but in the age to come, when equality reigns, it will cease, since there will no longer be the inequality on account of which these things ought to be practised, but all will pass over from this manifold—that is, active—operation to the love of God and the contemplation of divine things, in perpetual purity of heart. To this those who have a care to press on either to knowledge or to the cleansing of the mind, being already established in this age, have chosen to devote themselves with all effort and strength—reckoning themselves, indeed, to that office while yet set in the flesh of corruption, in which office they shall abide when corruption has been laid aside, attaining to that promise of the Lord and Saviour whereby it is said: 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God' (Matt 5:8).
And why do you wonder if those offices comprehended above shall pass away, when the holy Apostle describes even the more sublime charisms of the Holy Spirit as destined to pass away, but designates love alone as destined to remain without end, saying: 'whether there be prophecies, they shall be made void; whether tongues, they shall cease; whether knowledge, it shall be destroyed'; but of love: 'love never fails' (1 Cor 13:8)? For all gifts are bestowed for a time according to use and necessity, and, the dispensation being completed, are soon without doubt to pass away; but love shall be cut off by no time.
For not only does it work usefully in us in the present world, but also in the future, when the burden of bodily necessity has been cast off, it will remain far more efficacious and excellent, never to be corrupted by any defect, but through perpetual incorruption clinging to God more ardently and more intently. GERMANUS: Who then, surrounded by frail flesh, can be so always fixed upon this theoria as never to think of a brother's coming, of the visitation of the sick, of the work of the hands, or certainly of the kindness to be shown to strangers and newcomers? Finally, who is not interrupted by the very provision or care of the body? Or in what manner the mind can cleave to that invisible and incomprehensible God, we desire to be taught. MOSES:
To cling to God perpetually and to be inseparably joined to His contemplation, in the manner you speak of, is impossible for a man surrounded by this frailty of the flesh. But we ought to know where we should keep the intention of our mind fixed, and to what aim we should ever recall the gaze of our soul: which when the mind has been able to obtain, let it rejoice; and let it grieve and sigh whenever it finds itself drawn away from it, and let it reckon that it has fallen back from the supreme good as often as it detects itself separated from that gaze, judging it fornication and a momentary departure from the contemplation of Christ. And when our gaze has strayed a little from Him, let us again turn the eyes of the heart back to Him and recall the vision of the mind as by a most straight line.
For the whole thing consists in the inner recess of the soul, whence, the devil being expelled and vices by no means any longer reigning in it, the kingdom of God is consequently founded in us, as the Evangelist says: 'The kingdom of God shall not come with observation; neither shall they say, Behold here, or behold there: for amen I say to you that the kingdom of God is within you' (Luke 17:20-21). But within us there can be nothing else than the knowledge or the ignorance of the truth, and either the friendship of vices or of virtues, through which we prepare a kingdom in our heart either for the devil or for Christ. The character of which kingdom the Apostle also describes, saying thus: 'For the kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit' (Rom 14:17).
And so, if the kingdom of God is within us, and that kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy, then he who abides in these is without doubt in the kingdom of God; and on the contrary, those who dwell in unrighteousness and discord and death-working sadness are established in the kingdom of the devil and in hell and death. For by these tokens the kingdom either of God or of the devil is discerned. And in very truth, if with sublime gaze of the mind we consider that state in which the heavenly and supernal powers pass their existence, who are truly in the kingdom of God, what else must it be believed to be than perpetual and unceasing gladness? For what is so proper to true blessedness and so fitting to it as unceasing tranquillity and everlasting joy?
And that you may be more surely instructed that this which we say is so, not by my conjecture but by the authority of the Lord Himself, hear Him most plainly describing the character and state of that world: 'Behold,' He says, 'I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former things shall not be in memory, nor come up upon the heart. But you shall be glad and rejoice for ever in the things which I create' (Isa 65:17-18). And again: 'Joy and gladness shall be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of praise. And there shall be month out of month, and sabbath out of sabbath' (cf. Isa 51:3; 66:23). And again: 'They shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away' (Isa 35:10).
