The Conferences 4.19–5.10

Daniel: “According to the definition of Scripture there are three states of souls: the first fleshly, the second soulish, the third spiritual. We read them marked out thus in the apostle. Of the fleshly it is said: ‘I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, for you were not yet able; and indeed you are not able even now, for you are still fleshly’; and again: ‘For where there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly?’ Of the soulish it is said thus: ‘But the soulish man does not perceive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him.’ Of the spiritual: ‘But the spiritual man judges all things, and he himself is judged by no one’; and again: ‘You who are spiritual, instruct such a one in a spirit of gentleness.’ So we must hasten, when by renouncing we have ceased to be fleshly, that is, have begun to be separated from the way of life of worldly people and to cease from that open pollution of the flesh, to strive at once with all our strength to lay hold of the spiritual state; lest, flattering ourselves that we seem to have renounced this world as to the outer man, or to have left the defilements of fleshly sexual immorality, as though we had thereby grasped the summit of perfection, we become slacker and slower thereafter in cleansing the other passions, and, held back between the two, cannot reach the degree of spiritual progress, thinking it abundantly enough for perfection that in the outer man we seem to be separated from the life and pleasures of this world, or that we are free from corruption and fleshly intercourse. And so, found in that lukewarm state which is judged the worst, we should know that we are to be spewed out of the Lord's mouth, according to his saying: ‘Would that you were hot or cold. But now you are lukewarm, and I will begin to spew you out of my mouth.’ Not without reason does the Lord declare that those whom he had already received into the bowels of his love, but who have become harmfully lukewarm, must be spewed out with a kind of convulsion of his breast. Though they could have provided him with a wholesome nourishment, as it were, they preferred to be torn from his bowels, and so became worse than foods that have never been brought to the Lord's mouth, just as we detest with more loathing what we throw up under the compulsion of nausea. For whatever is cold, once taken into our mouth, is turned to warmth and received with wholesome pleasure; but what has once been thrown up through the fault of a ruinous lukewarmness, we cannot, I will not say bring to our lips, but even look at from afar without great horror. Most rightly, then, it is declared to be worse, because a fleshly person, that is, a worldly person or a pagan, comes more easily to saving conversion and the summit of perfection than one who has professed himself a monk and yet, not taking the way of perfection according to the rule of discipline, has departed from that fire of spiritual fervor. For the former, humbled at least by bodily vices and feeling himself unclean from fleshly defilement, will one day run, pierced with compunction, to the source of true purification and the summit of perfection; and shuddering at that coldest state of unbelief in which he is, he will fly more easily to perfection, inflamed with the ardor of the spirit. But the one who, as we said, once began with a lukewarm beginning to misuse the name of monk, and did not take up the path of this profession with the humility and fervor he should, once infected with this wretched plague and in a way dissolved in it, will no longer be able either to be wise in perfect things of himself or to be taught by another's admonitions. For he says in his heart, according to the Lord's saying: ‘For I am rich and wealthy and need nothing.’ To him what follows will consequently apply: ‘But you are wretched and pitiable and poor and blind and naked.’ In this he has become worse even than a worldly person, because he does not recognize that he is wretched, blind, and naked, or worthy of correction, or in need of anyone's admonitions or instruction; and so he does not admit even any exhortation of the saving word, not understanding that he is weighed down by the very name of monk and pressed down by everyone's opinion. For since he is believed holy by all and honored as a servant of God, he must be subjected in the future to a more severe judgment and punishment. Finally, why do we dwell longer on what is well known and proved to us by experience? We have often seen people come from the cold and fleshly, that is, from worldly people and pagans, to spiritual fervor; from the lukewarm and soulish, we have never seen it at all. We read that the Lord so detests them through the prophet that spiritual men and teachers are commanded to leave off admonishing and teaching them, and not to spend the seed of the saving word on them as on barren and unfruitful ground, overgrown with harmful briars; but, despising that ground, rather to cultivate new ground, that is, to transfer all the cultivation of teaching and the urgency of the saving word to pagans and worldly people. So it is read: ‘Thus says the Lord to the man of Judah and the inhabitant of Jerusalem: Break up your fallow ground, and do not sow upon thorns.’”

