Scotus Academicus, Tomus quintus: De Creaturarum Corporalium et de Homine

Note 1. That although the devil is infected with all vices of which created spiritual substance is capable; for which cause the Apostle to the Ephesians 6. calls demons spiritual wickednesses in heavenly places: nevertheless he is agitated by three movements of sins above all. He excels chiefly in pride, wrath, and envy: pride indeed: For every high thing shall fall, says Job chapter 11. He is King over all the children of pride: hence that of Psalm 73. must above all be understood of demons: The pride of them that hate thee ascendeth continually. Wrath likewise: for he is a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, says St. Peter: whence Christ the Lord, John 8., addressing the Pharisees says: You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you will do, he was a murderer from the beginning: wherefore St. John rightly admonished, Apocalypse 12.¹ Woe to the earth, and to the sea, because the devil is gone down unto you, having great wrath. Envy lastly. for the Wise Man says, chapter 2. By the envy of the devil death came into the world. — It is asked moreover by which of those movements the demon was led to assail and assault the first parents.

Note 2. From Hugh of St. Victor in the Annotations upon Matthew, chapters 3. and 4. that pride is love of one's own excellence: envy is the spite at another's felicity; wrath is an irrational perturbation of the mind... Through pride a good is loved as one's own property: for the proud man rejoices that he has what another has not; or that he may have what another has not: therefore, because he loves excellence as his own property, he hates communion, and envy is born, the daughter of pride. For envy is hatred of another's felicity, which is born of pride; for it could not displease thee that another have it, unless thou hadst before willed to have it alone thyself: therefore it wounds thee, and another's felicity is burdensome to thee, because in it thine own defect is shown to thee, and thou art reproved by it that thou art not that which thou didst rejoice to be, or hadst coveted to be. In pride therefore thou dost delight unjustly: in envy thou art tormented justly: in pride it pleases thee perversely that thou art what thou art; in envy it displeases thee iniquitously that another is what he is.... In this envy is known to have something of justice, that he who acts unjustly is punished justly. After this follows wrath, that is, an irrational perturbation of the mind, by which it is called wrath, when thou dost disdain to suffer an inflicted evil, and art therefore troubled, agitated by impatience, because thou dost not sustain adversity. There is however a good wrath, by which thou dost disdain to do evil: but an evil one, by which thou dost disdain to suffer evil: the former rejects guilt, the latter does not receive justice: wherefore evil wrath is troubled by adversity occurring, and by impatience disturbs the quiet of the mind: nor does the soul any longer wish to stand firm in the toleration of punishment, which is just, as before it would not stand firm through continence of guilt, which is unjust. For it increases misery, while it receives the torment of the flesh to the grief of the mind.

Note 3. That of the three foresaid vices envy is the more cruciating and afflicting: whence St. Bernard rightly warns, treatise On the interior house, chapter 33. Nothing is sadder than envy, which straightway torments and crucifies its very bearer. Therefore it is wholly to be fled and abhorred: since in it God is offended, the neighbor wounded, the mind afflicted: For envy always torments the mind of its possessor, although often it cannot wound its neighbor, against whom it rages. Wherefore St. Augustine, book De disciplina Christiana, chapter 1. calls envy a diabolical vice. May God, he says, discern the pest of envy from the souls of all, nay of Christians: for it is a diabolical vice, by which alone the devil is guilty, and inexplicably guilty: for it is not said to the devil, Thou art condemned, because thou hast committed adultery, hast committed theft, hast ravished another's life: but because thou, fallen thyself, hast straightway stumbled upon man standing. These things thus briefly premised, let there be

