QuoteProject
All diseases of Christians are to be ascribed to demons; chiefly do they torment freshly-baptized Christians, yea, even the guiltless new-born infants.
Saint Augustine
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Saint Augustine suggests that spiritual or demonic influences are responsible for the suffering of Christians, particularly new believers and innocent infants.

In this quote, Saint Augustine highlights the belief that the trials and ailments faced by Christians are not merely physical but have a deeper spiritual cause, often attributed to demonic forces. He emphasizes the vulnerability of freshly-baptized Christians and innocent infants, suggesting that their new faith or purity makes them targets for spiritual torment, thus illustrating the ongoing struggle between good and evil within the realm of faith.

Themes

DiseaseDemonsFaithSpiritualitySufferingInnocence

In practice

Example use cases

During a church sermon discussing the nature of suffering in faith.

More from Saint Augustine

The angels surround and help the priest when he is celebrating Mass.
Saint AugustineRead
There is no health in those who are displeased by an element in Your creation, just as there was none in me when I was displeased by many things You had made. Because my soul didn't dare to say that my God displeased me, it refused to attribute to You whatever was displeasing.
Saint AugustineRead
Bad times, hard times, this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, and times shall be good. We are the times: Such as we are, such are the times.
Saint AugustineRead
Who can map out the various forces at play in one soul? Man is a great depth, O Lord. The hairs of his head are easier by far to count than his feeling, the movements of his heart.
Saint AugustineRead
Whatever skills I have acquired, whatever gifts I have been given, I place them at Your service.
Saint AugustineRead
Everyone who observes himself doubting observes a truth, and about that which he observes he is certain; therefore he is certain about a truth. Everyone therefore who doubts whether truth exists has in himself a truth on which not to doubt.... Hence one who can doubt at all ought not to doubt the existence of truth.
Saint AugustineRead

Similar quotes

There’s a period of time in your life when I kind of look back, and I’m like, was I happy, or was I just not aware?
Philip Seymour HoffmanRead
When I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep; yes, and when I walk alone in a beautiful orchard, if my thoughts drift to far-off matters for some part of the time for some other part I lead them back again to the walk, the orchard, to the sweetness of this solitude, to myself.
Michel De MontaigneRead
Things just happen in the right way, at the right time. At least when you let them, when you work with circumstances instead of saying, 'This isn't supposed to be happening this way,' and trying harder to make it happen some other way.
Benjamin HoffRead
I'm still there, watching those possessed children, as far away from the mystery now as I was then. I've never written, though I thought I wrote, never loved, though I thought I loved, never done anything but wait outside the closed door.
Marguerite DurasRead
Each human being has the eternal duty of turning what is hard and brutal into_x000D_ a tender and subtle offering, what is crude into an object of refinement, what_x000D_ is ugly into a thing of beauty, confrontation into collaboration, ignorance into_x000D_ knowledge, hereby rediscovering the child's dream of a creative reality_x000D_ incessantly renewed by death, the servant of life, and by life the servant of love
Yehudi MenuhinRead
Whosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details. Knowledge is not intelligence. In searching for the truth be ready for the unexpected. Change alone is unchanging. The same road goes both up and down. The beginning of a circle is also its end. Not I, but the world says it: all is one. And yet everything comes in season.
HeraclitusRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.