Monastic Exercise (Ascetic Discourse)

… having got outside the tumults to embrace the monastic life, these alone made their own life an imprint of apostolic virtue. They preferred having nothing to having possessions, for the sake of freedom from distraction; they preferred food that was improvised to food that was elaborately seasoned, because of the uprisings of the passions, and met the body's need with whatever came to hand. They disregarded soft clothing and every conceit of human luxury beyond need, and used a plain and simple garment for the body's necessity, despising luxury; for they reckoned it unphilosophical to let go of concern for heavenly things and to busy the mind with things that lie on the ground and come to the beasts without any effort. They did not know the world, having got outside human passions; among them there was no one who took more and one who was cheated, no one who went to law and one who was taken to court.

For each had as an incorruptible judge his own conscience. It was not that one went hungry while another …, nor that one wasted away with hunger while another burst with surfeit; for the generosity of those who had more than enough filled up the want of those who lacked. And there was equality and equal right, since unevenness had been driven out by the willing condescension of the higher toward the lowlier. Or rather, even then there was no equality: for even then inequality was produced by the eagerness of those striving to be humbled more, as now it is produced by the madness of those contending to be glorified more. Envy had been banished, jealousy exiled, vainglory put to flight, pride destroyed, every cause of strife dissolved. Toward the grosser passions they were like dead and insensible men, not even in a dream receiving images of such things, because from the beginning they had turned well away from the very memory of them, having risen to such a settled state by daily training and endurance. In a word, they were lamps shining in darkness, and fixed stars lighting up the moonless night of life, and by their own calm they showed all people an easy shelter of harbors in which to escape the assaults of the passions.

… that exact way of life and heavenly conduct, like a portrait gradually worn down by the carelessness of those who copied it over the years, has come to the extreme of unlikeness and has altogether fallen away from its archetype. For once again those who had been crucified to the world, who had renounced life and denied being men, and who strove to pass over into the nature of the bodiless powers by the single way of dispassion, have slunk back to worldly business and shameful gains. They muddy the exactness of those who lived well before them, and cause those who could be glorified and renowned for their virtue to be blasphemed through their own [negligence]. And keeping hold of the plough-handle, the solemn habit, we have become unfit for the kingdom of heaven because we have turned back, and we cling with great zeal to things we ought to have forgotten. For the cheap and improvised life is no longer pursued among us, nor is stillness thought useful for being freed from old defilements; instead a crowd of affairs, bringing cares useless for the true goal, has been honored, and ambition for matter has defeated the saving exhortations. For whereas the Lord withdrew us altogether from care about earthly things and commanded us to seek only the kingdom of heaven, we, as if eager to travel the opposite road, have left the Master's commandments and that providential care of his, and have placed our hopes in our own hands. He said, “Look at the birds of the sky: they do not sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns, and your heavenly Father feeds them.” And again, “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they do not toil, nor …” And more: he forbade the bag and the purse and the staff, and commanded us to walk by his most truthful promise alone, which he gave when he sent the disciples out for the benefit of the rest of mankind, saying, “The worker is worthy of his food”; for he knew that promise to be a surer provision of what is needed than our own industry.

We, however, do not decline to acquire as much land as we can, and we buy flocks of sheep and ploughing oxen, sturdy and enviable for their size, and well-fed donkeys: so that the sheep may provide wool in plenty for the needs of our work; so that the oxen, serving the business of farming, may provide food for us and fodder for themselves and the other animals; and so that the beasts of burden, making up what the district lacks with goods brought from abroad, may enlarge for us, beyond our necessary food, a life of enjoyment. More than that, we choose the more profitable crafts, those that draw all our leisure into themselves rather than give us time for the remembrance of God; and so, it seems, we condemn either the weakness of our Protector or ourselves for our former profession. For even if we do not confess it in word, we are convicted by our deeds: we delight in the conduct of people in the world, since we practise the same things as they do, and perhaps wear ourselves out in bodily labors even more; so that now the many think godliness a means of gain, and that once untroubled and blessed life is pursued for nothing else than that, through a feigned godliness, they may escape toilsome services, and, having won license for enjoyment, may give their impulses free rein toward whatever they please, lording it with much shamelessness over those beneath them, and sometimes over those above them too, as though they thought the virtuous life an occasion for tyranny and not for humility and gentleness. That is why even those who ought to revere us regard us as a common rabble, and the motley crowd laughs at us, especially when we are carried along in the markets; for we have nothing that sets us apart from the rest, as we ought to have. We want to be recognized not by our way of life but by our habit, and while we refuse the labors that virtue requires, we crave madly the glory that goes with them, displaying a shadow of the truth that once was.

And today someone takes up this solemn habit without yet having washed off the stains of his soul or wiped from his mind the imprinted marks of his old sins; perhaps he still revels wantonly in their images; he has not yet trained his character toward what pleases God, nor does he know what the goal of philosophy according to God is. Yet already he has put on a lofty brow and thinks great things of himself, as though virtue had been achieved, on the strength of the habit alone; and he goes about carrying the tools of a craft he has never learned. He professes, by the habit that shows outwardly, a knowledge he has not tasted even with the tip of his lips … a reef instead of a harbor, a whitewashed tomb instead of a temple, a wolf instead of a sheep, found to the ruin of those taken in by appearances. For when such men run away from the monasteries because they cannot bear the exactness of the life, [they make for] the cities; and then, wrung by the necessity of the belly, they carry about the outward form of godliness as bait to deceive the many, putting up with doing anything that the body's need compels. For nothing is more compelling than natural necessity, which ingeniously devises means for those without means; and above all when practised idleness is added, then the pretext advances all the more cunningly. These men wait at the doors of the rich no less than parasites do. In the markets they run alongside them like slaves, pushing away those who come near, shoving aside those they meet, eager to clear the way for them; and they do this for the sake of a table, never having learned to punish the pleasure of dainty foods by going without, nor having been willing to carry on their belt the peg that Moses gave for digging when need required. For if they had used it, [they would know] that the throat is the limit of every pleasure in food, and that whatever comes to hand fills the body's want, [and they would avoid] the indecencies of untimely desire.

Because of this the name of God is blasphemed, the longed-for life has become loathsome, and the possession of those who truly live by virtue is reckoned a deceit … The cities are burdened, and the people in their houses are troubled by these men who wander about aimlessly, and they shrink at the very sight of them, seeing them stay at the doors to beg rather shamelessly; and many, having got themselves into houses and feigned piety for a little while, and having wrapped their reputation for villainy in the mask of hypocrisy, afterwards rob the householders and go off. So they bring about a disrepute spread over the whole monastic life. Thus those who were once teachers of self-control are now driven out of the cities like destroyers, and chased away as accursed no less than those with leprosy; and one would rather trust robbers and housebreakers than those who pursue the monastic life, reckoning open villainy easier to guard against than trustworthiness that lies in ambush. These men have not begun in godliness and do not know what the gain of stillness is; driven perhaps by some necessity, without discernment, into the solitary life, they regard the thing as an occasion for trade to provide their necessities. They would, I think, go about this more decently if they did not present themselves at everyone's doors. But they hold out the habit to shame people into larger gifts, and, wishing to pay the body its tribute, they bring not what is necessary but what the softness of the luxurious has invented through immoderate desires. It is hard to cure those who are so incurably sick.

For how could anyone [show] the value of health to those who have never been in health, but have been brought up from their swaddling clothes with a wasting disease, and who through habit think that the misfortune of their nature falls short in nothing of the natural state? Every word of correction is superfluous when the zeal of the hearers has inclined toward the worse and is set against what is truly said; and especially when the hope of gain feeds the desire, the passion stops the ear entirely to counsel, so that exhortations to self-control find no entry, since the mind is strained toward the longing for gain, even shameful gain. We, beloved, who out of desire for virtue, as we suppose, have renounced life and denied worldly desires and promised to follow Christ, why do we entangle ourselves again in the distractions of life, and build up badly what we had well [torn down] before? Why … of those who pursue the thing improperly …, inflaming the appetites of the weaker through our zeal for vain things, and why have we become, for the more simple, [teachers] of greed …

For we have been commanded by the Lord to heal those who easily slip, not to provoke them, and before [seeking our own good, which pleases ourselves], to look to our neighbor's benefit, so that we may not, by following our own undiscerning impulses, make many of the simpler stumble and become for them an occasion of ambition for earthly things. Why do we make so much of matter, which we were taught to despise, clinging to money and possessions and dividing our mind among many useless cares? Zeal for these draws us away from the more necessary attendance [on God] and makes us neglect the goods of the soul, and it leads into a great pit those who gape at the brilliant affairs of life and think enjoyment of wealth the highest good fortune, when they see those who profess to philosophize, and who boast that they are above pleasures, more eager for these things than they are themselves. Nothing leads to inexorable punishment so much as making many people imitators of one's own vices: for the destruction of the imitators becomes an increase of punishment for the one who taught them, and the condemnation of those who did not refuse the imitation as shameful is no small one for him, since he has become a teacher of vices. Those who used a sober judgment saw that such conduct was disgraceful, and fled it. Let no one, then, take offense at what is said; but let him either correct what is done amiss, to the shame of the name, through the indifference of the many, or let him give up the name as well. For if the aim is to philosophize, possessions are superfluous to philosophy, which professes estrangement even from the body itself for the sake of the soul's purity. But if acquiring, and enjoying the pleasures of life, is what some are eager for, why have they taken up philosophy in word and estrangement from it in deed, doing things foreign to their profession and clothing themselves in solemn titles …

Then do we not think it shameful to be reproached by those we consider our inferiors, whom we call “worldly,” for the Saviour's ordinances we have neglected, and to be taught the commandments of the Lord we have set aside by those who ought to be learning them from us? For when they say to us as we quarrel, “The servant of the Lord must not quarrel, but be gentle toward all”; and again … about money …, “If anyone takes your tunic,” he says, “let him have your cloak as well,” what else are they doing but mocking and jeering at us for the contradiction between our works and our profession? For is it necessary to fight with someone who lays claim to possessions, and to do everything that the madness for them compels? One man has moved the boundary of your vineyard; another has let his beast loose on your land; another [has diverted] the water from your garden. Must one then rage, and become worse than madmen, dividing one's revenge among all of these, and nail to the law courts the mind that ought to be occupied with the contemplation of what truly is, and turn its contemplative power into practical cunning, so that we may prosper in an abundance of things of no use at all? Why do we lay claim to what belongs to others as if it were our own, making heavy fetters of matter for ourselves, and do not listen to the one who pities such people: “Woe,” says the prophet, “to him who gathers for himself what is not his own, and makes his yoke heavy and strong”? For if the pursuers are light, according to the one who says, “Our pursuers were lighter than the eagles of heaven,” while we load ourselves with worldly affairs, it is clear that, moving more sluggishly in the race, we shall easily be overtaken by the enemies whom Paul fled when he taught, saying, “Flee sexual immorality … and greed.” Even those who run lightly equipped toward the prize fall far short of overtaking it unless they are carried along with an intense rush, since the enemies who pursue them perhaps have swifter steps.

