.

To these Alcimus Avitus accords, who in book 2. On original sin introduces the devil thus speaking of man: Let him be the companion of my fall, let him enter the fellowship of my punishment. And may he divide with us the fires I foresee.

Hence Cassian, conference 8, chapter 12, says that

that air which is spread between heaven and earth is so beset with a dense throng of spirits, who flit about neither quiet nor idle, that divine providence has quite usefully hidden and withdrawn them from human sight. For either by the terror of their onset, or the horror of the faces into which they transform and convert themselves at will whenever it pleases them, they would overwhelm men with unbearable dread and make them faint away, being altogether unable to gaze upon such things with carnal eyes: or certainly they would be rendered daily more wicked by their constant examples and corrupted by imitation: and thereby between men and the unclean and aerial powers there would arise a certain harmful familiarity and pernicious union.

These words of Cassian are to be expounded thus, that God does not permit the demons to fashion horrific bodies for themselves, so as to mock the eyes of mortals with specters and phantoms, and terrify them from close at hand.

Note 2. Many likewise of the more ancient Fathers held with Origen that the fire to which the demons are already condemned or are yet to be condemned is not corporeal, nor does it signify anything other than the stinging conscience of sins, as Origen himself teaches in book 2. Periarchon, chapter 11, where, explaining these words of Isaiah chapter 51, Walk in the light of your fire, and in the flame which you have kindled, he says: By these words the sinner seems to indicate this, that he kindle for himself the flame of his own fire: and that he be not plunged into some fire that had previously been kindled by another, or existed before him.

That this was also the opinion of Origen, S. Jerome writes in his Apology 2. against Rufinus, where he says: But the fire which Origen is accustomed to understand in other cases, I think you do not fail to grasp, namely the conscience of sins, the repentance burning the inner heart, of which Isaias speaks in chapter 66. Their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be extinguished.

He explains this more fully in Epistle 69. To Avitus, where, speaking of Origen, he says:

The fire also of Gehenna, and the torments which holy Scripture threatens against sinners, he places not in punishments, but in the conscience of sins: when by the power and might of God every memory of offenses is set before our eyes: and as if from certain seeds left behind in the soul the whole crop of vices springs up: and whatever we had done in life, whether shameful or impious, the whole picture of them is drawn before our sight, and the mind gazing upon past pleasures is punished by the burning of conscience and is pierced by the goads of repentance.

— Theophilactus embraces the same opinion on the 9th chapter of Mark: But the worm, he says, and the fire which punish sinners, are the conscience and memory of each one, of the shameful things committed in this life: which consumes like a worm, and burns like fire.

S. Ambrose likewise favors this same interpretation in book 7. on Luke, chapter 14, where he opens his opinion in almost the very words Origen uses:

Therefore, he says, neither is there any grinding of bodily teeth, nor any perpetual fire of corporeal flames, nor is the worm corporeal; but these things are said for this reason, that just as from great indigestion fevers and worms arise, so if anyone does not boil down his sins, as it were by a certain interposed sobriety of abstinence, but by mixing sins with sins contracts a kind of indigestion of old and recent offenses, he shall be burned with his own fire and consumed by his own worms.

Note 3. There is likewise attributed to Origen the erroneous opinion that he taught the demons and the souls of the reprobate would at last sometime be released from all punishment and restored to their pristine sanctity, as Epiphanius affirms of Origen himself in the Epistle which he wrote against Origen to John of Jerusalem, where he attributes to Origen himself the teaching that the Devil would again become what he had been, would return to the same dignity, and would ascend the kingdoms of Heaven. Likewise Hieronymus in Epistle 51. to Pammachius says the same Origen judged that after many ages, and one restoration of all, Gabriel would be the same as the devil, Paul as Caiphas, virgins as prostitutes.

S. Augustine attributed the same dogma to Origen in the book On Heresies; where he says:

There are, moreover, other dogmas of this Origen which the Catholic Church does not receive at all: in which he neither falsely accuses him, nor can he be excused by his defenders, especially concerning the purgation and the liberation: and again concerning the revolution after a long time of rational universal creation to those same evils. For what Catholic Christian, whether learned or unlearned, would not shrink violently from that purgation of evils which he describes, that is, that even those who ended this life in crimes and villainies and sacrileges and impieties however great, and finally even the devil himself and his angels, though purified and liberated after most long ages, should be restored to the kingdom of God and to the light: and again after most long ages all who were liberated should relapse anew into these evils and return to them: and that these alternations of beatitudes and miseries of rational creature have always been and will always be?

That this was held by Origen is established from the Fifth Synod, in which the errors of Origen were condemned, among which this is enumerated, that he said the torments of all impious men, and even of the demons themselves, would have an end: and that the impious and the demons would be restored to their former state. Moreover, that Christ ought to be crucified for the demons, and to suffer the same repeatedly through future ages at the hands of the spirits of wickedness, who are in the heavenly places.

— S. Gregory of Nyssa seems to have subscribed to Origen in the book Catechetical, where, recounting the benefits of the Incarnation, he says:

These, and other things of this kind, he hands on as the great mystery of the divine Incarnation. For by this very fact, that he was mingled with humanity, passing through all the properties of nature — generation, upbringing, growth, even to the experience of death — he accomplished all those things which we have said; that he might free man from malice, and heal the very inventor of malice: For the healing of sickness is the purging of disease, though it be laborious.

The same he indicates in the book On the Soul and the resurrection, where, weighing those words of the Epistle to the Philippians, In the name of Jesus every knee should bow; he distinguishes a threefold genus by reason of those forenamed, namely Angels, Men, and demons; who, he says, press upon human nature to its detriment and ruin — that nature, namely, of the demons, Some, he says, say the Apostle numbers them among things underground and infernal, signifying thereby in that speech that, when wickedness shall at some time have been abolished through the long windings and circuits of ages, nothing outside the good will remain, but even the demons will confess with concord the dominion of Christ.

— Ambrose also seems to lend support to this opinion in Psal. 118. Octon. 20., where he teaches that the punishments of the devil will be eternal, and therefore that his punishment is deferred until after the judgment, so that it may be everlasting; but that the punishments of men, since they ought to be tempered and bounded by mercy, are appointed and inflicted immediately after death. For, he says, "the devil and his ministers will not be scourged with men; the punishment is separated where guilt and it stand apart." Hence he thinks that that rich man who implored the help of Lazarus would escape at some time: his words are these: "If this is wrought by a human tribunal" (that the guilty may obtain the mercy of the judge, and that return may not be cut off forever from those banished), "how much more is the judgment of Christ to be desired by all? The judgment of the devil is deferred, that he may be ever guilty in his punishments; ever bound fast in the chain of his own conscience for his wickedness, so that he may himself undergo judgment forever." Therefore that rich man in the Gospel, though a sinner, is pressed by penal afflictions, so that he may escape the sooner: but the devil is shown to be punished in no way unto judgment, in no way yet subject to punishments, except those which he, conscious of such great crimes, pays out of perpetual fear, lest he should ever be secure.

