31.1 emend the text's principem spiritum nequitiae, "the prince spirit of wickedness," to . . .
Book XI 447 which do not suit the head so much as the body and members. And so Lucifer, who was rising early in the morning and fell, can be understood as being the whole tribe of apostates from Christ or from the Church, who are converted to the darkness on letting go of the light they were carrying, in the same sort ofway as those who are converted to God pass from darkness to light, that is, those who were darkness become light.30
25, 32. Again under the figure of the prince of Tyre the following words are generally understood to be directed against the devil through the mouth of the prophet Ezekiel: You are a seal oflikeness and a crown ofbeauty; you were in the delights of the paradise of God. You were adorned with everyprecious stone etc. (Ez 28:12.13); but they can more suitably be taken as directed against his body than against the prince of the spirits*1 of wickedness (Eph 6:12). The Church, you see, is called a paradise, as we read in the Song of Songs: A garden enclosed, a fountain sealed, a well of living water, a paradise with the fruit of apples (Song 4:12.15.13). From that place there fell either all heretics by an open, bodily rupture, or all who returned to their vomit, when they had walked for a while in the way ofjustice32 after the remission of all their sins, whose last condition has become worse than the first, andfor whom it would have been better not to know the way ofjustice, than knowing it to turn their backs on the holy commandment entrusted to them (2 Pt 2:22.20.21).
This most evil generation is described by the Lord when he says that the wicked spirit goes out of a man, and comes back with seven others and enters the house which he has now found tidied up, so that the last state of the man is worse than the first.33 To people of that sort, you see, who have already become the devil's body, the following words can suitably be applied: From the day on which you were created with the cherub, that is, with God's seat, which means "manifold knowledge,"34 and l setyou in the holy mountain of God, that is, in the Church, as in the text: And he heard mefrom his holy mountain (Ps 3:4), you
30. See Eph 5:8. 31.1 emend the text's principem spiritum nequitiae, "the prince spirit of wickedness," to . . . spirituum nequitiae, seeing it as an allusion to Eph 6:12, where Paul talks of our wrestling being against the spiritualia nequitiae, which the old Douai/Rheims bible translates as "the spirits of wickedness." 32. See Sir 4:1 2; Mt 21:32. 33. SeeLk 11:24-26. 34. That the cherub is the same as God's seat is an Old Testament commonplace: see 2 Kgs 1 9: 1 5, Ps 80:1, 1s 37:16. As for God's seat or throne being interpreted as meaning multiplicata scientia, we have this passage from Sermon 53. 14 (Vol H1/3 of this series), probably preached about the same time, or a year or two later than this Book X1 of The Literal Meaning ofGenesis; it is on the two texts. 1s 66: 1 , Heaven is my throne, and 1s 40: 1 2, Who measured the heaven with the palm of his hand: "So—God is seated in heaven, and he is measuring heaven with the palm of his hand. Does the same heaven become wide when he is sitting in it, and narrow when he is measuring it? Or is God himself the same size in his seat as he is in his palm?. . . So then, take