The Conferences 7.6–7.27

“That we ought to cling to the Lord, and can, we shall discover by our own experience if we have mortified our wishes and cut off the desires of this world; and we shall be taught by the authority of those who, speaking with the Lord, say confidently: ‘My soul has clung after you’; and: ‘I have clung to your testimonies, O Lord’; and: ‘But it is good for me to cling to God’; and: ‘He who clings to the Lord is one spirit.’ We must not, then, wearied by these wanderings of the soul, slacken in this pursuit. ‘For he who tills his land will be filled with bread; but he who follows idleness will be filled with poverty.’ Nor let us be broken by ruinous despair from the intention of this observance, because ‘in all that is careful there is abundance. For he who is pleasant and without pain will be in want’; and again: ‘A man in pains labors for himself and does violence to his own destruction’; and also: ‘The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.’ For no virtue is perfected without labor, nor can anyone climb to that stability of mind which he desires without great contrition of heart. ‘For man is born to labor.’ In order that he may come ‘to the perfect man, to the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ,’ he must always keep watch with greater intention and toil with constant care. Yet no one will attain to the fullness of this measure in the future except one who has pondered it beforehand and been steeped in it in the present, and has had a foretaste of it while still placed in this world; and, marked out as a most precious member of Christ, has possessed in this flesh the pledge of that joining by which he may be united to his body: desiring only one thing, thirsting for one thing, directing to one thing not only all his acts but also his thoughts, so that what is said of the blessed life of the saints in the future he may already hold in the present as by a pledge, that is, that God may be to him all in all.”

Germanus: “This fickleness of the mind could perhaps be restrained to some extent, if so great a number of adversaries surrounding it did not constantly drive it to things it does not want, or rather where the mobility of its own nature also sweeps it. Since enemies so countless, so powerful, and so terrible surround it, we would believe it impossible to resist them, especially with this frail flesh, were we not encouraged to this opinion by your sayings, as by heavenly oracles.”

Serenus: “That adversaries lie in wait for us continually, no one who has experienced the battles of the inner man can doubt. But we say that they oppose our progress in such a way that we believe them only to be instigators of evil, not also compellers. Otherwise no human being could avoid at all any sin they wished to brand upon our hearts, if they had a violent power of compelling, as they have of suggesting. Therefore, just as in them there is abundance of instigation, so in us has been given the strength to reject, or the freedom to consent. Yet if we fear their power and attacks, let us on the other hand set against them the protection and help of God, of whom it is said: ‘For greater is he who is in us than he who is in this world.’ His help fights for us with far mightier strength than their multitude fights against us. For God is not only the suggester of good things but also their supporter and impeller, so that sometimes he even draws us to salvation unwilling and unknowing. It is certain, then, that no one can be deceived by the devil except one who chooses to give him the consent of his will. Ecclesiastes expressed this plainly in these words: ‘For because sentence is not quickly passed against those who do evil, therefore the heart of the sons of men is filled within them to do evil.’ It is clear from this that each one sins because he does not at once oppose a refusal of contradiction to the evil thoughts that assail him. For ‘resist him,’ it says, ‘and he will flee from you.’”

Germanus: “What, I ask, is this so indistinct and intermingled fellowship of the soul with these evil spirits, by which they can be, I will not say joined, but united to it, so that they can speak to it imperceptibly, enter into it, breathe into it whatever they wish, and incite it to whatever pleases them; and can see and survey its thoughts and movements; and so great a unity comes about between them and the mind that, without the grace of God, it is almost impossible to distinguish what comes to it from their incitement and what from our own will?”

Serenus: “It is not surprising that spirit can be joined imperceptibly to spirit and exercise a hidden power of persuasion toward whatever it likes. For there is between them, as between men, a certain likeness and kinship of substance, since the definition taken of the nature of the soul fits their substance likewise. But that they should enter into or be united with each other, so that one can contain the other, is wholly impossible. For this is most rightly attributed only to the Godhead, which alone is an incorporeal and simple nature.”

