The Conferences 12.1–12.10

When the meal was over, which seemed to us, longing as we were for the food of teaching, more burdensome than pleasant, the old man, sensing that we were at once expecting the discourse he owed us, said: “I am pleased not only by the intentness of your mind, eager to learn, but also by the orderliness of the question you have put. For you have indeed kept a reasonable order in your inquiry. For it is necessary that the immense rewards of perfect and perpetual chastity should follow the fullness of so exalted a love, and that the joy should be equal where the palms are so alike. For they are bound together in so close a fellowship that one cannot be possessed without the other. This, then, is what your question includes: that we should explain in a like discussion whether that fire of desire, whose heat this flesh feels as if implanted in it, can be wholly extinguished. On this let us first inquire carefully what the blessed apostle thought. “Put to death,” he says, “your members which are on the earth.” Before we examine the rest, then, let us investigate what these members are that he commanded to be put to death. For the blessed apostle does not drive us by a cruel command to cut off our hands or feet or genitals, but, in zeal for perfect holiness, desires that the body of sin, which certainly consists of members, be destroyed as quickly as possible. Of this body he says elsewhere: “that the body of sin may be destroyed,” and he then explains what its destruction is: “that we may no longer serve sin.” From this body he also begs with a cry to be freed, saying: “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?”

“This body of sin, then, is shown to be built up of many members, the vices, and whatever sin is committed in deed, word, or thought belongs to its share. Its members are most rightly said to be on the earth, for those who make use of their service cannot truthfully declare: “But our citizenship is in heaven.” Describing the members of this body in this place, then, the apostle says: “Put to death your members which are on the earth: sexual immorality, uncleanness, lust, evil desire, and covetousness, which is the service of idols.” In the first place, then, he thought sexual immorality should be put, which is consummated by carnal intercourse. The second member he called uncleanness, which sometimes steals upon a person, whether asleep or awake, through the carelessness of an unguarded mind, without any touch of a woman; and therefore it is marked and forbidden in the law, which not only deprived all the unclean of sharing in the sacred meats, but also ordered them to be separated from the assembly of the camp, lest they pollute the holy things by their touch, saying: “Any soul that eats of the flesh of the peace offering, which is the Lord’s, while uncleanness is on it, shall perish before the Lord,” and: “Whatever the unclean person touches shall be unclean.” In Deuteronomy too: “If there is among you a man who has been defiled by a dream in the night, he shall go outside the camp and shall not return until he has washed in water toward evening; and after sunset he shall return to the camp.” Then he puts the third member of sin, lust, which, growing within the recesses of the soul, can befall someone even without any passion of the body. For there is no doubt that libido, lust, takes its name from libet, “it pleases.” After this, descending from greater sins to lesser, he added a fourth member, evil desire, which can be referred not only to the said passion of unchastity but to all harmful desires in general, and which is a sickness of the corrupted will alone. Of it the Lord says in the gospel: “Whoever looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” For it is far greater to restrain the desire of a slippery mind even when the occasion of an enticing sight is offered to it. By these things it is most plainly proved that the chastity of bodily continence alone cannot suffice for perfection of purity unless integrity of mind is added. After all these, he names the last member of that body, covetousness, showing without doubt that the soul must not only be kept from the craving for other people’s things, but also that one’s own must be magnanimously despised. For we read in the Acts of the Apostles that the multitude of believers did this, of whom it is said: “And the multitude of those who believed were of one heart and one soul, and no one said that any of the things he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common. For as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the prices of what they sold and laid them at the apostles’ feet; and it was distributed to each as anyone had need.” And lest this perfection should seem to concern only a few, he testified that covetousness is the service of idols. And rightly. For whoever does not share in the necessities of the needy, and sets the commands of Christ after his money, which he keeps with faithless tenacity, incurs the crime of idolatry, preferring love of worldly matter to the love of God.

“If, then, we see that many have so cast away their property for Christ that we can prove that not only the possession of money but even the desire for it has been cut out of their hearts for ever, it follows that we should believe that the heat of sexual immorality too can be extinguished in the same way. For the apostle would not have joined an impossible thing with a possible one, but, knowing both to be possible, he decreed that they must be put to death alike. And the blessed apostle is so confident that sexual immorality and uncleanness can be rooted out of our members that he declares they should not only be put to death but not even be named among us: “Let sexual immorality and all uncleanness or covetousness not even be named among you, nor filthiness, nor foolish talk, nor scurrility, which are not fitting.” He also teaches that they are equally pernicious and drive us out by an equal exclusion from the kingdom of God, saying: “But know this, that no one who is sexually immoral or unclean or covetous, which is the service of idols, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God,” and again: “Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the soft, nor those who lie with males, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will possess the kingdom of God.” There should be no doubt, therefore, that the contagion of sexual immorality and uncleanness can be abolished from our members, since he commanded them to be cut off in the same way as covetousness, foolish talk, scurrility, drunkenness, and thefts, which are easily cut away.

