IX.  But since this movement of self-contemplation alone could not satisfy Goodness, but Good must be poured out and go forth beyond Itself to multiply the objects of Its beneficence, for this was essential to the highest Goodness, He first conceived the Heavenly and Angelic Powers.  And this conception was a work fulfilled by His Word, and perfected by His Spirit.  And so the secondary Splendours came into being, as the Ministers of the Primary Splendour; whether we are to conceive of them as intelligent Spirits, or as Fire of an immaterial and incorruptible kind, or as some other nature approaching this as near as may be.  I should like to say that they were incapable of movement in the direction of evil, and susceptible only of the movement of good, as being about God, and illumined with the first rays from God—for earthly beings have but the second illumination; but I am obliged to stop short of saying that, and to conceive and speak of them only as difficult to move because of him, S. Thomas Aquinas (Summa I., qu. 63, art. 7) gives reasons for thinking that Satan was originally the highest of all the angelic hosts.  This, however, is an opinion in which many high authorities differ from him.  At any rate, Satan as Lucifer must have held a very high place. who for his splendour was called Lucifer, but became and is called Darkness through his pride; and the apostate hosts who are subject to him, creators of evil Evil, says Nicetas here, has no positive existence, but is the negation of good.  “The faculties of mind and body which are used in a sinful action are indeed things, and are the creatures of God; but the sin itself is not a thing, and consequently not a creature.  God is indeed the Author of all that is, of every substance; but sin is not a substance, and is not.  It is a declination from substance and from being, and not a part of it.”  (Mozley, Treatise on the Augustinian doctrine of predestination.) by their revolt against good and our inciters.