3. The Lord, indeed, sowed good seed in His own field;[1] and He says, "The field is the world." But while men slept, the enemy came, and "sowed tares in the midst of the wheat, and went his way."[2] Hence we learn that this was the apostate angel and the enemy, because he was envious of God's workmanship, and took in hand to render this [workmanship] at enmity Avith God. For this cause also God has banished from His presence him who did of his own accord stealthily sow the tares, that is, him who brought about the transgression;[3] but He took compassion upon man, who, through want of care no doubt, but still wickedly [on the part of another], became involved in disobedience: and He turned the enmity by which [the devil] had designed to make [man] the enemy of God, against the author of it, by removing His own anger from man, turning it in another direction, and sending it instead upon the serpent. As also the Scripture tells us that God said to the serpent, "And I will place enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed. He[4] shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel."[5] And the Lord summed up in Himself this enmity, when He was made man from a woman, and trod upon his [the serpent's] head, as I have pointed out in the preceding book.
Chap. xli.—Those persons who do not believe in God, but who are disobedient, are angels and sons of the devil, not indeed by nature, but by imitation. Close of this book, and scope of the succeeding one.
1. Inasmuch as the Lord has said that there are certain angels, [viz. those] of the devil, for whom eternal fire is prepared; and as, again, He declares with regard to the tares,
- ↑ Matt. xiii. 34.
- ↑ Matt. xiii. 28.
- ↑ The old Latin translator varies from this (the Greek of which was recovered by Grabe from two ancient Catenæ Patrum), making the clause run thus, that is, the transgression which he had himself introduced, making the explanatory words to refer to the tares, and not, as in the Greek, to the sower of the tares.
- ↑ Following the reading of the LXX., αὐτός σου τηρήσει κεφαλὴν.
- ↑ Gen. iii. 15.
