Letters

⁴ So long as we are held down by this frail body, so long as we have our treasure in earthen vessels; so long as the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, there can be no sure victory. “Our adversary the devil goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.” “You make darkness,” David says, “and it is night: wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth. The young lions roar after their prey and seek their meat from God.” The devil looks not for unbelievers, for those who are without, whose flesh the Assyrian king roasted in the furnace. It is the church of Christ that he “makes haste to spoil.” According to Habakkuk, “His food is of the choicest.” A Job is the victim of his machinations, and after devouring Judas he seeks power to sift the [other] apostles. The Saviour came not to send peace upon the earth but a sword. Lucifer fell, Lucifer who used to rise at dawn; and he who was bred up in a paradise of delight had the well-earned sentence passed upon him, “Though thou exalt yourself as the eagle, and though thou set your nest among the stars, thence will I bring you down, says the Lord.” For he had said in his heart, “I will exalt my throne above the stars of God,” and “I will be like the Most High.” Wherefore God says every day to the angels, as they descend the ladder that Jacob saw in his dream, “I have said you are Gods and all of you are children of the Most High. But you shall die like men and fall like one of the princes.” The devil fell first, and since “God stands in the congregation of the Gods and judges among the Gods,” the apostle writes to those who are ceasing to be Gods— “Whereas there is among you envying and strife, are you not carnal and walk as men?”