Germanus: “We think that what we see happen in the possessed is quite contrary to this reasoning, when, inspired by unclean spirits, they speak and do things they do not know. How then should we not believe that their souls are united to those spirits, when we see them made, as it were, their instrument, and, leaving their natural state, passing into the movements and feelings of the spirits, so that they utter not their own but the spirits' words and gestures?”

Serenus: “What you say happens in the possessed, when, seized by unclean spirits, they speak or do what they do not want, or are compelled to utter words they do not know, is not contrary to our definition above. For it is quite certain that they do not all undergo this infusion of spirits in one way. Some are so inspired that they do not understand at all what they do or say; others know it and remember afterwards. It must not be thought that this happens through the infusion of an unclean spirit in such a way that it penetrates into the very substance of the soul and, as if united to it and in a way clothed with it, sends out words and speech through the mouth of the sufferer. It must by no means be believed that they can do this. For it is found by plain reasoning to happen not through any diminution of the soul but through weakness of the body: the unclean spirit, settling on those members in which the vigor of the soul is contained, and laying on them an unbearable and immense weight, overwhelms and cuts off its intellectual senses with the foulest darkness. We see this sometimes happen also through the fault of wine or fever or excessive cold, and other illnesses coming from outside. The devil, who had received power over the flesh of the blessed Job, was forbidden to attempt to inflict this on him by the command of the Lord, who said: ‘Behold, I deliver him into your hands; only guard his soul’; that is: only do not make him mad by weakening the dwelling of the soul, and overwhelm the understanding and wisdom of the one who resists you, by choking the ruling part of his heart with your weight.”

“For if a spirit is mingled with this gross and solid matter, that is, the flesh, which can be done very easily, it is not for that reason to be believed that it can be united in the same way to the soul, which is likewise a spirit, so as to make it capable of its own nature too. That is possible only to the Trinity, which so penetrates all intellectual nature that it can not only embrace and surround it, but also flow into it and be poured, as incorporeal, into a body. For although we declare that there are some spiritual natures, such as angels, archangels, and the other powers, and our soul itself too, or indeed this subtle air, yet they are by no means to be considered incorporeal. For they have in their own way a body by which they subsist, though much finer than our bodies are, according to the saying of the apostle: ‘And there are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies’; and again: ‘It is sown a natural body, it rises a spiritual body.’ From these it is plainly gathered that nothing is incorporeal except God alone, and therefore that all spiritual and intellectual substances can be penetrated by him alone, because he alone is whole and everywhere and in all things, so that he looks into and surveys the thoughts of men and all their inner movements and the inner sanctuaries of the mind. For it was of him alone that the blessed apostle declared: ‘For the word of God is living and effective and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and intentions of the heart; and there is no creature invisible in his sight, but all things are naked and open to his eyes.’ And the blessed David: ‘Who fashions their hearts one by one’; and again: ‘For he knows the secrets of the heart.’ Job too: ‘Who alone knows the hearts of men.’”

Germanus: “By the reasoning you give, these spirits cannot even see our thoughts. We think it very absurd to hold this, since Scripture says: ‘If the spirit of the one who has power rises up against you’; and again: ‘When the devil had put it into the heart of Simon Iscariot to betray the Lord.’ How then can it be believed that our thoughts are not open to them, when we feel that the seedbed of them for the most part springs up from their putting it in and prompting it?”

