The Conferences 8.13–9.1

“It is quite certain that they also direct against one another the attacks with which they assail men. For with unwearied strife they likewise never cease to carry on discords and conflicts over certain nations which they have taken under their care, as by a kind of native familiarity of wickedness. We read this most plainly figured in the vision of the prophet Daniel, when the angel Gabriel relates: ‘Do not fear, Daniel: for from the first day on which you set your heart to understand and to afflict yourself in the sight of your God, your words have been heard, and I have come because of your words. But the prince of the kingdom of the Persians withstood me twenty-one days; and behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, and I remained there beside the king of the Persians. But I have come to teach you what will come upon your people in the last days.’ It must by no means be doubted that this prince of the kingdom of the Persians is a hostile power which favored the nation of the Persians, enemy of the people of God. To hinder the benefit which he saw was to be brought by the archangel through the answer to the question for which the prophet had prayed to the Lord, he set himself in the way out of envy, lest the saving consolation of the angel should reach Daniel quickly and strengthen the people of God, over whom the archangel Gabriel was set. Yet Gabriel says that not even then could he have reached him because of the violence of that attack, had not the archangel Michael come to help him and, meeting the prince of the kingdom of the Persians, throwing himself into the conflict and opposing him, and defending Gabriel from his attack, enabled him to come after twenty-one days to instruct the prophet. And a little later: ‘And the angel said: Do you know why I have come to you? And now I will return to fight against the prince of the Persians. For when I was going out, the prince of the Greeks appeared, coming. But I will tell you what is inscribed in the writing of truth; and there is no one who helps me in all these things except Michael your prince.’ And again: ‘At that time Michael shall arise, the great prince, who stands for the sons of your people.’ We read, then, that another is likewise called the prince of the Greeks, who, favoring the nation subject to him, seemed hostile both to the people of Israel and to the nation of the Persians. From this it is clearly seen that the hostile powers also carry on among themselves the discords, conflicts, and rivalries of the nations which these wage with one another at their instigation, and either rejoice in their victory or are tormented by their defeat; and therefore they cannot be in harmony among themselves, as each contends with restless rivalry on behalf of those over whom he is set against the ruler of another nation.”

“Besides the opinions we set out above, then, we can gather by clear reasoning that they are called principalities or powers for this reason too: either because they rule and preside over different nations, or else because they exercise their rule over inferior spirits and demons, who, as the Gospels testify by their own confession, are legions. For they cannot be called dominions unless they have those over whom they exercise the rule of their dominion; nor can they be called powers or principalities unless there are those over whom they claim their principality for themselves. We find this most plainly indicated in the Gospel by the blaspheming Pharisees: ‘He casts out demons by Beelzebub, the prince of the demons.’ For we also read that they are called rulers of darkness, and another is named the prince of this world. Yet the blessed apostle asserts that these grades will be made void in the future, when all things have been subjected to Christ: ‘When he has handed over the kingdom to God the Father,’ he says, ‘when he has made void all principality and power and dominion.’ This will certainly not happen otherwise than by taking away from their rule those over whom they are known to exercise powers, dominions, or principalities in this age.”

“For no one doubts that the same names of orders have not been given to the good side without reason or cause, and that they are names of offices, merits, or dignities. For it is plain that angels, that is, messengers, are so called from the office of announcing; the very meaning of the name teaches that archangels are so called because they are set over the angels; dominions, because they rule over some; principalities too, because they have those of whom they are princes; and thrones, because they cling so closely to God and are so much of his household and family that the divine majesty rests in a special way in them as on a kind of throne, and in a way reclines more firmly on them.”