Yet it is certain that these holy Fathers were far removed from the opinion of Origen. These things having been premised, three points are to be resolved in the present Question: First, whether all the demons were straightway cast down into Hell after their sin. Second, whether they are truly tormented by corporeal fire. Third, whether their punishment is ever to have an end.

First conclusion. — The demons truly were cast down into Hell after their sin. And precipitated into it.

It is proved first from Holy Scripture, which declares in plain words that all the demons were precipitated into Tartarus. Isaiah 14: Thy pride is brought down to Hell. And below: Yet thou shalt be brought down to Hell, into the depth of the pit. So St. Peter writes in the Catholic Epistle 2, chap. 2: If indeed God spared not the angels that sinned, but dragged them down by the ropes of Hell, cast into Tartarus to be tormented, reserved unto judgment. To him St. Jude accords in the Catholic Epistle, verse 6: The angels, he says, who kept not their principality, but forsook their own habitation, he hath reserved under darkness in everlasting chains, unto the judgment of the great day. Although, however, St. August. in Psal. 149. thinks that the Tartarus and Hell named by St. Peter are to be understood of the lower part of the air, still this interpretation is not probable. For Tartarus, hell, and darkness plainly signify the infernal regions: yet I do not think the demons are so condemned and fixed there that they never go out of it as from a prison; since the holy Apostle, Ephesians 2, calls the devil the Prince of the power of this air: to whom, namely, the demons who dwell in the air render obedience and are subject.

This same truth is proved from the Council of Florence, where it is defined,

That the souls of those who after the reception of baptism have incurred no stain of sin whatever, and likewise those souls which, after contracting a stain of sin, have been purged either while in their bodies or when stripped of those same bodies, are received into Heaven without delay and clearly behold the very God, Three and One, as He is; yet by reason of the diversity of merits one more perfectly than another: but that the souls of those who depart in actual mortal sin, or in original sin alone, descend immediately into Hell, to be punished, however, with unequal punishments.

Although it defines nothing there concerning demons, nevertheless reason itself persuades that the same must be thought of them as of souls: both because the demons, who are the assailants of men, are also their tormentors; and therefore they must needs be in the same place, to torment men damned whom they have conquered; and because that punishment was owed from the beginning to their pride; and therefore from the beginning they were condemned to it by definitive sentence: but at the beginning it was not necessary that it be suspended or deferred; and therefore it was more fitting that they be sent, so to speak, straightway into its possession, until, men having been created, on account of their good and on account of other reasons of divine Providence, they received license to go out thence. Since, therefore, the presence of the demons in hell is, so to speak, the ordinary law and rule; but their absence is by dispensation and on account of an extrinsic end; therefore per se it is credible that hell is never emptied of all the demons: but that such a number is permitted to go out of it as suffices for the exercise of men. Finally, then, because the damned souls are not in a worse condition than the demons: but those suffer that punishment without intermission: therefore a fortiori the demons. The minor is established from the aforesaid definition of the Council of Florence, and also from that passage Job 21. They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment they go down to Hell: and Luc. 16. The rich man died, and was buried in Hell.

— Moreover, the same reason of the last reward and punishment intervenes in the angels; therefore as the holy angels received complete beatitude at the term of the way, from which they do not recede when they come into this world, except only as regards distance from the heavenly place; so entirely, with due proportion, must we think concerning the demons and their punishment.

St. Gregory teaches this very thing, lib. 4. Dialog. cap. 28., saying:

If you have believed, by the satisfaction of the sacred Eloquium, that the souls of the Saints are in Heaven, you must believe by all means that the souls of the wicked are also in Hell, because from the eternal retribution of justice, from which the just already glory, it must needs be by all means that the unjust also are tormented. For as beatitude delights the Elect, so it must be believed that from the day of their going forth fire burns up the Reprobate.

Wherefore I can scarcely conceive how he judges, lib. 4. Moral. cap. 10., that the demons have not yet been precipitated into Tartarus, since the same reason seems to hold of them as of the souls of the Reprobate.

But that this sentiment may accord with the words of the holy Fathers praised in the first Notable, I should judge it must be said that not all the demons, perhaps, were wholly unloosed in the prisons of the lower world, nor are those who were shut up there held perpetually in fiery chains; but that most of them were hurled down into Tartarus, while the rest have their station in the air and neighboring places; and that they change abodes in turn, and those who were in the lower regions emerge thence; and penetrate to the inhabitants of the lower regions, of the earth, and of the air, and pass to and fro, as Eusebius taught, lib. 7. De praeparatione Evangelica, where he declares that a multitude of angels stood above the earth: but that most of them were cast down into the lowest Tartarus:

Innumerable, he says, is another kind subjected to them, liable to the same faults: which, falling away through impiety from the lot of the former, compelled to exchange the shining and more divine adornment with which it had long ago been encircled, and the degree of honor which it had obtained in the royal Palace while it dwelt among the blessed choirs of angels, for a dwelling consonant with the impious, and the habitation of Tartarus, which the divine Scriptures call the abyss, and darkness in no way like ours, but such as the sacred Letters signify, by the just judgment and sentence of the great God; a most tiny particle of whom, left behind around the earth and the sublunary air for the exercise of athletes of piety, gave occasion to men for that superstitious error which admits a multitude of Gods, nor differs from utter ignorance and contempt of the Divinity, > gave cause to men.

This very thing can be urged from that passage of Luke 8., where the demons besought Christ not to command them to go into the abyss; for thence it is clear that some demons, cast out of human bodies, do not return to Tartarus unless urged by divine command.

— Hence in Holy Scripture a threefold place is assigned to the demons, altogether darksome, namely the air, the earth, and the abyss. From which perhaps it is that some have devised many kinds of demons, aerial, terrestrial, subterranean, infernal; yet it is not repugnant that these are the same who inhabit this air, and now roam over the earth, now are relegated to the abyss. But that they cannot change place at pleasure as they wish, and choose for themselves whichever they want, that stands in the way, that he is said to be delivered and kept in chains of darkness, and indeed eternal ones, unto the judgment of the great God. Wherein also every hope of return to God, and remission of guilt, is cut off from him, and his powers and ability to hurt and harm are so bound and constrained by the nod of divine Providence, that as a lion bound in chains can run no further than they permit, nor break them, so neither can he without the will and permission of God move himself, or undertake or do anything.

Second conclusion. — The demons are tormented in Hell by true and corporeal fire: Not physically, but intentionally, so holding and affecting the intellect of the demon that it cannot turn it to other objects at its own pleasure.