A great hindrance to those hastening toward virtue is attachment to worldly affairs, which often brings ruin to both soul and body. For what [killed] Naboth the Israelite? Was it not his enviable vineyard that became the cause of his death, by stirring his neighbor to envy against him? What made the two tribes remain outside the promise? Was it not the multitude of their cattle? And what [separated] Lot from Abraham? Was it not the great number of their flocks, which stirred up continual quarrels between the shepherds and in the end [parted] them from one another? If, then, [property] even [rouses] the envious to murder against those who own possessions, and [separates] those who possess from the more earnest, and [cuts] kinship apart, and turns friends into enemies, and has nothing in common with the life to come, and is of no great use even to the body, why do we leave the service of God and give ourselves wholly to vanity? It is not we who accomplish the things of our life; it is God who arranges them. Human effort that does not obtain God's help necessarily falls short of its end, while God's arrangement, even without human effort, provides good things in full. What [profit did] their own toil [bring] those … to whom God said, “You have sown much and brought in little, and I blew it away out of your houses”? And what necessary thing ever failed those who lived by virtue, though they [took no thought] at all about these things? Did not the Israelites go about in the desert for forty years without enjoying anything from farming, and yet lacked no food? The sea belched up quails for them, a strange food; the rock, which had no moisture, broke open and gave an abundant stream; and heaven brought down manna, an unaccustomed and foreign rain; and their clothes and sandals did not wear out all that time. What land did Elijah farm when he was fed …? Did not ravens bring him his food? When he came to Zarephath, did not a widow, herself in want of necessities, give him bread snatched from the mouths of her own children, so that it might be shown that virtue is to be honored even above nature? …

These things are indeed marvellous, yet they also hold to what is reasonable; for it is possible to live without eating when God wills. How else did Elijah [walk] a forty days' journey in the strength of one meal? How did Moses remain without tasting human food for eighty days, while he conversed with God on the mountain? For after forty days he came down, and, angered by the making of the calf, immediately broke the tablets, ran back up the mountain, spent as many days again there, and only then took the second tablets and came down to the people. What human reasoning can show the rationale of this wonder? How could the body's nature, which is always flowing away, be emptied to such a degree, with nothing replacing the strength that is breathed out each day? The Word resolves this difficulty when it says, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes out through the mouth of God.” Why then do we [drag] our heavenly citizenship down to earth, weighing it down with material miseries? Why do we, who were once nursed in scarlet, embrace [dung-heaps], as Jeremiah said in his Lamentations about certain people? For when we rest upon bright and fiery thoughts, we are nursed in scarlet; but when we abandon that state and are mixed up with earthly affairs, we embrace dung-heaps. Why do we withdraw our hope from God and [make] flesh [our arm], ascribing the Master's providence to our own hands? And what Job feared would be reckoned to him as a great sin, putting his hand to his mouth and kissing it, we are not afraid to do now. For it is the custom of many to kiss their hands, saying that they have their prosperity from them. The law hints at such people by a figure when it says, “Whatever goes on its hands is unclean, and whatever goes on its feet is unclean, and whatever goes … on four is always unclean.” He goes on his hands who leans on his hands and has all his hope in them; on four, he who trusts in the things of sense and always drags his ruling mind about in busyness with them; and on many feet, he who is surrounded by bodily things. That is why the wise author of the Proverbs wants the perfect man to have not even two feet but one, and that one rarely moving toward bodily affairs: “Rarely,” he says, “set your foot toward your friend, lest having had his fill of you he hate you.” For if someone troubles Christ about the needs of the body, he will be dear to him, since this is the purpose of such friends, as the Saviour says to his disciples, “You are my friends”; but if he does this too often, he becomes hateful.

What then will he suffer, and how will he not be abominable, who is always busy with these needs and never rises to the upright life, because he has no legs above his feet with which to leap from the ground? For just as the legs, by bending …, first take the whole weight of the body upon themselves, and then, having brought it a little closer to the ground, prepare it to spring all at once into the air, so the reason that discerns the things of nature, after first being lowered by the body's need, quickly sends the mind up light again to the things above, lifting with itself none of the earthly defilements. To have straight legs belongs to those who are wholly given to enjoyment and always lie below; it belongs also to the holy Powers, because they are entirely [free] of bodily things and do not even incline toward them. Indicating this, I think, the great Ezekiel said that their legs were straight and their feet winged, which shows the unbending steadiness of their will and the swiftness of that nature toward thoughts. For human beings it is enough to have legs that bend, serving sometimes the occupations of the body and sometimes the upward occupations of the soul: because of the soul's kinship with the Powers above, mostly to soar aloft with them; because of the body's tension, to give the earth as much attention as need compels. But always to creep about after the preparations of enjoyment is truly unclean, and unfitting for human beings who have been given a share of rational knowledge. For with careful precision [the law] did not simply call unclean the one who goes on four, but the one who goes on four always; for it gave those in the body time to come down for the body's need. Indeed Jonathan, fighting the Ammonite, walked on all fours and won, since he served only the necessity of nature; for one who fights against the serpent that crawls on its breast (for that is the meaning of the name) had to take on its likeness for a little while by going on four, and so, rising up again to his own posture, to overcome it with great ease.

And does not the story of [Ishbosheth] teach us … not to cling, weighed down, to … bodily things, nor to entrust our guard to sense? For he, though a king, was resting in his chamber and, it says, had entrusted the door to his own wife; and the men with Rechab came, found her cleaning wheat and dozing, slipped past her, went in, and killed Ishbosheth, finding him asleep as well. For everything sleeps, mind and soul and understanding and sense, when bodily things have the upper hand. That the doorkeeper had been cleaning wheat shows the understanding diligently occupied with bodily things, and practising their cleanness not in passing but with a certain zeal. That Scripture does not teach this as plain history is clear from this: how could a king have had a woman as doorkeeper, when he ought to have been guarded by a crowd of soldiers and to have kept about him all the pageantry of his rank? Or how could he have been so poor as to have the wheat cleaned by her? But often what is unreasonable is mixed into a story for the sake of the truth of what is signified. For each person's mind, like a king, lives somewhere within, having the understanding as doorkeeper of the senses; and when the understanding hands itself over to bodily things (and cleaning wheat is bodily), the plotters easily slip past and [kill] the mind. That is why the great [Abraham] does not trust a woman to guard the door, for he knows how easily sense is deceived, how by delight in the things of sense it entices the mind and persuades it to share in the pleasures with it, and the sharing would plainly be dangerous; instead he himself sits by it, keeping the entrance wide open to divine thoughts and shutting the door on worldly cares. What do we gain for life from our vain toil about these things? Is not “all a man's toil,” according to Ecclesiastes, “for his mouth”? And according to the Apostle, food and covering are enough to sustain our wretched flesh. Why then do we toil endlessly, chasing the wind, as Solomon says, hindering the soul by our zeal for earthly things from enjoying the divine goods, and pampering the flesh and warming it more than is good, so that it becomes our enemy, neighbor and foe, and the battle with it is not merely evenly matched, but … [the flesh] grieves the soul from a great surplus [of strength], armed against it, so that it does not even let the soul aspire to honors and crowns? What is the body's need, that on its pretext we stretch desire into senseless helplessness? It is surely bread and water. Do not the springs provide the stream in abundance, and is not bread easily obtained by those who have hands? We can provide for ourselves by such work as fills the body's need and distracts us little, or not at all. But does clothing give much worry? Not this either, if we look not to the softness that comes from habit but only to need. For what spider-web garments, what fine linen or purple or silk did the first man wear? Did not the Creator [make] his clothing from skins, and command him to be fed on grass? By so ordaining he set these as the limits of the body's need, and from far off checked the shamefulness that now [prevails] among men. I do not say that even now he who feeds the birds of the sky will not feed those who live well, and that he who put such glory about the lilies of the field will not clothe them; but it is not yet possible to persuade those who stand far from this faith. For who will not supply the necessities, without being begged, to the one who lives by virtue?

For if barbarous men, the Babylonians, who had taken Jerusalem by the law of war, respected the virtue of Jeremiah and gave him every bodily care in abundance, providing not only food but also the vessels with which those who are entertained are customarily served, how will his own people not revere a virtuous life, people whose reasoning has been more thoroughly cleansed than the barbarian's for the understanding of what is good, and who are emulators of virtue? For even if they have not been able to become practitioners of it through weakness of nature, still they honor virtue and admire those who practise it. Who persuaded the Shunammite to build a lodging for [Elisha], and to put there a table, a stool, a bed and a lamp? Was it not the man's virtue? And what put to shame that widow, when famine was laying waste the whole land, so that she preferred the service of the prophet to her own need? Surely, had she not respected Elijah's philosophy, she would not have taken the small comfort of life from herself and her children and given it up to him, choosing beforehand the death she pictured coming soon, out of her generosity to the stranger.

… [What made] them such was their nobility, their refusal to give way before labors, and their contempt for the affairs of life. For by practising frugality and advancing from needing little to needing, so to speak, nothing, they came to stand near the bodiless powers. Hence, though they were obscure and of no account in body, they became stronger than those who rule all things, speaking to those who wear the diadem with more freedom than these use toward their subjects. Trusting in what weapons, or in what power, did Elijah say to Ahab, “It is not I who trouble Israel, but you and your father's house”? How did Moses set himself against Pharaoh in contest, having no provision for his boldness but his virtue? How did Elisha, when the army of the two [kings] … of Israel and of Judah, say to [the king], “As the Lord of hosts lives, before whom I stand today, if I did not regard the face of Jehoshaphat, I would not have looked at you or seen you,” fearing neither the army that had been set in motion nor the anger of the king, which he was likely to vent at a time of war, his reasoning confused by anxiety into an irrational impulse? What can kingship do that is like what virtue does? What purple [divided] a river as Elijah's sheepskin did? What diadem [drove away] diseases as the handkerchiefs of the apostles did? A prophet, alone, rebuked a lawbreaking king who was surrounded by his whole army; and when the rebuke [kindled] his anger, the king stretched out his hand against the prophet, but he did not seize him, and he could not draw his hand back to himself, for it had withered. It was a contest between virtue and royal power, and the victory of virtue proved stronger. The prophet did not fight, and virtue routed the enemy; the champion did nothing, and faith did the work; the king's allies became judges of the contest, and the hand stood there bearing witness to the victory of virtue.

