How are you fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how are you cut down to the ground, who did weaken the nations!
All Commentaries on Isaiah 14:12 Go To Isaiah 14
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
It was by a kind of strength that man offended, so as to require to be corrected by weakness: for it was by a certain “pride” that he offended; so as to require to be chastened by humility. All proud persons call themselves strong people. Therefore have many [others] “come from the East and the West” and have attained “to sit down with Abraham, and Isaac and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven.” Therefore, how was it that they so attained? Because they would not be strong. What is meant by “would not be strong”? They were afraid to presume of their own merits. They did not “go about to establish their own righteousness,” that they might “submit themselves to the righteousness of God.” … Behold! you are mortal; and you bear about you a body of flesh that is corrupting away: “And you shall fall like one of the princes. You shall die like human beings” and shall fall like the devil. What good does the remedial discipline of mortality do you? The devil is proud, as not having a mortal body, as being an angel. But as for you, who have received a mortal body, and to whom even this does no good, so as to humble you by so great weakness, you shall “fall like one of the princes.” This then is the first grace of God’s gift, to bring us to the confession of our infirmity, that whatever good we can do, whatever ability we have, we may be that in him; that “he that glories, may glory in the Lord.” “When I am weak,” he says, “then am I strong.”