“Yet we must be sure that, even if we undergo every strictness of continence, namely hunger and thirst, vigils too and constant work, and unceasing application to reading, we cannot attain the lasting purity of chastity by the merit of these labors, unless, while we sweat continually in them, we are taught by the teaching of experience that its incorruption is granted by the generosity of divine grace. Each one should know that he must persevere tirelessly in these exercises only for this reason: that, having obtained the Lord’s mercy through their affliction, he may deserve to be freed by divine gift from the assault of the flesh and the rule of the overpowering vices; not that he should trust that he will attain by them the inviolate chastity of body that he desires. But let him be inflamed with as great a desire and love for acquiring chastity as that with which a most greedy seeker of money, or one who is driven by the highest ambition for honors, or one who is carried away by an unbearable love of a beautiful woman, longs with most impatient ardor to have his desire fulfilled. So it will come about that, while he burns with insatiable desire for lasting integrity, desirable food will be despised, necessary drink will be shunned, and even the sleep that is owed to nature will be rejected, or at least taken with an alert and suspicious mind as a most fraudulent deceiver of purity and a rival and adversary of chastity. And so each one, becoming every morning an examiner of his own integrity, may rejoice at the purification granted him, and feel that he has obtained it not by his own effort or watchfulness but by the Lord’s protection, and understand that its constancy will cling to his body only as long as the Lord in his mercy grants it. For whoever holds this faith firmly will by no means be proud and trust in his own virtue, nor, beguiled by long respites from the unclean flow, will he be relaxed into a most flattering security, knowing that he would at once be stained by the sprinkling of the foulest defilement if divine protection withdrew from him even a little. And accordingly, for its continuance, he must keep watch in unwearied prayers with all contrition and humility of heart.

“Do you want to grasp a clear proof of the truth of what we are saying, by which you may both confirm what has been said and learn that this bodily warfare, which is thought hostile and harmful to us, has been usefully set in our members? Consider, I ask you, those who are eunuchs in body: what is the chief cause that makes them sluggish and lukewarm in seeking the virtues? Is it not because they believe they are in no danger of having their chastity corrupted? Let no one think that I have said this in order to maintain that none of them at all can be found burning with perfect renunciation; but if any of them strive with the utmost strictness of soul for the palm of perfection set before them, they overcome their nature in a way. For the ardor and desire of that palm compels one whom it has once kindled to bear hunger, thirst, vigils, nakedness, and all bodily labors not only patiently but even gladly. For “a man in sorrows labors for himself and does violence to his own ruin,” and again: “To a needy soul even bitter things seem sweet.” For desires for present things cannot otherwise be either restrained or torn out unless, in place of those harmful feelings that we wish to cut away, other saving ones are brought in. For the liveliness of the mind can in no way exist without some feeling of desire or fear, of joy or grief, unless these same feelings are changed to the good side. And therefore, if we want to drive fleshly desires out of our hearts, let us at once plant spiritual delights in their place, so that our soul, always bound to these, may have something in which to dwell continually and may reject the allurements of present and temporal joys. And when our mind, trained by daily exercises, has advanced to this state, then it will grasp by the teaching of experience the feeling of that verse which we all sing together in the usual chanting of psalms, but whose force only a few who have experienced it perceive: “I set the Lord always before my face, for he is at my right hand, that I may not be moved.” For only he will effectively attain the force and meaning of this song who, reaching this purity of body and soul of which we are speaking, understands that he is kept by the Lord at every moment lest he fall away from it again, and that his right hands, that is, his holy works, are continually protected by him. For the Lord stands by his saints not on the left, since a holy man has nothing “left” about him, but always on the right; but he is not seen by sinners and the ungodly, since they do not have those right hands by which the Lord is accustomed to stand, and they cannot say with the prophet: “My eyes are ever toward the Lord, for he will pluck my feet out of the snare.” No one will be able truthfully to say this except one who, judging everything in this world to be either harmful or superfluous or at least inferior to the highest virtues, has fixed all his gaze, all his zeal, and all his care on the cultivation of his heart and the purity of chastity. And so the mind, refined by these exercises and polished by these advances, will come to perfect holiness of body and soul.