“That unclean spirits are ruled by more wicked powers and are subject to them, besides those testimonies of the Scriptures which we read described in the Lord's answer to the slandering Pharisees in the Gospels, ‘If I cast out demons by Beelzebub, the prince of the demons,’ many clear visions and experiences of the saints also teach us. For when one of our brothers was travelling in this wilderness, as day was already drawing to evening he found a cave and stopped there, wishing to celebrate the evening synaxis in it. While he was singing the psalms there according to custom, the time passed midnight. And when, the service finished, he had sat down a little to rest his tired body, suddenly he began to see countless troops of demons flocking together from all sides. Coming forward in an endless throng and a very long line, some went before their prince and others followed. At last he arrived, taller than all in stature and more terrible in appearance, and, a throne having been set, sat down on a very lofty tribunal and began to examine the acts of each one with careful scrutiny. Those who said they had not yet been able to get the better of their opponents he ordered to be driven from his sight with disgrace and insult, as idle and sluggish, reproaching them with the roar of fury for so much time and labor spent in vain. But those who reported that they had deceived those assigned to them he sent out before all, with the highest praise and with the exultation and applause of all, as the bravest warriors and most glorious, as an example to all. Among them a most wicked spirit came up more joyful, as one about to report a most sublime triumph, and named a monk who was very well known, asserting that after fifteen years in which he had constantly besieged him, he had at last prevailed so as to throw him down that very night by the fall of sexual immorality: for he had not only driven him to commit the crime of sexual immorality with a certain consecrated virgin, but had also persuaded him to keep her for himself by right of marriage. At his report an immense joy arose among them all, and he departed, raised up by the prince of darkness with the highest praises and crowned with great commendations. So, when dawn came and the whole multitude of demons had vanished from his eyes, the brother, doubting the assertion of the unclean spirit, and thinking rather that it had wished to deceive him by the ingrained falsehood of its habit and to brand an innocent brother with the crime of unchastity, remembering the saying of the Gospel, ‘He did not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him; when he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own, for he is a liar, and his father,’ went to Pelusium, where he knew the one the unclean spirit said had fallen was living; for the brother was very well known to him too. When he inquired about him, he found that on the same night on which that most foul demon had announced his fall to his troop and prince, he had left his former monastery, gone to the village, and fallen in a miserable lapse with the woman who had been named.”

“For Scripture testifies that two angels are joined to each of us, that is, a good one and a bad one. Of the good ones the Savior says: ‘Do not despise one of these little ones; for I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.’ Also: ‘The angel of the Lord will encamp around those who fear him, and will deliver them’; and also what is said of Peter in the Acts of the Apostles: ‘It is his angel.’ Of both kinds the book of the Shepherd teaches most fully. And if we consider the one who sought the blessed Job, we are most plainly taught that it was he who, always lying in wait for him, could never incite him to sin, and therefore asked the Lord for power, as one who was being defeated not by Job's strength but by the Lord's defence, which always protected him. Of Judas too it is said: ‘And let the devil stand at his right hand.’”

“About the differences of demons we have also learned much from those two philosophers who had once often experienced, through their magic arts, either their sluggishness or their strength and savage wickedness. For they despised the blessed Antony as an unskilled and unlettered man, and wished, if they could harm him in nothing more, at least to drive him out of his cell by magic tricks and the snares of demons; so they sent the most wicked spirits against him, led to this attack by the bite of envy, because very great crowds of people came to him every day as to a servant of God. And when, as he now pressed the sign of the cross on his breast and forehead, now applied himself humbly to prayer, those most savage demons did not dare even to come near him, and returned without any effect to those who had sent them; and when they sent against him others more violent in wickedness, and these too spent their strength in vain and returned empty; and when stronger ones again, sent against the victorious soldier of Christ, prevailed not at all, all these great snares of theirs, sought with all their magic, went so far that by them they proved most plainly that there is great power in the Christian profession, since those shades, so savage and so powerful, which they thought could have darkened the sun and moon if they had been sent against them, could not only do him no harm at all but could not even drive him from his monastery for a moment.”

