VISIO QUINTA, cap. IX
The Serpent's Envious War Against Humanity
The ancient serpent, having lost heavenly glory, rejoices in human punishment and wages war against God through human consent, inciting hatred and murder among people.
So the ancient serpent delights in all the punishments mentioned earlier, by which a human being is punished either in soul or in body, because he himself has lost the glory of heaven, and therefore he is eager that the human person, too, should not arrive at that same glory. For when he realized that the human being had consented to his own counsel, he was eager to wage war against God, saying: 'Now in this human being I will carry out my every desire. And then in his hatred he sent a hateful consensus among people, so that they would kill one another. And he said: 'I will make humans die, and I will destroy them more than I am destroyed, because, though I exist, they have no existence of their own.
Corruption of Desire and Blasphemy Against Creation
The serpent corrupts human desire, causing moral decay and perversion, and blasphemes God by distorting the natural order, producing a catalog of vices.
In his own breath he also brought it about that the offspring of the human race would perish, where men burned with shameful desire, working corrupt deeds against one another. And greatly rejoicing, he cried out: 'The greatest blasphemy belongs to the one who formed the human being, that the human being vanishes from his natural form, casting off the natural use of women. And so, under diabolical suggestion they are faithless and seducers; in hatred they are murderers, plunderers, and robbers; and in the most contrary sin among men they are the most foul transgression and all vices at once.
The Collapse of Order and the Widowed Church
When sins accumulate among peoples, divine law is divided, the Church is shaken like a widowed figure, and social upheaval drives out the powerful, all fueled by the serpent's hissing through changing customs and clothing.
And when these sins have joined together among the peoples, then the order of God's law will be divided, and the Church, like a widow, will be shaken, and the rulers, the nobles, and the wealthy will be driven out from their own places by their own subordinates, and they will flee from city to city, and the nobility of their birth will be brought to nothing, and they will be reduced from wealth to poverty. All of this will happen when the ancient serpent hisses through the people with a variety of customs and a variety of clothing — which they themselves will imitate, rejecting some things and embracing others — since they will always renew and change themselves in the works I've described.
The Hidden Battle of Rationality and God's Zeal
The fallen spirits retain rationality and lie in wait for each person, but God wages battle through human rationality that resists them, and the visionary reddish globe reveals God's zeal that punishes sin with love and protects the saved.
But that same ancient enemy and the other most wicked spirits have indeed lost the beauty of their own form, yet they have not lost the breath of rationality; and out of fear of their Creator they do not display their own form of ruin to any mortal creature as it truly is — instead, through their own suggestions they lie in wait for each person, according to that person's character, whenever they find something similar to their own malice in the rest of creation. God, however, has waged a great battle against their wickedness, in that human rationality resists their rationality and puts them to shame — and this battle will last until the final day, when their shame will defile them through everything, and when the one who has conquered them will receive the reward of life. What is shown through the reddish globe and the wings surrounding it on both sides, above and below, in this vision, is the zeal of God, by which sins are punished together with love, and by which his defenses — through which those who are to be saved are protected — are made known.
Read the original Latin
Antiquus itaque serpens de omnibus supradictis poenis, quibus homo seu in anima seu in corpore punitur gaudet, ut quia ipse coelestem gloriam amisit, homo etiam ad illam non perveniat. Nam quando sensit quod homo consilio suo consenserat, pugnam contra Deum facere studebat dicens: « Nunc in homine omnem voluntatem meam complebo. » Et deinde in odio suo odibilem eonsensum inter homines misit, quatenus se invicem interficerent. Et dicebat: « Faciam homines mori, eosque magis perdam quam perditus sim, quia, cum ego sim, ipsi non sunt. » In sufflatu suo quoque habuit, ut processio filiorum hominum interiret, ubi viri in viros exarserunt turpia operantes. Unde et valde gavisus clamabat: « Maxima blasphemia illi est, qui hominem formavit, quod homo in forma sua evanescit, naturali usu mulierum abjecto. » Itaque in suggestione diabolica infideles et seductores sunt; in odio autem homicidioque raptores et latrones; in contrario vero peccato virorum immundissima praevaricatio omniaque vitia sunt. Et cum peccata haec in populis se invicem conjunxerint, tunc constitutio legis Dei dividetur, Ecclesiaque quasi vidua concutietur, et principes, nobiles et divites per suos minores de locis suis expellentur, et de civitate in civitatem fugabuntur, nobilitasque generis eorum ad nihilum deducetur, et de divitiis ad paupertatem redigentur.
Ista omnia tunc fient cum antiquus serpens varietatem morum varietatemque vestimentorum in populo sibilabit, quem ipsi imitabuntur, haec abjiciendo, haec attrahendo, cum in praedictis operibus se semper novabunt et variabunt. Sed idem antiquus inimicus caeterique nequissimi spiritus pulchritudinem formae suae quidem perdiderunt, non autem sufflatum rationalitatis amiserunt, et pro timore Creatoris sui formam perditionis suae nulli mortali creaturae sicuti est ostendunt; sed suggestionibus suis unicuique homini secundum mores ipsius insidiantur, cum et in reliqua creatura malitiae suae aliquid simile inveniunt. Deus autem contra impietatem eorum magnum praelium instituit, cum rationalitas hominis rationalitati illorum resistit, eosque confundit, et praelium hoc usque ad novissimum diem perdurabit, ubi et confusio eos per omnia inquinabit, ubi et homo qui eos superavit, mercedem vitae accipiet.
Quod per globum rebeum et alas eum utrinque sursum et deorsum ambientes in hac visione ostenditur zelus Dei quo cum charitate peccata puniuntur, et defensiones ejus quibus salvandi proteguntur ostendantur.
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