The devil and demons in the early church

Satan and the fallen angels, their fall, power, and defeat; exorcism. Part of Angels.

Ascension of Isaiah 7.9Anonymous · late 1st–2nd century
Epistle of Barnabas 4.9Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · In the last days, resist so that the devil cannot slip in.
Epistle of Barnabas 4.13Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · Do not grow complacent as the called, lest the devil cast us out.
Epistle of Barnabas 16.7Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · Before faith our hearts were a house of demons.
Epistle of Barnabas 18.2Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · God rules forever; Satan rules the present lawless age.
Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 7.2 (37.2)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Do not fear the devil, who has no power over those who fear God.
Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 7.3 (37.3)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Fear the devil's works, not the devil.
Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 12.4.6 (47.6)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Turn from the devil's hard commands; he has no power over you.
Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 12.5.2 (48.2)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · The devil can wrestle but cannot win against those who hope in God.
Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 12.6.2 (49.2)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · God will heal past sins if you turn to him; the devil is powerless.
To the Ephesians 13.1Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Frequent gatherings for the Eucharist defeat the powers of Satan.
First Apology 5Justin Martyr · ca. 150–155 · The pagan gods are evil demons, exposed by Socrates among the Greeks and by the Word made man, Jesus Christ, among the barbarians.
First Apology 23Justin Martyr · ca. 150–155 · Justin will prove that Christian teaching alone is true and older than the poets, and that the demons imitated it beforehand in myths.
First Apology 28Justin Martyr · ca. 150–155 · Satan and his followers will be punished eternally; God delays judgment so that more may repent; humans are free and responsible.
Acts of Andrew (Vatican fragments), chapter 17Anonymous · ca. 150-200 (the Acts); the Martyrdom text is later · Andrew tells the brothers not to be troubled by his coming death, since the devil has always waged a disguised war on mankind under a show of friendship.
Acts of Andrew (Vatican fragments), chapter 18Anonymous · ca. 150-200 (the Acts); the Martyrdom text is later · Andrew tells the brothers that since grace was revealed the devil has turned to open hatred, and urges them to wake up and gladly welcome the end.
Martyrdom of Andrew (first Greek martyrdom), chapter 12Anonymous · ca. 150-200 (the Acts); the Martyrdom text is later · Andrew tells Aegeates that the demons and idols have been overthrown by God the Word, who came in a body and sent the apostles, and calls him to believe and be saved.
Acts of John 41Anonymous · ca. 150–200 · John prays in the temple that the demon of the place be put to flight.
Second Apology 1Justin Martyr · ca. 150–160 · Recent executions under the prefect Urbicus move Justin to write again, since the demons use those rebuked by Christians to have them killed.
Second Apology 4Justin Martyr · ca. 150–160 · God entrusted the world to angels, some of whom fell by lust for women and fathered the demons, who enslaved mankind and are the gods of the poets.
Second Apology 5Justin Martyr · ca. 150–160 · God the Father has no proper name; the Son is called Christ and Jesus, and in his name Christians cast out demons.
Sentences of Sextus 39Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · When those who live wickedly have gone out of the body, an evil demon will torment them until he exacts from them even the last [penny].
Sentences of Sextus 62Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · An evil mind is a choir of evil demons.
Sentences of Sextus 305Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · An evil demon is the guide of evil actions.
Sentences of Sextus 348Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · Unclean demons claim an unclean soul for themselves.
Sentences of Sextus 349Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · Evil demons do not hinder a faithful and good soul on the way of God.
Sentence 305 (Greek)Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · An evil demon is the guide of evil actions.
Sentence 348 (Greek)Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · Unclean demons lay claim to an unclean soul.
Sentence 349 (Greek)Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · Evil demons do not hinder a faithful and good soul on the way of God.
Dialogue with Trypho 30.3Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Christians pray through Christ to be kept from demons, which flee at his name.
Dialogue with Trypho 55.2Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Other “gods” are idols of demons.
Dialogue with Trypho 76.6Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Christians cast out demons in Jesus' name; the apostles understood the prophecies only when Christ explained them.
Dialogue with Trypho 78.9Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · The “power of Damascus” is the demon from whom the Magi were set free by worshiping Christ.
Dialogue with Trypho 79.2Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Justin cites Scripture for evil angels.
Dialogue with Trypho 79.3Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Isa 30:1–5 (LXX): “evil angels” in Tanis.
Dialogue with Trypho 79.4Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Zechariah, Job, Genesis, Exodus, and the Psalms all speak of the devil and demons.
Dialogue with Trypho 85.2Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Every demon is subdued by the name of the crucified and risen Son of God.
Dialogue with Trypho 85.3Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Exorcism in other names fails, except perhaps in the name of the God of Abraham.
Dialogue with Trypho 94.2Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · The bronze serpent proclaimed the defeat of the devil through the cross.
Dialogue with Trypho 103.5Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · The lion may also be the devil; Justin explains the name Satan.
Dialogue with Trypho 125.4Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Christ defeated the devil in the temptation.
Oration to the Greeks 7Tatian · ca. 165–172 · The Word made angels and humans free; the first angel rebelled, was worshiped, and became the chief demon, and the first human lost the higher spirit and became mortal.
Oration to the Greeks 12Tatian · ca. 165–172 · Tatian's cosmology: matter was created by God; one material spirit runs through all things, but humans were first given also a higher spirit, God's image; the demons are made of matter.
Oration to the Greeks 14Tatian · ca. 165–172 · The demons cannot die, but their immortality will be one of punishment, which those who follow them will share.
Oration to the Greeks 15Tatian · ca. 165–172 · The image of God in humans is the indwelling divine Spirit, making the person God's temple; the demons cannot repent, but humans can conquer death through faith and repentance.
Oration to the Greeks 16Tatian · ca. 165–172 · The demons are not the souls of the dead; they deceive by illusions, claim credit for illnesses, and flee before the word of God's power.
Oration to the Greeks 18Tatian · ca. 165–172 · Healing by drugs belongs to the demons' art; the demons cause illness and then “heal” to win worship, like robbers who kidnap for ransom.
Diatessaron, section 6Tatian · ca. 160-180
Diatessaron, section 14Tatian · ca. 160-180
Diatessaron, section 20Tatian · ca. 160-180
Diatessaron, section 35Tatian · ca. 160-180
6Anonymous · ca. 161–180 or 249–251 · Sacrifice to demons makes the worshipper like them.
7Anonymous · ca. 161–180 or 249–251 · True worshippers become like God; idol-worshippers become like the demons.
8Anonymous · ca. 161–180 or 249–251 · Idolaters justly share the devil's fate; Carpus will not sacrifice.
17Anonymous · ca. 161–180 or 249–251 · The devil explains pagan oracles: he foretells wars he himself prepares.
18Anonymous · ca. 161–180 or 249–251 · The devil foretells the harm he plans to do.
19Anonymous · ca. 161–180 or 249–251 · The devil tempts humanity by God's permission.
To Autolycus 2.8Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · The poets and philosophers contradict one another about providence; they spoke under the inspiration of demons, though at times they said things that agree with the prophets.
To Autolycus 2.28Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · God made Eve from Adam's rib to show that one God made both, and marriage fulfills Adam's prophecy; Satan, a fallen angel, deceived Eve and is still invoked in the Bacchic cry “Euan.”
To Autolycus 2.29Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · Satan, out of envy, moved Cain to murder Abel, and so death entered the world; God gave Cain, as he had given Adam, a chance to repent.
A Plea for the Christians 23Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · The effects produced through idols are real but come from demons, not gods; Plato himself distinguished the uncreated God from the created gods of myth.
A Plea for the Christians 24Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · As there are Father, Son, and Spirit, so there are angels; some angels fell, among them the ruler of matter and those who lusted after women and fathered the giants.
A Plea for the Christians 25Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · The fallen angels and the souls of the giants are the demons; the injustice in human affairs comes from the ruler of matter and the demons, not from a lack of providence.
A Plea for the Christians 26Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · The demons, greedy for sacrificial blood, work through the statues of dead men such as Neryllinus and Proteus; the bronze itself and the men portrayed have no such power.
Acts of Peter (Vercelli) 8Anonymous · ca. 180–200 · The brothers tell Peter how Simon has turned the generous senator Marcellus against the Christians, and Peter denounces the devil.
Acts of Peter (Vercelli) 11Anonymous · ca. 180–200 · Peter casts a demon out of a young man, who smashes Caesar's statue, and Marcellus restores it by sprinkling water in Christ's name.
Acts of Peter (Vercelli) 22Anonymous · ca. 180–200 · On the eve of the contest Marcellus dreams that Peter, through one like him with Christ's sword, destroys a demon in the form of a dancing woman.
Adumbrations on 1 John, paragraph 9Clement of Alexandria · original ca. 200; Latin translation 6th century · On 1 John 3: we are God's children by adoption, not nature; in the end we shall see him as he is; those born of God do not sin because his word abides in them; the apostles ought to lay down their lives for the brothers.
Exhortation to the Greeks 1.7Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The Word, God and man, who gave us being, has now appeared as teacher to give eternal life and to rescue us from the serpent, who binds people to lifeless idols.
Exhortation to the Greeks 4.56Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Idols and daemons are earthbound spirits; statues are only earth given shape, and the soul's hopes must not rest on lifeless things.
Against Heresies 3.8.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The devil is strong only compared with us; Christ bound him and rescued us, his former vessels.
Against Heresies 4 pref. 4Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Like the serpent with Eve, the heretics promise secret knowledge and lead people into death, blaspheming the Creator and denying the salvation of the flesh.
Against Heresies 4.40.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The enemy who sowed the weeds is the apostate angel; God pitied deceived man and turned the enmity back on the serpent, which Christ, born of a woman, crushed.
Against Heresies 4.41.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · As disobedient sons are disinherited, so those who disobey God cease to be his sons and are called by the names of beasts, of Sodom, and of the devil, though they could repent.
Against Heresies 5.21.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · In the temptation in the desert Christ conquered the devil three times with the words of the law, undoing Adam’s transgression by his obedience.
Against Heresies 5.21.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The God of the law is the one Christ served; through the Man who kept the law the devil was bound as he had bound man, and his captives were set free by God’s mercy.
Against Heresies 5.22.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Christ’s answers in the temptation teach humility and trust in God’s gifts; the devil’s promise of the kingdoms was a lie, since all is ruled by God.
Against Heresies 5.23.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The devil lied from the beginning, telling Eve she would not die; but God proved true, and disobedient Adam and Eve became debtors to death.
Against Heresies 5.24.4Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The devil, an angel who fell through envy of man, usurps rule like a rebel; but the Word, conquering him as man, has made him subject to man.
Against Heresies 5.26.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Since Christ, the stone of Daniel, fulfilled what the Creator foretold, those who blaspheme the Creator, like Marcion and the Valentinians, are instruments of Satan, who, as Justin said, began to blaspheme only after learning his condemnation.
Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 16Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–200
Hortatory Address to the Greeks 28Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · Homer too learned in Egypt and borrowed from Moses: bodily punishment of Tityus, creation on Achilles' shield, paradise in Alcinous's garden, Babel in Otus and Ephialtes, and the devil's fall in Ate.
Prophetic Extracts 53.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · “Night to night proclaims knowledge”: the devil knew the Lord would come but not whether Jesus was he, so he tempted him and waited until the resurrection.
Prophetic Extracts 53.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · After the resurrection all the demons knew Jesus was the Lord; Enoch says the fallen angels taught astronomy and divination.
Excerpts from Theodotus 14.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Demons are called bodiless only by comparison with the spiritual bodies of the saved; they have a shape and can feel punishment.
Excerpts from Theodotus 53.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · This flesh is the tare sown among the good seed, the devil's seed, the serpent that strikes the heel,
Excerpts from Theodotus 77.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The newly baptized is God's servant and master of the unclean spirits, who now tremble before him.
Excerpts from Theodotus 81.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Fire is of two kinds: bodily fire for bodies, and a pure, bodiless fire that touches demons and the devil.
Excerpts from Theodotus 82.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Likewise the exorcised baptismal water both drives away evil and receives holiness.
Excerpts from Theodotus 83.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · One should come to baptism with joy, but also fear, since unclean spirits may go down with the candidate and receive the seal with him.
Miscellanies 5.1.10Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Greek philosophers stole their chief doctrines from Moses and the prophets; also the fallen angels revealed secrets to women; so Greek thought is partly true by conjecture and partly wrong through misreading prophetic allegory.
Miscellanies 5.14.92Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The philosophers learned from Moses that the world had a beginning, as Plato says in the Timaeus, and Plato's evil-working soul in the Laws corresponds to the devil of Scripture.
Miscellanies 6.3.31Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Some Greeks ascribe plagues and storms to angry daemons or evil angels, tell of magi and seers who averted them, and honor the souls of the dead as daemons serving mankind.
Miscellanies 6.12.98Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Sinners cannot blame demons: by choosing what demons choose, a person becomes demonic; some goods, like knowledge, are chosen for themselves, others, like faith, for their results, since most avoid sin from fear and obey for the promised reward.
On Idolatry 1Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Idolatry is the chief sin, containing murder, adultery, fraud, and every other vice, because it robs God of his honor and serves the demons.
On Idolatry 9Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Astrology was taught by the fallen angels and is a form of magic; the magi's visit to Christ ended its license, as the fate of Simon Magus and Elymas shows.
Octavius 26.7Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Octavius explains that impure spirits lie behind oracles.
Octavius 26.8Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Fallen spirits seek to draw others away from God through false religions.
Octavius 26.9Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Poets and philosophers, including Socrates, knew of demons.
Octavius 26.10Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Magicians work their tricks through demons.
Octavius 26.11Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · The magus Hostanes acknowledged the true God, his angels, and hostile demons.
Octavius 26.12Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Plato describes demons as beings between mortal and immortal who stir human desires.
Octavius 27.1Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Demons hide in idols and produce omens and oracles.
Octavius 27.2Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Demons cause illness and then 'cure' it to win worship.
Octavius 27.3Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Demons also drive the frenzied public prophets.
Octavius 27.4Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · The wonders Caecilius cited were the work of demons.
Octavius 27.5Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Demons confess what they are when Christians cast them out.
Octavius 27.6Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · The gods themselves, under exorcism, admit they are demons.
Octavius 27.7Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Adjured by the true God, demons leave the possessed and flee from Christians.
Octavius 27.8Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Demons stir up hatred of Christians so people will condemn them without knowing them.
Octavius 31.1Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Demons invented the incest slander to make people shun Christians.
Apology 22Tertullian · ca. 197 · Demons, fallen angels, cause disease and madness, steal knowledge of the future from the prophets, and work false marvels so that idols are worshiped instead of the true God.
Apology 23Tertullian · ca. 197 · Tertullian challenges the magistrates to test it: before a Christian, the spirits worshiped as gods confess that they are demons and fear Christ the judge.
Apology 27Tertullian · ca. 197 · Christians refuse to sacrifice even to save their lives, recognizing that the pressure to do so comes from the demons, over whom they triumph when condemned.
On the Dress of Women 1.8Tertullian · ca. 197–206 · Dyed cloth is an “adultery of colors” God did not make; that materials come from God no more justifies vanity than it justifies spectacles or idolatry.
On the Dress of Women 2.5Tertullian · ca. 197–206 · Cosmetics criticize God's workmanship and borrow the devil's art; they are a lie of the face and an adultery of appearance.
On the Dress of Women 2.10Tertullian · ca. 197–206 · God did not invent dyes, jewelry, or pierced ears; these came from the fallen angels, and even permitted things are tests best met by abstaining.
To the Martyrs 1Tertullian · ca. 197 · Tertullian encourages Christians imprisoned and awaiting martyrdom to feed their spirits, not to grieve the Holy Spirit, and to keep peace among themselves so that the devil finds no foothold.
To the Nations 2.13Tertullian · 197 · If men became gods after death, someone higher must have made them so, and no merit can explain it, since the stories of Saturn and Jupiter are full of incest, violence, and lust.
On the Shows 10Tertullian · ca. 197–202 · The theatre is a shrine of Venus and Liber, gods of lust and drunkenness, and the stage arts were inspired by demons who hide behind the names of their supposed inventors.
On the Shows 26Tertullian · ca. 197–202 · Tertullian tells of a woman possessed by a demon at the theatre and another who died after dreaming of a shroud, as warnings that no one can serve two masters.
The Testimony of the Soul 3Tertullian · ca. 197–198 · People's curses, calling others “demon” and naming Satan, show that the soul knows the demons and the devil, the author of the fall.
Acts of Thomas 31Anonymous · ca. 200–250 · Thomas gives the Eucharist and goes where the Lord sends him; finding a dead youth, he prays, and a great dragon confesses it killed the youth out of jealousy over a woman.
Acts of Thomas 33Anonymous · ca. 200–250 · The dragon declares its lineage and its part in every evil from Eden to the betrayal of Christ; at Thomas's command it sucks the poison from the youth, who revives, and the dragon bursts and is swallowed by the earth.
Acts of Thomas 41Anonymous · ca. 200–250 · The colt dies at the city gate; Thomas frees a woman from a demon that has abused her for five years, seals her and gives the Eucharist; then a youth who killed his lover for refusing continence is convicted by the Eucharist and healed, and the woman, raised, describes the punishments she saw in the place of the dead.
Acts of Thomas 64Anonymous · ca. 200–250 · The captain's wife tells how two black demons met them at the aqueduct and struck them down; for three years the women have been tormented, and the captain begs Thomas for help.
Acts of Thomas 73Anonymous · ca. 200–250 · Thomas sends one of the wild asses into the captain's courtyard to summon the demons that torment the women.
Acts of Thomas 74Anonymous · ca. 200–250 · The wild ass addresses the demons as children of Gehenna whose evil nature cannot change.
Acts of Thomas 75Anonymous · ca. 200–250 · The wild ass orders the demon and its son to come out before the crowd and declare their race.
Acts of Thomas 76Anonymous · ca. 200–250 · The demon, recognized by Thomas, compares its father's service to Christ's, is commanded to leave human dwellings, and vanishes, leaving the women as if dead.
Acts of Thomas 148Anonymous · ca. 200–250 · Thomas prays that, having overcome the passions and kept watch, he may pass the hostile powers and tax collectors of the heavenly ascent unharmed and stand before the judge.
On the Medium of Endor (spurious fragment)Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 200–235 · On 1 Sam 28: Samuel did not truly come up at Endor; a demon showed his likeness and, guessing from God's anger, foretold Saul's defeat and death.
On Proverbs, fragment 9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 200–235 · On Prov 4:27: virtue is a mean; the ‘right’ to be shunned is apparent good through pleasure, and Boreas, the harsh wind called ‘right-hand,’ is the devil, called an angel.
Heads against Gaius, fragment VII (on Rev 20:2-3)Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 200-235 · Against Gaius, who held that Satan is already bound, Hippolytus argues that the devil still tempts and fights, and reads the thousand years of Rev 20 as one perfect day at the Lord's coming.
Apostolic Tradition 42Hippolytus of Rome · early third century · The sign of the cross, made in faith, puts the devil to flight, as the blood of the paschal lamb protected Israel.
Pistis Sophia 139Anonymous · 3rd century
Pistis Sophia 140Anonymous · 3rd century
Letters to Virgins 1.12.2Anonymous · 3rd century · Visit and pray over the possessed in faith, not with showy formulas.
Letters to Virgins 1.12.3Anonymous · 3rd century · Exorcism requires prayer, faith, and fasting, not empty words.
Prescription against Heretics 40Tertullian · ca. 203 · The devil imitates Christian sacraments in pagan mysteries, as in Mithraism, and likewise twists Scripture into heresy, which is a kind of idolatry.
Fragment 33 on Genesis (Gen. 49, 16)Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 202-235 · Dan who judges is a type of the devil, the accuser of humanity cast down in Revelation.
Fragment 34 on Genesis (Gen. 49, 118--)Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 202-235 · Dan the serpent is the devil, who hid in Judas, of the tribe of Dan, and struck at the Lord who came in the flesh.
Commentary on Daniel 2.27Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 202-204 · The king acted under the devil, who imitates God's works: the image's eighteen years, sixty cubits and six cubits are read as parodies of Christ, the patriarchs and the six days, and the many idols of the present age as the devil's devices.
Commentary on Daniel 3.24Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 202-204 · Daniel would not set God's glory below men's; Christians threatened with death for worshipping God must choose to die; the devil persecutes the saints to stop their prayer, which defeats him as Moses' raised hands defeated Amalek.
Commentary on Daniel 3.25Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 202-204 · On Daniel 6:11–15: the devil works through the satraps, who accuse Daniel; Darius strives to save him, but they hold him to his irrevocable decree, so that Daniel's rescue would be God's work.
The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity 4Anonymous · 203 · In her last vision Perpetua, made a man, wrestles and defeats an Egyptian in the arena and understands that her fight is against the devil.
Against Marcion 2.10Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The devil was created a good angel and became evil by his own free choice, as Ezekiel's lament over the prince of Tyre shows; God delays his destruction so that man, by the same free will, may defeat him and return to paradise.
Against Marcion 4.7Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Marcion's Christ begins at Capernaum, in the Galilee Isaiah foretold; he teaches in the synagogue without opposing the law, and the demon who names him Holy One recognizes the Creator's Christ.
Against Marcion 4.8Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Christ bears the Creator's name Nazarene, has a real body that was seized at Nazareth and heals by touch, and is confessed by demons who fear the Creator's Son, as Isaiah foretold.
Against Marcion 4.20Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Christ's stilling of the storm, his victory over the legion of demons, and his healing of the bleeding woman all show him to be the Creator's Christ, with a real body, fulfilling rather than opposing the law.
Against Marcion 5.6Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The hidden wisdom Paul speaks of was the Creator's, veiled in figures and revealed in Christ; the rulers who crucified the Lord of glory, the one foundation, the temple of God, and the folly of worldly wisdom all point to the Creator.
Against Marcion 5.17Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Ephesians, which Marcion called Laodiceans, speaks of summing up all things in Christ, of the Spirit promised by Joel, of the nations brought near to Israel's God, and of Christ's real flesh and the prophets' foundation, all of which belong to the Creator.
Against Marcion 5.18Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Marcion altered Ephesians 3:9 to make the mystery hidden from the Creator, but the context, Paul's spiritual allegories, his moral commands, his teaching on marriage as a great mystery, and the powers of darkness in Ephesians 3–6 all point to the Creator.
On the Soul 39Tertullian · ca. 210 · Pagan birth rites hand children over to demons from birth; the children of believers are called holy, but only baptism by water and the Spirit makes one truly holy.
On the Soul 46Tertullian · ca. 210 · Many true dreams are recorded in history, against Epicurus; but dreams at pagan oracles, like the oracles themselves, are the work of demons.
On the Soul 57Tertullian · ca. 210 · Magic's claim to summon the dead is demonic deceit, as with the witch of Endor; no soul returns from the underworld except when God raises the dead bodily.
On Flight in Persecution 2Tertullian · ca. 208–213 · The devil's iniquity is only the instrument of persecution, not its author: as Job, Peter, the Lord's Prayer, and Paul's thorn show, Satan can do nothing to God's servants except by God's permission.
On Flight in Persecution 10Tertullian · ca. 208–213 · The proverb that he who flees lives to fight again is worldly wisdom; a Christian soldier who flees has already been defeated, and like Jonah he cannot escape God anyway, so it is better to stay and trust him.
To Scapula 2Tertullian · 212 · Christians worship the one God, hold that religion must not be compelled, pray for the emperor to their God, and are loyal and peaceable subjects who leave vengeance to God.
On First Principles 1.0.6Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · The church teaches that the devil and his angels exist but has not defined their nature; many hold that he was an apostate angel.
On First Principles 1.5.2Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Every rational creature is capable of praise and blame; Scripture names the devil and the hostile powers, and distinguishes orders among human beings as well.
On First Principles 1.5.4Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Ezekiel's lament over the prince of Tyre describes a once holy and spotless power that fell by its own fault, showing that evil powers were not created evil.
On First Principles 1.5.5Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Isaiah's fallen Lucifer and Christ's saying about Satan falling like lightning show that the devil was once light; holiness in creatures is accidental, so none is spotless or polluted by nature.
On First Principles 1.6.3Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Some fallen beings became the devil and his angels, opponents of humanity; whether they can ever be converted Origen leaves to the reader, while others are restored through long corrections, every rational being able to rise or fall by free choice.
On First Principles 1.8.3Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Every rational creature, even the devil, is capable of good and evil; only God, Christ and the Holy Spirit are good by nature, while creatures hold holiness, righteousness and wisdom as accidents.
On First Principles 3.2.1Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Scripture shows hostile powers inciting human beings to sin, from the serpent in Eden to the rulers who crucified the Lord, so that simpler believers think all sin comes from them.
On First Principles 3.2.2Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Many sins arise from natural bodily motions such as hunger and desire; the hostile powers then inflame these beyond measure, at times even to madness.
On First Principles 3.2.4Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Thoughts arise from ourselves, from hostile powers, or from God and the angels, as Scripture, Hermas and Barnabas attest; but in every case we remain free to accept or reject them.
On First Principles 3.2.5Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · No one fights all the hostile powers at once; God, the just umpire, measures each contest, and the saints prevail only by Christ's power, as Jacob's wrestling shows.
On First Principles 3.2.6Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · The demons' warfare is spiritual: misfortunes like Job's are allowed by God and aim to drive us to anger, despair or complaint against God.
On First Principles 3.3.2Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · The wisdom of this world is the ordinary arts and sciences; the wisdom of the rulers of this world is the secret lore of nations, inspired by the spiritual princes set over them, who plotted against Christ.
On First Principles 3.3.3Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · The wisdom of the rulers of this world may be instilled by hostile powers, as in the arts of poets, magicians and diviners who give themselves over to demons.
On First Principles 3.3.4Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Heresies may be devised by hostile powers; the soul can receive the workings of evil or of good spirits, and true inspiration leaves the mind clear and its judgment free.