Serenus: “No one doubts that unclean spirits can reach the character of our thoughts, but only by gathering them from outside through perceptible signs, that is, from our dispositions, or from the words and pursuits to which they have seen us more inclined. But those which have not yet come out from the inner parts of the soul they cannot reach at all. Even the thoughts they suggest, whether they have been received, or how they have been received, they detect not through the nature of the soul itself, that is, through that inner movement hidden, so to speak, in its marrow, but from the movements and signs of the outer man. For example, when they have suggested gluttony, if they see a monk look curiously at the window or at the sun, or ask anxiously about the hour, they know that the desire of the palate has been received. If, when suggesting sexual immorality, they perceive that he has received the dart of lust patiently, or see him stirred in the flesh, or at least not sighing as he should against the wantonness of the unclean suggestion, they understand that the dart of lust has been fixed in the inner parts of the soul. If they have brought incitements to sadness, anger, or fury, they discern whether these have settled in the heart by the gesture of the body and perceptible agitation, when they observe him groaning silently, or sighing with a kind of indignation, or changing color in the face, turning pale or red; and so they subtly find out who is given to which vice. For they know with sure reasoning that each of us delights in that vice to whose instigation they have seen him give consent and connivance by some nod or movement of the body. It is not surprising that these things are detected in this way by those powers of the air, since we see this very often done even by prudent men, who recognize the state of the inner man from the figure, face, and bearing of the outer. How much more surely, then, can these things be detected by those who, as of a spiritual nature, are without doubt far subtler and shrewder than men!”

“For just as some thieves are accustomed to find out the hidden wealth of people in houses they wish to break into secretly: in the black darkness of night, scattering fine grains of sand with a careful hand, they detect hidden riches which they cannot see, by a kind of ringing that answers the fall of the grains, and so by the betrayal of the sound drawn out they arrive at the surest knowledge of the thing or metal; so these too, in order to explore the treasure of our heart, scatter harmful suggestions on us like grains of sand, and when they see a bodily feeling arise corresponding to their kind, they recognize, as by a ringing coming from the inner chambers, what is hidden in the recesses of the inner man.”

“We ought to know, however, that not all demons brand all passions on men, but that particular spirits brood over each vice: some delight in uncleanness and the filth of lusts, others in blasphemies; others are especially bent on anger and fury; others feed on sadness; others are soothed by vainglory and pride; and each inserts into human hearts the vice in which he himself rejoices. Nor do they all press their wickedness at once, but in turn, as the opportunity of time, place, or recipient invites.”

Germanus: “Must we then believe that there is an ordered and, so to speak, disciplined wickedness among them, so that a certain order of succession is kept by them and the onset of their attack is carried out rationally, when it is agreed that neither measure nor reason can exist except among the good and upright, according to the saying of Scripture: ‘You will seek wisdom among the wicked and not find it’; and: ‘Our enemies are senseless’; and also: ‘There is no wisdom, there is no strength, nor is there counsel among the impious’?”

Serenus: “It is a certain principle that there is no lasting agreement among the wicked in everything, and that perfect harmony cannot stand even in those very vices in which they delight in common. For, as you said, discipline and measure can never be kept in undisciplined things. Yet in some things, namely where community of action or necessity demands it, or partnership in some gain invites it, they must lend a temporary agreement. We see this most plainly in this warfare of spiritual wickedness: they are known not only to observe times and turns among themselves, but also to cling especially to certain places and besiege them continually. For that they must put forth their attacks with changing temptations and in particular vices and times, we clearly prove from this: no one can at the same time be deluded by the vanity of vainglory and burned by the desire of sexual immorality; no one can be puffed up with the swelling elation of spiritual pride and at the same time be brought low by the humiliation of fleshly gluttony; no one can dissolve in foolish giggling and laughter and at the same time be spurred by the goads of anger, or be filled with the grief of consuming sadness. Rather, each spirit must take up its attack on the mind one at a time, so that when it withdraws, either defeated, it yields the mind to another spirit to be attacked more fiercely, or, if it has been the victor, hands it over no less to another to be mocked in the same way.”