“Finally, shameful to say, we see many who have renounced the world in such a way that they are shown to have changed nothing of their former vices and habits except only their worldly rank and dress. For they are eager to acquire money which they did not possess before, or at any rate do not cease to keep what they had, or, what is more lamentable, even desire to increase it, under the pretext that they claim it is right for them always to support their servants or brothers from it; or else they keep it under the pretext of gathering a community, which they presume they can establish as abbots. If they truly sought the way of perfection, they would rather strive with all their strength to strip themselves not only of money but also of former affections and all distractions, and place themselves, alone and naked, under the rule of the elders, so as to have no care not only for others but even for themselves. But the opposite happens: while they hasten to be over the brothers, they themselves are never subject to the elders, and, beginning from pride, while they desire to instruct others, they do not deserve either to learn or to do what is to be taught. They must, according to the Savior's saying, become blind leaders of the blind and fall together into the pit. Although this pride is of one kind, it has two forms. One constantly imitates seriousness and gravity; the other dissolves with unbridled freedom into foolish laughter and giggling. The first delights in silence; the second disdains to be restrained by silence and is not ashamed to utter all sorts of unfitting and foolish things, while it blushes to be judged inferior or less learned than others. The one, out of pride, seeks the office of the clergy; the other despises it, judging it unfitting or unworthy of its former rank or of the merits of its life and birth. Which of these is to be declared the worse, let each person's examination discuss and weigh. It is certainly one and the same kind of disobedience to violate an elder's command either for the sake of urgent work or for the desire of leisure; it is as harmful to break the rules of the monastery for the sake of sleep as for the sake of watching; it is as much to transgress the abbot's command in order to read as to despise it in order to sleep; nor is it a different tinder of pride to neglect a brother for the sake of a fast than for the sake of a meal. Except that the vices which seem to arise under the appearance of virtues and the image of spiritual things are more ruinous and farther from remedy than those which openly come from fleshly pleasure. For these, like diseases laid open and manifest, are both rebuked at close quarters and healed; but the former, hidden under the pretext of virtues, remain uncured and make those they deceive sick more dangerously and more hopelessly.”

“How can one express how ridiculous it is that some, after that ardor of the first renunciation by which they left their family property or great wealth and worldly service and gave themselves to monasteries, are, as we see, bound with such zeal to the things which cannot be wholly cut off and which cannot fail to be had in this order, small and cheap as they are, that their care for them exceeds their passion for all their former possessions. It will certainly not profit them much to have despised greater wealth and substance, since they have transferred their affection for it, for which it had to be despised, to small and trifling things. For keeping the vice of covetousness and avarice, which they cannot practise on precious goods, for cheaper materials, they prove that they have not cut off but only exchanged their former passion. For, bound by excessive care for a mat, a basket, a cloak, a book, and other such things, however cheap, they are held by the same desire as before. They even guard and defend them with such jealousy that they are not ashamed to be angry with a brother over them, and, what is more shameful, even to quarrel. Still suffering from the sickness of their former covetousness in these things, they are not content to have, according to the common number and measure, the very things which the use of the body or necessity compels a monk to possess; and in this too they show the avarice of their heart, either by striving to have more readily than the others the things that must be used, or, going beyond the measure of care, by guarding more particularly and attentively, and defending from others' handling, things that ought to be common to all the brothers. As if only the difference in metals, and not the passion of covetousness itself, were harmful; and as if it were not lawful to be angry over great things, but to do the same over cheaper ones were without fault; and as if we had not cast away more precious materials precisely so that we might more easily learn to despise cheaper ones. For what difference does it make whether one exercises the disturbance of covetousness over ample and magnificent wealth or over cheaper goods, except that he is to be judged the more blameworthy in that, having despised the greatest things, he is bound by the least? And so this renunciation does not attain perfection of heart, because, while it has the property of a poor man, it has not cast off the will of a rich one.”