On First Principles 3.3.6Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Good or evil suggestions may also have causes before birth, but our watchfulness or sloth opens the heart to the ministering spirits or to the devil.
Eclogae on Exodus-Judges, column 291Origen · ca. 220-254 · The “fathers” whose sins are visited on the children are the devil and his spirits, whose working the sinner accepts; God visits the sinner himself to heal him.
Eclogae on Exodus-Judges, column 575Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Numbers 16–22: the censers; tithes and the priests' poverty; Moses' hidden grave; Israel wars by prayer, Balaam by curses; God, good by essence, cannot work evil.
Eclogae on Exodus-Judges, column 577Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Balaam: God came to him to avert the demons; God's power defeats magic; sacrifices were allowed to end sacrifice to demons; the donkey loosed by Christ's disciples; Peor and the two summits.
Eclogae on 1 Kingdoms, column 993Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on 1–3 Kingdoms: David's ruddiness; the loaves of the presence prefigure the twelve apostles sent two by two; Saul as a type of the evil spirit; David's mercy to the blind and lame; the saint as adamant that the devil's hammer cannot break.
Fragments on Genesis, column 107Origen · ca. 220-254 · The wild beasts that fear the righteous are evil powers; the image of God is the Saviour, who is therefore God; a Hebrew tradition that Canaan first saw Noah's nakedness.
Fragments on Job, column 59Origen · ca. 220-254 · The devil could touch only what God's hedge left open, and he struck Job's children at a drinking party, not at reading or prayer.
Fragments on Job, column 61Origen · ca. 220-254 · Job's wife spoke the devil's counsel, but Job, like a good pilot, stayed steady in prosperity and disaster alike.
Fragments on Job, column 99Origen · ca. 220-254 · God explains that Job's sufferings revealed his hidden righteousness, and gives him power over the devil and the opposing powers.
Fragments on Job, column 101Origen · ca. 220-254 · The dragon of Job 41 is the devil, who wears the mask of virtue over each vice, yet with God's help each believer can overcome him.
Fragments on Job, column 103Origen · ca. 220-254 · The fire from the dragon's mouth is the teaching of those who slander the Creator, but Christ's weakness has conquered the dragon's power.
Fragments on Luke, column 349Origen · ca. 220-254 · Christ was handed over by the Father in love, by Judas in malice and by the devil, and by his death destroyed death; the call to follow him comes when the "father", the devil, has died to us.
Fragments on Proverbs, column 159Origen · ca. 220-254 · The adulteress and strange woman of Proverbs are false and pagan teaching, the ruler's table is the prophets read spiritually, and the leech of Prov 30 is the devil.
Fragments on Proverbs, column 163Origen · ca. 220-254 · Those who lack the fear of God are insensible to wisdom, like those who reject the Old Testament; the soul that goes out from wickedness becomes the broad place where Wisdom speaks.
Fragments on Proverbs, column 165Origen · ca. 220-254 · Wisdom "rejoices" over the destruction of sin in the converted, all people stand between angels and demons, and the evil counsel that forsook its youth is the devil.
Fragments on Proverbs, column 179Origen · ca. 220-254 · The soul deprived of Christ's righteous blood dies; the mother wisdom leads us through creation to the Father; the commandment's lamp and light are the Old and New Testaments.
Fragments on Proverbs, column 195Origen · ca. 220-254 · Wisdom's nests are the churches and the virtues; life is the holy Trinity; the devil, the crooked and lawless man, tries to separate the saints from God through the demons.
Fragments on Proverbs, column 213Origen · ca. 220-254 · The deceitful balance is a mind bent by self-interest; rash vows lead to regret; Christ winnows the ungodly; the Lord's lamp searches the heart, while the devil disguises himself as light.
Fragments on Proverbs, column 219Origen · ca. 220-254 · Christ is the good shepherd and the rod from Jesse's root; the devil is the lion and the deep pit; Scripture's teaching is threefold, ethical, natural and theological, matching Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song.
Fragments on Proverbs, column 225Origen · ca. 220-254 · Life is a sea battle against the demons, won with God as pilot through prayer and fasting; the wise must not neglect to teach and to rescue those being led to death.
Fragments on Proverbs, column 247Origen · ca. 220-254 · Whoever shares with the thief, the devil, hates his own soul; sins must be confessed; the angels set over the nations lead us; the valiant woman of Prov 31 is the soul that conquers the enemy and spins the threads of contemplation.
PG 12:1181 (Ps 7–8 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · The end of Psalm 7: the devil’s instruments of death; the lover of pleasure conceives toil and brings forth lawlessness, the lover of God conceives joy and brings forth righteousness; the pit dug by the devil; the title of Psalm 8, “for the winepresses.”
PG 12:1183 (Ps 8 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · The winepresses in Scripture (Noah, Judah, Issachar, the righteous man’s wife) are rational natures receiving the fruit of the spiritual vine; on Ps 8:2 the infants of Matthew 21 teach an allegorical reading; the enemy is the devil, overthrown through simple fishermen; the heavens, the works of God’s fingers, and the moon and stars.
PG 12:1193 (Ps 9 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · On Ps 10:5–8 (LXX 9:26–29): Satan “rules” the righteous in some respect, for Christ alone was sinless, or the text states the devil’s vain will; the righteous still progressing are subject to him; the mouths full of cursing are the heretics who speak evil of the Creator; the devil lurks among the rich in ignorance.
PG 12:1195 (Ps 9 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · The end of LXX Psalm 9 (Ps 10:9–18): God “punishes” by breaking the sinner’s arm, freeing him from sin; Christ reigns until his enemies become friends; the land of the Lord is the contemplation of creation; God hears the desire of the poor, which is effective prayer.
PG 12:1221 (Ps 16 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · On Ps 17:11–13 (LXX 16:11–13): the enemies surround those they have cast out of virtue; whether the vices, like the virtues, follow one another; the lion lying in wait is the impure thought; God’s sword is the righteous soul, to be rescued from the enemies of his hand.
PG 12:1231 (Ps 17 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Ps 17 LXX (18):17–24: rescue from mighty enemies, the broad place of affliction, and cleanness of hands.
PG 12:1255 (Ps 21 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Ps 21 LXX (22):10–14: Christ’s sinless infancy, his struggle in Hades without the angels’ help, and the calves, bulls and lion as hostile powers.
PG 12:1277 (Ps 26 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Ps 26 LXX (27):2–5: the demons who eat our flesh, the army that the heart does not fear, and the one thing asked of the Lord.
PG 12:1311 (Ps 34 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Ps 34 LXX (35):3–13: the drawn sword, Christ who has conquered the world, the devil caught in the snare of the cross, and fasting that humbles the soul.
PG 12:1597 (Ps 118 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Psalm 119:70–85 (LXX 118): the demons not wicked from the beginning, the body as a wineskin cooled by the divine word, and the devil as the first persecutor.
PG 12:1607 (Ps 118 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Psalm 119:110–116 (LXX 118): the snares laid for Joseph and Daniel, the reward stored up, and hating the lawless man's sin while loving the image of God in him.
PG 12:1609 (Ps 118 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Psalm 119:116–121 (LXX 118): salvation complete only with the angels, sinners of the earth and of heaven, and the fear of God as the cross from which perfect love takes us down.
PG 12:1619 (Ps 118 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Psalm 119:157–165 (LXX 118): the imprints of good works, the rulers of this darkness, seven times a day as a symbol of this world, and the great peace of those who love God's law.
PG 12:1631 (Ps 123–124 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Psalm 124:7 (LXX 123) and Psalm 125:1–2 (LXX 124): the soul rescued like a sparrow, the snares of action and of thought broken by the Old and New Covenants, and those who trust in the Lord like Mount Zion.
PG 12:1657 (Ps 138–139 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on the end of Psalm 139 (LXX 138) and on Psalm 140 (LXX 139): awakening from vice, the demons' warfare through thoughts and the thought of listlessness, and the judgment to come.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.47.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The heretics identify Aratus's Dragon near the pole with the devil in Job who goes about the earth.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.33.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Valentinians make the devil and Beelzebul the rulers of matter and demons, and the ignorant Demiurge a tool of Sophia who wrongly claims to be the only God.
Fragment 91 on John 12:83Origen · ca. 226-254 · On John 12:39–40: Scripture shows that we are free to become righteous or unrighteous; the one who blinds and hardens is the evil one, ‘the god of this age,’ while Christ heals those who turn; those who ‘could not believe’ could still be healed by coming to Jesus.
Commentary on John 2.97Origen · ca. 230–248 · The devil as devil is not God's creation, though the being who became the devil was created by God.
Commentary on John 6.281Origen · ca. 230–248 · The martyrs' deaths weaken the demonic powers and free many others from their burden.
Commentary on John 10.52Origen · ca. 230–248 · Mark records Jesus casting out an unclean spirit in Capernaum.
Commentary on John 10.56Origen · ca. 230–248 · Luke's account of the exorcism in Capernaum.
Commentary on John 10.205Origen · ca. 230–248 · Christ destroys the bow of war, so the devil's fiery darts cannot prevail over those who receive him.
Commentary on John 10.322Origen · ca. 230–248 · One who gives place to the devil lets Satan in, as with Judas.
Commentary on John 19.93Origen · ca. 230–248 · Their charge that he cast out demons by Beelzebul shows their knowledge of hidden traditions.
Commentary on John 19.94Origen · ca. 230–248 · They knew of Beelzebul, though he is not named in the accepted books.
Commentary on John 19.95Origen · ca. 230–248 · Jesus' reply assumes Beelzebul exists.
Commentary on John 19.96Origen · ca. 230–248 · They erred about Jesus but rightly knew of Beelzebul.
Commentary on John 20.78Origen · ca. 230–248 · Sinners are children of the devil, and more specifically of some wicked figure.
Commentary on John 20.97Origen · ca. 230–248 · John 8:44 shows that the father meant is the devil.
Commentary on John 20.102Origen · ca. 230–248 · All who sin are of the devil.
Commentary on John 20.103Origen · ca. 230–248 · While we sin, we are still the devil's children, even if we are believers.
Commentary on John 20.105Origen · ca. 230–248 · Until we let Christ destroy the devil's works in us, we remain the devil's children, known by our fruits.
Commentary on John 20.107Origen · ca. 230–248 · One becomes a child of God by loving enemies; every person of mature reason is either God's child or the devil's, depending on whether he sins.
Commentary on John 20.168Origen · ca. 230–248 · Heracleon says they could not hear because they were of the devil's very substance.
Commentary on John 20.211Origen · ca. 230–248 · Heracleon also claims the devil has desires but no will.
Commentary on John 20.221Origen · ca. 230–248 · The devil murdered Adam and Eve by leading them to sin.
Commentary on John 20.243Origen · ca. 230–248 · The devil has not stood in the truth because there is no truth in him.
Commentary on John 20.258Origen · ca. 230–248 · The story of Micaiah and the lying spirit supports this.
Commentary on John 20.262Origen · ca. 230–248 · Lying spirits are liars from the devil by wickedness, not by substance.
Commentary on John 20.314Origen · ca. 230–248 · Or they said it because they thought he cast out demons by Beelzebul.
Commentary on John 20.326Origen · ca. 230–248 · Scripture teaches that sinners act under demonic influence.
Commentary on John 20.327Origen · ca. 230–248 · Some have called even irritability and slander demons.
Commentary on John 20.328Origen · ca. 230–248 · No one is wholly free of demonic influence, as no one is free of sin.
Commentary on John 20.329Origen · ca. 230–248 · Spiritually, Jesus still drives out demons from those healed by the Word.
Commentary on John 20.332Origen · ca. 230–248 · Rage and uncontrolled lust show demonic influence.
Commentary on John 20.333Origen · ca. 230–248 · Despairing grief that forgets God's providence is also a sign of demonic influence.
Commentary on John 20.334Origen · ca. 230–248 · Groundless fears and empty joys also come from demons.
Commentary on John 28.129Origen · ca. 230–248 · Evil spirits too can testify to Jesus, as the demons did.
Commentary on John 28.139Origen · ca. 230–248 · Scripture also speaks of an evil spirit from God on Saul, and of a lying spirit in Ahab's prophets.
Commentary on John 28.150Origen · ca. 230–248 · Even the devil knew Jesus was the Son of God, so an evil power could have prophesied through Caiaphas.
Commentary on John 32.19Origen · ca. 230–248 · Origen boldly suggests Jesus did not wash Judas' feet, since the devil had already wounded him.
Commentary on John 32.20Origen · ca. 230–248 · The devil is the archer of Psalm 7.
Commentary on John 32.22Origen · ca. 230–248 · The whole passage refers to the devil, through whose envy death entered.
Commentary on John 32.23Origen · ca. 230–248 · The devil's dart struck Judas at the supper, whose host is not named here, unlike at Bethany.
Commentary on John 32.24Origen · ca. 230–248 · The devil shoots every kind of sin into hearts that lack the shield of faith.
Commentary on John 32.281Origen · ca. 230–248 · Satan entered Judas only after the morsel, not when he first put the betrayal into his heart.
Commentary on John 32.285Origen · ca. 230–248 · The morsel took peace away from Judas, and the one who watches for an opening entered him.
Commentary on John 32.286Origen · ca. 230–248 · Satan first only put the thought into Judas's heart; after the morsel he entered him.
Commentary on John 32.287Origen · ca. 230–248 · Guard the heart against the devil's darts, lest he then enter.
Commentary on John 32.302Origen · ca. 230–248 · Satan in Judas could not remain in Jesus' presence.
Commentary on John 32.307Origen · ca. 230–248 · Perhaps Satan entered Judas before he could eat, to keep him from benefiting from Jesus' gift.
Commentary on John 32.308Origen · ca. 230–248 · Fearing the morsel's good power, Satan entered Judas the moment he took it.
Commentary on John 32.317Origen · ca. 230–248 · Satan led Judas to the noose, for unlike Job his soul was not protected; the next text is John 13:31–32.
Commentary on John 32.381Origen · ca. 230–248 · Christ was no longer truly with Judas once the devil had entered his heart.
On Prayer 12.1Origen · ca. 233–234 · The prayers of the saints are powerful, like light and like arrows, weakening and wounding the evil spirits that try to bind us in sin.
On Prayer 26.5Origen · ca. 233–234 · Evil spirits are not truly “in heaven,” because where one belongs depends on the will, not on place; the saints on earth are heavenly, and the demons, though in the heavens, are earthly.
On Prayer 30.2Origen · ca. 233–234 · God delivered Job from the evil one not by sparing him temptation but by keeping him faithful through two great trials; the threefold victory over the tempter was reserved for Christ.
On Prayer 30.3Origen · ca. 233–234 · We should pray not to be conquered by temptation, quenching the evil one's fiery darts with the shield of faith and the living water of saving thoughts.
Homily on Luke 6Origen · ca. 233–250 · Elizabeth hid from modesty; Christ was born of a betrothed virgin so that his birth would be hidden from the devil; the angel’s “full of grace” is a greeting unique to Mary; and Christ’s greatness now fills the world.
Homily on Luke 30Origen · ca. 233–250 · In the second temptation the devil shows Christ his own kingdom, the people ruled by sin, and offers it for worship; Christ refuses, wishing to reign over all only so that they may worship God alone.
Homily on Luke 31Origen · ca. 233–250 · The devil quotes Ps 91 against Christ, as heretics misuse Scripture, though the psalm speaks of the saints, not of Christ, and its next verse promises that the righteous will trample the devil.
Exhortation to Martyrdom 18Origen · 235 · The whole world and the angels watch the martyrs' contest; those who deny will hear the taunts of Isaiah 14 from the powers of Hades.
Exhortation to Martyrdom 45Origen · 235 · Sacrificing is not indifferent: demons feed on the smoke of sacrifices, so those who sacrifice share the guilt for the evils demons do.
Exhortation to Martyrdom 46Origen · 235 · Names are not mere conventions: calling God “Zeus” or the sun “Apollo” invokes demons, so God must be called only by the names Scripture gives him.
Homily on Isaiah 7Origen · ca. 235–250 · Origen expounds Isa 8:18–20: all believers are Christ's little children, even the prophets and apostles knew only in part, and Christians must not seek ventriloquists and demons, or teachers who speak from the belly, but the Law and the Word made flesh.
Homily on Isaiah 8Origen · ca. 235–250 · Origen reads the idols of Jerusalem and Samaria as the hidden idols of sin in church members and heretics, and the boastful king of Assyria as the devil, whom Christians resist by standing firm on Christ the rock.
On the Witch of Endor 2Origen · ca. 240 · Unlike some Old Testament stories, the account of Samuel and the medium concerns everyone, since it raises the question whether after death even a prophet's soul could fall under a demon's power.
On the Witch of Endor 4Origen · ca. 240 · Origen answers that the narrator of Scripture, the Holy Spirit, says plainly that the woman saw Samuel, that Saul “knew” it was Samuel, and that Samuel spoke, foretelling truthfully God's transfer of the kingdom, which a demon could not do.
Homily on 1 Samuel 1.10Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Hannah’s “My heart exulted in the Lord” teaches joy in the Lord rather than in earthly things; her exalted horn and enlarged mouth stand for the power to overthrow evil powers and refute heretics and philosophers.
Homilies on Exodus 1.5Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The king who did not know Joseph is the wisdom of the flesh that rules a soul which forgets Christ, or the devil, who fears the people of God and builds his cities in human minds, while Christ sends teachers to lead us out of Egypt.
Homilies on Exodus 2.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Since the midwives' disobedience makes no sense literally, Pharaoh's killing of the males and sparing of the females is read as the devil's war on the rational spirit while he fosters the life of the flesh.
Homilies on Exodus 2.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Pharaoh's order to drown the Hebrew boys figures the devil's attack on the soul's good beginnings, and good deeds done for human praise are boys handed over to the Egyptians.
Homilies on Exodus 3.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · God opens the mouths, ears, and eyes of the saints, as the devil opens the mouths of liars and heretics; only one who meets Moses on the mountain, in the law's spiritual sense, has his mouth opened by God.
Homilies on Exodus 3.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The three days' journey out of Egypt is Christ and the purification of word, deed, and thought; Pharaoh resists and mocks those who leave the world, but the word of God stirs up a war against vice in which believers must stand firm.
Homilies on Exodus 6.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Persecutors are horses ridden by demons, as Judas was once ridden by the Lord and then by Satan; “the God of my father” is the God of Christ, who calls the Father his God to safeguard the oneness of God.
Homilies on Exodus 6.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Pharaoh's chariots are the worst sinners, driven by the devil, and the “captains of three” are demons who watch the threefold way of sin in deed, word, and thought.
Homilies on Exodus 6.8Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The nations that heard and trembled are the hostile powers, seized with fear when Christ despoiled them on the cross.
Homilies on Exodus 6.9Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · “Let them become like a stone” refutes those who teach evil natures or a cruel Creator, and foretells a temporary hardening of Israel until the Gentiles come in; Christ redeemed with his blood those whom the devil had bought with the coin of sin.
Homilies on Exodus 8.6Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Against heretics who reject a God who punishes children for their fathers' sins, Origen reads the “fathers” as the devil and his angels and the “children” as those they beget through sin, whom God chastises in this life so that they may be purified for the age to come.
Homilies on Ezekiel 1.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Jerome's translation in the 380s) · The fiery figure of Ezek 1:27 shows that God’s fire is remedial, consuming only the works of sin, and the captivity is a figure of the soul’s fall into sin through free choice.
Homilies on Ezekiel 1.14Origen · ca. 238–250 (Jerome's translation in the 380s) · The north, from which the spirit comes, figures the devil, the source of vices, as Jeremiah and the camp of Dan in Numbers suggest.
Homilies on Ezekiel 4.7Origen · ca. 238–250 (Jerome's translation in the 380s) · The evil beasts sent on the sinful land are, spiritually, the devil and invisible powers that devour sinners’ souls, worse than the beasts that killed the martyrs.
Homilies on Ezekiel 6.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Jerome's translation in the 380s) · Jerusalem’s Canaanite parentage shows that sin changes one’s father: the sinner becomes a child of the devil, as the righteous are children of God and of Abraham.
Homilies on Ezekiel 6.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Jerome's translation in the 380s) · Jerusalem’s uncut navel signifies a soul not cut off from sin, the navel being where the devil’s power lies against women; the Septuagint’s “unbound breasts” signify a loose and unstable mind.
Homilies on Ezekiel 6.8Origen · ca. 238–250 (Jerome's translation in the 380s) · God raised Jerusalem from her blood and adorned her youth; her “breasts” and “time” require allegory, and the “time of those who turn aside” is the age when angels of God or of Satan come to the soul.
Homilies on Ezekiel 9.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Jerome's translation in the 380s) · Sodom’s chief sin was pride, the devil’s own sin and the greatest of all, a danger also for clergy; and to be “justified” only by comparison with worse sinners is no praise.
Homilies on Ezekiel 11.5Origen · ca. 238–250 (Jerome's translation in the 380s) · Allegorically, the great eagle is the devil, who carries off leaders and ordinary believers from the Church through sin; only by remaining in the Church can the vine bear fruit.
Homilies on Ezekiel 12.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Jerome's translation in the 380s) · The true Nebuchadnezzar, the devil, seeks first to capture the Church’s leaders; sin gives him entry, and his captives are led into the “Babylon” of a confused soul.
Homilies on Ezekiel 13.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Jerome's translation in the 380s) · God laments even the fallen prince of Tyre; believers are called to rise to the place from which such powers fell, receiving Christ’s seal and the soul’s true beauty, and must beware of falling through pride.
Homilies on Joshua 1.5Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Rahab’s flax signifies the priesthood of the Gentile church; the spies keep to the mountains where the devil cannot follow, and Jesus, who stopped the sun, now stays with us in our spiritual warfare.
Homilies on Joshua 1.6Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The land promised to Joshua’s soldiers figures the places of the fallen angels, which Christians win in heaven by conquering the devil.
Homilies on Joshua 8.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The taking of Ai, “chaos,” the dwelling of the devil, figures the victory of the two peoples, Jewish believers who “flee” the burdens of the law with Jesus and the Gentiles who come unexpectedly from behind.
Homilies on Joshua 8.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The double tree on which the king of Ai was hanged is the twofold cross: Christ was crucified visibly in the flesh, and the devil and his powers invisibly.
Homilies on Joshua 8.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The devil, though conquered on the cross, still attacks, because what Christ’s first coming foreshadowed will be completed at his second coming, when death, the last enemy, is destroyed.
Homilies on Joshua 8.7Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The command to leave none of Ai alive is read as the war against sin and the demons, which the righteous must wage without sparing any vice; the Old Testament’s wars of slaughter are to be understood in this way.
Homilies on Joshua 12.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Against heretics who reject the Old Testament, Origen argues that Joshua’s conquest of Canaan figures the Christian’s war against the spiritual powers that occupy the kingdom of heaven.
Homilies on Joshua 12.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Christ himself commands that the kingdom of heaven be taken by force; the kings of Makkedah, Lachish, and Libnah figure spiritual enemies and vices, and the soldiers of Jesus must return unwounded and without boasting.
Homilies on Joshua 14.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Christ teaches peace through the reading of wars, arming Christians against the sins of the heart; the great alliance of kings at the waters of Merom figures the swarms of demons stirred up against the growing people of God.
Homilies on Joshua 14.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · From the meanings of their names, the kings allied with Jabin (“understanding”) of Hazor (“court”) are read as the devil and the powers that deceive souls by bitterness, false hearing, fleeting goods, great and small sins, ambush, and heresy; they will be wholly destroyed at the end of the age.
Homilies on Joshua 15.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The enemy horses that are hamstrung, unlike the donkeys that are spared, figure the proud fallen powers and the passions of the body, which must be curbed by fasting and slain while still small, so that no stirring of vice remains in the soul.
Homilies on Joshua 15.5Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Jesus took all the enemy kings because Christ, the Wisdom of God, overcomes every kind of sin, which baptism washes away; God lets the hostile powers come out so that they may be destroyed, and there are countless spirits of each vice under their princes and one chief prince over all.
Homilies on Joshua 15.6Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Each victory of the saints over a spirit of sin removes that demon, as the legion and the crushing of Satan show, and the “sword” that must not be withheld from blood is the word of God turned against the hostile powers.
Homilies on Joshua 20.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Even when the lists of names in Joshua are not understood, hearing Scripture benefits the soul: as pagan incantations act through names, the words of Scripture strengthen the angelic powers within and around us and drive away the demons.
Homilies on Joshua 24.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The Amorites, “bitterness,” who stayed in Elom and Salamin under the heavy hand of Ephraim, are like demons that persist in the possessed despite prayers, fasts, and exorcisms, but are weighed down by the laying on of hands and by good works.
Homilies on Judges 1.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Each person has in himself either the days of Jesus, lit by Christ the true light, or evil days lit by the false light of the devil.
Homilies on Judges 2.5Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · God hands sinners over to the devil both through the church's excommunication and by withdrawing from a soul enslaved to vice, leaving it empty for evil spirits.
Homilies on Judges 3.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · A good judge is taken away when the people become unworthy, and their sins give strength to their enemies, both visible and spiritual.
Homilies on Judges 3.5Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Ehud the ambidextrous figures the leader and the saint who has nothing "left-handed"; the devil and his princes are wholly on the left.
Homilies on Leviticus 12.7Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The harlot soul is one that receives the devil and his spirits; teachers must sow the word of God only in pure souls, in whom Christ is then formed.
Homilies on Leviticus 16.6Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The righteous need fear nothing; the 'evil beasts' and 'wars' God removes are the devil, demons, and the inner battles of the passions, which fall when we put our earthly members to death.
Homilies on Numbers 3.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The striking of Egypt's firstborn before Israel's were sanctified signifies Christ's triumph over the demonic powers, which makes believers God's firstborn.
Homilies on Numbers 5.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The furnishings of the tabernacle stand for different kinds of saints, whom angels carry toward the promised rest, as Psalm 91 says of the righteous.
