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AND So we are clearly shown that out of that number of them some of the
leaders fell, by the lamentations of Ezekiel and Isaiah, in which we know
that the prince of Tyre or that Lucifer who rose in the morning is lamented
with a doleful plaint: and of him the Lord speaks as follows to Ezekiel:
"Son of man, take up a lamentation over the prince of Tyre, and say to him:
Thus saith the Lord God: Thou wast the seal of resemblance, full of wisdom,
perfect in beauty. Thou wast in the pleasures of the paradise of God: every
precious stone was thy covering: the sardius, the topaz and the jasper, the
chrysolyte and the onyx and the beryl, the sapphire and the carbuncle and
the emerald: gold the work of thy beauty, and thy pipes were prepared in
the day that thou wast created. Thou wast a cherub stretched out and
protecting, and I set thee in the holy mountain of God, thou hast walked in
the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day
of thy creation, until iniquity was found in thee. By the multitude of thy
merchandise thy inner parts were filled with iniquity and thou hast sinned;
and I cast thee out from the mountain of God, and destroyed thee, O
covering cherub, out of the midst of the stones of fire. And thy heart was
lifted up with thy beauty: thou hast lost thy wisdom in thy beauty, I have
cast thee to the ground: I have set thee before the face of kings, that
they might behold thee. Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude
of thy iniquities and by the iniquity of thy traffic." Isaiah also says
of another: "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, who didst rise in
the morning? how art thou fallen to the ground, that didst wound the
nations? and thou saidst in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will
exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit in the mountain of the
covenant, in the sides of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the
clouds. I will be like the Most High." But Holy Scripture relates that
these fell not alone from that summit of their station in bliss, as it
tells us that the dragon dragged down together with himself the third part
of the stars. One of the Apostles too says still more plainly: "But the
angels who kept not their first estate, but left their own dwelling, He
hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness to the judgment of the
great day." This too which is said to us: "But ye shall die like men and
fall like one of the princes," what does it imply but that many princes
have fallen? And by these testimonies we can gather the reason for this
diversity; viz., either that they still retain those differences of rank
(which adverse powers are said to possess, after the manner of holy and
heavenly virtues) from the station of their former rank in which they were
severally created, or else that, though themselves cast down from heavenly
places, yet, as a reward for that wickedness of theirs m which they have
graduated in evil, they claim in perversity these grades and titles of rank
among themselves, by way of copying those virtues which have stood firm
there.
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