They did these things because they had decided to live by the soul alone, turning away from the body and the body's necessities; and what made them higher than all was needing nothing. For they thought it better to leave the body and be released from life in the flesh than to betray the dignity of virtue or, for the sake of bodily need, to flatter any of the rich. But we, when we need something, are like little dogs that wag their tails more cheerfully at those who toss them perhaps a bare bone or some crumbs: so we run up to the rich, calling them benefactors and the only [patrons] of Christians, and simply testify to every virtue in them, even if they happen to be sunk in the depths of vice, in order to get what we are after; we take no trouble to examine the conduct of the saints whose virtue we have supposedly set out to emulate. Naaman, the commander of Syria, once came to Elisha bringing many gifts with him. What then did the prophet do? Did he run out to meet him at once? No: he dealt with the need for which Naaman had come through a single young servant, without even admitting him to his presence, so that he might not be thought to give the healing for the sake of the gifts. This is said not so that we may learn arrogance, but so that we may not, for need's sake, [court] those who cherish the things we have professed to despise. Why then do we abandon the goal of philosophy and practise farming and trade? What great thing [do we add] for God by our own care? To show that the care of farming is a joint work: human effort cuts the earth and casts the seeds, but God waters what has been sown with rain upon rain, preparing the roots to stretch out in the soft [clods] of the earth; he raises the sun to warm the earth and with its warmth to call the plants upward; he sends breezes of wind suited to the age of the growing crops, with gentle breaths at first over the green plain, so that the seed may not be scorched by hot winds, and with steadier blasts ripening the milky part of the grain in its husks; he provides the heat fit for threshing and the winds suitable for winnowing. If any one of these fails, human toil is shown to be vain, and our … effort, not sealed by the gifts of God. … the earth lacked none of these things for bringing the crop to completion, but a violent and heavy rain came and [spoiled] the grain while it was still being threshed, or after it had been heaped up in season. Sometimes, even in the barn itself, worm and moth destroyed it, plundering, so to speak, a table already laid, from the very mouth.

Where then, and for what, is our effort useful, since God holds the tillers of affairs and carries and leads everything as he wills? But, we will say, in sicknesses the body needs comfort. And how much better it is to die than to do something unbecoming! Surely, if God still wants us to live, either he puts strength into the body against the sickness, so that it may bear the toil of [the sickness] and receive the crowns for [endurance], or he will devise a means of comfort for the sufferer; contrivance for salvation will not fail the source of salvation and of wisdom. It is good, then, beloved, it is good to go up again to the ancient blessedness and to lay hold of the way of life of those of old. For it is easy, I think, for all who are willing; and even if some toil is involved, it will not be fruitless, since it has as sufficient comfort the renown of those who went before and the correction of those who will follow. For it will be no small gain to those who begin such a manner of life and leave to those after them an image of the best way of life, that those who fell away should be restored. Let us flee life in cities and villages, so that those in cities and villages [may come] to us [in] the desert, so that we may draw to ourselves those who now flee from us, if that is at all dear to us. For it is written in praise of certain people that they left the cities and dwelt in the rocks, and became like meditating doves. John the Baptist, too, lived in the desert, and all the cities came out to him with all their people … they hurried to see the leather belt; those who … clothed in silk garments, and those who had gilt-roofed houses and rested on beds inlaid with stones, [preferred] hardship in the open air, or lying on the sand, and everything was bearable to them, though it went against their custom. For desire for the man's virtue cut away their feeling of pain, and the wonder of the sight stole away the toil of the hard life.

So much more precious than wealth is virtue, and a still life more illustrious than great riches. How many in that time were rich and proud of their glory, and they have been silenced and handed over to oblivion; while the wonder of the man without glory is sung to this day, and the memory of the desert-dweller is cherished. For it is the property of virtue to be celebrated and to send out its fame as a messenger of its own goods. Let us renounce cattle-raising, so that we may take up the shepherd's state; shameful trade, so that we may acquire the pearl of great price; let us flee the farming of a land that brings forth thorns and thistles, so that we may become workers and guardians of paradise. Above all let us choose the still life, so that [we may shame] those who now reproach us and bring up our possessions against us. For nothing so shames those who attack as the gentle correction of what is reproached; the change in those reproached becomes confusion to those who reproach them. This too I consider shameful, and it is truly shameful, and for it we are rightly laughed at by all: someone comes to this life, learns only the outward customs of the ascetic discipline, how they pray, and when, and what their manner of diet is, and at once he steps forward as a teacher of what he has not learned, dragging a string of disciples after him, though he himself needs teaching, and all the more because he thinks the thing easy. He does not know that the hardest thing of all is to take care of souls, which need first to be cleansed of their old defilements, and then much attention in order to receive the lessons of virtue well. How will one who has nothing more than bodily discipline correct the characters of those under him? How [will he heal] those [held fast] by evil habit? How will he help those who are warred against by [thoughts], when he does not know at all the war that is waged in the mind? Or how will he heal the wounds received in that war, while he himself still lies wounded and needs bandages?

Every craft needs time and much teaching to succeed; only the art of arts is practised without being learned. No one inexperienced in farming would [take it up], nor would anyone uninitiated in medicine attempt its works; for the one will be shown up by doing the sick no good and even making their disease worse, the other by turning the best land into barren and dirty ground. Godliness alone, as the easiest of all, is ventured on by the untrained; the thing that is hard to accomplish is thought easy by the many, and what Paul says he has not yet attained, this, those who know only that they do not know it confidently claim to know exactly. That is why the life has become contemptible and those who pursue it are mocked by all. For who will not laugh to see the man who yesterday carried water in a tavern escorted today by disciples as a teacher of virtue, or the man who lately withdrew from civic misdeeds strutting about late in the day through the whole market with a crowd of disciples? If they were clearly convinced that the toil of leading others to godliness is great, and feared the danger that goes with the work, they would surely have declined the thing as beyond them. But so long as they do not know this, and think presiding over others a glory, they [rush] lightly into such a task, and think it a slight thing to leap into a burning furnace, becoming a laughingstock to those who know their life of yesterday, and to God [a cause of] indignation at such rashness …

For if nothing excused [Eli] from the wrath of God, not venerable old age, not long [service], not priestly honor, because he neglected to correct his sons, how will [God] now spare from such indignation those who have no credit with God from works of old, who know neither the manner of the sin nor the method of correction, but who out of love of glory inexpertly take in hand a dreadful task? That is why the Lord, seeming to [rebuke] the Pharisees, said, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you go round sea and dry land to make one proselyte, and when you find him you make him a son of Gehenna twice as much as yourselves” … but in truth, through his rebuke of them, he was admonishing those who would later be caught in the same faults, so that, heeding the “woe,” they might restrain themselves from the untimely desire for glory among men, judging the lament more fearful. Let Job, too, shame them, either into caring in the same way for those under them, or into declining such leadership, if they do not know how to do what he did, and are not willing to bring the same zeal on behalf of those in their charge. For if he, wishing his sons to be pure even of the stains of thought, offered sacrifices for them every day, saying, “Perhaps my sons have thought evil in their heart against God,” how can these men, who are ignorant even of open sins … lacking discernment, because the dust of the battle with the passions still darkens their reasoning, leap into the leadership of others and take on the healing of others, though they have not yet healed their own passions and cannot, from their own victory, lead others to victory in the same way?

For one must first fight the passions, and with much watchfulness commit to memory what happens in the war, and so, from one's own experience, set before others the matters of the battle and make victory easier for them by telling beforehand the methods used in the war. For there are some who have mastered the passions, perhaps through much hardship, yet do not know the manner of their victory, because, as though in darkness, they did not follow [the movements of the passions] nor fix their mind exactly on the plots of the enemies. Joshua the son of Nun did this symbolically when the army was crossing the Jordan by night: he ordered stones to be drawn up from the middle of the river, set up as pillars outside the river, plastered, and inscribed with how they had crossed the Jordan. He signified that the hidden thoughts of the life of passion must be brought into the open and clearly published, and that others must not be grudged the knowledge, so that not only the one who has crossed may know the manner of the crossing, but also those who choose to do the same may make the crossing easy by learning, and the experience of some may become teaching for others. These things those men do not see, nor do they listen when others speak of them; looking only to their own self-assurance, they lay slavish services on the brothers as though on slaves bought with silver, putting the whole of their glory in this, in presiding over more people. And there is rivalry among them not to drag along fewer slaves than the rest in their processions, displaying the state of hucksters rather than of teachers.

For when they think it easy to command in word, however heavy the commands may be, but will not even bear to teach by deed, they make their aim plain to everyone: that they are eager not to benefit those under their rule but to gain their own pleasure, and for that reason they slip into this leadership. Let them learn, if they will … from [Abimelech] and from Gideon, that not word but deed leads those under rule to imitation: the one made a load of wood, and after carrying it said, “As you saw me do, do the same yourselves”; the other led the way in a common work and put himself in front of the labor, saying, “Look at me and do the same.” So too the Apostle, saying, “These hands served my needs and those of the people with me”; and the Lord himself, who first did and then taught. Whom do these examples not persuade to think teaching by deeds more trustworthy than teaching by words? But these men shut their eyes to such images and arrogantly order what is to be done. And when they seem to know something of these things by hearsay, they are like the shepherds whom the prophet charged with inexperience, who wear the sword on the arm, so that their right eye is blinded on account of the arm. For right action, neglected through folly, extinguishes along with itself the brightness of contemplation as well. This is what happens to those who discipline cruelly and inhumanly: when they have the power to punish ready to hand, at once their contemplative powers on the right are put out; and again their actions, robbed of contemplation, wither away, since those who have strapped the sword not to the thigh but to the arm cannot know anything. Those who use the divine word against their own passions wear the sword on the thigh; those who keep punishment ready for the sins of others wear it on the arm.

So too Nahash the Ammonite, whose name means “serpent,” [sought] to dig out every right eye in the seeing faculty, so that no right thought within might lead [the mind] to right action; for he knew this to be the cause of great progress for those who come from contemplation to the practical life. For to such people what is done becomes [easy] through the most sharp-sighted eyes of knowledge. That it is [the mark] … of careless people, who have no benefit within themselves, to take on the leadership of others is clear from experience as well. For no one who has tasted stillness and has begun in some measure to give himself to contemplation would choose to bind his mind to cares about bodily things, drawing it away from knowledge, and to drag down to worldly affairs a mind that is mostly borne aloft. It is clearer still from that famous parable which Jonathan put to the men of Shechem, saying, “The trees went out to anoint a king over themselves, and they said to the vine, ‘Come, reign over us.’ And the vine said, ‘Shall I give up my good fruit, which God and men have glorified, and go to rule over trees?’” So likewise … the fig, because of its sweetness, and the olive, because of the richness it has, declined. The bramble, a fruitless and thorny wood, accepted rule over them, though it had no richness of its own nor any from the trees under it. For the parable said that it was not the trees of paradise but those of the thicket that needed oversight. For as the vine, the fig and the olive declined to rule the trees of the thicket, delighting more in their own fruit than in the dignity of rule, so those who see some fruit of virtue in themselves and feel the benefit that comes from it, even if many press them to take up rule, prefer their own benefit to the honor that comes from the many …

What the bramble in the parable called down as a curse on the trees happens also to people who [act] like them: “Either let fire come out of the bramble,” it says, “and devour the trees of the thicket, or let it come out of the trees and devour the bramble.” For when such compacts prove useless, danger necessarily follows, both for those who subject themselves to an inexperienced teacher and for those who have taken on the rule, because of the heedlessness of those they teach. For the inexperience of the teacher destroys the disciples, and the negligence of the disciples brings danger on the teacher, especially when they grow slack because of his lack of knowledge. Nothing that bears on the correction of those under him ought to escape the teacher, and the disciples ought not to overlook any of the teacher's commands. For it is heavy and dangerous for them to disobey, and for him to overlook their faults. Let them not think the thing a pretext for ease and enjoyment: of all things the most laborious is to rule souls. Those who rule irrational beasts and cattle have herds that oppose them in nothing, and so their rule often prospers; but for those set over human beings the variety of characters and the cunning that comes from reasoning make oversight harder, and those who come to it must anoint themselves as for a toilsome contest, so that they may bear the shortcomings of all with much forbearance and patiently [show] those who [err] through ignorance what escapes them.

