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the Mind subsisting essentially, the Father; and Life subsisting essentially co-existing, the Holy Spirit.
4. One God, begetter of one Son, Father, and source of one Holy Spirit: a confusion-free unity and undivided Trinity; a Mind without beginning, the sole Progenitor of the only Word who is essentially without beginning solely from the sole; and the source of the only eternal Life, that is to say, of the Holy Spirit.
5. One God, because there is one Godhead. A unity without beginning, and superessential, and indivisible, and inseparable; the same is unity and Trinity, and so forth.
6. If every participation is preconceived by those who participate, and if, clearly, the Cause of beings is far superior to all things in every way, being by nature pre-existent and preconceived before beings—not as essence is to accidents (otherwise the Divine would be proven composite, having the subsistence of beings for the completion of its own existence), but as essence is to those things which are superessential. B For if the arts found the forms of the things that come from them, and the universal nature [founds] the species contained under it, much more did God establish the essences of beings from not-being, as He is superessential, and even more, infinitely removed from the position of superessentiality; and He joined the sciences to the arts for the discovery of forms, and gave to nature the working energy of the species, and He Himself having established the very state of being of essences. C
7. He who by essence is in no way participated in, yet wishes to be participated in by those capable of participating, by another mode, does not at all depart from His own essential arcana and hidden reason; since the very mode according to which He is participated in (as He wills it) remains perpetually inaccessible to all. Therefore, just as God wills to be participated in, D according to which mode He remains inaccessible to all, so too He established beings—the One who is the sole begetter of the Word.
Centuria I
He knows by His own reason, so too did He create those things which participate in Him, by the excellent power of His goodness, and by the reason through which He knows. Therefore, that which was made by the will of the Creator would never be co-eternal with the One who willed it to be as He willed.
8. The Word of God, having been born once according to the flesh (wherein is His propense goodness and humanity), is always being born in spirit for those who wish; and He becomes an infant, fashioning Himself in them through the virtues, and revealing Himself as much as the receiver knows how to contain—not diminishing the expanse of His own magnitude through the stain of envy or jealousy, but as if by measure or mode exploring the faculty of those who desire to see—and always, by the excellence of the mystery, remaining unobservable to all. B Therefore, the divine Apostle, wisely considering the power of the mystery, says: "Jesus Christ, yesterday and today; the same also for the ages;" understanding the mystery as always new, and never growing old through any comprehension of the mind.
9. Christ God is born, having become man by the assumption of a soul endowed with intelligence—He who had granted the things that exist to proceed out of nothing. Him the Virgin gave birth to in a way superior to nature, and He did not loosen the seal of her virginity. For just as He, having become man, did not alter His nature, nor change His power, so too He makes her who bore Him both mother and virgin, in the same moment displaying miracle upon miracle, and concealing one in the other. C For God, as He exists essentially, is always a mystery; He only draws forth from the hidden retreats of His nature as much as suffices so that, through that very thing by which He is explained, He might become more hidden and occult; and likewise, He presents the mother who bore Him as a virgin, as much as is necessary so that the birth might be the indissoluble bond of virginity.
10. Natures are renewed, and God becomes man; not only does the divine, stable, and immovable Nature move toward that which is subject to motion and unstable, so that it might make it cease from being borne about, nor does He only produce the human flesh—perfected by the Word beyond nature—so that it might cease to be moved and tossed about; D but also, a star shines clearly during the day from the East, and leads the Magi to the place where the Word, having assumed flesh, lies; so that He might mystically show the Word, who stands above the Law and the Prophets, leading the nations to the greatest light of knowledge. For truly, the discourse of the Law and the Prophets, like a star, when understood piously, leads those who have been called by the power of grace according to His purpose to the incarnate Word.
11. Because I, wishing [to be as God], had transgressed the divine commandment, and the devil had seduced my nature's solidity and strength, or constancy, by the hope of divinity, and dragged it down toward pleasure...
by which he—the one who had established death—exulted, reveling in the corruption of nature. For this reason, God becomes A a perfect human being, changing nothing of the nature except sin, since sin was not of the nature's own census; in order that, by presenting the bait of the flesh, He might entice the insatiable dragon, who was gaping to swallow the flesh, and it might become poison to him, destroying him utterly by the power of the divinity within it; but to the nature of humans, it would be an antidote, recalling it by the power of the divinity within it to the grace it had from the beginning. For just as he, by pouring the venom of his malice into the tree of knowledge, had corrupted the nature that tasted it, so he too, presuming to devour the Lord’s flesh, was destroyed and removed by death through the virtue of the divinity therein.
12. The great mystery of the divine incarnation always remains a mystery; it is clearly abstruse, not only because it is manifested in proportion to the capacity of those who are to be saved by it—in that what is explained of it is surpassed by what is not yet seen—but also because that which has been manifested remains entirely hidden, known by no means as it truly is. And let not what is said seem strange or unheard of to anyone. For since God is superessential and B surpasses all superessentiality, when He willingly came to take on essence, He was superessentially given essence. Therefore, also for the sake of humans—as one who loves humanity—having truly become a human being from human essence, He preserves the manner of how He became human as something entirely unmanifest; for He has become human beyond what is human.
13. Let us faithfully contemplate the mystery of the divine incarnation, and let us only praise and proclaim without idle curiosity Him who, by His own willing purpose, was pleased to become human for our sake. For who could be confident in the strength of logical demonstration to be able to recount how the conception of the Word of God takes place; how flesh is brought forth without seed; how the birth exists without any stain of corruption; how the mother perseveres as a virgin even after birth; how He who is greater than all perfection progressed in age and bodily stature; how He who is pure was baptized; how He who feeds others was hungry; how He who becomes weary bestowed strength; how He who suffers provided remedies for healing; how He who dies brought things to life? And, to say the first and the last at once, in what way does God become human; and—what is far more abstruse—in what way is the Word truly in the flesh, hypostatically, while that same person exists essentially C as a whole with the Father? How is the same being entirely God by nature, and [yet] has entirely become human by nature, without having altered either nature at all—neither the divine, according to which He exists as God, nor our own, according to which He has become human? Faith alone grasps these mysteries, being the hypostasis of things that exist beyond mind and speech.
A 14. Adam, having disobeyed, taught that the birth of nature begins from pleasure; the Lord, banishing this from nature, did not accept the conception that comes from seed. The woman, having also transgressed the commandment, demonstrated that the birth of nature begins from pain; the Lord, shaking this off from nature, by being born, did not permit the woman who gave birth to submit to corruption, so that at once He might take away from nature both the voluntary pleasure and the involuntary pain brought in through it — He being the destroyer of those things of which He was not the creator — and might teach us mystically, according to our intention, to initiate another life, one that perhaps begins from pain and labors, but concludes entirely in divine pleasure and boundless joy. For this reason He becomes human, and is born as a human, He who made the human, so that He might save the human; and, healing sufferings with sufferings, B by being Himself the suffering of our own sufferings, He might demonstrate that He is, through His own privations according to the flesh, supernaturally renewing our habits according to the spirit in a most excellent way.
15. He who through divine desire has conquered the disposition of the soul toward the body has become uncircumscribed, even if he subsists in a body. For God, who draws the yearning of the one who loves and desires Him, is incomparably higher than all things, and does not allow the one who loves and desires to fasten his yearning to any of the things that are secondary to God. Let us therefore love and desire God with the entire power of our nature, and let us make our intention unconstrained by any bodily things; let us become, by our disposition, above all things that exist, both sensible and intelligible, and let nothing concerning our intention hindered by physical circumscription deprive us of being C with God, who is by nature uncircumscribed.
16. The suffering of the saints is a contest between envy and virtue; for the former, it is a struggle so that it might prevail, while for the latter, it is a struggle to remain unconquered, enduring all things. And for the one, it is a struggle to make wickedness prosper through the punishment of those who perform good deeds; for the other, it is a struggle so that it may hold fast to the good, even when they possess the advantage in the midst of calamities. D Those who possess the advantage: The condition is far better than that of the wicked. Let us say, "Those who have the advantage even in afflictions," etc. This is indeed the evangelical promise: "A hundredfold now in this time, with persecutions" (Mark 10:30); this is what Maximus speaks of so excellently, that we are punished and affected by evils because we cultivate virtue and are tenacious in our duty. Those who certainly provide this, and maintain patience in these things, or even rejoice, are fully grown in virtue and Christian fortitude, and are truly the most blessed of all. Strength of soul through patience is the injury and maltreatment of the body.
18. Having been deceived at the beginning by the deceit of pleasure, we chose death over the life which truly exists. Let us therefore cheerfully endure the pain of the body—the murderer of that pleasure—so that, having extinguished in ourselves the death that brought about the death caused by it, we may receive back for ourselves the life returned to us, which was bartered for pleasure and bought back with the slight sufferings of the flesh. 19. If, when the flesh is comfortable, the vigor of sin is accustomed to fatten itself, it is clear that when it is afflicted, the vigor of virtue is naturally inclined to flourish. Let us therefore bear the affliction of the flesh with a brave spirit, for it is a cleanser of the defilements that are upon the soul, and a harbinger of the future glory; for the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us. 20. Neither do physicians who heal bodies apply one and the same remedy to all, nor does God, the physician of souls, knowing as He does the ailments, understand only one method of healing that is suitable for all; but by bestowing upon each what is appropriate according to his condition, He works recoveries. Let us therefore give thanks while the healing is applied, even if the process involves torture; for a blessed and prosperous end follows it. 21. Nothing reveals the disposition of the soul so much as the uprisings and desires that surge from an afflicted and suffering flesh; for if the soul yields to them, it will be clear that it loves and honors the flesh more than God, but if it remains unmoved by their assaults, it will show that it values virtue more than the flesh. Through this virtue, the soul will receive God as its indwelling guest, since for the sake of virtue He deigned to suffer and endure hardships together with us, as He cried out formerly to His disciples: "Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." 22. If all the saints have become partakers of discipline, let us also give thanks while we are being disciplined with them, so that we may be accounted worthy to become partakers of their glory. For whom the Lord loves, He disciplines; and He scourges every son whom He receives. 23. Adam, indeed, having approved of pleasure as a rib and having acquiesced to it, cast the human race out of paradise. But the Lord, having been pierced in this part with a lance with suffering, brought the thief into paradise. Therefore, let us love the labor of the flesh, and hate its pleasure and lust; for the former opens the way and restores us to good things, while the latter casts us out and separates us far from good things. 24. If God suffers in the flesh—having become man—who, while suffering, does not rejoice in having God as a companion in his passion?
For truth-speaking is he who says: *If we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified with him* (Rom. viii, 17).
A 25. Since we must by all means labor, on account of the pleasure implanted in our nature by our forefather, let us bravely endure temporary pains, dulling for ourselves the goad of pleasure, and freeing ourselves from the eternal punishments of which it is the cause.
26. The end of all good things is love, as B towards God, who is the highest of all good things and the cause of every good; it leads, brings, and gathers together those who walk in it, as it is faithful, unfailing, and abiding. For faith is the foundation of those that follow it—I mean hope and love—firmly establishing the truth. Hope is the strength of the final virtues (I mean of love and faith), revealing within itself both the trustworthiness and the desirability of both, and teaching us to make our course toward the object itself through itself. But love is the completion of these, embracing the whole final object of desire, and providing for these a cessation of the movement that is toward it; it introduces, through itself, enjoyment of the object [now] present, instead of believing and hoping that it will be present.
C 27. The most perfect work of love, and the end of the activity according to it, is that, through a relative exchange of those joined by it, the properties and titles should become beautiful in one another, and should cause man to become God, and God to be called and appear as man, because of the one and unchangeable will and movement of both.
28. If we are altogether according to the image of God, let us become [our own] and God's; or rather, let us be entirely of the One and Whole God, and entirely [of Him], bearing nothing earthly within ourselves, that we may draw near to God and become gods, having received from God the fact of being gods. For thus are divine gifts honored, and the presence of divine peace is welcomed.
D 29. Great is the good of love, and the first and preeminent of all good things, as it is the good of God and of man, because it joins God and men together.
A It joins to Himself the one who possesses it, and reveals the Creator of mankind as man, on account of the identity—as far as possible for men—between the one deified and God according to goodness. This, I suppose, is to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, and your soul, and your strength; and your neighbor as yourself."
30. Observe how the devil, having cunningly composed B by means of *philautia* (that is to say, blind and carnal love) the objects of pleasure, and by leading man astray, has separated him from God and from others, with warring minds and opinions; having thus perverted rectitude, and divided nature in this way, and having cut it up into many opinions and fantasies.
31. There are three great and primal evils, and the causes—to put it simply—of all vice: ignorance, I say, and *philautia* (improper love of self and carnal love) and tyranny; hanging from one another and through one another being established. For from ignorance regarding God comes *philautia*; and from this, tyranny toward those related by kinship. And no one will deny that the evil one, through the abuse of our own powers—namely, reason, desire, and anger—has stirred up and brought these to pass in us.
32. It is necessary, by reason, instead of ignorance, to be moved toward the sole God through the search for knowledge; by desire, being cleansed of the passion of *philautia*, to be driven by longing toward God alone; and with anger, separated from tyranny, to struggle C to attain God alone, and to create the divine and blessed love—which is the offspring of these and the reason for them—which joins the lover of God to God and renders him a god.
33. Since *philautia*, as I have said, is the beginning and mother of vices, all its progeny and the shoots that follow them are accustomed to be plucked out with it; for when this is removed, no kind or trace of malice can subsist at all.
34. We should care for ourselves and for one another as much as Christ, in His own person, first showed us, by deigning to suffer for our sake.
35. All the saints, because of love and its command, resisted sin, having no regard for the present life; and they endured diverse D kinds of death, so that they might gather themselves and God from the world, and unite within themselves the fragments of nature. For this is the true and blameless divine wisdom of the faithful, the end of which is goodness and truth; if indeed goodness is manifest kindness and humanity, and truth is piety and religion composed according to the dictates of faith. These are the marks of love, as it joins men to God and to one another, and for this reason it enjoys the firm and constant permanence of good things.
A 36. The force and proof of perfect love toward God is a genuine and voluntary disposition of good will toward one's neighbor. For he who does not love his brother whom he sees, says the divine John, cannot love God whom he does not see.
37. Charity—which the Word of God calls himself—is the way of truth; and those who walk in it, having been made pure from every stain, he presents to God and the Father.
38. This is the door, through which he who enters penetrates into the Holy of Holies, and becomes worthy to be a beholder of the inaccessible beauty of the holy and royal Trinity.
B 39. Truly, and beyond all condemnation, it is a fearful thing to destroy of one’s own will the life given to us gratuitously from God by the Holy Spirit, through love for those things which pass away; and those who have made it their study to prefer the truth to self-love know this fear.
40. Let us use peace for its proper purpose, and having set aside the friendship—formed to our detriment—with the world and the prince of this world, let us bring to an end the war stirred up against God through our passions; and by binding unbreakable treaties of peace with him, in the destruction of the body of sin, let us put an end to our enmities with him.
41. It is impossible for us to be reconciled to God while we occupy a position of rebellion against him through our passions, and while we endure to pay tribute through our wickedness to the wicked tyrant and murderer of souls, the devil, without first having waged war against the wicked one. For we continue to be enemies and foes of God, even if we drape ourselves with the name of believers, as long as we choose to serve the passions of shame; and no profit will accrue to us from peace according to the world, if the soul is in a bad state, and in rebellion against its own Creator, and refuses to come under His kingship. C For it is sold to countless cruel masters who urge it on toward wickedness, and they deceive and prepare it to choose the road that leads to perdition, rather than the one that provides salvation.
42. For this end has God created us, that we might become partakers of the divine nature, and sharers in His eternity, and might appear to Him as beings like Himself through the deification which is by grace; for the sake of which there is both the constitution and permanence of all things that exist, as well as the production and generation of those things that do not yet exist.
43. If we desire to be called and to be God’s, let us strive not to betray the Word to the passions, after the manner of Judas, or to deny Him, after the manner of Peter. For the denial of the Word is the refusal to do good on account of fear; but betrayal is sin committed through deliberate intent, and an urge toward sin. D
A 44. The end of all trial is joy; of all labor, rest; and of all dishonor, glory. And to speak briefly, the end of all painful things that we endure for the sake of virtue is that we may attain unto God and dwell with Him forever, and that we may enjoy the eternal rest and beatitude that has no end.
45. God, desiring to unite us to one another, both in nature and in will, and truly urging all of humankind toward this goal, has written for us, in His most benign loving-kindness, saving commandments; and for this reason He has ordained that we should show mercy, and that mercy should be shown to those who show mercy.
46. The self-love and craftiness of men, either rejecting or perverting one another and the law, has cut the one nature into many parts; and by introducing the insensibility that now prevails within it, it has armed nature against itself through discord of soul. Whoever, therefore, is able by prudent counsel and sincerity of mind to dissolve this inequality of nature, has had mercy on himself before others; for he has ordered his will according to nature, and has approached God by his will through nature, and has shown in himself what is the mode of that which is according to the image, and how God, in the beginning, fittingly creating our nature similar to Himself and as a manifest image of His own goodness, established it in all things as one with Himself—peaceful, quiet, tranquil, bound to God and to itself by charity; by which (charity) we embrace God with desire, and we ourselves embrace one another with more indulgent piety and mercy.
B 47. The most loving God for this reason became man, so that He might gather the nature of men toward Himself and bring it to a halt from its evil drifting—drifting toward itself, or rather acting seditiously against itself C and riven asunder; and having no stability, on account of the unsteady movement of the mind regarding each thing, nor being balanced by its own proper weights.
48. Nothing is more precious to those who possess a sound mind and senses, or rather more dear to God, than perfect charity; as that which gathers those who are divided into one, and creates one accord in the many or in all, with all discord removed far away. D
A For it is the property of charity to show that the mind of those who seek the things that belong to it is one.
49. If by nature the good is that which unites the divided and holds them together, then clearly the evil is that which divides and corrupts those things which are joined. For by nature, evil is dispersive, unstable, multiform, and divisive.
50. The release from all evils and the short path to salvation is the true love of God according to knowledge, and the total renunciation of the affection of the soul toward the body and this world; by which, having cast off the desire for pleasure and the fear of pain, we are freed from that evil self-love, and raised up to the knowledge of Him who created us; and having received instead a good and intellectual self-love, separated from bodily affection, we do not cease serving God through this good self-love, always seeking the preservation of the soul from God. For this is true worship, and that which is truly pleasing to God: the precise care of the soul through the virtues.
51. B He who does not desire bodily pleasure, and does not fear pain at all, has become dispassionate. For together with self-love, which is the mother of these, he has slain all the passions that arise through them and from them, along with that most sovereign of evils, ignorance; and he has become wholly and entirely immovable, bound to the Good which stands, abides, and is by nature always the same, and beholding the glory of God with unveiled face, he gazes upon the divine and inaccessible brightness from the light-like splendor within himself. C 2 Cor. III, 18.
52. Let us renounce the pleasure and pain of this present life as much as we are able, and we shall be entirely freed from every defilement of the passions and the devilish malice. For because of pleasure we love the passions, and because of pain we flee from virtue.
53. Since all wickedness is by nature such that it is corrupted by those very ways that constitute it, when a man discovers through experience itself that pain is always the successor to every pleasure, he directs his whole urge toward the pleasure, and his whole flight away from the pain; striving for the former with all his might, and struggling against the latter with all his zeal, D thinking that it were possible—which was entirely impossible—to separate them from one another by such a method, and by pleasure alone...
A being joined to self-love, to possess it entirely free from pain, being ignorant, as it seems, under the influence of passion, that it is never possible for pleasure to exist without pain. For labor associated with pain is mingled with pleasure, even if it appears to escape the notice of those who possess it, on account of the overriding influence of the passion of pleasure; for it is in the nature of that which dominates to always appear manifest, veiling the perception of that which lies alongside it. Therefore, since we claim as our own, because of self-love, both pleasure and—for the same reason—the eager haste to flee from pain, we devise the countless generations of destructive passions.
54. B Someone is ignorant of the experience of pleasure and pain of the senses, when he has bound—or rather, has united—his mind to God, who is truly most beloved, desirable, and the object of longing, having become free from bodily attachment.
