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SERENUS: The passage in Genesis shows that that was not the beginning
of his fall and ruin, as before their deception it takes the view that he
had already been branded with the ignominy of the name of the serpent,
where it says: "But the serpent was wiser" or as the Hebrew copies express
it, "more subtle than all the beasts of the earth, which the Lord God had
made." You see then that he had fallen away from his angelic holiness
even before he deceived the first man, so that he not only deserved to be
stamped with the ignominy of this title, but actually excelled all other
beasts of the earth in the subterfuges of wickedness. For Holy Scripture
would not have designated a good angel by such a term, nor would it say of
those who were still continuing in that state of bliss: "But the serpent
was wiser than all the beasts of the earth." For this title could not
possibly be applied I say not to Gabriel or Michael, but it would not even
be suitable to any good man. And so the title of serpent and the comparison
to beasts most clearly suggests not the dignity of an angel but the infamy
of an apostate. Finally the occasion of the envy and seduction, which led
him to deceive man, arose from the ground of his previous fall, in that he
saw that man, who had but recently been formed out of the dust of the
ground, was to be called to that glory, from which he remembered that he
himself, while still one of the princes, had fallen. And so that first fall
of his, which was due to pride, and which obtained for him the name of the
serpent, was followed by a second owing to envy: and as this one found him
still in the possession of something upright so that he could enjoy some
interchange of conference and counsel with man, by the Lord's sentence he
was very properly cast down to the lowest depth, that he might no longer
walk as before erect, and looking up on high, but should cleave to the
ground and creep along, and be brought low upon his belly and feed upon the
earthly food and works of sins, and henceforward proclaim his secret
hostility, and put between himself and man an enmity that is to our
advantage, and a discord that is to our profit, so that while men are on
their guard against him as a dangerous enemy, he can no longer injure them
by a deceptive show of friendship.
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