orm. "The humanity of Christ
was the bait; the fish, the devil, snapped at it, and was left hanging
on the invisible hook, Christ's divinity" (iii. 307). In Athanasius the
relation of the work of Christ to Satan retires into the background,
Gregory of Nazianzus and John of Damascus felt scruples about this view.
It is expressly repudiated by Anselm and Abelard. Peter the Lombard
asserted it, disregarding these objections. Bernard represents man's
bondage to Satan "as righteously permitted as a just retribution for
sin," he being "the executioner of the divine justice." Another theory
of Origen's found less acceptance. The devil, as a being resulting from
God's will, cannot always remain a devil. The possibility of his
redemption, however, was in the 5th century branded as a heresy. Persian
dualism was brought into contact with Christian thought in the doctrine
of Mani; and it is permissible to believe that the gloomy views of
Augustine regarding man's condition are due in some measure to this
influence. Mani taught that Satan with his demons, sprung from the
kingdom of darkness, attacked the realm of light, the earth, defeated
man sent against him by the God of light, but was overthrown by the God
of light, who then delivered the primeval man (iii. 324). "During the
middle ages," says Tulloch, "the belief in the devil was
absorbing--saints conceived themselves and others to be in constant
conflict with him." This superstition, perhaps at its strongest in the
13th to the 15th century, passed into Protestantism. Luther was always
conscious of the presence and opposition of Satan. "As I found he was
about to begin again," says Luther, "I gathered together my books, and
got into bed. Another time in the night I heard him above my cell
walking on the cloister, but as I knew it was the devil I paid no
attention to him and went to sleep." He held that this world will pass
away with its pleasures, as there can be no real improvement in it, for
the devil continues in it to ply his daring and seductive devices (vii.
191). I. A. Dorner (_Christian Doctrine_, iii. p. 93) sums up Protestant
doctrine as follows:--"He is brought into relation with natural
sinfulness, and the impulse to evil thoughts and deeds is ascribed to
him. The dominion of evil over men is also represented as a slavery to
Satan, and this as punishment. He has his full power in the
extra-Christian world. But his power is broken by Christ, and by his
word victory ov