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the evil, it rises into conceptions of victorious and consummated beauty.’

( id. ib. v. p. 232; Pt IX. c. ii. § 13.)

‘The world, the flesh, and the devil.’

[The question raised by Dr Westcott, after quoting Ruskin, in his notes on Eph. 6:12, ‘When does “the world, the flesh and the devil” first appear?’ remains unanswered.

There can indeed be little doubt that the actual co-ordination in English, and in this unqualified form, of the three familiar terms, as well as the introduction into the Baptismal Office of the same threefold classification, though in a different and more ancient order, of ultimate sources of evil, is due to Cranmer.

But on the other hand it is to be noted:—

( a ) That although in the earlier English, as in the Roman, Offices ‘the devil’ or ‘Satan’ with ‘his works’ (operibus eius) and ‘his pomps’ (pompis eius) stood alone as the object of baptismal renunciation,—in the Gallican Office, as also (with slight variants) in Luther's Taufbuchlein and Hermann's Consultation , the ‘pomps of the world ’ (pompis seculi) and ‘its pleasures’ (voluptatibus eius) are co-ordinated with ‘Satan’—a collocation which, there is evidence, had very early authority, both Eastern and Western (cf. Cyprian, ad Rogatianum , Ambros. de Initiatis , c. 2, Macarius, Hom. 49).

( b ) That in several ancient Litanies, Greek and Latin, ‘deceits of the world ’ or ‘desires of the flesh ,’ or the like, had been co-ordinated in deprecation with ‘snares of the devil.’

( c ) That S. Thomas Aquinas had explicitly ( Summa 11 114, 3), discussed the question ‘Utrum omnia peccata procedunt ex tentatione diaboli ?’ and had concluded that not all sins were committed at his instigation, but some ‘ex libertate arbitrii et carnis corruptione’; and had also (1. 65, 1) explained that ‘the devil’ is said by St Paul to be ‘the god of this world ’ (deus huius seculi) because ‘seculariter viventes ei serviunt.’

( d ) That in the Imitatio Christi (11. 12, 9) occurs the sentence: ‘Si ad te ipsum respicis, nihil huiusmodi ex te poteris; sed si in domino confidis, dabitur tibi fortitudo de caelo, et subicientur ditioni tuae mundus et caro ; sed nec inimicum diabolum timebis, si fueris fide armatus et cruce Jesu signatus.’

Rightly to examine and interpret these and other data involves argument which, if presented here, would constitute a material departure from the rule, adopted in the editing of this volume, that beyond statistics and matter of common knowledge no conclusions should be advanced other than such as have the authority of Bishop Westcott himself. J. M. S.]


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