Homilies on Numbers 7.5Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The spies' report of giants in the promised land is read as the Christian's struggle against the spiritual powers who hold the heavenly inheritance, which believers win by faith in Jesus.
Homilies on Numbers 7.6Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Armed with Paul's spiritual armor and following Jesus, believers can overcome the demonic “giants,” who grow weaker as Christians grow in holiness.
Homilies on Numbers 12.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Israel's request to pass through Sihon's land figures the baptismal renunciation of the devil, and victory over him comes by keeping Christ's commandments.
Homilies on Numbers 13.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Sihon, the devil, falls by the sword of God's word, and the land from “curses” to “wrestling” is won by those who struggle free of his kingdom, while his chief city Heshbon, “thoughts,” must be burned by Christ's fire.
Homilies on Numbers 13.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Balak turned to the sorcerer Balaam rather than to arms because words can do what force cannot, and because he had heard that Israel conquered by prayer; magic can harm but, unlike God's power, cannot restore.
Homilies on Numbers 13.5Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Balak sought Balaam's curses to counter Israel's prayers; magic works through evil demons, which no holy angel obeys, and those who can call on Christ must never call on demons.
Homilies on Numbers 13.6Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Balak's claim that Balaam's blessings take effect was flattery, since magic can only curse; when Balaam consulted his divining instruments, God drove away the demons and came himself to forbid the curse.
Homilies on Numbers 13.7Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · God kept Balaam's demons away rather than destroying them, because he will not condemn the demons or remove their free will before the time; Balaam's star prophecy, preserved by his disciples, led the magi to Christ.
Homilies on Numbers 13.8Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Balaam's ass, which saw the angel he could not see, is read as humanity once ridden by demons and now, as the church, carrying Christ into the heavenly Jerusalem.
Homilies on Numbers 16.7Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Origen explains augury and divination as the work of demons, illustrated by the Philistines’ test of the ark and Manasseh’s sins, recalls the law’s prohibitions, and says the people of God must learn the future only from God through his prophets.
Homilies on Numbers 18.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The star out of Jacob is the star of the Magi, which remained on Christ as a sign of his divinity, while the man out of Israel signifies his humanity; Christ destroys the demonic princes, takes humanity as his plunder, makes even the flesh an heir, and saves those whom he “destroys” by setting them free from the world.
Homilies on Numbers 19.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Origen gathers the scriptural accounts of Amalek, whose name means “licking up” or “turning aside the people,” and reads him as the invisible opposing power that must be conquered, through holiness, prayer, and pressing forward, before one reaches the kingdom.
Homilies on Numbers 19.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The last oracle foretells the blessedness of those who see Christ’s victory, the struggle of the people who “cross over” with the demonic “Assyrians,” and the final perishing of Assur, whom Origen doubts can ever be recovered like the lost sheep.
Homilies on Numbers 25.6Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Even the victorious soldiers needed purification after the battle, so everyone who leaves the battle of this life, even the apostles who fought demons, needs purification before entering the holy city of God, whose door is Christ.
Homilies on Numbers 27.8Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Israel left Egypt the day after the Passover, a festival kept now only “in part”; God’s vengeance on the gods of Egypt is executed whenever those whom demons deceived are converted, and above all when believers study the Scriptures.
Homilies on Psalms 36-38 2.8Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · As God’s soldier has the armor of Eph 6, the devil’s soldier has contrary arms; sinners “draw the sword” when they sin shamelessly and shoot the arrows of poisonous speech at the poor, against which we should be rich in spiritual goods.
Homilies on Psalms 36-38 3.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · As Christ, Moses, the prophets, and the apostles are God’s arrows that wound hearts with love, so the Antichrist and all through whom the devil speaks or acts are the devil’s arrows; Origen laments that God’s arrows are few and fears being used as the devil’s arrow himself.
Homilies on Psalms 36-38 5.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The sinner watches the righteous to kill them, as was done to Christ and the martyrs and as the devil does daily, but the Lord will not abandon them; those who wait for him will be exalted to inherit the land above, the “earth” of the higher heaven.
Homilies on Psalms 36-38 5.6Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Innocence harms no one; the “remains” of the peaceable man are his body raised incorruptible; the salvation of the righteous is with the Lord, who protects them in tribulation and delivers them from the demons that meet the soul at death; one must hope in God alone.
Homilies on Psalms 36-38 9.5Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The devil, the “foolish” accuser, will reproach those whose sins are still written in them with his pen, reminding them that they renounced him in baptism; so we must turn from all iniquity, since Christ has blotted out the record against us.
Homilies on Jeremiah 1.14Origen · ca. 240 · Unlike Isaiah, Jeremiah was touched by the Lord's own hand; the kingdoms and nations he roots out are sins in the soul, weeds sown by the devil, which God's words uproot.
Homilies on Jeremiah 1.15Origen · ca. 240 · God's words not only root out and pull down the devil's building in the soul but destroy what is removed, so that nothing is left for the evil one to rebuild or resow.
Homilies on Jeremiah 5.16Origen · ca. 240 · The trumpet is the Word that rouses us to spiritual war; we must flee into the walled city, the church, to escape the lion from the north, the devil, who hunts in the night.
Homilies on Jeremiah 5.17Origen · ca. 240 · The devil, a fallen lion, wants to lay waste the soul by false teachings; we must repent in sackcloth and shelter in the church, where God delivers us.
Homilies on Jeremiah 9.4Origen · ca. 240 · Christians who sin return to their former father, the devil, for whoever sins is born of him; but as the Father always begets the Son, so God always begets the righteous as his sons in every good deed.
Homilies on Jeremiah 17.3Origen · ca. 240 · Believers delivered by Christ from this evil age abandon the devil “in the middle of his days”; the devil, once “wise” like the serpent of Eden, will at the end be shown a fool.
Homilies on Jeremiah 19.14Origen · ca. 240 · Pashhur (“Blackness of mouth”) is the false interpreter who throws Scripture's prophetic words into a dungeon; sinners, even in the church, are handed over to the “king of Babylon,” the devil, who takes away all the labors and honor of those who fall after long struggle.
Instructions 1.3Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · The gods are the spirits of the Giants born of fallen angels and women, who now wander as demons.
Commentary on the Song of Songs 2.151Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · Pharaoh's chariots are souls through whom demons attack the church; the Lord's horses and horsemen, seen by Elisha's servant, in Habakkuk and in Revelation, are souls who bear Christ's bridle and are led by the Spirit.
Commentary on the Song of Songs 3.195Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · Against God's saving darts stand the demons' fiery darts, quenched by faith; the Bridegroom's left and right hands are not to be taken bodily, for the Word is beyond gender.
Commentary on the Song of Songs 3.211Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · Animals, spirits, and thoughts also have hidden senses: men become like beasts, unclean spirits blow like winds, and evil or good thoughts have authors; creation teaches the invisible through the visible.
Commentary on the Song of Songs 3.222Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · The devil's nets ensnared all; Christ alone, sinless and free among the dead, broke them, rose, and led captivity captive.
Commentary on the Song of Songs 3.235Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · The outer wall may be the Father's bosom, whose secrets the Son reveals; the little foxes of Song 2:15 are demonic thoughts, which angels are commanded to catch.
Commentary on the Song of Songs 3.236Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · Angels help the soul discern and expel evil thoughts while they are small, as Judas failed to do with his love of money; applied to the Church, teachers must refute heresies at their beginning.
Commentary on the Song of Songs 3.238Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · After citing Samson and Nehemiah, Origen interprets Psalm 63: false teachers who read Scripture carnally descend to the depths and become the portion of the demons, the foxes.
On the Singleness of Clerics 19Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · The devil lures clergy into cohabitation with women through apparent usefulness and calm, nursing their friendship until he can destroy both at once in an unlawful love.
Against Celsus 1.6Origen · ca. 248 · Christians cast out demons not by spells but by the name of Jesus and the telling of his story; Celsus wrongly calls Jesus a sorcerer.
Against Celsus 1.31Origen · ca. 248 · The apostles' readiness to die makes sense only if they saw Christ risen; his death, like that of heroes who died for their cities, defeated the ruler of demons for all humanity.
Against Celsus 1.60Origen · ca. 248 · At Christ's birth the angels' praise broke the power of the magi's demons; guided by Balaam's prophecy of the star, the magi came to worship a greater power, with gifts fit for a king, a mortal, and God.
Against Celsus 3.29Origen · ca. 248 · Origen explains that demons opposed the spread of the gospel because it ended their sacrifices, but God made churches arise everywhere, which even at their worst are better than the civic assemblies around them.
Against Celsus 3.36Origen · ca. 248 · Origen rejects Celsus's comparison of Jesus with Hadrian's favorite Antinous, whose cult was set up by royal command and sustained by Egyptian sorcery, whereas God himself commended Jesus, whose name still drives out demons.
Against Celsus 3.37Origen · ca. 248 · Origen says Christians refuse to compare Jesus with Zeus or Apollo, whom they know to be demons that feed on sacrifices, and explains that some fallen spirits, like deluded philosophers, proclaim themselves gods, so that one should trust only the God over all and Christ.
Against Celsus 4.32Origen · ca. 248 · Providence transferred the dignity of Israel's law to believers from all nations through Jesus, whose word prevailed despite demon-inspired persecution by rulers and peoples; Israel was protected while faithful and forsaken after killing Jesus.
Against Celsus 4.34Origen · ca. 248 · The power of the patriarchs' names in exorcism can only be explained from Genesis, and their Hebrew names prove that the Jewish nation truly descends from them.
Against Celsus 4.65Origen · ca. 248 · Against Celsus's claim that philosophers can explain evil, Origen says its origin can be known only by God's revelation, including the fall of the devil and his angels.
Against Celsus 4.92Origen · ca. 248 · Fallen demons, able to foresee some things, enter savage and cunning animals and steer their movements to draw people away from the true God through divination.
Against Celsus 4.97Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus's claim that animals are dearer to God and hold holier conversations than humans would rank them above Socrates and Plato; any real bird-omens are demonic deceptions.
Against Celsus 5.5Origen · ca. 248 · Angels need not be invoked; prayer goes to God through the Son, and the angels favor those who imitate them; 'demons,' unlike 'angels,' always means evil powers.
Against Celsus 6.42Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus mocks the Christian belief in Satan as a garbled version of Greek myths of divine war in Heraclitus, Pherecydes, Homer, and the Titans, which he reads as allegories.
Against Celsus 6.43Origen · ca. 248 · Origen replies that the Bible, older than all the Greek writers, already taught about the fallen evil one: the serpent of Genesis, the destroyer of Exodus, Azazel, Belial, Satan in Job, and the figures lamented in Ezekiel and Isaiah.
Against Celsus 6.44Origen · ca. 248 · Only God is good by nature; creatures who neglect the bread of life fall, and Satan, the “adversary,” is the first being who fell from blessedness, as Ezekiel describes.
Against Celsus 7.4Origen · ca. 248 · The Hebrew prophets were made clearer in mind and soul by the Holy Spirit, whereas the Pythia's frenzy shows a demonic spirit, the kind that even simple Christians drive out by prayer.
Against Celsus 7.5Origen · ca. 248 · The spirits behind the oracles resemble evil souls that haunt tombs and feed on sacrifices; a true god at Delphi would have chosen a wise man, not an ordinary woman, as his prophet.
Against Celsus 7.6Origen · ca. 248 · Apollo chose no wise person as his prophet and praised Socrates less for wisdom than for his sacrifices, and Homer's Chryses shows that such powers answer bribes of sacrifice, marks of demons, not gods.
Against Celsus 7.17Origen · ca. 248 · What the prophets foretold was worthy of God: the divine Word came with the human soul of Jesus, and his human death gave an example of dying for piety and began the defeat of the devil.
Against Celsus 7.35Origen · ca. 248 · Origen refuses Celsus's oracle-shrines as seats of demons, and asks how a mere phantom, as Celsus calls the risen Jesus, could transform souls and drive out demons across the world.
Against Celsus 7.67Origen · ca. 248 · Christians rightly refuse to serve demons; far from serving them, they drive them out by prayer and Scripture from souls, places, and even animals.
Against Celsus 7.68Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus argues that demons, as appointed administrators under the greatest God, should be served; Origen replies that not everything, including sin, is God's will or providence, and wicked demons transgress God's law.
Against Celsus 7.69Origen · ca. 248 · All demons have fallen from the good, as their use in love charms and spells shows, and the worship of the pagan gods at altars and temples is the service of demons, which Christians flee.
Against Celsus 7.70Origen · ca. 248 · Whether demons are appointed by God like executioners or organize themselves like robber bands requires deep knowledge of Scripture; Origen will take up Celsus's argument on serving many masters in Book 8.
Against Celsus 8.13Origen · ca. 248 · Christians do not serve the pagan gods, who are servants of the devil, not of God; they reverence the one God and his Son, offering prayer to the Father through the Son as high priest.
Against Celsus 8.25Origen · ca. 248 · Only the good are said to belong to God, like the men and angels of God; since all demons are wicked, they do not belong to God but to their ruler Beelzebul.
Against Celsus 8.31Origen · ca. 248 · Food, water, and air are managed by God's angels, not by demons; if demons have any part, it is as executioners of famine and plague, permitted by God to turn sinners back and to test the faithful.
Against Celsus 8.32Origen · ca. 248 · Evil angels may carry out God's judgments, which are hard to fathom; but Christians who eat and drink to God's glory with thanksgiving share their table with God's angels, not with demons.
Against Celsus 8.34Origen · ca. 248 · Christians offer first-fruits and prayers to the Creator through Jesus the high priest, and have the friendship of countless angels who help those who pray; demons have power only over the wicked, not over those armed with God's armour.
Against Celsus 8.36Origen · ca. 248 · God's angels do not harm those who insult them; demons harm only those who submit to them, while the true Christian is guarded by his angel, who carries his prayers to God through Christ the high priest.
Against Celsus 8.43Origen · ca. 248 · Since Jesus' death a whole new nation of Christians has arisen; like a grain of wheat his death bore much fruit, and the Father gave his Son willingly for the world, while the demons avenge themselves on Christians who expel them.
Against Celsus 8.44Origen · ca. 248 · The martyrs' deaths break the demons' power, which is why persecution pauses and resumes; the demons and the judges rejoice when a Christian denies under torture, and a Christian who flees does so in obedience to Christ, not from cowardice.
Against Celsus 8.54Origen · ca. 248 · Christians need not obey Celsus's prison overseers, since Jesus came to free those bound by Satan, like the woman he healed; Christians expose the demons' deceptions and die for piety not at random but as a death precious to God.
Against Celsus 8.57Origen · ca. 248 · Christians show proper gratitude not to demons but to God, whose gifts fill them, and their eucharistic bread is a symbol of that thanksgiving; they honour but do not worship the angels who oversee nature.
Against Celsus 8.58Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus cites the Egyptian belief that thirty-six demons each govern a part of the body and can heal it when invoked by name; Origen answers that God alone suffices, and the name of Jesus has healed many.
Against Celsus 8.60Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus himself warns that service of the earthly demons, bound to blood and incense, leads to love of the body and forgetfulness of higher things; Origen concludes it is better to trust God through Christ and to seek healing from medicine or, better, from prayer.
Against Celsus 8.62Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus finally admits that oracles are works of earthly demons bound to blood and incense, as Christians said; Christians would rather be sick and unfortunate with a pure conscience than healthy through serving demons.
Against Celsus 8.63Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus contradicts himself, now saying the demons need nothing and that God must never be abandoned, then urging Christians to win the favour of rulers and kings as appointed by demonic power.
Against Celsus 8.73Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus urges Christians to serve in the emperor's army; Origen answers that Christians help the emperor more by praying for him and for just wars, like pagan priests who keep their hands free of blood, forming an army of prayer against the demons who cause wars.
Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 49Origen · ca. 244–249 (Latin translation, 4th–5th century) · Figuratively, the darkened sun is the devil, the moon the church of heretics, and the falling stars false teachers and fallen Christians; the mourning tribes of Zechariah are grades of sinners among laity, teachers, and clergy.
Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 59Origen · ca. 244–249 (Latin translation, 4th–5th century) · Watching for the Lord's coming means watching for both one's death and his coming into the soul; the thief is the devil breaking into the negligent soul, to be caught before sin is done, while the lamp of the Word guides those still advancing.
Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 83Origen · ca. 244–249 (Latin translation, 4th–5th century) · As God the Word, Jesus remained with and guarded his disciples while he went to the cross; the devil handed him over through Judas, as the devil acts through all betrayers and unjust judges; Judas asked “Is it I?” last and without fear, only to hide his plan.
Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 110Origen · ca. 244–249 (Latin translation, 4th–5th century) · Adjuring is found in the law, but one who lives by the Gospel, which forbids swearing, should not adjure anyone, nor adjure demons, since Christ gave power to command them; Jesus neither denied nor openly confessed, but turned the doubting high priest's words, like the devil's “If you are the Son of God,” back on him.
Commentary on Matthew 10.2Origen · ca. 246–248 · Origen reads the good seed as sound thoughts sown in the soul by the Word and the weeds as wicked doctrines sown by the devil, to be burned at the end of the age.
Commentary on Matthew 12.40Origen · ca. 246–248 · Peter, “not knowing what he said,” may have spoken under a spirit not yet conquered by the cross, seeking to keep Jesus from his saving passion; or, more simply, he wished to stay and enjoy the vision of glory.
Commentary on Matthew 13.6Origen · ca. 246–248 · Origen explains epilepsy not by the moon but by an unclean spirit that times its attacks to the moon's phases so as to slander God's creation, and rejects astrology.
Commentary on Matthew 13.7Origen · ca. 246–248 · Origen explains “faithless and perverse generation,” takes the mountains moved by faith as hostile powers lodged in souls, and advises prayer and fasting rather than addressing the spirit.
Commentary on Matthew 13.8Origen · ca. 246–248 · Origen distinguishes this prediction from the earlier one and argues, by the example of Job, that the Father delivered the Son to hostile powers out of love, while they delivered him to men to bring him under death.
Commentary on Matthew 13.9Origen · ca. 246–248 · Origen explains the devil's power of death as spiritual death, holds that the powers of this age delivered Jesus to men, and notes that the disciples grieved at the death but overlooked the resurrection.
Commentary on Matthew 13.17Origen · ca. 246–248 · Origen explains who are the “little ones” who can be made to stumble, and gives interpretations of the donkey millstone as a healing punishment, the heavy body of the wicked, or the body taken up by hostile powers.
Commentary on Matthew 13.22Origen · ca. 246–248 · Origen identifies the stumbling-blocks with the devil's army, which uses unbelievers and even nominal believers as instruments, and warns against causing weaker believers to stumble.
Commentary on Matthew 15.18Origen · ca. 246–248 · A figurative reading: the rich man’s possessions are the vices and evil spirits he has acquired, which he must “sell” back to the evil powers, the true “poor,” in order to become perfect and have treasure in heaven.
Commentary on Matthew 15.27Origen · ca. 246–248 · The first and last may be angels and men: fallen angels, including the devil, become last, while believers renewed in baptism become first; the parable of the labourers that follows shows that both first and last are saved.
Commentary on Matthew 16.26Origen · ca. 246–248 · Leaving Jerusalem for Bethany, the church, Christ curses the fruitless fig tree, which Origen reads as the synagogue; the mountain cast into the sea is Satan, removed from believers by the faith and teaching of Christ’s disciples.
Commentary on Matthew 17.2Origen · ca. 246–248 · Origen suggests that the question concerned the many orders of good and hostile “authorities,” a hidden teaching that Jesus would have explained, with examples from the exodus onward, had his questioners been worthy.
Commentary on Romans 7.1Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Opening Book 7, Origen distinguishes the many senses of “spirit” in Scripture: the Holy Spirit, the spirit of servitude, the human spirit, angelic and evil spirits, and winds.
Commentary on Romans 7.10Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Origen explains that the devil accuses all but cannot prevail against the elect whom God justifies and Christ defends, while warning that Christ, being the truth, will not plead for unrepented sins after baptism.
Commentary on Romans 7.12Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Origen explains each power that cannot separate the believer from God’s love—death and the life of sin, hostile angels and powers, things present and to come, height and depth, and any other creature—and warns that the flesh is the enemy most to be feared.
Commentary on Romans 10.15Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Even what is prophesied needs prayer, so no one should scorn asking the church's prayers; prayer is a contest against hostile powers and distracting thoughts, and Paul asks help in it so as not to be hindered in Judea, seeking at Rome the rest of mutual comfort in faith.
Commentary on Romans 10.37Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · The 'Satan' to be crushed is any adversary spirit opposing the soul's peace, raised against the negligent and crushed for the zealous in each contest of chastity, faith, concord or gentleness.
To Donatus 5Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 246 · God's Spirit is given without measure to those who remain faithful, and gives power to heal and to drive out demons.
That Idols Are Not Gods 6Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 246–250, if by Cyprian · Behind idolatry are fallen spirits, the demons known even to poets, Socrates, and the magi; yet Ostanes, Plato, and Hermes Trismegistus confess one God.
That Idols Are Not Gods 7Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 246–250, if by Cyprian · Demons hide in idols, work oracles and diseases to win worship, but flee when Christians adjure them by the true God; they stir up hatred of Christians.
To Quirinus 3.80Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · The devil can do nothing against anyone except by God's permission.
Letter 69.15Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · As Pharaoh was defeated at the sea, the devil, however stubborn before, is overthrown in the water of baptism.
Letter 75.10Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · Firmilian tells of a woman in Cappadocia about twenty-two years earlier who, possessed by a demon, posed as a prophetess, deceived clergy, celebrated the Eucharist, and baptized with the correct words.
Martyrdom of Pionius and Companions 14Anonymous · 250 (the text may be later) · From Saul and the medium of Endor Pionius argues that demons, not the dead, appear at necromancy, and urges the lapsed to repent.
Prayer 1 1Anonymous · uncertain · A prayer ascribed to Cyprian asks God for purity of heart, protection from the devil, and help such as he gave to Tobias, Daniel, Thecla, Paul, and Peter.
On the Unity of the Catholic Church 3Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · The devil, defeated by Christ, invented heresies and schisms to deceive people under the Christian name.
To Demetrian 15Cyprian of Carthage · 252–253 · Cyprian invites Demetrian to watch Christians exorcize demons, who then confess what they are and tremble before the servants of God.
To Fortunatus 0.2Cyprian of Carthage · 253 or 257 · The devil is an ancient enemy with six thousand years of practice, but a Christian trained in the Lord's precepts and clinging to Christ will defeat him.
On the Good of Patience 19Cyprian of Carthage · 256 · Impatience is the devil's evil: it caused his fall, Adam's sin, Cain's murder, Esau's loss, Israel's idolatry, and the rise of heresies.
Symposium 4.2Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · God sent chastity to anchor souls against the flood of corruption; as Pharaoh drowned the boys, the devil seeks to destroy the soul's rational offspring.
Symposium 6.1Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · Agathe, the sixth speaker, says that every soul is created beautiful, in the image of the Only-begotten, and that the devil and his angels seek to defile it.
Symposium 8.10Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · The dragon is the devil, who cannot seize the reborn, and the third of the stars he drags down are the heresies, each erring about one Person of the Trinity.
Symposium 10.5Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · The devil counterfeited the fig and the vine, but under the reign of chastity the true vine (Christ) and fig (the Spirit) bear fruit, as Joel, Isaiah, Paul, and Micah show.
Commentary on the Apocalypse 12.2Victorinus of Pettau · late 3rd century · The dragon is the devil, who could not hold Christ in death because Christ, not born of seed, owed nothing to death.
Against Porphyry, fragment 1Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Christ took flesh and was crucified so that, through the very human nature the demons had used to deceive, they might be overthrown; the cross is the sign of victory, seen in the standards, the ship's mast, the bird's wings, and the outstretched arms of man.
On Free Will 8.12Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Even the devil is called evil from what he does, not from his substance.
On Free Will 18Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Using the parable of an enemy who learns from a physician's advice how to harm a man, the speaker argues that the devil learned what evil is from God's command, and that both devil and man are punished justly because they act by free will.
On Free Will 19Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The devil was created good and became devil by his own envious choice, as Scripture's name apostate shows; God foreknew his fall but created him so that free will and God's goodness in forgiveness might be made known.
On Free Will 20Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · God did not destroy the devil at once, because that would have been no great deed and would have hidden his kindness; instead he trains men like wrestlers to conquer the devil themselves.
Res. 1.35Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The narrator argues that man, made in the image of the only-begotten Image, was meant to be immortal, and takes up the objection about where death and the devil's envy come from.
Res. 1.37Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The narrator explains that the devil was an angel entrusted with governing matter who fell through pride and envy, and closes with lines of verse against the serpent and Error.
Res. 2.2Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Methodius explains Romans 7: the devil used the commandment in paradise to stir up desire, and Paul's 'I do what I do not want' refers to unwanted thoughts that assail the mind, not to evil deeds.
Sang. 3Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The leech of Proverbs 30, which hides in drinking water and is never satisfied, signifies the insatiable hostile power that lives in spiritual waters.
Sang. 4Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The great serpent of the waters is the devil, whose head God crushes; Christ calmed the sea and rescued Peter, and believers are given power to trample on the enemy.
Sang. 6Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The leech in the muddy water of the serpent is the power that silences the soul's voice and fills it with improper desires; each of its insatiable daughters is explained.
Fragment on Job, no. 15Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The rebuke “Who is this who hides counsel?” (Job 38:2) is read as addressed to the defeated devil, not to Job.
Fragment on Job, no. 16Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · God's challenge “Gird up your loins” (Job 38:3) is read as addressed to the devil, who cannot answer.
Fragment on Job, no. 17Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The devil had already fallen before creation; the darkness of Gen 1:2 is darkness by choice, not created darkness.
Canon 29Anonymous · ca. 306 (disputed, ca. 295–314) · A person troubled by an evil spirit is not to be named at the offering or to serve in church.
