Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. [Psalms 91:11-12] Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence: For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee: And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. [Psalms 91:11-12] And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season.
In various ways has the devil rivaled and resisted the truth. Sometimes Praxeas’s aim has been to destroy the truth by defending it. He maintains that there is only one Lord, the almighty Creator of the world, in order that out of this doctrine of the unity he may fabricate a heresy. He says that the Father himself came down into the Virgin, was himself born of her, himself suffered, indeed was himself Jesus Christ. Here the old serpent has fallen out with himself, since, when he tempted Christ after John’s baptism, he approached him as “the Son of God.” Surely he was intimating that God had a Son, even on the testimony of the very Scriptures, out of which he was at the moment forging his temptation: “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.” Again, “If you are the Son of God, cast yourself down from here; for it is written, he shall give his angels charge concerning you”—referring no doubt, to the Father—“and in their hands they shall bear you up, so that you do not hurt your foot against a stone.” Or perhaps, after all, he was only reproaching the Gospels with a lie, saying in fact, “Away with Matthew. Away with Luke!”
This power the Creator conferred on his Christ first of all, even as the ninetieth psalm [LXX] says of him: “You shall tread on the lion and the cobra; the young lion and the serpent you shall trample under foot.” Isaiah also says, “In that day the Lord God shall draw his sacred, great and strong sword” (even his Christ) “against that dragon, that great and tortuous serpent; and he shall slay him in that day.” But when the same prophet says, “The way shall be called a clean and holy way; over it the unclean thing shall not pass, nor shall there be any unclean way; but the dispersed shall pass over it, and they shall not err therein; no lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon; it shall not be found there,” he points out the way of faith, by which we shall reach God; and then to this way of faith he promises this utter crippling and subjugation of all harmful animals.
His next remark was, “Have not these inferior powers been assigned to them by God different departments, according as each was deemed worthy?” But this is a question that requires a very profound knowledge. For we must determine whether the Word of God, who governs all things, has appointed wicked demons for certain duties, in the same way as in states executioners are appointed, and other officers with cruel but necessary duties to discharge; or whether as among robbers, who infest desert places, it is customary for them to choose out of their number one who may be their leader—so the demons, who are scattered as it were in troops in different parts of the earth, have chosen for themselves a chief under whose command they may plunder and pillage human souls. To explain this fully and to justify the conduct of the Christians in refusing homage to any object except the most high God, and the Firstborn of all creation, who is his Word and God, we must quote this from Scripture: “All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them”; and again, “The thief does not come, except to steal, and to kill and to destroy”; and other similar passages, as, “Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will by any means hurt you”;44 and again, “You shall tread on the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon you shall trample under foot.” But of these things Celsus knew nothing, or he would not have made use of language like this: “Is not everything that happens in the universe, whether it be the work of God, of angels, of other demons or of heroes, regulated by the law of the most high God? Have these not had assigned to them various duties of which they were severally deemed worthy? Is it not just, therefore, that he who serves God should serve those also to whom God has assigned such power?” To which he adds, “It is impossible, they say, for a man to serve many masters.”
Wild animals are a proof of our faith. Have you trusted in the Lord? “You shall walk on the asp and the basilisk; and you shall trample under foot the lion and the dragon.” You have the power through faith to walk on serpents and scorpions. Or, do you not observe that the viper that fastened onto Paul when he was gathering sticks inflicted no harm because the holy man was found to be full of faith? Yet, if you are incredulous, do not fear the wild beast more than your own lack of faith, through which you have made yourself an easy prey to every form of corruption.