And if you wish to learn yet more clearly of that conversation and city of the saints, attend to the things which are addressed to Jerusalem herself by the voice of the Lord: 'And I will make,' He says, 'your visitation peace, and your rulers righteousness. Iniquity shall no more be heard in your land, wasting and destruction within your borders, and salvation shall occupy your walls, and praise your gates. The sun shall be no more to you for light by day, neither shall the brightness of the moon enlighten you: but the Lord shall be to you for an everlasting light, and your God for your glory. Your sun shall no more go down, and your moon shall not be diminished: but the Lord shall be your everlasting light, and the days of your mourning shall be ended' (Isa 60:17-20).
And therefore the blessed Apostle does not generally or simply pronounce all joy to be the kingdom of God, but expressly and specially that alone which is in the Holy Spirit. For he knows that there is also another, blameworthy joy, of which it is said: 'This world will rejoice' (John 16:20), and: 'Woe to you who laugh, for you shall weep' (Luke 6:25). The kingdom of heaven, indeed, is to be understood in a threefold manner: either that the heavens shall reign—that is, the saints over others made subject to them, according to that word: 'Be you over five cities, and you over ten' (Luke 19:19,17), and that which is said to the disciples:
'You shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel' (Matt 19:28); or that the heavens themselves shall begin to be ruled by Christ, when, all things being made subject to Him, God shall have begun to be all in all (1 Cor 15:28); or certainly that the saints shall reign in the heavens with the Lord. Wherefore, let each one, while set in this body, already know that he is to be assigned to that region or ministry of which in this life he has shown himself a partaker and cultivator; and let him not doubt that he shall be a partner in that everlasting age of that to which he now prefers to show himself a minister and companion, according to the sentence of the Lord who says thus: 'If any man minister to me, let him follow me, and where I am, there also shall my minister be' (John 12:26).
For just as the kingdom of the devil is taken on through the connivance at vices, so the kingdom of God is possessed through the exercise of virtues in purity of heart and spiritual knowledge. But where the kingdom of God is, there without doubt is also eternal life held; and where the kingdom of the devil is, there it is not doubtful that death and hell are. And he who is in that state cannot even praise the Lord, according to the sentence of the prophet who says: 'The dead shall not praise you, O Lord: nor all those who go down into hell' (without doubt: of sin). 'But we,' he says, 'who live' (not, that is, to vices nor to this world, but to God), 'will bless the Lord, from this time forth and for evermore' (Ps 113:17-18). For he who is mindful of God is not in death;
but in the hell (of sin) who shall confess to the Lord? That is, no one. For no one, even though a thousand times over he profess himself to be a Christian or a monk, when he sins confesses God; no one who commits the things that the Lord abhors is mindful of God, nor does he truly profess himself the servant of Him whose precepts he despises with obstinate rashness. In which death the blessed Apostle pronounces that widow to be who lives in pleasures, saying: 'The widow who lives in pleasures is dead while living' (1 Tim 5:6). There are, therefore, many who, living in this body, are dead, and lying in hell cannot praise God; and on the contrary, there are those who, though dead in body, bless and praise God in spirit, according to that word:
'Bless the Lord, you spirits and souls of the just' (Dan 3:86), and: 'Let every spirit praise the Lord' (Ps 150:6). And in the Apocalypse the souls of the slain are said not only to praise God, but even to make intercession (Rev 6:9-10). In the Gospel also the Lord more evidently says to the Sadducees: 'Have you not read that which was spoken by God, saying to you: I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. For all live to Him' (Matt 22:31-32; Luke 20:38). Concerning whom the Apostle also says: 'For which cause God is not ashamed to be called their God: for He has prepared for them a city' (Heb 11:16).
For that they are not idle after their separation from this body, nor perceive nothing, even the parable of the Gospel which is set forth concerning that poor Lazarus and the rich man clothed in purple shows, of whom the one merits a most blessed seat, that is, the rest of Abraham's bosom, while the other is burned by the intolerable heat of eternal fire (Luke 16:19-25). But if we should wish to attend also to that which is said to the thief: 'Today you shall be with me in paradise' (Luke 23:43), what else does it plainly signify than that in souls there persist not only their former intelligence, but also that they enjoy a fitting requital according to the quality of their deserts and deeds?
For the Lord would by no means have promised this to him, had He known that his soul, after its separation from the flesh, was either to be deprived of sensation or to be dissolved into nothing. For it was not his flesh that was to enter into paradise, but his soul, together with Christ.
