for just as a robber comes forth from ambush and joins himself to travelers, feigning himself a companion until he deceives the unwary, and when he suddenly bursts forth, the robber is shown manifest unto destruction, so the vices sometimes mingle themselves dangerously with the virtues until they seize all the efficacy of good work for their own uses, so that the soul which was pleasing to itself on account of its virtues beholds itself deceived by damnable vices. XXXVI. On the desire of virtues. We rise to virtues with difficulty; we slip down to vices without labor. For the latter are downhill, the former steep. For we endure great sweats that we may be able to ascend to heaven.
Just as those tending toward the summit of virtues do not begin from the highest, but from the modest, so that they may gradually reach the loftier things, so also those who slip down to vices do not begin at once from great crimes, but grow accustomed from modest ones, and thus rush headlong into the greatest. Just as little by little a man rushes from the least vices into the greatest, so from modest virtues he strives step by step toward those which are exalted. But he who strives to grasp the virtues in a disordered way is quickly imperiled. This is a cause in the nature of things, that whatever tends swiftly to advancement is without doubt swiftly ended, just as herbs, which perish all the more hastily the more swiftly they grow.
But on the contrary, trees founded upon a deep root therefore endure longer, because they come to their advancement gradually. It profits nothing, with evil mixed in, to do something good, but first one must refrain from evil, then exercise good. For the prophet indicates this when he says: Cease to act perversely, learn to do well. First the vices must be extirpated in a man, then the virtues implanted. For truth cannot cohere and be joined with falsehood, modesty with wantonness, faith with perfidy, chastity with lust. Certain are the highest virtues, but certain are middle. Faith, hope, and charity are the highest virtues. For by whomsoever they are held, they are assuredly held truly.
But the other virtues are middle, because they can be held both for profit and for ruin, if anyone should swell arrogantly over them—such as learning, fasting, chastity, knowledge, or temporal riches, with which indeed we can work both well and ill. Whoever from being worse has now begun to be better, let him beware of being lifted up over the virtues he has received, lest he fall more grievously through the virtues than he lay before from the fall of the vices. Him whom God justifies, lest he again exalt himself over his virtues, God grants certain gifts of virtues and withdraws certain others, so that, while the mind is lifted up over that which it has, it may again be humbled over that which it knows it by no means has.
Whosoever, inspired by the gift of heavenly grace, is raised to the virtues, if perchance by the hand of the governing God he is restrained by some adversity, lest he be lifted up over the virtues received, he ought not to be broken, because this very thing, that he is humbled by blows, to bear it with equanimity is without doubt of great virtue. XXXVII. On the battle of virtues against vices. Then do holy men more truly cleanse themselves from the filth of the vices, when against single vices single virtues are set by them. Sometimes vices contend with virtues unto profit, so that by the very struggle either the mind may be exercised, or the soul shaken from elation may be restrained. Against the assaults of the vices one must fight with contrary virtues.
Against luxury, purity of heart must be applied; against hatred, love must be made ready; against wrath, patience must be set forth. Furthermore, against fear the strength of confidence must be applied; against sluggishness the warfare of zeal; against sadness likewise joy, against sloth fortitude, against avarice generosity, against pride humility must be opposed. And thus the several virtues restrain the vices that arise against them, and by the strength of divine charity they extinguish the stirrings of temptation. Abstinence tames lust. For as much as the body is broken by fasting, so much is the mind called back from unlawful appetite. Against anger endurance does battle; anger indeed slays itself, but patience, by holding out, bears away the victory.
The hope of eternal joy overcomes the grief of sadness, and the sweetness of inward tranquility soothes the one whom a troubled mind afflicts through outward things. Against envy charity is made ready, and against the burnings of wrath the tranquility of gentleness is applied. The proud imitate the pride of the devil, against whom is set the humility of Christ, by which the lifted-up are brought low. Pride is the queen and mother of the seven chief vices, and these same seven chief vices bring forth from themselves many vices, because they are joined to one another by a certain kinship, so that one arises out of another.
Just as pride, the prince of the seven vices, subjects us to their powers, so Christ, full of sevenfold grace, rescues us from the dominion of the vices; and those whom pride hands over to sevenfold vice, He sets free by the gift of sevenfold grace. Concerning pride. Pride is worse than every vice, whether because it is taken up by the highest and foremost persons, or because it arises out of the work of justice and virtue, and its guilt is less felt. But the luxury of the flesh is notable to all, since it is at once and of itself base. And yet, when God weighs it, it is less than pride; but he who is held by pride and does not perceive it falls into the luxury of the flesh, so that, humbled by this, he may rise both from confusion and from pride.