“In wonder at this, they came at once to Abba Antony, laid open the greatness of their attacks and the causes and snares of their hidden envy, and asked at once to become Christians. When he asked them the day of the attack they had revealed, he declared that he had then been assailed by the most bitter goads of thoughts. By this experience the blessed Antony proved and defined the view we put forward yesterday in the conference: that demons can by no means invade anyone's mind or body, nor have the power to rush into anyone's soul at all, unless they have first stripped it of all holy thoughts and made it empty and bare of spiritual contemplation. It must be known, however, that unclean spirits obey men in two ways. Either they are subjected by divine grace and power to the holiness of the faithful, or, soothed by the sacrifices of the impious or by certain incantations, they flatter them as their familiars. Deceived by this opinion, the Pharisees too thought that the Lord and Savior commanded the demons by this art, saying: ‘He casts out demons by Beelzebub, the prince of the demons’; according, that is, to that custom by which they knew that their magicians or sorcerers, by invoking his name and by the rite of sacrifices in which they knew he delighted and rejoiced, had power, as his household, even over the demons subject to him.”

Germanus: “Since the reading of Genesis was brought forward a little earlier by God's arrangement, which has fittingly reminded us that we may now suitably ask what we have always wanted to learn, we wish to know what we are to think also of those apostate angels who are said to have mingled with the daughters of men, and whether this can be fitting for a spiritual nature according to the letter. We likewise wish to hear about that testimony of the Gospel which you cited a little earlier concerning the devil, ‘for he is a liar, and his father’: who is to be understood as his father?”