To be avoided indeed—nay rather, with all horror to be detested—is that most depraved distinction of the heretics, who, since they do not believe that Christ could on the same day on which He descended into hell also be found in paradise, distinguish thus: 'Amen I say to you today,' and, having interposed the distinction, add: 'you shall be with me in paradise'—so that, forsooth, this promise is to be understood as fulfilled not immediately after the passing of this life, but as to be fulfilled after the coming of the resurrection; not understanding that which He uttered to the Jews before the day of His resurrection, who believed that He, like themselves, was confined within human straits and carnal weakness: 'No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven' (John 3:13).
By which words it is plainly proved that the souls of the departed are not only not deprived of their senses, but do not even lack these affections—that is, hope and sadness, joy and fear—and that, of the things which are reserved for them in that general examination, they already begin to foretaste somewhat; nor, according to the opinion of certain unbelievers, are they dissolved into nothing after their departure from this sojourn, but subsist more vividly and cling more intently to the praises of God.
And truly, if for a little while we set aside the testimonies of the Scriptures and, according to the modest measure of our own understanding, dispute some few things about the very nature of the soul: is it not beyond all folly — I will not say the silliness, but the very madness of ineptitude — even lightly to suspect that this more precious portion of man, in which, according to the blessed Apostle, the image and likeness of God also consists, becomes insensible once it has laid down this bodily burden by which it is now blunted in the present life? For this portion, containing within itself the whole power of reason, makes even the mute and insensible matter of the flesh to become sensible by the sharing of itself. Since surely it is consequent, and the very order of reason maintains it, that this mind, once stripped of the carnal grossness by which it is now dulled, should restore its intellectual powers to something better, and receive them purer and subtler rather than lose them.
And that what we say is true, the blessed Apostle so well knows that he even longs to depart from this flesh, so that by separation from it he may more earnestly be able to be joined to the Lord, saying: 'I have a desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ, for that is far better; for while we are in the body we are absent from the Lord. And therefore we are bold, and we have a good will rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord. Wherefore also we strive, whether absent or present, to please Him' — declaring, that is, that the soul's sojourn while it is in this flesh is a pilgrimage away from the Lord and an absence from Christ, and confidently believing with all his faith that its separation and departure from this flesh is presence with Christ.
And yet more clearly again concerning this same most living state of souls the same Apostle says: 'But you are come to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to the company of many thousands of angels, and to the church of the firstborn who are written in heaven, and to the spirits of the just made perfect.' Of which spirits he says in another place: 'The fathers of our flesh we had as instructors, and we reverenced them: shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits, and live?' But the contemplation of God is conceived in many ways.
For God is known not only in the marveling at that incomprehensible substance of His — which is yet still hidden in the hope of the promise — but He is also perceived from the greatness of His creatures, from the consideration of His justice, and from the help of His daily governance:
namely, when with a most pure mind we survey the things He has done with His saints through each generation; when with trembling heart we marvel at His power, by which He governs, moderates, and rules all things; when we marvel at the immensity of His knowledge and that eye from which the secrets of hearts cannot lie hidden; when we consider that the sand of the sea and the number of the waves are measured and known to Him; when in amazement we contemplate that the drops of rain, the days and hours of the ages, and all things past and future stand present to His knowledge:
when with a kind of ecstasy of admiration we behold His ineffable clemency, by which with untiring long-suffering He bears with the countless outrages that are committed at every single moment before His very sight; His calling, by which by the grace of His mercy He has taken us to Himself with no preceding merits; and finally, how many occasions of salvation He grants to those to be adopted:
in that He so ordained us to be born that from our very cradles His grace and the knowledge of His law were handed down to us; in that He Himself, conquering the adversary in us, rewards us with eternal blessedness and everlasting rewards merely for the assent of a good will; and lastly, in that He undertook the dispensation of His incarnation for our salvation and spread abroad the wonders of His mysteries among all the nations. But there are also countless other contemplations of this kind, which arise in our perceptions according to the quality of our life and the purity of our heart, by which God is either seen by pure gazes or held fast. And no one will hold these perpetually in whom anything of carnal affections still lives, for the Lord says: 'You shall not be able to see My face:
for man shall not see Me and live' — that is, to this world and to earthly affections. GERMANUS: What then is it, that even against our will, indeed even without our knowing, superfluous thoughts so subtly and secretly creep in upon us, that not only to expel them but even to understand and detect them is a matter of measureless difficulty? Can the mind then ever be found free from these and never be assailed by illusions of this kind? MOSES: That the mind should not be beset by thoughts is indeed impossible; but to accept them or to reject them is possible for everyone who applies himself. Just as, therefore, their rising does not depend altogether upon us, so their rejection or their choice rests in us.
