And of this nation the land is not given into the possession of Israel, but by the Lord's command it is ordained that he should forsake it forever and go out from it. And therefore the fasts are to be so regulated that it should not be necessary, through an immoderation of abstinence contracted by the failing or infirmity of the flesh, to return again to the Egyptian land—that is, to the former lust of the gullet and of the flesh, which, when we renounced this world, we cast off; as they figuratively suffered who, having gone out into the wilderness of virtues, again desired the fleshpots over which they had sat in Egypt.
But as to why that nation, among whom the children of Israel were born, is commanded not to be utterly destroyed but only to have its land forsaken, whereas these seven are bidden to be exterminated even to extinction, the reason is this: that with however great an ardour of spirit we, being kindled, have entered the desert of virtues, we can by no means be free from the neighbourhood and service of gluttony and, as it were, its daily commerce. For there will always live in us, as an inborn and natural affection, the desire of food and eatables, although we hasten to cut off its superfluous appetites and desires; and as these cannot be wholly destroyed, so they ought to be avoided by a certain turning aside. For of this it is said: 'And make not provision for the flesh in its desires.'
So long, therefore, as we retain the affection of this care—which we are bidden not altogether to cut off, but to exercise without desires—we evidently do not exterminate the Egyptian nation, but separate ourselves from it by a certain discretion, not thinking of superfluous or more sumptuous feasts, but, according to the Apostle, content with daily food and raiment. And this is figuratively also commanded in the Law: 'You shall not abhor the Egyptian, because you were a sojourner in his land.' For the food necessary for the body is not to be denied, without either the destruction of the body itself or the sin of the soul. But the movements of those seven disturbances, as being in every way harmful, are to be utterly exterminated from the recesses of our soul. For of these it is thus said:
'Let all bitterness and anger and indignation and clamour and blasphemy be put away from you, with all malice'; and again: 'But fornication and all uncleanness and covetousness, let it not even be named among you, nor obscenity nor foolish talking nor scurrility.' We can, then, cut off the roots of those vices which have been superadded to nature; but the use of gluttony we shall in no wise be able to sever. For however much we may have advanced, we cannot make ourselves not to be what we are born. And that this is so is shown both by the life and conduct of us who are of small account, and of all the perfect.
For these, though they have cut off the goads of the other passions and seek the desert with all the fervour of the mind and the nakedness of the body, are nonetheless unable to be freed from the providing of daily sustenance and the preparation of the yearly bread. The figure of this passion, by which even the spiritual and most exalted monk must of necessity be constrained, is quite fittingly designated by the likeness of the eagle. For when it has been raised aloft by its most lofty flight beyond the heights of the clouds, and has hidden itself from the eyes of all mortals and from the face of the whole earth, yet again it is compelled by the necessity of the belly to sink down to the depths of the valleys and to descend to earthly things and to be entangled with the carcasses of dead bodies.
By which it is most manifestly proved that the spirit of gluttony can by no means be cut away like the other vices, nor in every respect similarly extinguished, but that its stings and superfluous appetites can only be beaten back and restrained by the virtue of the soul. For a certain one of the elders, disputing on the nature of this vice with philosophers who thought that on account of his Christian simplicity he was to be wearied out as a rustic, elegantly expressed it under this colour of a riddle, saying: 'My father,' he said, 'left me liable to many creditors. Having paid the rest in full, I was set free from all the trouble of their claims; but there is one I cannot satisfy, though I pay daily.'
And when they, ignorant of the force of the proposed question, begged him earnestly for its solution, he said: 'By my natural condition I was bound fast to many vices. But by the Lord's inspiring in me the desire of liberty, renouncing to this world and casting from me all the substance which had come to me by inheritance from my father—thus renouncing all those most troublesome creditors—I gave satisfaction and was in every way set free from them: but from the stings of gluttony I was in no way able to be free.
For although I have reduced it to a small measure and a most paltry quantity, I do not escape the force of its daily compulsion, but it is necessary for me to be pressed by its perpetual demands and to pay a certain interminable settlement by continual discharge, and to render an insatiable tribute to its levies.' Then they proclaimed that this man, whom they had before despised as an idiot and a rustic, had grasped preeminently the first parts of philosophy—that is, the discipline of ethics—marvelling greatly that he had been able naturally to attain what no secular learning had conferred upon him, whereas they themselves, with much sweat and long instruction, had been unable so to reach these things. Let this suffice to have said especially concerning gluttony.
