Matthew 4:10

10. Get thee hence, Satan For now Satan has, so to speak, showed his cloven foot. This soft-spoken man, this most interesting angel, turns out to be none else than God’s foe. He demands to be worshipped! and that ends the matter. The devil is a coward; he only needs resistance, and he runs.

James 4:7. Jesus had but to give him a Get thee hence and he is gone, and makes room for the better company of angels, whose benevolence and whose form, perhaps, he had been counterfeiting.

As the first temptation appealed to the animal appetites, and the second to the mental tastes, so the third appealed to the ambition. This is the very triple division referred to by St. John: “The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life.” John 2:16. It is the very triple temptation by which Eve fell. The fruit was good for food, and so appealed to the appetite; it was pleasant to the eyes, and so pleased the sense of beauty; it would make her as the gods, and so it awakened her ambition.

By this last temptation the great men of this world have fallen in myriads. Not that true greatness is incompatible with goodness. Many a ruler of the people has been the servant of God; but often their ruin has been this temptation serve the devil and rule the world. They have believed the devil to be the true dispenser of this world’s endowments, and they have sought his patronage.