Serenus: “You have put forward together two questions of no small weight, which I will answer as best I can in the same order in which you put them. It must by no means be believed that spiritual natures can have carnal intercourse with women. If this could ever have happened according to the letter, why would it not happen now too, at least rarely, and why would we not likewise see some born of women, conceived by demons, without the seed or intercourse of a man? Especially since it is certain that they delight greatly in the filth of lusts, which they would no doubt rather practise by themselves than through men, if this could in any way be done; and Ecclesiastes declares the same: ‘What is it that has been? The same that is. And what is it that has been done? The same that will be done. And there is nothing new under the sun, of which one may speak and say, See, this is new; it has already been in the ages that were before us.’ But the question put forward is solved thus. After the murder of the righteous Abel, lest the whole human race should take its beginning from a fratricide and an impious man, Seth was born in place of the slain brother, to succeed not only to his posterity but also to his brother's righteousness and piety. His descendants, following their father's righteousness, always remained separate from fellowship and union with the kindred that descended from the sacrilegious Cain, as the distinction of the genealogy also plainly shows, saying: ‘Adam begot Seth, Seth begot Enos, Enos begot Cainan, Cainan begot Mahalalel, Mahalalel begot Jared, Jared begot Enoch, Enoch begot Methuselah, Methuselah begot Lamech, Lamech begot Noah.’ Likewise the genealogy of Cain is described separately thus: ‘Cain begot Enoch, Enoch begot Cainan, Cainan begot Mahalalel, Mahalalel begot Methuselah, Methuselah begot Lamech, Lamech begot Jabal and Jubal.’ So that generation which descended from the stock of the righteous Seth, always intermarrying within its own line and kindred, continued for a long time in the holiness of its fathers and forefathers, never infected by the sacrileges and malice of that most wicked offspring, which kept the seed of impiety implanted in itself as if by ancestral tradition. As long as this distinction of their generations remained between them, that seed of Seth, as coming from the best root, was called, for the merit of its holiness, ‘angels of God,’ or, as other copies have it, ‘sons of God’; and on the contrary the others, because of their own or their fathers' impiety and their earthly works, were called ‘sons of men.’ While this useful and holy division existed between them up to that time, the sons of Seth, who were the sons of God, afterwards seeing the daughters of those born of the stock of Cain, and inflamed with desire for their beauty, took wives for themselves from them; and these, pouring their parents' wickedness into their husbands, at once corrupted them from that inborn holiness and ancestral simplicity. To them that saying is quite fittingly addressed: ‘I said, You are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High. But you shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.’ They fell away from that true discipline of natural philosophy handed down to them by their forefathers, which that first man, who came immediately after the establishment of all natures, could plainly attain and hand on to his posterity by sure reasoning. For he had seen the infancy of the world itself, still tender and in a way throbbing and unformed; and there was in him not only so great a fullness of wisdom but also the grace of prophecy, poured in by that divine inbreathing, that as the first dweller in this still unformed world he gave names to all living creatures, and not only distinguished the rage and poisons of every kind of beast and serpent, but also set out the powers of herbs and trees, the natures of stones, and the changes of seasons not yet experienced; so that he could truly say: ‘The Lord has given me true knowledge of the things that are, that I may know the arrangement of the world and the powers of the elements, the beginning and end and middle of times, the changes of the seasons and the divisions of times, the courses of the years and the arrangements of the stars, the natures of animals and the rages of beasts, the force of winds and the thoughts of men, the differences of trees and the powers of roots; and all things that are hidden and manifest I have known.’ This knowledge of all natures, then, the seed of Seth received by ancestral tradition through the succession of generations; and as long as it remained separate from the sacrilegious stock, as it had received it holily, so it used it either for the worship of God or for the benefit of common life. But when it was mixed with the impious generation, it turned what it had piously learned to profane and harmful things, at the prompting of demons too, and boldly established from it the curious arts of sorcery, tricks, and magical superstitions, teaching its descendants to abandon that holy worship of the divine Godhead and to venerate and worship these elements, or fire, or the demons of the air. How this knowledge of curious things did not perish in the flood and became known in the ages that followed, although the answer to the question put forward does not require it, yet since the occasion of this explanation has reminded us, I think it should be touched on briefly. As far as ancient traditions tell, Ham the son of Noah, who had been instructed in these superstitions and sacrilegious and profane arts, knowing that he could not bring any book of memorial about them into the ark, into which he was to enter together with his righteous father and holy brothers, engraved the wicked arts and profane inventions on plates of various metals, which could not be spoiled by the flood of waters, and on very hard stones. When the flood was over, searching for them with the same curiosity with which he had hidden them, he passed on the seedbed of sacrileges and perpetual wickedness to his posterity. In this way that popular opinion, by which people believe that angels handed on sorceries and various arts to men, was fulfilled in truth. Of those sons of Seth and daughters of Cain, then, as we said, more wicked sons were born, who were very mighty hunters, most violent and fierce men, who were called giants because of the enormity of their bodies or of their cruelty and malice. For they first began to plunder their neighbors and practise robbery among men, preferring to get their living by plunder rather than being content with the sweat and labor of work; and their crimes grew so great that the world could not be purified otherwise than by the flood. So, since the sons of Seth, driven by lust, had transgressed that command which had been kept by natural instinct for a very long time from the beginning of this world, it was necessary afterwards for it to be restored by the letter of the law: ‘You shall not give your daughter to his son as wife, nor take any of their daughters for your son; for they will seduce your hearts to depart from your God and follow their gods and serve them.’”

Germanus: “The crime of transgression could rightly have been ascribed to them for presuming this marriage if this command had been given to them. But since the observance of this separation had not yet been fixed by any ordinance, how could the mixing of the race be imputed to them as a fault, when it had been forbidden by no command? For the law usually condemns not past crimes but future ones.”