Now let us return to the discussion which we had begun to set forth concerning the general kinship of the vices. When the Lord spoke to Abraham concerning things to come—which you did not at all inquire about—He is read to have enumerated not seven nations but ten, whose land is promised to be given to his seed. Which number is evidently completed by the addition of idolatry and blasphemy, to which, before the knowledge of God and the grace of baptism, the impious multitude of the Gentiles or the blasphemous multitude of the Jews was subject, so long as it tarried in the intellectual Egypt.
But if anyone, renouncing and having gone out thence by the grace of God, and having likewise vanquished gluttony, arrives at the spiritual desert, being freed from the assault of three nations, he will take up wars against seven only, which are enumerated through Moses. Now as to why we are bidden salutarily to possess the regions of these pernicious nations, it is thus understood. Each vice has in our heart its own station, which, claiming for itself, it drives out Israel from the recess of our soul—that is, the contemplation of the highest and holy things—and it does not cease always to be at enmity with them. For the virtues cannot dwell together with the vices. For what participation has righteousness with iniquity? or what fellowship has light with darkness?
But when the vices have been overcome by the people of Israel—that is, by the virtues fighting against them—the place which the spirit of lust or fornication kept for itself in our heart, thereafter chastity shall obtain; the place which wrath had seized, patience shall claim; the place which death-working sadness had occupied, that salutary sadness which is full of joy shall possess; the place which accidie was laying waste, fortitude shall begin to cultivate; the place which pride was trampling down, humility shall ennoble. And thus, the several vices being expelled, their places—that is, the affections—shall be possessed by the contrary virtues, which are not undeservedly called the children of Israel, that is, of the soul that sees God.
And when they have expelled all the passions of the heart, they are to be believed not so much to have invaded another's possessions as to have recovered their own. For, as far as ancient tradition teaches, these same lands of the Canaanites, into which the children of Israel are brought, had once belonged to the children of Shem, allotted to them in the division of the world, which the posterity of Ham afterwards possessed by force and power through the iniquity of usurpation. In which too the most righteous judgment of God is approved, who both expelled those from another's places which they had wickedly occupied, and restored to these the ancient possession of the fathers, which had been assigned to their lineage in the division of the world. Which figure is recognized by most certain reasoning to stand in us also.
For the will of the Lord naturally assigned the possession of our heart not to the vices but to the virtues; which, after the transgression of Adam, being driven from their own region by the insolent vices—that is, the Canaanite peoples—when they are again restored to it by the grace of God through our diligence and labour, are to be believed not so much to have occupied another's lands as to have received back their own. Concerning these eight vices it is thus signified also in the Gospel: 'When the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he walks through dry places seeking rest, and finds none. Then he says: I will return into my house whence I came out: and coming, he finds it empty, swept with brooms, and adorned:'
then he goes and takes to himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and entering in they dwell there: and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first.' Behold, just as there we read of seven nations, apart from the Egyptians out of whom the children of Israel had come, so here also seven unclean spirits are said to return, apart from the one who is first narrated to have gone out of the man. Of this sevenfold tinder of vices Solomon also in the Proverbs thus describes: 'If your enemy entreats you with a loud voice, do not consent to him: for there are seven wickednesses in his soul:'
that is, if the vanquished spirit of gluttony begins to flatter you with its humbling, asking, as it were, that, relaxing something from your undertaken fervour, you would grant it something that exceeds the mode of continence and the measure of just strictness—do not be undone by its submission, nor by the smiling security of the assault, whereby you seem for a little while to have become quieter as regards the carnal incentives, return to your former slackness or to the past lusts of the gullet. For through this that spirit whom you had conquered says: 'I will return into my house whence I came out'; and the seven spirits of the vices proceeding from it will forthwith be to you fiercer than that passion which had been overcome in the beginning, and they will soon drag you down to worse kinds of sins.
Wherefore, while we lie intent upon fasting and continence, we must make haste, so that, once the passion of gluttony has been overcome, we may not allow our soul forthwith to remain empty of the necessary virtues, but rather occupy all the recesses of our heart the more zealously with them; lest the returning spirit of concupiscence find us idle and vacant of these very virtues, and, no longer content to prepare an entrance for itself alone, bring in with it into our soul this sevenfold kindling of vices, and make our last state worse than the first.
