Section X: The Difference Between Good and Evil Angels, § 56
SECTION X: ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE GOOD AND THE EVIL ANGELS
From what cause some angels are evil.
§ 56. All the angels were created good, righteous, and holy, but some of them “did not persist in the truth” (John 8:44). “They did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling” (Jude [6]). From this the division of angels into good and evil ones developed. We readily admit that we do not know what the devil’s first sin was. Augustine (on John, tractate 49), Ambrose (Letter 84), Basil (Homil. quod Deus non sit auctor mali), and Damascenus (Orth. fid., bk. 2, ch. 4) all claim that the devil fell through pride. Cyprian (Sermon de zelo), Lactantius, (Instit., bk. 2, ch. 8), Bernard, and others claim that it was through envy. It is better to deplore with serious mourning those immeasurable evil things which have followed the fall of the angels (since the devil misled our first parents with his cunning and in so doing despoiled both them and all their descendants of the uprightness and blessedness with which they had been created) than to investigate his first sin too anxiously.