This Conclusion has two parts, of which the first is proved: That must especially be asserted which Holy Scripture expressly indicates, and the holy Fathers constantly affirm: but Holy Scripture often pronounces that men and demons damned are tormented with fire, and repeats it so frequently that it does not seem to be taken metaphorically: therefore it must be confessed that they are tormented with corporeal fire. The minor is proved from various texts of the same Scripture, especially from that Deut. 32.² A fire is kindled in my wrath, and shall burn even to the lowest hell; and Judith 16. The Lord omnipotent will vindicate them, in the day of judgment he will visit them; for he will give fire and worms into their flesh. Psalm. 10. He shall rain snares upon sinners, fire and brimstone, and storms of winds, the portion of their cup. Ecclesiastic. 7. The vengeance of the flesh of the impious is fire and worms. And cap. 21. The stubble gathered of the synagogue of sinners, and their consummation is a flame of fire.

— The same appears from the New Testament. Thus Matth. 3. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit shall be cut down, and cast into the fire. And the same 5. 22. and 18. hell, Gehenna of fire, is so called, and the damned are said to be cast into eternal fire. Marc. 9. Into the unquenchable fire, where their worm dieth not, etc.

But so constant a manner of speaking of Scripture savors not of a merely metaphorical sense; for according to the rule handed down by St. August., lib. 3. De Doctrina Christiana cap. 10., Holy Scripture is to be taken literally as often as the literal sense presents neither any contradiction nor any absurdity; which rule holds chiefly when the usage is frequent and uniform, and when the proper sense has not only nothing inconvenient, but is even more useful for good morals: and both are found in the present case.

The same the holy Fathers constantly teach, in the first place St. Cyprian in the book De laudibus Martyrii cap. 12., where he describes Hell thus elegantly:

A raging place whose name is Gehenna, with the great murmur of those wailing, and groaning, and with flames belching forth through the horrible night of thick darkness breathes forth ever savage burnings of a smoking furnace; a mass of fire hemmed in is obstructed, and relaxed into various issues of punishment. Then it rolls within itself many kinds of raging, whatsoever the ravening flame emitted has tortured with burning mouths.

The same, serm. De Ascensione Domini: The incorruptible flames, he says, shall lick round the naked body: the purple-clad rich man shall burn... In his own fat the pleasures rubbed raw shall boil, and amid frying-pans and flames wretched bodies shall be consumed.

— This truth St. Augustine expressly weighs lib. 21. De Civit. Dei, cap. 10. where, having inquired, if the fire of Hell be not spiritual, how the demons can be tormented in it: but if it be not corporeal, how it will be able to torture the bodies of men, since the same fire will be attributed to the punishment of men and of demons, Christ saying Matth. 25. Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, which is prepared for the devil, and his angels; he answers thus;

Except that there are certain bodies proper even to the demons, as learned men have judged, made from this gross and humid air, whose impulse is felt when the wind blows. If this kind of element could suffer nothing from fire, it would not burn when heated in baths: for as it burns, it is first burned itself, and makes what it suffers.

But although the demons are incorporeal, he presently asserts that they are affected and tormented by fire:

But if anyone asserts that the demons have no bodies, there is no need either to labor at this matter with painstaking inquiry, or to contend with contentious disputation. For why should we not say that, though in wonderful ways, yet in true ways, even incorporeal spirits can be affected by the punishment of bodily fire, if the spirits of men, themselves assuredly incorporeal, both now could be enclosed in bodily members, and then will be able to be insolubly bound with the bonds of their bodies? There will adhere, therefore, if no bodies are theirs, the spirits of the demons; nay rather, spirits, the demons, though incorporeal, shall be tormented by corporeal fires: not that the fires themselves, to which they will adhere, may be inspired with their junction, and become animals, that they may consist of spirit and body: but as I said, adhering in wonderful and ineffable ways, receiving from the fires punishment, not giving to the fires life.

— The same truth St. Gregory lucidly expounds, lib. 4. Dialog. cap. 28., where he speaks thus: As beatitude delights the Elect, so it must be believed that from the day of their going forth fire burns up the Reprobate. But Peter the disciple asks: And by what reason is it to be believed that corporeal fire can hold an incorporeal thing? which he pursues in chapter 29, and finally asks expressly: Is the fire of Hell corporeal? and Gregory answers: I do not doubt that it is corporeal.

But the second part of our Conclusion, that that fire torments the demons not really, but intentionally, the same Greg. teaches in the same place. For Peter asking: How can corporeal fire hold an incorporeal thing? he meets him in this manner: If the incorporeal spirit of a living man is held in the body, why not after death, since the spirit is incorporeal, is it not also held by corporeal fire? Then he declares of what kind that punishment is:

But we say the spirit is held by fire, so that it is punished by the torment of fire, seeing and feeling. For the fire it suffers by the very fact that it sees it; and because it beholds itself being burned, it is burned. And thus it comes about that a corporeal thing burns an incorporeal one, both ardor from the visible fire, and > invisible pain is drawn, so that by corporeal fire the incorporeal mind is tormented even by incorporeal flame. Although we can gather from the words of the Gospel that the soul suffers the conflagration not only by seeing, but also by experiencing.

But how this punishment is inflicted upon spirits by corporeal fire, the Doctor teaches in 4. dist. 44. quaest. 2., where, supposing n. 5. that according to St. Aug. 14. De Civitate Dei cap. 15. The pain of the flesh is only the offense of the soul from the flesh, and a certain dissension from its possession, as the pain of the soul, which is called sadness, is from those things which happen to us unwillingly; From this, says the Doctor, it appears that pain is a passion consequent upon sensitive apprehension, and in the sensitive appetite: but sadness is properly in the intellectual appetite, or in the will, and consequent upon the apprehension of the event of some object unwilled. Then he declares n. 7. that

the fire of Hell is an object uncongenial to the demons, and that in two ways: First, as definitively detaining the spirit: Second, as objectively changing it. And in both ways it torments the demons: First indeed, because they do not wish to be detained by fire, and to this not-wishing, says the Doctor, inclines the affection of commodity according to which it appetites the free use of its power; as by its nature it is indifferent to any body whatever, so it could make itself present to any body. But pride promotes it, on account of which it appetites to use its own power: envy consummates it, on account of which it would never wish determinately to be on account of the sentence or action of God. This not-wishing precedes detention, and the apprehension of detention: but upon this not-wishing, though posited inordinately in its will, follows a certain apprehension of the event of that unwilled thing: and from this third, or fifth, counting those two which precede the not-wishing, follows sadness.

He observes next that fire does not detain the angel, neither effectively, nor formally per se.

Not indeed effectively, because, he says, no corporeal place can detain a spirit; because that which does not localize effectively, does not impede it from moving, nor does it detain it effectively. Nor yet formally necessarily; for a spirit freed from body is shut in and encompassed by no corporeal place; since, being devoid of matter and quantity, it has no surrounding surface, nor consequently a formal place. But it is detained only formally by the fire itself according to the divine ordination, so that God effectively detain the demon in the fire, as in a prison; but the fire by the ordination of God detains and binds it as a prison, so that it cannot go out from it. Whence it is saddened supremely; for it hates not only the active detention of God, and its passive one from God: but also, says the Doctor, n. 9., it hates the formal perpetual detention by that fire: and consequently it is saddened by that formal detention. But since to be saddened is formally to be tormented, it follows that the fire, as formally detaining the devil, also somewhat effectively torments it. Nor does it matter that it does not detain it effectively: for thence it does not follow that it cannot also effectively torment it; because as formally detaining, it is an object unwilled and apprehended, as uncongenial; but an object unwilled effectively inflicts sadness.

