Heretics Quote Scripture as the Devil Did

But someone will say: What proof do we have that the devil is in the habit of appealing to Holy Scripture? Let him read the Gospels, where it is written, “Then the devil took him” (the Lord, the Savior) “and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, He will give his angels charge concerning you, to keep you in all your ways. In their hands they will bear you up, so that you do not strike your foot against a stone.’” What sort of treatment, then, must men, insignificant wretches that they are, expect at the hands of one who assailed even the Lord of glory with quotations from Scripture? “If you are the Son of God,” he says, “throw yourself down.” Why? “For,” he says, “it is written.” We ought to pay special attention to this passage and keep it in mind. Then, warned by so weighty an example from the Gospel, we may be sure beyond doubt, when we find people bringing passages from the apostles or the prophets against the catholic faith, that the devil is speaking through their mouths. For as then the Head spoke to the Head, so now too the members speak to the members: the members of the devil to the members of Christ, those who believe wrongly to those who believe, the sacrilegious to the religious, in a word, heretics to catholics. [a]

But what do they say? “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down.” That is: if you want to be a son of God and to receive the inheritance of the kingdom of heaven, throw yourself down; that is, throw yourself down from the doctrine and tradition of that lofty church, which is pictured as nothing less than the very temple of God. And if someone asks one of the heretics who gives this advice, “How do you prove it? What grounds do you have for saying that I ought to cast away the universal and ancient faith of the catholic church?” he has the answer ready: “For it is written.” At once he produces a thousand testimonies, a thousand examples, a thousand authorities from the Law, from the Psalms, from the apostles, from the prophets. Interpreted on a new and wrong principle, these send the unhappy soul hurtling from the height of catholic truth into the lowest pit of heresy. Then, with the promises that go along with it, the heretics are in the habit of wonderfully beguiling the unwary. For they dare to teach and promise that in their church, that is, in the little meeting of their own communion, there is a certain great, special, and altogether personal grace of God. Whoever belongs to their number, without any labor, without any effort, without any diligence, even though they neither ask nor seek nor knock, is so provided for by God that, borne up by angels’ hands, that is, kept safe by the protection of angels, they can never strike their foot against a stone; that is, they can never be made to stumble. [b]