For after this the soul will be fouler and more unclean, and will be smitten with a heavier punishment—the soul that boasts that it has renounced this world while eight vices lord it over her—than it once was when set within the world, when it had professed neither the discipline nor the name of a monk. For these seven spirits are said to be more wicked than that former one which had gone out, for this reason: because the desire of gluttony, that is gastrimargia, would not of itself be harmful, unless it introduced other and graver passions, namely of fornication, of avarice (philargyria), of anger, of sadness, or of pride, which without doubt are of themselves harmful and destructive to the soul.
And therefore whoever hopes to acquire the purity of perfection from this continence alone, that is, from bodily fasting, will never be able to obtain it, unless he knows that he ought to practice it for this purpose: that, the flesh being humbled by fasting, he may more easily enter into combat against the other vices, the flesh not growing insolent through the gluttony of satiety. Yet it must be known that the order of battles is not the same in all of us, because, as we have said, we are not all assailed in one manner; and each of us ought to take up the wrestling of contests according to the nature of the war by which he is chiefly troubled, so that it is necessary for one to wage his first conflict against the vice ranked third, for another against the fourth or fifth.
And thus, according as the vices themselves hold the primacy within us and as the manner of the assault requires, we too ought to establish the order of our battles, following which the ensuing outcome of victory and triumph will bring us to purity of heart and to the fullness of perfection. Thus far Abbot Sarapion, discoursing to us on the nature of the eight principal vices, so lucidly laid open the kinds of passions lurking in our heart—whose causes and affinities, though we were daily laid waste by them, we could neither fully know before nor discern—that we seemed in a manner to behold them set before our eyes, as though in a mirror. A description of the desert, and an inquiry concerning the slaying of the saints.
The reply of Abbot Theodore to the question proposed. Concerning the three kinds of things that are in this world, that is, good and evil and indifferent. That evil can be inflicted on no one against his will by another. An objection: how God Himself is said to create evils. A reply to the question proposed. A question, whether he is guilty who has inflicted death upon a righteous man, since the righteous man has a reward from death. A reply to the preceding question. The example of Job tempted by the devil and of the Lord betrayed by Judas, and that to the just both prosperous and adverse things profit unto salvation. Concerning the virtue of the perfect man who is figuratively called ambidextrous. Concerning the twofold kind of temptations, which are brought in in a threefold manner.
How a righteous man ought to be like, not to wax, but to an adamantine seal. A question, whether the mind can continually endure in one and the same state. A reply to the questioner's proposition. What loss there is for one departing from his cell. Concerning the mutability even of the supernal and heavenly powers. That no one collapses by a sudden ruin. In the region of Palestine, near the village of Thecua (Tekoa), which was worthy to bring forth the prophet Amos, there is a most vast solitude stretching as far as Arabia and the Dead Sea, into which, when they enter, the streams of the Jordan fail, and the ashes of Sodom are spread out in a most ample expanse. In this place monks of the highest life and holiness, dwelling for a very long time, were suddenly slain by roving bands of Saracen brigands.
Although we knew that their bodies had been snatched away with such great veneration, both by the bishops of that region and by the whole people of the Arabs, and laid among the relics of the martyrs, that countless throngs, flocking together from two towns, engaged in a most grievous contest, and the dispute went so far as a clash of swords over the holy plunder, while they strove among themselves with pious devotion as to which of them might more justly possess their burial and relics—some indeed glorying in the nearness of the men's dwelling, others in closeness of origin—nevertheless we, moved by our own offense or by that of certain brothers not a little scandalized on this account, and inquiring why men of such merit and of such great virtues had thus been slain by brigands, and why the Lord had suffered so great a crime to be perpetrated against His own servants, so as to deliver into the hands of the impious men admirable to all, went in sorrow to the holy Theodore, a man singular in the active life.
For he was dwelling in the Cells, a place situated between Nitria and Scete, distant indeed five miles from the monasteries of Nitria, and separated by an intervening solitude of eighty miles from the desert of Scete in which we were dwelling. When we had made our complaint to him about the slaying of the aforesaid men, marvelling at so great a patience of God—that He had permitted men of such merit to be slain in such a way, that those who ought also by the weight of their holiness to have delivered others from temptation of this kind had not even snatched themselves from the hands of the impious; or why God had allowed so great a crime to be committed against His servants—the blessed Theodore replied.