“For as far as one advances in gentleness and patience of heart, so far will he advance in purity of body, and the further he drives away the passion of anger, the more firmly he will hold chastity. For no one will escape the heats of the body unless he has first suppressed the movements of the soul. This the beatitude praised by our Savior’s mouth declares most plainly: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the earth.” We shall not possess our earth in any other way, that is, the earth of this rebellious body will not otherwise be subjected to our control, unless our mind has first been founded in the gentleness of patience; nor will anyone be able to suppress the wars of lust rising against his flesh unless he has first been equipped with the arms of meekness. “For the meek shall possess the earth, and shall dwell upon it for ever and ever.” How we may obtain this earth, I say, the same prophet teaches in what follows in the same psalm: “Wait for the Lord, and keep his way, and he will exalt you to take the earth as an inheritance.” It is clear, then, that no one can rise to the firm possession of this earth except those only who, keeping the Lord’s hard ways and precepts through unshaken gentleness of patience, have been lifted by him out of the mire of fleshly passions. The meek, then, will possess the earth, and not only possess it but also “delight in the abundance of peace,” which no one in whose flesh the wars of desire are still stirred up will enjoy steadily. For he must be assailed by the most dreadful battles of the demons and, wounded by the fiery darts of lust, be thrown out of the possession of his earth, until the Lord “takes away wars to the ends of his earth, breaks the bow and shatters the weapons, and burns the shields with fire,” that fire, namely, which the Lord came to cast upon the earth; he also shatters the bows and weapons with which the spiritual forces of wickedness, fighting against him day and night, used to pierce his heart with the fiery darts of the passions. And so, when the Lord, breaking the wars, has freed him from all the heats of their incitements, he will reach such a state of purity that, laying aside the shame with which he used to shudder at himself, that is, at his flesh, while it was under attack, he begins to delight in it as in a most pure tabernacle (for “evils shall not come near it, and the scourge shall not approach its tabernacle”), attaining by the virtue of patience to that saying of the prophet, so that by the merit of meekness he not only inherits his earth but also delights in the abundance of peace. But where anxiety about the struggle still remains, there cannot be abundance of peace. For he does not say “they will delight in peace,” but “in the abundance of peace.” By this it is plainly shown that patience is so effective a medicine of the heart, according to Solomon’s saying, “A meek man is the physician of the heart,” that it roots out the tinder not only of anger, sadness, acedia, vainglory, and pride, but also of lust and of all the vices alike. For, as Solomon says, “In long-suffering is prosperity for kings.” For one who is always gentle and calm is neither set on fire by the disturbance of anger, nor consumed by the anguish of acedia and sadness, nor distracted by the vanity of vainglory, nor lifted up by the swelling of pride. “For great peace have those who love the name of the Lord, and there is no stumbling block for them.” And so it is rightly declared: “Better is the patient man than the strong, and he who restrains his anger than he who takes a city.” Until, then, we deserve to obtain this peace firm and lasting, we must be tried by many attacks, and we must often repeat this verse with groaning and tears: “I am become wretched and am bowed down utterly; I went about mourning all the day, for my loins are filled with illusions,” and: “There is no health in my flesh because of your anger; there is no peace for my bones because of my folly.” For we shall rightly and truly lament these things when, after a long purity of our body, hoping that we have now escaped fleshly contagions altogether, we feel the goads of the flesh rising against us again because of elation of heart, or when through the deceit of dreams the impurity of the old defilement sprinkles us. For when someone has begun to rejoice in a long purity of heart and body, it is inevitable that, believing he can no longer fall from that sincerity, he should in a way boast within himself and say: “I said in my abundance, I shall never be moved.” But when, abandoned for his good by the Lord, he feels that state of purity in which he trusted disturbed, and sees himself stumbling in that spiritual success, let him run at once to the author of that integrity and, recognizing his weakness, confess and say: “Lord, in your will,” not mine, “you gave strength to my beauty. You turned away your face, and I was troubled,” and also that saying of blessed Job: “If I were washed as with snow water, and my hands shone most clean, yet you would plunge me in filth, and my clothes would abhor me.” Yet one who plunges himself into filth by his own fault cannot say this to his creator. Until, then, he reaches the perfect state of purity, he must be trained quite often by these inequalities, until, strengthened by God’s grace in the purity he seeks, he may deserve to say effectively: “I waited patiently for the Lord, and he regarded me, and heard my prayer; and he brought me up out of the pit of misery and out of the mire of dregs, and set my feet upon a rock, and directed my steps.”