— The same St. Thomas teaches, quaest. De anima art. 21. Every, he says, spiritual substance, as far as its nature goes, is not bound to any place; but transcends the whole order of corporal things: Therefore that it be bound to anything, and determined to some place by a certain necessity, is against its nature, and contrary to natural appetite.

Hence in book 4 of Contra Gentes, chapter 90, he infers:

Incorporate substances therefore suffer from corporeal fire by way of a certain binding: for spirits can be bound to a body either by way of form, as the soul is bound to the human body so as to give it life; or even without being its form, as necromancers bind spirits to images or things of this kind through the power of demons. Much more therefore, by divine power, can spirits to be damned be bound to corporeal fire: and this very thing is an affliction to them when they know themselves bound to lowest things in punishment.

— But how this detention of the demons by fire can torment them, the Doctor opens in the same place, num. 7: I say, he says, that that fire is an object so disconvenient, and this in two ways: first as definitively detaining the spirit; second as objectively altering it. And he proves the first at num. 11, teaching that the demons most intensely hate that binding and detention, because it most highly offends their dignity and liberty, and hence afflicts and torments them vehemently, which he declares thus at num. 11:

For first, he says, the intellect of an angel is determined perpetually to consider the fire intensely as an object. Second, it apprehends that determination to such consideration. Third, it hates it, and as before, this hatred arises from the affection for the pleasant, from which it wills to consider now this, now that object, according as it is delightful to itself; and it is promoted by pride, from which it wills to use its intellective power according to the command of its own will; and it is consummated by envy, on account of which it hates to be determined by God to any single consideration. Fourth, there follows the apprehension, not merely bare of that consideration, as in the second step, but a certain apprehension of the outcome of that intense and perpetual consideration. Fifth, from this follows sadness. — And if you ask, says the Doctor, how that can belong to fire, since no body can move the intelligence of a spirit so efficaciously that the intelligence itself and the operation of the intellect are not subject to the will of that spirit itself, so that it may recall it at pleasure from the disconvenient object and turn it to another; I answer, that this does not belong to fire by its own power, because with the whole active power of fire posited, the angel left to himself could indifferently consider the fire or another body according to the command of his own will. Therefore it is necessary that that detention in the intense and perpetual consideration of fire, and against the will of the angel, be effectively from God principally, and from fire actively indeed, but less principally. For just as the agent intellect and the phantasm are related to moving the passive intellect in us, so God, acting in the manner of an agent intellect, and fire in the manner of a phantasm, most efficaciously move the passive intellect of the angel against its will. Nor does it stand in the way, says the Doctor, that the principal agent and the instrument are not here in the same supposit, as the agent intellect and the phantasm are in the same man; this, he says, does not stand in the way, because the order of those agents does not require identity of supposit.

From these things it appears, according to the Doctor's opinion, that demons are tormented by fire with a twofold punishment: one by the binding in it and detention by it; the other by the consideration of it as the instrument of divine vengeance and of God's chastisement upon them.

— Nevertheless the Doctor infers at num. 13 that the demons are tormented far more gravely and bitterly by that perpetual detention of their intelligence in the intense consideration of fire than by the formal detention of themselves locally from the fire. Because, he says, angels are far freer according to their power of understanding than with respect to the force of their motive power; indeed, according to the command of their own will their intellect ought to be occupied with whatever object, in keeping with the exigency of the perfection of their nature, which perfection is certainly far nobler in them than that by which they can change place at pleasure by their nature.

But that detention in the most intense consideration of fire impedes the first liberty; for thereby the intellect is detained in the consideration of that avenging fire so that it can in no way consider other objects: but local detention from fire only impedes the free use of the motive power, so that it cannot present itself to any body; from which it follows that the sadness will be far greater from that objective detention than from the local one; because where there is greater unwillingness and an equally certain apprehension of the outcome, greater sadness follows. Add that fire objectively detaining the intellect of an angel torments it more effectively than insofar as it detains it locally: for as detaining locally, it afflicts the demons effectively only insofar as it is an object of unwillingness: but as it detains it objectively, it causes effectively the first apprehension to which the intellect is determined, which is unwilled: and so this latter detention has as it were a double action upon the intellect of the demon; whereas the former has only a simple and single one.

— But if you ask how the intellect of demons and of the damned is so determined to the apprehension of fire as a disconvenient object and as the instrument of divine justice: the Doctor explains in the same place, saying that God concurs with the fire in imprinting its species into the intellect of the angel, just as the agent intellect with the phantasm produces the intelligible species in the patient intellect: and this happens connaturally. For since the angel is bound to the fire and held in it as in a prison so that he cannot go out of it, he always has the intelligible species of the fire present, which he cannot fail to know and behold continually, from whose intense consideration he is afflicted far more than by his simple detention, and is tormented more vehemently than the soul is racked while the body which it informs is scorched by fire.

You will say. By that by which the demons are tormented formally and effectively, by that they are torunted unequally: but they are not tormented unequally by that local or objective detention: therefore, etc. The major is evident, and St. Augustine openly hands it down in book 21 of De Civitate Dei, chapter 10: It must by no means be denied, he says, that the eternal fire itself will be lighter for some and heavier for others; whether the heat of it varies according to the desert of each one's punishment, or whether it burns equally, but is not felt with equal distress. Then, if fire makes its impression upon the demons only intelligibly, it is far from tormenting them; rather it delights them; for that impression is fitting to the intellective power. Finally, if the demon does not will against, or hate, being so detained, or being so altered by the object, he will not be sad: but it is in his power not to will against: therefore it will also be in his power not to be tormented. Add that he could equally be afflicted in a stone, in the Sun, or in the

Empyrean Heaven, if he were definitively detained by them and altered objectively.

— The Doctor answers the first, denying the minor: and to its proof he says that the formal detention of the demons by fire is indeed equal, but their unwillingness is not equal: rather that unwillingness is far more intense in those who sinned more, and therefore the sadness in them is far greater.

To the second he says that it is not in the power of the demons not to have this unwillingness; since it is continued by a superior agent cause, which binds them thus perpetually in the fire and holds their intellect in the consideration of the fire. Hence it follows that no one of the demons can at some time will against more remissly than he now wills against; because as the act is not in his power, neither is the mode of the act: and as the superior cause acts uniformly to produce that willing-against together with the will of the demon, so that this cannot operate otherwise; so also it acts uniformly toward the intensification of this willing-against, so that he cannot will anything against more remissly.

