Jo. 17.
2. To consider their power in spiritual and moral things particularly, we shall find they have no power in some things, but by their fall have utterly lost it, as is apparent in these few points. 1. They have lost that freedom of will that they had by Creation, and were partakers of before they fell, and agreeable to this is the Thesis of learned Zanchy, which is this: “That all Devils have so far their wills made obstinate in sins, the hatred of God, Christ, and of Mankind, that from this evil they cannot will to repent, and thereby be saved;” and this he thus proveth. 1. Because in the Scriptures they are called, πονυροὺς κατ’ ἐξοχὴν, for they are now become such, that they cannot be changed from their malice and wickedness; because it is become natural unto them. 2. From whence it is manifest, that the whole time since their fall, never yet any of them hath given any sign of resipiscence. 3. If they could repent and believe in Christ, then for them and their sins Christ also should have died; for he saith, that he prayed for those that were to believe in him; but they neither believe in him, neither did he die for them. 4. But the chief cause of their impenitency is the just judgment of God, that hath given them up to hardness of heart, because they sinned knowingly and wilfully against the truth. And this point is sufficiently proved by Thomas Aquinas, the rest of the Schoolmen and many others. 2. So that as they have lost freedom of will, so they cannot at all will or act to be saved, or to repent. 3. And as they cannot will or act to repent or be saved, so the whole acts of their wills are evil, malicious and wicked, being liars and murtherers from the beginning.
3. The third is to consider their power in sublunary and elementary things which is the most pertinent to our present purpose, it being the thing that some have magnified even to a kind of omnipotency, and therefore we must the more narrowly ventilate and examine it, which we shall do in this order.
1. How great soever the power of the faln Angels may be supposed to be, yet neither in knowlege can they be deemed to be omniscient, or in power to be omnipotent, because they are created Beings, circumscribed, limited and finite, and consequently can perform no act that necessarily must require an omnipotent power, and so can neither create things de novo, annihilate or transubstantiate any Creature or substance, or pervert or put forth of order, the things that God by Creation, Decree and Providence hath set into their certain orders of Generation, alteration and corruption.
Ut supra.
2. How great soever their power may be supposed to be, yet rationally it must be taken for a truth, that they have not the same power that they had before their fall. For as Zanchy saith: Certum est enim in universum, & in genere, hac etiam in parte illos punitos fuisse, ut non possint quicquid poterant, cum boni essent, nec etiam quicquid nunc velint. Because the Holy Ghost beareth witness, that they are bound in Chains, and that Satan begged leave of God to invade Job, that they fought with the good Angels, but were overcome, and that they may be so resisted of believing men that they may be overthrown. Ac væ nobis, nisi potentia Dæmonum infirmata esset, & à Domino comprimeretur, & compesceretur.
Zanch. de op. Dei ut supra.
3. And what power soever be granted to the faln Angels, yet it is by the opinion of all the learned, restrained only to these sublunary and inferior bodies, and that they have neither power by Creation or Ordination, to work upon, move, or alter things that are Angelical, Celestial, Ethereal and Superior, but only are chained in this Caliginous Atmosphere, and impure air. For it is manifest, that superior bodies work upon those that are inferior, but not on the contrary, neither have we any examples that can prove that they do operate upon Celestial bodies, and so their power (how great soever some may suppose it to be) is only restrained to these inferior sublunary things.
Gen. 19. 24.
Isai. 37. 36.