Church History 4.7.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · As the church flourished, the devil, who had first used persecution, turned to new schemes.
Church History 4.18.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Justin also wrote a discourse Against the Greeks discussing the nature of demons.
Church History 6.43.14Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Cornelius: Novatian came to faith through exorcism and was baptized by pouring on his sickbed, a doubtful baptism.
Church History 10.4.14Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · The devil, enraged at Christ's grace, attacked the church like a mad dog, tearing down church buildings, issuing threats through tyrants, and poisoning souls with idolatry.
Church History 10.8.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Envious of the church's peace, the devil found an instrument in Licinius, who, despite his honors and marriage into Constantine's family, imitated the fallen tyrants.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 15Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Manes opens the debate: he claims to be the Paraclete promised by Jesus and argues that the law and the prophets come from Satan, not from the Father of Christ.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 20Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Manes says the evil one was always evil; Archelaus argues that the serpent became evil only after man, that the law given to man is God's, and that man could not be the work of a witless evil principle.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 36Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Archelaus explains the devil as a fallen angel who chose evil, argues that every creature has free choice, and turns Manes's own belief in judgment against his view of the soul as part of God.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 37Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Archelaus explains who is "the father of the devil" in John 8:44: those who conceive and bring forth his wickedness, first the serpent, then Cain, and later Judas.
Homilies 2.30Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Simon claims a demon, not the soul, serves him; Nicetes points out that this contradicts Simon's own earlier explanations.
Homilies 8.9Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter announces that he will first show why God should not be blamed for the demons and diseases that afflict people.
Homilies 8.18Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter explains that the giants' souls became a new race, the demons, and God sent them a law through an angel.
Homilies 8.20Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter tells the crowd that by worshipping demons and eating their sacrifices they fell under demonic power, which otherwise has no hold on anyone.
Homilies 9.9Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Demons enter people through food offered to idols, mingle with their souls, and drag them into eternal punishment in the fire at the end.
Homilies 9.10Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Demons enter bodies to enjoy food and sex, so fasting and hardship drive them out, and stubborn demons require prayer to God.
Homilies 9.11Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Demons stay in proportion to a person's unbelief, but flee at once from those who fully believe and do good.
Homilies 9.14Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · People misled by demons cannot be forced to salvation, while the demons appear in dreams, give cures and oracles, and demand sacrifices to consume souls.
Homilies 9.22Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Believers should rejoice not in expelling demons but in having their names written in heaven, since demons sometimes flee even from wicked men in order to deceive.
Homilies 11.15Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Pagan feasts, with their smoke, blood and wine, feed unclean spirits who enter the worshippers and drive them to vice and violent death.
Homilies 19.2Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Simon asks whether there is a leader of evil, and Peter affirms from many sayings of Jesus that the evil one exists.
Recognitions 1.26Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter warns that the devil steals the word from forgetful hearers and resolves to review the creation account.
Recognitions 2.17Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter explains that the devil seeks to turn men's natural love for God toward himself, which God permits for a just reason.
Recognitions 2.18Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter teaches that God permits the devil's deceptions to test whether men remain loyal to their true Father and Creator.
Recognitions 2.64Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Andrew warns that such fantasies are the beginnings of demonic possession or come from a disorder of soul or body.
Recognitions 2.71Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter explains that he does not eat with the unbaptized because former idolaters harbor unclean spirits that baptism drives out.
Recognitions 3.49Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · The people drive Simon out, and Peter urges patience with the wicked and laments that Simon has become a chosen vessel of the evil one.
Recognitions 4.7Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter, standing on a pedestal in Maro's garden, expels demons and heals the sick before beginning his discourse.
Recognitions 4.14Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter offers the ancestral worship of God as freedom from demons and warns that those who reject it face eternal punishment, since God is just as well as good.
Recognitions 4.17Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Faith and purity drive demons out, and Gentiles must turn to God and pray, since demons flee in proportion to growing faith.
Recognitions 4.19Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Demons make people believe their sufferings come from the gods so that they will sacrifice to them, but each person is free to choose life or destruction.
Recognitions 4.33Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Believers are no different in nature but command demons by God's power, as an officer commands stronger soldiers through fear of Caesar.
Recognitions 5.33Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Idol worship gives demons power to drive people to crime, lust, rage, and even suicide, which God permits so that they may recognize whom they have forsaken.
Recognitions 8.50Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · After the flood, which pagans call Deucalion's, God promised no more floods but set evil angels over the nations with power only over those who sin, until the coming of the one who rejoices in good.
Recognitions 9.10Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Demons can only incite, not compel; sin makes a person like pitch-smeared tow that catches fire, while the water of baptism makes one fireproof.
Recognitions 9.38Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · When the host's demon-possessed daughter is suddenly freed at Peter's presence and comes to him with her chains, Peter agrees to lodge with the family.
Testament of Our Lord 2.7Anonymous · ca. 350–500
Prophetic Extracts 3.4Eusebius of Caesarea · before 325 (probably ca. 310–320) · Eusebius interprets Ecclesiastes' poor and wise youth as Christ, the old and foolish king as the devil, and the second youth as the Antichrist.
Prophetic Extracts 3.5Eusebius of Caesarea · before 325 (probably ca. 310–320) · Eusebius reads Ecclesiastes' poor wise man who saved the besieged small city as Christ rescuing the world, or the church, from the devil's siege.
Prophetic Extracts 3.7Eusebius of Caesarea · before 325 (probably ca. 310–320) · Eusebius reads Job's description of the one who walks on the sea and subdues the great sea-monster as the Word, who walked on the water and conquered death and the devil.
Prophetic Extracts 3.9Eusebius of Caesarea · before 325 (probably ca. 310–320) · Eusebius reads God's words to Job about the dragon prepared for him as Christ's victory over the devil and closes the extracts from the poetic books.
Prophetic Extracts 4.5Eusebius of Caesarea · before 325 (probably ca. 310–320) · Eusebius interprets Isaiah's son “Plunder swiftly, spoil quickly,” born of the prophetess, not literally but as a further prophecy of the virgin birth by the Holy Spirit and of Christ's spoiling of the hostile powers.
Prophetic Extracts 4.19Eusebius of Caesarea · before 325 (probably ca. 310–320) · Eusebius reads Isaiah's “righteousness raised up from the east” as Christ, whose coming disarmed the hostile powers and led the nations to renounce their man-made idols.
Divine Institutes 1.7.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Apollo, really a demon, falsely counted himself among the angels, but in other oracles called himself a daemon.
Divine Institutes 1.7.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Apollo himself admitted that demons are subject to God's scourge and punishment.
Divine Institutes 2.8.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God then made another spirit, who by his own free choice turned from good to evil through envy.
Divine Institutes 2.8.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · This fallen spirit is the devil, the accuser who reports the sins he provokes.
Divine Institutes 2.12.17Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The devil, envious, plotted to rob man of immortality.
Divine Institutes 2.14.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The devil lured the angels into vice and relations with women.
Divine Institutes 2.14.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The fallen angels became the devil's servants.
Divine Institutes 2.14.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Thus arose two kinds of demons, unclean spirits ruled by the devil.
Divine Institutes 2.14.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Hermes calls the devil prince of demons; demons know much of the future but not all.
Divine Institutes 2.14.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Sent as guardians, demons pose as protectors to be worshipped instead of God.
Divine Institutes 2.14.13Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · People worship these demons as household gods who ward off evils they themselves cause.
Divine Institutes 2.14.14Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Demons enter bodies to cause illness, nightmares, and madness so people will seek their help.
Divine Institutes 2.15.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Pagans think demons help when they merely stop harming.
Divine Institutes 2.15.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Demons harm only those who fear them and lack God's protection; they fear the righteous.
Divine Institutes 2.15.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Adjured in God's name, demons leave the possessed and confess their names.
Divine Institutes 2.15.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Demons howl that they are being beaten and must leave.
Divine Institutes 2.15.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Hermes calls demons evil angels fallen from heaven.
Divine Institutes 2.16.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Fallen angels seek worship to keep humans from the immortality they themselves lost.
Divine Institutes 2.16.20Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · By such tricks demons have erased knowledge of the true God everywhere.
Divine Institutes 2.16.21Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Demons devised human sacrifice to destroy souls.
Divine Institutes 2.17.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Third, the demons behind idolatry can give nothing and only lead people astray.
Divine Institutes 2.17.11Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Demons should not be worshipped, since the righteous can drive them out in God's name.
Divine Institutes 3.29.13Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Christians know that Fortune is nothing, but that a malicious spirit, the devil, opposes the good.
Divine Institutes 3.29.14Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The devil keeps unbelievers from knowing God.
Divine Institutes 3.29.16Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God allows the devil to remain so that virtue may be exercised.
Divine Institutes 3.29.19Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Not knowing the adversary, they cannot know virtue.
Divine Institutes 4.27.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The sign of the cross terrifies demons, who flee when adjured through Christ.
Divine Institutes 4.27.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Christians expel demons by Christ's name and the sign of the cross.
Divine Institutes 4.27.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Demons, unable to touch those sealed with the cross, persecute them through men.
Divine Institutes 4.27.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · If demons exist, the religion that overcomes them must be true.
Divine Institutes 4.27.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · If they admit evil demons, they must distinguish them from gods.
Divine Institutes 4.27.11Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · What is the difference between gods and demons?
Divine Institutes 4.27.12Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Pagan priests cannot drive out demons.
Divine Institutes 4.27.13Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Demons flee at the name of the true God.
Divine Institutes 4.27.14Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Demons and pagan gods flee alike from God's name, so they are the same.
Divine Institutes 4.27.15Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Homer and others call the gods demons.
Divine Institutes 4.27.16Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Demons confess their nature when exorcized but pose as gods when worshipped.
Divine Institutes 4.27.17Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Demons took the names of dead kings to receive divine honours.
Divine Institutes 5.20.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Pagans worship demons who are their enemies.
Divine Institutes 5.21.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Demons drive the persecutors.
Divine Institutes 5.21.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Demons are expelled by Christians in God's name.
Divine Institutes 5.21.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Exorcised demons confess and flee.
Divine Institutes 5.21.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Demons, hating exorcists, stir up persecution.
Divine Institutes 6.3.14Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Each way has an immortal guide: God and the devil.
Divine Institutes 6.4.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The left way belongs to the devil.
Divine Institutes 6.4.19Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The one enemy attacks each person by suitable arts.
Divine Institutes 6.4.20Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The devil uses greed, anger, lust, and envy.
Divine Institutes 6.6.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God is the source of goods, the devil of evils.
Divine Institutes 6.22.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Pleasures are the devil's weapons.
Preparation for the Gospel 3.14.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Pan's oracle shows he is a demon, not a symbol of the universe.
Preparation for the Gospel 3.16.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The sun could not descend into a medium to give oracles.
Preparation for the Gospel 3.16.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · If Hecate is the moon, the moon would serve shameful magic as queen of evil demons.
Preparation for the Gospel 3.16.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Porphyry calls Sarapis the ruler of evil demons, so he cannot be the sun.
Preparation for the Gospel 3.17.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The oracles are the work of evil demons who deceive both the masses and the philosophers.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.4.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Exposing the demons behind the oracles shows the greatness of the gospel, which freed all nations and replaced pagan sacrifice with prayer and virtue.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.5.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Greek theologians divide the divine into the first God, gods, demons, and heroes, with evil demons as the opposing class of darkness.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.5.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · They assign regions to gods, demons, and souls, and order worship accordingly, including propitiation of evil demons.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.5.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Scripture calls all demons evil, and the good powers angels and ministering spirits; 'demon' derives from fear.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.5.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Good powers should not share the name of demons, being unlike them in character.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.8.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Elsewhere Porphyry says that those who receive blood sacrifices are demons, not gods.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.10.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · By Porphyry's own reasoning, Apollo and all gods receiving sacrifice are demons.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.15.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Porphyry says that living sacrifices are offered to demons, not to gods.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.15.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Porphyry says the theologians themselves confirm that blood sacrifices go to demons, some of them evil.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.15.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Eusebius will show that all the pagan gods are bad demons.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.16.20Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Scripture condemns child sacrifice and declares the gods of the nations to be demons.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.17.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Through Moses God commanded the destruction of the demons' temples and worship.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.19.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Porphyry attributes oracles and divination to evil demons.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.19.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Porphyry links divination with the evil craft of demons.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.20.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Porphyry records Apollo's oracle commanding offerings to a wicked demon before a vision of the divine.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.21.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Only Christ freed mankind from the demons, as Isaiah foretold.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.21.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Christians repel demons by purity of life and need no divination.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.21.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Eusebius introduces Porphyry's admission that evil demons disguise themselves as the highest gods.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.22.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Porphyry describes evil-doing demons as souls ruled by their passions.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.22.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Demons are invisible, without solid bodies, and the worse ones change their shapes.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.22.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The demons' subtle bodies are passible and not eternal.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.22.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Evil demons dwell near the earth and attack men violently or by stealth.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.22.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Demons disguise themselves as gods and inflame human desires, causing strife and war.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.22.11Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The evil demons deceive through wonders and inspire love charms and greed.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.22.12Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The evil demons wish to be gods and feed on the fumes of sacrifices.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.22.15Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Porphyry names Sarapis and Hecate as rulers of the evil demons; Scripture names Beelzebul.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.23.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Porphyry says the evil demons are under Sarapis, who is Pluto.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.23.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Priests drive demons from temples by noise, beating the air, and animal blood.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.23.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Demons fill houses and bodies, especially at meals, which is why purifications are made.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.23.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Porphyry makes Sarapis and Hecate rulers of the demons, symbolized by the three-headed dog.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.23.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Porphyry identifies Hecate's whelps as evil demons; Eusebius will add further proofs.
Preparation for the Gospel 5.2.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Earthbound demons, delighting in blood and tombs, fostered the worship of the dead through moving images, oracles, and sham cures.
Preparation for the Gospel 5.2.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The demons made people take them for gods or deified heroes.
Preparation for the Gospel 5.3.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The sixth and seventh kinds are the demonic, which deceive and mock.
Preparation for the Gospel 5.3.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · They divided the demons into good and bad.
Preparation for the Gospel 5.4.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plutarch credits the doctrine of demons, intermediate between gods and men, with solving many problems.
Preparation for the Gospel 5.4.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plutarch holds that demons, not gods, preside over oracles, and are subject to passion and change.
Preparation for the Gospel 5.4.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plutarch attributes savage rites and human sacrifices to the appeasement of bad demons.
Preparation for the Gospel 5.4.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plutarch says myths of giants and Titans are really stories about demons.
Preparation for the Gospel 5.5.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plutarch says the myths of Osiris and Typhon, and of the Greek gods, describe the sufferings of great demons.
Preparation for the Gospel 5.5.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plutarch cites Empedocles on the punishment of sinning demons, and compares Typhon.
Preparation for the Gospel 5.5.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plutarch relates that myths of Python, Typhon, and the Titans concern exiled and punished demons, and that demons are called by gods' names.
Preparation for the Gospel 5.6.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Porphyry's 'good' demons delight in lust, noise, war, hunting, mourning, and divination.
Preparation for the Gospel 5.14.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Pan's oracle prescribes a wax image of Hecate as a charm against demons.
Preparation for the Gospel 5.15.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The gods are shown to be earthly, passion-loving demons.
Preparation for the Gospel 5.17.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Heracleon objects to the idea that demons sin and die.
Preparation for the Gospel 5.17.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Demons that are neither bad nor mortal would be indistinguishable from gods.
Preparation for the Gospel 5.17.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Philip notes that many philosophers believed in bad demons.
Preparation for the Gospel 5.17.13Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The death of Pan coincides with the time when Christ drove out demons.
Preparation for the Gospel 5.17.14Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The demons' destruction, like the end of human sacrifice, came with the gospel.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.6.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The deceiving demon uses fate as an excuse when its predictions fail.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.6.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · By making all things depend on fate the demon ruins those who believe him.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.11.29Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Humans, taught partly by fallen angels, mistook signs for causes.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.11.82Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Eusebius sums up: the oracle-givers are not gods or good daemons but deceivers.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.10.14Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Moses teaches that an evil demon lies in wait against human salvation.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.10.15Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The serpent, envious of us, deceived our first parents and still tempts us, so we must watch.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.16.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The fallen power is named for its wickedness.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.16.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The leader of the fall is called dragon, serpent, lion, and basilisk.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.16.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Isaiah 14 describes the morning star's proud fall.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.16.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Ezekiel 28 describes a proud being once in God's paradise.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.16.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Ezekiel 28 describes his blameless creation and fall through pride.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.16.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · A multitude of fallen spirits followed him and were consigned to the abyss.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.16.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Some demons remain near the earth to test the pious and to promote idolatry.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.16.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Scripture names the demons plainly and symbolically.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.16.10Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Demons seek worship through oracles; the Hebrews fled them, teaching that the gods of the nations are demons.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.16.11Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Through the gospel all nations, freed from demons, praise the one God.
Preparation for the Gospel 11.26.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Job speaks of angels of God and the devil.
Preparation for the Gospel 11.26.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Paul speaks of the struggle against evil spiritual powers.
Preparation for the Gospel 13.13.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Clement: Plato’s evil-working soul in the Laws is the devil of Scripture.
Preparation for the Gospel 13.15.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · If daimones are emanations of good beings, they could not be evil.
Preparation for the Gospel 13.15.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Evil daimones cannot be emanations of the divine.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 22.6Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · The serpent, called the devil (accuser), kept attacking Adam's descendants.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 22.11Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · The fallen angels now seek to destroy mankind.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 23.1Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · These are the demons the poets speak of, whom people took for gods.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 23.4Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · The demons invented idolatry to keep people from God and eternal life.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 23.8Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Demons cause illness and dreams to win worship.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 46.7Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Demons are cast out by Christ's name and the sign of the cross.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 46.8Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · The pagan gods, which are demons, are defeated by the cross.
Demonstration of the Gospel 2.3.116Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The enemies named are spiritual powers that once held Israel captive to vice.
Demonstration of the Gospel 3.2.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Moses freed Israel from Egypt; Christ freed mankind from demonic idolatry.
Demonstration of the Gospel 3.3.19Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Christ taught about hostile demons in the air, to be shunned though they claim divine honors.
Demonstration of the Gospel 3.6.34Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Sorcery needs sacrifices to demons, but Christians would rather die than sacrifice to demons.
Demonstration of the Gospel 3.6.35Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Christians drive out demons by the name of Jesus and prayer, and are their enemies, not their servants.
Demonstration of the Gospel 3.6.36Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Jesus could not have served demons, since to this day they flee in terror at his name.
Demonstration of the Gospel 3.7.39Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Christians also defeat invisible demonic powers by purity, prayer, and Christ's name, showing his divine power.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.8.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Because invisible demons could be mistaken for good spirits, it was safer for the nations to honor the visible heavens.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.9.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The fallen spirits and their ruler, envious of human salvation, plotted against all nations and against God’s own people.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.9.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Isaiah records the boast of the great demon that he would remove the boundaries of the nations and seize the world.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.9.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Isaiah’s oracle on the fall of the Morning Star shows the devil’s pride.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.10.13Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Christ defeated the demons by divine power, and they confessed him as Son of God.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.17.19Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · At his ascension Christ was reclothed in divine glory; the devil opposed him then and opposes his church now.
Demonstration of the Gospel, Book 5, preface 6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Eusebius replies that the oracles are the work of evil demons, as the Preparation proved from human sacrifice and false prophecies.
Demonstration of the Gospel, Book 5, preface 9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · As the gospel spread, oracles ceased and deaths of demons were reported.
Demonstration of the Gospel, Book 5, preface 26Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Demonic possession darkened the mind and left its victim senseless, which is why pagan divination was likened to madness.
Demonstration of the Gospel 5.2.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The psalm fits Jesus, who conquered the demons and won the nations, anointed with the Spirit, not with oil.
Demonstration of the Gospel 5.4.16Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The other versions read “the labor of Egypt,” meaning the barbarian nations once enslaved to demons.
Demonstration of the Gospel 5.20.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The Lord who masters the dragon is the Savior, who conquered the devil and death.
Demonstration of the Gospel 5.21.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The devil quoted this psalm to Jesus; it addresses the Lord whose refuge is the Most High, his greater Father.
Demonstration of the Gospel 6.2.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · God, not the demons, now reigns over the nations, and the Word sits on the throne given him by the Father.
Demonstration of the Gospel 6.13.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The melting valleys are the demons, burned by Christ’s fire and driven from the possessed.
Demonstration of the Gospel 6.20.11Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · When Christ came to Egypt, the demons in its idols were shaken and overcome by his invisible power.
Demonstration of the Gospel 6.20.12Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Later, when the gospel was openly preached in Egypt, Christ's power worked through the apostles to turn people from demons to God.
Demonstration of the Gospel 7.1.103Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Spiritually, the two kings are demonic forces of idolatry and moral corruption, driven out when Emmanuel reigns in the soul.
Demonstration of the Gospel 7.3.50Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · God promises to break the demons' yoke so that the saved serve him alone.
Demonstration of the Gospel 9.1.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The leaders of Moab are the demons worshipped by the Moabites, such as Baal-peor, to whom Israel once fell.
Demonstration of the Gospel 9.1.18Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Ruling the nations, Christ overthrew the demonic powers figuratively named Moab, Seth, Edom, and Esau.
Demonstration of the Gospel 9.3.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The unicorn’s one horn is the Father; with spiritual arrows the Word drove out the devil and still refines the nations for the narrow way.
Demonstration of the Gospel 9.7.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The Psalm’s night and noonday dangers are the powers that tempted Christ by night and by day.
Demonstration of the Gospel 9.7.17Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The “scourges” are demonic afflictions, which cannot approach Christ’s dwelling, his body.
Demonstration of the Gospel 9.7.18Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Christ drove out demons by a word; David’s vow to find a dwelling for the Lord refers to this dwelling, his body.
Demonstration of the Gospel 9.7.25Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Christ alone tramples the devil and his chief powers; to his disciples he gives authority over lesser ones, not letting them be tempted beyond their strength. Next comes Isaiah.
Demonstration of the Gospel 9.10.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Christ proclaimed release to captives of the demonic powers; next comes Deuteronomy.
Demonstration of the Gospel 10.2.13Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · As Scripture names spirits of immorality and error, so a spirit of death produces fear.
Demonstration of the Gospel 10.8.68Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Facing all the demonic powers without any helper, since even good angels dared not enter the realm of death, Christ says “there is no one to help.”
Demonstration of the Gospel 10.8.73Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · On the cross Christ saw the demonic powers of air, earth, and underworld gathering around his body like beasts, and describes them in the Psalm.
Against the Heathen 25Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Human sacrifice among Scythians, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Cretans, and early Romans shows the cruelty of demon-gods, whose worshipers imitate their murders and licentiousness.
On the Incarnation 5.2Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Through the devil's envy death entered, and corruption prevailed over the whole human race beyond its natural force.
On the Incarnation 10.4Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Hebrews 2:14–15 shows that the Word took flesh to destroy the devil through death.
On the Incarnation 20.6Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The immortal Word took a mortal body to offer it for all and to destroy the devil.
On the Incarnation 25.5Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Dying lifted up in the air, Christ cast down the devil, the ruler of the air, and opened the way to heaven.
On the Incarnation 30.6Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Idols and demons flee at Christ's name, the work of a living God.
Letter 2.5Antony the Great · before 356 · Antony prays that the brothers may discern the demons' hidden attacks, which sow unbelief, anger, self-justification, judging of others, and pride.
Letter 2.6Antony the Great · before 356 · Antony warns that the body is a house full of wars, where hidden demons work through a soul that welcomes their suggestions, and urges the brothers to give them no place.
Letter 2.7Antony the Great · before 356 · Antony explains that angels, demons, and saints all come from one Creator and received their names from their works, and urges self-knowledge and mutual love, since to know oneself is to know all.
Letter 2.10Antony the Great · before 356 · Antony urges unceasing prayer, warns that the demons' chief weapons are pride, vainglory, and enmity among brothers, and points to Christ's washing of feet as the example of humility.
On the Witch of Endor 2Eustathius of Antioch · ca. 324–337 · Eustathius retells how Saul, after banishing the mediums, was abandoned by God and in terror of the Philistines sought out the woman of Endor, and argues that divination forbidden by God cannot yield true testimony.
On the Witch of Endor 3Eustathius of Antioch · ca. 324–337 · Eustathius argues that no demon or medium has power to bring up any soul from Hades, that Origen wrongly attributes the woman's words to the Holy Spirit, and that the text says only that Saul inferred from her description that it was Samuel.
On the Witch of Endor 4Eustathius of Antioch · ca. 324–337 · Eustathius argues from Christ's words that the devil is a liar that the demon's promise to bring up a righteous soul cannot be true, and rejects Origen's claim that the narrative voice, being the Holy Spirit's, vouches that Samuel was seen.
On the Witch of Endor 7Eustathius of Antioch · ca. 324–337 · Eustathius answers Origen's appeal to the word “knew” by arguing that Saul saw nothing and only believed what a possessed woman told him, so that the narrator's “knew” reports a madman's supposition, not the truth.
On the Witch of Endor 10Eustathius of Antioch · ca. 324–337 · Eustathius argues that the “gods coming up” were the devil's show of power, that a true Samuel would have refused worship, and that the devil, who even asked Christ to worship him, tricked Saul into doing obeisance to him.
On the Witch of Endor 11Eustathius of Antioch · ca. 324–337 · Eustathius argues that Christians put demons to flight, as Paul did the spirit of Python at Philippi, so no demon could summon Samuel, and that a real Samuel would first have rebuked Saul for consulting a medium against the law.
On the Witch of Endor 13Eustathius of Antioch · ca. 324–337 · Eustathius argues that the apparition's own predictions were false, since Saul did not die the next day and died with three sons, not only Jonathan, and that whatever it said truly about war it knew as the devil, the author of all wars.