That is why in the temple oxen carry the laver, while the lampstand was made entirely solid and turned. The lampstand shows that one who sets out to give light to others must be solid in all his parts, with nothing light or hollow in him, and must have turned away every superfluity that would not serve those who see him as an example of a blameless life. The oxen beneath [the laver] show that one who has undertaken such a work must refuse nothing that comes upon him, but must bear both the burdens and the dirt of the lesser, so long as bearing it is without danger. For if he is to cleanse the actions of those who come to him, he must necessarily get some share of the dirt himself, since the one who [washes] the hands of another receives that person's dirt. One who talks about passions and scrubs others clean of such stains cannot come away unsoiled; for the very memory naturally soils the speaker's mind. Even if it does not stamp the impressions of shameful things on it in deeper dyes, it still stains the surface of the mind, muddying it with the unclean colors of the discourse. The superior must also be so expert as to be ignorant of none of the enemy's designs, so that he may strip bare and show those entrusted to him the [tricks] of the wrestling that are hidden from them, and, by telling them the adversary's plots in advance, may award them the victory and bring them out of the contest crowned. But such a man is rare and not easily found.

The great Paul testifies to this very thing when he says, “For we are not [ignorant] of his designs.” And the wonderful Job, at a loss about such things, says, “Who will uncover the face of his garment? Who could enter the fold of his breastplate? Who [will open] the gates of his face?” What he means is this: “The face he shows,” he says, “is not [his own]; for he covers his wickedness with many garments, enticing deceitfully by what appears, and craftily contriving destruction by what is hidden.” And so as not to count himself among those who are ignorant of what concerns the enemy, he states his marks, since he clearly knows all his trickery: “His eyes,” he says, “are the appearance of the morning star; his entrails are asps.” He says this to expose the enemy's villainy: by putting on the form of the morning star he schemes to draw those who see him to himself, and by the asps within he [brings] death to those who have dealings with him. The proverb, too, hints at the danger of this matter when it says, “I split wood in them, if the iron should fall out.” For one who divides things by reasoning, and separates what are thought to be united, wishing to show the truly good things to be wholly foreign to those thought to be such, unless he has his reasoning secured on every side, runs the danger among his hearers of a word that has fallen from its security giving an occasion of stumbling to those [who listen].

So one of those who studied under Elisha, cutting wood at the Jordan, when the iron fell into the river, foresaw the danger and cried out to his teacher, saying, “Alas! And it was borrowed!” This is what happens to those who from things half heard … undertake to teach and cannot come through to the end, because they do not speak from their own settled state; for when in the middle they say something contrary to their subject, then they confess their ignorance, endangered by the borrowed word. That is why the great Elisha threw wood into the depths and made the iron float, making plain the thought from the disciple which was thought to be hidden in the depths, and bringing it before the eyes of the hearers. Look: the Jordan signifies the word of repentance, for there John performed the baptism of repentance. One who has not spoken exactly about repentance, but by baring the hidden … has caused [God's] kindness to come into contempt … brought up the iron for the hearers in the Jordan. It is plain too that the wood that appeared brings up the iron from the depths and makes it float. For before the cross the word about repentance was hidden; that is why the one who rashly dared to say something about it was put to shame. But after the cross it became plain to all in its own time, shown forth through the wood.

I say this not to deter anyone from leading others, nor to prevent anyone from guiding some of the young to godliness, but to urge them first to acquire a settled state of virtue proportionate to the greatness of the task, and not to give themselves rashly to this aim, counting up its pleasures, the service of disciples and the praise of outsiders, while miscounting the danger that follows; and not to make the instruments of war into farming tools before the state of peace. For after one has subdued all the passions, when wars no longer trouble him from any side, and he is no longer dragged into the need of using weapons of defense, it is good to cultivate others. But while the passions tyrannize and the war against the mind of the flesh still stands, one must not take one's hands off the weapons, but keep them on the weapons unceasingly, so that the plotters may not take our relaxation as the moment for attack and overpower us. For just as to those who have fought well for virtue and, through great humility, do not yet think they have won, the word says by way of encouragement, “Beat your swords into ploughs and your spears into sickles,” urging them not to brandish them any longer in vain at defeated enemies, but for the benefit of the many to convert the powers of the soul from the habit of war to the cultivation of those who still run wild in the works of vice; so to those who, before reaching such a state, through inexperience or folly have taken on what is beyond their power, it counsels the opposite, saying, “Beat your ploughs into swords and your sickles into spears.”

What use is farming to us when war holds the land and prevents us from enjoying the [fruits], providing abundance to the enemy rather than to [the farmers]? Perhaps that is why he does not permit the care of farming to the Israelites while they were still in the desert fighting various nations, so that it might not hinder their training for war. But after the [destruction] of the enemy he advises them to take it up, saying, “When you enter the land of promise, plant in it every fruit-bearing tree.” And “Before you enter, you shall not plant” is understood with it, and rightly; for [before] perfection what is planted does not become firm, especially while the habits of those who want to plant are still carried about in instability. For if there is order and sequence in anything, there is in the works of godliness, and one must advance in the way of life from its beginnings. Those who overlook the things of [order], enticed by what is more dainty, are persuaded [not] to keep to the sequence of order. And just as [Jacob], drawn by the beauty of [Rachel], overlooked the weakness of Leah's eyes, yet did not escape the toil for the acquisition of [Leah], since he fulfilled her week as well, so one who wishes to keep lawfully to the way of life must not [go down] from the end to the beginnings, but advance from the beginning toward perfection.

For in this way he will himself attain what he strives for, and will guide those under him blamelessly to the goal of virtue. But the many, who have contributed no toil and have accomplished no work of godliness, small or great, [take hold of] the name as chance has it, displaying a terrible madness and not thinking this a danger. Not only do they not decline when others urge them to the work; they even go round the alleys dragging along, against their will, whomever they meet, promising every kind of care, like people who make contracts about food with hired workers. And those who are so in love with the thing, and want to appear in their processions with a crowd, to lean on those who lead them by the hand, and to keep up all the pageantry of leaders, having taken on, as it were, the acting of a play, must, so as not to be abandoned by those who perform this service for them, indulge them in many things and leave them to their desires, like a charioteer who has dropped the reins and given his horses a free run, so that they are carried over cliffs and into pits and stumble over everything at their feet, with no one to check them or to hinder their disorderly impulses.

But let such men hear the blessed Ezekiel lamenting those who supply material for the pleasures of others, and who by going along with each one's wishes treasure up the “woe” for themselves. For he says, “Woe to the women who sew pillows under every elbow of the arm, and make veils for every head of every age, to destroy souls, for a handful of barley and for a morsel of bread.” So too these men, collecting the needs of the body for themselves by contributions, and lulling to rest, with comforts stitched together as it were from rags, those who ought to pray and prophesy with bare head, loosen the manly state by putting coverings over them … killing souls that ought not to die. … Above all, obeying Christ, the true teacher, they ought to decline the care of others as far as they can; for he says to his disciples, “But you, do not be called Rabbi.” If even Peter and John and the whole choir of the apostles [were told] to stand far from such a work and to count themselves too small for such a dignity, who will there be who imagines himself above them and admits himself to a dignity from which they were held back? Or will he perhaps say that in saying “do not be called Rabbi” he forbids not being one, but only being called one?

If someone, without choosing it, after accepting one or two [disciples], should be compelled to lead more, let him first examine himself exactly, whether he is able to teach what must be done by deed rather than by word, [offering] his own life to the learners as an image of virtue, so that those who copy from it may not, by some slip, dull the beauty of virtue. Then let him know that he must struggle no less for those he rules than for himself; for, having once taken on their salvation, he will give an account for them as for himself. The saints too were zealous to leave their disciples not inferior to their own virtue, but to reshape them from their first state into a better one. So the apostle Paul made Onesimus, from a runaway, a martyr; Elijah made Elisha, from a ploughman, a prophet; … Moses [made] Joshua [better] in all things; and Eli showed Samuel to be even greater than himself. For even if their own zeal [contributed] to their acquisition of virtue, yet the whole cause of their progress was that they found teachers of the good who were able to fan the smoldering spark of their eagerness into the greater [flame] of exhortation, and made it [blaze]; and for this reason they became the mouth of God, ministering his will to human beings. For they had heard him who says, “If you bring out the precious from the worthless, you shall be as my mouth.”

God sets the teacher's state before Ezekiel too, teaching what kind of [people], and from what [material], those who build [cities] must make: “Son of man,” he says, “take for yourself a brick and set it before your face, and draw on it the city of Jerusalem,” signifying that the teacher makes the disciple from clay into a holy temple. And well is it said, “set it before your face”; for improvement will be swift for the disciple if he is always in the teacher's sight. For the continual images of good examples close at hand [imprint themselves] on souls that are not altogether hard and calloused. That is why Gehazi and Judas fell, the one into theft, the other into betrayal: because they withdrew themselves from the eyes of their teacher; had they stayed with those who corrected them, neither of them would have done wrong. And that danger comes to the teacher from their negligence he showed by the words that follow: “And you shall set an iron pan between you and the city, and it shall be a wall between you and it.” For one who does not want to share in the [disciple's] punishment must, after making the city of brick for him, declare the punishments that hang over those who run back from such a state, so that these, becoming a wall, may [separate] the guiltless from the guilty. For this God commands [Ezekiel], saying, “Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; and if you see the sword coming and do not warn them, and it takes one of them, I will require his soul from your hand.”

Moses too [made] such a wall for himself when he said to the Israelites, “Take heed to yourself that you do not seek to follow after them, after they have been destroyed from before you.” For this happens to those who attend rather carelessly to their own mind after the cutting out of the passions: like shoots, the images of [old] fantasies begin to peep out; and if one gives them room to fall continually upon the ruling faculty and does not block their entry, the passions once more make his life a struggle after the victory. For even when the passions have been tamed and taught to eat grass like oxen, through the negligence of the one taming them they can grow wild again and take back the savagery of wild beasts. So that this may not happen, he says, “do not seek to follow after them, after they have been destroyed from before you,” lest in seeking them the soul acquire a habit of taking pleasure in such fantasies and run back to its old vice. The great [Jacob], knowing that this happens, that such things, when contemplated and continually dwelt on, harm the mind all the more by stamping on it very clear and distinct images of shameful fantasies, hides the foreign gods in Shechem. For the one who labors over the passions hides and destroys them, not for a time but “to this day,” that is, for all time, since “today” extends along with the whole age, always signifying the present moment. Shechem signifies “battle,” which shows the toil over the passions. That is why he gives Joseph Shechem as a special possession: [to] the one who fights the passions, the toil among them.

