BOOK V

CHAPTER I

HOW THE DEVIL'S PRIDE AND ENVY HAVE BEEN THE CAUSE OF IDOLATRY

The devil's pride is so great and so obstinate that he always longs and strives to be accepted and honored as God and to steal and appropriate to himself in every way he can what is owed only to the Most High God. He never ceases to do this in the blind nations of the world, those that the light and splendor of the Holy Gospel has not yet illuminated. In the book of Job we read of this prideful tyrant that "he beholdeth every high thing, he is king over all the children of pride.¹ His evil intentions and reckless treachery, with which he tried to make his throne equal to the throne of God, are clearly told us in the Holy Scriptures, saying in Isaiah: "And thou saidst in thy heart: I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit in the mountain of the covenant, in the sides of the north. I will ascend above the height of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.² And in Ezekiel: "Because thy heart is lifted up and thou hast said: I am God, and I sit in the chair of God in the heart of the sea"³ Satan still feels this wicked desire to become God even though the just and awful punishment of the Most High deprived him of all his pomp and ostentation, by which he had become so haughty, dealing with him as his impudence and folly deserved, as is told at length in the prophets. Yet he has not desisted one jot from his perverse intent, which he demonstrates in all the ways he can, like a mad dog biting the very sword with which he is wounded.⁴ For it is written that the pride of those who hate God persists forever. From this comes the strange and perpetual care that this enemy of God has always exercised to make himself worshiped by men, inventing so many kinds of idolatries with which he held most of the world in subjection for so many ages that God retained scarcely a fragment of his people Israel.⁵
And, employing the same tyranny, after the might of the Gospel defeated and disarmed him, and by the power of the cross entered the chiefest and stoutest strongholds of his realm, he attacked the most remote and savage peoples, attempting to preserve among them the false and lying divinity that the Son of God had wrested from him in his Church, enclosing him like a wild beast in its cage to make him an example and a cause of rejoicing for his servants, as he showed through Job.⁶ And so, once idolatry was rooted out of the best and noblest part of the world, the devil retired to the most remote places and reigned in that other part of the world, which, although it is very inferior in nobility, is not so in size and breadth. The reason why the devil has encouraged idolatry so much in all heathen lands, to the point that scarcely any people can be found who are not idolaters, is due to two chief causes. One is that he is infected with his incredible pride, which anyone who wishes to think about it can discern from the fact that he attacked the Son of God and true God himself, so shamelessly bidding him fall down and adore him; and he said this to him even though he did not know for certain that he was God himself, but at least having a very good idea that he was the Son of God.⁷ Who is not astonished by this strange assault, this excessive and cruel pride? Is it any wonder that he causes himself to be worshiped by ignorant folk, he who assaulted God himself, trying to make himself God, being such a filthy and abominable creature? The other cause and motive for idolatry is the mortal hatred and enmity that he harbors toward men. For, as the Savior says, "He was a murderer from the beginning, and he stood not in the truth; because truth is not in him."⁸ And because he knows that the greatest harm man can do to himself is to worship the creature as God, he never ceases to invent ways of idolatry with which to destroy men and make them God's enemies. And there are two evils that the devil does to idolaters: one is to make them deny God, according to the verse, "He forsook who made him";⁹ the other is to make man subject to something lower than himself, for all creatures are inferior to the rational creature, and the devil, although in nature he is superior to man, in estate is much inferior, because man even in this life is capable of divine and eternal life. And so, with idolatry in every place, God is dishonored and man destroyed, and in both cases the proud and envious devil is well content.

2. Isaiah 14:13-14.
3. Ezekiel 28,2.
4. Psalm 73: 23.
5. Saint Matthew 12: 29.
6. Job 40.
7. Saint Matthew 4, 9.
8. Saint John 8: 44.
9. Deuteronomy 32:15.