55. 55. Just as it is impossible for anyone to offer pure worship to God without thoroughly cleansing the soul, so too is it impossible to serve the creature without bestowing diligent care upon the body. For by this, man performed a destructive worship toward the body, and by becoming a lover of himself in relation to it, he had pleasure incessantly and pain in operation, always eating of the tree of disobedience, which possessed for the senses the knowledge of good and evil mingled together by experience. And perhaps one would not miss the truth if he said that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is the visible creation; for it is by nature endowed with the power of producing pleasure and pain, just as it is perceived.
56. C Where reason does not hold sway, the power according to sense is accustomed to arise, in which the force of sin is somehow mingled, drawing the soul through pleasure toward pity for the flesh that is consubstantial with it in subsistence. By this, as if it were a natural work for it, it undertakes the impassioned and pleasure-seeking care of the flesh, leads it away from the life according to nature, and persuades it to become the creator of this non-existent wickedness.
57. D Wickedness is the forgetting, by an intelligent soul, of the goods according to nature, which comes into being from an impassioned attachment toward the flesh and the world. Reason, serving as a commander and ruling by spiritual knowledge, obliterates this by investigating the origin and nature of the world and the flesh, and by driving the soul toward the region akin to it—the realm of intelligible things—toward which the law of sin makes no crossing. It does not have, as it were, a bridge—which is sense—to convey it toward the mind; for sense has already been dissolved in its connection to the soul and been cast away toward sensible spectacles, the connection and nature of which the mind, having passed over them, does not perceive at all.
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58. Just as reason, dominating the passions, makes the senses an instrument of virtue, so too the passions, dominating reason, inform the senses for sin. And it is necessary to consider and meditate with a sober mind how the soul will appropriately make its conversion, utilizing the very things through which it used to transgress for the purpose of preparing and sustaining virtues.
59. The Holy Gospel teaches the renunciation of the carnal life and the admission of the spiritual one. By this I mean those who according to the human—that is, the human life in the flesh for the use of this age—are always dying, but are living according to God only in the Spirit, in accordance with the divine Apostle and those akin to him, who no longer have their own life, but have Christ living in them only in their soul. In this way, those who are dead in the flesh for God’s sake in this age are judged, having many afflictions, tortures, and straits, and enduring with joy the myriad kinds of temptations. B C
60. Every passion, or vice and failing, consists entirely of the complex of some object falling into the sense, and of the sense itself, and of the natural faculty—by this I mean anger, or desire, or reason perverted from its natural state. If, therefore, the mind, having inspected the end of these toward each other according to their composition (namely, the object that moves the sense, the sense itself, and finally the natural faculty within it), is able to distinguish each of these and trace them back to its proper natural principle—and to contemplate the sensible object in itself, without the relation of the sense to it, and the sense without the affinity of the object toward it; and, for example, the desire, or any other of the natural faculties, without the impassioned affection of the mind toward the sense and the sensible object (which a certain movement of the passion and lust is accustomed to provide to the consideration)—it has dissipated and crushed this, like the calf of Israel of old, as well as the stain and substance of any passion, vice, or suffering, and has sown it under the water of knowledge, having completely abolished even the bare phantasy of the passions, through the restoration of the realities that constitute it to their own natural state.
61. A life stained by many offenses of the passions arising from the flesh is a soiled and polluted tunic. D For just as from a certain garment everyone’s life and conduct is accustomed to appear, whether he be righteous or iniquitous—the one, having a clean tunic, being a life adorned with virtues; the other, possessing a life stained by wicked works. Or rather, a tunic stained by the filth of the flesh is a habit and a certain disposition formed by the memory of carnal things according to conscience.
A As indeed from the Spirit, through virtues woven together for one another according to reason, there is woven for the soul a tunic of incorruption, by putting on which it becomes beautiful and glorious; so, too, from the flesh, by passions woven together for one another according to proportion, there arises a certain unclean and stained tunic, which renders the soul manifest from itself, and imposes upon it another form and image besides the divine.
B Firm faith in the hope of deification is provided to human nature by the fact that God became man; for He makes man god to the same extent that He Himself became man. For He who became man without sin will obviously deify nature without any change into divinity; and He will exalt it for His own sake to the same extent that He humbled Himself for the sake of man. The great Apostle teaches this mystically, saying that in the ages to come the superabundant riches of God’s goodness toward us will be shown (Eph. ii, 7).
C Reason, ruling over anger and desire, produces virtues; and the intellect, applying itself to these reasons, gathers an unerring knowledge of created things. Therefore, when reason, having cast off opposites, finds what is lovable according to nature, and the intellect, after the passing over of known things, lays hold of the Cause of all things that exists beyond essence and knowledge, then — through grace — the passion of blessed deification supervenes, leading reason away from natural discernment (where there is nothing to be discerned), and inducing in the intellect a cessation from natural intellection and thought (where there is nothing to be known), and by the firmness of this same stillness and state, makes him who is deemed worthy of divine communion a god.
D Labor cleanses the soul infected with the rust of pleasure and tears away from it entirely the affection for earthly things, once it has learned through the loss resulting from such affection to be of a sounder mind. This is the reason why God in His just judgment allows men to be tormented by the devil.
§. Pleasure and pain, desire and fear, and the things that follow from these, were not originally created along with the nature of men; otherwise they would pertain to the definition of nature. Therefore I say, following the author...
great Gregory of Nyssa (lib. *De opificio hominis*), that because the perfection was lost, these things were introduced, adhering to that part of the soul which is more removed from reason: by which, instead of the blessed and divine image, the clear and manifest likeness of brute animals immediately emerged in man after the transgression. For it was fitting that, the dignity of reason being obscured, the human race should be justly punished by those marks of irrationality which it had embraced; God most wisely arranging that, in this way, man might be brought to a sense of rational excellence.
B 66. Passions and affections also become good in those who are diligent and virtuous, when we wisely turn them away from bodily things and use them to acquire heavenly things; for instance, when we make desire the motion of a mind longing for divine things; pleasure, the harmless joy of the mind attracted by the gracious gifts of God; fear, the cautious diligence against future punishment for offenses; and sadness, the corrective repentance for a present evil. And to speak briefly, just as wise physicians remove the injury present or impending from the body—a poisonous beast, like the viper—by using these very passions to eradicate present or expected evil, so we use them to acquire and preserve both virtue and knowledge.
C 67. The law of the Old Testament, through practical philosophy, cleanses nature from every stain. But the law of the New, through the initiation of contemplation and more profound doctrine, mystically raises the mind from bodily things to the related spectacles of intelligible beings.
68. Divine Scripture calls those who are being introduced, and who as it were-linger in the vestibules of the divine hall of the virtues, "fearful"; those who have obtained a D moderate habit of the accounts and ways of virtue, it is accustomed to call "those who are progressing"; and those who finally have already reached the vertex of the truth that reveals the virtues, and have advanced to the cultivation of knowledge and contemplation, it calls "perfect" (*1 Cor. II, 6*). He, therefore, who has turned away from the ancient manner of life in which he clung to vices and was tossed about by passions, and has surrendered his whole disposition to the divine precepts out of fear, is lacking in no kind of good that befits those who are being instructed; even if he has not yet acquired a firm habit in the virtues, nor has become a participant in that wisdom which is spoken of among the perfect. Nor does the one who is progressing…
lack any part of those goods A which pertain to his degree, even if he has not yet reached that same excellent knowledge of divine things as the perfect. For the perfect, having already mystically attained to contemplative theology, and having made their intellect pure of every material imagination, and bearing in themselves without any deficiency the image and likeness of the divine beauty fully expressed, appear to have embraced divine love in their innermost heart.
69. Fear is twofold; one is pure, the other is not pure. For that fear which is formed by the anxiety of punishment for sins, having sin as the cause of its own generation, is not pure, nor will it last forever, because it is destroyed together with sin through repentance. B But that fear which is constant without the grief that is conceived from sins, this fear is pure and will never depart; for it is essentially implanted, as it were, by God in the creature, making manifest to all His natural majesty, which is above every kingdom and power in its transcendent excellence.
70. He who does not fear God as a judge, but reveres Him because of the exceeding excellence of His infinite power, justly suffers no lack, being perfect in charity, loving God with reverence and becoming piety. And he it is who possesses that fear which remains into the age of ages, and to whom there is no lack C at all.
71. From beings we know the Creator of beings; and from the diversity of beings, we are taught the subsistent wisdom of the Being; and from the natural movement of beings, we learn the subsistent life of the Being, the life-giving power of beings, the Holy Spirit.
72. The Holy Spirit is absent from none of existing things, and especially from those that are in any way participants of reason. For He is the sustainer of the knowledge of each, because God and the Spirit of God, being endowed with such power, pervade all things through the reasons of Providence, and move the reason D that is in each by nature; through this, He brings him who is endowed with any sensibility to a sense of those things which he has committed against the law of nature through sin; and, for him whose will is somewhat more ready to comply, He impels him toward the willing acceptance of right thoughts derived from nature. Wherefore we even find many, among those who are very barbarian and who lead a nomadic life, who have pursued probity of character and have renounced the beastly laws which they had formerly held from their ancestors.
CAPITUM QUINQUIES CENTENORUM CENTURIA I.
A 73. The Holy Spirit is in all things simply, in that He contains and preserves all things and provides for the universe, and stirs the natural seeds. But in a specific way, He is also in all who are under the Law, inasmuch as He points out the transgression of the commandments and provides light for the recognition of the promised coming of Christ. Beyond these ways, He is in all who are accounted by the Christian name, even as the author of adoption. Yet as the author of wisdom, He is in none of those I have mentioned, except in those who are possessed of prudence and intelligence, and who, through a life ordered by divine morals, have rendered themselves worthy of His deifying inhabitation. For everyone who does not perform the divine will, even if he is a believer, has an unwise heart—as it were a workshop for evil thoughts—and a body bound by sins, as if it were always stained by the defilements of passions.
B 74. God, who desires the salvation of all men and hungers for their deification, curses their pride and arrogance as one would a barren fig tree; so that, preferring to be righteous rather than merely appearing so, they may cast off the garment of moral display worn in hypocrisy, and, putting on a life of virtue as the divine Word wills, may pass their lives in purity, honoring God with the disposition of their soul rather than displaying to men an outward show of manners.
C 75. The definition of acting is one thing, and the definition of suffering is another; the definition of acting is the natural power for the operation of virtues; the definition of suffering is the grace of things beyond nature, or the concurrence of those things contrary to nature. For just as we have no natural power for that which is above things, so neither do we have by nature the power for that which does not exist in things. We suffer, therefore, that which transcends nature by grace, but we do not work deification; for we do not possess by nature the power capable of deification. And again, we suffer what is contrary to nature—wickedness—by a disposition according to circumstance; for we have no natural power for the production of wickedness. We act, therefore, in this present life, being by nature such that we have the natural power to perform the virtues; but we suffer deification as a thing of the future, receiving it as it is bestowed by the gift of grace.
D 76. We act, insofar as we have the natural, rational power that is generative of the virtues, and the noetic faculty capable of all knowledge.
A We suffer, however, when, having completely passed beyond the concepts of things that have come to be from nothing, we attain in an unknown way to the Cause of things, and bring to a rest, together with things limited by nature, our own faculties; this is indeed an achievement that in no way exists as a work of natural faculty. For nature is not endowed with the power to comprehend what is above nature. For there is nothing in created things that can effect deification, just as there is nothing in them that can comprehend God. For this is proper only to divine grace, to grant deification to things in a certain way; for it illuminates nature with a light exceeding nature, and raises it above its own limits, according to the excellence of its glory.
77. Vitae, when we have performed the virtues, we cease; but we never cease suffering deification by grace, by which we are gifted with divinity. For that experience which is above nature is bounded by no limits, because it is vivid and efficacious; whereas that which is contrary to nature and opposed to it truly has no existence, because it is obscure and weak.
78. B The types of divine goods are both the modes of practice and the concepts of things, through which God always becomes man: as body, having the modes of the virtues; and as soul, the concepts of knowledge in the Spirit, by which He makes those who are worthy divine, providing a substantial character of virtue, and granting a real existence to true and certain knowledge.
79. C The faithful mind, like holy Peter, held by Herod (read "leathern"; for Herod, if you interpret the name, is called "leathern," which is the mindset of the flesh), is locked under two guards and one iron gate; being attacked both by the operation and act of the vices, and by the consent of the mind to those vices. This double prison or guard, where—through the word of practical philosophy that studies, as if through an angel and with him as guide—he passes, he comes to the iron gate that leads to the city (that is, the firm, hard, and difficult-to-overcome D disposition and lust of the senses towards the things subjected to them), which the word of natural contemplation in the Spirit, by opening it of its own accord, fearlessly sends the mind, now liberated from Herod’s madness, toward the kindred intelligible realities.
A 80. The devil is both an enemy and an avenger of God. He is an enemy when, as if hating Him, he affects a destructive love toward us men, by means of the modes of voluntary passions; persuading our will, through the allurement of pleasure, to prefer temporal things to eternal goods; whereby, stealing away the entire yearning of the soul, he utterly alienates us from divine love, making us voluntary enemies of our Creator. He is an avenger when, having laid bare the hatred he bears toward us, as those who have already become subject to him through sin, he demands our punishment. For nothing is as pleasing to the devil as the torment of a human being. When this has been permitted to him, contriving a succession of various involuntary afflictions, he falls ruthlessly like a tempest upon those over whom he has received authority by God’s permission; not desiring to fulfill the divine command, but wishing to nurture the passion of his own hatred toward us, so that by the great weight of painful calamities, the soul, failing through exhaustion, may cut off its own power of divine hope, and instead of taking it as a discipline, may make the imposition of these painful events a cause for impiety.
B 81. When those who have attained to practical habit and contemplative knowledge use these for the sake of human glory, sketching out the forms of virtues by an apparent manner of life, and speaking only words of wisdom and knowledge without the works of righteousness, and display to others the pride that follows upon such virtue and knowledge, they are deservedly handed over to fitting labors, so that by suffering they may learn, however late, the humility that they had not known because of their empty conceit.
C 82. Each of the demons, according to the aptitude naturally underlying it, serves by bringing about this or that temptation. For one is the producer of one vice, and another is clearly more defiled than the other, and each is more suited to this or that type of vice.
D 83. Without divine permission, not even the demons themselves are able to contribute anything to the devil. For God Himself knows how, in accordance with His proper kindness and good providence, to permit the devil, through his own subordinates, to exact various punishments for the things in which we have sinned; and the history written about Job clearly reveals this, by recording that the devil was not able to approach Job at all, apart from the divine will.
84. Substance-bearing faith is that which is active and practical, by which the Word of God is shown in those who practice, being embodied by the commandments, through which the Word is revealed. Indeed, in those who practice,
A leads those who practice them up to the Father, in whom He exists by nature.
85. The mystery of the New Testament proclaims the transition of life, the angelic worship, the voluntary separation of the soul from the body, and the birth of divine transformation in the Spirit. The Word is also accustomed to calling this "spiritual circumcision," which is the cutting off of the soul's passionate attachment to the body.
86. Since God is good and kind, and desires to completely root out from us the seed of vice—that is, the pleasure and lust that have estranged the mind from divine love—He permits the devil to bring upon us pains and punishments. By this means, He seeks at one and the same time to cleanse the soul of the virus of the pleasure that preceded, through these pains, and to instill in us a perfect hatred and abhorrence for the things of this age and for those things which flatter only the senses; for their use, besides bringing punishment, yields no greater profit. He does this, finally, so that the devil’s avenging and hate-filled power might itself, by inflicting evils, force and lead back to virtue those who have voluntarily slipped away from it B.
87. It is fitting and just that those who have willingly accepted the devil’s wicked suggestions and thus sinned voluntarily should be punished by that same devil. For the devil is the sower of pleasure through voluntary passions, and the inflictor of pain through involuntary sufferings.
88. The contemplative and knowing mind is therefore often delivered to the devil to be punished—the devil who justly brings upon it pains and calamities—so that, while suffering, the person may learn to philosophize about patience and endurance of pains, rather than vainly and proudly boast about things that do not exist.
89. He who suffers for the sake of grace [or for the sake of a divine commandment] C that has been transgressed, if he recognizes the reason for this divine providence, accepts the calamity with thanksgiving and joy, and corrects the transgression for which he is being disciplined. But he who does not perceive the sense of this medicine is justly deprived of the grace given to him and is delivered to the confusion of his passions and vices, being left to the very works for which he had a desire in his soul.
90. Whoever, being moved by the awareness of what he has done, voluntarily accepts with the necessary gratitude the painful incursions of involuntary temptations, is not cast out of his virtuous state and grace. Like one who has voluntarily submitted to the yoke of the king of Babylon and pays the penalty for his sin as if it were a debt, he does not refuse the punishments inflicted upon him; but remaining within them, he pays the tribute to the king of Babylon—the violent pains of the suffering nature D—and [offers] his contemplation, as it were his soul, which mutually requires it for its own perfection.
A regarding them in his mind as a debtor to them on account of his previous transgressions, [and offering to them] his consent; but to God, offering through true worship—I mean by way of a humble disposition—the amendment of things neglected.
91. He who does not gratefully receive the hardship brought upon him by God's permission for the sake of amendment, through the involuntary incidence of temptations, and who, thinking himself to be righteous, does not repent or cast aside his pride—as one who resists the divine decrees of righteous judgments—and who does not voluntarily accept the yoke of the king of Babylon according to the divine command, is delivered into captivity; and is given over to collars, and bonds, and famine, and death, and the sword, and is entirely driven out of his own land. B For he who is exiled, as it were, from his own land of virtue and knowledge suffers all these things, and more than these, because in his pride and vain conceit he does not wish to pay the debts for which he has transgressed, or to be content in tribulations and necessities and straits, according to the divine Apostle. For the great Apostle knew that the humiliation that is outwardly formed around the body through labors is a protection for the divine treasures within the soul; and for this reason he willingly endured it, both for his own sake and for the sake of those to whom he was set forth as a model of virtue and faith, that even if they suffered as guilty ones, like the Corinthian who was rebuked, they might have as a consolation and a model of patience the one who suffered though innocent.
92. He who does not linger upon the forms of visible things C through sense perception, but seeks out their essences in his mind, viewing them as types of intelligible things or as the essences of sensible creatures, is taught that nothing of the things seen is unclean; for all things are by nature very good.
93. He who is not changed by the movement of sensible things practices an unadulterated performance of the virtues. He who does not imprint his mind with their forms has attained the true opinion of beings. And he who has bypassed the very essence of beings with his understanding, like an excellent theologian, after this has approached the unity in an unknown way.
94. Every contemplative mind, having the sword D of the Spirit, which is the word of God, having killed within itself the movement of the visible creation, has perfected virtue; and having cut off from itself the fantasy of sensible forms, [has fixed] in the essences of things...
truth, in which natural speculation or contemplation consists. Finally, having surpassed the substance of beings, it is illuminated by the light of the divine and insuperable Unity, in which the mystery of true theology is established. B
95. To each according to the opinion he holds concerning God, God reveals Himself. To those who by habit have passed beyond material composition and possess the powers of the soul acting with equal strength among themselves, in one and the same ceaseless movement around God, He appears as both Unity and Trinity, that He may both demonstrate His own existence and mystically teach the mode of the same. But to those whose appetitive power remains moved only toward material composition, and who possess the powers of the soul not bound to one another, He appears not as He is, but as they are, showing that they have grasped with both hands the earthly duality, of which the corporeal world, as if concreted from matter and form, consists.
96. The divine Apostle calls the various operations or inspirations of the one Holy Spirit different gifts, which, clearly, one and the same Spirit works. If, therefore, according to the measure of faith in each one, the manifestation of the Spirit is given, in the sharing of that gift, each of the faithful, according to the proportion of his faith and the disposition of soul subject to him, receives the operation of the Spirit measured out, which grants to them the appropriate habit C for the execution of this or that commandment.
97. "To one is given the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge, to another faith," and to another some other of the gifts of the Spirit enumerated by the great Apostle. Thus, one receives through the Spirit the gift of perfect and immediate love toward God, having nothing earthly, according to the measure of faith; another, through the same Spirit, the gift of perfect love toward one's neighbor; another something else, according to the same Spirit, as I was saying; so that each truly has his own gift exercised in action. For every habit of a commandment that is exercised, the Spirit calls a gift.