This question is wont to disturb the minds of those who, possessing too little faith or knowledge, suppose that the merits of the saints, or the rewards which are not rendered in the present but are laid up for the future, are repaid within the brevity of this temporal life.
But we, who do not hope in Christ in this life only—lest, according to the Apostle, we be more wretched than all men, because forsooth, receiving none of the promises in this world, we should also lose them in the future on account of this unbelief—ought not to go astray by their opinions, lest, ignorant of the sentence of the true definition, we be moved, wavering and trembling in temptations, when we see ourselves also delivered up to the same things; ascribing to God—which is even wicked to utter—either injustice or carelessness of human affairs, because He does not protect holy men and those living rightly in temptation, and does not repay to the good the things that are good, nor to the wicked evil things in the present; and we should deserve to be condemned with those whom the prophet Zephaniah, chastising, says, 'who say in their hearts:'
'The Lord will not do good, neither will He do evil'; or surely we should be found with those who by complaints of this kind are said to blaspheme God: 'Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and such please Him; or surely, where is the God of justice?' Adding likewise that blasphemy which is described in what follows: 'He is vain who serves God; or what profit is it that we have kept His precepts, and that we have walked sorrowful before the Lord? Therefore now we call the arrogant blessed: since indeed those who work impiety are enriched, and they have tempted God and are made safe.'
Wherefore, that we may be able to escape this ignorance, which is the root and cause of this most depraved error, we ought first to know what is truly good, what is evil; and then at last, holding concerning these not the false definition of the crowd but the true one of the Scriptures, we shall by no means be deceived by the error of unbelieving men. There are three classes of all things that are in this world, that is, good, evil, and indifferent. We ought therefore to know what is properly good, what is evil, and what is indifferent, so that our faith, fortified by true knowledge, may endure unshaken in all temptations. Nothing therefore, at least among human affairs, is to be believed to be the principal good save virtue of soul alone, which, leading us by sincere faith to divine things, makes us cleave continually to that immutable Good.
And on the contrary, nothing is to be called evil save sin alone, which, separating us from the good God, makes us joined to the evil devil. Indifferent are those things which can be diverted to either side according to the disposition and choice of the one who uses them—such as riches, power, honor, strength of body, health, beauty, life itself or death, poverty, weakness of the flesh, injuries, and other things like these—which, according to the quality and disposition of the user, can profit either toward the good part or toward the evil.
For riches too frequently profit unto good, according to the Apostle, who charges the rich of this world to give readily, to share with the needy, to lay up for themselves a good foundation for the future, that through these they may lay hold of true life; and according to the Gospel they are good for those who make themselves friends of the unjust mammon. Which again are turned back to evil, when they are heaped up only for hoarding or for luxury, and are not dispensed to the uses of the needy.
Power too, and honor, and strength of body, and health—how much they are indifferent and fitting on either side—is easily proved even from this, that many of the saints in the Old Testament, endowed with all these and established in the highest riches and the pinnacle of dignities and in strength of body, are known to have been also most acceptable to God. And on the other hand, those who ill-abused these and perverted them to the service of their wickedness were not undeservedly either punished or destroyed, which the Book of Kingdoms frequently indicates was done. Concerning life itself and death also, that they are indifferent, the nativity of holy John or of Judas testifies. For the life of the one so profited himself that his birth is said to have conferred joy also on others, according to that:
'And many shall rejoice at his nativity.' But of the life of the other it is said: 'It were good for that man if he had not been born.' Concerning the death also of John and of all the saints it is said: 'Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints'; but of Judas and the like, 'the death of sinners is worst.' Weakness of body too, how advantageous it sometimes is, the blessedness of that poor ulcerous Lazarus demonstrates; of whom, although Scripture commemorates no other merits of virtues, yet for this alone, that he most patiently bore want and infirmity of body, he deserved by a most blessed lot to possess the bosom of Abraham.
Want too, and persecutions, and injuries, which by the opinion of the whole crowd are reckoned to be evils, how useful and necessary they are is also clearly proved from this: that holy men not only never wished to avoid them, but even, with the highest virtue either seeking them or bravely enduring them, being made friends of God, obtained the wages of eternal life; the blessed Apostle chanting in accord: 'Wherefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ: for when I am weak, then am I powerful, because virtue is made perfect in weakness.'
