On discretion. How necessary discretion is to monks, the error of many shows, and the downfalls of some demonstrate: who, beginning without discretion and living without a moderating knowledge, were not able to bring a praiseworthy life to its end. For just as error befalls those who travel without a road, so excess is ready at hand for those who live without discretion, which is always contrary to the virtues set in the middle between either extreme. The collision with this peril is a real thing, since alongside the straight path of discretion the enemies of wickedness set the stumbling-blocks and scandals of various errors.
God must therefore be entreated to bestow the light of true discretion for the illumination of this life, surrounded on every side by the most dark shadows of the world; so that his true worshippers may, without error, be able to escape these shadows toward him. Discretion, then, took its name from discerning, because it discerns in us between good and evil, and also between things middling and things perfect. For from the beginning both, that is, good and evil, were divided, like light and darkness, after evil things began to exist through the devil by the depraving of good; but through God first illuminating, and afterwards dividing. Hence Abel first chose good things, but the impious Cain fell into evil.
God made all things which he created as gifts, but the devil oversowed evil things by crafty guile and by the treacherous persuasion of unguarded ambition. What, then, are those good things? Namely, those which have remained whole and incorrupt, as they were created: which God alone created and prepared, according to the Apostle (Eph. 2:10), that we might walk in them: which are good works, in which we have been created in Christ Jesus; namely goodness, integrity, piety, justice, truth, mercy, charity, saving peace, spiritual joy, with the fruit of the Spirit. All these, with their fruits, are good:
but contrary to these are evils, namely malice, corruption, impiety, injustice, lying, avarice, hatred, discord, bitterness, with their manifold fruits which are born from them. For innumerable are the things which are begotten from both contraries, that is, from goods and from evils. But whatever turns aside from created goodness and integrity, this is the first evil, as is the pride of the first malice; to which is opposed the humble esteem of pious goodness, acknowledging and glorifying its Creator; which is the first good of the rational creature. So too the rest, by twofold parts, have gradually grown into a vast forest of names.
Since this is so, good things must be firmly held, with God's help, which must always be prayed for through prosperity and adversity; lest either we be exalted in prosperity into vanity, or be cast down in adversity into despair. Therefore one must refrain from both perils, that is, from all excess, through glorious temperance and true discretion, which cleaves to Christian humility and opens the way of perfection to the true soldiers of Christ and to those who fear God. Namely, one must always discern rightly in doubtful matters, and everywhere divide justly between good and evil—whether between the two outwardly, or inwardly between body and soul, or between works and morals, or between care and rest, or between things public and things secret.
Evils, therefore, must likewise be guarded against: pride, envy, lying, corruption, impiety, evil morals, transgression, gluttony, fornication, covetousness, anger, sadness, instability, vainglory, conceit, detraction. Good things too, that is, the virtues, must be pursued: humility, kindness, purity, obedience, abstinence, chastity, generosity, patience, gladness, stability, fervor, diligence, vigilance, taciturnity; which, through enduring fortitude and moderating temperance, as if on a certain balancing scale of discretion, must be set in the act of accustomed work, by those who seek sufficiency everywhere according to the measure of our endeavor.
For whoever is not satisfied with sufficiency, it is doubtful to no one that he has exceeded the measure of discretion: and whatever exceeds that measure, it is manifest to be a vice. Therefore between too little and too much there is a reasonable measure in the middle, always recalling from all that is superfluous on either side, set in every matter, everywhere securing what is certainly of necessity, and turning aside the irrational element of superfluous will. And this measure of true discretion, weighing all our acts with just weight, will in no way permit us to deviate from the just; nor, if we follow it straightforwardly always as a leader, to suffer error. For since one must always restrain oneself on either side, according to that saying: 'Restrain yourselves on the right hand and on the left' (Deut. 5:32; 2 Cor. 6:7):
one must always press straight forward through discretion; that is, through the light of God, often saying, and chanting the verse of the victorious Psalmist: 'My God, enlighten my darkness, for in you I shall be delivered from temptation' (Ps. 18:28-29). For the life of man upon earth is a temptation (Job 7:1).