For in what do they need carnal action, seeing that by connivance and by the will alone of seeking praise and of pursuing human glory they abundantly beget the ruin of the captive soul? Or what bodily effect had the ancient pride of that aforesaid Lucifer, save that he conceived it in mind and thought alone, thus the prophet recording: Thou that saidst in thy heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will set my throne above the stars of God; I will ascend above the height of the clouds, I will be like the Most High? Who, as he had no one to instigate this pride, so thought alone accomplished for him the consummation of the crime and of perpetual ruin—and that too when no works of the tyranny he affected had followed.
Avarice and anger, although they are not of one nature (for the former is beyond nature, but the latter seems to possess an original seed-plot within us), nevertheless arise in a similar manner; for they for the most part conceive the causes of their arousal from without. For frequently those who are still weaker complain that they have fallen into these vices by the provocation or instigation of certain persons, and plead that they were precipitated either into wrath or into avarice by the provocation of others. But that avarice is beyond nature is here clearly perceived, because it is proved to have neither an original principle within us, nor to be conceived from that matter which reaches to the participation of soul or flesh and to the substance of life.
For nothing is certain to reach the use and necessity of common nature except daily food and drink. But all the remaining materials, with however great zeal and love they be kept, are nevertheless proved by the very use of life itself to be foreign to human need. And therefore this vice, existing as it were beyond nature, assails only the lukewarm and ill-founded monks; whereas those that are natural do not cease to attempt even the most approved of monks, and those indeed dwelling in solitude. And this is proved to be so very true that we recognize certain nations to be in every way free from this passion, that is, from avarice, because they have by no means received the sickness of this vice by use and custom.
That former world too, before the flood, we believe to have long been ignorant of the madness of this covetousness. And this, in each one of us who rightly renounces the world, is proved to be extinguished without any labour, when, all his goods being cast off, he so seeks the discipline of the monastery that he suffers not even a single denarius of them to remain to himself.
Of this matter we can find many thousands of men as witnesses, who, when in a very brief moment they had, by scattering all their possessions, so uprooted this passion that they are no longer even slightly assailed by it—nevertheless, contending at all times against gluttony, cannot be secure unless they fight with immense circumspection of heart and abstinence of body. Sadness and acedia are wont to be engendered, as we said of the foregoing, with no provocation supervening from without. For they are known frequently and most bitterly to vex even solitaries, and those set in the desert and mingled with no human fellowship.
That this is most true, whoever has dwelt in solitude and experienced the battles of the inner man will most easily prove by his very experiences. These eight vices therefore, although they have diverse origins and dissimilar operations, yet the six former ones—that is, gluttony, fornication, avarice, anger, sadness, acedia—are joined together by a certain kinship and, so to speak, concatenation among themselves, so that the excess of the prior becomes the beginning of the following. For from the abundance of gluttony fornication must needs sprout; from fornication, avarice; from avarice, anger; from anger, sadness; from sadness, acedia.
And therefore we must fight against these in a similar manner and by the same method, and we ought always to enter the contests against the following ones starting from those that precede. For the noxious breadth and height of any tree will more easily wither away if first the roots on which it rests are either laid bare or cut through; and the infesting waters will straightway be dried up when the fountain that begets them and the flowing veins have been stopped up by skilful industry. Wherefore, that acedia may be conquered, sadness must first be overcome; that sadness may be driven off, anger must first be thrust out; that anger may be extinguished, avarice must be trampled down; that avarice may be plucked up, fornication must be checked; that fornication may be subverted, the vice of gluttony must be chastised.
But the remaining two, that is, vainglory and pride, are indeed joined together in a manner similar to that which we described concerning the foregoing vices, so that the increase of the former becomes the source of the other (for the excess of vainglory begets the kindling of pride); yet they utterly differ from those six former vices, nor are they leagued with them in a like fellowship, since not only do they receive from them no occasion of their generation, but are even roused in a contrary manner and order. For, those being rooted out, these flourish the more vehemently, and by the death of those they sprout up and grow the more vigorously. Whence also we are assailed by these two vices in a different manner.