Every sinner is proud, in that by doing forbidden things he holds the divine commandments in contempt. Rightly, therefore, pride is the beginning of every sin, because unless disobedience to the commandments of God has gone before, the guilt of transgression does not follow. All pride lies as low as it lifts itself up on high, and falls the more deeply the more loftily it is exalted. For he who is raised up through his own pride is bowed down through the justice of God. Those who are puffed up with pride are fed with wind; whence also the prophet says: 'The wind feeds all thy shepherds,' that is, the spirit of pride. Those who are proud of their own virtues are to be judged by the very works which they use in place of virtues, because they do a good thing not with a good will.
For truly, any virtue whatsoever without humility, and without charity, is reckoned among the vices. It was by the desert of pride that the devil fell from the heavenly blessedness. Those, therefore, who are lifted up on account of their virtues imitate the devil; and thereby they fall the more grievously, because they slip down from lofty heights. Pride, as it is the origin of all crimes, so it is the ruin of all virtues. For it is the first in sin, the last in the struggle. For either at the outset it lays the mind low through sin, or at the very end it casts it down from its virtues. Hence too it is the greatest of all sins, because it destroys the human mind both through the virtues and through the vices.
Pride falls in the very place where it is born, so that for the proud the guilt is not one thing and the penalty another, but the guilt itself is for them also the penalty. From pride is born arrogance, not from arrogance is pride born. For unless a hidden elation of the mind has gone before, the open boasting of praise does not follow. Thus, therefore, in guilt pride is set before arrogance, just as it is placed first in origin. Very often, for the correction of elation, by the providence of God some fall through some mischance, so that, rebuked by their own fall, they may be humbly wise, and may not seek to be praised for the gifts of God, but may praise the God from whom they received that for which they wish to be praised.
It is more profitable to slip by whatever vice of the arrogant, and to become humble before God after a fall, than to be proud through elation and to incur the graver damnation of ruin through pride. Concerning fornication. From the guilt of pride one very often passes into the abominable uncleanness of the flesh. For the one hangs upon the other; but just as through pride of mind one passes into the prostitution of lust, so through humility of mind the chastity of the flesh is kept safe. God, moreover, sometimes casts down the hidden pride of the mind through a manifest ruin of the flesh. The uncleanness of lust is born from the hidden pride of the soul, by the example of the first man, who, as soon as he swelled with pride against God, at once felt the lust of the flesh and covered his shameful parts.
Wherefore let each one impute to his own guilt the fact that he has fallen, as often as he is overcome by lust, because unless a hidden pride had gone before, the manifest ruin of lust would not have followed. Sometimes the Christian is assailed by the devil with a twofold vice, both secretly through elation and publicly through lust. But while one avoids lust, he falls into elation. Again, while he carelessly turns aside from elation, he falls slothfully into lust; and thus from the hidden vice of elation one passes into the open vice of lust, and from the open vice of lust one passes into the hidden vice of elation. But the servant of God, discerningly weighing both, so guards against lust that he does not run into elation, and so presses down elation that he does not release his mind into lust.
To the lustful and the proud the demons show themselves greater patrons; and while the malignant spirits serve men in the other vices, to these two they are joined with a greater familiarity, and wait upon them more fully according to their desire. It is chiefly by these two vices that the devil rules over the human race, that is, through pride of mind and luxury of the flesh. Whence the Lord speaks to Job concerning the devil, saying: 'He sleeps under the shadow, in the covert of the reed, in moist places.' For by the reed empty pride is signified, but by the moist places the luxury of the flesh is shown. For through these two vices the devil possesses the human race, either while he raises the mind into pride, or while through luxury he corrupts the flesh.
Many are subjected to luxury, and with obstinate pride they boast of the very work of luxury, and are thereby the more lifted up in the very thing for which they ought to have been humbled. By comparison an evil becomes worse, when not only are shameful deeds committed, but men, lost through the vanity of praise, are exalted over those very shameful deeds, as it is written: 'For the sinner is praised in the desires of his soul.' For what is worse than for wretched men to rejoice in shameful deeds over which they ought rather to weep abundantly? Lust is then the more sought after, while it is looked upon. For as a certain wise man said: 'The first weapons of fornication are those of the eyes, the second those of words.' But he who is not captured by the eyes can resist the words. Nature suffices where the affection is still free.