98. The baptism of the Lord is the complete death of our will toward this world which is an object of the senses; but the cup is the renunciation of our own present life itself for the sake of the truth. D
99. The baptism of the Lord is a figure of those voluntary labors undertaken for the sake of virtue, by the help of which we wash away the stains upon our conscience and receive the voluntary death toward the things subject to our eyes; but the cup offers a type of those involuntary temptations that rise up against us for the sake of the truth due to some adverse circumstance contrary to our will; through which we ourselves also [offer] the death of nature which stands around us. For circumstance here is not…
type; by means of these, preferring even this to the divine desire of nature, we voluntarily undergo the death incident to nature.
100. Baptism differs from the cup in this: that baptism, for the sake of virtue, renders the will dead to the pleasures of life; but the cup exists as an author to persuade the pious to prefer even the truth of nature itself. A
CENTURY TWO
1. He set the cup before baptism because virtue exists for the sake of the truth, and not truth for the sake of virtue. Therefore, he who practices virtue for the sake of the truth is not wounded by the darts of vainglory; but he who cultivates the truth for the sake of virtue has the pride of vainglory as his companion.
2. He says that truth is divine knowledge; virtue, however, is the struggle on behalf of the truth by those who desire it. Therefore, he who endures labors of virtue for the sake of knowledge does not glory in his vanity, knowing that the truth is by nature impossible to be encompassed by labors. For what is first by nature is not circumscribed by those things which are second. But he who pursues knowledge for the sake of the toils endured for it is entirely held by the malady of vainglory, thinking he has gained the crowns before the sweat; not knowing that labors are for the sake of the crowns, but that crowns are not for the sake of the labors. For every method and every rational procedure of art ceases by its own nature when that for which it existed has been accomplished, or is thought to have been accomplished. B
3. He who pursues only the form of knowledge, which is mere word, and the image of virtue, which is mere manner, is himself a Jew, being puffed up with the shadows of truth. C
4. He who does not see all the manifest worship of the Law according to sense, but, having examined each of the visible symbols through the excursions of the mind, and having been instructed in the God-intended Word hidden in each, finds God in the Law, skillfully groping through the mental faculty—just as if one were to find, in a heap, the pearl of the Word which completely escapes the senses, hidden in the flesh of the Law. D
5. And he who does not define the nature of visible things by sense alone, but wisely [considers]… him according to the mind.
A In every creature he who searches for the Word finds God, being taught by the manifest magnificence of things themselves, the Cause of the things themselves.
6. Therefore, since there is a wise discernment B of what is touched, he who wisely passes through the symbols of the Law, and scientifically contemplates the manifest nature of things, discerning Scripture and creation and himself—Scripture, into letter and spirit; creation, into the word and the surface; and himself, into mind and sense—and having taken from Scripture the spirit, from creation the word, and from himself the mind, and having bound them to one another in an indissoluble bond, he finds God; inasmuch as he has recognized God as He ought to be recognized, and as it is possible, he who exists in Mind and Word and Spirit, having been delivered from all that seduces and drags [one] into myriad opinions—I mean the letter, the surface, and the sense, in which the different quantity exists, which is contrary to unity. But if anyone, tying together the letter of the Law, the surface of things subject to the eyes, and one’s own sense, should mingle them with one another, he is a blind man groping for the way; he suffers, that is to say, from ignorance of the Author of things.
7. The divine and great Apostle, in defining what faith is, says: "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." C But if anyone should also define it as an innate good, or a true knowledge demonstrating those secret goods, he would not fall short of the truth.
8. Faith is a relative power, or an active disposition, by which an immediate union beyond nature is afforded to the believer with the God who is believed and who is credited.
9. Since, therefore, man, existing of soul and body, is tossed by two laws—I mean of the flesh and of the spirit—and the law of the flesh has its activity in the sense, while the law of the spirit has its activity in the mind; and the law of the flesh is by nature apt to bind one to material things, as it is active in the sense; but the law of the spirit, being active in the mind, makes [its] union with God immediately; therefore, "He who shall not have been discerned in his heart"—that is, not having discerned in his mind, or rather, having discerned D the immediate union with God which occurs through faith, as dispassionate, or rather, as one who has already become a god by the union through faith, he will say to this mountain, "Be moved," and it will be moved. And this manner of speaking, as if with the finger, points out the sense and the law of the flesh, that heavy and difficult-to-move [thing].
and, so far as natural power is concerned, utterly motionless and unshakable.
10. So firmly rooted is the power of the irrational in human nature through the senses, that the vast majority of people believe that a human being is nothing but flesh, possessed of sense-fright used for the enjoyment of the present life.
11. "All things," he says, "are possible to him who believes," and does not doubt—that is, who is not divided from the union with God brought about in him through faith in the mind, because of the soul's relationship with the body through the senses—those things which alienate the mind from the world and the flesh, and reconcile it to God, perfected by good works. For this is to be implied in what is said, "All things are possible to him who believes." B
12. Faith is an undemonstrable knowledge. If it is an undemonstrable knowledge, then faith is a state beyond nature, through which we are united to God in a way that is unknowable, and not through demonstrations, according to a union that surpasses understanding.
13. Having received an immediate union with God, the mind has the power of thinking and being thought of at total rest. Therefore, whenever it breaks this—by thinking of something among those things which are after God—it is divided, severing the union that is beyond understanding, by which, as long as it is joined to God—having become God by participation, as one beyond nature—it removes from itself the law of nature, like an immovable mountain. C
14. He who is being introduced to piety, being instructed in the works of righteousness, performs only the practice, with all obedience and faith, as if eating the visible flesh of the virtues—that is, moral pedagogy; but the inner reasons for the commandments, in which the knowledge of the perfect consists, he yields to God through faith, not being able for the time being to extend himself to the length of that knowledge.
15. The perfect man, having run through not only the order of beginners but also that of those who are progressing, is not ignorant of the reasons for the things done by him according to the commandment; but first drinking them in by the Spirit, he eats the whole body of the virtues D through the actions themselves.
16. B When the Lord said, *Seek first the kingdom of God, and his justice* (Matt. vi, 33); that is, before everything else the knowledge of the truth, and thus the performance of the modes of conduct that are appropriate; he clearly indicated that those who believe must seek only for divine knowledge, and for that virtue which adorns it through works.
17. B Since those things which believers must seek for the sake of the knowledge of God and for virtue are many—such as liberation from affections or vices, endurance of temptations, the reasons for virtues, the modes of operations, the uprooting of the soul’s inclination toward the flesh, the avocating of the sense from its association with sensible things and from the lust for them, the soul’s complete withdrawal from all created things—and simply put, there are countless other things which preserve us from malice and ignorance and which provide knowledge and virtue; the Lord C reasonably said, *All things whatsoever you shall ask in prayer, believing, you shall receive* (Matt. xxi, 22). He meant, absolutely all things—but only those things that lead to the knowledge of God and to virtue—must the pious seek and ask for with understanding and faith. For all these things are beneficial, and the Lord certainly grants them to those who ask.
18. C Therefore, he who for the sake of faith alone—that is, for union with God—seeks all things that lead to this union, will certainly receive them. But he who seeks for any other cause, whether he seeks other things or even these very things already mentioned, will not receive them. For he is not believing, but, like an unbeliever, is pursuing glory for himself from divine things.
19. C He who is immune to the blot of sin, D destroys the corruption of those things which are naturally wont to corrupt. For the incorruption of the faculty of choice is by nature adapted to preserve the incorruption of the nature, through the grace of the Spirit in it, by providence, not permitting it to be corrupted by contrary qualities, nor bringing upon it the stain of destruction.
20. D Since the reason for nature and the reason for grace are not one and the same, it is not a matter for wonder how the saints were at one time superior to passions and at another time fell more into passions, when we know that the miracle belongs to grace, but the passion belongs to nature.
21. D He who, through imitation, keeps the memory of the conversation of the saints, lays aside the death of the passions and receives the life of the virtues.
22. D In the way that God, having determined the life of each person before the ages, leads each one to the appropriate end of their life, whether it be just or unjust.
23. D The dark winter that befell the blessed Paul, I surmise to be the weight of involuntary temptations; and the island to be the firm and unshaken divine
A hope; the pyre to be the habit of knowledge; the brushwood, the nature of visible things, which he was handling with his hand—I mean, with the contemplative, tactile power of the mind—nourishing with the thoughts drawn from it the habit of knowledge, which heals the gloom rubbed into the understanding by the winter of temptations. The viper is the evil and lethal power lying hiddenly within the nature of sensible things; it struck the hand—that is, the tactile action of the mind in contemplation—but it did not harm the discerning mind, which, by the light of knowledge, as though in fire, immediately destroyed that lethal power that had attached itself to the practical movement of the mind from the contemplation of sensible things.
24. The Apostle was an odor of life unto life, as he prepared the faithful, by his own example, to be moved through action toward the fragrance of the virtues, or as a herald to translate to the life in the Spirit those who obeyed the word of grace, from the life according to sense. But to those who had passed from the death of ignorance to the death of unbelief, he was an odor of death unto death, giving them a sense of the condemnation awaiting them. Or again, it is an odor from life unto life for those who are led up from action to contemplation; but an odor of death unto death for those who, having mortified B the members which are on the earth [(b)] by the cessation from sin, pass on to the praiseworthy mortification of passionate thoughts and phantasies.
25. There are three powers of the soul: reason, irascibility, and concupiscence. By reason we seek; by concupiscence we desire the good that is sought; and by irascibility we contend for it. Those who love God, waiting upon these powers and the divine word of virtue and knowledge—seeking with the first, desiring with the second, and contending with the third—receive incorruptible food, and knowledge of things created, which fattens the mind.
26. Having become man, the Word of God filled the nature that had been emptied of the given knowledge, and filling it again with knowledge, and tempering it toward immutability, He deified it—not by nature, but by quality; sealing it unceasingly with His own Spirit, just as one blends water with the quality of wine to impart tone C to it. For this reason He truly becomes man, that He might make us gods by grace.
27. God, who created the nature of men, at the same time He granted it the will to exist, also fitted it with the power of doing what is incumbent; and by power, I mean the movement that is D essentially sown...
A into nature for the purpose of the operation of virtues; and by the exercise of the will, according to the choice of the one who possesses it, it is made manifest in action. 28. We possess a natural criterion, the law according to nature, teaching us that because of the wisdom that is inherent in all things, our appetite ought to have been moved B toward the initiation into the mysteries of the Creator of all things.
29. Jacob’s well is Scripture. The water is the knowledge contained in Scripture. The depth is the obscure position of the enigmas of the Scriptures, through which one does not easily find a way. Furthermore, the bucket is the discipline of the divine word had through the letters; which the Lord did not have, being Himself the Word; nor does He deliver to the faithful knowledge that is the result of discipline and exercise, but that which is the eternal wisdom flowing C from spiritual grace, which He bestows upon those who are worthy and which never ceases. For the bucket—that is, discipline—taking a very small part of knowledge, leaves behind the whole, which it cannot conceive by any reason. But the knowledge that is by grace possesses in its entirety, and even without exercise, the wisdom attainable by men, flowing forth in various ways according to the requirements of the need.
30. The tree of life, and that which is not so—from this alone, that the one is called the tree of life, whereas the other is not of life, but only the knowledge of good and evil 82—they have a very great and ineffable difference. For the tree of life is altogether productive D of life; but that which is not the tree of life is clearly productive of death. For that which is not productive of life, from the fact that it is not called the tree of life, would clearly be productive of death; for nothing else is divided in opposition to life.
31. The tree of life, and as wisdom, has very great difference from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which is neither wisdom nor called such. For the characteristic of wisdom is mind and reason; the characteristic of the disposition opposed to wisdom on the contrary is irrationality and sense-perception.
32. Since man has come into existence constituted of an intellectual soul and a sensitive body, let it be maintained in one way that the tree of life is the mind of the soul, in which exists the substance of wisdom; and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is the sense-perception of the body, in which is clearly present the movement of irrationality, by which, when...
A a man has taken the divine command, he did not keep it, because it was forbidden him to touch it by experiencing it.
33. Both trees, according to the Scripture, are means of discernment, namely, the mind and the sense-perception; for example, the mind has the power of discerning things intellectual and sensible, temporal and eternal; or rather, being a discerning power of the soul, it persuades it to lay hold of the one and to transcend the other. Sense-perception has the power of discerning the pleasure and pain of bodies; or rather, being a power of ensouled and sensible bodies, it persuades one to draw pleasure to oneself and to repel pain.
34. If a man comes to possess only the discernment of the sense-perception of bodies, which is concerned with pleasure and pain, having transgressed the divine command, he eats of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; that is, of the irrationality according to sense-perception; for he has only the discernment constitutive of bodies, by which, as if it were a good, he lays hold of pleasure, and as if it were an evil, he abstains from pain. But if he comes to possess B fully the intellectual discernment that distinguishes the temporal from the eternal, having kept the divine command, he eats of the tree of life; I mean the wisdom that consists in the mind, having only the discernment constitutive of the soul, by which, as if it were a good, he lays hold of the glory of the eternal; and as if it were an evil, he abstains from the corruption of the temporal.
35. The good for the mind is its passionless disposition toward the Spirit; the evil is its passionate relation toward sense-perception. The good for sense-perception is the movement toward the body that is passionate according to pleasure; the evil is the disposition that arises from the deprivation of this.
36. He who has persuaded his conscience that what is by nature the worst thing is good when it is practiced, this man, having extended his practical faculty like a hand, has received in a blameworthy C manner from the tree of life, thinking that what is by nature the worst is immortal. Therefore God, having naturally implanted in man the reproach of evil according to his conscience, separated him from the tree of life, as one who had become evil through his own free choice, so that, while doing evil, he might not be able to persuade his own conscience that the worst thing is by nature good.
37. The vine produces wine; wine, drunkenness; drunkenness, ecstasy. Therefore the active reason, which is the vine, being cultivated by the virtues, gives birth to knowledge; and knowledge gives birth to the good ecstasy, which transports the mind from the relationship of sense-perception.
38. The wicked one is accustomed to maliciously suggest to the thoughts of sensible things the forms and shapes of sensible objects, through which passions are wont to be created D around the surfaces of visible things, taking a stand through the intermediate sense-perception that regarding the intelligible things, in order that the mind may not pass over to spiritual things through the intermediate sense-perception.
but rather A that the power of that natural activity in us may be inhibited. Hence it also prevails in tearing the soul apart and dragging it down into the confusion of the passions and vices.
39. The Word of God is at once both a lamp and a light; it illuminates the natural reasonings of the faithful and burns those which are contrary to nature. It dispels the darkness of life according to sense-perception for those who, by fulfilling the commandments, hasten toward the life hoped for; and by the burning heat of judgment, it punishes those who, by their own choice, owing to a love of the flesh, adhere to this dark night of life.
40. If one has not first raised himself by casting off the B passions that are contrary to nature, so as to ascend to his Author and Cause (God, that is), he will never be raised; for by grace he must acquire those goods which surpass the power of nature. For he who is to be truly gathered into God must, in his mind, be separated from created things.
41. It is the work of the written law to be delivered from passions and vices; of the natural law, to distribute equal portions of honor to all men; and of the spiritual law, to achieve the perfection—as far as is granted to man—of an accurate likeness to God.
42. The power of the mind is by nature capable of knowledge regarding bodies and bodiless things (that is, spirits); but it receives manifestations of the Holy Trinity only by the guidance of grace. It merely believes that He exists, not C presuming—as the demonic mind does—to know what He might be per essence and nature. For he who is devoid of such knowledge does not know the way of virtue by which to wash away the filth of vices.
43. He who loves the lie is delivered over to it for his own destruction, so that in suffering that which he willingly embraced, he might learn by experience how, while thinking he was embracing life, he was unwittingly embracing death.
44. God alone possesses the knowledge of the good, as He is by essence both the nature and the knowledge of the good; but of evil, He has ignorance, as He possesses no capacity for it. For whatever things one has the capacity for by nature, of those he possesses the knowledge essentially.
45. That which is in Leviticus, the breastplate, signifies the better... D
and sublime contemplation. A But the shoulder signifies action—that is, the habit and operation of the deliberative mind, or knowledge and virtue; for knowledge immediately brings the mind to God, while virtue, by which one diligently practices action, removes it from all affection and birth of worldly things. These the Word assigned to the priests, to those who have obtained God alone as their inheritance, and who possess absolutely nothing earthly in their estate.
46. Since those who are thoroughly imbued with knowledge and virtue through the Spirit render the minds of others capable of piety and faith through the word of teaching—and by removing their habit and power of action from the yearnings that attend the corruptible nature, they carry them over to the operation of the incorruptible goods that transcend all nature, to be performed by work—for this reason, the divine Word justly commanded that the breastplate of the lifting-off B (that is, the heart of those being brought near) and the shoulder (that is, their very action) be consecrated to the priests as those things which are brought for a sacrifice to God.
47. All righteousness here, when compared to the one to come, holds the place of a mirror, having the image of the archetypal things, but not possessing the things themselves as they exist according to their essence; and all knowledge here of high things, when compared to that of the future, is an enigma, having an impression of the truth, but not possessing the truth itself which is about to appear and truly exist.
48. Since divine matters depend C upon virtue and knowledge, the mirror is indicative of the archetypes according to virtue, and the enigma is manifestative of those archetypes according to knowledge.
49. He who has pleased God through action transfers his mind through contemplation to the region of intelligible things, in order that he may not see by any fantasy the death that is situated in the senses and the passions, but rather—since he is being sought by none of those who desire to catch him—he might find nothing at all.
50. He who with the pure eye of faith has seen the beauty of the good things to come, obeys D and eagerly departs from his land, and his kindred, and his father's house, having abandoned the relationship and desire toward the flesh, and the senses, and the things that move the senses; and being higher than nature in the time of temptation and struggles, he prefers...
the Cause of nature, as Abraham, the great, preferred God before Isaac. A
51. He who pursues virtue or the meditation of divine discourses neither for the sake of glory, nor by pretext of avarice, nor for the grace of flattery and pleasing men and display, but does, says, and thinks all things for the sake of God, he walks in the way of truth in knowledge. For the divine Word is not wont to dwell in paths that are not straight, even if it should find the way prepared in some. B
52. Someone fasts and abstains from the gluttonous diet of the passions; he does other things also, as many as can contribute to the deliverance from wickedness; this man has prepared the so-called way. But if, for the sake of vainglory, or avarice, or flattery, or pleasing men, or for any other reason, he cultivates such manners apart from divine pleasure, he has not made straight the paths of God; and while he has endured the labor of preparing the way, he has not obtained God as one walking in his own paths.
53. *Every valley shall be filled*: C not simply every one, nor of all; for it is not so of those who have not prepared the way of the Lord, and made straight his paths. When, therefore, the valley—that is to say, the flesh or the soul—of those who, as I said, have prepared the way of the Lord and made straight his paths, through the presence of God the Word walking in them by his commandments, shall be filled both with knowledge and with virtue, all the spirits of falsely-named knowledge and wickedness are humbled, the Word trampling upon them and subjecting them, and destroying that most wicked power which exalts itself against the human race, and digging out the proud mass and high summit of the mountains and hills, and throwing it down to level the valleys. For when the affections, which are contrary to the accounts of nature, are cast away, and the virtues, which are according to its accounts, are added, the soul, depressed like a valley, is filled, and the power of the wicked spirits, elevated like the brow of mountains, is pressed down and humbled. D
54. *The rough ways* (that is, the onslaughts of involuntary temptations) *shall be turned into smooth paths*; then most of all, when the mind, rejoicing and glad in infirmities and distresses and necessities, finds pleasure in them, and through involuntary labors removes from itself the entire power of voluntary affections and lusts. For he called the encounters of involuntary temptations "rough," which are changed into smooth paths through patience by way of thanksgiving.
55. He who is held by the desire for true life, knowing that every labor, whether it be self-chosen or involuntary, becomes the death of pleasure—the mother of death—and of pain, all the rough ones [of the involuntary temptations...]