And yet, from what we have said — that it is impossible for the mind not to be approached by thoughts — not everything is to be attributed either to the assault or to those spirits who strive to thrust them upon us. Otherwise neither would free will remain in man, nor would the diligence of our own correction stand within us. But it is, I say, largely our own affair that the quality of our thoughts be amended, and that either holy and spiritual thoughts or earthly and carnal ones grow together in our hearts.
For this reason frequent reading and continual meditation on the Scriptures are employed, that from thence an occasion of spiritual memory may be furnished us; for this reason the constant chanting of the psalms, that from thence unceasing compunction may be ministered to us; for this reason the diligence of vigils, fasts, and prayers is applied, that the mind, being made lean, may not savor of earthly things but may contemplate heavenly ones. When these cease, negligence creeping in again, it is necessary that the mind, caked with the filth of vices, should soon incline to the carnal part and fall. This exercise of the heart is not unfittingly compared to the likeness of millstones, which the headlong rush of the water's current whirls round in a rotating drive. These indeed can by no means cease from their work, being turned about by the impulses of the water:
but it lies within the power of him who is in charge whether he would rather have wheat, or barley, or tares ground. For that, without doubt, is to be milled which has been put in by him to whose care the work of that mill has been committed. So then, the mind too, whirled about on every side by the torrents of temptations pressing in through the assaults of the present life, cannot indeed be empty of the surges of thoughts; but what kind it ought either to cast off or to prepare for itself, the industry of its own zeal and diligence will provide.
For if, as we have said, we continually have recourse to the meditation of the Holy Scriptures and raise up our memory to the recollection of spiritual things, to the desire of perfection and the hope of future blessedness, it is necessary that the spiritual thoughts which arise from thence should make the mind dwell upon those things which we have meditated.
But if, overcome by sloth or negligence, we are occupied with vices and idle chatter, or entangled in worldly cares and superfluous anxieties, then consequently there will be generated thence, as it were a kind of species of tares, which will minister to our heart a work harmful to it; and according to the sentence of the Lord and Savior, where the treasure of our works or of our intention shall be, there also our heart will necessarily remain. This above all we ought to know: that there are three sources of our thoughts, that is, from God, from the devil, and from ourselves.
And they are from God, indeed, when He deigns to visit us with the illumination of the Holy Spirit, raising us up to a loftier advance, and when by a most wholesome compunction He chastises us for those things in which we have made too little progress or, acting slothfully, have been overcome; or when He unlocks to us the heavenly mysteries and turns our purpose to better deeds and to a better will. As there, when king Ahasuerus, chastised by the Lord, is prompted to seek out the books of the annals, by which, remembering the benefits of Mordecai, he exalts him to the highest degree of honor and forthwith revokes the most cruel sentence against the destruction of the Jewish nation. Or as when the prophet records: 'I will hear what the Lord God will speak in me.' Another also says: 'And the angel who spoke in me said.'
Or when the Son of God promises that He will come, together with the Father, and will make His abode with us. And: 'It is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaks in you.' And the vessel of election: 'You seek a proof of Christ that speaks in me.' But from the devil a series of thoughts is born, when he strives to subvert us as much by the delight of vices as by hidden snares, with the most subtle craft fraudulently displaying evil things in place of good and transfiguring himself for us into an angel of light. Or as the evangelist relates: 'And supper being ended, when the devil had now put it into the heart of Judas, son of Simon Iscariot, to betray the Lord.' And again: 'After the morsel,' he says, 'Satan entered into him.'
Peter also says to Ananias: 'Why has Satan tempted your heart, that you should lie to the Holy Spirit?' And that which we read foretold long before in the Gospel through Ecclesiastes: 'If the spirit of one that has power ascend upon you, leave not your place.' That also which is said to God against Ahab in the third book of Kings, in the person of an unclean spirit: 'I will go forth and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.' But from ourselves thoughts arise when we naturally remember the things which we do, or have done, or have heard. Of which the blessed David says: 'I thought upon the days of old, and I had in mind the eternal years, and I meditated in the night with my own heart, and I was exercised, and I searched out my spirit.' And again:
'The Lord knows the thoughts of men, that they are vain'; and: 'The thoughts of the just are judgments.' In the Gospel also the Lord says to the Pharisees: 'Why do you think evil in your hearts?' This threefold reckoning, then, we ought continually to observe, and to sift with sagacious discernment all the thoughts that emerge in our heart, first tracing out their origins, their causes, and their authors, so that from the merit of those who suggest them we may be able to consider what disposition we ought to show toward them, that we may become, according to the precept of the Lord, approved money-changers.