Serenus: “God, in creating man, implanted in him naturally all knowledge of the law. If man had kept it as he had begun, according to the Lord's purpose, it would certainly not have been necessary for another to be given, which he afterwards published in writing; for it was superfluous to offer from outside a remedy that was still in force within. But because, as we said, this had already been wholly corrupted by the freedom and habit of sinning, the severe strictness of the Mosaic law was set beside it as its executor and avenger, and, to speak in the very words of Scripture, as its helper, so that, at least through fear of present punishment, they might not wholly extinguish the good of natural knowledge, according to the saying of the prophet: ‘He gave the law as a help.’ It is also described by the apostle as having been given like a tutor to little children, teaching and guarding them lest through some forgetfulness they depart from that discipline in which they had been naturally trained. For that all knowledge of the law was implanted in man from the beginning of creation is plainly proved by this: we know that all the saints kept the commands of the law without reading the letter, before the law, indeed before the flood. For how could Abel know, before the law commanded it, that he ought to offer God a sacrifice of the firstlings of his sheep and of their fat, unless he had been taught naturally by the law implanted in him? How would Noah have distinguished which animal was clean and which unclean, before any command of the law distinguished them, unless he had been instructed by natural knowledge? Where did Enoch learn to walk with God, having received no illumination of the law from anyone? Where had Shem and Japheth read, ‘You shall not uncover your father's nakedness,’ so that, walking backwards, they covered their father's shame? Where was Abraham warned to abstain from the enemies' spoils offered to him, so as not to receive a reward for his labor, or to pay the tithes to the priest Melchizedek which are commanded by the Mosaic law? Where did Abraham himself, and Lot, humbly offer the rights of hospitality and the washing of feet to passers-by and strangers, before the command of the Gospel shone forth? Where did Job attain such devotion of faith, such purity of chastity, such knowledge of humility, gentleness, mercy, and kindness, as we do not see fulfilled now even by those who know the Gospels by heart? Which of the saints do we read failed to keep any command of the law before the law? Which of them did not keep, ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord’? Which of them did not fulfil, ‘You shall not make for yourself a carved image, nor any likeness of what is in heaven or on earth or in the waters under the earth’? Which of them did not observe, ‘Honor your father and mother,’ or what follows in the Decalogue: ‘You shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife,’ and other things far greater than these, by which they anticipated the commands not only of the law but also of the Gospel?”

“So we understand that from the beginning God created all things perfect, and that there was nothing which needed to be added to his original ordering, as though it were improvident and imperfect, if all things had remained in the state and arrangement in which they were created by him. And therefore we prove that God punished with just judgment those who sinned before the law, indeed before the flood, because, having transgressed the natural law, they deserved to be punished without any excuse. Nor shall we fall into the blasphemous slander of those who, not knowing this reason, disparage the God of the Old Testament, and, detracting from our faith and mocking it, say: ‘What pleased your God, then, that after so many thousands of years he chose to publish the law, having let so many ages pass without law? If afterwards he found something better, it appears that at the beginning of the world he knew lower or worse things, and afterwards, as if taught by experience, began to foresee better things and to amend his original ordinances for the better.’ This could by no means fit the immense foreknowledge of God, nor can these things be said of him without enormous blasphemy by heretical madness, since Ecclesiastes says: ‘I have known that all the things which God has made from the beginning will be for ever; nothing can be added to them, and nothing can be taken from them.’ And therefore ‘the law is not laid down for the righteous, but for the unrighteous and insubordinate, for the impious and sinners, for the wicked and defiled.’ For those, having the sound and whole discipline of the natural and implanted law, had no need of this law applied from outside and written in letters, which was given as a help to that natural one. From these it is gathered by the plainest reasoning that neither should this law written in letters have been given from the beginning (for it was superfluous to do this while the natural law still stood and had not been wholly violated), nor could evangelical perfection have been handed on before the keeping of the law. For those could not hear, ‘Whoever strikes you on your right cheek, offer him the other also,’ who were not content to avenge their own injuries with the equality of retaliation, but repaid the lightest slap with deadly kicks and wounds of weapons, and for one tooth sought the lives of those who struck them. Nor could it be said to them, ‘Love your enemies,’ among whom it was thought a great fruit and benefit if they loved their friends and turned away from their enemies, differing from them only by hatred, and did not hasten to crush and kill them.”