What then, my brethren, what is said of our Head? "For Thou, Lord, art my hope," etc. Of this we have spoken, "for He has given His angels charge over You, to keep You in all Your ways" [Psalm 91:11]. You heard these words but now, when the Gospel was being read; attend therefore. Our Lord, after He was baptized, fasted. Why was He baptized? That we might not scorn to be baptized. For when John said to our Lord, "Comest Thou to me to be baptized? I ought to be baptized by You;" and our Lord replied, "Suffer it to be so now, for thus it becomes us to fulfil all righteousness;" [Matthew 3:14-15] He wished to fulfil all humility, so that He should be washed, who had no defilement....Our Lord, then, was baptized, and after baptism He was tempted; He fasted forty days, a number which has, as I have often mentioned, a deep meaning. All things cannot be explained at once, lest needful time be too much taken up. After forty days He was an hungred. He could have fasted without ever feeling hunger; but then how could He be tempted? Or had He not overcome the tempter, how couldest thou learn to struggle with him? He was hungry; and then the tempter said, "If Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread." Was it a great thing for our Lord Jesus Christ to make bread out of stones, when He satisfied so many thousands with five loaves? He made bread out of nothing. For whence came that quantity of food, which could satisfy so many thousands? The sources of that bread are in the Lord's hands. This is nothing wonderful; for He Himself made out of five loaves bread enough for so many thousands, who also every day out of a few seeds raises up on earth immense harvests. These are the miracles of our Lord: but from their constant operation they are disregarded. What then, my brethren, was it impossible for the Lord to create bread out of stones? He made men even out of stones, in the words of John the Baptist himself, "God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham." [Matthew 3:9] Why then did He not so? That he might teach you how to answer the tempter, so that if you were reduced to any straits and the tempter suggested, if you were a Christian and belonged to Christ, would He desert you now?...Listen to our Lord: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." Do you think the word of God bread? If the Word of God, through which all things were made, was not bread, He would not say, "I am the bread which came down from heaven." [John 6:41] You have therefore learned to answer the tempter, when pressed with hunger.
Well, the Donatists are not false Christians. They are quite simply not Christians at all, since they listen to what the devil suggested and do not listen to the answer Christ gave him. How, after all, did the Lord, our teacher and savior, answer the devil’s suggestion of such things? “Get back, Satan, for it is written: You shall not tempt the Lord your God.” The devil, as a matter of fact, had taken his suggestion from Scripture, and the Lord replied from Scripture. The devil had said to the Lord, you see, “Since it is written, He will instruct his angels about you; they will lift you up in their hands, lest you should hurt your foot on a stone.” “Hurl yourself down,” he said, “and if you are the Son of God, the angels are there to catch you; what are you afraid of?” The Lord could indeed both have cast down his body and not allowed it to die; but what the devil was suggesting to Christ at that time is the sort of thing Christ was not teaching future Christians. This, you see, is exactly what the devil is also suggesting to the Donatists, saying, “Hurl yourselves down, the angels are there to catch you. With such a death you do not go to punishment, but you win through to a crown.” They would be Christians if they give an ear to Christ and did not trust the devil, who first separated them from the peace of the church and later on gave them cliff-jumpers.
But what is said to Christ? “And you shall trample down the lion and the serpent.” The lion because of his open danger, the serpent because of his concealed deception. The serpent drove Adam out of paradise; the very same one, as a lion, persecuted the church, as Peter says: “Your adversary the devil goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.” Let the devil not appear to you to have lost his rage; when he flatters, he must be feared the more.
However, we should not be without anxiety, dearly beloved, because we know that [God] is keeping his patience for such a long time. The fact that such great things happen in the world and he still does not avenge them indicates patience, not carelessness. God has not lost his power but is preserving us for repentance. Yet, the longer he awaits your amendment, the harsher will be your punishment if you refuse to amend. God indeed holds the sword, and he wishes to strike sin; we, on the contrary, defend our sins because we love them. Thus, we who should be the accusers of our sins become their defenders. Truly, dearly beloved, God does not want to kill the sinner, but his sin. Like a good doctor he wants to strike the disease, not the person who is ill. But, what is worse, we often despise the doctor and love our sickness: we love our sin and despise God. Sin, indeed, is like this, a dragon, a viper; but concerning the Lord it is written, “You shall walk on the lion and the cobra; and you shall trample under foot the young lion and the serpent.” We, on the other hand, embrace our sins like lions and dragons. But our God, who wants to punish sin and save the sinner, daily exclaims to humanity: Cast off your sin from you, and without you it will die. If you refuse to throw aside your sin, you will perish with it, for sin cannot go unpunished. God wants to kill sin, not to strike the sinner.
[AD 60] Matthew on Psalms 91:11-12