He who bridles the delight of lustful suggestion does not pass over to consent to lust. For he quickly resists the deed who does not yield to the titillating delight. He is more harshly assailed who is tempted even to consent, though not to perpetration, than he who by mere suggestion, according to the condition of the flesh, is solicited by temptations. The goads of the flesh which were in Paul, stirred up by the angel of Satan, were from the law of sin, which dwells in the members of men by the necessity of lust. And while he struggles against it, resisting within himself, he is perfected, and from the weakness of the lustful titillation he receives the virtue of a glorious contest. Many contests are stirred up in the servants of God from their own flesh;
for although their intention is unshaken in the love of God, yet the mind endures inward battles from the flesh which it outwardly bears. But God, who permits these things for a testing, by His protecting grace does not desert His own. Therefore the elect sometimes fall through a carnal lapse, that they may be healed of the vice of pride by which they swell over their virtues; and those who become proud through the effects of their virtues are humbled by a vice of the flesh, that having fallen they may rise. Before adultery is accomplished in the deed, adultery already stands in the thought. For fornications must first be taken away from the heart, and not break forth into the deed. Hence it is that it is said through the prophet:
'Gird up your loins above your breasts,' that is, cut off in the heart the lusts which pertain to the loins, for the heart is above the breasts, not in the loins. The unbridled license of lust knows not how to keep a measure. For when the vicious soul has let itself loose in fulfilling fornication with the flesh running to luxury, it nonetheless passes to other unspeakable crimes at the demons' persuasion; and when it has immoderately overstepped the bounds of shame, it adds crime to crimes, and little by little advances to worse things. The uncertain lust of lovers, nay rather of madmen, is not so sweet as when it has been tasted; nor does fornication so delight when it is first committed, for repeated it brings a greater delight.
But now, if it has come into habitual practice, it becomes so much sweeter to the lost that it is difficult to be overcome. Whence also often, from the habit of sinning, we are drawn as it were captive to sin with a certain violence, and we feel our senses rebelling within us against right will. If the delight of fornication pleases the mind more than the love of chastity, sin still reigns in the man. Surely if the beauty of inward chastity delights more, then sins no longer reign, but justice reigns. For not only does sin reign in a man from committed fornication; but if he still takes delight in it and holds it in his mind, without doubt it reigns. Fornication of the flesh is adultery; fornication of the soul is the servitude of idols.
There is also a spiritual fornication, according to what the Lord says: 'Whoever looks upon a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.' Every unclean pollution is called fornication, although each is prostituted by a different pleasure of baseness. For from the delight of fornicating various shameful deeds are begotten, by which the kingdom of God is closed and man is separated from God. Among the other seven vices, fornication is of the greatest wickedness, because through the uncleanness of the flesh it violates the temple of God, and taking away the members of Christ, it makes them members of a harlot. It is chiefly through the luxury of the flesh, more than through the other vices, that the human race is subjected to the devil.
For while he strives to pervert men enticed by various temptations, he suggests rather the desire of committing adultery, because he intends both sexes to be the more sick in this vice. The demons, knowing that chastity is the beauty of the soul, and that through it man is made equal to the angelic merits from which they themselves fell, being struck with the venom of envy, inject through the bodily senses the work and desire of lust, so that they may drag down the soul, cast down from heavenly things, and, boasting of what they have conquered, lead it with themselves to the depths of hell.
When by the impulse of demons the mind is driven to the delight of fornication, let the fear of divine judgment and the torments of the eternal burning be set before the eyes, because assuredly every pain is overcome by the dread of a graver punishment. For as a nail drives out a nail, so often the recollection of the fire of Gehenna shuts out the fire of luxury. Certain men, living luxuriously in youth, delight to become continent in old age, and then choose to serve chastity when lust disdains to have them as its slaves. By no means are those to be called continent in old age who lived luxuriously in youth. Such have no reward, because they had no struggle of labor.
