Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Clementine Homilies/Homily IX/Chapter 22

Chapter XXII.&#8212;&#8220;Rather Rejoice.&#8221;

&#8220;But still, though all demons, with all diseases, flee before you, you are not to rejoice in this only, but in that, through grace, your names, as of the ever-living, are written in heaven.&#160; Thus also the Divine Holy Spirit rejoices because man hath overcome death; for the putting of the demons to flight makes for the safety of another.&#160; But this we say, not as denying that we ought to help others, but that we ought not to be inflated by this and neglect ourselves.&#160; It happens, also, that the demons flee before some wicked men by reason of the honoured name, and both he who expels the demon and he who witnesses it are deceived:&#160; he who expels him, as if he were honoured on account of righteousness, not knowing the wickedness of the demon.&#160; For he has at once honoured the name, and by his flight has brought the wicked man into a thought of his righteousness, and so deceived him away from repentance.&#160; But the looker-on, associating with the expeller as a pious man, hastens to a like manner of life, and is ruined.&#160; Sometimes also they pretend to flee before adjurations not made in the name of God, that they may deceive men, and destroy them whom they will.