A he will receive, rejoicing with gladness, through patience, making the ways easy and flat, and [making them] paths that pass him on unerringly toward the prize of the upward calling, as he piously pursues the divine course within them. For indeed, pleasure is the mother of death, but pain is the death of pleasure; and this is true both of that which is chosen by the will and that which arrives against the will.
56. Therefore, everyone who has dissolved by temperance the multi-layered and intricate pleasure—which is intertwined in many ways with all things that fall under the senses—has made the crooked paths straight; and he who has trampled down the difficult and rough onset of labors through patience has made the rough ways smooth. Whence, as a reward for virtue and for the toils endured for its sake, just as one who has competed well and lawfully, and having conquered pleasure by the desire for virtue, and having trampled down pain by the love of knowledge, and having carried through the divine contests bravely by both, he shall see, according as it is written, the salvation of God.
57. He who loves virtue willingly extinguishes the furnace of pleasures; B but he who has had his mind tempered by the knowledge of the truth is not checked by involuntary pains in the constant motion of his desire toward God.
58. He who has straightened the crooked paths of voluntary passions—that is, the impulses of pleasure—by means of temperance, and has leveled the rough ways of involuntary temptations—that is, the modes of pain—by means of patience, and has set them into smooth paths, such a man will deservedly see the salvation of God, having become pure in heart; through which state, by means of virtues and pious contemplations, he sees God at the end of his contests, according to the saying: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God;" C having received in exchange for the labors on behalf of virtue the gift of imperturbability, than which nothing more manifests God to those who are endowed with it.
59. Scripture calls "cisterns" those hearts that are receptive to the heavenly gifts of holy knowledge, which are hewn out by the solid word of the commandments, casting away, like callouses, both the addiction to pleasure in relation to the passions and the inclination of nature toward things subject to the senses, and which are filled with the knowledge that flows from on high—the knowledge that cleanses from the passions, and gives life to, and, as it were, nourishes the virtues in the Spirit.
A 60. "He digged the cistern in the desert" (that is, in the world and in human nature), digging up the hearts of those who are worthy, cleansing them from earthly weight and disposition, and making them spacious for the reception of the divine rains of wisdom and knowledge, in order that they may water the sheep of Christ—those who, on account of the infancy of their soul, are in need of moral instruction.
61. Scripture calls "mountain" the lofty contemplation in the Spirit of nature, which is cultivated by those who have departed from sensible imaginations and have crossed over to their intelligible principles through the medium of the virtues.
62. As long as the mind has in itself the living memory of God, it seeks the Lord through contemplation; and not simply so, but "in the fear of the Lord"—that is, in the practice of the commandments. For he who seeks the Lord through contemplation without practice does not find Him, because he did not seek the Lord in the fear of the Lord. "And the Lord prospered him." For the Lord prospers everyone who applies himself to action accompanied by knowledge, teaching him the ways of the commandments and revealing the true principles of things.
B 63. A lofty discourse on the Deity is a tower in the soul, fortified by the observance of the commandments. And this is what is said: "Ozias built towers in Jerusalem." For he who is rightly guided to the search for the Lord through contemplation, with the requisite fear—that is, the practice of the commandments—builds towers in Jerusalem, that is to say, in a simple and tranquil state of soul, raising up lofty discourses about the Deity.
64. The principles of particular things, when they approach the universal, create unions of those things that are divided, because the more universal principles encompass the principles of the more particular things in a unified way, to which the particular things themselves naturally have a relation. But there is also in the Spirit a principle of relationship, according to which even heaven and earth, things perceived by sense and things understood by the mind, nature and principle, are united, one woven into the other.
65. He who has been able to draw away the senses from C the passions and has separated the soul from the lust of the senses—an entrance which the devil had constructed for himself into the mind through the medium of the senses—has been able to block it. Therefore, in the desert (that is, in natural speculation), he has built, as it were, firm and safe towers—pious opinions about things. He who takes refuge in these does not fear those who practice their brigandage in this desert (that is, in nature as it is subject to the eyes)—namely, the demons who seduce the mind through the works of the senses and drag it down into the darkness of ignorance. For he who piously thinks and feels about each thing does not fear the demons who seduce people through the things that are seen by the eyes.
66 A Anyone who possesses strength for contemplation is a true cultivator, preserving the divine seeds of good things free from weeds through his own diligence and care, for as long as he retains the memory of God, kept safe by that memory. For it says: *And he was seeking the Lord in the days of Zachariah, in the fear of the Lord*. Now the Word knows that "Zachariah," if we translate it into our tongue, means "memory of God." Therefore, let us always pray to the Lord that this saving memory be kept for us, so that this very thing which is accomplished rightly and by virtue may not create ruin for the soul, if it should be lifted up to heights and, like Uzziah, rashly presume things that exceed the capacity of its nature.
67 B The unerring contemplation of existing things requires a soul that is free from passions; such a soul is called Jerusalem, both on account of its perfect virtue and its immaterial knowledge that possesses nothing of the earth; a knowledge which, indeed, approaches readily not only when passions and vices are eliminated, but even the thoughts of sensible things.
68 Without faith, hope, and love, nothing of what is evil is wholly destroyed, nor is the integrity of what is good accomplished. For faith, on the one hand, persuades the soul under attack to take refuge in God, becoming for it an encouragement and all the preparation of spiritual C armor by which confidence is provided. Hope, on the other hand, stands as the most truthful guarantor of divine help, promising to it the destruction of the opposing powers. And love makes it difficult to move, or rather, completely immovable, from divine affection, even when it is under attack, pinning all its power of desire to the divine longing.
69 Faith comforts the soul under attack, strengthening it with the hope of help; hope, by bringing the trusted help into view, repels the incursion of the adversaries; and love renders the assault of the enemies dead to the one who loves God, the assault being completely dimmed by that desire for God.
70 D The son of a truly divine portion—that is, of true knowledge—the first and only born, is the word of the faith concerning the divine resurrection within us, which, with the necessary disposition of mind—that is, discernment—rightly distinguishes the uprisings of both voluntary and involuntary temptations. For the first resurrection within us of God, who was dead to us through ignorance, is faith, rightly administered by the works of the commandments.
71 The turning toward God clearly reveals through itself the most complete word of divine hope, without which it is by nature impossible for anyone to incline toward God in any way; for it is the property of hope to bring into view things that are future as if they were present; and by no means...
A can anyone be persuaded that God, under whose protection he fights against the opposing power, is absent, or that the necessity of war has been declared against the saints without a cause. For without the expectation of something either difficult or easy, no one would ever be induced to turn himself toward what is honorable and required by duty.
72. Nothing so truly brings together the scattered and unites them, creating in them a single will held fast by the bond of concord, as love, whose badge and mark is the beauty of equal dignity. Therefore, love is the cause why the faculties of the soul (that is to say, reason, anger, and desire) are gathered into one regarding divine things; through which, those who have already achieved by grace that equality of honor with God hold the indelible desire for divine love, which writes and inscribes the immortal beauty in the principal part of the soul (that is, the mind). B
73. Every mind harnessed with divine power possesses, as it were, certain elders and leaders: the faculty of reason, from which knowledge-bearing faith is naturally born, by which it is taught that God is always secretly present, and through the gift of hope associates with future things as if they were already at hand; the faculty of desire, by which divine love consists, and by which, having spontaneously attached itself to the longing for the undefiled Godhead, it has obtained an immortal appetite for that which is desired and loved; and furthermore, the faculty of anger, by which it clings tenaciously to divine peace, binding the movement of desire into divine love. Every mind, moreover, has these powers as ready helpers for the abolishing of vice and for the establishing and preserving of virtue. C
74. Without the faculty of reason, there is no scientific knowledge; and without knowledge, faith does not subsist, from which hope—that beautiful germ—proceeds, through which the faithful one associates with future things as if they were present. And without the faculty of desire, neither desire nor love consists, of which charity and affection are the end; for to love something is the property of desire. And without the faculty of anger, which strengthens desire in the union of that which delights, peace cannot subsist; since true peace, tranquil and undisturbed, is the full and integral possession of that which is enjoyed. D
75. He who has not first been cleansed of passions and vices must not touch upon natural contemplation, because of the images of sensible things which move the sense and can mold the mind toward lust—if one is not yet perfectly freed from the passions. For the mind, occupied in thought with the sight of sensible things in order to soothe the sense, becomes a creator of unclean passions and lusts or vices, while it is not given to it, by contemplation, to cross over to the related intelligible things.
76. He who, in the time of the incursion of the passions
A rising, and of their hostile battle line, has stoutly closed his senses, and has completely dismissed the thought and memory of the things that stir the senses; and who has suppressed in every way the natural movements of the mind regarding the investigation of things external, has through the divine right hand overcome, vanquished, and confounded the wicked and tyrannical power that had risen up against him.
77. When the reason is mindless, and anger is headlong, and desire is irrational, and ignorance and tyranny and licentiousness take possession of the soul, then the habit of wickedness is prone to become active, entwined with the manifold pleasure of the senses.
78. It is worthwhile that the mind, learned in escaping the invisible clashes, at the time when the most wicked powers beset it, should neither engage in natural contemplation nor perform any other thing, save only to apply itself to prayers and to tame the body with labors, and with all diligence to destroy the earthly sense and understanding, and to guard the walls of the city: I mean the virtues, by which the mind is fortified as with a garrison; or the methods which are the guardians of the virtues (namely, continence and patience), lest in some way he who stirs the soul with turbulent subversion, by seducing through prosperous things, should secretly avert the desire from God; and through those things which have the appearance of the honorable, should little by little draw the mind that is seeking those very things, toward worse ones.
B 79. He who, by temperate and comprehensive continence and patience, has stoutly closed his senses, and through the powers of the soul has blocked the entrances to the mind for the forms of sensible things, easily dissipates and destroys the wicked machinations of the devil, compelling him to return with shame by the same way he came. But the way by which the devil comes, is the material things that seem to be for the sustainment of the body.
80. The mind which, according to nature, has through the medium of reason united the sense to itself, gathers true knowledge from natural contemplation.
81. C The springs are outside the city; that is to say, of the soul; which Ezechias blocks up; [these are] all those things which fall into the sense. The waters of these springs, however, are the concepts and notions conceived in the mind of those same things. But the river dividing through the midst D of the city is, according to natural contemplation, [the flow] from the...
knowledge deriving from sensible things, passing through the midst of the soul, as if it were the boundary between mind and sense. For the knowledge of sensible things is neither entirely alienated from the intellectual faculty, nor does it wholly proceed from the operation of sense; but as a medium—by which the mind comes together with sense, and sense with the mind—it creates through itself the conjunction of these with one another. According to sense, it is fashioned in the form of the shapes of sensible things; according to the mind, it transfers the forms of the shapes into reasons [(n)]. Therefore the river parting through the midst of the city is fittingly called the knowledge of visible things, as it exists as the boundary between the two extremes, I mean the mind and sense.
B 82. He who, at the time of the onset of temptations, abstains from natural contemplation and, having collected his mind from all things into himself and into God, devotes himself to prayer, kills the habit that is the parent of evil, and forces the devil—who suggests the habit I mentioned—to return with shame. Relying on this, [the devil] had come with his arrogance into the soul, puffed up with proud thoughts against the truth. It was perhaps when the great David had known this, and had suffered and experienced it and had acted accordingly—being himself the most expert of all in the ordering of spiritual wars—that he said: *When the sinner stood against me, I was dumb, and I was humbled, and I kept silent from good things* (Ps. CXVII, 2). And following him, the divine Jeremiah commands the people not to depart from the city on account of the sword of the enemies surrounding it on every side (Jer. VI, 25).
83. Therefore also the blessed Abel, if he had been on his guard and had not gone out with Cain into the field—that is, into the expanse of natural contemplation—before [he had attained] dispassion, [Cain] would never have risen up and killed him by treachery; for the law of the flesh (which is and is called Cain) would not have deceived him with pleasing and auspicious things among the objects of contemplation, since he was not yet furnished with a perfect habit.
84. In like manner also Dinah, the daughter of the great Jacob, if she had not gone out with the daughters of the inhabitants—that is, with the sensible fantasies—Sichem the son of Hamor would not have risen up and humbled her (Gen. XXXIV, 1).
D 85. It is better, so long as we have not attained a perfect habit, not to engage in natural contemplation, lest, while seeking spiritual reasons from visible created things, we inadvertently gather passions. For among the imperfect, the visible figures of things that can be seen have more power to entice the sense than the reasons of created things hidden within them have to attract the soul. Moreover, those who in the manner of the Jews fasten their mind only to the letter, await according to this age the [promises of incorruptible goods, being ignorant of the goods of the soul according to nature...]*
[alt-version omitted]
of the promised immortal goods, awaiting their fulfillment at that time, while remaining ignorant of what the natural goods of the soul are.
A 86. He who bears the image of the heavenly one, endeavors to follow the Spirit through all of Holy Scripture; in which, with virtue as a companion and knowledge, the preservation and salvation of the soul is placed. But he who bears the image of the earthly one, attends only to the letter; in which, the inclination of the senses toward the body, the parent of vices and lusts, consists.
B 87. The power of God is established as virtue, which is the destroyer of passions and the guardian of pious thoughts; it is the offspring of action through which we carry out the commandments, by which, with the help of God—or rather, by the power of God alone—we destroy the evil forces that are contrary to the good. The height of God is the knowledge of the truth, which is brought forth by the labor of the contemplation of created things, and by the sweats of performing virtues, which themselves are the parents of that labor. By this knowledge, we completely annihilate the power of the lie that opposes the truth, by casting down and destroying every height of the evil spirits that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. For just as action brings forth virtue, so does contemplation bring forth knowledge.
C 88. Unforgettable knowledge, having an undefined motion of the mind—that is, a motion beyond intellection—concerning the divine infinity, depicts through that indeterminacy the super-infinite glory of the truth. And the voluntary imitation of the wise goodness of Providence brings honor; it renders the mind’s disposition of likeness to God as clear as is possible for a human being.
89. The tongue is a symbol of the cognitive operation of the soul; but the throat is a testament to the natural self-love toward the body. Therefore, he who has culpably joined these things together cannot remember the peaceful habit of virtue and knowledge, because he takes pleasure in the confusion caused by the eagerness for bodily passions.
90. Natural appetites and pleasures are, for those who possess them, not a source of blame; they are established as a necessary corollary of natural appetite. For nature, whether we wish it or not, makes the common and most readily available food a pleasure, soothing and refreshing our D prior state of need; and drink, repelling the agitation of thirst; and sleep, renewing the strength exhausted by keeping vigil; and
A restorative; or if there are other natural things for us, they are necessary for the nourishing of nature, and for those who are studious, they are extremely useful for the acquisition of virtue. These things proceed with all their heart from the person who flees from the confusion of sin, lest because of them he should remain a slave and thrall to those passions which are within our control, which have harm in them, and which are contrary to nature; and they have no other principle and origin in us than the very movement of natural affections, to which they are not even comparable, so that they might pass over with us into the immortal and long-lived life.
91. The words of God, if spoken merely by utterance alone, are not heard, because they do not have the action of those who speak them. But if they are uttered by the execution of the commandments, then they have both demons wasting away B at such a voice, and men, by the progress of the works of righteousness, obediently building up the divine temple of the heart.
92. Just as God by His essence does not fall under knowledge, so neither can His Word be comprehended by our knowledge. For the word of the Holy Scripture, even if it admits of circumscription according to the letter, ceasing with the times of the things related in it, yet with regard to the spirit, in the contemplations of those things which are understood, it remains forever uncircumscribed.
93. It is necessary for one who is interpreting the Holy Scripture in a manner consistent with Christ to the soul, wisely and learnedly, to be diligently occupied with the interpretation of the names themselves, from which he might be able to elucidate the entire meaning of the things written, if he cares for the accurate understanding of the things written; and not, after the manner of the Jews, to drag the height of the spirit down C to the body and the earth, and to circumscribe the divine and incorruptible promises of the goods of the mind with the corruption of transitory things.
94. Just as a vow is a promise of good things offered by men to God according to a promise, so prayer, according to the reasonable word, will be clearly the petition for the good things supplied by God for the salvation of men, bearing a reward for those things that were offered with an upright mind. And a cry is the increase and advancement of those who excel in the virtue D of the way of life and the gnostic contemplations, at the time of the uprising of the wicked demons—a cry which God, being the nature that hears all things, hears not least of all, counting the disposition of those who are diligent in virtue and knowledge as a great voice.
95. The wicked and destructive kingdom of the devil... [(p)] There is a clear allusion to I Esdras iv, where the attempt of the enemies of the Jews to hinder the building of the temple is described; the demons, whom Maximus interprets tropologically, are the same, wasting away with envy because they hear the spiritual temple of God rising in us, and finally, as he seeks in many places, e.g., Quæst. 56, ad Thal. Therefore, the demons have those [servants] who serve such a voice. Certainly, this is not the office of the demons, even if they themselves pretend to be helpers in building the temple of the Lord in us, just as the enemies of the Jews did, since under the appearance of good and the display of virtue, they draw the unwary into the consent of some evil, or lead them away from the straight path of virtue.
A ...tyranny, typified by the kingdom of the Assyrians, having kindled war against virtue and knowledge, attempts by means of the soul’s own innate faculties to overthrow it. First, it excites desire to crave things contrary to nature, and persuades it to prefer sensible things over intelligible ones; then it stirs up anger to fight for the sensible object chosen by desire; finally, it teaches the rational faculty to devise ways of obtaining the pleasures that affect the senses.
A 96. It is proper to supreme goodness not only to have constituted the divine and incorporeal substances of intelligible beings as images of the ineffable and divine glory—those beings which, as far as is permitted, receive in due proportion the whole of the inconceivable beauty of that inaccessible magnificence—but also to have mingled some extreme vestiges of its own majesty even with sensible things, which fall far short of those substances that are understood by the mind. These serve to ferry the human mind, mounting upon them, straight toward God, making it superior to all things that fall under visual perception, as one who has attained the summit of perfect blessedness.
C 97. Every mind crowned with virtue and knowledge, having obtained, like the great Ezechias, the kingdom of Jerusalem (that is to say, the state that contemplates peace alone, a state devoid of all manner of vices and perturbations, for the name *Jerusalem* is interpreted as "vision of peace"), has all creation subject to itself. Through the forms that fulfill it, it offers to God those spiritual reasons of knowledge that are in (creation) as gifts. To Him it also renders, as offerings, the habits that exist within it according to the natural law for virtue; and through both it receives with honor the man who is able to excel in both—I mean the philosopher mind, perfected in both discourse and life, through action and contemplation.
D 98. He who by action and contemplation has perfected virtue and knowledge to the highest degree is deservedly exalted; for, having become superior by action to carnal affections and to the vices that cling to them, and superior by contemplation to those things called natural bodies—that is to say, those subject to generation and corruption—and, to speak briefly, to all forms and natures that fall under the senses, having surpassed all the reasons within them by the pre-eminence of his knowledge, such a mind has lifted itself up to things akin to it and divine.
99. He who has attained, through the labors of action, to dwell in dispassion as in Jerusalem, and has been freed from every molestation of sin, and does, speaks, hears, and thinks only peace—after having received through natural contemplation the nature of things subject to the eyes—offers the more divine reasons in it as gifts to the Lord through himself...
offering them as gifts through himself to the Lord; and existing as laws within her, paying tribute to her as to a king, it is exalted before the eyes of all the nations, shining out superior to all things; overcoming by action those things that are carnal passions, and by contemplation, the natural bodies and all forms that fall under the senses, transcending the spiritual reasons and modes within them.
100. Practical philosophy makes the practitioner superior to the passions; but contemplation makes the gnostic superior to visible things, by raising the mind toward the kindred intelligible realities.
THIRD CENTURY OF HEADS
1. A He who cultivates knowledge along with action, and performs action along with knowledge, is both the throne and the footstool of God; the throne, because of knowledge; the footstool, because of action. But if anyone were to call the human mind heaven, having been cleansed of every earthly thought and being addicted—nay, rather, uniquely adorned—with the divine reasons of spiritual things, I do not think he would have exceeded the bounds of truth.
