Herein we continue, from part 1, part 2, part 3, part , part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, part 12, considering info on Angels in Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD). The fuller complete result consists of quotations of those sections within the text that refer to Angels, Cherubim, Seraphim, Devil, Satan, demons, serpent and dragon. The point is not to elucidate these references but to provide relevant partial quotations and citations. See my section on Angels here, Cherubim and Seraphim here, Satan here and Demons here.
Angels in Augustine of Hippo’s The City of God, Book XXI.
Chapter 1 “The Son of man shall send forth His Angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things which offend, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth, Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of His Father;” and that, “These shall go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into life eternal.”
Chapter 6 But, above all, they possess the hearts of men, and are chiefly proud of this possession when they transform themselves into Angels of light. Very many things that occur, therefore, are their doing; and these deeds of theirs we ought all the more carefully to shun as we acknowledge them to be very surprising. And yet these very deeds forward my present arguments. For if such marvels are wrought by unclean devils, how much mightier are the holy Angels! And what can not that God do who made the Angels themselves capable of working miracles!…He who has given to the Angels a nature more mighty than that of all that lives on Earth; He whose power surpasses all marvels, and whose wisdom in working, ordaining, and permitting is no less marvellous in its governance of all things than in its creation of all!
Chapter 10 For it is undoubtedly the same fire which is to serve for the punishment of men and of devils, according to the words of Christ: “Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his Angels;” unless, perhaps, as learned men have thought, the devils have a kind of body made of that dense and humid air which we feel strikes us when the wind is blowing.
Chapter 17 In respect of this matter, Origen was even more indulgent; for he believed that even the devil himself and his Angels, after suffering those more severe and prolonged pains which their sins deserved, should be delivered from their torments, and associated with the holy Angels…Let, then, this fountain of mercy be extended, and flow forth even to the lost Angels, and let them also be set free, at least after as many and long ages as seem fit! Why does this stream of mercy flow to all the human race, and dry up as soon as it reaches the Angelic?
Chapter 18 And yet they who hold this opinion do not extend it to the acquittal or liberation of the devil and his Angels.
Chapter 23 For so many holy men, imbued with the spirit of the Old and New Testament, did not grudge to Angels of any rank or character that they should enjoy the blessedness of the heavenly kingdom after being cleansed by suffering, but rather they perceived that they could not invalidate nor evacuate the divine sentence which the Lord predicted that He would pronounce in the judgment, saying, “Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his Angels.” For here it is evident that the devil and his Angels shall burn in everlasting fire…the devil and his Angels shall never return to the justice and life of the saints, than that Scripture, which deceives no man, says that God spared them not, and that they were condemned beforehand by Him, and cast into prisons of darkness in hell, being reserved to the judgment of the last day, when eternal fire shall receive them, in which they shall be tormented world without end…For if all or some of those to whom it shall be said, “Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his Angels,” are not to be always in that fire, then what reason is there for believing that the devil and his Angels shall always be there? Or is perhaps the sentence of God, which is to be pronounced on wicked men and Angels alike, to be true in the case of the Angels, false in that of men?
Chapter 24 Why, then, if in that perfected holiness their prayers be so pure and all-availing, will they not use them in behalf of the Angels for whom eternal fire is prepared, that God may mitigate His sentence and alter it, and extricate them from that fire? Or will there, perhaps, be some one hardy enough to affirm that even the holy Angels will make common cause with holy men (then become the equals of God’s Angels), and will intercede for the guilty, both men and Angels, that mercy may spare them the punishment which truth has pronounced them to deserve? But this has been asserted by no one sound in the faith; nor will be. Otherwise there is no reason why the Church should not even now pray for the devil and his Angels, since God her Master has ordered her to pray for her enemies. The reason, then, which prevents the Church from now praying for the wicked Angels, whom she knows to be her enemies, is the identical reason which shall prevent her, however perfected in holiness, from praying at the last judgment for those men who are to be punished in eternal fire…It is then, I say, the same reason which prevents the Church at any time from praying for the wicked Angels, which prevents her from praying hereafter for those men who are to be punished in eternal fire; and this also is the reason why, though she prays even for the wicked so long as they live, she yet does not even in this world pray for the unbelieving and godless who are dead…
But when the Judge of quick and dead has said, “Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world,” and to those on the other side, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his Angels,” and “These shall go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life,” it were excessively presumptuous to say that the punishment of any of those whom God has said shall go away into eternal punishment shall not be eternal, and so bring either despair or doubt upon the corresponding promise of life eternal. Let no man then so understand the words of the Psalmist, “Shall God forget to be gracious? Shall He shut up in His anger His tender mercies” as if the sentence of God were true of good men, false of bad men, or true of good men and wicked Angels, but false of bad men.
Chapter 25 But let us now reply to those who promise deliverance from eternal fire, not to the devil and his Angels (as neither do they of whom we have been speaking), nor even to all men whatever.
In the next segment, we will consider more on Angels in Augustine of Hippo.
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