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This Part: 128 Pages
Page 116
BOOK VI.
[Introduction]
44 Ye are of your father the devil and the lusts of your father ye will do: he was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth because there is no truth in him.
Having with reason led them off from their kindred with Abraham and convicted them of having unlikeness to him in their manners, and of being far removed from piety toward God Himself, and yet moreover having explained the reason of their not being able to be obedient to His speech, He again shews who will rather be more fittingly and properly termed their father. Ye therefore, He says, are of your father the devil, whom He says was also a murderer in the beginning and that he abides not in the truth and is a liar; and that his father was a liar, whom in what follows He defined clearly who he is : for the mighty force itself in their brevity of the words before us has much obscurity and specially needs accurate scrutiny. For deep is the discourse about this, and not clear I ween to the many. For as to the meaning which can readily be got, it allots to the Jews no other father than Satan who fell from heaven. But that which is put next about the father allotted them, that he is a liar just as his father also, troubles us, yea rather compels us to fresh doubt[2] not a little. For whom (if we think reasonably) can we imagine to have been father to the devil, or what other before him fell to whom he that comes after can be compared in likeness and manner ? for no one will shew us such a reading as this in the holy and Divine Scriptures; and in no wise is that to be received as truth which is not told in the Divinely-inspired Scriptures. For every spirit that is reckoned among devils as a child of the devil is called Satan according to what is said by our Saviour Christ, If then Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself: yet have we heard of one surpassing the rest and above them, him to whom it is somewhere said by the Prophet Ezekiel, Thou art the seal of likeness and crown of beauty begotten in the delight of the Paradise of God, every precious stone hast: thou put on. Whom else then shall we unblamed suppose existed, after whom this one was formed, in likeness I mean as to vice? for some of the elder expositors, citing what is now before us, say that that ancient Satan who is conceived of as being the chief of all the other devils was bound by the Might of God and cast into Tartarus itself there to pay the penalty of what he had done in outrage against God, and that some other appeared after him, coming nothing short of the abominations of his father [1], and they affirmed that of him it was that the Saviour says that he was a murderer from the beginning and that he is a liar, as his father.
But unless we had much considered it in our minds, we should with reason have readily accepted this, but now this one thing above all suffers us not to approve inconsiderately. For at the time of the Saviour's Advent, the tyranny of the devil was receiving the beginning of its fall and the wicked and unclean spirits were being sent forth into the deep. And verily the devils would come and openly beg Him, that He would not command them to go forth into the deep. And we remember that they made a great outcry about this, saying, Let us alone, what have we to do with Thee, Thou Jesus of Nazareth? we know Thee Who Thou art, The Holy One of God, art Thou come hither to torment us before the time? For that our Lord Jesus Christ having come among us would waste them away[ ]and manifoldly vex them, they themselves too knew full well, finding much talk of Him among those in Israel, yet found fault as though He had come not in His season, in this too acting tyrannically and perversely accusing the time of the Advent. But they say before the time, as though in no wise tormented in any other time, but looking for one, the time of the Advent, in which they were unquestionably to undergo what they are expecting. And to this we say besides, If, he being bound according to their distinction, some other deceived Adam, and does not yet cease from the madness whereof he is accused, the first one will be wholly blameless as regards us, and this account will free him from all blame, and neither hath he slain any, nor deceived nor lied, nor yet will it be justly said to him by God, As raiment stained in blood shall not be clean, so neither shalt thou be clean, because thou destroyedst My land and slewest My people. If therefore we grant that that he whom they say is the first is wholly without any share in the above enumerated evil deeds, whom shall we decide that the second after him imitated, or after whom was he formed who surpassed in wickedness his leader, and had the deeper impress of that one's villainy?
1. [b ]Here the MS of S. Cyril gives the words, Κὰωσ τὸν νῦν ἄρχοντα τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου, which Dr. Heyse, the careful and accomplished collator of S. Cyril's Commentaries, looked on as a gloss.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/cyril-alexandria/john-commentary-3.asp?pg=116