For we fall into each one of those six vices when we have been overthrown by those that precede them; but into these two we are in danger of running as victors, and most of all after our triumphs. All the vices therefore, just as they are generated by the increase of those that precede, so are they purged by the diminution of those. And by this reasoning, that pride may be exploded, vainglory must be choked off; and thus, the prior ones always being overcome, the following will subside, and by the extinction of those that precede the remaining passions will wither without labour. And although these eight vices which we have named are connected and intermingled with one another by that reasoning which we have recounted, yet they are more specially divided into four couplings and pairs.
For fornication is leagued with gluttony by a special fellowship; anger with avarice; acedia with sadness; pride is intimately coupled with vainglory. And that we may now dispute severally concerning the kinds of each vice: of gluttony there are three kinds. The first is that which urges the monk to hasten to his refection before the appointed and lawful hour; the second, that which delights in the filling of the belly and in the voracity of any kind of foods; the third, that which desires more refined and most dainty dishes. These three smite the monk with no slight loss, unless he strive to extricate himself from all of them with equal zeal and observance.
For just as the ending of a fast before the canonical hour is by no means to be presumed, so also the gorging of the belly and the sumptuous and exquisite preparation of foods is likewise to be cut off. For from these three causes diverse and most pernicious maladies of the soul are engendered. For from the first is begotten a hatred of the monastery, and thence grows up a horror and intolerance of that same dwelling, which without doubt will presently be followed by departure and most swift flight. From the second the fiery goads of luxury and lust are aroused. The third also knits the inextricable snares of avarice about the necks of its captives, and never suffers the monk to be established in the perfect nakedness of Christ.
That the traces of this passion are in us we detect also by this sign, when perchance, being kept for refection by some brother, we are not content to take the food with that savour with which it was seasoned by him who provides it, but with importunate and unbridled liberty demand that something be poured over them or added to them. This ought by no means to be done, for three reasons. First, because the mind of a monk ought always to be exercised in every practice of endurance and frugality, and, according to the Apostle, to learn to be content with what suffices. For by no means will he be able to restrain the hidden or greater desires of the body, whoever, offended by the tasting of a little unsavouriness, has not been able to chastise even for a moment the dainties of his gullet.
Secondly, because it sometimes happens that at the moment there is lacking that dish which is demanded by us, and we bring shame upon the necessity or frugality of our host, publishing forsooth his poverty, which he had preferred to be known to God alone. Thirdly, because sometimes that savour which we ask to be added is wont to displease others, and we are found to inflict an injury upon many while we desire to satisfy our own gullet and craving. On which account this liberty in us is in every way to be chastised. Of fornication there are three kinds. The first is that which is accomplished by the intercourse of both sexes.
The second is that which is accomplished without the touch of a woman, for which Onan the son of the patriarch Judah is read to have been struck by the Lord, and which in the Holy Scriptures is called uncleanness. Concerning which the Apostle says: But I say to the unmarried and to widows, it is good for them if they so continue, even as I. But if they do not contain themselves, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn. The third is that which is conceived in mind and thought, concerning which the Lord says in the Gospel: Whosoever shall look upon a woman to lust after her hath already committed adultery with her in his heart. These three kinds the blessed Apostle, declaring that they are to be extinguished in like manner, says: Mortify your members which are upon the earth, fornication, uncleanness, lust, and so forth; and again, concerning two of them, to the Ephesians:
But fornication and uncleanness, let it not even be named among you; and again: But know this, that no fornicator, or unclean person, or covetous man, which is the service of idols, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. That these three may be guarded against by us with equal observance, one and the same exclusion of them from the kingdom of Christ deters us alike. Of avarice there are three kinds. The first is that which does not suffer those who renounce to be despoiled of their riches and possessions. The second is that which persuades us with greater covetousness to take back the things which have been scattered by us or distributed to the needy. The third is that which compels us to desire and acquire the things which we did not even possess before. Of anger there are three kinds. The first is that which blazes up within, which in Greek is called thymos.
There is another kind which bursts out into word and deed and effect, which is called orgē (wrath). Of these the Apostle also says: 'But now do you also put away all these: anger, indignation.' A third kind is that which is not vented all at once in a boiling-over for the moment, but is stored up through days and seasons, which is called mēnis (rancour). All of these are to be condemned by us with equal loathing. Of sadness there are two sorts: one which is engendered either when anger dies down, or from a loss inflicted, or from a desire that has been thwarted and frustrated; another which descends from an irrational anxiety of mind or from despair. Of accidie there are two sorts: one which casts down into sleep those who are overwrought, another which urges a man to desert and flee his cell.