But if you should say, says the Doctor, that that first apprehension of fire caused delight in the intellect of the demon, at least in the first instant.

— He answers, that this cannot be said, because in the same instant in which the intellect of the demon apprehended the fire, it conceives vehement sadness, which excludes every joy not only contrary, but altogether irrelevant.

If you urge, saying, that the cause of delight is naturally prior to the cause of sadness.

— He answers, that in things having only an order of nature, and which exist simultaneously in time, the less efficacious excludes the more efficacious more effectually, although the more efficacious be later in nature: Nor is it wonderful, he says, because that which impedes or prohibits is sometimes later naturally; yet the first is impeded through its contrary action, if the generation of one is the corruption of the other. So the Doctor.

You will insist. If the whole punishment of the demons consisted both in the formal and in the objective detention, it would follow that the demons going out of hell and flying about through the airs or the earth would not be tormented; since they would not be so detained by the infernal fire itself, neither formally nor objectively: but the consequent is false; therefore also the antecedent.

— I deny the major, for, as Rupert says in book 4 of De Victoria Verbi Dei, wherever the devil turns himself, he carries with him the torturing fire. It must be known, he says, meanwhile, that wherever he turns himself, he carries his punishment with him, and the wound of the fire of ignited stones, with which he was once struck by lightning, perseveres intrinsically in himself. This punishment of his can be understood from those words of the Lord to blessed Job, saving a more sacred understanding: Out of his mouth go lamps, like torches of kindled fire: out of his nostrils proceeds smoke, like pots set on fire: and his fervent breath makes coals burn, and a flame shall go forth out of his mouth. The same thing St. Augustine had explained expressly above, lib. 21. De Civit. Dei, cap. 10. where, after he had said, If the spirits of men, themselves also certainly incorporeal, could now be included in bodily members, then they will be able to be bound insolubly by the bonds of their bodies; he concludes: Therefore, if they have no bodies, the spirits of demons, nay rather the spirits that are demons, though incorporeal, will adhere to corporeal fires to be tormented.

Bede explains this same thing excellently in his Commentary on chapter 3 of the Epistle of James. Wherever, he says, they fly through the air, or wander on the earth, or > beneath the earth, whether they roam or are detained, they always carry with them the torments of their flames: like one in fever, who even if he lies on beds of ivory, even if he is placed in sunny spots, cannot nevertheless avoid the burning or chill of the malady implanted in him. Thus therefore the demons, even if they are honored in gilded temples, even if they run through the airs, always burn with Gehenna's fire: and admonished by their very punishment, enviously suggest to deceived men also the fuel of vices, whence they themselves perish.

But you will object against the first part, namely, that the demons are tormented by real and corporeal fire; First indeed with various texts of Scripture, by which it is signified that the fire with which the demons are tormented must be taken not really and properly, but metaphorically.

Which indeed is urged, first, from that passage of Luke 16, where that rich man, who said I am tormented in this flame, is afterwards said to have raised his eyes and seen Abraham afar off, and to have said to him: Send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue: but it is manifest that eyes, finger, and tongue are attributed to souls only metaphorically: therefore in like manner that flame in which they are tormented must also be taken metaphorically.

Second, the same is urged from that passage of Job 24: Let him pass to the excessive heat from the waters of snow, and his sin even to hell: but whether these words are understood of the cold of the sins of this life passing to the heat of the punishments of hell; or of the alternation of punishments in hell itself, those waters of snow are always taken metaphorically: therefore by equal reason fire must be said to be only metaphorical.

Finally, fire must be understood to torment the damned in the same way in which worms gnawing them: but the worms in hell are only metaphorical, namely those goads of conscience with which the soul of the damned is pricked and as it were gnawed: therefore, etc. The major is plain, for Sacred Scripture speaks of fire in the same way as of worms; thus Isaiah 66: Their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be extinguished: which words the Lord Christ interpreted of the punishments of the damned, saying: It is good for you to enter lame into life, rather than having two feet to be cast into Gehenna, into unquenchable fire, where their worm dies not, and the fire is not extinguished: therefore by equal reason fire and worm are to be taken, and accordingly since worm is used only metaphorically, fire also must be taken only metaphorically.

— Origen championed this opinion before all others, who judged that that eternal fire, into which the impious are to be sent by the capital decree of Christ, was nothing else than the worm of conscience. Let chapter 11 of book 2 of De Principiis be consulted, in which he threshed out that argument:

There, he says, when the memory of sins, recalled by divine power and placed before the eyes of the impious (according to that of Rom. 2. 15. 16. Their thoughts mutually accusing or also defending one another, in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men), pricks his mind, so that it may be its own accuser and witness, and burns it with avenging flames: the food of this fire is the sins committed beforehand, which therefore the Apostle called wood, hay, and stubble; hence it is written in Isaiah 50. 11.: Walk in the light of your fire and the flame which you have kindled. By which words, he says, this seems to be indicated, that the sinner kindles for himself the flame of his own fire, and is not immersed into some fire which was previously kindled by another, or stood ready before him.

He asks next whether, besides those fires of wrath, or fury, or madness, or grief, with which the impious were tortured in this life, they are also to be tormented in the future, they are to be punished by some general punishment after death.

Then he says that the soul is affected by that torture, torn away from the order and harmony for which it was constituted by God, as the body is affected when its members are torn apart dissolved from their compact frame: Which dissolution and rending apart of the soul, he says, when it has been explored by reason of the applied fire, doubtless is solidified for the firmer frame and restoration of its structure.

Of the same opinion was also St. Ambrose, book 7 on Luke, chapter 14:

Therefore, he says, neither is there any gnashing of corporal teeth, nor any perpetual fire of corporal flames, nor is the worm corporal; but these things are so, because as from much crudity fevers and worms arise, so if anyone does not boil away his sins, as it were by a certain interposed sobriety of abstinence, but mixing sins with sins contracts as it were a certain crudity of old and recent offenses, he shall be burned with his own fire and consumed by his own worms.

— Jerome, otherwise sufficiently hostile to this doctrine, nevertheless bears himself kindly toward it near the end of book 18 of the Commentary on Isaiah: But the worm that dies not, and the fire that is not extinguished, is taken by most for the conscience of sins, which torments those placed in punishments, wherefore they have lacked the goods of the elect through their vice and sin. And a little after: If anyone therefore have in his conscience the tares which the enemy man sowed while the father of the family slept, the fire shall burn up these, the conflagration shall devour these. He testifies that he by no means gives faith to these things joined by himself; but he does not signify that they are disapproved by him; nor does he propose them under another's person, nor under his own.

— Gregory of Nyssa also denies a corporeal hell in the book De anima et resurrectione. — Similarly John Damascene, book 4 De orthodoxa fide, denies that the eternal fire consists of matter. Theophilactus likewise, on chapter 9 of Mark, places the infernal fire and worm in the memory of crimes. But the worm, he says, and the fire which punish sinners, is the conscience of each one and the memory of shameful deeds done in this life; which consumes as a worm and burns as fire.

