Satan

For God raised up against him Satan, an Idumean enemy.

With reason, then, he applied to the parable of that strong armed man, whom another stronger overpowered — the prince of demons, whom he had above called Beelzebub and Satan — signifying him overpowered by the finger of God, not the Creator subdued by another god.

And surely we know (saving the simplicity of the Scripture — for not even could the beasts themselves harm where faith was) that figuratively scorpions and serpents portend spiritual things of wickedness, of which their very prince too is reckoned under the name of serpent and dragon and of each most eminent beast with the Creator, who granted this power to his former Christ, as the ninetieth psalm to him:

but this I solemnly testify to you, that the things which up to now Satan, the father of lies, has not consented to utter, these the fearless hearts and unbridled mouths are forever speaking without dread.

"Satan asked to sift you;

And how is he not godless, deifying the devil, and daring to call the Lord a man capable of sin?

but for our sake he died in the flesh, that he might redeem us from the tyranny of death.

And though the enemy, not bearing his defeat, even now raises wars against us the faithful,

Therefore he was cast out of his rank and his dignity, and, instead of that blessed glory and angelic name, was called the devil and was given the name Satan.

These things the devil has enjoined upon his own, and he is obeyed.

All things alien, all things hostile, all things condemned, sent in by the Evil One to wear away her salvation.

The priesthood of widowhood and of celibacy exists among the nations — out of rivalry with the devil, of course.

For they pronounce Satan too, the prince of this evil race, with the same voice of execration, out of the soul's own consciousness.

But how, out of certain angels corrupted of their own will, a yet more corrupt race of demons came forth, condemned by God along with the authors of the race and with him whom we have called their prince — the order of it is learned in the holy writings.

Far be it otherwise that we should believe the soul of any saint, let alone of a prophet, to be drawn forth by a demon — taught as we are that Satan himself transfigures himself into an angel of light, let alone into a man of light, being even about to assert himself God at the end, and to put forth more portentous signs to overthrow, if it could be, the elect.

where the demonic onsets with the Holy Spirit — the devil himself with his angels now plunged into the fires?

" But if you defend both transfiguration and conversion as a passing-over of each one's substance, then Saul too, converted into another man, departed from his own body, and Satan himself, when he is transfigured into an angel of light, loses his own quality.

what he condemned, he reckoned in the pomp of the devil.

Why should we not recognize the wiles of Satan, who, what he cannot accomplish by our mouth, contrives to accomplish by the mouth of his own, bringing in idolatry to us through the ears?

if, stripped of the goods of the mind, he has even handed over his service to the prince of this world (to whom else but the devil?

For if he had pronounced him to be handed over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, surely he had damned him rather than rebuked him.

so that from this they argue that the fornicator — nay, that incestuous man — was handed over by the Apostle not to the perdition of Satan, but to amendment;

Satan, in short, you pronounce in every vexation and disdain and detestation — Satan, whom we call the angel of malice, the contriver of all error, the adulterator of the whole world, through whom man, circumvented from the beginning so that he transgressed the precept of God, and on that account given over to death, thenceforth made the whole race, infected from his own seed, the transmitter of h …

as in the one all mankind were subjected to Satan, and in the other to Sovereignty;