In that gathering of the most ancient elders there was a man named Serapion, especially adorned with the grace of discernment, whose conference I think it worth while to commit to writing. When we asked him to discuss the assault of the vices, so that their origins and causes might be laid open more clearly, he began thus.

“There are eight principal vices which attack the human race: first, gastrimargia, which means gluttony of the belly; second, sexual immorality; third, philargyria, that is, avarice or love of money; fourth, anger; fifth, sadness; sixth, acedia, that is, anxiety or weariness of heart; seventh, cenodoxia, that is, boasting or vainglory; eighth, pride.”

“These vices are of two kinds. Some are natural, like gluttony; others are outside nature, like love of money. Their working is fourfold. Some cannot be completed without a bodily action, like gluttony and sexual immorality; others are fulfilled even without any action of the body, like pride and vainglory. Some take the causes of their stirring from outside, like love of money and anger; others are aroused by inner movements, like acedia and sadness.”

“To make these things clearer not only by argument, as briefly as we can, but also by testimonies of Scripture: gluttony and sexual immorality, though they are in us by nature (for sometimes they arise even without any prompting of the mind, from the mere instigation and itching of the flesh), still need material from outside to be completed, and so come to effect by bodily action. ‘For each one is tempted by his own desire. Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is completed, brings forth death.’ For the first Adam could not have been deceived by gluttony unless he had had the material of food at hand and used it unlawfully; nor is the second tempted without the enticement of some material, when it is said to him: ‘If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.’ That sexual immorality too is carried out only through the body is plain to all, as God says of this spirit to the blessed Job: ‘And his strength is in his loins, and his power in the navel of his belly.’ And therefore these two in particular, which are fulfilled by the service of the flesh, need, besides the spiritual care of the soul, bodily self-control in a special way. For the intention of the mind alone is not enough to blunt their goads (as sometimes happens against anger or sadness and the other passions, which the effort of the mind alone knows how to overcome even without any affliction of the flesh), unless bodily chastisement is added, which is achieved by fasts, vigils, and wearying work; and to these withdrawal to a separate place must be joined. For as they are produced by the fault of both, that is, soul and body, so they cannot be overcome except by the labor of both. And although the blessed apostle declared generally that all vices are fleshly, since he counted enmities, angers, and heresies among the other works of the flesh, we nevertheless distinguish them by a twofold division in order to gather their cures and natures more carefully. For we say that some of them are fleshly and some spiritual. Those are fleshly which belong especially to the comfort and feeling of the flesh, in which the flesh so delights and is fed that it even stirs up quiet minds and sometimes drags them unwilling to consent to its will. Of these the blessed apostle says: ‘Among whom we all once lived in the desires of our flesh, doing the will of the flesh and of the thoughts, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest.’ We call those spiritual which, arising from the impulse of the soul alone, not only bring no pleasure to the flesh but even afflict it with the most grievous sicknesses, and feed only the sick soul with the food of a most wretched delight. And so these need a simple medicine of the heart; but the fleshly ones come to health only by a twofold cure, as we said. Hence it helps those who strive after purity very much to withdraw from themselves first the very materials of these fleshly passions, from which either occasion or memory of these passions can arise in the soul that is still sick. For a twofold cure must be applied to a twofold disease. From the body the image and material that entice must necessarily be withdrawn, lest desire try to break out into action; and to the soul no less must more attentive meditation on the Scriptures, wakeful vigilance, and the withdrawal of solitude be usefully applied, lest it conceive it even in thought. In the other vices, however, human company does no harm; indeed it helps very much those who truly wish to be free of them, because they are more exposed by the frequent company of men, and, being more often provoked and brought to light, they come to health by a quick medicine.”

“And therefore our Lord Jesus Christ, though the apostle declares that he was tempted in all things according to our likeness, is yet said to be without sin, that is, without the contagion of this passion. He certainly did not experience the goads of fleshly desire, by which we must be pricked even without knowing or willing it, since there was in him no likeness of human begetting or conception, as the archangel announced the manner of his conception: ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore also the holy one who will be born of you will be called the Son of God.’”