“As for what troubled you about the devil, ‘for he is a liar, and his father’ — as if the Lord seemed to declare both him and his father liars — it is quite absurd to think this even slightly. For, as we said a little before, spirit does not beget spirit, just as soul cannot procreate soul, though we do not doubt that the formation of the flesh grows from human seed. The apostle distinguishes more plainly which author each substance, that is, flesh and soul, is to be ascribed to: ‘Furthermore,’ he says, ‘we had fathers of our flesh who corrected us, and we revered them; shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live?’ What could define it more clearly than this division, declaring men the fathers of our flesh, but firmly expressing that God alone is the Father of souls? Although even in the very formation of this body only the ministry is to be ascribed to men, but the sum of creation to God, the Creator of all, as David says: ‘Your hands have made me and fashioned me’; and the blessed Job: ‘Have you not milked me like milk, and curdled me like cheese? You have knit me together with bones and sinews’; and the Lord to Jeremiah: ‘Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.’ Ecclesiastes, gathering quite plainly and properly the nature and origin of each substance by examining the birth and beginning from which each came, and by considering the end to which each tends, and discussing likewise the separation of this body and soul, reasoned thus: ‘Before the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.’ What could be said more plainly than that he declares that the matter of the flesh, which he called dust, since it takes its beginning from human seed and seems to be sown by its ministry, returns to the earth as having been taken from the earth; but indicates that the spirit, which is not begotten by the union of both sexes but is given specially by God alone, returns to its author? This is also plainly expressed by that inbreathing of God with which he first gave life to Adam. So from these testimonies we plainly gather that no one can be called the father of spirits except God alone, who makes them from nothing when he wills, while men are called only the fathers of our flesh. Therefore the devil too, in that he was created a spirit, or an angel, or good, had no father except God his maker. But when he was lifted up by pride and said in his heart, ‘I will ascend above the height of the clouds, I will be like the Most High,’ he became a liar and did not stand in the truth; but, bringing forth a lie from his own treasury of wickedness, he became not only a liar but also the father of the lie itself, by which, promising divinity to man and saying, ‘You will be like gods,’ he did not stand in the truth, but was a murderer from the beginning, either by bringing Adam into the condition of mortality, or by killing Abel at his instigation through his brother's hand.” But now the following dawn brings to a close our discussion, carried on through the vigils of nearly two nights, and the brevity of our rusticity has drawn the little boat of this conference from the deepest sea of questions into the safest harbor of silence. The farther the breath of the divine Spirit leads us into that deep, the more widely the immensity ahead will always open before the sight of our eyes, and, according to Solomon's saying, it will become farther from us than it was, ‘and deep is the depth; who will find it?’ Therefore let us pray the Lord that either his fear, or the love that knows no falling, may remain immovable in us, which will make us wise in all things and always protect us unharmed from the devil's darts. For with these guardians it is impossible for anyone to fall into the snares of death. But this is the difference between the perfect and the imperfect: in the former, love, fixed and, so to speak, riper, persevering more tenaciously, makes them endure in holiness more firmly and easily; in the latter, placed as it were more weakly and growing cold more easily, it quickly and often compels them to be entangled in the snares of sins. When we had heard this, the discourse of this conference so inflamed us that, going away from the old man's cell, we thirsted for the fullness of his teaching with greater ardor of mind than when we came.

What was promised in the second book of the Institutes about the perpetual and unceasing continuance of prayer will, with the Lord’s favor, be fulfilled by the conferences of this elder whom we shall now bring forward, that is, Abba Isaac. When these have been set out, I believe I shall have satisfied both the instructions of Pope Castor of most blessed memory and your desire, most blessed Pope Leontius and holy brother Helladius. But I must first excuse the length of the volume: although we tried not only to compress what had to be told into brief narration but also to pass over a great deal in silence, it has grown longer than we had planned. For after a full discussion of various practices, which we have preferred to cut out for the sake of brevity, the blessed Isaac at the end spoke these words.