On the Witch of Endor 14Eustathius of Antioch · ca. 324–337 · Citing the lying spirit sent to deceive Ahab, Eustathius argues that the devil engineers the ruin of the wicked, and that the apparition's “tomorrow you will be with me” blasphemously mimics Christ's promise to the thief, since, as the parable of Lazarus shows, the wicked Saul could not be with Samuel.
On the Witch of Endor 17Eustathius of Antioch · ca. 324–337 · Eustathius insists that the question is not whether Samuel was in Hades but whether a demon can summon righteous souls, and attacks Origen's claim that Christ in Hades was “above in purpose”, saying it treats Christ as a mere man, whereas the Word is everywhere by his Godhead and Christ's soul freed the souls in Hades.
On the Witch of Endor 23Eustathius of Antioch · ca. 324–337 · Answering Origen's claim that a demon could not know of David's coming kingship, Eustathius argues that David's anointing and victories were public and written in Scripture, which the devil knows, as the demons knew Christ and the devil quoted the Psalms to him.
On the Witch of Endor 30Eustathius of Antioch · ca. 324–337 · Eustathius concludes that the woman of Endor's oracle was a myth from the belly, staged by a shape-shifting demon who mimics the dead, and that only God and his Son can bring souls up from Hades; the text breaks off.
Theophany 1.78Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 2.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 2.82Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 3.13Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 3.14Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 3.55Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 3.56Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 3.57Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Book 2, lines 51–75Juvencus · ca. 330 · The demons named Legion are sent into the pigs; the people ask Jesus to leave.
Book 2, lines 599–622Juvencus · ca. 330 · Jesus heals a blind and mute demoniac; the Pharisees accuse him of using the prince of demons; a divided kingdom cannot stand.
Letter to Marcellinus 32Athanasius of Alexandria · uncertain, after 335 · Those who pray the Psalms will be heard and protected; Scripture itself shows the power of God's words, as with Moses' Song, Deuteronomy in Joshua's and Josiah's days, and the ark of the law.
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 2.3Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Christ drives away the demonic powers; the emperor defeats the visible enemies of truth.
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 7.2Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Barbarians ravaged the empire while demons enslaved humanity to polytheism, pushing aside the true God.
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 7.13Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Constantine subdued both barbarian peoples and the demons, whom Christ had already conquered, distributing their spoils.
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 16.3Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · When Christ's body was raised as a trophy over the demons, the divided governments and their wars came to an end and one God was proclaimed.
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 16.6Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Christ's power overthrew the demons' rule while Rome united the nations, the gospel preparing the way for the empire.
Demonstration 6.2Aphrahat · 337-345
Demonstration 6.17Aphrahat · 337-345
Demonstration 14.40Aphrahat · 337-345 · Satan works through every kind of desire; a long list traces the ruin of biblical figures to particular desires, from Adam to Judas.
Demonstration 14.43Aphrahat · 337-345 · Envy and strife divide families and destroy peoples; the evil one plants them in the heart, chokes the good seed, makes prayer hollow, and lures the quarrelsome like a bird into a snare; only pursuing peace heals.
On Ecclesiastical Theology 3.4.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Even the devil and an evil spirit “went out from the Lord,” so going out does not imply identity.
Life of Constantine 3.3.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · The dragon, pierced and cast into the sea, stood for the devil, as Isaiah had prophesied.
Oration I Against the Arians 8Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius argues that quoting Scripture does not make Arius orthodox, since the devil too uses Scripture, and that his teaching is new and not from the fathers.
Oration I Against the Arians 10Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius contrasts the Scriptural confession with the Arian “Thalia,” says the Arians hide their views behind imperial patronage, and traces the heresy to the devil.
Oration I Against the Arians 50Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius compares the anointing with Christ's saying that he casts out demons by the Spirit: both are said of him as man, so that we might receive the Spirit through his flesh.
Oration II Against the Arians 73Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Wisdom, by whom the earth was founded, was “founded” for us as the foundation of the new creation; the decisive question, which even the devil asked, is whether he is the Son.
Oration III Against the Arians 40Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Christ had authority over Satan, sin, and death before his resurrection; he says he “received” it in human fashion so that human beings, sharing in the divine nature, might have it through him.
Oration III Against the Arians 49Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Christ's “not even the Son knows” protects believers against demons and the Antichrist who claim to know the end, and keeps them watchful, since neither the world's end nor one's own death is known.
Letter 2Ammonas · ca. 340-360 · Love of God leads through fear, tears and joy to a divine power that drives off Satan, which few hermits acquire because few labour for it.
Letter 7Ammonas · ca. 340-360 · As Jacob received his fathers’ blessing and saw the angels, so Ammonas prays that his obedient disciples may receive the fathers’ blessing and be kept from the Evil One.
Catechetical Lecture 2.4Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The devil, created good, fell by his own choice and drew others after him; yet repentance is always possible, for God’s mercy is greater than any sin.
Catechetical Lecture 5.3Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Even ordinary life (marriage, farming, seafaring) rests on faith; Scripture teaches that without faith no one can please God, and faith is the shield against the devil.
Catechetical Lecture 16.15Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Scripture qualifies the word “spirit” when it means sin, wind or demons; a demon's coming is violent and destructive, quite unlike the Holy Spirit's.
Catechetical Lecture 17.35Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Candidates must come to baptism sincerely, looking not to the minister but to the Holy Spirit, who gives a seal the demons fear.
Catechetical Lecture 19.2Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The renunciation of Satan in the vestibule of the baptistery is foreshadowed by Israel's deliverance from Pharaoh.
Catechetical Lecture 19.4Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Facing west, the region of darkness, the candidate renounced Satan, whose power Christ destroyed by sharing our flesh and blood.
Long recension, Ephesians 13Anonymous · later 4th century (probable) · Ignatius urges frequent gatherings for the Eucharist, joins faith and love as the beginning and end of life, praises deeds over words, and warns that corrupters of the church face eternal punishment.
Long recension, Smyrnaeans 7Anonymous · later 4th century (probable) · The false teachers are offspring of the devil, the author of evil from Adam to the Passion; Ignatius urges the Smyrnaeans to avoid them and their schisms.
Long recension, Philippians 3Anonymous · later 4th century (probable) · Ignatius sets out the one God, one Son and one Paraclete, the true incarnation and passion of the Son alone, and addresses the devil, who fears the cross, works through heresies, and could not recognize the Son of God in his lowly birth and life.
Commentary on Matthew 3Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 353–355 · Hilary interprets Christ’s temptation: the devil, unsure of who he was, was defeated by the flesh he could see; then the call of the four fishermen and the Galilean ministry.
To the Bishops of Egypt 1Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 356 · Athanasius opens by recalling that Christ foretold false prophets and gave believers the gift of discernment, because the devil disguises himself as the truth.
To the Bishops of Egypt 2Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 356 · Athanasius shows how the devil deceived Eve and Job's wife by counterfeiting, and how since Christ's coming even children mock him and believers see through his disguises.
To the Bishops of Egypt 3Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 356 · Athanasius argues that the devil's truths are not to be trusted, as Christ showed by rebuking Satan and silencing the demons, and that every heresy borrows Christ's name and Scripture's words.
Life of Antony 5Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · The devil tempted the young Antony with memories, pleasures, and finally sexual thoughts and apparitions, but Antony overcame them by faith, prayer, fasting, and the thought of judgment.
Life of Antony 6Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Defeated, the devil appeared to Antony as a black boy, confessed himself the spirit of sexual immorality, and fled when Antony rebuked him.
Life of Antony 8Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Antony shut himself in a distant tomb, where demons beat him almost to death; a friend found him and carried him to the village church.
Life of Antony 9Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Back in the tomb, Antony defied the demons, who came at him in the shapes of wild beasts; he mocked their weakness and trusted in Christ.
Life of Antony 10Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · A light from heaven drove the demons away, and a voice promised Antony that the Lord would always help him and make him known everywhere.
Life of Antony 11Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · When the old ascetic would not come with him, Antony set out alone for the mountain and saw through the devil’s trick of a silver dish in the road.
Life of Antony 13Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Visitors outside Antony’s fort heard demons raging within, but Antony told them to seal themselves with the cross and was found singing Psalm 68.
Life of Antony 21Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Antony warns the monks against anger and desire and introduces the demons, who fill the air and wage war against Christians.
Life of Antony 22Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · The demons were created good but fell; they envy Christians, and discerning their wiles requires prayer, discipline, and the Spirit’s gift of discernment.
Life of Antony 23Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · When evil thoughts fail, the demons try terrifying apparitions and false prophecies, which vanish before faith and the sign of the cross.
Life of Antony 24Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Though the devil appears as the fiery monster of Job 41 and boasts of his power, Christ has bound him like a captive beast, and his light is only a foretaste of the fire prepared for him.
Life of Antony 25Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Demons may even imitate psalm-singing, Scripture reading, monks, and calls to prayer and fasting, but only to drive the simple to despair and turn them from the ascetic life.
Life of Antony 26Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Even when demons speak the truth, as when they confessed Christ, they must not be heeded, for Christ silenced them and Christians have the Scriptures.
Life of Antony 27Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Following the psalmist, monks should be deaf to the demons, whatever they urge, and not fear their threats, for they are powerless.
Life of Antony 28Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Since the Lord’s coming the demons are powerless; their threats, crowds, and disguises prove their weakness, while a true angel, as against the Assyrians, acts with quiet authority.
Life of Antony 29Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · The devil had no power over Job except what God allowed, and the demons could not even enter the pigs without Christ’s leave.
Life of Antony 30Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · God alone is to be feared; the demons fear the ascetic virtues and the authority Christ gave his followers to trample them.
Life of Antony 31Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Demons only seem to foretell: being swift, they see travelers on the road and run ahead to announce them, but they know nothing that has not yet begun to happen.
Life of Antony 32Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Demons predict the Nile flood only because they have seen the rains in Ethiopia, like David’s watchman seeing a runner from a height; Providence can overturn their predictions.
Life of Antony 33Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Pagan oracles were demonic guesswork, like a physician’s or a farmer’s forecasts; foreknowledge has no value for salvation, which depends on faith and keeping the commandments.
Life of Antony 35Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Demons flee the sign of the cross; visions of holy angels come quietly, bring joy and peace, and take away fear, as with Zechariah, the women at the tomb, and the shepherds.
Life of Antony 36Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Demonic visions bring fear, confusion, and evil desires, whereas holy visions bring joy and courage, as Abraham and John the Baptist rejoiced.
Life of Antony 37Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Lingering fear signals the demons’ presence; they try to make people worship them, as they did the Greeks, but Christ rebuked Satan with Scripture.
Life of Antony 39Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Antony recounts his own encounters: demons flattered, threatened, appeared as soldiers, beasts, and false light, sang psalms, and shook his cell, but were routed by prayer and the psalms.
Life of Antony 40Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Antony tells how a demon claiming to be God’s power, a demon disguised as a monk offering bread, and visions of gold all vanished at the name of Christ, prayer, and psalms.
Life of Antony 41Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Satan himself came to Antony complaining that he had become powerless, since Christians were everywhere and even the desert was full of monks.
Life of Antony 42Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Demons mirror the soul they find: fear invites their attack, while joy in the Lord and hope drive them away, as with Job and Judas.
Life of Antony 43Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Faced with an apparition, ask boldly “Who are you, and where are you from?”: holy visitors bring joy, demons grow weak, as with Joshua and Daniel.
Life of Antony 48Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Without opening his door, Antony sent away an officer whose daughter was possessed, telling him to pray in faith, and she was healed; many others were healed outside his cell.
Life of Antony 51Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Alone on the inner mountain in old age, Antony fought visible and invisible demons with prayer, trusting in the Lord, and even the wild beasts were at peace with him.
Life of Antony 52Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · When the devil sent hyenas against Antony at night, he told them to eat him if God allowed it, or else depart, and they fled.
Life of Antony 53Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · A monstrous beast, half man and half ass, appeared at Antony’s door and fled to its death when he declared himself Christ’s servant.
Life of Antony 63Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · On a boat Antony smelled a stench no one else noticed, which proved to come from a demon hidden in a young man; he cast it out in Christ’s name.
Life of Antony 64Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · A violently possessed young nobleman attacked Antony at dawn after a night of prayer, which Antony recognized as the sign that the demon had left him.
Life of Antony 65Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · In a vision Antony was led up through the air, where hostile powers demanded an account of his life since he became a monk, but could prove nothing against him.
Life of Antony 66Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · In another vision Antony saw souls ascending past a giant figure, the enemy, who seized those subject to him while the faithful passed beyond; he told such things only when pressed, for others’ benefit.
Life of Antony 71Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · As Athanasius and others escorted Antony out of Alexandria, he healed a possessed girl at the city gate.
Life of Antony 80Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Antony challenged the philosophers to heal the demon-possessed by their arguments or magic; when they could not, he healed them with the sign of the cross, giving the credit to Christ.
Life of Antony 88Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · With his gift of discerning spirits Antony taught others to overcome demonic temptations; many virgins chose virginity on seeing him, and all mourned him like orphans.
Hymns 1.3Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · A hymn on Christ, the heavenly Adam, battling Satan: the devil, gloating over a world lost to idolatry, hears the angels' song at the nativity and the Father's voice at the baptism, and, seeing only a mortal body, prepares the temptation; the rest is lost.
On Saint Athanasius 1.31Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer sets the psalms' blessings on those who keep justice against the emperor's demands and, from Wisdom 1–2, calls him an imitator of the devil through whose envy death entered the world.
That One Must Die for the Son of God 12Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer says the demons persecute the bishops through Constantius but are conquered in the martyrs, refers the emperor to his book On Apostate Kings, and argues from Philippians 2 that the Arians read only the texts of Christ's humiliation and ignore those of his eternal divinity.
On Not Sparing Those Who Sin against God 23Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer applies the Maccabean youth's words to Constantius point by point, then from Peter's command to resist the devil and Moses' song argues that the emperor, drunk with the devil's wine, must be named for what he is.
On Not Sparing Those Who Sin against God 27Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer applies Paul's warnings against the serpent's deceit and against false apostles disguised as ministers of righteousness to Constantius, who feigns piety while deposing catholic bishops, and cites the girl with the spirit of divination at Philippi.
On Not Sparing Those Who Sin against God 28Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer argues that, as the spirit of divination stirred up Philippi against Paul and Silas, so unclean spirits drive Constantius, who cannot have the Holy Spirit without faith in the Son, and that like Saul he persecutes Christ in his servants.
Letters to Serapion 4.18Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · The unpardonable blasphemy, as Mark says, was the Pharisees’ claim that Christ’s divine works came from an unclean spirit.
Letter 233Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Answering a question of Amphilochius about the mind, Basil explains that the mind, made in God's image, can be led astray by demons or raised by the Spirit to perceive divine things, and that God can be truly known, though only in part.
Against Arius 1.15Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus adds texts from John and Matthew, including the confessions of Satan and the demons, and argues from Matthew 11:27 that only one who shares God's substance can know him.
Against Arius 3.17Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus cites texts on the judging of Satan and explains that the three powers are one deity, referred to Father and Son because both are self-begotten motion of one substance.
To Justinus the Manichaean 15Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author argues that the Almighty is not bound by the rule that created things produce only their like, that evil in the proper sense is a demon, an angelic creature, and that other evils have no substance.
Homilies on the Psalms 7.8Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · Basil explains Ps 7:14–15: the order travail–conception–birth describes sin's birth in the heart, Absalom being the devil's offspring; and in Scripture pits stand for evil, wells (which reveal hidden springs) for good.
Homilies on the Psalms 61.2Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · On Ps 62:1–5 Basil teaches that the soul must be subject to God, its Maker, from whom comes salvation, Christ himself; the righteous are shaken only humanly by trials, while the devil's servants assault man until, like a leaning wall, he falls, yet God rebuilds him for the resurrection. He discusses the variant “in thirst” and “in a lie,” and condemns those who flatter vice by giving it the names of virtues.
On the Holy Spirit 60Didymus the Blind · Greek ca. 360-390; Latin 387-391 · Answering an objection: Satan "fills" a heart not by entering it in substance, which only the Trinity can do, but by drawing it into evil through deceit and suggestion, as with Ananias and Elymas.
On the Holy Spirit 61Didymus the Blind · Greek ca. 360-390; Latin 387-391 · Satan entered Judas through his avarice, by activity, not substance; as a changeable creature the devil cannot be shared, so only the Trinity can indwell by substance.
Treatise on the Mysteries 1.29.3Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–366 · Moses' killing of the Egyptian prefigures Christ's victory over the devil for his people.
Treatise on the Mysteries 1.29.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–366 · Christ bound the strong man and freed his people, yet was rejected by them, as Moses was.
Tractates on the Psalms 51.13Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The world is a sea ruled by the devil; Christ came to draw us out with the net of his teaching, but the people who betrayed him cast themselves into the depth, like the drowned Egyptians.
Tractates on the Psalms 52.20Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Christ, who read Isaiah 61 in the synagogue, turned back the captivity of the nations by freeing them from demons and sin.
Tractates on the Psalms 58.3Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The strong who hunt the soul of the sinless one are the persecutors armed by the devil, who entered Judas.
Tractates on the Psalms 64.10Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The sea is the world, ruled by the devil; when Christ is preached, the demons fall silent, oracles cease, and exorcism by Christians troubles the nations, some of whom come to fear God.
Tractates on the Psalms 65.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The shout of joy is the church’s battle cry against the devil, heard in its prayers, hymns, and responses.
Tractates on the Psalms 67.23Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Following Colossians 2, Hilary explains that by dying and rising Christ cancelled the decree of death and triumphed over the demonic powers who caused his death.
Tractates on the Psalms 67.24Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The shattered heads are the demonic powers of the air, who tread unnoticed on human minds and prompt sin, and whom Christ condemned in his death.
Tractates on the Psalms 67.25Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · “From Bashan into the depth of the sea” means Christ’s descent from the shame of the body into the storm of the world and the cross, where he crushed the enemy powers.
Tractates on the Psalms 68.14Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Though all creation pleases God, the passion is the special “time of good pleasure,” when Christ reconciled all things, defeated the powers, and freed creation.
Tractates on the Psalms 118.1.8Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Since even a human witness restrains sin, Christians should fear to sin before the angels who see God daily and before the devil who accuses sinners.
Tractates on the Psalms 118.11.5Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Knowing his days are few, the psalmist asks for judgment now on his spiritual persecutors, the devil and his powers, as Christ later gave his apostles power over the enemy.
Tractates on the Psalms 118.14.17Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Though the devil sets snares everywhere, one whose soul is in God's hands flies free like a sparrow from the fowler's net.
Tractates on the Psalms 118.16.6Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Hostile spirits drive us to sin, pride, anger, hatred, lust, and greed, but cannot seize the innocent unless God withdraws.
Tractates on the Psalms 118.16.7Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The proud slanderers are the devil and his angels, who incite us to sin and then accuse us before God.
Tractates on the Psalms 120.8Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God does not hand us over to sin; when we leave him by sinning, he withdraws, and that withdrawal leaves us to the demons.
Tractates on the Psalms 120.11Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · "The hand of your right hand" means our best works, which God guards against the demons that try to weaken them.
Tractates on the Psalms 120.15Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God keeps the soul not from death, sickness, or poverty, but from the devil's assaults: vices, flattery, slander, ambition, and lust.
Tractates on the Psalms 123.6Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The devil's torrent overwhelms those empty of God, but for those in whom God dwells it soon dries up and can be crossed.
Tractates on the Psalms 124.6Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Angels and saints guard the church, but the Lord himself, present everywhere by his Spirit, surrounds his people against the spiritual powers that assail them.
Tractates on the Psalms 128.2Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The psalm names no attackers because men are only the agents; the instigators are the spiritual powers of wickedness.
Tractates on the Psalms 128.3Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Job's afflictions and Judas's betrayal show the devil working his will through human agents.
Tractates on the Psalms 139.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Christ was attacked constantly with venomous words, as in the Gospel controversies; believers too are assailed by hostile powers working through men, as Hadad was a 'satan' to Solomon.
Tractates on the Psalms 139.14Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The 'head' of Christ's encirclers is the devil, who moved Judas and the crowd; their own curses and the fire of judgment will cover them.
Tractates on the Psalms 140.16Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The net is the devil's, who works through all the wicked; sinners fall into it because they are already sinners.
Tractates on the Psalms 142.2Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · David's complaint is not against Absalom but against the devil who inflamed him, as he inflamed Judas; the psalm is read of the prophet and of the Lord in his assumed weakness.
Tractates on the Psalms 143.9Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God's descent in fire and lightning, as in Psalm 18, signifies Christ's rescue from death; the 'mountains' that smoke are the diabolical powers, his strongest enemies.
Tractates on the Psalms 143.11Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The devil's power, subjected at Christ's coming, 'smokes' now but is not yet consumed; it is being prepared for the eternal fire.
Sermon on Baptism 3Pacian of Barcelona · ca. 360-390 · Pacian explains grace as the gift of forgiveness and describes Christ, sinless from his birth, overcoming the devil’s temptations in the wilderness.
Sermon on Baptism 4Pacian of Barcelona · ca. 360-390 · Pacian describes the passion as Christ’s victory: the devil, by condemning the sinless one, overstepped his power over sinners and was overcome, and Christ rose on the third day.
Sermon on Baptism 7Pacian of Barcelona · ca. 360-390 · Pacian urges the newly baptized to keep the life they have received, renouncing the devil once for all, and warns that returning to sin brings a worse bondage.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 69Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Titus argues that the demons are not evil by nature but became evil by choice.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 70Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · The demons know Christ and beg not to be sent into the abyss, which shows they are rational, not blind by nature, and not akin to the place of punishment.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 71Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · The abyss was made later as a corrective punishment; since the demons can suffer and fear, they cannot be unbegotten.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 72Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Degrees of wickedness among demons show choice, not nature; Titus begins to restate the Manichaean myth of the two separated realms in order to refute it.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 75Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Nebuchadnezzar’s confession of God after the furnace shows that even the wicked can know the good; evil is not a substance but a sickness, and Satan is fallen, as Isaiah and Christ testify.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 76Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Scripture speaks of Satan as fallen from a former height, so he was not evil by nature; and the Manichaean myth of light snatched by darkness makes God passible and Satan impassible.
Commentary on Ephesians 2.1Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Victorinus explains spiritual death in sin, the “age of this world” as opposed to the eternal ages, and the “prince of the power of the air” as the devil, the spirit of matter, since air is the chief of the elements.
Commentary on Ephesians 6.16Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · The shield of faith quenches the devil’s fiery arrows, the persuasive words that inflame the blood, because faith takes everything spiritually and the light of Christ overcomes worldly fire.
Oration 4.47Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · God permitted but did not cause Julian's march; Gregory denies that demons foretold Constantius's death and insinuates Julian's guilt.
Oration 4.54Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · The cross appeared in Julian's sacrificial entrails; in an underground rite the sign of the cross put the demons to flight, but his mystagogue led him on.
Oration 35.2Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · The preacher describes the end of heresy as the passing of night, and compares the Arian women who rioted against the Church to Jezebel and to the Maenads of a painting.
Oration 39.7Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · The demons, envious of man, led him into idolatry; the remedy begins with the fear of God, which leads through obedience and cleansing to illumination, so that we may receive the Word worthily.
Oration 40.15Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Baptism, the seal, protects in life and is the best shroud in death; the devil persuades people to delay it out of fear of spoiling it, but catechumens should enter fully and take up the shield of faith.
Oration 40.35Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Using the parable of the returning unclean spirit, Gregory warns that the baptized must fill their souls with Christ, lest the evil spirit return with greater force.
Tractates 1.16.3Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno argues from exorcisms, in which possessing spirits name themselves as dead persons, that the souls of the dead live.
Tractates 2.15.1Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno retells the story of Job's trials and patience.
Tractates 2.29.1Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · A fragment: Christ entered the world in secret so that the devil, who deceived man, should not recognise him.
Tractates 2.43.2Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno reinterprets the twelve signs of the zodiac as Christ, the Testaments, the church's warfare against the devil, and baptism, which makes Jews and Gentiles one people.
Homilies 1.9Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · The rich man's luxury and the fasting of the saints, of John the Baptist, of Paul and of Christ himself show the value of fasting.
Homilies 9.8Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · The devil, an angel who fell by his own choice, is evil not by nature but by estrangement from God, and in envy deceived man in paradise.
Homilies 9.9Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · God set enmity between the serpent and humanity; the tree tested obedience, and the devil, an incorporeal ruler of the air whose name means 'adversary', is used by God to exercise our souls.
Homilies 9.10Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · The 'heavenly places' where the devil's forces dwell are the air, from which Christ saw Satan fall.
Homilies 11.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Envy, the devil's own vice, consumes the envious soul, rejoices only in others' fall, drove the devil against mankind and Cain against Abel, and made Saul hate David the more for his benefits.
Homilies 11.4Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Envy sold Joseph and crucified Christ; it attacks those nearest us, harms the envious most, sees only faults, and is cured by valuing only true and eternal goods and turning ambition toward virtue.
Homilies 13.6Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Like the Ethiopian eunuch, the hearer should be baptized without delay; the devil's trick is to say “today for me, tomorrow for God,” but the Christian life, though demanding, is easier than the toils of sin.
Homilies 21.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Life is a road on which the devil lies in ambush among worldly delights; wealth, food, lust and power cannot be truly ours, but only the soul, the body as its vehicle, and the virtues.
Homilies 21.9Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Basil adds thanks for the church's escape from a fire set nearby, blamed on the devil, and asks the congregation to provide for those who lost everything in it.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 4.6Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · The thief of Psalm 50 is the devil, whom the Donatists help when, by exorcizing and rebaptizing Catholics, they drive out God who dwells in them and leave them empty for the unclean spirit.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 2:8Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The 'rulers of this age' who crucified Christ are chiefly spiritual powers acting in ignorance of his divine sonship; the impassible Lord is said to die because the Word became flesh.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 5:5Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The incestuous man is to be expelled, 'handed to Satan' in the lust of the flesh, so that he may repent and so that the Holy Spirit is not lost to the whole church.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 10:19–20Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Idols are nothing, but the devil is worshipped through them, so eating their sacrifices makes one a partner with demons.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:57Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Christ, sinless God made man, defeated the devil by being unjustly killed, so the devil justly lost those he held through sin.