Vainglory, although it is manifold and multiform and is divided into diverse kinds, nevertheless has two sorts. The first is that by which we are exalted over carnal and manifest things; the second is that by which we are inflamed with the desire of empty praise over spiritual and hidden things.
In one respect, however, vainglory is usefully taken up by beginners—by those, that is, who are still goaded by carnal vices—so that, for example, if at the time when they are being scorched by the spirit of fornication they conceive in their mind either the dignity of the priestly office or the reputation among all men by which they are believed to be holy and undefiled, and thus, judging the unclean promptings of lust to be foul and unworthy either of their standing or of that rank, they may by this consideration at least turn them away, beating back a greater evil with a lesser one. For it is better for anyone to be assailed by the vice of vainglory than to fall into the fire of fornication, from which, after his fall, he either cannot recover or scarcely can.
This sense one of the prophets elegantly expressed in the person of God, saying: 'For my own sake I will remove my fury far off, and with my praise I will bridle you, lest you perish'—that is, that while you are held in check by the praises of vainglory, you may by no means run down into the depths of hell nor be plunged irrevocably into the consummation of mortal sins. Nor is it any wonder that there is such power in this passion, that it can rein in one who is rushing into the pit of fornication, since it has very often been proved by the experience of many that when it has once corrupted a man with the plague of its poison, it renders him so untiring that it makes him feel neither two days' nor three days' fasts.
This we have often known some in this desert to have confessed: that while they were established in the monasteries of Syria they bore going without food for five days without any effort, but now they are so assailed by hunger even from the third hour that they can scarcely put off their daily fasts until the ninth. On this matter Abbot Macarius beautifully answered one who asked him why in the desert he was smitten with hunger from the third hour, whereas in the monastery he had often felt no hunger, scorning food for whole weeks together; he replied: 'Because here there is no witness of your fast to nourish and sustain you with his praises; but there the pointing finger of men and the food of vainglory used to fatten you.'
Now the figure of this matter—namely, that, as we said, when vainglory comes upon a man the vice of fornication is shut out—is quite beautifully and pointedly set forth in the book of Kings, where Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Assyrians, going up, carried off the people of Israel, who had been taken captive by Necho king of Egypt, out of the borders of Egypt into his own region—not, that is, to restore them to their former liberty and native land, but to lead them off into his own lands, to be carried further away than they had been held captive in the land of Egypt. This figure also fits aptly here. For although it be more tolerable to be enslaved to the vice of vainglory than to that of fornication, yet it is harder to escape from the dominion of vainglory.
For in a certain way the captive who has been led off by a longer stretch of the journey returns more laboriously to his native soil and the liberty of his fatherland; and deservedly is that prophetic rebuke directed at him: 'Why are you grown old in a foreign land?' Rightly indeed is he said to be grown old in a foreign land who is not renewed from earthly vices. Of pride there are two kinds: the first carnal, the second spiritual, which is even more pernicious. For this one attacks more especially those whom it has found to have made progress in certain virtues. These eight vices, then, though they assail the whole human race, do not yet attack all in one and the same manner.
For in one man the spirit of fornication holds the chief place; in another wrath rides supreme; in another vainglory claims the tyranny; in another pride holds the citadel. And although it is agreed that all are assailed by all, yet each of us labours in a different manner and order.
Wherefore the battles against these must be so undertaken by us that each one, examining the vice by which he is most infested, may take up his chief contest against it, fixing all the care and solicitude of his mind upon assailing and watching against it, directing against it his daily darts of fasting, hurling against it at every moment the sighs of his heart and the frequent weapons of his groanings, spending upon it the labours of vigils and the meditations of his heart, and pouring out to God the ceaseless tears of his prayers, and imploring from Him especially and continually the extinction of that assault upon him.