Only Conclusion. — The devil was moved by two vices of the soul to tempt man in Paradise, namely pride and envy. Such is the teaching of the Seraphic Doctor in 2. dist. 20. q. 1. where he says: the mind of the devil possessed by these two vices, namely pride and envy, seeing man in that state in which he could fall under diabolical power, and in which he could ascend to the supernal felicity from which he himself had fallen, was moved by pride, and by envy, that he might impede him from supernal felicity. Pride indeed was the first motive, but envy the proximate and immediate: for even suppose he could not acquire dominion over man, still he would have studied to impede him from the joys of Paradise. Such are the words of the Seraphic Doctor. Which St. wonderfully explains and confirms, book 11. De Genesi ad litteram, chapter 14. Some, he says, say that that fall from supernal seats befell him because it fell upon man made to the image of God; moreover envy follows pride, it does not precede it: for envying is not the cause of boasting: but pride is the cause of envying. Since therefore pride is the love of one's own excellence: but envy the hatred of another's felicity, that it is born thence is sufficiently manifest: 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 himself: or superiors, that he be not made equal to them: therefore by boasting he is envious, not by envying proud. — But for what cause the devil envied man, various authors bring forward various things. For St. Bernard judges that the object of this diabolical envy against men was that cognition which the demon had received, God revealing it. That the divine Word was to become incarnate, that God-Man might be at once Head of men and of Angels. — There are those who judge that the devil envied man for this reason, that God constituted him Monarch of the whole world. Thus judges Anastasius Synaita, chapter 1. Since therefore God, he says, was fashioning this visible world, that is Heaven, and Earth, and whatever things the earth contains, the devil judged, as a certain Doctor says, that he would be constituted by God King and Lord of visible Creation. But after he saw man produced, and dominion over all earthly things conferred upon him by God, bearing this hardly, and envying man, he deceived him. To this sentiment subscribes Tertullian, book De patientia, chapter 5. though he ascribed it to impatience, which others to envy: Therefore, he says, I detect the nativities of impatience in the very devil, that even then he bore impatiently that the Lord God had subjected to His image, that is, to man, all the works which He had made: for neither would he have been lost, had he sustained: nor would he have envied man, had he not grieved. Therefore he deceived him, because he had envied; but he had envied, because he had grieved; he had grieved, because he certainly had not borne patiently, etc. All which Prudentius elegantly weighs in the Hamartigenia, where he teaches that the devil blazed out in envy against man newly created:

For from the tinder of zeal a spark of hatred burned, And sudden grief established his wit iniquitous. He had poured forth the clay, and the fragile image set To grow warm with the heat of God: and the Lord too, by condition, Who should rule the whole World by his own moderating sway, Imposed upon the nature of Soil, of sea, and sky, That, serving man, it knew how to pour forth its opulent issue, And, poured forth, devote it to the earthly King: With the ferment of a chafing spirit the Beast pressed on Its swelling rage, and drew bitter force from its acid marrow.

Others affirm, and indeed, as it seems to me, more rightly, that the daemon for this reason blazed out in envy against man, because he saw that he was to be conducted into Heaven, whence he himself had been cast down. Which St. Ambrose excellently explains, book De Paradiso, chapter 12. where weighing that word of Wisdom 2. By the envy of the devil death came into the world, he says: Envy moreover was the cause of the beatitude of man placed in Paradise: and therefore he himself, the devil, unable to endure the grace received as a punishment, envied man, for that from clay he was elected to be an inhabitant of Paradise. For the devil considered that he himself, who had been of superior nature, had fallen into these secular and worldly things: but man of inferior nature hoped for eternal things. This therefore is that which he envies, saying: Shall this inferior attain that which I could not keep? Shall he depart from earthly things to Heaven, while I, fallen from Heaven, am upon the earth? Many ways have I whereby I may deceive man: he was made of clay, earth is his mother, he is wrapped in corruptible things: although his soul is of superior nature, yet even it can lie liable to fall, constituted in the prison of the body, when I could not avoid falling. — So subscribes St. Gregory the Pope in the book Pastoralis, part 3. c. 11. likewise weighing the same words of Wisdom: But the envy of the devil, etc. For since, he says, that malignant spirit himself our adversary lost Heaven, he envied man created for this end, and lost himself, he yet accumulated his damnation by losing others. To these equally accords St. Augustine, book 10. Confessionum, c. 36. Our adversary presses upon our true beatitude: everywhere scattering his snares, Well done, well done, that while we greedily gather, we may be caught lying in wait... and in that manner, having made them like himself, he holds them with him, not for concord of charity, but for fellowship of punishment. — Alcimus Avitus, bishop of Vienna, elegantly describes all these things, book 2. of his Poems, where he describes the spite and envy of the demon against men newly created in this manner:

