Chapter XXVIII.
How we ought not to despise those who are delivered up
to unclean spirits.
From
which it plainly
results that we ought not to hate or despise those whom we see to be
delivered up to various temptations or to those spirits of evil,
because we ought firmly to hold these two points: first, that none of
them can be tempted at all by them without God’s permission, and
secondly that all things which are brought upon us by God, whether they
seem to us at the present time to be sad or joyful, are inflicted for
our advantage as by a most kind father and most compassionate
physician, and that therefore men are, as it were, given into the
charge of schoolmasters, and humbled in order that when they depart out
of this world they may be removed in a state of greater purity to the
other life, or have a lighter punishment inflicted on them, as they
have been, as the Apostle says, delivered over at the present time
“to Satan for the destruction of the flesh that the spirit may be
saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.”
1497
1497
1 Cor. v. 5
.