By the most illustrious man John Dominic Mary Mansi, Clerk Regular of the Mother of God, afterward the most worthy archbishop of his native land, this sermon was first drawn out from codex 85 of the chapter of the church of Lucca, and published in the appendix to the works of Stephen Baluze, vol. II, p. 432, marked with the name of St. Maximus. We, moved by the testimonies of four other codices, declare its author to be St. Maximus; that is, of two of the Laurentian library, no. 1 Pluteus 14 p. 120 on the back, of the second, no. 174 of the library formerly of the metropolitan church of Florence, of the third, of the library of the congregation of Monte Oliveto at Naples p. 100, of the fourth finally the Taurinensis. By all, St. Maximus is named as author of the sermon, but not all have the same title. In the Lucca codex:
the sermon is inscribed On the General Fast; in the rest: On Lent. We do not adopt the inscription which the other codices display, On Lent, but that from the Lucca codex, because in this discourse St. Maximus does not treat of the special fast of Lent, but generally of the virtue and merit of fasting, which nevertheless can be applied to the Lenten abstinence. It has often been instilled into your ears, both from the divine Scriptures and from our preachings, that in Adam the first fault of sinning was the enticement of the mind, and that the cause of the transgression was the craving for food. For while amid so many precious feasts of paradise --
he could not keep the fast of abstaining from one thing, he lost the enjoyment of all delights, and lost what was granted while he coveted what was forbidden. Truly, if he had endured abstinence from one food, he would not have gone fasting from so many goods. Whence we, brethren, recognizing in our progenitor the cause of the offence, let us cut away from us the occasion of offence. And the desire which he extended beyond the line of the commandment, let us keep within the bound of the precept, and not allow ourselves, on account of fasts enjoined for a very short time, to lose the sweetness of the whole life. If he sinned by tasting, why should I not please by fasting? If food proved to him unto death, why should not abstinence profit me unto salvation?
Plainly foolish is he who is neither instructed by precepts nor taught by examples. See therefore whether such a precept is not given to us when we are reborn as was set for Adam when he was created. For it is said to us, as to those established in the paradise of delights and resting in the pleasantness upon the Lord's fountains, that we may take food from the fruits of all the virtues, but not taste of the little tree of knowing good and evil alone. Who would be content with such a law, to abstain from one thing that he might delight in very many? We are commanded, I say, to abstain from the little tree of knowing good and evil; and we ought to understand what that little tree is. For surely if the holy are fattened by the fruits of the disciplines, what is the little tree forbidden to the just man, unless the undisciplined ways of the world?
Whoever, after receiving grace, tastes of worldly wantonness, receives the discernment of good and evil. For he begins to know both what of holiness he has lost and into what of perdition he has fallen. Not that the taste of the wood bestows the knowledge itself upon man, but that the conscience was innocent; after it has been polluted, it both bewails the goods it has lost and groans over the evils it has committed. But a life and knowledge unstained is not held bound; for it ever, being holy or simple, thinks this alone to be in man, that which is pure. But wantonness renders one very greatly evil-skilled through the experience of sins. It is good therefore for a Christian to have holy rusticity rather than criminal knowledge. Of the little tree in which good and evil are to be known, I want no such skill.
For what does it profit to know what it profits not to know, what it repents to have known? For such a law the Lord instituted for man in the tabernacle of the Church as He commanded in the possession of paradise. For the Church is a paradise, protected by the pleasantness of diverse virtues, or trees, from whose bosom, as a most shining fountain, Christ goes forth, and after the manner of paradise is derived as it were into the four rivers of the evangelists. For the blessed apostles and evangelists are to be compared to rivers, because by the spirit of their doctrine the face of the whole people is watered. For there is no Christian soul which does not draw from the holy fountain of the evangelists. Plainly the Gospel is as it were a river, of which St. David also says:
The rushing of the river maketh glad the city of God (Ps. 45). For the city of Christ is made glad, when into it the people, purified by the course of evangelical doctrine, is carried, and by a certain rush of preaching His hall is filled with the commerce of holiness. It gladdens, I say, the city of God, the rush of the evangelical word, which carries in some things and purifies others. It carries in the pearls of righteousness, it cleanses away the filth of wickedness. Therefore, brethren, established as it were in the paradise of the Church, we have received a commandment to keep the law of fasting. And let us not violate the consecrated number of forty days even by a slight tasting, because the Lord is not injured by satiety, but offended by the transgression of the law.