2. B Every philosopher, clearly, and pious person, fortified by virtue and knowledge—or by action and contemplation—when he sees the wicked power rise up against him through the passions, just as the king of the Assyrians C rose up against Hezekiah, has one refuge to be delivered from evils: God, that is, whom he renders propitious by crying out silently with a greater exertion of virtue and knowledge; and he receives as an ally in war, or rather as the author of his salvation, an angel—clearly a word greater than wisdom and knowledge—which crushes and destroys every strong man, and warrior, and leader, and commander in the camp.
3. D Every passion is born to be ruled by the sensible object congruent to it. For without some underlying thing, and one that stirs up the powers of the soul toward itself through some intermediate sense, a passion could never consist. For without a sensible object, a passion does not exist. For if there were no woman, there would be no fornication; and
if there were no food, there would be no gluttony; and if there were no gold, there would be no avarice. Therefore, the sensible object is the initiator of every passionate movement of the natural powers within us—or rather, it is the demon who, through it, incites the soul to sin.
4. A Friction removes the act, but attrition obliterates even the very thought of vice. For friction is merely the cessation of the passionate deed as it is being performed; but attrition is the complete extinction of the evil movements within the mind.
5. Sensible and intelligible things stand between God and human beings. The human mind, however, rises above them toward God, not being enslaved to sensible things through action, nor in any way held fast in its contemplation by intelligible things.
6. The creation becomes an accuser of ungodly men. Through the reasons within it, it proclaims its own Maker; and through the natural laws pertaining to each individual species within it, it instructs man in virtue. Now, these reasons are recognized in the perennity of the continuity of each species, while the laws appear in the identity of the natural operation of each species. Because we do not apply our intelligent power to these things, we have remained ignorant of the Cause of all beings, and have become consumed by all passions contrary to nature.
7. C Scripture commands that we offer gifts to God, so that it may set forth the infinite nature of divine goodness—in that God receives as gifts from us the things which He Himself provided, as if He had brought forth nothing prior, counting the entire contribution as ours, thus showing the great and ineffable goodness of God toward us: He receives His own things as if they were ours, offered to Him by us, and confesses Himself obligated as a debtor for them, as if they belonged to another.
8. D Man, perceiving the spiritual reasons of the things that are seen, is taught that there is a Maker of the phenomena; yet he leaves the thought of who He might be as something unreachable and unexamined. For the creation—seen clearly—provides the understanding that there is a Maker, but does not provide the understanding of what kind of Being the Maker is.
9. The wrath of God is the painful sensation felt by those who are being disciplined. This painful sensation is the infliction of involuntary sufferings, through which God often leads to restraint and humility the mind that has become puffed up through virtue and knowledge; He grants it to become a judge of itself and to understand its ownweakness.
When one perceives this, he lays aside the vain conceit of his heart.
10. The wrath of the Lord is the withholding of the provision of divine graces. This happens profitably to every mind that is high and lifted up, and that boasts in the good things given to it from God as if they were its own achievements.
11. Every gnostic and philosophic mind possesses both Judas and Jerusalem: Judas, as the philosophy of action; Jerusalem, as the contemplative discipline of sacred things. When, therefore, by divine grace, the God-loving mind, both through the philosophy of action and through that of contemplation, having beaten back every power opposed to virtue and knowledge, B has perfectly bound the power—the power of the spirits of wickedness—and has not rendered the due thanks to God, the Author of the victory, but has puffed up its heart, deeming itself the cause of the whole achievement: then, as one who has not returned to God according to the repayment He rendered to it, it receives not only the wrath of abandonment coming upon itself, but also Judas and Jerusalem—that is, the habit of action and the habit of contemplation—immediately, by the permission of God, are assailed by shameful passions. These passions stir up insurrection against the action, defiling the conscience that hitherto shone with purity, and, intertwined with false reasonings and thoughts alongside the speculation of things, they pervert the hitherto C correct opinion of knowledge. For him who is puffed up in action, the consequence is the ignominy and reproach of passions; but the one who is puffed up in knowledge, the just judgment allows to stumble regarding the true contemplation of truth.
12. A divine boundary and law, in truth, exists by Providence within all that is, allowing us to be educated through opposites toward a sense of gratitude—we who, supported by virtues and gifts, had become ungrateful—and to be advanced by the experience of opposites to acknowledge the divine power that bestows goods, lest, in the happy course of virtue and good things, by the permission of Providence, having acquired an inviolable elation and pride of mind, we fall into the God-opposing disposition of vainglory. D For we might come to think that the possession of virtue and knowledge is ours by nature, and not acquired by grace; and we might be found using the good for the production of evil, and through those things by which the divine knowledge ought to have been more firmly bound and remained unshaken in us, we might become possessed by the darkness of ignorance of it, which God forbid.
A 13. We recognize that the divine providence, which sustains all beings, is a law and a definition existing within them. By a just judgment, it instructs through the lack of good things those who had shown themselves ungrateful for the affluence of good things toward their Giver, leading them through the opposite state to a perception of how to discern the Giver of good gifts. For the conceit that arises in the name of virtue, if it remains untutored, is naturally apt to generate the disease of pride, which produces a disposition contrary to God.
14. He who thinks he has attained the end of virtue will by no means seek further the source of good things, having circumscribed the power of desire within himself alone, and, by his own fault, suffering loss—I mean, the loss of God, the goal of his salvation. But he who is conscious of his own natural poverty regarding good things does not cease running headlong toward Him who alone can provide the fulfillment of that need.
15. He who has recognized the infinity of virtue never ceases from the course pertaining to it, so that he might not suffer the loss of the beginning and the end of virtue—I mean, God—by fixing the movement of his desire around himself, and, thinking that he has attained perfection, unwittingly suffer a fall from the One who truly is, toward Whom every movement of the diligent strives.
B 16. Just wrath rightly comes upon the high-minded mind, that is to say, abandonment, as it has been said: or rather, the permission to be harassed by demons, both in regard to action and in regard to contemplation. This is so that, having perceived his own natural infirmity, he might recognize the divine power and grace that protects him and accomplishes all good things, and might be humbled, casting off entirely and far from himself that pride which is alien to him C and contrary to nature, so that another wrath may not come upon him—the removal of the given gifts—having been humbled and having come to a perception of Him who provides good things.
17. He who has not been brought to humility by the first kind of wrath, that is to say, abandonment, having considered it a teacher of good gratitude, receives the other wrath clearly coming upon him, which takes away the activity of his gifts and leaves him stripped of the power that was previously guarding him. For, God says, speaking about the ungrateful Israel, "I will take away D its hedge, and it shall be for plundering; and I will tear down its wall, and it shall be for trampling; and I will leave my vineyard, and it shall not be pruned nor dug, and thorns shall come up upon it as upon a wasteland; and I will command the clouds not to rain upon it" (Isa. v, 5, 6).
18. A Furthermore, that the path is inclined toward impiety, is [shown by] the lack of sensibility regarding the loss of the virtues. For he who has accustomed himself, on account of the pleasures and lusts of the flesh, to disobey God, will, when occasion is given, even deny God Himself; preferring the life and well-being of the flesh to God, having preferred its pleasures alone to the divine will.
19. Whenever we think that the mind has in any way undergone something, we must believe that its active and contemplative power likewise, according to their natural principles, have entirely suffered with it. For the subject cannot suffer or be affected without those things that are in the subject also being disposed accordingly. I call the mind the "subject," as it is capable of virtue and knowledge; while in the subject are action and contemplation, which have the nature of accidents relative to it. Wherefore they are also entirely affected in the same way as it is, having such a motion of their own as the origin of their change.
20. B Any God-loving and virtuous man, following the example of Hezekiah, having girded his strength against the demons with the power of wisdom and knowledge—if an assault of wicked spirits happens against him, who invisibly engage the battle against him in his mind, and if through prayer C he obtains from God an angel sent to him (I mean a greater word of wisdom)—and having crushed and scattered the entire phalanx of the devil, does not attribute the cause of such victory and salvation to God, but ascribes the whole victory to himself; such a one has not rendered back to God according to what He rendered, not having equaled the multitude of thanksgiving with the salvation, nor returned his own affection and benevolence for the benefit of the One who provided salvation.
21. Let us enlighten the mind with divine thoughts; and let us adorn the body with the modes of the more divine reasons of those things which have been contemplated, making it a rational workshop of virtue by the casting off of the passions. For the natural passions of the body, if they are governed by reason, are free from all blame; but if they are moved without it, they turn into vice. Therefore, he says that these passions must be cast off, whose inward motion is indeed natural, but whose use is often unnatural, because it is by no means governed by reason.
22. D Anyone who has exalted his own heart on account of the gifts he has received, having become proud as if he had not received them, justly receives the wrath that comes upon him, as God allows the devil to wrestle with him mentally; and to unsettle the modes of virtue in action, and to cloud and confuse the lucid reasons of knowledge in contemplation, so that, having learned his own weakness, he may recognize the only power that beats down the passions in us, and being humbled by repentance, having cast off the swelling of empty pride and vain opinion, he may render God propitious, and avert the wrath that comes upon those who do not repent, which is removed
by the grace that guards the soul, leaving the ungrateful mind desolate.
23. A Ira salutaris is the divine permission for the high-minded mind to be warred upon by the passions through the agency of demons, so that he who is shamefully afflicted, while boasting of his virtues, may know who it is that bestows these; or that he may be stripped of what is not his own, which he imagined he possessed, as if he had not received it.
24. Blessed in truth is that mind which has died to all things that exist; to objects of sense, by the casting aside of the operation of sensing; and to objects of intellect, by the bringing to rest of the movement of the mind. Note well that he calls this "the death of the mind" which is praised, namely, the volitional death B towards all existing things, after which it is natural for it to receive the life that comes by divine grace, having without thought received the Cause of all things in place of the things themselves.
25. Blessed is he who has joined the practical part to the good according to nature, and the contemplative part to the truth according to nature. For every action is naturally performed for the sake of the good, and every contemplation seeks knowledge solely for the sake of the truth. When these have been completed, there will be nothing at all to strike the practical faculty of the soul, nor its contemplative part, with stinging, alien considerations; for it has passed beyond everything that exists and that is conceived, and has slipped into God Himself, who is the C only good and true, and who is beyond all essence and intellection.
26. They say that the end of practical virtue is the good. This is a completion of divine operation, toward which the rational part of the soul is led, using anger and desire according to nature; within which it is natural for the beauty of the "likeness" to shine forth. But they say that the end of contemplative philosophy is the truth; which is an indivisible, uniform knowledge of all things concerning God, toward which the pure mind is carried when it has completely extinguished within itself the judgment of sense; in which (that is, in this knowledge) the unadulterated D dignity of the divine image is shown.
27. No one can truly bless God, quin ...
A nor illuminate the soul with knowledges, unless he has first sanctified the body by the virtues. For the disposition according to virtue is the countenance of the contemplative mind, as it is raised up towards heaven to the height of true knowledge.
28. Blessed is he who truly knows that God performs within us—even as in instruments—every action and contemplation, every virtue and knowledge, as well as victory and wisdom, and goodness and truth, we ourselves contributing nothing at all except the will that desires the good. Possessing this, the great Zorobabel, in addition to the things already said, speaks to God saying: "Blessed art Thou, who hast given me wisdom; and to Thee I make confession, O Lord of my fathers. From Thee is victory, and from Thee is wisdom, and to Thee is glory, and I am Thy servant." B Like a truly upright and grateful servant, he referred everything back to God who had bestowed all things; and to Him from whom he had received the wisdom, as to the Lord of his fathers, he ascribed the power of the granted goods with open confession—namely, the union of victory and wisdom, as has been said; of virtue also and knowledge, of action and contemplation, and likewise of goodness and truth. For these, conjoined one with another, flash forth one glory and radiance of God.
29. All the achievements and right deeds of the saints were, without doubt, the gifts of God, since no one at all possesses any other good than that which is given. It is, clearly, from God as Lord, measured according to the proportion of the gratitude and goodwill of him who receives it; and each possesses only so much as is pleasing to the Lord who bestows it.
30. The mind that stands at the head of virtue and knowledge, and desires that the soul be freed of the evil slavery of the passions, says: "Women prevail, and truth conquers above all." By "women" he means the deifying virtues, by which charity—which constitutes the union of men with God and mutually with one another—is established. C This charity, of a truth, draws the soul out of all things that arise and perish, and out of those spiritual substances superior to them, and entangles and binds it to God Himself by a certain temperance of love, as far as is possible for human nature, and mystically produces an unpolluted and divine communion. By "truth," however, he names the sole and unique cause and author of things, the beginning and kingdom and power and glory, out of which and for whose sake all things were made and are being made, and by which and through which they are held together so as to exist in the nature of things; for which, finally, every diligence and movement in religious and pious men strives.
31. By "women," he D indicated the end of the virtues: charity; that is, the goal according to desire.
A of the nature of the Good, for those who participate in it, is an unfailing pleasure and an indivisible union. By "Truth," he indicated the end of all knowledge, and of the very things being known; toward which, as the beginning and end of all things that exist, the movements according to nature are drawn together by a certain general reason. For truth, as the beginning and cause of things that exist, conquers all things according to nature, and draws to itself the movement of those things which have been created. B 32. By the privation by transcendence of the many—in the way in which Truth alone is by nature accustomed to appear—it causes the cognitive faculties of all things capable of thinking or being thought to fade, since it exists above the thinkers and the things thought as an essentiality beyond-being. And by infinite power, bounding the extremities of things that exist according to their beginning and their end, it draws all movement of all things equally to itself. To some it provides a clear knowledge of the grace of which they were deprived; to others, bestowing it in an ineffable sense, it grants a manifest recognition of that goodness for which they held a longing, through participation. C 33. The intellect, he says, is the organ of wisdom; reason, the organ of knowledge; and the natural assurance of both of these is the faith which consists in both; and the charism of healings is natural philanthropy. For every divine gift has an apt and congenial [organ] within us, like a power, or a habit, or a disposition—a receptive organ. For instance, he who has made his intellect pure of every phantasy of sensible things receives wisdom; and he who has established reason as the master of the inborn affections—I mean of anger and desire—receives knowledge; and he who has the unshakable assurance in mind and reason concerning divine things attains faith, which can do all things; and he who has accomplished natural philanthropy after the complete eradication of self-love, receives the charism of healings. 34. Each of us, according to the proportion of the faith that is in him, possesses the manifest operation of the Spirit. D Consequently, each person is the steward of his own grace; and no one who is sane would ever envy another thriving in the charisms, since the disposition that is receptive to divine goods lies within his own free will. 35. He says that the measure of each one's faith is the cause of the distribution of divine goods. For just as we believe, so also do we have the increase of zeal for acting. Therefore, he who acts demonstrates the measure of his faith in proportion to his action, receiving the measure of grace as he believed; but he who does not act, in proportion to his inaction, demonstrates the measure of his unbelief, receiving the privation of grace as he disbelieved. Therefore, the envious man does wrong by begrudging those who have attained success, since, clearly, it lies in his own power, not another's.
A 36. He who is a lover of what is good, through the reasons of divine Providence, hastens willingly toward the grace of deification; but he who is without love for these things is, by a just judgment, led back from wickedness against his will by the ways of discipline. Thus, clearly, the one acts as a lover of God and, being religious, is deified through Providence; while the other, through judgment, so that he might not, as a lover of earthly things, fall into condemnation, is not permitted to remain as he is. For God, being good, cares for those who are inclined by their own will through the reasons of wisdom, but He heals those who are moved toward virtue with difficulty through the ways of discipline.
B 37. True faith is a truth that is cohesive and constructive, having no falsehood in it; a good conscience brings with it the power of love, since it has no transgression of a commandment.
38. And it shall rest, he says, upon him: seven spirits: the spirit of wisdom, the spirit of understanding, the spirit of knowledge, the spirit of prudence, the spirit of counsel, the spirit of strength, the spirit of the fear of God. Now the property of these spiritual gifts is: of fear, that we should abstain from evils; of strength, that we should perform good works; of counsel, that we should discern what is contrary; of prudence, that we should know what is our duty truly and sincerely; of knowledge, that we should comprehend in reality the divine reasons that are in the virtues; of understanding, that we should be thoroughly moved in our souls by that which we comprehend through knowledge; and of wisdom, that union with God which is beyond the grasp of the mind, C by which, for those who are worthy, desire becomes enjoyment, making the participant a god by participation, and constituting him an interpreter of that divine blessedness, according to the eternal, unceasing pouring forth and outflowing of divine mysteries to those who have need.
39. The spirit of the fear of God is the abstaining from evils in deed; the spirit of strength is the eager impulse and movement toward the performance and execution of the commandments; the spirit of counsel is the habit of discernment, by which we perform the divine commandments with reason, and distinguish the better from the worse; the spirit of prudence is the unwavering knowledge of the ways by which action according to virtue is cultivated, D by which, as we act, we never fall from the right judgment of reason; the spirit of knowledge is the comprehension of the commandments and the reasons contained within them, according to which the ways of the virtues have been established; the spirit of understanding is the movement of the soul toward the ways and reasons of the virtues, or, to speak more precisely, the transformation, according to which a mixture of the natural powers...
A is tempered by the manners and reasons of the commandments. The Spirit of wisdom is the assumption and union with the Cause of the more spiritual reasons in the commandments, according to which, in a way unknown to men, we are simply taught the reasons of things in God as far as is lawful for men; and as if from some spring welling up in the heart, we set forth the truth existing in all things in various ways to other men.
40. From those things which are last from God, but near to us, we ascend by way and order toward the first things, which are indeed far from us but near to God. For from the rest from evils through fear, we come to the performance of the virtues through strength; from the performance of the virtues, to the discernment of the will; from discernment, to the habit of the virtues, that is, prudence; from the habit of the virtues, B to the knowledge of the reasons within the virtues themselves; from this, to the habit that turns us toward the known reasons of the virtues—I mean understanding; and from this, to the simple and accurate contemplation of the truth in all things. Setting out from this, we shall render many and various pious reasons concerning the truth, out of the wise contemplation of the essences of beings, both those perceived by the senses and those understood by the mind.
41. The first good in act for us, which is fear, the Word of Scripture has numbered last, as the beginning of wisdom, from the movement of which we ascend to the end of wisdom, which is understanding. Having attained this, being joined closely to God, we have only wisdom as the intermediate link of our union with Him. For it is not possible for anyone to take hold of wisdom who has not first, through fear and the remaining gifts C placed in between, utterly shaken off from himself both the rheum of ignorance and the dust of wickedness. For this reason, the order of Scripture has assigned wisdom as near to God, but fear to us, so that we might know the reason and law of an orderly arrangement.
42. Therefore, ascending by these eyes of faith, that is to say, illuminations, we are gathered to the divine unity of Wisdom, gathering the division of gifts that came about for our sake back toward the cause of the gifts, through the particular ascents of the virtues, omitting nothing of what has been said with the cooperation of God, lest, by neglecting them little by little, we render our faith blind and D sightless, not having the illuminations of the Spirit through works, and be justly punished in the infinite ages, as those who in us...
as much as lies within our power, have blinded the divine eyes. 43. Whoever, through sloth in not fulfilling the commandments in himself, digs out such eyes, is thoroughly reprobate, no longer having God looking upon him. For if the Word calls the operations and inspirations of the divine Spirit the eyes of the Lord, then he who does not open them by the practice of the commandments does not have God looking upon him. For it is not with other eyes, as may be supposed, that God knows how to look upon those on earth, since the illumination of our virtue is itself a ray of the divine vision. B
44. Wisdom is a monad, contemplated indivisibly in the diverse virtues that proceed from it, and conceived uniformly in their operations; and it is again shown to be a simple monad in the restoration of the virtues that proceed from it back to itself; that is, when we, for whose sake it makes its progression in the generation of each virtue, are gathered back to it through the practice of each virtue in an upward ascent.
45. He who does not perform the divine precepts of faith has his faith blind. For if the commandments of God are light, it is clear that he who does not perform the divine commandments is without divine light, and carries around the divine calling only nominally, C and not in truth.
46. No one who sins can use the infirmity of the flesh as a pretext for sin. For the union with God the Word has strengthened the whole nature by the dissolution of the curse, D taking away from us any excuse for being inclined toward the passions and the desires of the mind. For the divinity of the Word, always accompanying by grace those who believe in Him, extinguishes the law of sin that is in the flesh.