And to them he who says he took Shechem with sword and bow shows that by battle and toil he had mastered the passions, hiding them away in the land of Shechem. Now it may seem somehow contradictory that hiding the gods in Shechem [is praised], while setting up an idol in secret [is cursed]. For the one is praiseworthy … to hide them in Shechem; the other blameworthy, to set up an idol in secret. Thus he laid it down with a curse, saying, “Cursed is he who sets up an idol in secret.” For it is not the same thing to hide something altogether in the earth and to set it up in secret. What is in the earth and no longer appears to sense is wiped from the memory too by time; but what is set up in secret perhaps escapes the notice of outsiders, yet, being continually seen by the one who set it up, is carried about secretly as an image in the memory. For every shameful thought that takes form in the mind is a secret carved image. Thus it is a disgrace to bring such ideas out into the open; it is dangerous also to set up a carved image in secret; and more dangerous still to [seek] and search out forms that have already been obliterated, since the mind easily inclines again toward the passion that was [rooted out] and tips the balance of the idols down to the ground. For such is a state of virtue: if it is neglected, it sways very easily toward the opposite.

Scripture seems to signify this by a figure when it says, “The land which you are entering is a land moved about among the peoples of the nations.” For as soon as the one who has the state of virtue is moved toward the opposite, that state is moved along with him and becomes unstable. Therefore one must from the beginning give no passage into the mind to the fantasies of thoughts that naturally do harm, and not let it [go down] into Egypt; for from there it is carried off by force to the Assyrians. For if the mind [goes down] into the darkness of unclean thoughts (for that is what “Egypt” means), it is thereafter dragged by force, even against its will, by the passions to the deed. That is why the lawgiver, too, shutting out by a figure the entry of pleasure, commanded that the serpent's head be watched. For since the serpent watches the heel (his aim is the act; and unless he lays hold of that, he cannot easily inject his venom), our zeal is to crush the very first assault of pleasure; for when it [is crushed], the act is weak. Perhaps, too, Samson would not have burned the harvests of the Philistines had he not turned the foxes head to tail and tied them together by their tails. For one who was not able to [detect] from the outset the ambush of crafty thoughts, and overlooked their beginnings (for they contrive to make the beginnings seem [good], so that the end is forgotten), will, by comparing their ends with one another, expose the absurdity of the thoughts, tying tail to tail and putting the torch of exposure between them.

To make what has been said clearer, I will lay it bare with two thoughts; this will also be a true proof of the rest. Often the thought of sexual immorality comes from …[vain]glory, and, … solemn …, [opens] the front gates of the roads that lead to Hades, but hides the deadly ways by which it brings down to the chambers of Hades those who follow it without reflection. For it suggests to him now the priesthood, now the perfect life of a monk; it makes many come to him for their benefit, and prepares him to imagine renown from his word and deed; and when it has sufficiently beguiled him with these ideas and led him far from his natural watchfulness, then, sketching for him a supposed good fortune with a respectable woman, it carries him on to the act of the foul deed, bringing the boldness of his conscience down to the utmost shame. So let one who wants to tie the tails together take the ends of the two thoughts: of vainglory, the reproach; of sexual immorality, the dishonor. And when he sees clearly that they oppose one another, then let him think he has done what Samson did. Again, the thought of gluttony has as its end that of sexual immorality, and that of sexual immorality ends in the thought of sadness; for sadness and despondency at once follow the one defeated by such thoughts after his relief. Let the one who struggles, then, consider not the enjoyment of foods nor the smoothness of pleasure, but the ends of both; and when he finds sadness following both, let him know that he has tied tail to tail and, by exposing them, destroyed the harvests of the Philistines.

If, then, the one who fights against the passions needs so much knowledge and experience, let those who have taken on the leadership of others know how much knowledge they need, so that they may guide those under them wisely to the prize of the upward call and teach them plainly all the tricks of deceit; so that they do not merely shape the gestures of victory in the air, like shadow-boxers, but in the very battle with the adversary deal blows that land, so as not to strike the air in vain with their hands, but the adversary himself. For this contest is harder than the contest of the gymnasium: there the bodies of athletes are thrown and can easily be set upright again; here it is souls that fall, and once overturned they can hardly be raised up. If someone still boxing his way through the life of passion, and stained with blood, [undertakes] to build a temple of God out of rational souls, such a man will surely hear, “You shall not build [a house] for me, for you are a man of blood.” For it belongs to a [peaceful] state to build a temple to God. And Moses, by taking the tent and pitching it outside the camp, shows that the teacher must be [outside] the tumult of war and must live far from the bloodstained camp, settled in a peaceful life free from war. When such teachers are found, with disciples who have so denied themselves and their own wills … as to differ in nothing from a body without a soul, or from material laid before a craftsman, [then], just as the soul does what it wills in the body, with the body in no way resisting, and as a craftsman displays his own art in his material, hindered by it in nothing from his purpose, so the teacher works the knowledge of virtue in his disciples, since he has them obedient and contradicting him in nothing.

For to meddle with the teacher's arrangements, and to want to test what he orders, is to hinder one's own progress; for not everything that seems reasonable and plausible to the inexperienced is truly reasonable. The craftsman judges the matters of his craft one way, the unskilled another: the one uses knowledge as his rule, the other likelihood; and likelihood only rarely hits the truth, but for the most part has more kinship with deceit than with correctness. What seems more unreasonable, by appearances, than the helmsman who, when the ship is carried sideways on what sailors call the beat to windward, orders the passengers to sit on the side that is going under, leaving the side that is raised up, though the wind is pushing and overturning the ship toward the very side he told them to weigh down? Likelihood would advise weighing down the side that is rising, not running across to the side in danger. Yet those on board obey the helmsman rather than their own ideas; for necessity persuades them to serve the art of the one entrusted with their safety, even if what is done is not plausible from what they see. Should not those, then, who have entrusted their own salvation to others leave likelihood aside and yield their own reasonings to the art of the one who knows, judging his knowledge more trustworthy? And first, when they renounce the world, let them leave nothing outside, not even the smallest thing, fearing the example of Ananias, who, thinking he was keeping back something from men, received from God the sentence for his theft.

[And] as they hand over themselves, so let them hand over all that is theirs, knowing well that what continually draws the mind back to itself will distract it greatly from better things and later tear it away completely from the brotherhood. That is why the Holy Spirit recorded the lives of the saints: so that each of those who practise any manner of life whatever may be brought to the truth by examples like his own. How then did the one who joined himself to his teacher renounce the world? “He was ploughing,” it says, “with twelve yoke of oxen before him; and he slaughtered the oxen and [boiled] them with the oxen's gear.” This hints at the warmth of his eagerness. For he did not say, “I will sell the yokes of oxen and manage the matter properly,” reckoning that once sold they would meet more needs; but, having become wholly given to the desire that drew him to his teacher's company, he despised visible things and was eager rather to be rid of them as distracting him from his purpose, knowing that delay has often become a cause of regret. And why did the Lord, setting before the rich man the perfection of the godly life, command him to sell his possessions and give to the poor and leave nothing for himself, unless whatever was left would equally become a cause of distraction? I think Moses too, in commanding those who wish to purify themselves in the great vow to shave the whole body, commands the complete renunciation of possessions. Second, let them so forget kin and family that they are never troubled at all by memories of them.

For [if] the cows yoked to the wagon of the ark [were made] to forget nature, with the ark [driving] them, and, though their calves had been shut up at home and no one forced them, they finished the road blamelessly, turning aside neither to the right nor to the left, not showing their love for their young by turning their necks, nor showing by lowing their pain at being parted from their offspring, but, pressed by the weight of the ark and throttled by the tyranny of nature, walking as if along a ruler, they nowhere turned from the straight way, their natural affection having been overcome by reverence for the ark laid upon them, why should not those who are to carry the spiritual ark do the same? They ought indeed to do more, lest the rational make-up, measured in necessary works against irrational nature, be convicted of not doing by reason what irrational animals do by necessity. Perhaps Joseph, too, wanders in the desert for this reason, since he was seeking the limit of perfection among names of kinship. And the man who [directs] toward the truth asks him the cause of his wandering, and learns that it is attachment to his own family (for he would not have said “feeding” them but “shepherding” them unless … judgment about the craft); and he says to him, “They have gone away from here; for I heard them saying, ‘Let us go to [Dothan],’” which is interpreted “a sufficient leaving,” teaching the one still wandering among the dear things of the body that there is no other way to attain perfection than by sufficiently leaving behind attachment to one's kin in the flesh.

For even if someone leaves Haran, which signifies the senses (for it is interpreted “holes”), and comes out of the valley of Hebron, that is, of humble works, and out of the desert in which the wandering befalls the one seeking perfection, yet does not move on to the “leaving” …, there is no benefit for him in his long hardship, since because of his love for his kin he has fallen short of perfection. Moreover the Lord, rebuking Mary the Theotokos when she sought him among the relatives, and judging one who loves father or mother above him unworthy of himself, fittingly teaches the leaving behind of the bonds of kinship. After success in these things, one should advise those who are still newly freed from tumults to keep stillness, and neither by continual outings to reopen the wounds that come into the mind through the senses, nor to add other forms to the old idols of their sins, but to turn aside from the attack of new ones and to give all their zeal to wiping out the old fantasies. Stillness is indeed laborious for those who have newly renounced the world; for then memory, finding its opportunity, stirs up all the impurity lying within, which it had no leisure to do before because of the multitude of affairs surrounding it. But along with the toil it has its benefit too, freeing the mind in time from the harassment of foul thoughts. For if their aim is to wash the soul clean and heal it of all that defiles, they ought to withdraw from all the affairs by which the dirt increases, to give the reasoning faculty much calm, to be far from what provokes, and to flee living together with their own family, embracing solitude, the mother of philosophy.

… it is easy [to be caught] again in the same nets from which they thought they had been freed, when they are careless and eager to live among the confused crowds. For it is unprofitable for one who has migrated to virtue to take pleasure in the same affairs that he condemned and fled; for habit drags one along, so that there is reason to fear that [such company] may undo the stillness won with much zeal from shameful practices, and work up again the memories of evils forgotten. For the mind of those who have recently withdrawn from vice is like a body beginning to recover from a long [illness], for which any chance pretext becomes a cause of relapse into sickness, since it is not yet set firm in stronger health. Their labors too are still fresh and they waver, so that there is reason to fear that the passion may run back, since it is apt to be provoked by the dissipation that comes in crowds. That is why Moses commanded those who wanted to suffer nothing from the destroyer to stay inside their doors, saying, “You shall not go out, each of you, from the door of your house, so that the destroyer may not touch you.” And Jeremiah seems to command this when he says, “Do not go out into the field, and do not walk in the roads, for the sword of the enemies is round about.” For it belongs to noble champions to close with the enemy and to escape his plots; but if someone is one of those not yet able to fight, let him stay in his house that none may enter, providing for himself, out of stillness, a life free from danger. Such was Joshua the son of Nun, of whom it is written, “But the attendant Joshua, being young, did not go out of the tent.” For those who [went out] to the plain had to be killed by the brothers of the body and the friends of the flesh, because of their premature contest, as … the story [shows].

