Section 24

“Their ruler often appears in the manner in which the Lord revealed the devil to Job: ‘His eyes are like the morning star. Burning torches come from his mouth, and sparks of fire leap out. Smoke like that of a furnace burning with coals comes from his nostrils. His breath kindles coals, and flame comes out of his mouth.’

“When the prince of the demons appears in such a form, the crafty one tries to terrify us, as I said, by making great boasts. The Lord again exposed him in the words spoken to Job: ‘He regards iron as straw and bronze as rotten wood; he regards the sea as a jar of ointment, and the depth of the abyss as a captive, and the abyss as a walkway.’ Through the prophet the enemy also says, ‘I will pursue; I will overtake,’ and elsewhere, ‘I will seize the whole world in my hand like a nest and gather it as one gathers abandoned eggs.’

“These, in short, are the kinds of boasts and claims they make in order to deceive the godly. Yet even then we who believe must not fear his appearance or pay attention to his words. He is a liar and never speaks a word from love of truth.

“For all the great and arrogant things he says, the Savior has certainly drawn him like a dragon with a hook. Like a beast of burden he has had a bridle put through his nostrils; like a runaway slave his nose has been bound with a ring and his lips pierced. The Lord has bound him like a sparrow so that we may mock him. His fellow demons have been placed with him like serpents and scorpions beneath the feet of Christians.

“The proof is that we now live in opposition to him. The one who threatened to dry up the sea and seize the world is unable even to stop our ascetic practice—or to stop me from speaking against him now.

“So let us pay no attention to his words, because he is a liar. Let us not fear his apparitions either, because they too are deceptive. What appears in them is not true light. Rather, these appearances are anticipations and images of the fire prepared for the demons. They try to frighten people with the flames in which they themselves will be burned.

“They do appear, certainly, but in a moment they vanish again. They harm none of the faithful and carry with them only an image of the fire that is destined to receive them. It is therefore unfitting for us to fear them because of such things. Through the grace of Christ all their schemes are powerless.