“We must also by no means be ignorant that they are not all of the same ferocity and desire, nor even of one strength and wickedness; and that only the weaker spirits are matched in combat with beginners and the weak; and when these spiritual wickednesses have been overcome, the fights of the stronger are kindled against the athlete of Christ step by step. For the difficulty of the struggle increases in proportion to human strength and progress. For none of the saints would be able at all to bear the wickedness of such and so great enemies, or to meet their snares, or even to endure their cruelty and savagery, if Christ, the most merciful umpire and president of the games, presiding over our contest, did not match the strength of the wrestlers and repel and rein in their immoderate onsets, and make with the temptation also a way out, that we may be able to bear it.”

“We believe, however, that they do not carry out this struggle without labor of their own. For they too have a certain anxiety and sadness in their conflict, especially when they have engaged stronger opponents, that is, holy and perfect men. Otherwise it would no longer be a conflict or a struggle, but a simple and, so to speak, secure deception of men granted to them. And how would that saying of the apostle stand: ‘Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places’? And also: ‘So I fight, not as one beating the air’; and again: ‘I have fought the good fight.’ For where a contest, a match, and a fight are spoken of, sweat, labor, and anxiety must be undergone on both sides, and grief and shame at defeat must await both equally, or joy follow victory. But where one struggles with sweat while the other fights with ease and security, and uses only his will, as much as he can, to throw his opponent, it should not be called a fight, or a struggle, or a contest, but a kind of unjust and unreasonable assault. But plainly they too labor no less, attacking the human race, and toil in order to win the victory they desire over each one; and the shame which awaited us, if we had been thrown by them, is turned back on them, according to the words: ‘The head of their circuit, the labor of their lips shall cover them’; and: ‘His sorrow shall be turned upon his own head’; and again: ‘Let the snare which he does not know come upon him, and let the net which he has hidden catch him, and into that very snare let him fall,’ namely, the one he contrives for the deception of men. They too therefore grieve no less, and just as they throw us, they themselves are likewise thrown, and do not depart defeated without shame. He who had the sound eyes of the inner man, seeing their falls and conflicts every day, and seeing them exult over the falls and ruin of individuals, and fearing that they might have this joy over him too, prays to the Lord: ‘Enlighten my eyes, lest I ever sleep in death, lest my enemy ever say, I have prevailed against him. Those who trouble me will exult if I am moved’; and: ‘My God, let them not rejoice over me; let them not say in their hearts, Aha, aha, to our soul; nor let them say, We have swallowed him up’; and: ‘They gnashed their teeth at me. Lord, when will you look? For he lies in wait in secret like a lion in his den; he lies in wait to seize the poor’; and: ‘He seeks his food from God.’ And again, when they have spent all their efforts and cannot achieve our deception, they must be confounded and blush at their frustrated labor: ‘Let those who seek our souls to take them away be put to shame; let those who devise evil against us be clothed with shame and confusion.’ Jeremiah too says: ‘Let them be confounded, and let me not be confounded; let them be afraid, and let me not be afraid; bring upon them the wrath of your fury, and crush them with a double crushing.’ For no one doubts that when they have been overcome by us they must be crushed with a double crushing: first, because, while men seek holiness, they, who possessed it, lost it and became the cause of human perdition; second, because, being spiritual substances, they have been overcome by fleshly and earthly ones. Seeing these falls of the enemies and his own victories, each of the saints proclaims with exultation: ‘I will pursue my enemies and overtake them, and I will not turn back until they fail. I will crush them, and they will not be able to stand; they will fall beneath my feet.’ Praying against them the same prophet also says: ‘Judge, O Lord, those who harm me; fight against those who fight against me. Take hold of arms and shield, and rise up to help me. Draw out the sword, and shut up the way against those who persecute me; say to my soul, I am your salvation.’ When we have conquered them, all the passions having been subdued and extinguished, we shall deserve to hear consequently that voice of blessing: ‘Let your hand be exalted over your foes, and all your enemies shall perish.’ So when we read or sing all these things and those like them inserted in the sacred books, unless we take them to have been written against these spiritual wickednesses which lie in wait for us day and night, we shall not only gain no edification of gentleness and patience from them, but shall even conceive a dreadful disposition contrary to evangelical perfection. For we shall not only not be taught to pray for our enemies and love them, but shall even be provoked to detest them with implacable hatred, to curse them, and to pour out prayer against them unceasingly. It is utterly wicked and profane to think that holy men and friends of God spoke in such a spirit; men for whom, before the coming of Christ, the law was not laid down, because, going beyond its commands, they chose to obey the precepts of the Gospel and to strive after apostolic perfection, anticipating the dispensation of the time.”