Commentary on 1 Thessalonians 2:14–16Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The Thessalonians shared the sufferings of the Judean churches; Paul denounces the persecuting Jews, explains why he longs to see the Thessalonians in person though Satan hindered him, and calls them his crown.
Commentary on 2 Corinthians 11:14Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Satan disguises himself as an angel of light, which is why Joshua and Peter tested apparitions.
Commentary on 2 Timothy 4:17Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · God stood by Paul and rescued him from the devil’s jaws; Paul sends greetings, explains why Trophimus was left sick, and closes with his signature naming Jesus Christ as God and man.
Commentary on Ephesians 5:2Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Christ's death pleased God not because he was killed but because he kept righteousness to death; God 'handed him over' by permitting his willing killers, who remain guilty.
Commentary on Romans 7:4Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Through Christ’s body, unjustly killed by the devil, believers die to the law and belong to the risen Christ, bearing fruit to God.
Commentary on Romans 7:8Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Ambrosiaster takes “sin” here as the devil, who, seeing the law given to help man, used it to provoke every desire; before the law sin seemed dead because people thought God would not judge it.
Commentary on Romans 7:13Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The good law did not cause death; the devil used it to provoke sin, so that sin under the law grew beyond its former measure, and God answered by sending Christ.
Commentary on Romans 7:14Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The law is spiritual, but man, descended from Adam and enslaved by his own sins, is carnal and too weak to keep it without God’s help, since since the fall the devil has access to his mind.
Commentary on Romans 7:18Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The flesh is not evil, but sin dwells in it as the corruption left by Adam’s sin, which the devil uses; so a person wills the good but lacks the strength to do it.
Commentary on Romans 7:24–25Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Born under sin, man is freed from the “body of death”, the whole of his sins, by grace through baptism; the freed mind serves God’s law, while the flesh, still under Adam’s sentence, remains open to the devil’s suggestions until the resurrection.
Commentary on Romans 8:38Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Ambrosiaster takes each power in Rom 8:38–39 as one of the devil’s attempts to draw believers from Christ, death, worldly rank, false angels, false wonders like Simon Magus’s flight, terrors and illusions, none of which can separate them from God’s love in Christ.
Question 2, section 2Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The world was made because the devil, the most brilliant of the angels, drew many powers into rebellion, wanting to be called God, as usurpers do with their soldiers.
Question 2, section 4Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The devil, seeing that man was made to condemn him, led him into the same sin by promising deity; his names describe his will, not his nature.
Question 2, section 5Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Christ came to free man and undo the devil’s works; the devil cannot be evil by nature, or punishing him would be unjust.
Question 2, section 6Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The devil discriminates among people, attacking God’s servants above all, which shows that his evil lies in his will.
Question 2, section 7Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · If the devil acted by nature, like a madman, he could be neither praised nor condemned; so his evil must be voluntary.
Question 27, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The figure raised by the witch of Endor was not Samuel, since a righteous man cannot be summoned by magic, but Satan in disguise, pretending to hold the righteous dead in his power.
Question 31, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The tempter was a real serpent, wiser than other beasts, and its sentence to crawl merely confirmed its natural place beneath man, which it had overturned as Satan’s instrument.
Question 31, section 2Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The devil spoke through the serpent as through an instrument, so the bodily curse on the serpent falls spiritually on Satan, who now grovels on the earth.
Question 66, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The “rulers of this age” who did not know Christ are the spiritual powers, not the Jewish leaders; but then how did the demons recognize him?
Question 90, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · In John 8:44 “devil” is a name for a kind of work, so the father of the Jews there is Cain, the first murderer and liar, whose own father is the devil.
Question 98, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · In a homily on John 8:44, Ambrosiaster teaches that the devil had no one who led him into apostasy and that his names describe his deeds, not his nature.
Question 98, section 2Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Cain, who killed his brother out of envy and lied to God, is the “devil” whose father is the devil in John 8:44.
Question 98, section 4Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The devil was not created evil, for he “did not stand” in the truth, which means he was once in it and fell by his own will, and so is justly punished.
Question 110, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · In a reading of Psalm 1, Ambrosiaster calls blessed the one who does not join the counsel of the ungodly, a conspiracy begun by the devil, whose ungodliness is the gravest of sins.
Question 111, section 17Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Christ is shown to be king of glory by the power with which he overcame the devil.
Question 113, section 3Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Ambrosiaster asks why the Son himself, rather than an angel, came to earth to defeat the devil.
Question 113, section 4Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Since David sent servants against rebels and Michael defeated the devil, it seems an angel could have conquered Satan.
Question 113, section 7Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The devil, seeking to be worshiped as god, spread idolatry on earth after his fall, and Christ came to earth to crush him and reveal the truth.
Question 115, section 29Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · A good life under God’s law overcomes so-called fate; those who live badly blame fate for what they and the demons who aid them have done.
Question 115, section 38Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Astrological predictions come true for those who believe them because demons bring them about, but God does not let them harm those who trust in him.
Question 116, section 2Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · God rescued humanity justly, not by force: the devil, man’s accuser, was provoked into killing the sinless Son of God and so became guilty himself.
Question 116, section 3Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · By killing the sinless Christ the devil, identified with death, forfeited all humanity, as through Adam he had gained them, and Christ’s blood restored human nature to a better state.
Question 118, section 8Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · When Satan struck Job’s body with sores and still could not make him curse God, he tried, as with Adam, to deceive him through his wife.
Letter 21.11Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome interprets the ruler to whom the prodigal attaches himself as the devil, known in Scripture by many names.
Letter 21.12Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome interprets the pigs as the demons who feed on idolatrous sacrifice and on the death of human souls.
Letter 22.3Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome warns Eustochium that the Christian life is a constant spiritual battle, in which God's help is greater than all the enemy's forces.
Letter 22.4Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome warns that the devil seeks especially to devour those within the church, as he fell himself and caused others to fall.
Letter 51.5Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Epiphanius attacks Origen's teachings on the devil's restoration, the coats of skins as bodies, a heavenly paradise, and the waters above the firmament.
Letter 96.8Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus attacks Origen's teaching that the devil will be restored and Christ's reign end, citing Christ's promise of an everlasting kingdom.
Letter 96.10Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus rejects the Origenist idea that Christ will suffer again for the demons, arguing that Christ suffered once, for human sins, according to the Scriptures.
Letter 96.12Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus denounces Origen in a string of biblical invectives for teaching that Christ will be crucified again for demons.
Letter 118.3Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome explains from Job 1–2 that Julian has so far lost only external goods, 'skin for skin', and has not yet been tried in his own body as Job was.
Letter 124.3Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome reports Origen’s teaching that rational beings fell into bodies through negligence and can pass repeatedly between angel, human and demon in successive worlds.
Letter 124.10Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome quotes Origen on the renewal of matter and worlds after intervals of time, on a future devil drawn from the most wicked, and on bodily nature being taken up into the divine substance.
Letter 124.12Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome charges that Origen spoke of an eternal Gospel in heaven and of Christ suffering again in the heavenly places for the salvation of demons, and quotes the passage.
Book of Rules 7Tyconius · ca. 380 · Tyconius’s seventh rule: as with Christ and his body, Scripture passes from the devil to his body (the wicked, within and without the church); he illustrates this from the fall of the king of Babylon in Isaiah 14 and of the king of Tyre in Ezekiel 28, and ends with the coming departure of the church from the mystery of iniquity.
Ancoratus 72.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Evil and other spirits named in Scripture.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 30.10.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Josephus exorcized the madman in Jesus' name.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 30.16.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They teach two appointed rulers, Christ of the age to come and the devil of this age.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.19.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The devil and demons came from Achamoth's grief.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 34.2.15Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Such spirits are Satan's, deceiving those weak in the Church's faith.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 34.13.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Their confidence shows they are driven by evil spirits.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 34.13.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The parable of the returning unclean spirit is applied to them.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 37.1.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The serpent still tempts with false promises.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 37.1.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The devil spoke through the snake.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 37.2.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Scripture calls the devil a snake because of his crookedness.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 37.2.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The devil works on weak, 'female' ignorance, not firm reason.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 37.2.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · God set enmity between snake and humanity as a warning.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 39.9.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Their myths are the devil's doing.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 39.9.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The devil quoted Psalm 91 at Christ's temptation.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 39.9.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The devil hoped for mercy at Christ's coming.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 39.9.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Rejected, the devil turned to blasphemy and heresy.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 40.5.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They make the devil the son of Sabaoth.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 40.6.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The ultimate 'liar' is the devil who deceived Eve.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 40.6.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Cain was the devil's son by imitation, not by birth.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 63.1.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They claim to protect their seed from demons.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 63.3.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Their teaching is demonic.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.28.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The devil envied free man.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.28.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Wisdom says death came through the devil’s envy.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.28.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Is God responsible for the devil?
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.28.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The devil cannot be ungenerated, since he is punished.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.29.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The devil is an angel set over matter.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.29.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The devil fell through envy, like the angels of Genesis 6.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.29.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The devil was the fallen morning star.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.56.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The devil used the commandment to work desire.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.56.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · “Sin” in Romans 7 is the devil, who deceived and killed.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.56.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The devil, not the commandment, caused death.
On Cain and Abel 1.16Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · Christ taught us to resist the snares of gluttony, boasting and ambition by his answers to the devil's three temptations.
On Cain and Abel 2.16Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · When wickedness departs, virtue enters: Christ left Judas when Satan entered him, but Zacchaeus, renouncing avarice, received Christ and restored what he had taken.
On Paradise 9Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · The devil was in paradise by God's permission, and God turns his malice to the good of the saints, as with Job, Joseph and Abraham.
On Paradise 10Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · The devil cannot shut the saints out of heaven; he may tempt but cannot overthrow unless we slip by our own will.
On Paradise 54Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · The serpent's wisdom is either pleasure or the devil, who out of envy at man's hope of heaven attacked Adam through the woman, who had learned the command only from Adam.
On Paradise 55Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · The devil tempts in many ways: by false wisdom, by feigned friendship, and by open struggle, which Paul resisted like a good athlete.
On Paradise 61Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · The devil's promises were lies, except that their eyes were opened, a truth that harmed; his promise "you will be like gods" was the beginning of idolatry.
On Paradise 74Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · The serpent's going on its belly and eating dust figures delight and gluttony; God foretold rather than imposed its fate, and we should feed our souls on God's word, not on earthly things.
Apostolic Constitutions 6.5.5Anonymous · ca. 380 · The devil now attacks the church with persecutions and heresies, as he tempted Job.
Apostolic Constitutions 8.7.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · The deacon leads prayer for those troubled by unclean spirits.
Apostolic Constitutions 8.7.5Anonymous · ca. 380 · The prayer recalls Christ's victory over the devil.
Apostolic Constitutions 8.7.8Anonymous · ca. 380 · The Son is asked to rebuke the evil spirits.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 71Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · Macrina reads Phil 2:10 as the final harmony of all rational beings (angels, the living, the dead, and even the demons) in confessing Christ, when evil has been destroyed. Gregory, satisfied that the soul survives, asks to return to the main argument.
Against Fate, part 11Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · Demons sweeten their deceit with predictions and cures, as poisoners use honey; every kind of divination, from livers, birds, dreams, the prophetic water and the Pythian vapour, comes from the same demonic source and none proves fate; astrologers hedge their predictions, as when a usurper under Valens was encouraged by a horoscope and ruined; the whole aim is to turn people from God.
On the Lord's Prayer 1131Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · The saints who seem to curse their enemies are praying against sin, not people: the Psalmist wants sin to fail, and the enemies he wishes put to shame are the demons and passions that war against the soul.
To Theodosius on the Witch of Endor, part 1Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · Answering Bishop Theodosius, Gregory rejects the view that the medium of Endor really brought up Samuel's soul, since the gospel's chasm cannot be crossed between the righteous and the wicked, and explains divination of every kind as the deceit of demons.
To Theodosius on the Witch of Endor, part 2Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · The "gods" the woman saw were demons, and the "Samuel" was a demon imitating the prophet, as its words "Tomorrow you will be with me" betray; Scripture often names what seems for what is, as with Balaam's "god"; Gregory then answers Theodosius's other questions briefly (Elijah at the brook and the ravens, Moses' veil, the sacrifices, the fallen archangel) and postpones the question of the Spirit before baptism.
Chapter 1Nicetas, bishop of Remesiana · ca. 380–414 · Nicetas describes the baptismal renunciation of the devil, his angels and his works, which precedes the profession of the creed.
Fragment 3Nicetas, bishop of Remesiana · ca. 380–414 · Nicetas teaches that before confessing the faith the candidate must sincerely renounce the devil and his works, including pagan cults, shows and vices, and condemns vain male and female adornment.
Fragment 6Nicetas, bishop of Remesiana · ca. 380–414 · Nicetas explains that the exorcisms before baptism purge the candidates like fire, being made of the Lord’s fiery words.
Book of Heresies 26.4Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · The lying spirit sent to Ahab shows how Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.
Book of Heresies 108.5Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Fallen angels act by entering and persuading men.
Book of Heresies 108.6Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Unclean spirits entered men's souls, as Satan entered Judas.
Book of Heresies 115.9Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · The unrepentant devil is kept for the eternal fire.
Canons on the Letters of Paul 6Priscillian · ca. 380–400 · Paul calls sins or demons darkness and works of darkness.
Canons on the Letters of Paul 52Priscillian · ca. 380–400 · False apostles and prophets cause sects; Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.
Eleven Tractates 1.11Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · Lions, bulls, and dogs in Scripture stand for the devil and for sinners.
Eleven Tractates 1.13Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · The beasts of Scripture are parables written for us, so that we may reject the vices they signify; Revelation and Paul identify them with spiritual powers of evil.
Eleven Tractates 1.14Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · They hold to the creed and renunciation of the devil made at baptism, and read Scripture's beasts as figures of the devil.
Eleven Tractates 1.20Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · They anathematize the veneration of Saclas and other demons named in Gnostic and Manichaean writings; whatever the name, it is the devil.
On the Complaints of Job and David 3.27Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · God holding the right hand reverses the devil’s place at Adam’s right; Christ drove him back, and Peter was held up on the waters.
On the Complaints of Job and David 4.28Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · Guard the summit of the heart against the enemy’s signs and axes; let Christ, who knocks, enter, and persevere with him.
Catechetical Oration 6Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · Gregory explains the fall: an angelic power set over the earth grew envious of man, who joined the intelligible and the sensible, and by deceit mixed vice into man's will, so that death, curse, and shame replaced life, blessing, and freedom.
Catechetical Oration 23Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · The captor, proud and seeing Christ's miracles, accepted him as ransom for those held in death; the Godhead was veiled in flesh so that he would approach, showing God's goodness, justice, and wisdom together.
Catechetical Oration 26Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · The deceiver was justly deceived in turn, but for his good as well as ours: like gold refined by fire, all creation, even the adversary, will be purified and will join in thanksgiving at the final restoration.
On the Life of Moses 341Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · Since “brother” and “angel” can be used in good and bad senses, the difficulty about Aaron is eased; Moses’ address to the people teaches that one must be trained before teaching, and Pharaoh’s harsher oppression shows how the devil assails new believers.
On the Life of Moses 411Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · Moses, untouched by envy, prays for Miriam and Aaron, armed with Christ as with armour; when the devil turns to the people with gluttony, Moses keeps his eyes on the promised land, trusting the good report of Joshua rather than the faithless spies.
On the Life of Moses 421Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · Balaam the augur, taught by his donkey, learned that Israel could not be overcome, as the demons confessed Christ; the curse turned to blessing shows that reproach cannot touch the virtuous; so the devil turned to pleasure.
On Jacob and the Happy Life 2.24Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Mystically, Laban ('whitened') is Satan disguised as light, who found nothing of his own in Jacob, a type of Christ in whom the prince of this world found nothing.
On the Duties of the Clergy 1.4Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Guarded speech makes a man gentle and denies the devil the snares he sets through our words.
Exposition of Psalm 118 1.13.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Even if Christ and the angels looked away, the devil, who led the sinner in, would see and accuse him.
Exposition of Psalm 118 1.13.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The devil who drives men to sin will be blamed by them at the judgment, but, as with Eve, that will not acquit them.
Exposition of Psalm 118 3.34.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · On verse 21: pride, whose author is the devil, is opposed to Christ’s obedience.
Exposition of Psalm 118 3.35.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The devil let the Pharisee rise in virtue so that pride might bring him down the harder.
Exposition of Psalm 118 3.45.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The spiritual powers of evil are the princes who watch for the righteous.
Exposition of Psalm 118 3.45.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The evil powers plot against the righteous and ask leave to tempt them.
Exposition of Psalm 118 3.45.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The evil spirit stirred up Saul, Doeg, and Amnon against David.
Exposition of Psalm 118 3.45.4Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · David overcame the devil’s darts by commanding that Absalom be spared.
Exposition of Psalm 118 4.11.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · By confessing his sins first, the righteous man silences the devil, his accuser.
Exposition of Psalm 118 7.8.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The devil fell through pride and sought man as partner in his guilt.
Exposition of Psalm 118 7.26.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Christ, the true Solomon, gave his church singers whose psalms drive away evil spirits, as David’s did for Saul.
Exposition of Psalm 118 8.43.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The devil binds us with fornication, adultery, unbelief, envy, and cruelty, until Christ frees us as he freed the bent woman.
Exposition of Psalm 118 8.47.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · At night evil spirits tempt with the example of saints who sinned and were forgiven.
Exposition of Psalm 118 8.59.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The heaven of heaven is pure; the lower, airy heaven between sky and earth holds the evil spirits.
Exposition of Psalm 118 8.59.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · No temptation works in the true heaven; the devil and his angels are held by earthly enticements.
Exposition of Psalm 118 11.18.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The prophet asks that the devil, not a man, be subjected to him.
Exposition of Psalm 118 11.18.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · He longs for Satan to be crushed under the feet of faith, freeing the reformed man.
Exposition of Psalm 118 11.18.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Christ has subjected the hostile powers to us; if we do not crush the devil, it is our own fault.
Exposition of Psalm 118 12.10.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Satan fell from heaven to earth, which is why vices abound here.
Exposition of Psalm 118 12.10.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The word does not abide on earth, where the devil has laid snares; he fell for not holding to it.
Exposition of Psalm 118 12.38.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Judas said “I am yours” with his lips, but Satan entered him and claimed him.
Exposition of Psalm 118 16.12.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The devil is the author of all sins: anger, lust, avarice.
Exposition of Psalm 118 16.12.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Envy led Cain from sacrifice to fratricide; the devil is the author of incontinence.
Exposition of Psalm 118 16.12.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Scripture shows the devil instigates incontinence and avarice.
Exposition of Psalm 118 16.13.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Sinners belong to the devil; the chaste and merciful are Christ’s, whom the devil cannot claim unless they fall.
Exposition of Psalm 118 16.15.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The proud slanderer is the devil, who exalted himself against God.
Exposition of Psalm 118 16.15.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The devil, who ravaged the world, slanders individuals too.
Exposition of Psalm 118 16.16.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The devil sets his throne above the stars when he deceives the righteous, as he did Judas.
Exposition of Psalm 118 16.16.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The devil slanders those he cannot seduce; God’s hand protects those who flee him.
Exposition of Psalm 118 18.25.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Christ slew the true Goliath, the devil; the redeemed souls sing.
Exposition of Psalm 118 19.7.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Against spiritual powers one cries with the heart, not the voice.
Exposition of Psalm 118 20.23.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · If human justice gives hope, how much more Christ’s; the devil’s judgment is deferred to his torment.
Exposition of Psalm 118 20.23.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The rich man in Hades suffers; the devil awaits judgment in perpetual fear.
Exposition of Psalm 118 20.45.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · All the godly suffer persecution from vices, each an evil spirit.
Exposition of Psalm 118 20.51.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Christ is persecuted in us; to flee the struggle is to reject him.
Exposition of Psalm 118 20.51.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Where the devil attacks, Christ defends; if God is for us, who is against us?
Exposition of Psalm 118 21.11.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · As David beheaded Goliath with his own sword, Christ defeated the devil through the faith of the nations.
Exposition of Psalm 118 21.11.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Christ bound the strong man and made sinful flesh a chosen vessel.
Exposition of Psalm 118 21.11.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Isaiah’s child named “Swift spoil” is Christ, who plundered the devil.
On the Happy Life 18Augustine of Hippo · 386 (November) · Augustine shows that the three answers come to the same thing, after Adeodatus explains that one without an unclean spirit is one who lives chastely, attending to God alone.
Against the Academics 1.20Augustine of Hippo · 386 (autumn) · Trygetius argues that true knowledge of human things is knowledge of the virtues, which Albicerius lacked, and that his feats may be explained by demons of the air, who excel in sense but not in reason.
Letter 9.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine says the question how higher powers or demons put thoughts and dreams into us needs a book, but offers some hints.
Letter 9.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine suggests that motions of the mind leave traces in the body which beings of air or ether can perceive and stir, producing thoughts and dreams.
Letter 78.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine warns against the devil’s three snares in such cases: imitating evil, losing heart under slander, and judging others by suspicion.
Letter 102.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Demons demand temples and sacrifices because they know these belong to God; the fault of paganism is offering them to idols and demons.
Letter 102.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Scripture mocks senseless idols and identifies the gods of the nations as demons; true religion condemns sacrifice to demons, not sacrifice as such.
Letter 138.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Comparing Apollonius and Apuleius with Christ is laughable; Christian teaching is called an enemy of the state because it exposed the demons behind pagan gods and magic.
Letter 140.55Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The devil and his angels, cold with pride and envy, are figured by the north wind; the Spirit of grace is the warm south wind that melts sins and makes love flow.
Letter 194.46Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The exorcism of infants shows the devil rules them through sin; and since the Pelagians admit infants believe through sponsors, unbaptized infants as unbelievers are condemned, which presupposes original sin.
Letter 217.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains that the power of darkness is the devil, to whom humanity fell subject in Adam, and from which baptized infants are rescued, the freedom of their will appearing when they reach the age of reason.
Homilies on Matthew 6.6John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ wept but never laughed; we will give account for every sin, so dissipation is folly; frivolity comes from the devil, who built the theaters; spectators who applaud blasphemous and lewd mimes are more guilty than the actors and dishonor marriage.
Homilies on Matthew 13.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ is led by the Spirit into the wilderness after his baptism to teach the baptized that temptation follows grace, that it should not be sought, and that fasting is the weapon against the devil.
Homilies on Matthew 13.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ fasts forty days, no more, to avoid making the incarnation incredible, and answers the devil’s first temptation, which played on his hunger and flattered him as Son of God, with Scripture.
Homilies on Matthew 13.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ refuses the second temptation, exposing the devil’s misuse of the psalm, and dismisses him at the third when he claims the kingdoms of the world as his own.
Homilies on Matthew 28.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ calms the sea as Master, not as servant like Moses; the demons, tormented by his presence, proclaim his Godhead, and Chrysostom refutes the belief that the souls of the dead become demons.
Homilies on Matthew 32.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ heals the two blind men privately after drawing from them a confession of his power and lordship, and charges them to silence; he then frees a mute demoniac, and the crowds declare that nothing like it was ever seen in Israel.
Homilies on Matthew 41.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ refutes the charge that he casts out demons by Beelzebul with four answers (the divided kingdom, the exorcisms of their own sons, the binding of the strong man, and “he who is not with me is against me”), then explains why blasphemy against the Spirit is unpardonable; Chrysostom urges his hearers to judge and condemn their own sins now.
Homilies on Matthew 46.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The parable of the tares concerns heretics, whom the devil sows beside the truth while the guardians sleep; the master forbids the servants to pull them up, for heretics must not be killed.
Homilies on Matthew 57.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Fasting joined to prayer drives out demons, gives wings to the soul, and frees from avarice; luxury and drunkenness, the devil’s favorite tools, turn men into worse than swine, yet the fault is in the drunkard, not in God’s gift of wine.
Homilies on Matthew 86.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Passions once admitted are hard to expel, and the devil leads men from small sins to great ones—as with Saul, Cain and Judas—then to despair, and also deceives under a guise of piety, as when wives refuse their husbands for the sake of continence, or men abhor foods or grieve immoderately; Scripture arms us against each of these ways.
On Fleeing the World 39Ambrose · ca. 387-391 · Malice, signified by Cain’s mark, survives on earth; God postponed the devil’s punishment so that those he deceived might defeat him.
On Fleeing the World 40Ambrose · ca. 387-391 · The deceived are to become wise as serpents; Satan fell like lightning, losing his light, while we regain ours.