“For there are many degrees of chastity by which one climbs to that inviolable purity. Although our strength is not sufficient to see or describe them as they deserve, yet, since the course of the account requires it, we shall try to set them out somehow according to the modesty of our experience, reserving the more perfect things for the perfect and not prejudging those who, possessing a purer chastity through more fervent zeal, excel in keenness of insight as much as they excel in diligence. So I shall distinguish the lofty heights of chastity by six degrees, though they are far apart from one another in height, passing over certain intermediate ones, which are nevertheless many, and whose subtlety so escapes human perception that neither can the mind see nor the tongue express it, by which the perfection of chastity itself gradually grows through daily progress. For as earthly bodies each day take their increase without noticing it and so, without knowing it, are brought to their full stature, so too the strength and maturity of chastity are acquired by the soul. The first degree of chastity, then, is that the monk should not be struck down by carnal attack while awake; the second, that his mind should not dwell on voluptuous thoughts; the third, that he should not be moved to desire even slightly by the sight of a woman; the fourth, that he should not experience even a simple movement of the flesh while awake; the fifth, that when the course of a discussion or the necessity of reading brings to mind the begetting of human beings, not even the subtlest assent to the voluptuous act should touch his mind, but that he should regard it with a calm and pure gaze of the heart as a simple work and a service necessarily given to the human race, and conceive nothing more from the remembrance of it than if he were thinking of brickmaking or any other trade. The sixth degree of chastity is that he should not be deluded by alluring phantasms of women even when asleep. For although we do not believe that this delusion is liable to sin, it is nevertheless a sign of desire still lurking in the marrow. This delusion, it is clear, happens in different ways. For each one is tempted even in sleep according to the habit he was accustomed to practise or think about when awake. Those who have known carnal union are deceived in one way, and those who have no experience of intercourse with women in another. For the latter, just as they are usually troubled by simpler and purer dreams, so they can also be cleansed with easier care and less labor. But the former are deluded by filthier and more vivid phantasms, until, little by little, according to the measure of chastity each strives for, the mind even when lulled in sleep turns to hatred of the thing it once felt as pleasurable, and the Lord grants it what is promised through the prophet to brave men as the highest wage of their labors: “And I will break the bow and the sword and war out of your land, and I will make you sleep confidently.” And so at last one may come to that purity of blessed Serenus and a few men like him. I have set this apart from the said six degrees of chastity because it can be not only possessed but even believed by very few, and because what was granted to him by the special generosity of a divine gift cannot be set out as the pattern of a general precept: namely, that our mind should be so formed by the purity of chastity itself that, even the natural movement of the flesh being dead, it does not experience that unclean flow at all. I ought not to pass over in silence the opinion of certain people about this defilement of the flesh. They say that it happens to sleepers not because the deceit of dreams produces it, but rather because the overflow of that fluid fashions certain allurements in a sick heart. Finally they say that at the time when that accumulation does not trouble, the delusion ceases just as its flow does.