“For he too, possessing the uncorrupted image and likeness of God, had to be tempted in those passions in which Adam also was tempted while he still remained in that inviolate image of God, that is, gluttony, vainglory, and pride; not in those in which, after the transgression of the command, having violated the image and likeness of God, he fell by his own fault and is entangled. For gluttony is that by which he presumed to eat of the forbidden tree; vainglory that by which it is said, ‘Your eyes will be opened’; pride that by which it is said, ‘You will be like gods, knowing good and evil.’ In these three vices, then, we read that the Lord and Savior too was tempted: gluttony, when the devil says to him, ‘Command that these stones become bread’; vainglory, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down’; pride, when, showing him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, he says, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me’; so that, being assailed along the same lines of temptation as Adam, he might teach us by his example how we too ought to overcome the tempter. And therefore both the one is called Adam and this one Adam: the former first for ruin and death, the latter first for resurrection and life. Through the former the whole human race is condemned; through the latter the whole human race is set free. The former is formed from rough and untouched earth; the latter is born of the Virgin Mary. It was fitting, then, that he should undergo these temptations; it was not necessary that he should go beyond them. For one who had conquered gluttony could not be tempted by sexual immorality, which comes from its abundance and root; by which not even the first Adam would have been overthrown, had he not, deceived by the devil's enticements, first received the passion that gives birth to it. And for this reason the Son of God is said to have come not simply in the flesh of sin but in the likeness of the flesh of sin; because, though there was true flesh in him, since he ate, drank, and slept, and truly underwent the piercing of the nails, he did not have the sin contracted by the transgression truly, but only in likeness. For he did not experience the fiery goads of fleshly desire, which rise up in us even against our will, nature now bringing them about; but he took on a certain likeness of it by sharing our nature. For since he truly fulfilled everything that belongs to our condition and bore all human weaknesses, he was consequently thought to be subject to this passion too, so that through these weaknesses he might seem to bear in his flesh the condition of this vice and sin as well. Finally, the devil tempts him only in those vices in which he had deceived the first man, conjecturing that this one too, as a man, could likewise be deluded in the others, if he found him overthrown in those in which he had cast down the former. But, refuted in the first contest, he could not bring against him the second disease, which had sprung from the root of the principal vice. For he saw that he had by no means received the initial cause of this sickness, and it was useless to hope for the fruit of sin from one who he saw had in no way received its seeds or roots. Yet according to Luke, who places last the temptation in which it is said, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down,’ this may be understood as the passion of pride; so that the earlier one, which Matthew places third, in which, according to the evangelist Luke, the devil showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time and promised them to him, may be taken as the passion of love of money. That is, after the victory over gluttony, unable to tempt him with sexual immorality, he passed to love of money, which he knew to be the root of all evils; and, overcome again in this, not daring to bring upon him any of the vices that follow from it, since he knew they sprang from its root and tinder, he leapt to the last passion, pride, by which he knew that even the perfect could be assailed after all the vices had been conquered; by which he remembered that he himself, when he was Lucifer, and many others had fallen from heaven without any incitement of the preceding passions. According to the order we have mentioned, then, described by the evangelist Luke, even the enticement and form of the temptations by which the most cunning enemy attacks both the first and the second Adam agree most elegantly. For to the former he says, ‘Your eyes will be opened’; to the latter he shows ‘all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.’ There he says, ‘You will be like gods’; here, ‘If you are the Son of God.’”

“And so that we may discuss the workings of the other passions too, in the same order we had proposed (the explanation of gluttony and of the Lord's temptation necessarily compelled us to interrupt their account): vainglory and pride are usually completed even without any bodily service. For in what do they need fleshly action, since through mere connivance and the will to win praise and gain human glory they abundantly bring about the ruin of the captive soul? Or what bodily effect did the ancient pride of that Lucifer we mentioned have, except that he conceived it only in mind and thought, as the prophet records: ‘You who said in your heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will set my throne above the stars of God; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High’? As he had no one to incite this pride, so thought alone completed the crime and his everlasting ruin, even though no deeds of the tyranny he aimed at followed.”