47. He who has conquered the irrational desires, or movements, of the passions contrary to nature through faith in God and love, also goes beyond the law that is according to nature, and is wholly transferred to the region of the intelligible, and leads out with himself that which is of the same nature and genus from alien servitude, along with those things that have been added to him.
48. Knowledge, unless it is bridled by the fear of God in practice, produces pride, since it persuades him who is puffed up by it to set forth what he has borrowed as his own, acting as the author of it, and thus, through the symbol of speech, to seek praise for himself. But action, increasing along with divine love, not assuming an understanding beyond what should be done, makes the one who practices it humble, causing him to shrink into himself by reasonings that surpass his own capacity.
A 49. A celestial dwelling is a habit of virtue free from affections and tranquil; and knowledge is that which is impugned by no thought of error or knowledge of falsehood.
50. Just as a myriad is the end of an unmoving unit, and the unit is the beginning of an unmoving myriad—for the beginning of every end is, by its own nature, clearly immobility, and the end of every beginning is the completion of the movement according to it—so too faith, existing by nature as the beginning of the virtues, has as its end the completion of the good which is brought about through them. And the good according to nature, as the end of the virtues, having faith as its beginning, is inwardly gathered toward it. For faith is an inward good, and good is faith put into action. God is by nature faithful and good: the former as the primary good, the latter as the ultimate object of desire. Yet these are the same in every way, distinct in no respect except for what is apprehended by subtle thought, by reason of the movement of those things which derive their origin from him and end in him. The myriad, therefore, bearing the form of the supreme object of desire, defines the perfect longing of those that move toward it; and the unit, bearing the symbol of the primary Good, imparts a perfect base and foundation to those that move from him.
B 51. The first *apatheia* (freedom from passion) is the complete abstinence from evils in action, seen in those who are being introduced. The second is the complete casting out of logismoi (thoughts) by the mind regarding consent to evil, which happens in those who pursue virtue with reason as their guide. The third is a complete immobility of the desire regarding the passions, in those who contemplate intellectually the inner meanings of the visible things seen by the eyes. And the fourth *apatheia* is the complete purification even of bare imagination itself, consisting in those who, through knowledge and contemplation, have made their intelligence a pure and transparent mirror of God. Therefore, whoever has purified himself from the action of the passions, has become free from the mental consent to them, has attained a cessation of the movement of desire toward them, and has kept his mind undefiled even by their bare imagination, possessing these four generic *apatheiai*, departs from matter and material things, and presses on to the intellectual, divine, and peaceful state of the intelligible realm.
D 52. He calls the first *apatheia* (freedom from passion) an unstained movement of the body according to action toward sin; the second, the complete casting out of passionate *logismoi* by the soul, by which the movement of the passions is withered, according to the first *apatheia*, since it lacks the passionate *logismoi* that kindle it into action; the third, the complete immobility of the desire regarding the passions, from which the second also naturally comes to be, consisting in the purity of the *logismoi*; and he calls the fourth *apatheia* the complete laying aside, according to the mind, of all sensory imaginations, through which the third has received its genesis, having not the
A images of sensible things forming themselves within it.
53. Whoever is currently a servant of action, for him the reason and the cogitation of the mind labor, while they studiously devise and manufacture the modes of action, and hold all their strength, so to speak, arrayed and set against the spirits of wickedness that are hostile to action. But having completed the practical philosophy which the number six of the years has indicated (for it has been said that the number six signifies practical philosophy), they are released unto the spiritual, clearly returning to the contemplation of the reasons akin to the things that are, both the reason and the cogitation.
54. The foreign servant is anger and desire; these the contemplative mind, through fortitude and temperance, constantly enslaves to the lordship of reason for the service of the virtues, not granting them any release at all unto freedom, until the law of nature shall have been totally swallowed up by the law of the spirit, as death is by the infinite life of the flesh, wretched though it be, and the whole image of the unbegun kingdom shall shine forth clearly, having the entire form of the archetype through imitation. Having attained this, the mind that studies contemplation grants freedom to anger and desire: the latter, converting it into the undefiled pleasure of divine love and pure allurement; the former, transferring it into spiritual fervor and an inflamed, constant agitation of movement and a sober madness.
55. The image of the unbegun kingdom is the immutability of the mind regarding the true knowledge, and the incorruptibility of the sense regarding virtue, with soul and body, by the sole divine law of the spirit, being bound together, by that logic through which the sense passes into the mind by an alteration of the spirit; by which, naturally, they possess the constant, B moved and wondrous and living operation of reason that pervades all things; in which there occurs absolutely no dissimilarity to God.
56. They say that pleasure is desire put into action, if the present good looks toward its definition; but that desire is pleasure not yet put into action, if the future good looks toward its definition. Anger is the incitement of fury that we struggle with in the mind; and fury is anger put into the work itself. Whoever, therefore, has subjected these faculties to reason will discover, for desire… C D
through an immaculate A union of the soul with God in grace, it has passed into pleasure; and it will find fury to be an undefiled fervor, a guardian of the pleasure concerning God, and a sober madness, perfectly B ecstatic, whereby the soul’s faculty of desire is drawn away from existing things. As long, therefore, as the world lives in us, and there is a voluntary attachment of the soul to material things, we must not grant freedom to these faculties, lest, by mingling with sensible things as if they were of the same nature, they war upon the soul and take it captive, enslaved to the passions, just as the Babylonians did formerly to Jerusalem. For the law, which commanded that the children of strangers be served for an age, signified by the story the soul’s intentional attachment to this world, that is, to the present life, indicating through the things that are recounted those things which are to be understood in a spiritual sense.
57. He calls evil “begun,” for it has its beginning in our motion contrary to nature. But he calls good “not begun,” for good by nature is prior to every age and time. He calls good “intelligible,” which it is worth our while only to understand; but evil “not intelligible,” which it is best for us only not to understand or consider. And he calls good “speakable,” for it alone is worthy to be spoken of. And he says good is something that “comes to be,” for while existing as unborn by nature, through grace and for the sake of philanthropy, it allows itself to be brought into being by us—for our deification who perform and speak it—which is the only thing that ought to come to be; whereas evil is “not to be brought into being,” for it is something that ought only not to come to be. He calls evil “corruptible,” for the nature of evil is a corruption, C having no existence or substance whatever; but good is “incorruptible,” as it is always and never ceases to be, and it is a guardian of all in whom it exists. This, then, we seek with the rational faculty; we love and desire it with the desiderative; we keep it inviolable with the irascible; with the sensitive faculty, through knowledge and discernment, we distinguish it as unmixed from its contraries; with the vocal organ, by speaking it, we make it manifest to those who do not know it; and with the generative faculty, we multiply it—or rather, to speak more truly, we are multiplied according to it.
58. D It is worthwhile for the contemplative mind, which rules over the thoughts and visions of existing things as well as its own proper movements, to have a habit that is barren of vice—that is, one that neither conceives vice at all nor gives birth to it; for the mind must be carried and moved while engaged in contemplation, lest, while making a spiritual examination of things, it unwittingly fall into and be corrupted by one of the things that naturally destroy it through one of the sensible objects.
59. He who is wounded by the goad of vainglory at all, foolishly nourishing the hair of mental elation like Absalom, A and displaying a moral discipline artificially dyed and mixed like a mule to seduce spectators—puffed up and inflated by this, he presumes that he might subdue the father who begat him through the doctrine of the Word; striving, indeed, to transfer to himself tyrannically all the splendor of virtue and knowledge that, by divine gift, belongs to the father. But such a man, having gone out into the breadth of natural contemplation in the spirit, for the sake of the reasoned battle for the truth, is seized—by his very sense at work—by the thick oak of sensible spectacles; his hair, which connects his hollow conceit to death, holds him, suspending him between heaven and earth. For he who labors under the vice of vainglory has no heaven—that is, knowledge—to lift him up from the foolish opinion of himself that drags him down; nor again does he have earth—I mean the practice of humility—to lower him from the bloating elation that lifts him up. B Him, the teacher who begat him, with a sense of humanity, as one pious and religious, mourns even though he is dead; in imitation of God, naturally, not wishing the death of the sinner, but that he might turn and live 9.
60. The beginning and end of each person’s salvation is wisdom; which, strictly speaking, creates fear at first, and then, having been perfected, constitutes desire and love. Or rather, wisdom itself exists from the beginning by way of economy for our sake as fear, so that it might restrain the lover from vice and wickedness, and then later is found as love in its own nature at the end, so that it might fill with spiritual laughter those who have held its company to be more precious than all things. C
61. Wisdom is both fear—being a privation for those not striving for it—and love, that is, a desire which is found as a habit of the enjoying soul for those who love it. For this wisdom, by the expectation of punishment, delivers us from vices and creates fear; and it produces love, habituating the mind, through the acquisition of virtues, to see what is to come. D
62. Every confession humbles the soul: one, which is justified by the grace of God; the other, which teaches the soul that it is guilty through the negligence of its own will.
63. The definition of confession is twofold: one, which is made for the sake of thanksgiving for the good things that have been bestowed; the other, which is spoken for the reproof and examination of evils that have been committed. For confession is called both the commemoration of the benefits with which we have been affected by God, with thanksgiving, and the disclosure of evil deeds by those who are guilty of them; both, however, are productive of humility. For when [a soul]...
A judges itself unworthy of the benefits received, it becomes humble; and when it is examined for the crimes it has committed, the one seeks to receive forgiveness for his transgressions.
64. B The passion of pride consists of two ignorances. When two ignorances come together into a union, the one joining to the other, they produce a single, confused prudence. For only he is proud, who is ignorant of both divine help and human weakness. Pride, therefore, is a deprivation of divine and human knowledge. For by the negation of the true extremes, a single, false affirmation comes into existence.
65. C Vainglory is an aberration from the aim that is according to God, and a deviation toward another end than the divine one. For he is a vainglorious person who practices virtue for the sake of his own glory, rather than for divine glory, and who buys with his own labors the insubstantial praises of men, which do not even exist.
66. D The man-pleaser cares only for outward habits, and also for the flattering word; so that he may captivate the sight of some, and the hearing of others, among those who find pleasure only in what is seen and heard, and who define virtue by sense-perception alone. We say, therefore, that man-pleasing is the display of habits and words—done as if for virtue—for the sake of men.
67. B Hypocrisy is a simulation of friendship; hatred, cloaked in the habit of friendship; enmity, practiced under the guise of goodwill; or envy, wearing the mask of love; or a life that has the appearance of honesty through the veneer of virtue, but not in reality; the simulation of justice, which consists only in appearance; or error, having the form of truth; which those who imitate the serpent in the crookedness of their habits cultivate and pursue.
68. C The Cause of all that exists, and of the good things that are in those that exist, is God. He, therefore, who is exalted on account of virtue or knowledge, and does not, in proportion to his progress in virtue by grace, extend his awareness of his own weakness, has not escaped the evil of pride. But he who practices what is good for the sake of his own glory has preferred himself to God, being impaled on the nail of vainglory. And he who does or speaks [(h)] of virtue in order to be seen by men, has placed human approval far above divine approval, being diseased with the passion of man-pleasing. And he who wickedly uses his habits only to deceive, by masking his evil disposition of mind with the visible appearance of piety, buys virtue with the deceit of hypocrisy. Such a person, therefore, has diverted the aim of each of these to objects other than their Author.
69. D None of the evil demons...
A [the one who] is a devotee of virtue, he hinders his alacrity and promptitude: nay, he even craftily cuts away the deficiencies of virtues, and urges him to apply greater efforts, showing an alacrity equal to those who are engaged in the contest; doing this, naturally, in order to draw into himself the entire soul of the one exercising himself in piety, once the equilibrium of mediocrity has been lost; and he, so imprudent, directs his path to a different inn than that which appeared.
70. Demons neither hate temperance nor loathe fasting: they do not abhor the distribution of money, nor hospitality, nor the chanting of psalms, nor the work of reading, nor silence and solitude, nor B exceptionally sublime disciplines, nor the hardness of sleeping on the ground, nor vigils, nor all the other things by which a life religiously and piously established is distinguished, as long as the intent of those things which are done is directed toward them.
71. Perhaps the ascetic who is vigilant will more quickly detect the other demons, and easily escape the harm that threatens from them; but who among the highly exalted minds could detect those who seem to be coworkers in the race of virtue, and who wish, as it were, to build the temple for the Lord together with us, without the active and living Word C which pervades all things, and reaches even unto the division of soul and spirit [Heb. IV, 12]—that is, which distinguishes what things of the works or thoughts are psychical, that is, natural species of virtue or movements, and which ones happen to be spiritual—that is, surpassing nature and marking God, given to nature by grace—and who furthermore knows entirely the fitting or unfitting junction of the joints and marrows (that is, of the modes of virtue with the spiritual reasons), and discerns the thoughts and intentions of the hearts [Heb. IV, 12] (that is, the obscure affections or habits in those things which have been said, by reason of their depth, and the invisible causes and reasons for them in the soul): to whom no creature is invisible [Heb. IV, 13] (that is, especially in us who seem to be hidden), but all things are naked and open (not only those things which have been done and thought, but also those which are now about to be done and thought by us).
72. By "division of soul and spirit" he means the distinction between those virtues which are from nature, the reasons for which we possess naturally, and those from the Spirit, the grace of which we receive by the gift of God. For the discerning word clearly makes a distinction between these. D
73. He calls the "thoughts and intentions," of which the word is a discerner, the affections of the mind regarding divine reasons and cogitations, and the causes of them (that is, of the affections). For a thought moves the memory, whose proper affection is the intent; but the intent looks toward the end, which indeed denotes the cause.
74. If God is knowledge in essence, and the mind—under which it is also natural for that which is compared to it to fall—clearly precedes all knowledge; then God is above this, because
he infinitely exceeds all mind and every manner of being to which knowledge could in any way be compared.
75. Who, not having the divine Word dwelling at the base of his heart, A will be able to incline himself away from the invisible snares of the demons’ hypocrisy toward us, to stand most alone by himself, without any mixture, and to build the temple of the Lord, following the great Zerubbabel and Joshua and the leaders of the ancestral houses, saying expressly with a loud voice to the deceitful spirits of pride, vainglory, desire to please men, and hypocrisy: "It is not for us and for you to build a house to the Lord our God; for we alone shall build to the Lord of Israel"? He knows that the mixture of these things causes the ruin and destruction of the whole building, and plunders the grace of the beauty of divine offerings.
76. No one who has any of the aforementioned demons as a companion in his virtue can build it for the Lord; for he does not have God, who is the end of all things that are done, as the one whom he contemplates as he goes through this work, but rather the passion which constitutes itself through this work.
77. Those who fight by the deficiency of virtue are demons B who teach fornication and drunkenness, avarice and envy. But those who fight by excess are those who teach conceit, vainglory, and pride, and through the right things they secretly sow the crooked things.
78. Would that it were possible for us also always to say to the spirits of wickedness who invisibly attack us under the guise of spiritual friendship, and who secretly wish to bring about the death of sin through the pretext of good, and who say: "We will build the temple with you for your Lord": "It is not for us and for you to build a house to the Lord our God; for we alone shall build to the Lord of Israel." We are "alone," indeed, because we have been freed from the spirits who used to fight us through the deficiency of virtue, spirits we have escaped, and we do not wish, having been puffed up through you by the "excesses," to be caught again and to fall with a fall that is C so much more grievous than the former one, as the former had an easy hope of return, since there was excuse for them due to weakness; but in the latter, there is either no hope for those who are hated because of pride and who presume another thing, more "right," than what is right—or it will be difficult. But again, we are not "alone," because we have the holy angels as our helpers in good things; or rather, we have God himself, who manifests himself to us through the works of righteousness, and who builds us for himself into a holy temple, free from every passion.
79. The definition of virtue is: the union of human weakness D with divine power through knowledge. Therefore, he who defines himself by the weakness of nature does not reach the definition of virtue; and therefore he sins,
A not yet having received the strength that surpasses weakness. But he who, out of arrogance, sets his own weakness against divine power as if it were strength, has surpassed the boundary of virtue; and because of this, he who sins, since he considers that which is behind to be superior—it having come to pass in himself—does not recognize it; for he considers the transgression to be virtue. Therefore, he who has defined himself by natural weakness, having suffered the falling away from virtue rather out of sloth, is more forgivable than he who, as if seeking to perform his duties, sets his own weakness against divine power as strength, having brought about the falling away from virtue rather out of arrogance.
80. Since it has been said, "The prayer of a righteous person is very powerful," B I understand this to be powerful in two ways: in one way, when the one who prays, by fulfilling the commandments in deed, brings his prayer before the eyes of God accompanied by works, so that it may not lie idle and unsubstantial, poured forth from the mouth in mere words and the vain sound of a voice, but may remain effective and living, animated by the works through which we fulfill the commandments. For the substance of prayer and supplication is clearly the fulfillment of the commandments through the virtues, by which the righteous man possesses a strong prayer, capable of everything, rendered effective by the commandments. In another way, when he who implores the prayers of a righteous man performs the works of prayer himself, both amending his former life and rendering the prayer of the righteous man strong, C reinforced by his own virtuous conduct.
81. The prayer of the righteous man is of no benefit when he who asks for it finds more pleasure in his sins than in the virtues. For even the great Samuel mourned for Saul as he sinned, yet he could not appease God and render Him propitious to him, because the fitting amendment of the delinquent was not provided to him who was praying. Wherefore God also, restraining His servant from useless mourning and commanding him to cease, says to him, "How long do you mourn for Saul, seeing that I have rejected him from reigning over Israel?"
82. Again, Jeremiah also, the most compassionate, praying for the people of the Jews, who had gone mad D regarding their error...
was not heard when he prayed, for he had no power in his prayer to turn them from the deception of the godless Jews. A Hence God, leading him away from praying in vain, says: "Do not pray for this people, and do not beg that I should have mercy on them, and do not pray, and do not approach me for them anymore, because I will not hear."
83. It is truly a matter of great stupidity, not to say madness, to seek salvation through the prayer of righteous men for one who delights in his disposition in destructive things; and to ask for forgiveness for those who boast in the very things by which they defile themselves through the intention of their actions. It would be appropriate that the one who requests the prayer of a righteous man should not let the supplication of the righteous remain idle and immobile—since he needs that supplication if he truly hates evil things—but rather should make it active and strong, giving it wings through his own virtues, and enabling it to reach the One who can grant forgiveness for the things that have been committed.
84. The prayer of the righteous conveys much power, whether it is effective B because of the righteous man who performs it, or because of the righteous man who is requested to offer it. For when it is performed by a righteous man, it gives him confidence before Him who is able to grant the requests of the righteous; but when it is offered by one who asks the righteous man for it, it severs him from his previous wickedness, changing his disposition toward virtue.
85. Since the Apostle said: "In which you rejoice, even if now for a little while, if it is necessary, having been grieved in various trials," C how can one who is grieved in trials rejoice in that in which he is grieved?
86. The word of truth knows two kinds of sadness: one consisting in the soul invisibly, and the other manifested in sense-perception. The one encompasses the whole depth of the soul, scourging it with the lash of conscience; the other circumscribes all sense-perception, constraining it by the weight of afflictive things from its natural expansion. The former is the end of sensible pleasure, the latter the end of the soul's joy; or rather, the former is the result of voluntary passions of the senses, while the latter is the result of passions that occur against the will.
87. Sadness D is, I would say, a disposition bereft of pleasures; but the privation of pleasures is the infliction of labors. Labor is clearly the deficiency or withdrawal of a natural habit; but the deficiency of a natural habit is a passion—the sickness of that faculty which by nature is subject to the habit. And the passion or sickness of that faculty which is subject to the habit by nature is the mode of the abuse of natural energy. The abuse of the mode of energy is the movement of the faculty toward that which is not suited by nature, and which does not truly exist.
A 88. He says that sorrow of the soul is the end of pleasure of the senses; for from this arises sorrow of the soul; just as, therefore, pleasure of the soul has as its end sorrow of the flesh; for the delight of the soul is the torment/sorrow of the flesh.