On the Mysteries 2Ambrose · ca. 387–391 · In the baptistery the candidates renounced the devil and the world before the clergy, whose office, not their persons, matters, and turned to the east toward Christ.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.1.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Delight was set by God as a spur to virtue and turned by the devil into a spur to error, as Adam's story shows.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.1.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The devil used delight, which God himself took in his works, to bring death.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.7.4Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The Psalms teach patience and arm us against evil spirits, as David's playing drove off Saul's spirit.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.33.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The devil's food and golden cup are answered by Christ's food of salvation.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 36.46.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Christ is the mystical just man who paid our debts; the devil the sinner who borrows.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 36.46.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The devil borrowed power over the world, but only to test God's servants.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 36.46.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The devil may give worldly things, but has no right to what is Christ's.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 36.77.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The ungodly exalt themselves like the devil, but are nothing.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 36.77.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The ungodly stand on the devil's mountain, which faith can cast into the sea.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 37.21.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Even where the devil wounds, the arrows are called the Lord's, as Job shows.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 37.21.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The devil was allowed to strike Job's goods and children.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 37.21.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Job calls the devil's blows the Lord's hand and arrows.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 37.21.4Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The arrows are the Lord's because he permits the devil to test us.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 37.23.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The devil offered the world for worship; a Christian should give more to rise with Christ.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 37.25.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · God makes the devil, who tempts us, guard our soul.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 37.25.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Christ turned the tables: the devil must serve and guard what he hates.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 37.33.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Symmachus reads "loins": the devil mocks through lust.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 37.33.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The devil works through the loins to bring adultery and sexual immorality.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 38.7.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The devil is always present, lying in wait; he who sees him can avoid sin.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 38.7.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Shimei was driven by the devil; David fought the devil rather than punish Shimei.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 38.7.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The devil is beaten by God's word; Christ, Moses and Susanna were silent yet heard.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 38.30.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The fool is the devil, author of sin.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 39.17.5Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The devil, who gained Judas, lost more when the thief was carried into paradise.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 39.19.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The redeemed will be where Christ is, safe from Satan, who is cast down and bound.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 40.11.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The enemy is the devil; the Greek reading “into the souls of his enemies” points to their plotting minds.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 40.13.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · In the contest of the passion Christ hid his divinity, and the devil, thinking him a mere man, struck at his side as he had at Adam’s rib.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 40.13.4Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · From his wounded side Christ brought forth life and, by his own power, rose while the adversary fell.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 43.85.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The great whale made captive is the devil, whom Christ conquered, leading captivity captive.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 45.4.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · God’s word, sent to heal, must fill the hidden places of the heart so that the devil cannot enter.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 45.4.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · When the devil enters, Christ withdraws, as with Judas; Psalm 9 shows the adversary driven from the heart’s hidden places.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 45.9.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The mountain cast into the sea is the devil, who entered Judas’s heart and tossed it with passions.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 45.9.4Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The mountain moved by faith is the demon; perfect faith, like mustard seed, must be joined to love.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 45.10.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Troubled waters are evil powers, like the legion of demons in the swine; the good waters fear God and are calm.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 45.11.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The roaring waters are the unclean spirits, troubled at Christ’s coming and passion.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 45.11.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The devil seeks noise, Christ silence, as the prophets show of the silent Lamb who wins the victory.
On Free Choice of the Will 3.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Sins arise from one's own thought or from another's persuasion; man, persuaded by the devil, was justly subjected to him, until the Word became flesh and, killed though sinless and born without lust, justly freed those who believe in him.
On Free Choice of the Will 3.25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · The will is moved only by what it perceives, from higher things (God's command) or lower (the serpent's suggestion); the devil fell through pride, envied man into the same pride, and Christ gave an example of humility; one day in the light of truth is worth more than all the years of this life.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 2.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · The serpent is the devil, who approaches not bodily but through suggestions; every sin follows the same pattern as the first, suggestion (serpent), delight (woman), and the consent of reason (man).
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 2.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Adam and Eve shift the blame, Adam even onto God; the serpent, who cannot confess, is sentenced to a present punishment, power over those who despise God's commands, and crawling on breast and belly signifies pride and carnal desire.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 2.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · The serpent's eating earth signifies his hold on earthly sinners or the temptation of curiosity; enmity is set with the woman because the devil tempts only through the soul's lower part, and the two seeds are evil suggestion and good work.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 2.28Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Augustine answers the Manichaean objections: why God made man and woman knowing they would sin, who made the devil, and whether the devil is good because God uses him.
On True Religion 13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · Augustine explains that the devil is evil not by nature but by his own will, having fallen through pride by loving himself more than God.
Homily 5Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 390–394 · Expounding Song 2:8–17, Gregory reads the bridegroom's leaping over the mountains as the Incarnation overthrowing the demons, the wall and windows as the law and prophets giving way to the Gospel, spring as the end of idolatry's winter, and the repeated 'Arise, come' as the soul's endless ascent into the infinite good.
Homily 10Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 390–394 · On Song 4:16–5:2 Gregory reads the bride's banishing of the north wind and summoning of the south wind as the soul's authority over evil and its welcome to the Spirit, the bridegroom's feast as the eucharistic mysteries and a sober drunkenness of ecstasy, and the bride's sleep with a waking heart as the senses stilled while the mind contemplates God.
Life of Hilarion 6Jerome · ca. 390–392 · Demonic noises and a phantom chariot assail Hilarion, but vanish when he calls on Jesus.
Life of Hilarion 7Jerome · ca. 390–392 · Hilarion endured many visions sent by demons: naked women, feasts, beasts and gladiators.
Life of Hilarion 17Jerome · ca. 390–392 · Hilarion tames and delivers the violent possessed giant Marsitas.
Life of Hilarion 18Jerome · ca. 390–392 · Hilarion delivers Orion of Aila from a legion of demons and refuses his gifts.
Life of Hilarion 21Jerome · ca. 390–392 · A young man uses magic to make a consecrated virgin mad with love; Hilarion casts out the demon and rebukes her for giving it an opening.
Life of Hilarion 22Jerome · ca. 390–392 · A Frankish officer of the emperor's guard, possessed since infancy, travels to Gaza and is delivered by Hilarion, who refuses his gold.
Life of Hilarion 23Jerome · ca. 390–392 · Hilarion calms a raging camel and teaches that the devil attacks animals out of hatred for men.
Life of Hilarion 35Jerome · ca. 390–392 · On the voyage to Sicily Hilarion delivers the captain's possessed son and asks for silence about his name.
Life of Hilarion 42Jerome · ca. 390–392 · In Cyprus the possessed of the whole island cry out Hilarion's arrival, and he heals some two hundred of them within a week.
Life of Hilarion 43Jerome · ca. 390–392 · Hilarion spends his last five years in a remote, demon-haunted spot in Cyprus, where he heals a paralysed steward.
Life of Malchus 6Jerome · ca. 390–392 · Forced by his master to take a fellow captive as wife, Malchus nearly kills himself, but she persuades him to live with her in a chaste marriage.
Sermon 2.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God tempts not to learn but to reveal to a man what is hidden in him; the devil tempts to deceive, but has power only if given room.
Sermon 4.36Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · On the feast of the martyr Vincent, Augustine urges that the devil still persecutes: the sick person who refuses magical remedies and amulets wins a martyr's hidden victory.
Sermon 12.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Against the Manichee Adimantus, who argued from Job that the impure devil saw God, Augustine shows that Paul never said what Adimantus claims, and that "the princes of this world" are the proud or the devil, prince of sinners.
Sermon 12.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The devil cannot attain the vision of God to which faith in Christ leads, but he could hear God's voice, as unbelievers heard the voice from heaven.
Sermon 12.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Whether the angels were good or bad, the devil stood among them without seeing God, and God may have spoken to him through an angel, as a judge speaks through a herald.
Sermon 32.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The devil cannot force anyone; he enters only through the two doors of desire and fear, which we can close.
Sermon 46.28Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The partridge of Jeremiah, which gathers chicks it did not hatch, is the devil, who gathers into any error whatever, idolatry, Judaism, or heresy; once wise in cunning, he is a fool at the end when the baptized renounce him.
Sermon 67.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Our real enemies are the devil and his angels, rulers of the unbelieving world, and they are conquered invisibly by faith.
Sermon 71.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ’s disciples, who learned no evil arts from him, will judge the Pharisees, for Christ casts out demons by the Spirit of God.
Sermon 91.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The devil slanders even the good to make the weak despair of virtue, but in Job’s case his charge failed, for Job proved that he loved God freely.
Sermon 109.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The adversary with whom we must settle on the way cannot be the devil, from whom we have been redeemed, since Matthew’s parallel says we must agree with him.
Sermon 130.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ is the bread from heaven and the Merchant who took our birth, toil, and death and gave rebirth, resurrection, and eternal reign; his cross was the mousetrap and his blood the bait by which the devil lost his captives.
Sermon 134.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The devil found nothing of his own in Christ’s flesh and was caught in the trap of killing the innocent; Christ, the Truth, frees his disciples from the devil and from sin.
Sermon 143.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The world cannot blame the devil for its unbelief: cast out and judged, he attacks only from outside, and martyrs of every age and sex have overcome him by faith in Christ.
Sermon 144.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Believers share Christ’s righteousness in going to the Father, now by faith and hope and fully at the resurrection; as Christ and his members are one, so the devil and the ungodly are one body under judgment.
Sermon 163.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Paul, fearing pride, received the angel of Satan as a remedy, like theriac made from the serpent; God was present even in refusing his prayer, as a physician is present when he cuts.
Sermon 170.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · “The world” means those who love the world, whose prince is the devil; in Christ alone the devil found nothing, while David, though lawfully born, confesses that he was conceived in iniquity, the inheritance of all born of man and woman.
Sermon 210.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · In this present night, exiled from Christ and beset by the devil, the roaring lion, believers must mourn, fast, and pray.
Sermon 216.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ paid our debt; the candidates, longing for the land of the living, must put to death sexual immorality and greed and, with the exorcisms of the Church, fight and renounce the devil.
Sermon 222.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The “rulers of the world of this darkness” against whom we wrestle are the devil and his angels, ruling unbelievers from the lower air; believers, freed from them, must keep watch.
Sermon 234.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Faith in the resurrection distinguishes Christians from pagans and Jews; faith working through love, not fear, distinguishes them from demons, who also confessed Christ.
Sermon 263.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ’s glorification was completed by resurrection and ascension; he came hidden to be judged and will come manifest to judge; the devil, the roaring lion, was caught by Christ’s death as in a mousetrap by the Lion of Judah who was slain as a lamb.
Sermon 275.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · In Vincent the Spirit spoke while the flesh suffered; martyrs are made by their cause, not their pain, since the devil’s own false martyrs also endure; Christ, who cast out the devil, possessed Vincent and fought for him.
Sermon 281.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The devil tried Perpetua through her father rather than her husband; she honored her father yet refused him, grieved at his beating, and her grief only increased her glory.
Sermon 309.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Cyprian truly ‘took counsel for himself’ by living each day as his last before God the judge; when the proconsul urged him to sacrifice and ‘take counsel for yourself’, Cyprian recognized the devil speaking through him and refused.
The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 2.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine explains that no one can serve God and mammon, identifies mammon’s master with the devil, and warns against despising God through presumption on his mercy.
Against Jovinianus 2.4Jerome · 393 · Jerome gives Old Testament examples of holy men who sinned after God's favor, and describes the devil's power from Job, to show that the baptized must still guard against temptation.
Historia monachorum, chapter 2Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · Abba Hor, father of many monasteries, who learned to read by grace, received a promise from an angel, and resisted a demon posing as Christ the King.
Historia monachorum, chapter 11Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · Copres tells of Helenus, who carried fire unharmed, resisted craving, rode a wild ass and a crocodile, read hearts, and protected a disciple from demons; Copres then shows his garden planted in the desert.
Historia monachorum, chapter 13Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · Pithyrion, disciple of Antony and of Ammon, who taught that to cast out a vice’s demon one must first conquer that vice in oneself.
Historia monachorum, chapter 15Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · Apelles the smith, who drove off the devil with red-hot iron, tells of the hermit John, who prayed standing for three years, unmasked Satan disguised as a priest, healed, and discerned the state of distant monks.
Historia monachorum, chapter 29Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · Macarius of Alexandria: a paradise in the desert refused as a demonic snare, the bunch of grapes passed round Scetis, his vision of demons distracting monks at prayer and at communion, and a tribune converted by a word.
On the Christian Struggle 1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · The Christian's crown is won by conquering the devil, whom Christ conquered by taking our nature, and who is cast out of the hearts of those who renounce love of the world.
On the Christian Struggle 2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · The invisible devil is conquered within us when we conquer the desires through which he rules; the sinner who is 'earth' becomes the serpent's food.
On the Christian Struggle 3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · The 'heavenly places' where the spiritual forces of wickedness are found means the air, not the highest heaven, from which the devil fell.
On the Christian Struggle 5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · The devil is 'prince of the power of the air', though 'in the heavenly places' may also refer to believers whose way of life is in heaven.
On Christian Doctrine 2.23Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · Divination sometimes succeeds through demons' deceptions, which God permits as judgment; all such arts are partnerships with demons to be shunned.
On Christian Doctrine 2.24Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · Superstitious signs have force only by convention, like the different meanings of letters and words in Greek and Latin, through a covenant with demons.
On Christian Doctrine 3.37Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · Tyconius's seventh rule concerns the devil and his body; all the rules but one concern figurative expression, and students of Scripture must above all pray for understanding.
Life of Saint Martin 6Sulpicius Severus · ca. 396–397 · Martin repels the devil with a psalm, converts his mother, resists the Arians in Illyricum and Milan, and survives poisoning on Gallinaria.
Life of Saint Martin 17Sulpicius Severus · ca. 396–397 · Martin casts out two demons at Trier, one from the slave of the pagan Taetradius, who then becomes a Christian.
Life of Saint Martin 21Sulpicius Severus · ca. 396–397 · Martin sees angels and the devil in every disguise; the devil boasts of killing a man, and Martin sends the brothers to find him.
Life of Saint Martin 22Sulpicius Severus · ca. 396–397 · Martin resists the devil's disguises and, rebuking his claim that the fallen cannot be pardoned, says he would promise even the devil mercy if he repented.
Life of Saint Martin 23Sulpicius Severus · ca. 396–397 · The false prophet Anatolius shows a shining robe supposedly given from heaven, but it vanishes as he is being dragged before Martin.
Life of Saint Martin 24Sulpicius Severus · ca. 396–397 · After noting false prophets and messiahs as signs of the Antichrist, Sulpicius tells how the devil appeared to Martin as a royal Christ and was unmasked.
Confessions 10.59Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · The third temptation, the desire to be loved and feared by men, is a snare of the devil; praise must be referred to God.
Confessions 10.67Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Those who sought purification through angels and magic found only the devil, a false mediator who shares men's sin.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 21.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that “God tempered the body” must mean the true Creator, and allows that “the god of this world” may mean the devil only because of its qualifying phrase.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.72Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that only the true God knows what to command or permit, as Christ allowed the demons to destroy the swine, so the spoiling of the Egyptians was just.
Tractates 6Gaudentius of Brescia · ca. 397-410 · Gaudentius summarizes the Easter-week sermons and expounds the striking of Egypt's firstborn: at Christ's death and descent to the underworld he struck the demons and their idols, while the destroyer, the devil, is kept from those marked with the sign of Christ's blood.
Tractates 12Gaudentius of Brescia · ca. 397-410 · On John 12:31 ('Now is the judgment of this world'): the 'judgment' is the world's judging of Christ in his passion, by which the devil, prince of the world by usurpation, is cast out, and Christ draws all things to himself from the cross.
Letters 1.14Sulpicius Severus · ca. 397–406 · Martin himself admitted to Sulpicius that the devil had tricked him into seeking escape before prayer.
Letters 3.7Sulpicius Severus · ca. 397–406 · Seeing cormorants catching fish, Martin compares them to demons.
Letters 3.16Sulpicius Severus · ca. 397–406 · Martin rebukes the devil standing by him.
Against Secundinus the Manichaean 10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Augustine explains the spiritual struggle of Eph 6:12 without Manichaean dualism: the evil powers are fallen creatures, God permits them power to test the faithful, and the body will be changed in the resurrection, not absorbed into a Manichaean “globe”.
Against Secundinus the Manichaean 17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Augustine distinguishes the first sin, loving a creature above the Creator, from the second, persuading others to it, and explains the devil's fall as pride, a falling away of a good substance rather than an evil nature.
Against Secundinus the Manichaean 24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Augustine answers Secundinus's question about his conversion: the very fact that his soul changed proves it is not God's nature, and the devil is a fallen creature, not an evil principle.
On the Nature of the Good 32Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Even the power of the harmful is from God and serves to test the good and punish the wicked, as with Job, Peter, Paul, and Judas; the devil is punished for his own evil will.
On the Nature of the Good 33Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · The evil angels became evil by sinning; they are kept for the last judgment and meanwhile are confined in the lower, murky air, which Scripture also calls heaven.
On the Trinity 3.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine explains that magicians' wonders are done through fallen angels who have power only as God permits, to deceive the deceitful, to warn the faithful, or to test the righteous, as with Pharaoh's magicians and Job.
On the Trinity 4.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine contrasts the devil, the mediator of death, who leads the proud to ruin through pride, false philosophy and magical rites, with Christ, the humble Mediator of life.
On the Trinity 4.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine says that demons can easily work wonders through aerial bodies, as acrobats astonish theater crowds, but a faithful soul neither envies nor esteems them, since the saints have done far greater things by God's power.
On the Trinity 4.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine argues that souls are not cleansed by magical rites, since the devil, the false mediator, blocks the way; as the Magi returned by another way, so we return by Christ's humility. The devil brought our double death by his single death of the spirit, while Christ met us in bodily death by righteousness, making his death a sacrifice for sin.
On the Trinity 4.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine explains that Christ died not by necessity but by his own will, and that the devil, who brought death to man, was justly defeated when he killed the innocent Christ, so that by Christ's just blood unjustly shed the bond of death was cancelled and sinners redeemed; the proud who despise Christ's death will share the devil's eternal punishment.
On the Trinity 13.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Through the sin of the first man God justly permitted the human race to fall under the devil's power, yet without letting it go from his own power and goodness.
On the Trinity 13.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · God chose to overcome the devil by justice rather than power, setting the order that justice comes first and power follows at the judgment.
On the Trinity 13.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · The devil was conquered by Christ's justice, since he killed one who owed nothing, and then by his power in the resurrection; for this Christ had to be both man and God.
On the Trinity 13.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · The devil was conquered at the very moment he seemed to win, when Christ's sinless blood was shed as the price of our redemption.
The Harmony of the Gospels 2.56Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · Matthew's two demoniacs and the others' one are reconciled by supposing one was more famous; the other differences in the story are not contradictions.
The Harmony of the Gospels 2.84Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · Luke tells of the same demoniac as Matthew, later and mentioning only that he was mute.
The Harmony of the Gospels 3.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · Satan's entering Judas after the morsel means a fuller possession than his earlier prompting, as the apostles received the Spirit more fully at Pentecost.
The Harmony of the Gospels 4.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · Mark's 'tearing' or 'convulsing' the man and Luke's 'without harming him' agree: the demon threw him down but left him unharmed.
Commentary on Daniel 10, scholion 19Polychronius of Apamea · ca. 400-430 · Polychronius argues that the prince of Persia is not a demon but the angel set over Persia, who argued that the sinful Jews did not deserve release.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 20–21Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Two questions: why Christ called the apostles fishers of men (men must die to their old life); and whether monks troubled by involuntary sexual dreams must abstain from communion (no: dreams are not in our power; only delight in them is culpable, and grief and tears suffice).
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 40Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · When a demon is driven out by invisible power, it leaves no trace, because that power makes it afraid to approach the healed person again.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 41–42Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · The demoniac's strength to break chains was the demon's own, not given to his body; and pagan claims that the gods punished disobedience to oracles are refuted by paganism's defeat, against which it could use only human force.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 52Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Saul killed the mediums not from piety but to protect his throne from David; the apparition at Endor was a demon in Samuel's form, though God allowed the prophecy to be true, as he sent a lying spirit to Ahab.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 80–81Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Elisha's curse on the jeering youths was a deserved severity that taught their parents, who mocked Elijah's ascension, not to dishonor the prophets; and demons still deceive through mediums among unbelievers, since not all things are yet subjected to Christ.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 82–88Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Seven questions: demons' names (Beelzebul, Belial) were learned from the demons through magic; sacrifices before the law were accepted but not commanded, and Abraham's served as prophecy; Elisha's double portion meant greater power, shown in raising two dead; the saints raised at the crucifixion rose complete and remain immortal; Origen's work explains Hebrew words and measures; Herod heard of Jesus' miracles late; and infants, unable to choose, do not sin, so Scripture's “no one is sinless” does not touch them or Christ.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 2.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine rejects astrological fatalism, citing plants, animals and twins such as Jacob and Esau, and attributes true predictions to deceiving spirits, warning Christians to avoid astrologers.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 3.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine reconciles the philosophers’ view of demons as airy beings with Genesis, and suggests the fallen angels were thrust down into the murky lower air as a prison until the judgment.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine explains that the serpent is called “most wise” in a transferred sense, its cunning coming from the devil who filled it.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · The devil did not choose the serpent; he could act only through the animal God permitted, since all power comes from God.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Against heretics who give the devil a separate evil principle, Augustine holds that his nature is good as God's creature and that he fell by proud and envious will.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · If the devil once lived happily among the angels, why did he not foreknow his fall? Augustine weighs the view that he belonged to a lower order of angels in the world.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine finds no scriptural ground for two classes of good angels and leans to the view that the devil fell from the first moment of his creation.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · The view that the devil was created evil contradicts the goodness of creation and divine justice; it is his own will, not his nature, that is punished.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Job's “beginning of the Lord's fashioning” refers not to an evil nature but to God's providence, which makes the devil's malice serve the saints.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · The devil fell from the beginning not because he was made evil but because, as soon as he was made, he turned from the truth and so never received the happiness offered him.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Isaiah's fall of Lucifer, spoken against the devil under the figure of the king of Babylon, fits mostly his body: apostates from Christ and the church.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Ezekiel's lament over the prince of Tyre, fallen from God's paradise, is applied to the devil's body: heretics and backsliders who fall from the church.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine leaves the time and manner of the devil's fall open but holds firmly that the fallen angels are kept for judgment and that the eternal life of the holy angels, and ours, is certain.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.28Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · The serpent did not understand the words spoken through it, just as the possessed do not understand what demons say through them; snake-charming testifies to the old link between demons and serpents.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.29Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · The serpent is called cunning because of the devil who used it, as a pen is called lying; it spoke as Balaam's ass did, without becoming rational.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.36Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · The curse on the serpent is figurative, describing the devil as tempter of the human race; only the fact that it was spoken must be taken literally.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 12.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine leaves open how the soul comes to see prophetic images, but holds that images shown by a good spirit are God's gift, while a deceiving spirit can be discerned only by the gift of discernment of spirits.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 12.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Bodily and spiritual vision can be deceived, but intellectual vision cannot; mistaking images for bodies, as Peter did, does no harm so long as faith and understanding are not led astray.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 12.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine reports cases known to him: demons revealing thoughts and distant events, a delirious man who foretold a presbyter's coming and a woman's death, and a boy in pain who saw visions of the blessed and the damned.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 12.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Visions, like bodily changes, may arise from the body (sleep, fever, illness) or from a spirit; an evil spirit makes demoniacs and false prophets, a good spirit true prophets.
Letter 25, chapter 6Innocent I, bishop of Rome · 401–417 · Presbyters and other clerics may lay hands on baptized demoniacs only with the bishop’s authorization.
Apology against Rufinus 2.7Jerome · ca. 401–402 · Jerome argues that Rufinus's formula blames the devil for all sin, denying free will, and is compatible with Origen's view of eternal fire as remorse; he should have used Scripture's plain words of the devil's final ruin.
Apology against Rufinus 2.18Jerome · ca. 401–402 · Jerome translates more of Origen's letter to friends at Alexandria than Rufinus did, to show that it attacks the bishops who condemned him and that Rufinus cut its context.
Apology against Rufinus 2.19Jerome · ca. 401–402 · Jerome explains that Origen alleged falsification only about his dialogue with Candidus, and ridicules Rufinus's stories of Hilary's falsified book and Cyprian's On the Trinity, which is Novatian's.
Apology against Jerome 1.32Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 401 · Rufinus concludes that Jerome's second exposition promises lesser rewards even to the devil and his angels, a view harsher than the opinion Jerome condemns in Origen.
Apology against Jerome 1.34Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 401 · Rufinus quotes Jerome's comment on Eph 2:6–7 that the fallen angels and Lucifer will at the end be governed by the will of Christ and his saints, and argues that this implies their final blessedness.
Apology against Jerome 1.42Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 401 · Rufinus quotes Jerome's comment on Eph 4:16, which pictures the restoration of all rational creatures, the fugitive angel included, into one body like a dismembered body reassembled.
Apology against Jerome 1.43Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 401 · Rufinus parodies Jerome by putting into his mouth a speech that excuses every earlier teacher but condemns Origen alone for the doctrines Jerome's own commentary teaches.
Commentary on the Apostles' Creed 15Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 404 · The cross stripped the rebellious powers who ruled mankind of their bond over sinners and gave believers an example of obedience unto death.
Commentary on the Apostles' Creed 16Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 404 · The incarnation was like bait on a hook: the devil seized Christ's flesh in death and was caught by the hidden Godhead.
Dialogues 1.22Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · A former tribune turned hermit, persuaded by the devil to return to save his family, was possessed until he returned to the desert; Postumianus now asks Sulpicius to speak of Martin.
Dialogues 2.9Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · Martin calms a demon-possessed cow, and stops hounds chasing a hare; the fire story is referred to Sulpicius’s letter to Eusebius.
Dialogues 2.13Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · Gallus and Sulpicius heard voices in Martin’s cell; Martin admitted that Agnes, Thecla, and Mary visited him, and Peter and Paul; he named demons as Jupiter and Mercury; an angel told him the decisions of the synod of Nîmes.
Dialogues 3.6Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · Demons in the possessed cried out whenever Martin set out for the church; he exorcised by prayer in sackcloth and ashes, and the demons confessed their names.
Dialogues 3.8Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · Martin drives a demon from Avitianus’s back, after which the count is gentler; at Amboise a storm overthrows a pagan temple after Martin’s night of prayer.
Dialogues 3.15Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · Incited by demons, Martin’s presbyter Brictio insults him after being rebuked for buying horses and slaves; he repents, and Martin refuses ever to depose him: “If Christ endured Judas, why should I not endure Brictio?”
On the Divination of Demons 1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–411 · Augustine explains that the work records a discussion with Christian laymen about whether a demon's prediction of the fall of the Serapeum at Alexandria proves anything.
On the Divination of Demons 7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–411 · Demons have keener perception, greater speed, and longer experience than men because of their airy bodies, but such advantages do not make them better than good men, any more than keen-scented dogs or experienced but wicked old men are.
