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16. Wherefore, since the spirit is to be preferred to the body,
and the death of the spirit means that God has left it, but the death
of the body that the spirit has left it; and since herein lies the
punishment in the death of the body, that the spirit leaves the body
against its will, because it left God willingly; so that, whereas
the spirit left God because it would, it leaves the body although it
would not; nor leaves it when it would, unless it has offered violence
to itself, whereby the body itself is slain: the spirit of the
Mediator showed how it was through no punishment of sin that He came
to the death of the flesh, because He did not leave it against His
will, but because He willed, when He willed, as He willed. For
because He is so commingled [with the flesh] by the Word of God as
to be one, He says: "I have power to lay down my life, and I have
power to take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay down my
life that I might take it again." And, as the Gospel tells us,
they who were present were most astonished at this, that after that
[last] word, in which He set forth the figure of our sin, He
immediately gave up His spirit. For they who are hung on the cross
are commonly tortured by a prolonged death. Whence it was that the
legs of the thieves were broken, in order that they might die
directly, and be taken down from the cross before the Sabbath. And
that He was found to be dead already, caused wonder. And it was this
also, at which, as we read, Pilate marvelled, when the body of the
Lord was asked of him for burial.
17. Because that deceiver then, who was a mediator to death for
man, and feignedly puts himself forward as to life, under the name of
cleansing by sacrilegious rites and sacrifices, by which the proud are
led away, -can neither share in our death, nor rise again from his
own: he has indeed been able to apply his single death to our double
one; but he certainly has not been able to apply a single
resurrection, which should be at once a mystery of our renewal, and a
type of that waking up which is to be in the end. He then who being
alive in the spirit raised again His own flesh that was dead, the true
Mediator of life, has cast out him, who is dead in the spirit and the
mediator of death, from the spirits of those who believe in Himself,
so that he should not reign within, But should assault from without,
and yet not prevail. And to him, too, He offered Himself to be
tempted, in order that He might be also a mediator to overcome his
temptations, not only by succor, but also by example. But when the
devil, from the first, although striving through every entrance to
creep into His inward parts, was thrust out, having finished all his
alluring temptation in the wilderness after the baptism; because,
being dead in the spirit, he forced no entrance into Him who was alive
in the spirit, he betook himself, through eagerness for the death of
man in any way whatsoever, to effecting that death which he could, and
was permitted to effect it upon that mortal element which the living
Mediator had received from us. And where he could do anything, there
in every respect he was conquered; and wherein he received outwardly
the power of slaying the Lord in the flesh, therein his inward power,
by which he held ourselves, was slain. For it was brought to pass
that the bonds of many sins in many deaths were loosed, through the one
death of One which no sin had preceded. Which death, though not
due, the Lord therefore rendered for us, that the death which was due
might work us no hurt. For He was not stripped of the flesh by
obligation of any authority, but He stripped Himself. For doubtless
He who was able not to die, if He would not, did die because He
would: and so He made a show of principalities and powers, openly
triumphing over them in Himself. For whereas by His death the one
and most real sacrifice was offered up for us, whatever fault there
was, whence principalities and powers held us fast as of right to pay
its penalty, He cleansed, abolished, extinguished; and by His own
resurrection He also called us whom He predestinated to a new life;
and whom He called, them He justified; and whom He justified, them
He glorified. And so the devil, in that very death of the flesh,
lost man, whom he was possessing as by an absolute right, seduced as
he was by his own consent, and over whom he ruled, himself impeded by
no corruption of flesh and blood, through that frailty of man's mortal
body, whence he was both too poor and too weak; he who was proud in
proportion as he was, as it were, both richer and stronger, ruling
over him who was, as it were, both clothed in rags and full of
troubles. For whither he drove the sinner to fall, himself not
following, there by following he compelled the Redeemer to descend.
And so the Son of God deigned to become our friend in the fellowship
of death, to which because he came not, the enemy thought himself to
be better and greater than ourselves.
For our Redeemer says, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a
man lay down his life for his friends." Wherefore also the devil
thought himself superior to the Lord Himself, inasmuch as the Lord
in His sufferings yielded to him; for of Him, too, is understood
what is read in the Psalm, "For Thou hast made Him a little lower
than the angels:" so that He, being Himself put to death, although
innocent, by the unjust one acting against us as it were by just
right, might by a most just right overcome him, and so might lead
captive the captivity wrought through sin, and free us from a captivity
that was just on account of sin, by blotting out the handwriting, and
redeeming us who were to be justified although sinners, through His
own righteous blood unrighteously poured out.
18. Hence also the devil mocks those who are his own until this very
day, to whom he presents himself as a false mediator, as though they
would be cleansed or rather entangled and drowned by his rites, in that
he very easily persuades the proud to ridicule and despise the death of
Christ, from which the more he himself is estranged, the more is he
believed by them to be the holier and more divine. Yet those who have
remained with him are very few, since the nations acknowledge and with
pious humility imbibe the price paid for themselves, and in trust upon
it abandon their enemy, and gather together to their Redeemer. For
the devil does not know how the most excellent wisdom of God makes use
of both his snares and his fury to bring about the salvation of His own
faithful ones, beginning from the former end, which is the beginning
of the spiritual creature, even to the latter end, which is the death
of the body, and so "reaching from the one end to the other, mightily
and sweetly ordering all things." For wisdom "passeth and goeth
through all things by reason of her pureness, and no defiled thing can
fall into her." And since the devil has nothing to do with the death
of the flesh, whence comes his exceeding pride, a death of another
kind is prepared in the eternal fire of hell, by which not only the
spirits that have earthly, but also those who have aerial bodies, can
be tormented. But proud men, by whom Christ is despised, because
He died, wherein He bought us with so great a price, both bring back
the former death, and also men, to that miserable condition of
nature, which is derived from the first sin, and will be cast down
into the latter death with the devil. And they on this account
preferred the devil to Christ, because the former cast them into that
former death, whither he himself fell not through the difference of his
nature, and whither on account of them Christ descended through His
great mercy: and yet they do not hesitate to believe themselves better
than the devils, and do not cease to assail and denounce them with
every sort of malediction, while they know them at any rate to have
nothing to do with the suffering of this kind of death, on account of
which they despise Christ. Neither will they take into account that
the case may possibly be, that the Word of God, remaining in
Himself, and in Himself in no way changeable, may yet, through the
taking upon Him of a lower nature, be able to suffer somewhat of a
lower kind, which the unclean spirit cannot suffer, because he has not
an earthly body. And so, whereas they themselves are better than the
devils, yet, because they bear a body of flesh, they can so die, as
the devils certainly cannot die, who do not bear such a body. They
presume much on the deaths of their own sacrifices, which they do not
perceive that they sacrifice to deceitful and proud spirits; or if they
have come to perceive it. think their friendship to be of some good to
themselves, treacherous and envious although they are, whose purpose
is bent upon nothing else except to hinder our return.
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