When he saw that these new men in tranquil seat Were leading a happy life without distinction, That under a law accepted they served the Lord of the Orb, And enjoyed placid joys amid subject things:

The sudden spark of zeal stirred up his rapine, And burning spite grew hot into savage conflagrations. Near then by chance was he by whose lofty fall, Slipping, he had drawn the whole train headlong undeserving. Recalling this, and pressing the fresh fall in his heart, He grieved more that another possessed what he had lost. Then shame mingled with gall thus sought utterance in his breast, And unfolds it, and relaxes sighs with such a voice: O grief! that to us this sudden plasma should arise, And a hated race have grown from our ruin! Virtue held me exalted; now behold, rejected I am driven forth, and clay succeeds to angelic honor, Earth holds Heaven, raised upon a vile frame The clod reigns, and translated power perishes for us. Yet not altogether does it perish: a great part retains; Nor does it help to delay: now now with bland contest Will I engage, while prime safety, knowing no guile, Untried of any deceits, shall lie open to my weapons. And better shall they be caught by guile alone, before They send forth a fertile progeny into eternal ages. Nothing immortal must be suffered to proceed from earth: Let the fountain of the race perish; the casting down of the vanquished head Shall be the seed of death: let it bring forth the beginning Of a life of perilous distinction: let all be smitten in one: A slain root shall make no wine-bearing top. These solaces at length remain to me cast down, If I cannot again ascend the closed heavens. These also shall be shut: it must be thought lighter to have fallen, If new substance perish by a like fall, If a companion of my ruin enter the fellowships of my punishment, And share with us the fires whom I foresee. But lest the cause of deceiving seem difficult, This way must be shown, which long ago of its own accord he ran headlong in his prone fall: which pride, casting me from the kingdom Thrust down, this thrusts man from the threshold of Paradise. Thus he spoke, and closed his voice with the groan of grieving.

You will say 1. Envy is in respect of a good which the envious can acquire: but the devil could not attain eternal beatitude: therefore he did not envy man on account of its attainment. — I deny the major: because, as the Seraphic Doctor says in the place cited, ad secundum, one envies not only that which he can obtain; but also that which he is born to have, although he cannot; as the maimed and blind envy others sight and progress. And although the devil cannot arrive at beatitude, he has nonetheless a natural inclination to it, and therefore envies those who are destined to obtain it.

You will object 2. Envy is in respect of a good desired; for no one envies another on account of anything unless because he loves and covets it: but the devil did not covet to obey the commandments of God, nor to ascend to the supernal fatherland, nor to become a friend of God: since he fell into despair: therefore for this cause he could not envy man. — I answer there the Seraphic Doctor, that envy is not only in respect of a desired good, but also in respect of that good by whose obtaining the desired good is diminished, or judged to be diminished: but since the devil desired to be carried aloft and sublime through pride, therefore he judged that by the exaltation of man his own good was impeded, and therefore he envied, and out of envy assaulted the first Parents.

You urge. Envy, as has been said, is only in respect of that which is born to diminish one's own good: but the acquisition of beatitude can diminish no one's good: therefore it cannot be a motive of envy. — I answer that although the beatification and exaltation of man truly diminishes no one's good, nevertheless according to the estimation made (says the Seraphic Doctor there) it could be believed that that glorification of man was diminutive of the good desired by the demon, and out of that false estimation envy could arise: for the affections arise not only from certain judgments, but also from suspicions, and false estimations.