On the Divination of Demons 8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–411 · The wonders demons perform no more prove their goodness than the feats of acrobats and engineers prove theirs.
On the Divination of Demons 9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–411 · Demons mostly foretell what they themselves intend to do, or what they read from natural signs or from bodily signs of human thoughts.
On the Divination of Demons 10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–411 · Demons repeat true prophecy only when they overhear it; otherwise they are often wrong, because God's angels change what they foresaw, and they also lie deliberately.
On the Divination of Demons 11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–411 · The demon of Serapis foretold the Serapeum's fall only when it was already imminent, after long silence about what the prophets had foretold centuries before.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 7.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Against a pagan festival celebrating a woman's blood that outweighed gold, Augustine sets the blood of the Lamb that redeemed the world; demons imitate Christian redemption and even mix Christ's name into their charms to deceive Christians.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 7.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The devil can do nothing unless God permits, and sufferings are a Father's training for an eternal inheritance; Christians who resort to charms and fortune-tellers give the devil a share in what Christ bought.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 10.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Augustine urges his hearers to bear tribulation in hope and to pray to the God who hears within the heart, not on mountains or toward the stars.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 17.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The Jews rightly understood that Jesus made himself equal to God, which the Arians deny; the Son did not seize equality like the devil, but was begotten equal and emptied himself by taking the form of a servant.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 42.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The Jews could not hear Christ's word because they would not be corrected; he tells them their father is the devil.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 42.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Against the Manichees, who held the devil and our flesh to come from an evil nature, the Jews were the devil's sons by imitation, as Scripture calls Jerusalem a child of the Amorites; the devil himself was an angel who fell by pride.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 42.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The Jews were the devil's sons because they shared his desires: he was a murderer from the beginning by persuading man to evil, and he fell from the truth.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 42.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · “He is a liar and its father” has been taken by the Manichees to mean that the devil has a father; Augustine sets out their argument.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 42.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The devil is the father of lies because he begot his lie himself, as God the Father begot the Truth; others who lie are liars but not fathers of the lie.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 52.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The prince of this world is cast out now, from the hearts of those who renounce him by faith.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 52.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The devil was cast out of a few hearts before Christ, but now of many peoples, just as the Spirit was given before but now in Pentecostal abundance.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 52.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The devil still attacks believers from without but cannot reign within, and God heals and guards them through Christ and prayer.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 55.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The devil's suggestion entered Judas's heart spiritually; Judas came to the supper as a traitor, unaware that Christ knew him and was using him.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 62.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Augustine explains that Satan entered Judas after the bread because a good thing received badly does harm, as Paul shows of the Lord's body taken unworthily.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 62.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Satan had entered Judas before the supper to deceive him; after the bread he entered to possess him fully.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 79.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The devil is ruler not of creation but of sinners, the lovers of the world; he had nothing in Christ, who died without debt at the Father's command to redeem us.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 95.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The devil, ruler of the unbelieving world, has been judged; the world that imitates him is convicted of sharing his judgment, and must believe in Christ to escape it.
Homilies on the First Epistle of John 4.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Our righteousness has begun by faith and confession and will be perfected only at the end; we conquer the devil not by ourselves but with God, as Job did where Adam failed.
Homilies on the First Epistle of John 6.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Some are heard for their salvation though not according to their will, like Paul; others, like the devil with Job and the demons with the pigs, are heard according to their will to their damnation.
On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 1.63Augustine of Hippo · 411–412 · The rite of infant baptism, with its exorcism, renunciation of the devil, and profession of belief in the forgiveness of sins, would be a deception if infants had no sin; some opponents now admit infants are forgiven, but only for sins after birth.
On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 2.51Augustine of Hippo · 411–412 · Christ died without sin to destroy the devil, who has the power of death through sin, and believers' victory over the fear of death belongs to the contest of faith.
City of God 1.31Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine traces the Roman lust for power to avarice and luxury born of prosperity, and recalls Nasica's success in stopping the building of a theater in Rome.
City of God 2.10Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine explains that demons welcome both true and false tales of divine vice because such tales lend heavenly authority to human wickedness.
City of God 2.24Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine recounts the omens and prophecies that promised Sulla victory, and notes that the gods foretold his success but never warned him against his crimes.
City of God 2.25Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine describes a vision of gods fighting on a Campanian plain before the civil wars, arguing that demons staged such sights to give divine sanction to civil war.
City of God 2.26Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that any secret moral teaching in pagan mysteries was a demonic disguise, while the public festivals, like those of Caelestis he watched at Carthage, openly taught vice.
City of God 2.29Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine exhorts the Roman character, noble by nature, to abandon demon worship and seek citizenship in the heavenly city, whose empire has no end.
City of God 3.7Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine recounts how the Marian general Fimbria destroyed Ilium for its loyalty to Sulla, showing that the gods neither protected their kin city nor had truly departed.
City of God 3.10Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that Rome would have been better off small and peaceful, like Numa's Rome, than enlarged by endless wars, and that peace depended on God's higher power, not the demons.
City of God 4.1Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine summarizes the purpose of Book 1: to answer those who blame Christianity for present evils and to expose the gods as demons who delight in their own crimes.
City of God 4.19Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine mocks the report that the statue of Fortuna Muliebris spoke twice, attributing it to demonic deception.
City of God 4.26Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine recounts how the gods compelled the Roman senate, through the dreams of Titus Latinius, to renew the games in which Jupiter's crimes were acted, showing that they were demons, not givers of felicity.
City of God 5.7Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine ridicules the choosing of lucky days and attributes astrologers' correct predictions to evil spirits rather than any real art.
City of God 7.14Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that Mercury and Mars, as the gods of speech and war, are either absorbed into Jupiter or are mere human activities and no gods at all.
City of God 7.21Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine describes, from Varro, the phallic processions of Liber at the Italian crossroads and at Lavinium as proof of the uncleanness of the civil rites.
City of God 7.22Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine mocks Varro's making two goddesses, Venilia and Salacia, out of the incoming and outgoing wave.
City of God 7.33Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine says that only the Christian religion reveals the pagan gods as demons, from whom Christ's humility sets people free, and that Varro's natural explanations cannot excuse their rites.
City of God 7.35Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine explains that Numa learned the Roman rites by hydromancy from demons, and argues that the burning of his books shows how shameful their real causes were.
City of God 8.14Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine reports the Platonist scheme of gods, demons, and men, and uses Apuleius' On the God of Socrates to argue that demons, not gods, demand obscene rites.
City of God 8.15Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that the demons' finer bodies and airy dwelling do not make them better than men, just as the strength of beasts or the flight of birds does not.
City of God 8.16Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine analyzes Apuleius' definition of demons and concludes that their eternity, reason, and airy bodies, joined to passion, only make them eternally wretched and unworthy of worship.
City of God 8.17Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that demons, being subject to passions from which the true religion frees us, cannot rightly be worshipped, since religion means imitating what one worships.
City of God 8.18Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine mocks the idea that the chaste and innocent must reach the good gods through demons who love the very vices they avoid.
City of God 8.19Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues from Roman law, Virgil, and Apuleius' own defense against a charge of magic that magic is wicked, and that the demons behind it cannot be mediators of prayer.
City of God 8.20Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine mocks the maxim that 'no god mingles with man,' since it implies that the gods mingle with deceiving demons rather than with penitent men.
City of God 8.21Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine traps the Platonists in a fourfold dilemma: whatever the demons report to the gods about Plato and the stage, the good gods are made ignorant, dishonored, or deceived.
City of God 8.22Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine concludes that demons are not mediators but fallen spirits, confined to the air, who deceive people into worshipping them as gods or go-betweens.
City of God 8.24Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine seizes on Hermes' admission that idol-making arose from his ancestors' error and unbelief, and sets his lament beside the psalm's joyful 'new song' of the church built in all the earth.
City of God 9.1Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine recalls that Book 8 showed demons who love vice cannot reconcile good men to the good gods.
City of God 9.2Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine announces that Book 9 will ask whether some demons are good and could lead souls to happiness.
City of God 9.3Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine quotes Apuleius to show that the demons' very minds are storm-tossed by passions, so that they are worse than wise men.
City of God 9.6Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that since the demons' very minds are ruled by passions, they have no free and wise part by which to help men toward the gods.
City of God 9.7Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine shows that Apuleius makes the partisan 'gods' of Homer into demons, since he holds the true gods far from such passions.
City of God 9.8Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine notes that Apuleius' definitions give demons nothing good in common with gods or wise men, but only eternal bodies and minds tossed by passion like foolish men.
City of God 9.9Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that demons, with eternal bodies but vicious souls, are mediators hung upside down, their bodies not a vehicle of honor but a chain of condemnation.
City of God 9.10Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine cites Plotinus, who called the mortality of the human body a mercy of the Father, to show that demons with eternal bodies are more wretched than men.
City of God 9.11Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine rejects the Platonist view that human souls become demons — lares, larvae, or Manes — after death, as an encouragement to wickedness.
City of God 9.13Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that a true middle between happy immortal gods and wretched mortal men must be either mortal and happy or immortal and wretched — and the demons are the latter.
City of God 9.15Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine presents Christ, mortal for a time yet ever happy, as the one true mediator who brings men to happy immortality, against the immortal and wretched demons who separate them from God.
City of God 9.16Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine ridicules the claim that gods avoid men to escape contamination, since the supreme God touches wise minds and the sun's rays touch filth without being defiled.
City of God 9.18Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that the demons' 'way' of bodily heights leads away from God, whereas the true way is spiritual likeness, by which the uncontaminable God cleanses men.
City of God 9.19Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine notes that Scripture and common usage speak of good and bad angels but never of good demons, so he will use the name 'angels' for the good spirits.
City of God 9.20Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine explains that 'demon' derives from knowledge, and that knowledge without love puffs up, making demons proud; against their pride stands the humility of God in Christ.
City of God 9.21Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine explains that Christ made himself known to the demons not as eternal light but by signs of power, enough to terrify them, and that Satan tempted him because he was not sure who he was.
City of God 9.22Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine contrasts the demons' conjectural knowledge of temporal things with the angels' sure knowledge of all things in the Word of God, whom they enjoy in love.
City of God 10.9Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine shows that Porphyry wavered on theurgy, granting it a limited purification of the soul while admitting that it cannot lead to God and involves envious powers.
City of God 10.10Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine ridicules Porphyry's account of gods frightened by an envious theurgist and identifies theurgic visions with Satan's disguise as an angel of light.
City of God 10.11Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine reviews Porphyry's letter to Anebo, whose questions about compelled gods, threats, and magic expose these powers as deceiving demons.
City of God 10.21Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine explains that God permits demons to persecute the church so that the martyrs may be glorified, and that the martyrs conquer the powers of the air by virtue, not by appeasing them.
City of God 10.22Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine teaches that the saints overcome demons by prayer to God, and that purification from sin comes only by grace through Christ the Mediator.
City of God 10.26Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine presses Porphyry, who distinguished angels announcing the Father's will from those serving theurgists, to admit openly that the latter are demons.
City of God 10.27Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine accuses Porphyry of placing human vices in the heavenly gods and sending the unlearned to theurgists, while Christ, whom even Porphyry's oracles called holy and immortal, purifies the whole man.
City of God 11.11Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The angels who fell cannot have shared the holy angels' full happiness, which includes certainty of its eternity.
City of God 11.13Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The holy angels are certain of their eternal happiness; the fallen ones never had that certainty, and the devil fell from the truth rather than being evil by nature, against the Manichees.
City of God 11.14Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · “There is no truth in him” gives the sign, not the cause, of the devil's not standing in the truth, as in a similar psalm expression.
City of God 11.15Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Isaiah and Ezekiel show the devil was once without sin; “from the beginning” means from the beginning of sin, and his nature is God's good creation.
City of God 11.17Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Vice is contrary to nature and proves the goodness of the nature it harms; God uses even the devil's evil will for the good of the saints.
City of God 11.33Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The holy and fallen angels form two contrary societies, fittingly called light and darkness, whether or not Moses meant this in Genesis 1.
City of God 14.3Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The corruptible body burdens the soul, but it is the punishment of sin, not its cause; the devil, who has no flesh, commits “works of the flesh” like pride and envy, so living according to the flesh means living according to oneself.
City of God 18.5Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine reports Varro's explanation that the Argive king Apis, dying in Egypt, became the god Serapis, and explains the Apis bull as a demonic deception.
City of God 18.18Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine explains reports of men turned into animals as demonic illusions acting on the human imagination, permitted by God, and not as real changes of body or soul.
City of God 19.9Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine says that friendship with the holy angels, though free from death and corruption, is obscured in this life by demons who disguise themselves as angels of light, into whose power the pagan philosophers fell.
City of God 19.21Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that by Scipio's definition in Cicero's Republic, a commonwealth requires true justice, and since justice gives each his due and the Romans withheld worship from the true God, Rome was never a true commonwealth.
City of God 19.23Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine examines oracles quoted by Porphyry, in which Apollo condemns Christ while praising the God of the Hebrews and Hecate praises Christ as a pious man while cursing Christians, and argues that the demons' aim is to keep men from becoming Christians and that justice, and so a true people, exists only where the one God alone receives sacrifice.
City of God 20.7Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine rejects a literal, carnal reading of the thousand years of Revelation 20 and explains the binding of the devil as the restraint of his power over the church during the present age.
City of God 20.8Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The binding of the devil restrains his power to tempt during the church's age; at the end he will be loosed for three and a half years, yet the church will endure and even grow.
City of God 21.6Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Some marvels, such as the inextinguishable lamp of Venus, may be human contrivance, magic, or the work of demons; if demons and human art can do such things, God can do far more.
City of God 21.10Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The bodily fire of Gehenna can torment demons, whether they have airy bodies or are incorporeal spirits bound to the fire in a wonderful way, just as souls are bound to bodies.
City of God 21.23Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The church rejected the restoration of the devil because Scripture calls his punishment eternal and “for ever and ever”; the same word “eternal” in Matthew 25:46 must mean the same for punishment as for life.
Commentary on Jeremiah 1.70Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Judah must clear the thorns from its heart and be circumcised inwardly; the church must take refuge in Christ against the heretics, and the lion from the north is the devil.
Commentary on Jeremiah 1.75Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Jeremiah is perplexed that God promised peace yet sends the sword; the burning wind and the swift Babylonian army stand for judgment on Judah and for the devil's attacks on the church.
Commentary on Jeremiah 3.63Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Those who follow their evil hearts will be cast out to serve false gods, the demons who never give rest but drive them from sin to sin.
On Nature and Grace 68Augustine of Hippo · 415 · Augustine agrees with Pelagius that the devil flees those who resist him, but insists that resistance itself requires prayer for God's help, which the Pelagian stress on the will takes away.
On Patience 9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 415 · Job, attacked secretly by the devil through loss of goods and children, bodily torment, his wife, and his friends, kept patience throughout.
On Patience 21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 415 · An evil will needs no demon to prompt it, as the devil's own fall shows; it endures much for created goods whose pleasure it knows.
Apologetic Book 20.1Orosius · ca. 415–416 · The devil roams the earth.
Apologetic Book 20.2Orosius · ca. 415–416 · The devil worked before there was any church.
Apologetic Book 20.5Orosius · ca. 415–416 · Even the devil admits God protected Job.
Apologetic Book 20.6Orosius · ca. 415–416 · God limits the devil's power over Job.
Apologetic Book 20.7Orosius · ca. 415–416 · God shields the weak from the devil.
Apologetic Book 28.12Orosius · ca. 415–416 · Even the demons know the appointed time.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 4.5.8Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Even demonic powers act only by God's permission.
On the Grace of Christ and On Original Sin 2.45Augustine of Hippo · 418 · Baptized parents still beget children guilty of the inherited fault, as olive seeds produce wild olives; the church's exorcism and renunciation in infant baptism show that infants are freed from the devil's power.
On the Grace of Christ and On Original Sin 2.46Augustine of Hippo · 418 · God still creates human beings out of goodness even though they are born under the devil's power because of their inherited fault; the fault dishonors their nature without destroying it, and Christ in weakness overcomes the proud angel.
On Marriage and Concupiscence 1.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–421 · The church's exorcism and renunciation at infant baptism show that infants are under the devil's power through original sin until baptized.
On Marriage and Concupiscence 1.26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–421 · Human nature is from God, but through the fault inflicted by the devil those born through concupiscence are subject to him, the unclean to the unclean.
On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–421 · The fruits of marriage are human beings, not the sins they are born with; the devil is the author of guilt, not of nature.
On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–421 · God is the author of bodies and their union; the devil holds human beings not as human but as sinners.
On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.31Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–421 · God does not make human beings for the devil; like the potter of Rom 9, he makes vessels of mercy and of wrath from the same lump and uses even evil for good.
On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.33Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–421 · In denying that infants are under the devil, Julian accuses the whole church, which exorcises infants at baptism.
On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.49Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–421 · An infant has both a nature from God and a fault from Adam, and so is rightly under the devil until rescued by grace.
The Institutes 2.10John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · During the synaxis total silence is kept; prayers are short and frequent, so that the devil cannot distract the praying mind.
The Institutes 2.13John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The monks do not go back to sleep after the night office, lest the devil defile them in sleep or drowsiness dull them for the day.
The Institutes 5.18John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Paul's boxing against his own body means fasting; having won it, he turned to fight the spiritual powers in the air.
The Institutes 5.31John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Machetes showed that the devil makes monks sleepy during spiritual talk and alert at idle stories.
The Institutes 6.13John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Thoughts of women, even of relatives, must be expelled at once, crushing evil thoughts at their beginning like the serpent's head or Babylon's infants.
The Institutes 12.4John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Lucifer fell by pride, believing his glory came from his own nature and free will rather than God's grace.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 49Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · John's baptism did not regenerate; Christ, needing no rebirth, accepted baptism out of humility and death without sin, so that the devil might justly lose those he held.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 60Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · More important is discerning Satan when he poses as an angel of light, which requires vigilance and dependence on God alone.
The Conferences 1.19John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Thoughts come from three sources, God, the devil, and ourselves, each illustrated from Scripture.
The Conferences 1.21John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The devil deceived Abba John of Lycus into an excessive fast; every proposed action must be weighed against the acts and testimonies of the prophets and apostles.
The Conferences 2.5John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The old monk Hero, after fifty years of rigorous solitude, trusted his own judgment, took a demon for an angel, and died after throwing himself into a well.
The Conferences 2.7John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · A monk deceived by a demon posing as an angel nearly sacrificed his own son in imitation of Abraham.
The Conferences 2.11John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Abba Serapion told how, as a boy, he secretly stole a biscuit each day until he confessed before his abba, and a burning, sulphurous flame left him; secret thoughts lose their power when confessed to the elders.
The Conferences 4.13John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The resistance of the body delays our evil intentions and often allows repentance; demons, having no flesh, act at once on their malice and so are worse than men.
The Conferences 5.16John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The seven nations of Canaan figure the vices, which are more numerous and stronger than the virtues; all the lesser sins spring from the eight principal vices and die with them.
The Conferences 5.25John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The unclean spirit that returns with seven worse spirits, and Proverbs' enemy with seven wickednesses, signify gluttony and the seven vices that follow if the monk relaxes after overcoming it.
The Conferences 7.8John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Demons can suggest but not compel; we are free to consent or refuse, and God's help is stronger than their numbers.
The Conferences 7.12John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · In possession the spirit does not enter the soul's substance but oppresses the bodily organs of thought, as drink or fever can; God forbade the devil to do this to Job.
The Conferences 7.15John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Demons cannot see thoughts directly but infer them from outward signs, gestures, and expressions, as shrewd people also do.
The Conferences 7.16John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Like burglars who sprinkle sand in the dark and listen for the ring of treasure, demons cast suggestions and watch our reactions to learn what is in our hearts.
The Conferences 7.17John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Different demons specialize in different vices and attack in turn as opportunity allows.
The Conferences 7.21John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Demons too labor and suffer shame in defeat; the psalms that curse enemies must be read as prayers against these spiritual foes, not against human beings, whom the saints loved.
The Conferences 7.23John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The demons are less violent than in the early days of the desert, either because of the power of the cross or because monks' negligence makes fierce attacks unnecessary; some monks must be coaxed just to stay in their cells.
The Conferences 7.24John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Demons can possess a body only after first taking over the mind, once it has been stripped of the fear and memory of God.
The Conferences 7.28John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The possessed must not be despised, since nothing happens without God's permission, and he hands some over to Satan to purify them for salvation.
The Conferences 7.30John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The possessed should be prayed for as fellow members; the Egyptian elders never barred them from communion but would give it daily, since the sacrament drives out the demon.
The Conferences 7.32John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Demons have as many pursuits as men: tricksters, night visitors, violent killers, spirits of vanity, inspirers of heresy such as that of Arius and Eunomius, and others signified by the beasts named in Scripture.
The Conferences 8.8John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Ezekiel's prince of Tyre and Isaiah's Lucifer describe the fall of angelic princes, who drew a third of the stars with them; the fallen powers either keep their former ranks or have formed rival ranks according to their wickedness.
The Conferences 8.10John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The devil had already fallen through pride before tempting Adam and Eve, since Genesis already calls him the serpent; envy of man's calling to the glory he had lost caused his second fall, after which God set enmity between him and humanity.
The Conferences 8.13John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Hostile powers are set over nations and fight one another, as the prince of Persia and the prince of Greece in Daniel oppose Gabriel and Michael.
The Conferences 8.14John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The fallen powers are called principalities because they rule over nations or lesser demons; Christ will abolish their rule at the end.
The Conferences 8.16John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · A monk spending the night in a cave saw a council of demons reporting to their prince; one boasted of having led a well-known monk to sin with a consecrated virgin and marry her, which the monk found at Pelusium to be true.
The Conferences 8.19John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The philosophers became Christians; Antony had felt the attack only as bitter thoughts, confirming that demons cannot seize a soul not first emptied of holy thoughts. Demons obey either the holiness of the faithful or the sacrifices and spells of magicians.
The Conferences 8.25John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The devil's “father” is not another spirit, since God alone is the Father of spirits; the devil became a liar and the father of lies by his pride. Serenus closes with a prayer for the fear and love of God, and the visitors leave eager for more.
The Conferences 9.6John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · An elder sees a demon driving a brother on in useless building work; freedom from worldly ambition is shown by refusing even small, respectable-seeming things, and the mind so purified turns everything into pure prayer.
The Conferences 14.7John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Nesteros warns against imitating extraordinary examples, telling of a married peasant who drove out a demon Abba John could not, and who had kept his wife as a virgin for twelve years; John admired but forbade imitation.
The Conferences 15.10John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Paphnutius, burned while cooking, learns from an angel that fire will not spare him while carnal desire remains, and concludes that conquering inner lust is greater than conquering demons; Nesteros then sends them on to Abba Joseph.
The Conferences 24.17John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The devil attacks each soul at its weakest part, as Balaam did Israel through lust and the Syrians deceived Ahab through vain mercy; he tempted Christ in all three parts but found nothing to seize.
The Conferences 24.19John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Being visited is a sign of love for God, not a fault; the devil lures monks away with dreams of better solitudes and willing converts, only to trap them in worldly cares.
Instructions 1.47Eucherius of Lyon · ca. 428-434 · The dragon is the devil, created good by God before his voluntary fall, and mocked by children in Isaiah.
Commonitory 26Vincent of Lérins · 434 · The devil quoted Scripture to tempt Christ, and heretics do the same, promising a special grace to their followers.
Chapter 1Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 437-450 · After the night vigil the preacher explains to those about to be baptized that renouncing the devil means casting off the works of darkness and believing in God means putting on the armor of light.
Chapter 2Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 437-450 · The devil, a proud angel who fell, envied Adam and stripped him of chastity, temperance, love, and immortality, binding all his descendants with him.
Canon 14Anonymous · 441 · Baptized persons troubled by demons who submit to the clergy's care may receive communion.
Part 1, chapter 22Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · Job, of Esau’s Idumean line, overcame the devil and his wife’s temptation by patience and received double; so Christ promises a hundredfold, as shown in the emperor Valentinian I.
Part 2, chapter 25Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · David, anointed shepherd, harpist who calmed Saul, slayer of Goliath with a stone, persecuted fugitive who spared Saul, and feigned madman carried in his own hands, figures Christ the good shepherd, the cross, the victory over the devil, the persecuted martyrs, and the Eucharist.
Part 2, chapter 39Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · Tobit’s healing and Sarah’s deliverance from Asmodeus by the fish’s liver figure Christ, the ICHTHYS, who by his passion drives out demons and gives light, as with Mary Magdalene, Peter, and Paul.
Part 4, chapter 1Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · Ezekiel’s lament over the king of Tyre and Isaiah’s fallen Lucifer describe the angel created good who fell by pride, as Christ says of the devil who did not stand in the truth.
Part 4, chapter 2Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · Isaiah and Ezekiel describe the devil’s pride, and Christ and Peter his casting down; men are spared because they were seduced, while the devil seduced himself.
Part 4, chapter 3Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · The prophets, Christ, Peter, and the Apocalypse describe the devil cast down from heaven to the earth and the underworld, having a short time for his deceits before the end.
Part 4, chapter 4Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · The binding of the dragon for a thousand years in the Apocalypse is explained as the present age of the Church since Christ’s victory, prepared by Daniel’s seventy weeks; afterwards the devil will be loosed for a short time.
Part 4, chapter 6Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · Job, Paul, and Christ foretell the lying signs of the Antichrist; the author adds recent devilish signs he knew: a possessed young nun at Carthage healed at the Eucharist, a false monk with fraudulent cures, and an impostor near Naples expelled while Pope Leo was suppressing the Manichaeans and Pelagians.
Letter 1 (= Leo, Ep. 22), chapter 1Flavian of Constantinople · 448-449 · Flavian laments that the devil has carried off one of his own clergy, whom he could not save, and promises to tell how it happened.