— I deny all these consequences; and to the first text I say, that although in that narrative of the rich man, whether historical or parabolical, many things are to be taken metaphorically, still it is not established that the fire there mentioned must also be taken metaphorically: since from elsewhere it is established that Sacred Scripture constantly asserts that there is fire in hell, and it is also sufficiently evident that eyes, hands, and tongue can be attributed to separated souls only metaphorically: whence the same judgment must not be passed concerning the flame in which that rich man was tormented as concerning the rest.

To the second however I say, that it is doubtful whether, as fire, so also snow or cold water tormenting is in hell: for there are very many Authors who think that both truly exist in hell, that the damned may be tormented more sharply by the alternating torture of cold and heat, as in the first place St. Jerome teaches on chapter 10 of Matthew from the forecited words of Job, where, explaining the name of Gehenna, he concludes: That Gehenna is twofold, of excessive fire and of cold, is read most fully in Job. And on that word of Matthew 22, There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, he adds: So that the gnashing of teeth may arise from the rigor of the cold. The same think Bede on the cited place of Job, and Hugh of Victor, book 4 De anima, chapter 13.

— Nevertheless the aforesaid opinion is altogether uncertain, indeed seems less founded in Scripture; partly because Christ the Lord expressly threatens the punishment of fire as perpetual and irremissible, and as it were the only one: but of the other punishment of snows and waters he does not say even a word. Partly because if the punishment of cold were in hell, that rich man would not have asked for a drop of water, whereby the torment of fire might be mitigated, since sustaining the punishment of water or cold, he would have learned from it that no refreshment could be obtained. Partly because Zachariah 9 says, You brought them out of the lake in which there was no water; for that lake is a place of hell, which is said to lack water, and consequently snow and hail. Finally because that context of Job can have another sense: for St. Gregory, book 16 Moral., chapter 27, understands by the waters of snow and the excessive heat not punishments, but faults of the present life, because sinners are carried from certain vices to others extremely contrary, as from the infidelity of the gentiles to the errors of heretics, or from the cold of avarice toward the relief of the poor to the excessive heat of prodigality in vain or luxurious expenses. It can also be said that by those words of Job he imprecates the punishments of this life upon the sinner; for in the verse immediately preceding, he had said of the sinner: Cursed be his portion in the earth, and let him not walk by the way of the paths: by which words he imprecates the sterility of the earth and the want of all solace and refreshment; whence when he immediately joins: Let him pass to the excessive heat from the waters of snow, he signifies that he wishes that the sinner find no refreshment in this life, but pass from one misery to another extreme. Or also it could be expounded thus, that from the waters of snow of sins he passes to the excessive heat to come in hell.

— To the third, moreover, I answer, the same thing must not be said of worms as of fire; both because Christ spoke of fire singularly, and as it were by way of eminence: prepared for the devil and his angels; and because concerning the truth and proper nature of fire there is the common opinion of the holy Fathers. Finally, because it appears sufficiently that worms cannot gnaw a spirit, nor tear its substance; for that pain is not caused in a living being except through the vital action of the worm itself, which subtracts something from the substance of another; and a spiritual substance is not capable of such subtraction and quasi-division, and consequently it is repugnant for a worm to exercise such an action upon a spirit. And herein lies a great difference between fire and the worm; because fire acts by a merely extrinsic action, and by imparting qualities, or something of that kind, not by subtracting or dividing substance; and therefore no metaphor is necessary, which in the case of the worm with respect to a demon, or a separated soul, is necessary.

Yet I do not deny that in hell there truly are those material and living ravenous worms which perpetually gnaw the bodies of damned men: for thus we interpret literally that saying of Isaiah, chapter 66, where, when God had said: They shall see the carcasses of the men who have transgressed against me, he immediately adds: Their worm dieth not, as if to say that the worms shall live forever and shall gnaw the carcasses of the damned with insatiable bite. Similar are those words of Judith 16: He will give fire and worms into their flesh. Thence St. Maximus, in his Epistle to the Cubicularius, says of the reprobate that men placed on the left hand shall receive eternal fire, and outer darkness, and the watchful worm, and the gnashing of teeth.

You will say 2. St. Augustine, book 21³ De Civitate Dei cap. 10, adducing in favor of the reality of hellish fire those words of the Rich Man, I am tormented in this flame, says: I would indeed say that flame was corporeal, unless it could be congruously answered that such was that flame as are the eyes, such the tongue, such the finger, where souls were without bodies. Whence he concludes: Therefore incorporeal is that flame by which he burned, and that drop of water which he asked, of such a kind also as were the visions of those sleeping, or perceiving things in ecstasy, incorporeal things yet having the similitude of bodies. Therefore St. Augustine judges that fire not to be truly corporeal.

I deny the consequence. For from the words premised in the objection he indeed seems doubtful; nevertheless, immediately opening his mind, he says:

But truly that Gehenna, which is also called the pool of fire and lightning, Apoc. 20, will be corporeal fire, and will torment the bodies of the damned, whether of men, and of demons; solid the bodies of men, aerial those of demons, or only the bodies of men together with spirits; but demons are spirits without bodies adhering to them, taking punishment, not imparting life, from corporeal fires: for there will be one fire of both, as the Truth said.

Add. that although St. Augustine here might seem wavering, elsewhere nevertheless he constantly affirms the fire of Gehenna to be corporeal, especially serm. 181. de tempore etc.

You will say 3. Corporeal fire can in no way, or only by the greatest miracle, torment a spirit: but miracles are not to be affirmed unless they either clearly appear in Scripture, or are certainly known from elsewhere: but it plainly is not established, neither from Scripture nor from elsewhere, that that fire is corporeal: therefore such a fire is not to be affirmed.

I answer. Granting the major, denying the minor: for to affirm this, namely that the fire of hell is corporeal, we are led not only by the divine authority of Sacred Scripture, sufficiently proposed through the Church and its Doctors, but also by the opinion of the holy Fathers and of the common run of Theologians, whereby it is established that the fire of hell is truly corporeal, and that demons, although wholly spiritual, are truly and really tormented by it, whether physically, as the Thomists will, or — which seems truer — only intentionally, as we taught above with the Subtle Doctor.

Third conclusion. — The torments of the demons will never have any end.

This is of faith, and is evidently gathered from Sacred Scripture, which as often as it mentions the punishments of the damned, so often signifies that they will be eternal. Thus Matth. 25: Depart from me, you cursed, into eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels. And further below it adds: These shall go into everlasting punishment, but those into life everlasting. Thus Daniel, chapter 12: And many, he says, who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some unto life everlasting, others unto reproach, that they may see it always. Innumerable are texts of this kind, which declare the punishments of the damned eternal, just as the perpetual felicity of the blessed. — Nor does it avail to say that the fire will be eternal, but not the combustion eternal, as St. Aug. says, book De fide cap. 15.