Not least from the story of Dinah one can learn exactly that it belongs to a girlish and childish mind to undertake things beyond one's [power], and to be deceived by thinking oneself capable of them. For had she not rashly ventured on the sight of the affairs of the region, as though she were able … supposedly, and in no way to be charmed by their delight …, the judging faculty of her soul would not have been corrupted before its time by the fantasy of things of sense, since she had not yet lawfully consorted with manly reason. God, knowing that this passion dwells in human beings (I mean conceit), and wishing to dig it out of our state, says to the lawgiver Moses, “Make the sons of Israel cautious,” knowing that to strip rashly for contests beyond one's strength is foreign to caution. So we must not [throw] ourselves into tumults before reaching a perfect state, but must flee them as far as possible, setting the mind far from the noises that sound around it. For it is no great benefit, having withdrawn from affairs, to be battered by reports about them, and, having left the city of activities, to sit as it were beside its gate, filled with the tumult that comes from there. Rather one must withdraw outside, as the great Moses did, so that not only the works but even their sounds may cease, as he says, “When I go out of the city and spread out my hands, the sounds will cease.”

For true calm comes about when not only the activities but also the memories of them cease, giving the soul the opportunity to see the marks stamped on it, to wrestle with each of them, and to cut them out of the mind. But while other and yet other forms [are being stamped] on it, it is not possible to wipe out the marks made earlier, since the reasoning faculty is kept busy with those that keep arriving; and the toil of cutting out the passions must become harder, since they gain strength by growing little by little and, like rivers, flood the seeing faculty of the soul with the unbroken stream of fantasies flowing in. For just as those who want to see a riverbed dry, because perhaps some things worth seeing lie at the bottom, gain nothing by bailing out the spot where they think what they seek is lying …, since the inflow at once fills the space again; but when they check the current from above, the bottom appears to them without labor, as the water left behind withdraws of itself and yields them the dry ground for viewing what they desire: so also the emptying out of the forms that produce the passions becomes easy when the senses no longer supply things from outside. But while the senses send in the objects of sense like a stream, it is not only difficult but impossible to cleanse the mind altogether of such a flood. For even if the passions, because of continual encounters, find no opportunity to stir, they nevertheless return secretly and grow coarser, gaining strength from time.

And just as ground that is constantly trodden, even if it has thorns, does not send them up (for the trampling of feet prevents their growth), but stretches their roots deep within its bosom, thriving and in full vigor, so that as soon as it gets an opportunity that allows them to sprout they come up at once: so the passions, prevented by continual encounters from peeping out into the open, become stronger, and when they find stillness they attack with great force, making the war heavy and dangerous for those who are at the beginning of the battle against them. That is why the prophet [advises] destroying the seed from Babylon … while the forms are still in the storehouses of the senses, advising us to obliterate them, so that they may not fall upon the soil of the mind, and, watered by the violent and useless rains of repeated dwelling on them, [yield] an abundant fruit of vice. Another prophet even blesses those who do not wait for the passions to come to their prime, but [strike them] while they still cling to the breast: “Blessed,” he says, “is he who will seize your little ones and dash them against the rock.” Perhaps the great [Job], too, philosophizing on his own, hints at something of this kind when he says that the papyrus and the reed flourish in water, but that every plant deprived of the river withers; and that “the ant-lion perished for lack of food.” He seems to signify something of this kind. For the great Job, wishing to show the ambushing nature of passion, invented a compound name for it, composing the name from the boldest of creatures, the lion, and the cheapest of all, the ant. For the assaults of the passions begin from cheap fantasies, creeping in unnoticed like dust, and at the last swell to a great bulk, so as to bring danger no less than the onrush of a lion. Therefore the contestant must wrestle with the passions while they approach like an ant, having chosen to look cheap; for if they get ahead and advance to the strength of the lion, they become … and press hard. One must not provide them with food. Their food, as has often been said, is the images that come through the objects of sense; these feed the passions, arming each idol in turn against the soul.

That is why the lawgiver made the windows of the temple latticed, signifying that those who wish to keep their mind pure like a temple must, just as there the windows were made latticed so that nothing unclean might creep in, in the same way weave into the senses the hindrances of thoughts, the terrors of the judgment to come, [blocking] the entry of unclean forms as they creep in. And perhaps for this reason Ahaziah fell from the lattice: for to miscount the words of recompense at the time of temptations, being carried down to pleasures, is to fall from the lattice. And what is harder than this [illness]? For the body, being contrary to nature means the balance of the elements turned to what is against nature by the dominance of one of them; for the soul, it means turning aside from right reason, overcome by what causes disease. Such nets for the sight [Solomon sets out] for one who is able to listen, saying, “When your eyes see a strange woman, then your mouth will speak crooked things,” calling “crooked” the things that follow sin, … that will meet him at the time of recompense. For with the proper state he keeps away every dangerous gazing of the eyes. He also said what the state of the reasoning must be at that time: “For you will lie down,” he says, “as in the heart of the sea, and as a helmsman in a great storm.”

For if someone, at the time of battle against the sight that provokes him, is able so to make himself contend with the punishments that have been threatened that, like a man storm-tossed at sea, he comes through without pain from those who wrestle against him, not feeling the blows they deal, he will say, “They struck me and I felt no pain; they mocked me, and I did not know it.” “They struck me,” he says, “and thought they were mocking me; but I did not even perceive the blows, for they were the arrows of children; nor did I turn to their deceits, pretending not to know.” So also David, despising such adversaries, said, “When the evil one turned away from me, I did not know it”: “I did not perceive,” he says, “when they came near, nor when they withdrew.” But one who does not even know this, that the senses have much communion with the objects of sense, and that deception easily arises from that communion; one who does not suspect the harm that comes from them … but fills himself with them unguardedly, how will he recognize the plot at the time of deception, not having been trained beforehand to discern these things? For that the senses wage war against the objects of sense, and that the objects of sense impose tribute on the senses they have defeated, is clear from the war of the [kings] against the Sodomites. For Scripture introduces as history the matter of the four kings of the Assyrian nation against the five kings around Sodom: first agreement and treaties and peace offerings at the Salt Sea; then the servitude of the five for twelve years; then, in the thirteenth year, rebellion; and in the [fourteenth], war, the four attacking the five and taking them captive.

Such is the end of the story. But from this story we are taught about ourselves, and we learn the war of the senses against the objects of sense. For each of us, from birth until twelve years of age, not yet having a cleansed discernment, is placed in an unexamined servitude, the senses serving the objects of sense as masters in whatever they command: sight serving visible things, hearing sounds, taste flavors, smell odors, and touch the objects of sense that naturally move it; and through infancy he is unable to discern or resolve any of these perceptions. But when the reasoning is about to mature and begins to perceive the harm, it at once thinks of rebellion and … of flight from such servitude. And if, having become strong in its reasoning, it confirms this judgment, it remains free for ever, having escaped bitter masters. But if its judgment is too weak for the undertaking, it again betrays the senses as captives, defeated by the power of the objects of sense, and enduring thenceforth a tyrannical servitude without any good hope. That is why the five kings in the story, defeated by the four, are driven together into the bitumen pits, so that we may learn that those defeated by the objects of sense are [cast], as into pits or wells, into the object of sense that overturns each sense, thinking of nothing beyond what is seen, because they have bound their desire to the things here and have loved the enjoyment of present affairs more than spiritual things.

So too the slave who loves his master, and his wife and children, and refuses true freedom because of his kinship with bodily things, becomes a slave for ever, his ear pierced with an awl, so that, hearing through the natural opening of hearing, he may never receive a word of freedom, but remain perpetually a slave, having loved the things that are present. That is why the law commanded that the hand of the woman who seized a man's private parts, when two men were fighting, be cut off: because, when there was a battle of thoughts over the choice between worldly and heavenly goods, she let go the choice of the latter and seized the things of generation and corruption; for by the parts of generation it indicated the affairs of generation. There is no benefit, then, in renouncing worldly affairs if one does not abide by that judgment but is dragged back again and gives in to one's reasoning, and therefore continually turns back to what was left behind and proclaims one's attachment to it, as the wife of [Lot] turned back and stands to this day, changed into a pillar of salt, an example to the disobedient. Such is habit, of which she is a symbol: it turns back to itself those who wish to withdraw without turning round. And what does the law mean that commands the one who enters the temple, when he has finished his prayer, not to go back by the gate through which he came in, but to go out by the one opposite, making his course straight and without turning, except that one must not loosen with hesitations the intense straightness of the way toward virtue? For continual [glances] toward the things from which one has [departed] completely drag one back by habit, and slacken the forward impulse, [turning] it wholly toward …, and prepare a return to the old evils.

… For habit is terrible at holding one fast to itself and not allowing one to rise again to the first state of virtue. For a settled state comes from habit, and from a settled state comes a nature; and nature is hard to move and change. For even if it is bent a little by force, it quickly runs back to itself, shaken out of its own bounds but not moved altogether, unless much toil prepares it in turn to run back along the same road, so as to return from the habit to the state it had abandoned. See the soul that follows its habits: how it sits upon idols, nailing itself to formless matter, and does not accept going up with the word that wishes to lead it by the hand to the heights, but says, “I cannot rise … before you, because the custom of women is upon me.” For the soul that has for a long time rested in the affairs of life sits upon idols, things formless in themselves but receiving their form from human art. Is not wealth a formless thing, and glory, and the other affairs of life? They have nothing clear or articulated, but falsify the truth by a misleading likeness, taking on day by day different changes from different causes. It is we who put a form on them, when, through our own thoughts, we give them an appearance that is useful for nothing profitable …

For when we [turn] the body's necessary need into a limitless extravagance, seasoning our food in ten thousand ways and ambitiously embroidering our clothes for luxury and softness, and then, when we are accused of this vanity, on the ground that the need that could be met with little is being met idly and in vain, we dress it up with elegant defenses as though it were a matter of duty, what else are we doing but striving to put a form on formless matter? And we rightly said that such a soul “sits” upon these things. For the soul that has confirmed within itself such judgments about the things mentioned is thereafter nailed to the affairs of this world as to idols; it serves them and not the truth, it cannot rise up from them, and by its habits it defiles their nature as with a menstrual uncleanness. Here Scripture calls “sitting” both idleness in good things and love of pleasure. Idleness, when it says, “Sitting in darkness and the shadow of death, bound in poverty and iron”; for both darkness and fetters hinder work. Love of pleasure, when it speaks of those who turned in their heart to Egypt and said to one another, “When we sat by the pots of meat and ate meat to the full.” For truly those sit by the pots whose appetites are kindled by a moist and ceaseless heat. Gluttony is the mother of love of pleasure: it gives birth to love of pleasure, and perhaps to many of the other passions as well. From it, as from a root, the other passions sprout, and little by little they grow up along with their mother into vices as high as heaven. Love of money, anger, and sadness are the offspring and shoots of gluttony. For the glutton first needs money for his desire, which is always inflamed, even if it is never filled. Against those who hinder him from acquiring it, his anger must be stirred; and sadness necessarily follows anger that does not come to action through weakness. For the one that goes on its breast and belly, when it has the materials that produce pleasures, [goes] on its belly; but when it lacks them it leans on its breast, where anger is. For lovers of pleasure who are deprived of their pleasures become angry and embittered.