“But no one will be able to accept or test these things, or to determine by sure examination whether they are possible or impossible, unless through long experience and purity of heart, with the word of the Lord guiding him, he has come to the borders of flesh and spirit. Of this the blessed apostle says: “The word of God is living and effective and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, of joints also and marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” And so, placed as it were between their boundaries, he will discern with a just balance, like an inspector and arbiter, what is necessarily and unavoidably assigned to the human condition and what has been brought in by vicious habit and the carelessness of youth. He will not be led astray by the false opinions of the crowd about their effect and nature, nor will he rest in the prejudged definitions of the inexperienced; but weighing the measure of purity on the sure scale of his own experience and by exact examination, he will by no means be deceived by the error of those who, soiled through the fault of their negligence by more frequent discharges than nature compels, plead natural condition. Although it is clear that they rather do violence to nature and wring from it a pollution that it does not itself bring on, they refer their intemperance to the necessity of the flesh, or rather to its creator, transferring their own faults to the discredit of nature. Of them it is elegantly said in Proverbs: “The folly of a man corrupts his ways, but he blames God in his heart.” Finally, if anyone wishes to withhold belief from this assertion of ours, I ask him not to dispute with us on the basis of a prejudged opinion before he takes up the practices of this discipline; when he has kept them for a very few months with the moderation in which they are handed down, he will certainly be able to test what we have said with true judgment. Otherwise he will argue in vain about the end of any art or discipline who has not first pursued with the greatest zeal and strength all that belongs to its completion. Suppose, for example, I were to assert that something like honey can be produced from wheat, or again that a liquid of the smoothest oil can be produced from it, as also from the seeds of radish and flax: if someone wholly ignorant of these things were present, would he not cry out that this is against the nature of things and laugh at me as the author of a most obvious lie? If I showed him countless witnesses who testify that they have seen, tasted, and made these things, and further explained the method and process by which these substances are changed either into the richness of oil or the sweetness of honey, and he, persisting in the obstinacy of a most foolish conviction, denied that anything either sweet or oily can be produced from those seeds, would not his irrational and stubborn contention be the thing to be censured, rather than the truth of my words be ridiculed, which is supported by the weight of many faithful witnesses, by clear proofs, and, what is more than these, by the test of experience? And therefore whoever, by the constant intention of the heart, has reached that state of purity in which, his mind wholly freed from the titillation of this passion, his flesh during sleep expels, as it were, the overflow of superfluous fluid, will most certainly grasp the condition and measure of nature. And so, when on waking he finds that his flesh has been polluted after long intervals without his knowing or being aware of it, then at last he may plead natural necessity. He will without doubt have come to that state in which he is found the same by night as by day, the same in bed as at prayer, the same alone as when surrounded by crowds of people; in short, he never sees himself in private as he would blush to be seen by men, nor does that inescapable eye catch in him anything he would wish to be hidden from human sight. And so, when he has begun to delight continually in the sweetest light of chastity, he will be able to say with the prophet: “And night is my light in my delights, for darkness will not be dark to you, and the night will be lit up like the day; as its darkness, so also its light.” Finally, how he obtained this very thing, since it seems beyond the condition of human nature, the same prophet adds, saying: “For you have possessed my reins,” that is: I have not earned this purity by my own effort or strength, but because you have put to death the heat of lustful pleasure implanted in my reins.

Germanus: “We have experienced in some part that lasting purity of body can by God’s grace be possessed by those who are awake, and we do not deny that, when the rigor and judgment of strictness resist, a movement of the flesh need not befall those who are awake. But we want to be taught whether we can also be free of this disturbance when asleep. For we do not believe this possible for two reasons, which, though we cannot speak of them without shame, we ask you to receive with your pardon, if anything has perhaps been laid bare too immodestly, since the necessity of the remedy itself compels it. The first is that, when the vigor of the mind is relaxed in the rest of sleep, the stealing in of that movement can by no means be watched against; the second, that the accumulation of urine, when the unceasing inflow of internal fluid has filled the capacity of the bladder while we rest, rouses the sluggish members, which happens by the same law even to little children and eunuchs. Hence it comes about that, even if the delight of lust does not wound the mind’s consent, yet the unseemliness of the members humbles it with shame.”

Chaeremon: “It appears that you have not yet recognized the power of true chastity, since you believe it is kept by those who are awake only with the help of strictness, and hence you think that integrity cannot be kept by those asleep, when the rigor of the soul is relaxed. But chastity does not subsist, as you think, by the defense of strictness, but by love of itself and delight in its own purity. For where some opposition of pleasure still resists it, it is called not chastity but continence. You see, then, that for those who have received the disposition of chastity into their very marrow by the grace of God, the cessation of strictness when they sleep does no harm, strictness which is shown by the surest reasoning to be untrustworthy even for those who are awake. For whatever is suppressed by labor gives the fighter a temporary truce, but does not grant him the lasting rest of security after the labor; whereas whatever has been conquered by deep virtue, being settled without any suspicion of disturbance, will give the victor a continual firmness of peace. Therefore, as long as we feel ourselves struck by the movement of the flesh, let us know that we have not yet reached the heights of chastity but are still placed under the weakness of continence and are worn by battles in which the outcome must always be doubtful. As for your wish to prove the movement of the flesh unavoidable by this sign, that not even eunuchs, whose genitals have been removed, can be free of it, you must know that what they lack is not fleshly heats or the working of lust but only the power of generating seed. Hence it is clear that not even they, if they wish to reach this chastity we are striving for, should relax their humility and contrition of heart or the strictness of continence, although it must by no means be doubted that chastity can be attained by them with less labor and effort.