Nor can that be said here, whereby certain persons deceive themselves, that eternal fire is said, not the combustion itself eternal. For by means of the fire, which will be eternal, they think that those shall pass through to whom, on account of dead faith, salvation through fire is promised: namely that the fire itself be eternal; but that the combustion of them, that is, the operation of the fire, not be eternal upon them: whereas the Lord, foreseeing even this, concluded his sentence speaking thus: so shall these go into everlasting combustion: but the just into life everlasting: therefore the combustion will be eternal as the fire.

Thence St. Fulgentius, book De fide ad Petrum cap. 13:

Hold most firmly, he says, and doubt not at all, from the mouth of God the just and eternal Judge, from his everlastingly unchangeable utterance of sentence, that all the wicked shall go into eternal combustion; but the just into life everlasting: that the wicked shall burn forever with the devil: but the just shall reign without end with Christ.

The same is the opinion of the rest of the holy Fathers concerning the perpetuity of the punishments. Thus Irenaeus, book 4. cap. 67:

To whomsoever, he says, the Lord shall say: Depart from me, you cursed, into eternal fire, these shall be damned forever: and to whomsoever he shall say: Come, you blessed of my Father, receive the inheritance of the kingdom, which is prepared for you from eternity, these shall always receive the kingdom, and in it shall advance forever.

— Thus St. Clement of Rome, cited by St. Damascene in the Eclogae, preaches thus the everlasting punishments of impious souls: All souls, he says, are immortal, including those of the impious, for whom it would be better not to be incorruptible. For to be punished with everlasting punishment by unquenchable fire, and not dying, can obtain no end, to their great misery.

St. Hilary expressly expounds the same truth, Canon 5. on Matthew:

Therefore, he says, there shall be no rest for the nations, nor shall rest be given by a shortening of death, as they wish; but corporality shall be destined for them also unto eternity, that the matter of eternal fire may be eternal in them, and everlasting vengeance be exercised upon all unto everlasting ages. If therefore so great a gift of bodily eternity is granted to the Nations for this reason, that they may soon be consigned to the fire of judgment: how profane is it to drive the Saints from the glory of eternity, when the work of eternity is bestowed upon the impious for punishment?

— But that the torments of hell, both in punishing the devil and the demons, and likewise men, will be everlasting, Minutius Felix elegantly testifies in these words:

Nor is there any measure or term of torments. There a wise fire burns and restores the limbs, carves and nourishes them. As the fires of lightnings touch bodies and do not consume them; as the fires of Aetna and of Mount Vesuvius, and of burning places everywhere throughout the world, blaze and are not spent: so that penal conflagration is not fed by the damnation of those burning, but is nourished by the unimpaired laceration of their bodies.

You will say. It does not seem just that for sins however great, committed namely in a small space of time, each one should be condemned to eternal punishment; for the gravity of the chastisement ought to correspond to the gravity of the sins: but the sin was temporal, nay momentary: therefore its punishment ought not to be perpetual.

I deny the major. For, says St. Aug., book 21. De Civitate Dei:

Never has any justice or law decreed that each one be punished with so long a delay of time as the delay of that wherein he offended by which he was to be punished. Eight kinds of punishments, he says, Tullius writes to be in the laws: fine, bonds, stripes, retaliation, ignominy, exile, death, slavery. Which of these is contracted into a brief time according to the swiftness of each one's sin, so that so small a delay is exacted as is found to have been committed, unless perhaps retaliation? for that brings it about that each one suffer what he did. Whence that saying of the law: eye for eye, tooth for tooth. For it can happen that in so brief a time each one loses an eye by the severity of vengeance, as he took away the eye of another by the wickedness of his sin. Further, if the kiss fixed upon another's woman were to be avenged by the lash of reason, shall not he who did it in a point of time be scourged over an incomparable space of hours, and the sweetness of brief pleasure be punished by long-lasting pain? What of bonds? Is each one there to be judged as bound to be held for so long a time, > as long as he acted by which he deserved to be bound, when most justly a slave undergoes years-long penalties in fetters, who by a word or blow passing most swiftly either provoked his master or struck him? Now indeed fine, ignominy, exile, and slavery, since they are for the most part inflicted in such wise that no pardon relaxes them, do they not seem, in the manner of this life, like eternal punishments? For they cannot be eternal precisely because the very life in which one is chastised by them is not extended into eternity; and yet sins which are avenged by punishments of the longest time are committed in the briefest time; nor has anyone existed who judged that the torments of offenders ought to be ended as quickly as homicide, or adultery, or sacrilege, or any other crime whatsoever was done, which is to be measured not by length of time, but by the magnitude of iniquity and impiety. But he who for some great crime is mulcted with death, do the laws reckon his punishment to be the delay with which he is killed, which is very brief: and not that which they take from him forever, removing him from the fellowship of the living. But what it is in this mortal city to take men away by the punishment of the first death, that it is in that immortal city to take men away by the punishment of the second death. For as the laws of this city do not bring it about that anyone killed is recalled into it; so neither in that city, that one condemned by the second death is recalled into eternal life. How then, they say, is true what your Christ says: in what measure you shall mete, in the same shall it be measured to you again, if a temporal sin is punished by eternal chastisement? And they do not attend to the fact that not on account of an equal space of time, but on account of the requital of evil, that is, that he who has done evils should suffer evils, the same measure was spoken of: although this can properly be understood in that matter of which the Lord was speaking when he said this, namely of judgments and condemnations. Accordingly he who judges and condemns unjustly, if he is judged and condemned justly, receives in the same measure, although not that which he gave. For by judgment he acted, by judgment he suffers: although he did by condemnation what is iniquitous, he suffers by condemnation what is just.

— This same truth St. Gregory expressly hands down, book 34. Moral. cap. 16:

But, they say, a fault committed with an end ought not to be punished without end: doubtless almighty God is just, and what was not committed with eternal sin ought not to be punished with eternal torment. To whom we answer, that they would say rightly, if a just and strict judge coming weighed not the hearts of men, but their deeds. For the wicked then sinned with an end, because they lived with an end. For they would have wished to live without end, that they might have been able to remain in iniquities without end; for they desire to sin more than to live, and therefore here they wish always to live, that they may never cease sinning while they live. It pertains therefore to the justice of the strict Judge, that they never lack punishment whose mind in this life never wished to lack sin, and that no term of vengeance be given to the wicked, who as long as he was able would not have a term of crime.

But although these words are understood of damned men alone; nevertheless they can also be fitted to the wretched demons, since as long as they stood in the way they clung to sin so pertinaciously that they would not recoil from it, and would have stood forever in that perverse and rebellious will, had their state of the way been perpetual.

