To keep the commandments of God in the faith of Jesus Christ is to fight with the dragon and to challenge him to battle. Thanks be to God, who foils the raging dragon's attempt. For lo! he who exerted every effort to destroy the Lord born in the flesh, is frustrated by the resurrection. Labouring thereafter to undermine the confidence of the apostles' teaching, he strove to carry off the woman -- that is, the whole Church -- from the sphere of human affairs. but as his indiscriminate attacks have been in vain, he now turns against each of the ages of the faithful.
[Bede, Commentary on Revelation, Wallis, tr., Liverpool University Press (Liverpool: 2013), p. 197.]