89. He speaks of a twofold sorrow; the one, concerning the sense, consisting in the deprivation of bodily pleasures; the other, concerning the intellect, arising from the deprivation of the goods of the soul. He says that temptations also are twofold; the one voluntary, the other involuntary. And he says that the voluntary ones are the parents of pleasure of the bodily senses, and the begetters of sorrow/pain of the soul; for sin only, when committed, causes sorrow to the soul; but the involuntary ones, which are shown in pains contrary to our will, are the parents of pleasure of the soul, and the begetters of sorrow of the bodily senses.
90. As I was saying, Scripture knows of a twofold sorrow or pain, and it also knows of a twofold mode of temptations; one which consists in the will, and another which consists contrary to it: and the former, the maker of pleasures which are from propense will; the latter, however, bringing in pains and torments contrary to the will. For whatever temptation is from the mind and propense will, it clearly creates spontaneous pleasures for the soul; but that which is not from the mind and its inclination, clearly brings about involuntary B labors which fall upon those who are unwilling: and truly, the former is the author of sorrow of the soul; the latter, the author of pain of the senses.
91. That which is a temptation from the will and the inclination of the soul, causes sorrow or pain of the soul, and clearly brings forth pleasure of the senses: but that which is not of the will and the inclination of the soul, causes pleasure of the soul; but it is the author of pain of the flesh.
92. I think that our Lord and God, while teaching his own disciples the way to pray, admonished them to pray against that kind of temptation which is from the will and inclination of the soul, saying: *And lead us not into temptation*; signifying that they should pray to keep far from themselves the danger of those temptations which have to do with lust, and which are from the inclination of the soul and are voluntary: but that the great James, whom they call the brother of the Lord, in order to teach the champions of truth not to fear that kind of temptation which is applied to the unwilling, says: *Count it all joy, my brethren, when you meet various temptations*; C namely, the involuntary ones, and those outside the inclination of the soul, and those which induce labors. And they clearly show that this is the case, when the Lord there adds, *But deliver us from the evil one*; while here, the great James says, *Knowing that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness; and let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing*. D
A 93. The Lord teaches us to reject voluntary temptations, as they produce pleasure for the flesh, but pain for the soul; whereas the great James exhorts us to rejoice in involuntary temptations, as they remove the pleasure of the flesh and the pain of the soul.
94. He is perfect who struggles against voluntary temptations through self-control, and endures involuntary ones through patience; and he is complete who performs both action with knowledge and contemplation without idleness.
95. Since both sadness and pleasure are divided between soul and body, he who pursues the soul's pleasure while enduring with patience the sadness of the senses becomes tested, perfect, and complete: tested, because of his experience of things contrary to the senses; perfect, because through self-control and patience he struggles unyieldingly against the pleasure and sadness of the senses; and complete, because he keeps the habits corresponding to the mutually opposing dispositions of the senses in the stability of the identity of the Word, remaining unharmed—I mean action and contemplation, which are linked together, with neither separated from the other; but rather action manifesting the knowledge of contemplation through its ways, and contemplation, no less fortified by the virtue of the Word, through action. B
96. He who has experienced the sadness and pleasure of the flesh may be called tested, as one who has experienced success and failure in affairs concerning the flesh. He is perfect, however, who has overcome the pleasure and pain of the flesh by the power of the Word; and he is complete who has kept the habits of action and contemplation unchanged by his constancy in divine love. C
97. There is a twofold mode of sadness of the soul: one arises from one's own faults, the other from the faults of others. The cause of such sadness is clearly the pleasure or desire of the senses of the one who is saddened, or of those for whose sake he is saddened. For according to precise reason, there is almost no sin at all among men that does not have as the origin of its own birth an unreasoning attachment of the soul to the senses for the sake of pleasure. The cause of pleasure of the soul is clearly the sadness, according to sense, of one who rejoices and is glad for his own or others' virtues. For according to precise reason, there is almost no virtue among men that does not have as the origin of its own birth a reasoned detachment of the soul from the senses. D
98. Without an impassioned attachment of the soul to the senses, there is no sin at all among men; for every sadness that exists in the soul is preceded by the pleasure of the flesh.
99. The true origin of virtue is the soul’s voluntary alienation from the flesh; and it gladdens...
spiritually gladdens, who of his own accord subdues the body with labors.
100. That the sense—if the soul has renounced the affections that are the cause of virtue—should not be engaged in labors is impossible. For it lacks that faculty of the soul which is the clever inventor of things that delight, which is joined to it by the affection of the will and by desire. In another way, however, one who through self-control strenuously suppresses the rebellious force of the natural pleasures of the sense, and in the violent labors brought upon him contrary to nature, remains, through patience, constant and unyielding; and is of such a kind that he does not exceed [the bounds of temperance], being tricked by a vain pleasure away from the divine dignity and clarity of virtue; nor, through indulgence of the flesh on account of the pain of the sense in undergoing labors, does he fall from the loftiness of the virtues. Yet pain is the cause of sorrow to the soul, because it is fully occupied with things according to nature. The unnatural operation of the soul clearly introduces pleasure and desire into the sense; and for this—the confounding of it—there can be no other principle than that the soul casts away from itself those things which exist according to its nature and its own reasons. B
THE FOURTH CENTURY
1. It knows the inventive, intelligent faculty of the soul. This, being separated from the necessity and desire of the sense, leaves the flesh free of care for pleasure and delights by the determination of the mind, not even enduring to alleviate the pain of the flesh, because the whole force and affection of the mind is intent upon divine things. C
2. Mind and sense have a contrary operation toward one another, on account of the utmost dissimilarity and difference of the things subject to them. For the mind has as subjects intelligible and incorporeal substances, which it is fitted to grasp by an incorporeal and spiritual reason; but the sense, sensible and corporeal natures, which it also by nature is fitted to perceive.
3. Hence arises the pleasure of the sense, when the soul casts away those things which are according to nature. For as long as it toils at the goods according to nature, there is not at hand the faculty which would find the mode of pleasure for the sense.
4. Where reason takes precedence over the sense in the contemplation of visible things, the flesh is deprived of all pleasure according to nature, having no sense left unfettered and released from the bonds of reason to be at the service of the pleasures directed toward it. Whence it is also necessary that, with the reason in us holding sway, the flesh, which is enslaved to it for the obedience of virtue, should be tormented. D
A 5. The mind, as soon as it deems the sensory power to be its own by nature, being entangled with the surfaces of sensible things, devises the pleasures of the flesh; it is unable to transcend the nature of visible things, being held fast by the passionate relation it has to sense.
6. If it is not possible for the mind to pass over to the kindred intelligible realities without the contemplation of the sensible things which are projected between them—and it is utterly impossible for this (the contemplation) to occur apart from the sense which is conjoined to it, and which by nature is kindred to sensible things—then reasonably, if the mind, projecting itself, is checked by the surfaces of visible things, imagining the conjoined sense to be a natural operation, it has fallen away from the intelligible realities which are according to nature; and, as the saying goes, it has laid hold of unnatural bodies with both hands. Acting contrary to reason toward these, because of the sense that has overcome it, it stands as the generator of sorrow within the soul, being scourged by the frequent lashes of conscience; and it becomes the manifest creator of pleasure according to sense, growing fat on the devices of the ways of providing for the flesh. But if, cutting through the surface toward sense at the very moment of the approach of the things seen, it shall behold the spiritual B reasons of existing things, purified of the shapes upon them, it has produced pleasure for the soul, since the soul is held fast by none of the sensible things viewed; and it has established sorrow for the sense, which is deprived of all those things which are sensible by nature.
7. Since the pleasure according to sense constitutes the sorrow, or pain (for both are the same), of the soul, and the pleasure according to the soul is naturally disposed to cause sorrow, or pain, to the sense, reasonably, the man who longs for the hope of the life of God and our Savior Jesus Christ, kept in the heavens through the resurrection of the dead as an inheritance that is incorruptible and undefiled and unfading (1 Pet. 1:3), C exults in his soul and has joy that is unspeakable, constantly delighting in the hope of future good things. Yet as regards the flesh and sense, he has sorrow—that is, the pains that arise for it from various temptations, and the sufferings that follow from them. For with every virtue, pleasure and pain accompany it: pain of the flesh, which is deprived of the pleasant and softer sensation; and pleasure of the soul, which delights in the reasons of things in the Spirit, pure from everything sensible.
8. It is necessary that the mind during the present life (for this is what I mean by "now"), while grieving in flesh because of the many pains of the temptations brought upon it for the sake of virtue, should always rejoice in the soul and take pleasure because of the hope of eternal D goods, even if it has the sense in a state of tribulation. For the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the future glory that is to be revealed in us, says the divine Apostle (Rom. 8:18).
9. The flesh belongs to the soul, but the soul does not belong to the flesh; for that which is better, he says, is the beginning, but not that which is worse.
A Therefore, because the law of sin, which is sensory pleasure, was implanted in the flesh on account of the transgression—on account of which the death of the flesh was condemned through labors—it was devised for the abolition of the law of the flesh. Clearly, he who knows that death supervened on account of sin for the sake of its abolition, always rejoices in his spirit, seeing through various labors the law of sin departing from his own flesh, so that he may receive the blessed life to come in the Spirit. This life one cannot otherwise attain, unless he has first emptied out of the flesh, as it were, out of a vessel, in this present life we lead, the law of sin by which the will is led into affection and concupiscence toward it.
10. B He who cultivates virtue, sorrows through the flesh because of the labors and hardships, but rejoices in his soul because of the cultivation of it, as though he already sees the splendor of the future life present. By the grace of this, like the great David, he dies daily by the resolution of his mind to depart from the flesh, and is always renewed by the spiritual birth of the soul; thus he possesses beneficial pleasure and profitable sorrow. For we speak of this sorrow—not the irrational kind of the masses, which torments and vexes the soul with sadness at the loss of passions or material things, in that it directs its impulses contrary to nature toward what one ought not to desire, and creates escapes from what one ought not to flee—but the deliberate one, approved by men adorned with divine wisdom, which signifies present evil. C For they say that sorrow or pain is an evil of the present time, subsisting in the soul when sensory pleasure prevails over rational discernment, but subsisting in the senses when the course of virtue is run by the soul without obstacle, subduing the senses with as many labors as it creates pleasure for the soul, which is being led to God through the illumination of virtue and knowledge akin to Him.
11. He calls beneficial pleasure the joy of the soul in virtue, and beneficial sorrow the pain of the flesh for the sake of virtue. Therefore, he who gapes at passions and things he ought not to desire, and who does not embrace those events through which the deprivation of passions and things comes about, recoils by fleeing from what he should not. D
12. Neither does divine grace exert illuminations of knowledge when the vessel capable of receiving the illumination in accordance with natural power does not exist; nor again does the capable vessel produce the illumination of knowledge without the grace that bestows it.
13. Nor does the grace of the All-Holy Spirit work wisdom in the saints without the mind that receives it; nor knowledge without the capacity of reason capable of it; nor faith without the certainty of the mind and reason concerning the things to come and all that are still hidden from all; nor the gifts of healings without natural affection; nor finally any other of the remaining charisms
without the habit and capacity of each one capable of them. Nor, on the other hand, can man obtain any of the enumerated things by the powers of nature, unless the divine power provides them. And all the saints clearly demonstrate this, for after divine revelations, they seek the reasons for what has been revealed. 14. He who asks without perturbation receives, and by the cultivation of action is able to exercise the virtues; and he who seeks imperturbably finds the truth in things by the power of natural contemplation. Finally, he who knocks imperturbably at the door of knowledge will, without hindrance, reach the grace hidden in mystical theology. B
15. He who seeks divine things imperturbably will certainly receive that which he seeks. But he who seeks with some passion will fail to obtain what he seeks. For Scripture says: "You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly."
16. The Holy Spirit seeks the knowledge of beings within us, and He searches; but He does not seek the object of 6 search for Himself—since He is God, and exceeds all knowledge—but for us, who are in need of knowledge. Just as, indeed, the Word becomes flesh, not for His own sake, but for ours, fulfilling the mystery through the flesh. For just as the Word, without the flesh enlivened by intellect, did not operate in a manner worthy of God those things that were according to the nature of the flesh, so neither does the Holy Spirit operate in the saints the knowledge of the mysteries without the power that by nature seeks and searches for knowledge.
17. Just as it is impossible for the eye to perceive the things that fall under sense perception without solar light, so the human mind will never receive spiritual contemplation without spiritual light. For the light of the senses naturally illuminates the sense for the perception of bodily things; but the spiritual light illumines the mind for contemplation, so that it may perceive those things which exceed sense. C
18. Human nature possesses the powers of seeking and searching for divine things, essentially and from its very first condition and origin, planted in it by the Creator at the very moment of its passing into existence; but the divine revelations are brought about by the grace of the power of the Most Holy Spirit coming upon it. Since, however, at the beginning, through sin, the wicked one fixed these powers on the nature of visible things, and there was no one who understood or sought for God, because all who partook of nature had the intellectual and rational power circumscribed by the surface of sensible things and possessed no concept D of things above sense, the grace of the Most Holy Spirit—rightly, for those who did not voluntarily and by disposition yield to the deception—has detached the faculty from the earthly things to which it was fastened, and as it were unfixated it, restoring it to itself; which, by the gift of grace...
having acquired in a pure state, they first sought and searched out, and thus searched and scrutinized, through that selfsame gift of the Spirit.
19. The salvation of souls, correctly speaking, is the end of faith. The end of faith is the true revelation of the object of faith. The true revelation of the object of faith is the ineffable A indwelling (perichoresis) of the believed object, according to the proportion of faith in each person. The indwelling of the believed object consists in the return of the believers to their source according to the end. And this return to their own source according to the end for those who have believed is the fulfillment of desire. The fulfillment of desire is the unceasing rest of those who desire around the desirable object. The unceasing rest of those who desire around the desirable object is the perpetual and uninterrupted enjoyment of that desirable object. The B perpetual and uninterrupted enjoyment of the desirable object is the participation in those divine things that surpass nature. The participation in and communion with divine things that surpass nature belongs to those who delight in this participation and communion, together with Him whose participation and communion they enjoy, by means of likeness. The likeness of those who delight in this participation and communion to Him whose participation and communion they enjoy is, by the power of likeness, an identity in act, as great as can be afforded (as they term it). Finally, the identity in act via likeness, as far as can be afforded, of those who delight in the participation and communion with Him whose participation and communion they enjoy, is the deification of those who are deemed worthy of deification.
20. Nature has no reasons for things that are above nature, just as neither does it have laws for those that are contrary to nature. I say that which is "above nature" is that divine and inconceivable pleasure, which God is naturally accustomed to bestow, uniting Himself by grace to those who are worthy; but "contrary to nature" is that ineffable pain, constituted by the privation of this, which God is not accustomed to produce naturally, but which C He unites Himself to the unworthy according to something other than grace. For according to the underlying quality of each person’s disposition, God, who unites Himself to all, provides to each the perception of Himself in the way He knows, just as each person is fashioned by himself for the reception of Him who is in any case to be united to all at the end of the ages.
D Thus, therefore, do I understand Maximus. That the manifestation or revelation of the thing believed and of God (which occurs through the gifts of the Spirit assisting faith) is its comprehension and perception within us: so that from this we may have Him dwelling within us, and know Him as present and intimate to us, according to that word of Paul (Eph. iii, 17): "To have Christ dwelling through faith in your hearts." Nor does this forbid one from calling it an arcane union and a kind of intermingling, according to what Hesychius explains. But in these matters we are stammering, even if the Greeks are a little more fortunate with their terms. In other respects, Picus is hardly more fortunate, namely in that which for them is
ἀεικίνητος στάσις
, a state that is always moving, not something stirred by the force of perpetual motion; such is the state of those enjoying God.A
21. The Holy Spirit guides those who seek in spirit the salvation of souls, and investigate the spiritual reasons and methods of this salvation, so that they may grasp them with their minds; nor does He allow the power to remain motionless and inactive within them, by which it is natural for them to seek divine things.
22. First, one seeks by his will to mortify sin, and the will by sin; and thus he searches how and in what manner it is fitting that these should mortify each other. And again, after the perfect mortification of these with each other, he seeks the life of the will that is provided by virtue, and the life of virtue that is provided by the will; and thus he searches how and in what manner it is fitting to engender the life of these in each other. It is, therefore, if one may define it, that *seeking* is the appetite for some desirable object; but *investigating* is the operative method for the appetite to attain the desirable object. B
23. He who is to be saved ought, in truth, not only to mortify sin by his will, but also the will itself by sin; and not only to raise up the will by virtue, but also virtue itself by the will; so that, dead to the dead, the whole being divided from the whole, it may not perceive sin, and living to the living, the whole being in union with the whole, the will may perceive virtue. For he who has mortified the will to sin has been made "complanted" to the likeness of the death of Christ; and he who has raised it up to righteousness has been made one with the likeness of His resurrection. C
24. Sin and the will, being mortified by each other, have a twofold lack of perception toward each other. And righteousness and the will, having life in each other, have a twofold perception.
25. Christ, existing by nature as God and man, is inherited by us as God beyond nature through the ineffable participation of grace; and for our sake, in the form similar to us as man, claiming and, as it were, appropriating us to Himself, He inherits Himself with us by an inconceivable condescension. The saints, having mystically foreseen this in the Spirit, were taught that it is necessary, for the sake of the glory that will be manifested in Christ in the future on account of virtue, to go before it in the present with sufferings and tribulations for the sake of virtue. D
26. The mind, moved merely by desire toward the Cause of beings in a way beyond knowledge, only seeks; but reason, variously traversing the true reasons in existing things, investigates.
27. *Seeking* is the first and simple impulse of the mind toward its own Cause, accompanied by desire; but *investigating* is the first and simple discernment of reason regarding its own Cause, accompanied by a certain intention of judgment. And again, *exquiring* [seeking out] is the mind’s impulse toward its own Cause, according to spiritual knowledge and wisdom, accompanied by a certain burning desire; but *scrutinizing* is, as it...
were, the discernment of the Word A regarding the operation of virtues toward their own Author, taking place with a certain prudent and wise intention.
28. The holy and divine prophets, as they sought out and scrutinized regarding the salvation of souls, possessed a kindling and fervent impulse of the mind toward God, accompanied by skill and knowledge, B and they were endowed with a prudent and wise discernment in the practice of divine things. Those who emulate them seek the salvation of souls with skill and knowledge, and as they scrutinize with prudence and wisdom, they cultivate the judgment of discernment in divine works.
29. The Word acknowledges a twofold knowledge of divine things: one that is constant by habit and relation, or intentional, which is situated solely in reason and in the senses and thoughts, and which possesses no sensation of the known thing in reality through experience, through which we are ordered and governed in the present life; C and another that is truly and properly real, situated solely in the experience of the act, without reason and the concepts and thoughts of the mind, which provides the full sensation of the known object through that intercourse which is by grace. By means of this, in the future rest and felicity, we receive the deification that is operative, surpassing every power of nature, and which is ceaseless. And they say that the former, the one constant by habit or intentional—being, as it were, situated in reason and the senses and thoughts of the mind—has the power to incite desire and longing toward that knowledge which is true by reality of participation and intercourse. But the latter, which truly provides D the sensation of what is known through experience, is such that it causes the knowledge situated in reason and the senses and thoughts of the mind to pass away.
30. He says that knowledge is twofold: one situated in the Word and divine thoughts, which does not have the sensation of what is understood according to the present species; the other, which possesses it solely through operation, without the Word and the thoughts of the truth, having the enjoyment according to the species. For since the Word is accustomed, through knowledge, to signify the known, it moves the desire of those who are moved by it toward the enjoyment of what is signified.
31. The wise say it is impossible for the discourse about God to coexist with the experience of God, or for the thought and notion about God to be found together with the sensation of God. By "discourse about God," I mean the analogy of the cognitive contemplation about Him, drawn from things that exist; and [by] sensation, that which is in...
