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THE CORONATION 457
come the infernal dragon, this impious and powerful
enemy would have hindered the effects of the Redemp
tion; therefore this voice of the angel resounded victo
riously at the conclusion of the battle and at his casting
forth unto the earth and the sea. He congratulated the
saints, because now the head and the plottings of the
demon, by which he slandered men, were crushed, and
the angel calls them brethren because of their relation
ship with the angels through the soul, through grace and
glory.
524. The calumnies, by which the devil persecuted and
accused the mortals were the illusions and deceits by
which he expected to pervert the beginnings of the
evangelical Church, and his appeals to the justice of
God, alleging that men, through their ingratitude and
wickedness and by their having taken away the life of
Christ the Savior, did not merit Redemption or mercy,
but deserved to be punished by leaving them to their own
sinfulness and to the darkness of eternal damnation.
Against all these accusations, however, Mary, as our
most sweet and kind Mother, rose up in our defense,
meriting for us faith and its spread, the abundance of
mercies and gifts accruing to us from the death of her
Son, all of which the sins of those that crucified Him
and the others, that would not receive Him, have indeed
failed to deserve. The angel, by his prediction of woe,
warns the inhabitants of the earth to be prepared for the
serpent, which now descended to them in such -great
wrath; for without a doubt this dragon knows, that he
has little time for 1
wrecking his fury upon men, since he
has learned of the mysteries of Redemption, the power
of most holy Mary, the abundance of grace and wonder
ful favors in the primitive Church. From all these facts
he suspects, that the end of the world is
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at hand, or that