Nevertheless through envy of the devil came death into the world: and they that do hold of his side do find it.
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Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
Christ descended and died and by his death freed us from death. Dying, he destroyed death. And you, brothers, know that death entered the world through the envy of the devil. Scripture says that "God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the death of the living. He created all things that they might exist. But, by the devil"s envy, death entered the world." Human beings would not have died at the hands of the devil, had it been a matter of being compelled by force. The devil did not have the power to force them, only the shrewdness to seduce them. Without your consent the devil would have remained impotent. It was your consent, O man, that led you to death. Born mortal from a mortal, we became mortal from the immortals that we were. By their origin in Adam all human beings are mortal. But Jesus, the Son of God, the Word of God through whom all things were made, the only-begotten Son, equal to the Father, became mortal. "The Word became flesh and dwelled among us." - "Tractates on ...
The devil, seeing that human beings were made in the image of God, fell through malicious envy into jealousy and, compelled by this envy, caused another to be lost, not hurling down another by the instinct of his jealousy before he himself was hurled down by his own jealousy. He was made a prisoner before he imprisoned another. He was lost before he caused another to be lost, when, compelled by envy, he took from human beings the grace of immortality that had been given to them. He himself had in fact first lost what he once was. Beloved brothers, how great is the evil into which the angel fell by which that sublime and splendid nobility was deceived and subverted, by which the deceiver himself was deceived! From then on envy raged throughout the earth, since the one who will perish through the devil"s spite pays homage to the master of perdition, and the one who is jealous imitates the devil, as it is written, "Death entered the world through the envy of the devil." Consequently, "tho...
We must be convinced that the evil of envy is healed with more difficulty than the other vices. In fact, I would dare to say that if someone allows himself to be taken in only once by the plague of that poison, he will be without remedy. Envy is the scourge of which the prophet said figuratively, "See, I will send you poisonous snakes, against which no charm will work, and they will bite you." Rightly, therefore, the bite of envy was compared by the prophet with the fatal poison of the basilisk, from the effect of which the author and initiator of all poisons himself perished and caused others to perish. In fact, even before he poured forth the poison of death on the man, whom he envied, that murderer had already ruined himself. Indeed, "death entered the world through the devil"s envy, and those who belong to him experience it." Just as he who was first corrupted by the plague of that same evil was unable to accept the remedy of penitence and the provision for the cure, so also those ...
