Alcuin of York — on Rev 9:5 (COMMENTARY ON REVELATION)

“And it was given unto them that they should not kill them; but that they should torment them five months yet. If those who do not have the sign are reprobates, how can the locusts be forbidden from killing them? And can it be that those who do not have the sign of God are alive? Therefore it is implied that this refers to the previous sentence. So let us take It was given unto them that they should not kill them; but that they should be tormented five months to mean that the heretics cannot deceive the signed, but only test them by tormenting them in this life, which is ruled by the five senses. What follows corresponds well to them: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion when he striketh a man. Which means that the elect, who despise the things that are behind and stretch forth to the things that are before, [Cf. Phil. 3:13] are believed to be afflicted by others by means of what they themselves have visibly rejected out of contempt for the world, that is by means of either secular power or the error of bad credulity.”