“That they have no power to harm anyone is plainly shown by the example of the blessed Job, where the enemy dares tempt him no further than is granted him by the divine dispensation; and the confession of these same spirits, recorded in the Gospel, testifies to it: ‘If you cast us out, send us into the herd of swine.’ Much more must it be believed that they cannot enter at will into any human being, who is created in the image of God, since they did not have the power to enter unclean and dumb animals without God's permission. Otherwise no one, I will not say of the young men whom we see living most steadfastly in this desert, but not even of the perfect, could live alone in the desert surrounded by so many hosts of such enemies, if they had the power and freedom to harm or attack at will. This is confirmed still more clearly by the saying of our Lord and Savior, which he spoke to Pilate in the humility of the manhood he had assumed: ‘You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above.’”

“Yet we have learned well enough, both from our own experience and from the account of the elders, that the demons do not now have the same force as in an earlier time, at least in the beginnings of the anchorites, when monks still dwelt in the desert only rarely. For their ferocity was such that only a few, very steadfast and advanced in age, could bear to live in solitude. Even in the coenobia, where eight or ten lived together, their savagery raged so, and their attacks were felt so often and visibly, that they did not dare all sleep at night at the same time; but in turns, while some took sleep, others kept vigil, applying themselves to psalms and prayers or readings. And when the necessity of nature invited them to sleep, the others were woken and the watch was handed over to them in the same way, to guard those who were going to sleep. Hence it cannot be doubted that one of two things gives this security or confidence now, not only to us, who seem somewhat strengthened by the experience of age, but even to those younger in years. Either the wickedness of the demons has been blunted by the power of the cross, penetrating even the deserts, and its grace shining everywhere; or our negligence has made them slower in their former assault, since they disdain to fight against us with the intensity with which they then raged against those most approved soldiers of Christ, so that they throw us down more cruelly by this very fraud, the cessation of visible temptations. For we see that some have fallen into such lukewarmness that they must be coaxed even with gentler admonitions, if only they will not leave their cells and roll off into more ruinous restlessness, and, wandering about, get entangled in grosser vices, so to speak; and it is thought a great gain from them if only they can keep themselves in solitude even with some sloth; and the elders tend to say to them, as a great remedy: ‘Sit in your cells, and eat and drink and sleep as much as you like, provided you remain in them constantly.’”

“It is certain, then, that unclean spirits cannot enter into those whose bodies they are going to take possession of in any other way than by first possessing their minds and thoughts. When they have stripped them of the fear and remembrance of God or of spiritual meditation, they boldly attack them, as though disarmed of all divine defence and fortification and easy to bind, and thereafter take up their dwelling in them as in a possession handed over to them.”

“Though it is certain that those are troubled far more grievously and severely who, while they do not seem to be filled by them bodily, are more ruinously possessed in mind, entangled, that is, in their vices and pleasures. For according to the apostle's saying, ‘by whatever a man is overcome, of that he is also the slave.’ Except that these are the more hopelessly sick in this: though they are their slaves, they do not recognize that they are attacked by them or bear their rule. On the other hand, we know that even holy men have been handed over bodily to Satan, or to great infirmities, for very slight faults, since the divine mercy does not allow even the slightest blemish or stain to be found in them on that day of judgment. It burns out in the present all the dross of their filth, according to the saying of the prophet, or rather of God, so as to send them on to that eternity like gold or refined silver, needing no penal purification. ‘And I will smelt away your dross to purity,’ he says, ‘and I will take away all your tin. And after this you shall be called the city of the righteous, the faithful city’; and again: ‘As silver and gold are tried in the furnace, so the Lord chooses hearts’; and again: ‘Fire tries gold and silver, but a man is tried in the furnace of humiliation.’ Also: ‘For whom the Lord loves he corrects, and he scourges every son whom he receives.’”

