“Now, the devil would try to attack Saint Martin of Tours with a thousand malicious schemes . . . In one incident, some of the brothers told how they had heard a demon reproaching Martin in abusive terms and interrogating him as to why he had taken certain brothers back into the church—brothers who had lost their baptism by falling into error but had repented. The demon laid out the crimes of each of them; but Martin, resisting the devil firmly, answered him that past sins are cleansed away by the leading of a better life, and that through the mercy of God, those who have given up their evil ways are absolved from their sins.”
—James Stuart Bell, Awakening Faith: Daily Devotions from the Early Church (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2013), p 213
[Image: Detail from ceiling painting by Fidel Schabet (1846), located in Katholische Pfarrkirche St. Martin, Unteressendorf, Germany]