The Scriptures are explicit as to the apostasy of some, of whom Satan was the chief and leader. And the angels which kept not their first estate or principality, but left their own habitation,' etc. (Jude, ver. 6). For if God spared not the angels that sinned,' etc. (2 Pet. ii. 4). Those who fol lowed Satan in his apostasy are described as belonging to him. The company is called the Devil and his angels (4 Acal36Xcp kat TA' drYg AOLS atiroi), Matt. xxv. 4.4 The relation marked here denotes the instrumentality which the Devil may have exerted in inducing those called his angels to rebel against Jehovah and join them selves to his interests. How Satan and his fol lowers, being created so high in excellence and holiness, became sinful and fell, is a question upon which theologians have differed, but which they have not settled. The difficulty has seemed so great to Schleiermacher and others, that they have denied the fact of such an apostasy. They have untied the knot by cutting it. Still the difficulty remains. The denial of mystery is not the removal of it. Even philosophy teaches us to believe some times where we cannot understand. It is here that the grave question of the introduction of evil first meets us. If we admit the fact of apostasy among the angels, as by a fair interpretation of Scripture we are constrained to do, the admission of such a fact in the case of human beings will follow more easily, they being the lower order of creatures, in whom defection would be less surprising. As to what constituted the first sin of Satan and his fol lowers, there has been a diversity of opinions. Some have supposed that it was the beguiling of our first parents. Others have believed that the first sin of the angels is mentioned in Gen. vi. 2. The sacred writers intimate very plainly that the first transgression was pride, and that from this sprang open rebellion. Of a bishop, the apostle says (z Thn. iii. 6), He must not be a novice, lest, being puffed up with pride, he fall into the condem nation of the devil.' From which it appears that pride was the sin of Satan, and that for this he was condemned. This, however, marks the quality of the sin, and not the act.
In his physical nature, Satan is among those that are termed spiritual beings ; not as excluding neces.sarily all idea of matter, but as opposed rather to the animal nature. It is the WPEVALaTLK65, in opposition to the Ibux:x6r. The good angels are all ministering spirits, srveu'para (Heb. 14)• Satan is one of the angels that kept not their first principality. The fall produced .no change in his physical or metaphysical nature. Paul, in warning the Ephesians against the wiles of the Devil (ras ueBoaelas Tar Scapaou), tells them (Eph. vi. 12) that they contended not against flesh and blood—mere human enemies—but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places ; wpas rpevp.aruca. rig opnplas bp TOIS brou papiots, in which the contrast is between human and superhuman foes, the Ta rpeimaruai being for ras 4nlaeLs rpevaaruccis, or VI rpebuara spiritual natures, or spirits, in opposition to flesh and blood (Rosenmuller, /cc.) Satan is not pure spirit in the sense that God is spirit, nor necessarily to the exclusion of body ; but that body, if he has any, is ethereal, pneumatic, invisible. He is unlike God, because finite and dependent ; and, in his ethereal physical nature, and the rapidity with which he moves unseen from place to place, he is unlike to man. He is immortal, but not eternal ; neither omniscient nor omnipresent, but raised high above the human race in knowledge and power. The Persian mythology, in its early stage, and subsequently the Gnostics and Manicheans, ranked the evil principle as coeval and co-ordinate, or nearly so, with God, or the good principle. The doctrine of the Jewish church always made him a dependent creature, subject to the control of the Almighty. By the modifications which
Zoroaster subsequently introduced, the Persian angelology came more nearly to resemble that ot the Jews. Some have ascribed to Satan the power of working miracles, contending that there are two series of antagonistical miracles running through the Bible. To the miracles of Moses were opposed those of the Egyptian magicians ; and to those of Christ and his apostles the signs and wonders of false prophets and Antichrists--the Divine and the Satanic. Olshausen maintains this view, as do some of the older commentators (Biblischen Comnzentar, vol. i. p. 242). The evi dence in support of such a belief has not been sufficient to procure for it general acceptance (see Rosenmiiller and Calvin on Matt. xxiv. 24 ; 2 Thess. ii. 9 ; Hengstenberg's Egypt and the Books of Moses, ch. iii. ; also Rosenmiiller and Bush on Exod., ch. vii.) With a substantial presence in only one place at one time, yet, as the head of a spiritual kingdom, he is virtually present wherever his angels or servants are execut ing his will.
His character is evil, purely and entirely so (i John iii. 8 ; John viii. 44). His character is de noted by his titles, Satan, Adversary, Diabolos, False Accuser, Tempter, etc. All the representa tions of him in Scripture show him to have un mixed and confirmed evil as the basis of his character, exhibiting itself in respect to God in assuming to be his equal, and in wishing to transfer the homage and service which belong only to God to himself ; and in respect to men, in efforts to draw them away from God and attach them to his king dom. The evil developes itself in all possible ways and by all possible means of opposition to God, and to those who are striving to establish and extend his dominion. Evil is so transcendent in him, that his whole intellectual and moral nature is subordinated to it. His character is symmetrical. It has a dreadful consistency', from the concurrence in evil, and subjection to it, of all the powers of his being. It is unique and complete in evil, made so by the act of apostasy, and continued so by a pertinacious adherence to evil as his good. Quen stedt says that 'some angels are called evil, not by reason of their essential constitution, but—first, from an evil act, that is, apostasy from God ; secondly, from an habitual perverseness which fol lowed this act of apostasy ; thirdly, on account of an irreclaimable persistency in eviL' Evil is his fixed state, in which he is confirmed by the invinci bility of his dispositions to sin—an invincibility which no motives can ever overcome. This con firmation of evil is denoted by the everlasting chains of darkness in which the apostate angels are reserved unto the judgment of the great day (Jude, ver. 6). The immutability of his evil character precludes the idea of repentance, and therefore the possibility of recovering grace. He possesses an understanding which misapprehends exactly that which is most worthy to be known, to which the key fails without which nothing can be understood in its true relations—an understanding darkened, however deep it may penetrate, however wide it may reach. He is thereby necessarily un blessed ; torn away from the centre of life, yet without ever finding it in himself ; from the sense of inward emptiness, continually driven to the ex terior world, and yet with it, as with himself, in eternal contradiction ; for ever fleeing from God, yet never escaping him ; constantly labouring to frustrate his designs, yet always conscious of being obliged to promote them ; instead of enjoyment in the contemplation of his excellence, the never satisfied desire after an object which it cannot attain ; instead of hope, a perpetual wavering be, tween doubt and despair ; instead of love, a power. less hatred against God, against his fellow-beings, against himself' (Twesten).