[That is why] the great Moses puts the oracle on the breast of the priest, showing by symbols that one must rein in the impulses of the passion of anger with reasoning, with judgment; for the oracle is the oracle of judgment. And the priest masters the passion by reason, being imperfect; but Moses, the perfect, [removes] the whole of the angry part: for he does not wear the oracle, but takes away the breast itself. “Taking the breast,” it says, “he took it away as a heave offering before the Lord.” Others neither cut out anger altogether nor master the passion by reason, but overcome it by toil; these are the ones who take away the breast together with the arm. For the arm is a sign of toil and work. In the same way, going on the belly most truly belongs to pleasure; for the belly is almost the cause of pleasures: when the stomach is filled, the appetites for the other pleasures too become intense, but when it is in want, they stay quiet and more steady. Here too there is a difference between one who is making progress and one who is perfect. Moses, casting away the pleasure of food perfectly, [washed] the belly and the feet … in water, hinting by the belly at pleasure, and by the feet at steps and advances. But the one making progress [washes] the things in the belly, not the whole belly. And “he washed” and “they shall wash” have a great difference: the one is voluntary, the other is done by command.

For [it belongs to] the perfect to be moved to virtuous actions by an eagerness that needs no command, but to the one making progress to [need] the [command] of his guide. And very [fittingly] he takes away the whole breast but does not take away the belly, but washes it: for the wise man can decline and cut off anger altogether, but he cannot cut out the belly, since nature compels even the most self-controlled to use necessary food. And in the soul that has not kept to right and steady reason but to [bodily] pleasures, for this reason [the belly] swells; since, even if the body's hungers [are satisfied], desire remains thirsty. And the swelling of the belly is followed by the falling of the thigh; for [the thigh is] the mind's [power] for the begetting of good things. For when the stomach is inflamed by extravagance in food, it [slackens] the spiritual sinews as well; it is these that the word of the law hinted at by the thigh. So the lover of pleasure goes on his belly, wholly [given] to the pleasures of enjoyment; but one who is beginning the life of virtue removes the fat of the belly, declining the foods that fatten the body. The one making progress [removes] the things in the belly; but the perfect, the whole belly, casting away altogether whatever exceeds necessary need.

Very fittingly “you shall go” is added to “on your breast and [belly]”; for pleasure belongs not to those who stand still and are at rest, but to those who are in motion and full of disturbance. Rather, … nothing is more akin to gluttony than … [the pleasures of sex]; and nature too, wishing to show the kinship of these passions, has called the organs of intercourse “parts below the belly,” signifying their close kinship by their nearness. For if this passion is weak, it is weak from the want of the part above it; and if it swells and is excited, it has its power supplied from there. Gluttony is not only the nurse and nurturer of these passions, but also the destroyer of all good things. When it rules and has taken power, the goods naturally fall and are pulled down: self-control, temperance, courage, endurance, and all the other virtues. This Jeremiah showed in a riddle when he said that the chief cook of the Babylonians pulled down the wall of Jerusalem round about, calling the passion of gluttony “chief cook.” For just as the chief cook, putting all his zeal into serving the belly, devises countless arts and crafts pleasures, so gluttony sets every device in motion in the service of the pleasure of the throat, and the variety of foods pulls down and levels the strength of the virtues.

For seasonings and relishes become siege-towers and engines against a virtue already well established, shaking and throwing down its firmness and stability. And as extravagance destroys the virtues, so in turn frugality naturally pulls down the strongholds of vice. For just as the chief cook of the Babylonians [pulled down] the wall of Jerusalem, the peaceful soul, for the sake of the pleasures of the flesh, by the art of fine cooking, so too a cake of the Israelites' barley bread, rolling along, overturned the tents of the Midianites. For a frugal diet, rolling along and advancing far, destroys the passions of sexual immorality. The Midianites bear the symbol of the passions of sexual immorality, for they were the ones who brought sexual immorality upon Israel and deceived a great crowd of the young. And very fittingly Scripture said that the Midianites have tents but Jerusalem a wall; for everything that encloses virtue is firmly grounded and stable, but what holds vice together is … and a tent, differing in nothing from a fantasy.

That is why the saints fled the cities and avoided encounters with the many, knowing that living with corrupted people is more destructive than a pestilence. That is why, taking nothing, they left their possessions to be grazed by sheep, declining the distraction that comes from them. That is why Elijah [left] Judea for Mount Carmel, a desert full of wild beasts, having nothing for sustenance but trees; for he was content with the fruits of trees, filling with these the necessity of his need …, wearing [a sheepskin]. Elisha likewise had the same manner of life, having received from his teacher, along with his other good things, the love of living in the desert. And John, dwelling in the desert of the Jordan, ate locusts and wild honey, showing the many what the body needs for life and reproaching them for their burdensome enjoyment. And perhaps Moses too lays down such a law in general concerning the manna, when he commands the Israelites to gather each day's portion for that day, deliberately ordering human life to be lived only for the day and not stocked with provisions. He thought it fitting for a rational nature to be content with what comes to hand and to have Christ as the steward of the rest, rather than to take forethought for the future and so seem to distrust the grace of God, as though it did not always rain its everflowing gifts upon human beings.

In a word, this is why all the saints, of whom the world was not worthy, left the inhabited world, wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and the holes of the earth, and went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, afflicted: fleeing the tame vices of human beings and the strange affairs that flood the cities, so that they might not be swept away by the rush of the current, as if by force, into the indifferent dissipation of the many; and rejoicing in life among the wild beasts, judging the harm from them less than the harm from human beings; or rather, fleeing human beings as plotters, and trusting the beasts as friends. For the beasts do not teach vice, and they marvel at virtue and honor it. So it was with Daniel: men destroyed him, as they thought, but lions saved him. They guarded the man unjustly condemned out of envy, and [taught] justice to human beings, proclaiming the right judgment about the one unjustly condemned. And the man's virtue became for men an occasion of envy and strife, but for the beasts a ground for reverence and honor. So all in whom the love of improvement has been sown …

… let us emulate the virtues of the saints, and, withdrawing from slavery to the commands of the body, [emulate] the freedom of the wild ass that the Creator let loose in the desert, which does not hear the reproach of the tax-collector and laughs at the crowds of the city. Even if we have yoked ourselves by attachment to the burden-bearing of vice, let us [loose ourselves] from the bonds, even if those who are lords not by nature but have acquired their lordship by habit object; for they will surely hear, if they are willing to listen, those who say, not with the tongue only and the bare voice but with their whole disposition, … that “the Lord has [need] of it.” Then they will send it, so that, covered with the apostolic garments, it may become a vehicle of the Word; or, released into the ancient pasture of the Word, it may seek after every green thing, that is, following the flourishing sayings of divine Scripture, may be guided to a blameless life, reaping food and much delight together. At the same time we must ask how the wild ass let loose in the desert by God seeks after every green thing, though it has the desert for its dwelling and the salt land for its tent, and the desert is for the most part not at all fit for the growth of grass. Unless one were to say that, for one who has become a desert to the passions, contemplation of the divine words is enough, after the … of the passions has been …

Let us leave the affairs of this life and [turn] to the goods of the soul. How long [shall we busy ourselves] with childish things, never taking up a manly mind? How long shall we act more weakly than mere infants, not even being led, as they are, to progress to greater things? For they, as they change their age, change their attitude to their toys and easily give up their attachment to [them]. Nuts perhaps, and knucklebones, and balls are the material of their play, and while they have [a child's] understanding they think it a precious thing to procure these. But when one has advanced and become a man, he [lays] those things [aside] and holds to [serious] affairs with great zeal. We, however, in our infancy, admire things worthy of play and mockery, and do not wish to take up care for better things and a reasoning fitting for men; but having abandoned it, we [busy ourselves] with earthly doings, providing laughter for those who judge things according to the order of nature. For as it is shameful to see a grown man sitting in ashes and drawing childish amusements in the dust, so it is shameful, and much more shameful, to see those who trade in the enjoyment of eternal goods rolling in the ash of earthly things, and shaming the perfection of their profession by their pursuits. The cause of this, it seems, is that we think nothing greater than what is seen, and do not recognize, by comparison with the cheapness of present things, the superiority of the goods there; but, dazzled by the brilliance of the things here that are thought to be precious goods, we are held fast by them and bind our desire to them. For in the absence of the better, the worse are honored, inheriting their rank. So if we had a loftier idea of the things to come, we would not be gaping at these things …

Let us begin, then, to withdraw from our present possessions and money and from everything that sinks the reasoning and carries it under water. Let us throw off the cargo, so that the storm-tossed ship may lift a little, and [throw overboard] most of the gear, so that the helmsman, the mind, may be able to come safely through along with the thoughts on board. For if those who sail the sea, when caught in a storm, [throw] their own merchandise and cargo into the sea with their own hands, ranking their property second to life, so that the ship may not become waterlogged and be in danger of sinking under the weight of the cargo, hurling even the most precious of their treasures into the deep, why do we not, for the sake of the better life, despise what drags the soul down to the deep? Why can the fear [of God] not do as much as the fear of the sea can? They, desiring this temporary life, do not count the loss of their goods a great thing; but we, who say that we lay claim to eternal life, do not despise even a trifle, but choose rather to perish along with our cargo than to be saved deprived of it. Let us strip off everything, then, I beg you; for the adversary stands naked. The law of the games does not bring athletes into the stadium clothed, but naked. Whether it is hot or cold, they go in so, leaving their clothes outside; and if one of them refuses to strip, he has refused the contest as well. But we, who profess to be athletes, and who are at war with adversaries far more agile than those who contest in the visible arena, not only do not strip, but [try] to compete carrying countless burdens on our shoulders, giving our adversaries many holds against us.

For how will one who lays claim to possessions [wrestle] against the spiritual forces of wickedness, when he is easily cuffed from every side? How will one buried in [riches] wrestle with the spirit of love of money? How will one clothed in countless cares run against the demons, who are naked of every care, when divine Scripture says, “The naked shall flee in that day”? The naked, not one who wears the patchwork cloaks of care for the affairs of this life; the naked, not one hindered in the race by many thoughts of money and possessions. For the naked man is hard, or even impossible, for his plotters to catch. So if the great Joseph had been naked, the Egyptian woman would not have found anything to seize. For the divine oracle says that she seized his garments, saying, … “with me.” Garments are bodily things, by which pleasure, when it prevails, drags a man along; and one who lays claim to them must be dragged about, fighting with those who take them away. So the athlete of chastity, when he saw himself being dragged by force, also by way of the body's necessary need, toward the pleasure and union of intercourse, learned that he must live naked with a mistress able to hold him by force; and leaving his garments he fled and went outside, walking about naked in virtue as in paradise, in imitation of the first-formed man, who received nakedness from God as a special prize and had it until, through disobedience, he came to need clothing. For as long as he contended against the adversaries who advised him to break God's commandment, he stood naked like an athlete in the wrestling-ground; but when he was defeated and put out of the contest, he rightly clothed himself, laying aside his nakedness along with his athletic state.

