The Spurious Epistles

If, therefore, you are trodden down under the feet of the Lord, how do you tempt Him that cannot be tempted, forgetting that precept of the lawgiver, “You shall not tempt the Lord your God?” Yea, you even dare, most accursed one, to appropriate the works of God to yourself, and to declare that the dominion over these was delivered to you. And you set forth your own fall as an example to the Lord, and promise to give Him what is really His own, if He would fall down and worship you. And how did you not shudder, O you spirit more wicked through your malevolence than all other wicked spirits, to utter such words against the Lord?

Through your appetite were you overcome, and through your vainglory were you brought to dishonour: through avarice and ambition you [now] draw on [others] to ungodliness. You, O Belial, dragon, apostate, crooked serpent, rebel against God, outcast from Christ, alien from the Holy Spirit, exile from the ranks of the angels, reviler of the laws of God, enemy of all that is lawful, who rose up against the first-formed of men, and drove forth [from obedience to] the commandment [of God] those who had in no respect injured you; you who raised up against Abel the murderous Cain; you who took arms against Job: do you say to the Lord, “If You will fall down and worship me?”

Oh what audacity! Oh what madness! You runaway slave, you incorrigible slave, do you rebel against the good Lord? Do you say to so great a Lord, the God of all that either the mind or the senses can perceive, “If You will fall down and worship me?”