“Love of money and anger, though they are not of one nature (for the former is outside nature, while the latter seems to have an original seed in us), yet arise in a similar way, since they usually take the causes of their stirring from outside. For those who are still weaker often complain that they have fallen into these vices through the provocation or prompting of others, and plead that they were driven headlong into anger or love of money by others' provocation. That love of money is outside nature is clearly seen from this: it is proved to have no original beginning in us, nor is it conceived from material that belongs to the life of soul or flesh and to the substance of life. For it is certain that nothing reaches the use and necessity of our common nature except daily food and drink. All other materials, however carefully and lovingly they are kept, are shown by the very experience of life to be foreign to human need. And so this vice, as existing outside nature, assails only lukewarm and badly grounded monks, whereas the natural ones do not cease to attack even the most approved monks, even those living in solitude. So true is this proved to be that we know of some nations wholly free from this passion, that is, love of money, because they have never taken on the sickness of this vice by use and habit. We believe too that the earlier world, which existed for a very long time before the flood, did not know the madness of this desire. In each of us who renounces rightly it is proved to be extinguished without any labor, when, having cast away all his possessions, he seeks the discipline of the coenobium in such a way as not to allow even a single denarius to remain to him. We can find many thousands of men as witnesses to this, who, having dispersed all their property in the briefest moment, so rooted out this passion that they are no longer assailed by it even slightly; and yet, fighting against gluttony all the time, they cannot be safe unless they have fought with great watchfulness of heart and abstinence of body.”

“Sadness and acedia usually arise, as we said above, without any provocation coming from outside. For they are known to trouble frequently and most bitterly even solitaries placed in the desert and mixing with no human company. That this is most true anyone who has lived in solitude and experienced the battles of the inner man will very easily prove by his own experience.”

“These eight vices, then, though they have different origins and unlike workings, yet the first six, that is, gluttony, sexual immorality, love of money, anger, sadness, and acedia, are connected with one another by a kind of kinship and, so to speak, a chain, so that the excess of the one becomes the beginning of the next. For from an abundance of gluttony sexual immorality must spring, from sexual immorality love of money, from love of money anger, from anger sadness, from sadness acedia. And therefore we must fight against them in the same way and by the same method, and always begin the contest against the later ones from the earlier. For the harmful breadth and height of any tree will more easily wither if the roots on which it rests have first been laid bare or cut; and troublesome waters will at once dry up when the spring that produces them and the flowing veins have been skilfully stopped. Therefore, to conquer acedia, sadness must first be overcome; to drive out sadness, anger must first be expelled; to extinguish anger, love of money must be trampled; to root out love of money, sexual immorality must be checked; to overthrow sexual immorality, the vice of gluttony must be chastened. The remaining two, however, that is, vainglory and pride, are joined to each other in a similar way to that which we described for the earlier vices, so that the growth of the first becomes the origin of the second (for an excess of vainglory produces the tinder of pride); but they differ entirely from those first six vices and are not bound to them in a similar alliance. For they not only take no occasion of their origin from them, but are even stirred up in a contrary manner and order: when those have been rooted out, these sprout more vigorously, and from their death they spring up and grow more lively. Hence we are also attacked by these two vices in a different way. We fall into each of those six vices when we have been overthrown by the ones preceding it; but we are in danger of falling into these two when we are victorious, and especially after triumphs. All vices, then, as they are produced by the growth of the preceding ones, so are they purged by their diminution. And on this principle, in order that pride may be driven out, vainglory must be stifled; and so, the earlier always being overcome, the following ones will subside, and with the extinction of the preceding ones the remaining passions will wither without labor. And although these eight vices we have mentioned are connected and intermixed with one another in the way we described, they are more particularly divided into four pairs and couplings. For sexual immorality is bound to gluttony in a special alliance; anger to love of money; acedia to sadness; pride is closely coupled with vainglory.”