That is why the author of the Proverbs says to the trainer, “Take away his garment, for he has come forward.” For while he was outside the stadium he rightly wore the clothes of those who are not athletes, hiding his athletic manliness under the folds of his garments; but since he has come forward into the contest, “take away his garment.” For one must contend naked; or rather, not only naked, but also anointed. Being stripped makes one hard to catch …, and being anointed with oil makes the competitor [hard to hold] for his opponent: even if he is caught, the oil makes him slip out of the grip. That is why [wrestlers contrive] to sprinkle dust on their opponents, so that by roughening the smoothness of the oil with dust they may make them easy to take hold of. What the dust is there, earthly affairs are in our contest; what the oil is there, freedom from care is here. And just as there the anointed wrestler easily breaks what they call holds, but if he takes on dust [he escapes] the hand of his opponent with difficulty, so here the man who has no cares is hard for the devil to catch; but the one who has worries, and roughens the smoothness of his mind's freedom from care with cares as with dust, [escapes] his hand only with difficulty.

Freedom from care belongs to the perfect soul; being worn down by cares, to the ungodly. Of the perfect soul it is said that it is “a lily among thorns,” which shows the soul that lives free of care among those who are burdened with many cares. For the lily in the [Gospel] too signifies the soul free from care: “it does not toil,” it says, “nor does it spin,” and it is clothed with greater glory than Solomon. But of those who have much care for bodily things it says, “All the life of the ungodly is in care.” And truly it is ungodly to stretch care for bodily things through the whole of life and to show no zeal at all for the things to come; to spend all one's time on the body, though it does not need much zeal, while to the soul, whose road of progress is so long that a whole lifetime is not enough for its perfection, we do not allot even a little time; and if we seem to allot it some, we give it slackly, enticed by the dazzle of visible things. We suffer the same as men hooked by the ugliest courtesans, who for lack of genuine beauty devise a counterfeit to ensnare those who look at them, correcting their ugliness with the inventions of cosmetics. For once we have been defeated by the vanity of present things, we are unable to see the ugliness of matter, deceived by our attachment to it.

And for this reason we do not stop at necessary need; but, setting up an insolent satiety in our life, we strip for every kind of acquisition, not seeing that the measure of acquisition is the body's need, and that what goes beyond it is disorder and no longer need. For just as a tunic that fits the body is both a need and an ornament, but one that tangles about the feet on every side and drags on the ground is both unseemly and an obstacle to every kind of work, so acquisition that goes beyond the body's need is an obstacle to virtue as well, and stands heavily condemned by those who are able to search into the nature of things. We must not, then, heed those who are [enslaved] by the objects of sense, nor uncritically follow those who [think it good] not to attend to the intelligible things. For it is the same as using the blind as judges of colors, or the deaf of musical sounds, people [deprived] of the faculties for judging the matters in question, and trusting them as though they had chosen the enjoyment of present things by reason. For they are blind, having maimed the reasoning, the most necessary of the faculties of judgment, by which serious things and indifferent things are naturally judged.

One of these was [Achan] …, who confessed to [Joshua] that he had hidden the stolen things under the ground in the tent of his life, and had buried the silver beneath them. For one who judged the varied and bright things of matter to be higher, and buried reason beneath them, is rightly deceived like an irrational animal, and gives himself up to the appearance of what pleased him, because his reasoning has been brought down from its ruling thrones and set in the rank of the subjects, or rather of the condemned. For if his reasoning had been seated in its own dignity, and entrusted with judging appearances, it would have delivered a just and right verdict … and punished the impulse that ran after deceptive things. It is good, then, to remain within the bounds of need and to strive with all one's strength not to go beyond them. For once someone [slips] even a little, through desire, toward the pleasures of life, no reasoning thereafter [checks] his rush forward. For of [going beyond] need there is no limit; zeal is endless and vanity never finished, and it always increases the toil over such things, feeding desire as a flame is fed by adding fuel.

For when those who have once passed the bounds of natural necessity begin to advance into a material … life, they want to add a sweet relish to their bread, and to their water, at first, wine as a need, and after that the more expensive kind. In clothing they will not put up with simple garments, but first buy the finest woollens and the brighter ones, gathering the very flower of the wool; then they pass on from these to mixed garments made of linen and wool; then they fuss over silks, plain ones at first, and later ones embroidered with battles and wild beasts and stories of every kind. They make vessels of silver and of gold-sprinkled work, not only to serve [their tables], but also hung superfluously on their animals and couches. And why must I set out at greater length their untimely ambition, when they extend it even to the most dishonorable needs, not deigning to make even the vessels for excrement from any other material, unless silver serves them in this service too? Such is pleasure: it stretches itself out to the very last things, and honors even the dishonorable works with costly material. And this, from then on, is to be against nature.

For the natural manner of life was fixed by the Creator as the same for us and for the animals. “Behold, I have given you,” God says to man, “all the grass of the field; it shall be for food for you and for the beasts.” Having received a diet in common with the irrational animals, and having twisted it by our inventions toward greater prodigality, how should we not rightly be judged more irrational than they? For the beasts remain within the bounds of nature, transgressing none of the things ordained by God, while we human beings, who have been honored with reason, have been driven out altogether from the ancient legislation. What gourmandizing is there among the irrational animals? What countless arts of bakers and cooks craft pleasures for their belly? Do they not love the ancient frugality, feeding on grass, content with what comes their way, using the water of springs for drink, and that perhaps rarely? That is why the pleasures below the belly have been diminished in them: they [inflame] their appetites with no food, and do not always know the difference of male and … female; a season of the year gives them this perception, when the law of nature devised their union for begetting their like, for the continuance of the race; the rest of the time they are so estranged from it that they altogether forget such appetite. But in human beings, from extravagance in food, the insatiable desire for sex sprouts maddened appetites and lets the passion rest at no season.

[Since], then, harm [follows] possessions, and, as a cause of disease, supplies the occasions for all the passions, let us [remove] the cause itself, if indeed [we care] for the good health of the soul, and by [having nothing] let us heal the passion of love of money. Let us flee the gatherings of useless people, embracing solitude; for living with the more frivolous is destructive even of a peaceful state. For as those who are in a pestilential air surely fall sick, so those who live among careless people [share] in their vice. For what do those who have renounced the world still have in common with the world? “For no one serving as a soldier entangles himself in the affairs of life, so that he may please [the one who enlisted him].” Occupation with business prevents training for war; and if we fight untrained against men experienced in war, how shall we hold out? … Or rather, if the truth must be told, we fight so sluggishly and slackly that we cannot hold out even against the enemy when he lies fallen, and we who stand are plotted against by the one who has fallen. For what happens in wars to those who strip the dead out of love of money, who are often killed after the victory by those lying on the ground and perish pitiably after the trophies for the sake of shameful gain, this we too now suffer when we approach the enemy who lies fallen. For as they, searching the dead in their desire for money, often went up to one of them and began to strip him, received a fatal blow unawares and fell, senselessly shaming the glory of the victory, so we, when through chastity and self-control we seem to have thrown down the enemy, fall in love with the garments about him, which are the things thought precious among men, wealth, power, comforts, glories, and [go up to] him eager to take something of his, and so we die, bringing ourselves to the slaughter.

So the five virgins perished: by purity and self-control they killed the enemy, but by hardness of heart, which love of money begets, they pushed themselves onto the sword of one who, because he lay fallen, [they thought] dead … unable [to overcome] those who stand over him. Let nothing, then, of [his things] … lest together with his things we lose our soul as well. For he calls us to them even now, and urges everyone on, above all if he finds them obedient. For if he called the Lord himself, saying, “All these things I will give you, if you fall down and worship me,” and tried to deceive with the things that seem brilliant in this life the one who had no need of them, how will he not think he can deceive human beings, who are easily caught and have a leaning toward the enjoyment of the things of sense? Let us train the mind for godliness, since bodily training is [so prized]. For bodily training is of use for little, like the lessons of children; but godliness is of use for all things, producing good health in the soul for those who aim at victory over the opposing passions.

For just as for those who exercise in the exercises of boys the aim is to train the body to be graceful and to move the limbs continually, while for grown athletes it is to look after competitive strength and to anoint themselves for the sacred games, so for those who are beginning in godliness the care is to check the activities [of the passions]; for it is enough if they master the passions, goaded on as they are by the pleasures they grew up with, and driven almost involuntarily toward the evils of habit. But those who have come into a settled state of practical virtue, and now take care of what pertains to the mind, ought to guard their reasoning with all zeal, so that it is not moved in a disorderly way and carried down to something belonging to the imperfect. In short, for the one group the zeal is to train the movements of the body; for the other, to train the impulses of the reasoning to move in good rhythm toward the philosophic manner of life alone, with no worldly fantasy drawing the reasoning away from more divine thoughts. For the desire of the one who worships God must be stretched wholly toward what it longs for, so that the passions find no opportunity at all to act toward hostile thoughts. For if each passion, when it is stirred in one it has mastered, holds his reasoning fettered, will not zeal for virtue also hold the mind fast, keeping it free from the other passions? For what perception of external things has the angry man, who in his mind is fighting the image of the one who grieved him? What perception has the man who desires money, when, [carried away] by fantasy, he gazes at material goods? And the licentious man often, even while sitting with others, has shut his senses, and taking hold of the sight he longs for, converses with it, forgetting those who are present; he sits like a voiceless pillar, knowing nothing of what happens before his eyes or is said, but turned inward, wholly given over to the fantasy. Such a soul the word perhaps calls [“sitting”], when it sits apart far from the senses and draws in its own activity, perceiving nothing at all of what is outside, because of the shameful fantasy that holds it.

If these passions so master the reasoning through attachment, and make the senses idle, how much more will love of philosophy make the mind renounce both the objects of sense and [the senses], snatching it up aloft and occupying it with the contemplation of intelligible things! For just as no reasoning outside the passion that holds him could enter the mind of a man who is being cut or burned, because of the [pain] that prevails, so neither can one who thinks about anything with passion think of something besides what holds his mind, since it colors his whole reasoning with its own quality. For pleasure does not admit pain, nor joy sadness, nor gladness dejection; and again, pain, when it rules, does not admit pleasure, nor does sadness, when it prevails, have joy yoked to it, nor is dejection mixed with gladness. For opposite passions do not intertwine with one another, and would never come together or be bound in friendly fellowship, because of their natural, truceless enmity and estrangement. So let not the purity of virtue be muddied by thoughts of worldly affairs, nor the sincerity of contemplation be disturbed by bodily cares, so that the image of true philosophy, shining with its own beauty, may no longer be blamed by bold talkers, nor become an object of mockery through the inexperience of those who paint it, but may be praised, not by human beings, but by the powers above, or rather by the Master Christ himself, from whom the saints too sought praise; as the great [David], who trampled on human glory and asked for commendation from God, says, “From you is my praise,” and again, “In the Lord my soul shall be praised.” For [human judgment] often [slanders] even good things, but the theater above judges things impartially and awards its verdict according to the truth of what is done. Let this theater, then, which must be pleased, be delighted by the [beauty] of our works. Of human beings, who can neither return rewards for lives well lived nor punish others for theirs, there is little account, if out of envy or attachment they overshadow the works of virtue with the names of vice and slander with fabricated blasphemies a life known to God and to men. For at the time of recompense there will follow for all who have lived well, not according to human opinion but according to the very truth of their lives, the reward of the eternal goods. May we all attain them by the grace and love for mankind of our Lord Jesus Christ, with whom to the Father be glory, together with the Holy Spirit, now and always and to the endless and unending ages of ages. Amen.