For it is impossible for anyone to merit the triumph over any passion whatever before he has understood that he cannot by his own diligence or labour obtain the victory of the contest; and yet, that he may be able to be cleansed, it is necessary that he remain day and night in all care and solicitude. And when he has felt himself set free from that passion, let him again survey the hidden places of his heart with like intentness, and single out for himself whichever he perceives among the rest to be the fiercer, and let him move against it especially all the arms of the spirit; and thus, the stronger ones being always overcome first, he will have a swift and easy victory over the rest, because both the mind will be rendered stronger by the progress of its triumphs, and the ensuing fight with weaker foes will give him a readier outcome in his battles;
as is wont to happen with those who, before the kings of this world, have been accustomed to contend with beasts of every kind for the prospect of prizes—the kind of spectacle that is commonly called pancarpum. These men, I say, whatever beasts they perceive to be fiercer in strength or in the rage of their ferocity, take up against them the contest of the first encounter; and when these have been slain, they lay low the rest, which are less terrible and less violent, with an easier issue. So too, the stronger vices being always overcome and the weaker succeeding them, a perfect victory will be procured for us without any danger.
Nor, however, is it to be supposed that when a man is fighting chiefly against one vice, and, as it were, looking out too incautiously for the darts of the others, he may the more easily be wounded by an unexpected blow. This will by no means happen. For it is impossible that one who, solicitous for the cleansing of his heart, has armed the intention of his mind against the assault of any single vice, should not also have against the rest a certain general horror and a like watchfulness. For in what way will he merit to obtain the victory over that very passion from which he desires to be set free, if he makes himself unworthy of the reward of purgation by the contagion of the other vices?
But when the chief intention of our heart has taken up, as its special battle, the fight against one passion, it will pray more attentively for that very thing, supplicating with peculiar solicitude and zeal, that it may deserve to watch over it more diligently and thereby to obtain a swift victory. For that we ought to wage this order of battles, and yet not to trust in our own strength, the Lawgiver too teaches us in these words: 'You shall not fear them, because the Lord your God is in the midst of you, a God great and terrible: He Himself will consume these nations before your face little by little and by degrees. You cannot destroy them all together, lest perhaps the beasts of the earth be multiplied against you. And the Lord your God shall deliver them up in your sight:'
and He will slay them until they are utterly destroyed.' But likewise He warns us that we ought not to be exalted in the victory over them: 'Lest,' He says, 'after you have eaten and are filled, and have built fair houses and dwelt in them, and have herds of oxen and flocks of sheep, and abundance of silver and of gold and of all things, your heart be lifted up, and you remember not the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage: and was your guide in the great and terrible wilderness.' Solomon also in the Proverbs: 'If your enemy falls, do not rejoice:'
and when he is overthrown, do not be exalted, lest the Lord see it and it displease Him, and He turn away His wrath from him'—that is, lest, perceiving the elation of your heart, He depart from His assault upon him, and you, being forsaken by Him, begin again to be harassed by that passion which through the grace of God you had before overcome. For the prophet would not have prayed, saying: 'Deliver not, O Lord, to the beasts the soul that confesses to You,' had he not known that on account of the puffing up of the heart some, that they may be humbled, are again delivered over to the very vices they had conquered. Wherefore it behoves us to be certain, taught both by the very experience of things and by innumerable testimonies of Scripture, that by our own
strength, unless we are supported by the aid of God alone, we cannot overcome such great enemies, and that we ought daily to refer to Him the sum of our victory; as also concerning this the Lord admonishes us through Moses: 'Say not in your heart, when the Lord your God has destroyed them before your face: For my righteousness has the Lord brought me in to possess this land, whereas it is for their impieties that these nations are destroyed. For it is not for your righteousness and the equity of your heart that you enter in to possess their lands: but because they have acted impiously, at your entering in they were destroyed.'
