(13) This is why I am amazed that certain people want to claim, in contradiction to this absolutely clear pronouncement of Paul, that in the future age it should be necessary for Christ to suffer the same things or similar things all over again, so that those whom his medicine was not able to heal in the life of the present dispensation might be freed. For they say: Can there be any age in the future when neither good nor evil are committed, but instead things are brought to a standstill and profound silence remains? This, they claim, appears absurd. We shall therefore grant that something will happen. And where something is happening it is inevitable, they say, that some things would be done rightly, some things less rightly, and that in this very act some would make progress and become better, whereas others would become worse. For freedom of will shall always remain in rational natures. It was possible even for him who was Lucifer, owing to the splendor of his glory, and who rose in the morning because of the light of knowledge, to be changed from his own glory and become darkness because of the evil which he received. And to him who was without stain from the day of his birth and dwelled with cherubim and lived in the midst of the fiery stones and was clothed with the entire adornment of the virtues in the paradise of God, there was no tree of virtues which could compare. But later, iniquities were found in him and he was cast from heaven to earth. In the same way [M1053] it can come to pass that in whatever state a soul exists and in whatever degree of perfection of the virtues, it can still experience a fall, owing to the fact that virtue is changeable. So just as the [soul] is moved from the vices to virtue, so also from the virtues to the vices. If this is the case, the inference will seem to be that where there is sickness a physician will be needed, for according to the voice of the Savior himself, “There is need of a physician for those who are sick.”

. . .

(16) He who was Lucifer and who arose into heaven, he who was without stain from the day of his birth and who was among the cherubim, was able to fall with respect to the kindness of the Son of God before he could be bound by chains of love. But after the love of God shall have begun to be shed abroad in the hearts of everyone through the Holy Spirit, what the Apostle has declared will become settled, “Love never falls away.” We have said these things to the best of our ability in response to questions generated by the passage, so that it might become more plainly clarified in what manner Christ has died to sin once and for all and how he dies no longer, and why it is the life he lives, he lives to God.