For glory awaits those in whom there have been laborious struggles. Concerning continence. Continence is given by God, but ask and you shall receive. It is bestowed, moreover, when God is knocked upon with inward groaning. Virginity is preferred to marriage. For that is good, this is best. Marriage is permitted, virginity is only counseled, not commanded. But it is only counseled because it is exceedingly lofty. Virginity is a twofold good, because both in this world it loses the anxiety of the age, and in the future it receives the eternal reward of chastity. Virgins are happier in eternal life, as Isaiah testifies: 'Thus says the Lord to the eunuchs:
I will give them in my house and within my walls a place, and a name better than of sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name, which shall not perish.' Nor is there any doubt that those who persevere chaste and virgin are made equal to the angels of God. The beauty of chastity is to be loved. Its delight, once tasted, is found sweeter than that of the flesh. For chastity is the fruit of sweetness, the inviolate beauty of the saints. Chastity is the security of the mind, the health of the body; whence even some of the pagan athletes practiced perpetual abstinence from venery, lest they should break their strength by lust. For a luxurious life quickly weakens the flesh, and, once broken, swiftly leads it to old age. Every sin receives the healing of its wound through penance;
but virginity, if it slips away, is by no means restored. For although by repenting it receives the fruit of pardon, it nonetheless in no way recovers its former incorruption. A virgin in flesh but not in mind has no reward in the promise. Whence to the foolish virgins the Savior, coming in judgment, says: 'Amen I say to you, I know you not.' For where He, judging, shall find a corrupted mind, He will without doubt condemn the incorruption of the flesh. The incorruption of the flesh profits nothing where there is not the integrity of the mind, and it avails nothing to be clean in body for one who is polluted in mind. Many of the reprobate know not the contagion of carnal corruption;
who, as they are barren in body, so they remain sterile also in mind, void of the fruitfulness of good work. These would rightly rejoice in their virginity, if they did not serve other depraved works. He who professes himself continent, and yet is not withdrawn from other earthly desires, although the luxury of the flesh does not pollute him, is nonetheless stained by various workings of worldly conduct. Virgins glorying in their own merits are compared to hypocrites, who seek outwardly the glory of a good work which they ought to have kept humbly within their conscience. Such, therefore, do not attain to the heavenly promises, because they themselves take away from themselves the reward of virginity through the vice of elation.
For this is, in the Gospel, the virgins' not having oil in their vessels, that is, not keeping the testimony of good work within the conscience, but glorying in the face before men, not in the heart before God. The ruin of adultery is warded off by the prop of matrimony, and it is better to take a wife than to perish through the burning of lust. Certain men take delight in the honor of marriage not for the begetting of children, but seek it for a turbulent and lustful habit of the flesh, and thus they use a good thing badly. Vices are evil in themselves, but marriages and powers are indeed good in themselves; they become evil, however, through the things that surround them. For marriages are evil through that on account of which the apostle says: 'But he who is with a wife thinks of the things of the world';
'and on account of fornication let each one have his own wife.' So too powers become evil through elation, through oppression, and through the perversion of justice as well. For marriages do harm, and powers do harm, but through that which is placed beside them, not through themselves; by the example of a straight road, alongside which thorns grow, which springing up from the side do harm to those who walk on the straight road. Concerning cupidity. No one can undertake spiritual wars unless he has first tamed the cupidities of the flesh. The mind cannot be free to contemplate God, which gapes after the desires and cupidities of this world. For neither can the eye behold lofty things which the dust closes up.
Worse than every sin is avarice and the love of money. Whence also through Solomon it is said: 'Nothing is more wicked than to love money; for such a one makes his own soul venal, since in his life he has cast away his innermost being.' Cupidity is the material of all crimes. Whence also the apostle says: 'The root of all evils is cupidity, which some coveting have erred from the faith.' If, therefore, the root of crimes is cut down, the other offshoots of sins do not sprout. Many, for the sake of earthly cupidity, have even renounced the faith itself. For cupidity sold Christ.
For in very many the desire for others' goods is so great that they do not even fear to commit murder, like Ahab, who by the appetite of his cupidity glutted himself with the shedding of blood. Often the wicked both covet and attain the evils which they desire, in order that from the effect of an evil desire they may be the more grievously punished. But God does not let His elect go into the fulfillment of their evil desires, but turns their mind into grief for that which in the world they wickedly desire, so that by this experience they may come to their senses and return to God, from whom they had departed in mind. God, therefore, is against them by being favorable to them, when he who covets something temporally is not permitted to fulfill it.