“We see this plainly fulfilled in that prophet and man of God in the third book of Kingdoms, who for the fault of one act of disobedience, which he incurred not deliberately nor by the fault of his own will but through another's deception, was at once crushed by a lion, as Scripture relates: ‘It is the man of God, who was disobedient to the mouth of the Lord; and the Lord delivered him to the lion, and it broke him, according to the word of the Lord which he spoke.’ In this event, both the discharge of his present fault and incautious error, and the merits of righteousness for which the Lord handed his prophet over for a time to the tormentor, are shown by the very restraint and self-control of the beast of prey, by which the most voracious animal dares taste nothing at all of the corpse handed over to it. A quite clear and open proof of this occurred in our own times too, in Abba Paul and Abba Moses, who lived in the place in this wilderness called Calamus. The former lived in the desert which lies next to the city of Panephysis, a wilderness which we know was made not long ago by a flood of very salty water. Whenever the north wind blows, this water, driven from the lagoons and poured over the neighboring lands, so covers the whole surface of that region that it makes the ancient villages there, which for this very reason were long ago deserted by all their inhabitants, look like islands. This Abba Paul, then, had advanced to such purity of heart through the quiet and silence of solitude that he would not allow, I will not say a woman's face, but not even the clothes of that sex to come before his sight. For when he was going to the cell of a certain elder together with Abba Archebius, who lived in the same wilderness, and a woman happened to meet him, offended by meeting her he left the duty of pious visitation he had undertaken and ran back to his monastery with a flight greater than anyone would flee from the face of a lion or a most monstrous dragon, so that he could not be turned even by the shouts and entreaties of the aforesaid Abba Archebius calling him back to continue the journey they had begun, to go and see the old man as they had intended. Although this was done out of zeal for chastity and ardor for purity, yet because it was presumed not according to knowledge, and the measure of discipline and of just strictness was exceeded (for he believed that not only familiarity with women, which is truly harmful, but the very form of that sex was to be abhorred), he was at once struck by such a chastisement that his whole body was loosened by paralysis and no member in him could perform its function at all. Not only his feet and hands, but even the movements of the tongue by which the voice expresses speech, and his very ears, lost their proper sense, so that nothing more of a man remained in him than a motionless and senseless figure. He was brought to such a state that the care of men could in no way suffice to serve his infirmity, unless the diligence of women alone ministered to him. For he was carried to a community of holy virgins, and food and drink, which he could not ask for even by a nod, were brought to him by women's service; and they served him with the same diligence in fulfilling all the necessities of nature for about four years, that is, until the end of his life. Though he was held fast by such weakness of all his limbs that none of them kept any lively or sensitive movement, yet such a grace of virtues proceeded from him that when the sick were anointed with oil which had touched what was more his corpse than his body, they were at once cured of all their illnesses. So it became plainly and openly clear even to unbelievers, concerning this illness of his, both that the weakness of all his limbs had been brought upon him by the dispensation and love of the Lord, and that the grace of healings was given him by the power of the Holy Spirit as a testimony to his purity and a manifestation of his merits.”

“The second, whom we said lived in this wilderness, though he too was a singular and incomparable man, for the fault of one remark which he uttered a little too harshly in a dispute with Abba Macarius, carried away by a certain opinion, was at once handed over to so dreadful a demon that, filled by it, he put human excrement into his mouth. The Lord showed that he had inflicted this scourge for the sake of purification, so that not even the stain of a momentary fault should remain in him, by the speed of his cure and the author of the remedy. For as soon as Abba Macarius gave himself to prayer, quicker than a word the evil spirit was put to flight and departed from him.”