Whose highest skill and discipline it is to prove which is the purest gold and, as is commonly said, refined bullion, and which has been less thoroughly smelted by the fire of purification; not to be deceived by the most prudent discernment even when a base and worthless copper coin imitates precious currency under the color of gleaming gold; and not only wisely to recognize the coins that bear the likeness of usurpers, but also with keener skill to distinguish those which, though bearing the image of the true king, are yet not lawfully stamped; and then diligently to inquire by the scrutiny of the balance lest anything be lacking to them from the lawful weight. All which things the Gospel word shows, under the example of this name, that we too ought spiritually to observe:
first, that we most diligently scrutinize whatever creeps into our hearts, or if any doctrine has been introduced to us, whether it be purged by that divine and heavenly fire of the Holy Spirit, or whether, pertaining to Jewish superstition or descending from the swelling of secular philosophy, it makes a mere show of piety on the surface only. And this we shall be able to fulfill if we do that which the Apostle says: 'Believe not every spirit, but prove the spirits whether they be of God.'
By which kind those too were deceived who, after the profession of the monastic life, were enticed by the elegance of speech and by certain doctrines of the philosophers, which, heard at first sight as consonant with certain pious sentiments and with religion — deceiving like the gleam of gold — once they had enticed them by the surface, rendered them, deceived as though by copper and counterfeit coins, forever naked and wretched, either recalling them to the noise of the world or dragging them off to heretical errors and swollen presumptions. Which we read that Achan too suffered in the book of Joshua, who, coveting and stealing a golden wedge from the camp of the aliens, deserved to be struck by the anathema and condemned to eternal death.
Secondly, it will befit us anxiously to explore, lest a perverse interpretation fitted to the purest gold of the Scriptures deceive us by the preciousness of the metal. In which the most cunning devil attempted to impose even upon the Lord and Savior, as though upon a simple man, when, corrupting by a malevolent interpretation those things which are to be understood generally of the persons of all the just, he strives to apply them specially to Him who had no need of the guardianship of angels, saying: 'For He has given His angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways: and in their hands they shall bear you up, lest perhaps you dash your foot against a stone':
turning, that is, the precious oracles of the Scriptures by a crafty appropriation and wresting them to a contrary and harmful sense, and casting before us the image of a tyrant's countenance under the color of deceiving gold. Or when he strives to delude us by counterfeit coinage — that is, admonishing that some work of piety be affected which, not proceeding from the lawful mint of the elders, leads under the pretext of virtues to vices: whether by immoderate and unfitting fasts, or excessive vigils, or disorderly prayers, or unsuitable reading, deceiving us and dragging us to a harmful end.
Or when he persuades us to expend pious intercessions and visitations, by which he may shake us out from the spiritual cloisters of the monastery and the secret of beloved quiet, suggesting that we undertake the cares and anxieties of religious and destitute women, so that, the monk being inextricably ensnared in snares of this kind, he may distend him with the occupation of pernicious anxieties. Or indeed when he incites us to desire the holy office of the clergy under the pretext of the edification of many and out of love of spiritual gain, whereby he may tear us away from the humility of this purpose and its strictness.
All which things, though they are contrary to our salvation and profession, yet, veiled under a certain covering of mercy and religion, easily deceive the unskilled and the incautious. For they imitate the coins of the true king, because they seem at present full of piety, but they are not stamped by lawful moneyers — that is, by the approved and catholic fathers — nor do they proceed from the cardinal and public workshop of their conference, but, secretly fabricated by the fraud of demons, are forced upon any that are unskilled and ignorant, not without their detriment.
And these things, although they seem useful and necessary for the present, yet if afterward they begin to be contrary to the solidity of our profession and in a manner to shake the whole body of our purpose, then, even though it be as it were a necessary member, yet a scandalizing one, and one which seems to perform the office of the right hand or the foot, it is wholesome that it be cast away from us and cut off.