Thence it ought not seem wonderful that the Fathers of the Church most constantly disapproved of that playful fiction of Origen about the ending sometime of the punishments of the damned and the future restoration of all the reprobate. For Origen admitted punishments of sins in the other age only as expiatory and temporary, of which kind are those purgatorial ones which the Catholic Church acknowledges: thus book 3. Periarchon, or De Principiis, cap. 6, expounding that saying of St. Paul, 1. Cor. cap. 15. v. 26: And the last enemy, death, shall be destroyed, thinks the devil to be signified by death, whom he thinks will be so destroyed that his impious will, turned away from God, will be assailed and converted to God himself with religious worship.

Therefore, he says, also the last enemy, that is, the devil, who is called death, is said to be destroyed, that nothing sad may any longer be where death is not, nor anything adverse where there is no enemy. Truly the last enemy is to be understood as destroyed, not so that his substance, which was made by God, perish: but that the purpose and hostile will, which proceeded not from God, but from himself, pass away.

Where, when he says that the will of the demon turned away from God will sometime be converted to him, he sufficiently signifies that they will sometime be happy and endowed with eternal beatitude. — He explains his mind on this matter still more clearly, book 1. cap. 6, where he says:

Now truly if some of those orders which act under the principality of the devil, and obey his malice, can sometime in future ages be converted to goodness, on account of that which is in them, the faculty of free choice. But whether lasting and inveterate malice be converted, as it were by custom, into a kind of nature, do you also prove who readest, whether entirely in those ages which are seen, temporal, or in those which are not seen, and are eternal, this part will altogether differ from that final unity and concord.

Two things chiefly induced Origen into this error, as the Most Illustrious Huetius aptly observes, book 2. Origenianorum, quaest. 11. First indeed a perverse exposition of certain passages of Sacred Scripture. For besides those already mentioned, he thus interprets that saying of Isaiah XXIV, 22: And they shall be shut up there in prison, and after many days shall be visited. And this, Ioan. X. 16: There shall be made one fold and one shepherd, which he himself usurps in support of his dogma at the end of homil. 6. in Num. Likewise that from the parable which Christ proposes, Matth. XVIII. 34.⁴ when the angry Lord commanded the wicked servant to be delivered to the torturers, until he should repay the whole debt. Thence Origen, homil. 35. in Luc.: What is the law of this prison (hell)? I do not go out of it, nor does my exactor allow me to go out, unless I shall have paid every debt. Wrongly reckoned against him was also that saying of the Apostle, Rom. XI, 25. 26: Blindness in part has happened in Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles should enter, and so all Israel should be saved. But the expiatory punishments, which I mentioned, and purgatorial ones, he defends with these words from 1. Cor. 12, in which Paul affirms that the work of each one is to be tried by fire. That the Originists are accustomed to use certain other bulwarks of this opinion, Hieronymus hands down at the end of the Commentariorum in Isaiam; namely this saying of Paul, Rom. 11. 32: God concluded all under sin, that he might have mercy on all; and that one, Mich. 7. 9: I will sustain the wrath of the Lord, because I have sinned against him: until he justify my cause, and take away my judgment, and bring me out into light; and this also, Isaiae 12. 1: I will bless thee, O Lord, because thou wast angry with me: thou hast turned away thy face from me, and hast had mercy on me. And likewise this, Oseae 14. 5.: When the wrath of my fury shall have passed over, I will heal again; and equally that, Ps. 30. 20: How great is the multitude of thy sweetness, O Lord, which thou hast hidden for them that fear thee! — The second cause of this error Huetius uncovers and opens in the same place, namely the rather vehement zeal of Origen for the dogmas of the Platonists. For Plato judged in the Phaedo that the dead are led down to the lower world by that demon which had fallen to their lot while living, and then after a long space of time are called back thence by another guide. He repeats the same thing in the Gorgias and book 10. De Republica, and in the Timaeus, where he asserts that the soul which has conducted itself rightly here is enrolled in the number of a star; but that the soul which has behaved badly is sent into a female body; and that to both, after a course of a thousand years, the option of a new life is given; and that the soul which has contaminated itself with new vices is banished into the bodies of beasts. Therefore it ought not seem wonderful that Origen, more devoted than was fitting to the doctrine of Plato, drew this error from him.

But that erroneous opinion of Origen the holy Fathers condemned, above all St. Epiphanius in epist. ad Ioannem Hierosolymitanum, cap. 3. and book 2. Panarii, c. 18. Theophilus also reproaches it, Oratione 2. De Paschate, in these words: Such a shepherd of a sick flock everywhere brands Christ with injuries, and raises the devil with honor, while he asserts that he, purged of vices and sins, will sometime receive his pristine glory: and that this one (Christ) will cease to reign, and at the same time with the devil is to be reduced under the command of the Father. St. Hieronymus also sharply rebukes it in many places, especially epist. ad Pamachium, c. 3., and ad Oceanum, c. 2., where he says that Origen held that after many ages, and with one restoration of all, Gabriel will be the same as the devil; Paul, the same as Caiphas; virgins, the same as prostitutes. See also epist. 75. ad Vigilantium, and book 1. adversus Pelagianos, c. 9. and also in the Commentaries on cap. 14. and 27. Isaiae, and on 3. Danielis, but especially on 3. Ionae, where most sharply against this doctrine he inveighs thus:

Otherwise, if all rational creatures are equals, and are raised upward or sunk downward by their own free choice, whether from virtues or from vices, and after a long circuit and in infinite ages there shall be a restoration of all things, and one dignity of those who have fought; what distance will there be between the Virgin and the prostitute? what difference between the Mother of the Lord, and (which is a crime even to say) the victims of public lusts? Will Gabriel and the devil be the same? Will the apostles and the demons be the same? Will the prophets and the pseudoprophets be the same? Will the martyrs and the persecutors be the same? Suppose anything you like, double the years and times, and heap up infinite ages of torments: if the end of all is alike, everything past is as nothing, because we seek not what we once were, but what we are always to be.

— St. Augustine also must be heard declaiming vehemently against the same error, book 21.⁵ De Civitate Dei cap. 17. et 23. where, examining the same dogma, he writes that on its account it was deservedly rejected by the Church; whence, in the book De haeresibus, num. 43, whereas he had written that certain other commentaries of Origen could somehow be defended, he confesses that this one, with which we are dealing, is excused in vain by its defenders. For what Catholic Christian, he says, whether learned or unlearned, does not violently shudder at that purification of evils of which he speaks, that is, that even those who finished this life in crimes and villainies, and sacrileges and impieties however great; and finally the devil himself and his angels, although after very long times, all who have been freed, should again relapse and return into these evils, and alternating these vicissitudes, rational creatures have always been, and will always be, in beatitudes and miseries? Concerning which most vain impiety against the Philosophers, from whom Origen learned these things, disputation is carried on most diligently in the book De Civitate Dei. — To these must be added Justinianus, Epist. ad Menam. The 5. Synodus, as Photius relates in the little book de synodis; Gregorius Magnus, book 34. Moral. c. 29. secundum cap. primi Regum, where at length he convicts this delirium of the Originists. I pass over the other more recent ecclesiastical writers who assail the same fiction.