And therefore those who are exalted by the highest riches and honors and powers of this world are not to be believed to have obtained from these the principal good, which is defined to consist in virtues alone, but something indifferent; because, just as to the just, using them rightly and needfully, these are found to be useful and advantageous—for they bring forth the occasion of a good work and its fruit in the eternity of that life—so to those who ill-abuse wealth they are useless and disadvantageous, and contrive the occasion of sin and death. Holding therefore these divisions fixed and immovable, and knowing that nothing is good save virtue alone, which descends from the fear and love of God, nor anything evil
—save sin alone and separation from God—let us now diligently examine whether God has ever permitted evil to be inflicted upon His saints, either by Himself or by any other whatsoever. Which without doubt you will nowhere at all find. For no one could ever inflict the evil of sin upon another who is unwilling and resisting, except upon him alone who received it into himself by the sloth of his heart and a corrupt will.
Finally, when the devil, applying all the engines of his wickedness, had wished to inflict this evil of sin upon blessed Job, and not only had despoiled him of all his goods, but even, after that, had loaded him—by the death of his seven sons, so cruel and so unlooked-for a grief of bereavement—with a most grievous wound from the crown of his head to the sole of his feet, and with intolerable torments, he was by no means able to fasten upon him the stain of sin, because, remaining immovable in all things, he lent no assent to blasphemy. GERMANUS: We frequently read in the Holy Scriptures that God has created evils, or has inflicted them upon men, as is that saying: 'Since apart from me there is not:'
'I am the Lord, and there is no other; forming light and creating darkness, making peace and creating evils'; and again: 'Is there evil in a city which the Lord has not done?' THEODORE: Sometimes divine Scripture is wont, by a loose usage, to put 'evils' for afflictions—not because they are properly evil by nature, but according to this, that they are felt as evils by those to whom they are usefully inflicted. For the divine sentence, in disputing with men, must needs speak with human words and dispositions. For the salutary cutting or cauterizing which is piously inflicted by the physician upon those who are putrefied by the contagion of ulcers, is reckoned an evil by those who endure it; neither is the spur pleasant to the horse, nor correction sweet to the one who offends.
All discipline too seems bitter for the present to those who are being trained by it, as the Apostle says: 'Now all discipline for the present seems to be not of joy but of sorrow, but afterward it renders the most peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been exercised by it,' and, 'Whom the Lord loves He chastens, and He scourges every son whom He receives. For what son is there whom the father does not correct?' And so evils are sometimes wont to be put for afflictions, according to that: 'And God repented of the evil which He had spoken that He would do to them, and He did it not,' and again:
'Because Thou, O Lord, art merciful and compassionate, patient and exceedingly merciful, and repenting over evils'—that is, over the tribulations and hardships which Thou art compelled to inflict upon us for the deserts of our sins. Which another prophet, knowing them to be useful to some, thus imprecates—not indeed envying their salvation, but consulting for it: 'Add to them evils, O Lord, add evils to the glorious ones of the earth'; and the Lord Himself says, 'Behold, I will bring evils upon them'—that is, sorrows and devastations, by which, being wholesomely chastened in the present, they may at last be compelled to return and hasten to Me, whom in prosperity they despised. And therefore we cannot define these to be principal evils:
for to many they profit unto good and beget the causes of eternal joys. And therefore, to return to the question proposed, all things that are thought to be evils, inflicted upon us by enemies or by any others whatsoever, are not to be believed to be evils, but indifferent. For they will not be found such as he supposes them to be who inflicts them with a raging mind, but such as he perceives them who endures them. And therefore, when death is inflicted upon a holy man, it is not to be believed that an evil has been inflicted upon him, but something indifferent; which, though it be an evil to a sinner, becomes to the just a rest and a release from evils. For 'death is rest to a man whose way is hidden.'
And therefore the just man neither suffers any loss from this, because he has undergone nothing new, but that which was going to accrue to him by the necessity of nature he has received through the wickedness of the enemy, yet not without the reward of perennial life; and the debt of human death, which must be paid by an inexorable law, he has discharged with the most abundant fruit of suffering and with the wage of a great recompense. GERMANUS: Therefore, if the slain just man not only has suffered nothing evil, but even attains the reward of suffering, how shall he be called into guilt who did not harm by inflicting death, but profited? THEODORE: We are disputing about the property of good and of evil, or of that which we have said to be indifferent—not about the disposition of those who commit these things.