But by the secret judgment of God it comes to pass that those perish more harshly whose cupidity the effect of action at once follows. Cupidity never knows how to be satisfied. 'For the miser always lacks,' and the more he acquires, the more he seeks; nor is he tormented only by the desire of increasing, but he is also afflicted by the fear of losing. Needy we are born into this life, needy we shall depart from life. If we believe the goods of this world to be perishable, why do we desire perishable things with so great a love? Very often the powerful are inflamed with so great a madness of cupidity that they exclude the poor from their own borders and do not permit them to dwell there. To whom it is rightly said through the prophet: 'Woe to you who join house to house, and couple field to field, even to the end of the place.
Shall you alone dwell in the midst of the earth?' Indeed the same prophet subsequently announces that hell, that is the devil, snatches such men to perdition, saying: 'Therefore hell has enlarged its soul and opened its mouth without any limit, and their strong ones and their lofty ones and their glorious ones shall go down to it.' Nor is it any wonder that in dying they are consigned to the fires of hell, who while living in no way extinguished the flame of their cupidity. Those who burn with the desire of cupidity are scorched by the blast of diabolical inspiration. For pride kindled the mind of Eve, that she might eat of the forbidden tree. Envy kindled the mind of Cain, that he might kill his brother. It kindled Solomon with the torches of luxury, so that, through the love of lust, he worshiped idols.
It kindled Ahab with cupidity, that he might join murder to avarice. By these inspirations, therefore, the devil depraves the hearts of men with hidden cupidities. Concerning gluttony. The first suggestion of concupiscence is that of bread; and if it is by no means yielded to, the various desires of gluttony are held in check. Whence Daniel says: 'I ate not the bread of desire,' that is, I did not fulfill the concupiscence of it. The first material of luxury is the satiety of bread. Whence also the prophet accuses Sodom on account of the satiety of bread, saying: 'This was the iniquity of Sodom: pride, satiety of bread, and abundance.'
For the Sodomites, taking bread immoderately, flowed away into the basenesses of shameful deeds, and thence, with pride accompanying, they deserved to be burned by the heavenly fires, from the moment they kept no measure of gluttony. It is useful to guard against gluttony and the concupiscence of foods. For what is so harmful as that the soul should serve the belly and the food, which are to be destroyed, as the apostle testifies, saying: 'But God will destroy both the one and the other'? Lust is next to the belly, as in place, so in vice. For where there is care of the belly, there also is that which is next to the things that are around the belly. For in the order of the members the genitals are joined to the belly, and while one of these is immoderately refreshed, the other is excited to luxury.
Not for luxury or for satiety, but only that the body may be sustained, is food to be used. For, as the philosophers argue, foods were invented to sustain the soul, not to corrupt it. Those who use food to excess, the more they feed the belly, so much the more do they dull the sense of the mind. For the Greeks said that from a gross belly a subtle sense cannot be begotten. For excessive satiety of the gullet dulls the edge of the mind and makes the wit grow blunt. The fires of lust increase with the fomentations of food; but the body which abstinence breaks, temptation does not burn up.
Whence also the three young men who abstained, the flame of the Babylonian fire, though it touched them, did not burn, because assuredly, even though the fire of carnal desires inflames the minds of those who abstain, it nonetheless does not burn them up as far as the consent of concupiscence or of the deed. Let the abundance of the feasting of that rich man who burned attend to his punishment, whose want in hell among the fires was as great as here his abundance of feasting had been. For in this age he refused to hunger and to thirst; therefore there, amid the flames, thirsting, he sought a drop of water and did not deserve it. It must be considered how vehemently gorging and sumptuous banquets are censured through the prophet, so that the Lord threatens that He will not relax this iniquity to those who willingly go after it.
For He says through Isaiah: 'Behold joy and gladness, killing calves and slaughtering rams, eating flesh and drinking wine; surely this iniquity shall not be forgiven you, until you die!' Just as all carnal cupidities are cut back by abstinence, so all the virtues of the soul are destroyed by the vice of gluttony. Hence it is that the chief of the cooks overthrew the walls of Jerusalem, because the belly too, which is served by cooks, destroys the virtues of the soul. For no one can attain the perfection of the virtues unless he has first tamed the gluttony of the belly. No one can have dominion over the other vices unless he has first restrained the gluttony of the belly.