I ask, what could have been said more plainly against that pernicious opinion and presumption of ours, by which we wish to attribute all that we do either to free will or to our own industry? 'Say not,' He says, 'in your heart, when the Lord your God has destroyed them before your face: For my righteousness has the Lord brought me in to possess this land.' Has He not evidently expressed it to those who have the eyes of the soul unlocked and ears to hear:
when the wars against the carnal vices have prospered for you, and you see yourself freed from their mire and from the ways of this world, are you, puffed up, to ascribe this not to God's power but to your own virtue and to the success of your fighting and victory, believing that on account of your labours and zeal and the freedom of your choice you have obtained the victory over spiritual wickednesses or carnal vices? Over which, beyond all doubt, you could in no wise at all have prevailed, had not the aid of the Lord fortified and protected you.' These are the seven nations whose lands the Lord promises He will give to the children of Israel when they have gone out of Egypt. And all these things, since, according to the Apostle, they befell them in a figure, we ought to receive as written for our admonition. For thus it is said:
'When the Lord your God has brought you into the land which you are entering to possess, and has destroyed many nations before you—the Hittite and the Girgashite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, seven nations much greater in number than you, and stronger than you: and the Lord has delivered them to you, you shall smite them until they are utterly destroyed.' Now the reason why they are said to be of much greater number is this: because the vices are more than the virtues. And therefore in the catalogue indeed seven nations are enumerated, but in the assault upon them they are set down without any reckoning of number. For thus it is said: 'and has destroyed many nations before you.'
For more numerous than Israel is the people of the carnal passions, which proceeds from this sevenfold tinder and root of vices. For from thence proceed murders, contentions, heresies, thefts, false testimonies, blasphemies, revellings, drunkennesses, detractions, buffooneries, filthy talk, lies, perjuries, foolish talking, scurrility, restlessness, rapacity, bitterness, clamour, indignation, contempt, murmuring, temptation, despair, and many others which it would be too long to recount. And since these are judged by us to be trifling, let us hear what the Apostle thought of them, or what sentence he pronounced upon them:
'Neither murmur,' he says, 'as some of them murmured, and were destroyed by the destroyer'; and concerning temptation: 'Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them tempted, and perished by the serpents'; concerning detraction: 'Love not to detract, lest you be rooted up'; and concerning despair: 'Who, despairing, have given themselves up to lasciviousness, unto the working of all error, in uncleanness.' And that clamour, like anger and indignation and blasphemy, is condemned, we are most manifestly taught by the words of the same Apostle when he thus commands: 'Let all bitterness and anger and indignation and clamour and blasphemy be put away from you, with all malice'—and many other things like these.
And although these are of much greater number than the virtues, yet when those eight principal vices have been vanquished, out of whose nature it is certain that they emanate, they all forthwith subside and are destroyed together with them in one perpetual extermination. For from gluttony are born revellings and drunkennesses; from fornication filthy talk, scurrility, buffoonery and foolish talking; from avarice lying, fraud, thefts, perjuries, greed of base gain, false testimonies, violence, inhumanity and rapacity; from anger murders, clamour and indignation; from sadness rancour, faint-heartedness, bitterness, despair;
from accidie idleness, drowsiness, importunity, restlessness, wandering about, instability of mind and body, verbosity, curiosity; from vainglory contentions, heresies, boasting and presumption of novelties; from pride contempt, envy, disobedience, blasphemy, murmuring, detraction. And that these plagues are even stronger, we plainly feel by the very assault of nature itself. For the delight of carnal passions wars more mightily in our members than the zeal for virtues, which are acquired only by the utmost contrition of heart and body. But if with spiritual eyes you also contemplate those innumerable troops of enemies which the blessed Apostle enumerates, saying:
'Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against the spiritual wickednesses in high places,' and that which is said of the righteous man in the ninetieth psalm: 'A thousand shall fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand'—you will clearly perceive that they are of much greater number and more mighty than we, who are, of course, carnal and earthly, since to them a spiritual and aery substance has been granted. GERMANUS: How then are there eight vices which assail us, since through Moses seven nations are enumerated which oppose the people of Israel; or in what way is it profitable for us to possess the lands of the vices? SERAPION:
It is the settled opinion of all that there are eight principal vices which assail the monk. And that these, figuratively named under the appellation of the nations, are not now all set down, is for this reason: because Moses—or rather the Lord through him—was speaking in Deuteronomy to those who had now gone out of Egypt and been freed from one most powerful nation, that is, from the Egyptians. And this figure is found to stand most rightly in us also, who, being delivered from the snares of the world, are recognized to have escaped from gluttony—that is, the vice of the belly or of the gullet. And we have now, on a like principle, a conflict against these remaining seven nations, the first, of course, which has now been vanquished, being not reckoned at all.