A virtue of participation, the experience of the good things that are above nature: and by "intellection," the simple and singular knowledge and cognition of Him, which comes from existing things. Perhaps this is also known in the case of everything else; since the experience of this or that thing puts an end to discourse about it, and the sensation of this or that thing produces a cognitive intellection that is at leisure regarding it. By "experience," I mean that knowledge which is according to energy (actuality), which supervenes after all discourse; and by "sensation," the participation itself of the thing known, which shines forth after all intellection. And the great Apostle, perhaps teaching this mystically, says: "Whether there be prophecies, they shall be abolished; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall be abolished," 8 speaking clearly of the knowledge that consists in discourse and mental concepts. B 32. It was truly fitting that He who is the Creator of the essence of things that exist by nature, should also be the Author of the deification of created things by grace: so that He who had granted them to exist might also clearly appear the bestower of eternal well-being and everlasting happiness. Since, therefore, no thing at all knows either itself or another thing—what it is by essence—it naturally follows that none of the things that are, nor any of those that are to be, possesses by nature foreknowledge, except only the God, who is above all things, and who both knows Himself—what He is by essence—and foreknew the existence of all things made by Him, even before they were made: and who, through grace, is to bestow more liberally upon those things that exist—both upon themselves and upon one another—the knowledge of what they are by essence, and to reveal the reasons of their origin, which pre-existed in Him in a singular manner.
C 33. The Word (God) who created the nature of human beings, did not create along with it, according to sensation, either pleasure or pain; but He fashioned into it, according to the mind, a certain power toward pleasure, according to which it could enjoy Him in an ineffable manner. And this power—I mean the natural longing of the mind toward God—the first man, as soon as he was created, gave over to sensation; and, at that very first movement, through the medium of sensation, he had pleasure directed toward things that fall under sensation, functioning in a way contrary to nature. And for this, He who takes care of our salvation, by providence, attached as if to it a punishing power: namely, pain. By this means, the law of death was wisely rooted in the nature of the body, limiting the desire of the unwise mind, which was being moved contrary to nature toward sensible objects.
34. Pleasure and pain were not created with the essence of the flesh; but transgression devised the one for the corruption of the free will, and condemned the other to the dissolution of nature; so that the pleasure might work in the soul an involuntary death, which is sin; and that the pain, through the dissolution, might produce the form of the...
A flesh’s dissolution. For God, in His providence, for the chastisement of the pleasure that is of the will, has given to nature an involuntary pain, and the death that follows upon it.
35. On that account, because pleasure had grown into nature contrary to reason, pain, which is according to reason, entered in through many tribulations—in which, and from which, is the origin of death—cutting off the unnatural pleasure, yet not entirely abolishing or destroying it; for the grace of divine pleasure, which is in the mind, has still need to shine forth and manifest itself.
36. The invention of involuntary labors and the infliction of involuntary things take away pleasure, indeed, by stopping its movement in operation; but they do not destroy the power that is implanted in nature, as it were a law, for its generation. For the philosophy that cultivates virtue produces imperturbability of the mind’s intent, but not an expulsion of every affection from nature; according to which imperturbability of intent, the grace of divine pleasure, which consists in the mind, supervenes.
37. Every labor, as having as the cause of its own generation the pleasure that preceded it in operation, is clearly a debt, paid naturally by reason of cause by all who have partaken of nature. For to pleasure contrary to nature, labor naturally follows as a companion in all those whose origin was preceded by the law of pleasure, which is itself devoid of cause. But I call “cause-less” that pleasure which comes from the transgression, which truly followed no prior pain.
38. It was entirely impossible that nature, which had bowed its neck both to voluntary pleasure and to violent C pain, should be recalled and restored to its original life, unless the Creator Himself became man, by His own will accepting for the chastisement of the pleasure of the nature—which is of the will—the pain that was devised, having no generation prior to it; so that He might liberate nature from the birth that came of condemnation, accepting a birth that would not have as its origin any pleasure.
39. Since after the transgression, all humans had pleasure preceding their own generation by nature, and there was no one at all who was by nature free from the passionate generation according to pleasure; but as paying a natural debt, they were all enduring labors, and the death that follows them, and no one at all—
A the way of freedom was available to those oppressed by the tyranny of unjust pleasure, and naturally enduring the just labors and the most just death B resulting from them. Yet it was necessary, for the destruction of the most unjust pleasure and the most just labors stemming from it—by which man, while suffering, was miserably torn apart, having the beginning of birth from the corruption of passion and ending the term of life in the corruption of death—and for the restoration of the
impassible nature
, that a labor and death be devised, being at once unjust and without cause: without cause, indeed, as he had in no way experienced a pleasure preceding his birth; unjust, for being not at all a successor to any passionate life, so that, taken as a mean between unjust pleasure and most just labor and death, this most unjust labor and death might utterly destroy the most unjust beginning from pleasure and the most just end of nature occurring through death because of it, and the race of men might again become free from pleasure and pain, the nature having recovered its original happiness, unpolluted by any of the marks naturally occurring to those under generation and corruption.For this reason, God, the Word of God, being perfect by nature, becomes a perfect man, consisting of an intellectual soul and a body by nature passible like us, without sin alone. Having in no way possessed the pleasure from disobedience—which was preceding his birth from a woman in time—but having voluntarily accepted out of philanthropy the pain that exists as the end of nature, so that, suffering unjustly, he might destroy the beginning of birth that tyrannizes nature through unjust pleasure; not having as a debt—to be paid on its behalf, like other men and the Lord—that death, but rather having it brought against him; and so that he might wipe away the just end of nature through death—not having [the nature] for which he entered [into death], and which is justly punished by him, as the cause of the illicit pleasure. C
40. It was truly necessary, fittingly necessary, that the Lord, being by nature wise and just and powerful, as wise, should not be ignorant of the mode of treatment; as just, should not effect the salvation of man, who was caught by his own intent under sin, by tyranny; and as all-powerful, should not fail in the fulfillment of the treatment.
41. The wisdom of God is indeed shown in his becoming in truth a man by nature; justice, in that he took upon himself the passible nature by birth similarly to us; D and power, in that...
A he created for nature, through sufferings and death, eternal life and immutable impassibility.
42. The Lord made the logic of his wisdom manifest in the manner of the healing, becoming man without change or the slightest defilement of himself; but he displayed the equality of his justice in the greatness of his condescension, by voluntarily assuming the condemnation of nature in the passible aspect, and making that very thing a weapon for the destruction of sin and the death that comes through it—that is, the pleasure and the pain resulting from it, wherein the power of sin and death resided, as well as the tyranny of sin according to pleasure, and the dominion B of death according to the pain caused by it. For in the passible aspect of nature, the power of pleasure and pain clearly exists. Indeed, we strive to comfort ourselves for the penalty of suffering, which is naturally intensified, by means of pleasure. For desiring to escape the painful perception of suffering, we take refuge in pleasure, attempting to comfort nature, which is oppressed by the scourge of pain. But in our haste to blunt the impulses of pain through pleasure, we strengthen all the more against ourselves the bond of debt, being unable to enjoy what is free from pleasure, pain, and labors.
43. He demonstrated the power of his transcendent strength when he established the genesis and substance of nature as immutable C through those very opposites he himself suffered. For through passion he granted impassibility to nature, through labors he granted rest, and through death he granted eternal life, restoring it to its pristine felicity; renewing the habits of nature by his own experiences, and, through his own incarnation, bestowing upon nature the grace that transcends nature, that is, deification.
44. God truly became man and gave to nature another beginning of a second birth, starting from labor and ending in the delights of the future life. For just as Adam, our forefather, through the transgression of the divine command, introduced into nature—besides that which was first created—another beginning of birth, consisting of pleasure and ending D in death through labor, and—by the counsel of the serpent—devised a pleasure which was not a successor to preceding labor, but rather one that terminated in labor and tribulation; and as he justly drew down with himself all those born of him in the flesh to the end of death through labor, on account of the unjust beginning from pleasure—so also the Lord, having become man and having created for nature, by the Holy Spirit, another beginning of a second birth, and having accepted the most just death of Adam—which was, in him, most unjust, as not possessing that most unjust beginning of its own birth from the forefather’s transgression—remade both extremes, I mean both the beginning and the end of human birth according to Adam, as indeed...
A prior to their existence from God, he brought about their removal, and rendered all who are mystically reborn from him free from the liability thereof.
45. The Lord, having taken away the pleasure that comes from the law of sin, for the sake of annulling the birth according to the flesh of those who are born in Him by grace through the Spirit, permits them to receive death—which previously was unto condemnation—unto the condemnation of sin. They possess no longer, it is true, the pleasure of birth from Adam, but only the pain that, on account of Adam, is active within them; not as a debt due to the guilt of sin, but by an economy, on account of the natural state, B against sin, and working death in order to abolish it; for this, when it lacks the mother that gave it birth—she whose avenger it is wont to be—namely pleasure, openly becomes the father of eternal life. For just as the life of Adam, which was according to pleasure, became the mother of death and corruption, so too the death of the Lord, which exists on account of Adam, being free from the pleasure derived from Adam, becomes the progenitor of eternal life.
46. Human nature, after the transgression, had as the beginning of its own birth conception by pleasure from seed, and birth through flux; and as its end, death through corruption as a result of pain. But the Lord, not having this beginning of birth according to the flesh, was also not subject to the end, that is to say, to death.
47. Sin, having first enticed Adam, persuaded him to come to the transgression of the divine C commandment; whereby, having established pleasure, and having fastened itself through pleasure in him to the very root of his nature, it condemned the whole of nature to death, thrusting the nature of those who are born toward destruction through death by means of the man. For this is what had been contrived by the sower of sin, and the father of wickedness, the wicked devil, who had himself emigrated from the divine glory through pride, and through envy—both toward us and toward God—had driven Adam out of paradise, in order to destroy the works of God, and to dissolve what had been constituted for birth.
48. The devil, envying both God and us, persuading man through D craft that he was envied by God, caused him to transgress the commandment. He envied God, so that His all-laudable power, deifying man, might not become manifest by act; and he envied man, so that he might not become a partaker of the divine glory according to virtue. For the most wicked one envies us not only the glory that is with God on account of virtue, but he also envies God the all-laudable power that he exerts toward us for our salvation.
49. Just as in Adam the death of nature... [QQ. ad Thalas. q. 61, spiritual.]
had its condemnation, having pleasure as the beginning of its own birth; so in Christ, the death of sin has become a condemnation, nature having again received in Christ a birth pure from pleasure.
A 50. If we, who have been deemed worthy to become the house of God by the grace of the Spirit, owe such endurance of sufferings for the sake of justice unto the condemnation of sin, and as evildoers–though we are good–owe it to submit ourselves willingly to an ignominious death, what is the end of those who do not believe the Gospel of God? That is, what will be the end—or rather the judgment—of those who not only have kept until the end, through their own diligence, the birth according to pleasure that ruled over Adam, which is living, active, and exercising itself according to soul and body, according to B judgment and nature, but have also neither received the God and Father who calls them through the Son incarnate, nor yet the Mediator and Son Himself, who performs the embassy on behalf of the Father, and for the sake of our reconciliation to the Father, of the Father’s own will, delivered Himself up for our sake to death according to His will, so that through Himself He might glorify us to such an extent, brightening us with the beauty of His own divinity, as He Himself endured to be dishonored for us by our own sufferings?
51. Since God will be a place—uncircumscribed, indivisible, and infinite—for all who are saved, becoming all things to all men according to the proportion of justice, or rather according to the measure C of the sufferings undergone here for the sake of justice with knowledge, giving Himself to each according to their capacity, just as the soul reveals itself acting according to the power underlying each member of the body, and by its own power holds the members together so that they exist and are vigorous for the duties of life: where will the ungodly and the sinner appear, being deprived of this grace? For if he who is unable to receive the presence of God operating according to well-being, where will he appear, having suffered the fall from the divine life which is beyond age, time, and place?
52. He who is not in possession of God, who holds the life in well-being, and who will be the place for all those who are worthy, how shall he exist, not having God as his place according to the abiding and establishment of well-being in God? And if the righteous man is saved with great difficulty, what will become of, or what will he suffer, who has made no account of piety and virtue as long as life was his companion?
53. God, according to a single D infinite-powered will of goodness, will hold everything together, both angels and men, good and evil; but all these will not participate equally in God, who has passed through all things without connection, but according to their own capacity.
54. Those who have kept by nature through all…
A things their own will in accord with the reasons of nature, and have rendered it capable of receiving the reasons of nature in accordance with every reason of well-being, because of the correspondence of their will with the divine will, will become entirely partakers of the Good, according to the divine life shining forth in them, as occurs in angels or humans. Those, however, who have rendered their will unequal by nature through all things, and have shown it to be destructive of the reasons of nature in accordance with the moving power throughout the whole reason of well-being, because of the antagonism of their will toward the divine will, will fall entirely away from the Good, according to the appropriation of the will to the "ill-being" that appears to them; through which there will be a separation of such persons from God, as they do not have, according to the purpose of their will, the reason of well-being quickened by the energies of the good, in accordance with which the divine life is naturally wont to shine forth. B
55. The balance of each one's will at the judgment will be the reason of nature, which convicts the movement of one’s will toward the "ill" or the "well," in accordance with which the participation or non-participation in divine life is wont to occur. For as regards being and always being, God, being present, holds all things together; but as regards "well-being" and always "well-being," he holds only the saints, both angels and humans, in a way peculiar to them, having left the "always ill-being" to be mixed in for those who are not such, as the fruit of their own will, so that it may always be ill for them.
56. The mystery of the divine incarnation does not entail, together with the natural distinctness of those elements from which it is constituted, a distinction in person; on the one hand, so that the mystery of the Trinity may not receive an addition; and on the other, so that nothing may exist that is naturally homologous and consubstantial with the Deity. For the union C of the two natures occurred toward a person, but not toward one nature; so that the one that is "in person," formed from the natures that have run together, might be shown in the union, and that the difference of those that have come together for the indivisible union might be believed according to natural property, remaining outside of all change and confusion.
57. We do not speak of a difference of persons in Christ, because the Trinity has remained the Trinity, and the Word having become incarnate, no addition of a person has been added to the holy Trinity through the incarnation; but we do speak of a difference of natures, so that we may not maintain that the flesh is consubstantial with the Word by nature.
58. He who does not speak of a difference of natures does not have D ground to prove that the Word became flesh without change; not understanding that which is preserved according to nature in the one of the one Christ and with the reasons of nature, he is in agreement; as regards nature healed and instituted through grace, it must be understood not of that which in us has grown through transgression for sin: but finally of nature as it was founded by God, adorned with the image and likeness, in which the divine characters might shine forth, to which the passion of brutes (the lusts, to wit) has been introduced, which must be cast off by us through the cultivation and exercise of virtue, so that the divine life may be restored in us, which we do not have otherwise than by the grace of Christ.
A of the Savior’s Person after the union, as well as the receiver and the received.
59. If there exists a distinction according to nature between the flesh and the divinity in Christ after the union—for divinity and flesh are never the same in essence—then the union of those that have come together has by no means occurred for the creation of one nature, but for one person, in accordance with which we find no distinction in Christ in any way whatsoever. For the Word is the same with His own flesh according to person. For in whatever respect Christ might have a distinction, in that he cannot be in every way; but in whatever respect He admits of no distinction at all, in that he is and is rightly called one in every way, always, in His own case.
60. Faith establishes perfection in God through hope; a good conscience makes love toward neighbor shine forth through the keeping of the commandments. For a good conscience has no commandment that it has violated to accuse it, for the reason that it has not been transgressed or made void. Let the soul, however, which burns with a true desire for salvation, accept these things as entrusted to it.
61. Nothing is swifter than believing; nor is anything easier than to confess with the mouth the grace of that which you have believed. For the former manifestation shows the living and animated love of the believer toward the Creator; the latter shows the pious and religious affection toward one’s neighbor. Furthermore, love and a sincere disposition—namely, faith and a good conscience—are clearly the work of the hidden movement of the heart, by no means needing any exterior material for their generation.
B 62. He who suffers from complete sluggishness regarding that which is good will inevitably be agile regarding vice and evil. For it is impossible to be motionless in both respects. Wherefore Scripture knows how to call the soul’s slothfulness regarding good things—as if it were devoid of the sense of the virtues—"stones"; and the eagerness regarding evil things, "wood." The movement of the sense, however, when joined to the operation of the mind, produces virtue joined with knowledge.
C 63. I consider that Scripture calls the law of the body the "middle wall," and the "partition" the relationship in the law of the flesh toward the passions, that is to say, toward sin. For the relationship with the shameful passions alone becomes the partition of the law of nature—that is, of the passible portion of nature—severing the body from the soul as if by an interjected wall, and not allowing the reason of the virtues, through the cultivation of action, to pass to the flesh by way of the soul as a medium. But when reason arrives, and the law of nature—D
A having been overcome, he abolished the connection of unnatural passions within himself.
64. When through deceit the most wicked one plunders the innate knowledge of God concerning nature, he arrogates it to himself; he is a thief, attempting to transfer the worship and majesty of God to himself. He leads the intellect of the soul away from spiritual contemplation in the created reasons, and circumscribes the intellectual power solely to the external appearance and sight of sensible things. And when, beginning from the natural movements, he sophistically drags the practical power toward what is unnatural, and through what are supposedly goods, with a plausible appearance, fastens the desire of the soul—which has been enticed by the solicitation of pleasure—to baser things, he swears falsely in the name of the Lord, leading the soul that obeys him toward things other than what it had promised. And he is indeed a thief, in that he plunders the knowledge of nature for himself; but he is a perjurer, in that he foolishly B persuades the practical part of the soul to labor for what is contrary to nature.
65. Or again, he is a thief who, for the sake of deceiving his hearers, ostensibly cultivates divine discourses, the power of which he has not recognized through his deeds—turning the bare utterance into a trade for glory, and seeking from those who hear him, by the word on his tongue, the praise of being thought righteous. And to speak plainly, whoever has a life dissonant from his speech, and an disposition of the soul opposed to his knowledge, is a thief, not rightly shining forth from the goods of others; to whom the word C will rightly say, *But to the sinner God has said: Why do you declare my righteous ordinances, and take up my covenant through your mouth?*
66. Likewise, he is a thief who, by apparent ways and customs, covers the unseen wickedness of his soul, cloaking his inward disposition with a mask of gentleness; and he steals, just as the former one steals the mind of his hearers by the utterance of the words of knowledge, so does he by the manner of his hypocrisy of character [steal] the sense of those who observe him. Concerning whom it will similarly be said, *Be ashamed, you who put on foreign garments;* and, *The Lord will reveal their figure in that day.* For each day D in the inner workshop of the heart, I seem to hear God saying these things to me, as one clearly condemned by both names.
67. He is a perjurer—that is, one swearing falsely in the name of the Lord—who promises to God a life according to virtue, yet pursues things foreign to the promise of his own profession, and transgresses the covenant of the confession of a holy life through the idleness of the commandments. And to speak briefly, he who lives—
has determined to live religiously, but is not perfectly dead to this world, is a liar and a perjurer, who indeed has sworn to God (that is, has promised and vowed) an upright course in divine discourses, yet has not fulfilled it; and who therefore is worthy of no praise from this. For it says, *Everyone who swears by him shall be praised* (Ps. LXII, 12), that is, everyone who joins with God in vowing a divine manner of life, and fulfills the oaths of his good profession and vow through the truth of works of righteousness. B
68. He who simulates knowledge merely by the utterance of words steals the mind of the hearers for his own glory; and he who simulates virtue by his behavior steals the sight of the observers for his own glory. B Both, stealing through deceit, lead astray—the one, the mind of the soul of the hearers; the other, the bodily sense of those who watch. C
69. If he who fulfills his own vows has praise, as one swearing by God and speaking the truth, it is clear that he will have reproach and dishonor who becomes a transgressor of his own covenants, as one who has sworn by God and lied. C
70. Not every man who comes into this world is entirely illuminated by the Word: for many remain unilluminated and are in no way partakers of that light which is placed in knowledge; but it is clear that every man who by his own will comes into the true world of the virtues [is illuminated]. For everyone who through a voluntary birth truly comes into this world is entirely illuminated by the Word, obtaining an unchangeable habit of virtue and a sure knowledge of true wisdom. C
71. Not all persons and all things which are designated by the same word receive one and the same understanding of spiritual meaning; but we must understand single things that are said according to the power of the holy Scripture subject to the place, if we intend to rightly conjecture where those things which are written are aimed. D
72. None of the persons, places, times, or other things animate or inanimate, sensible or intelligible, recorded in Scripture, have a history or contemplation that is always understood in the same way, or that is coherent with itself in every respect. Therefore, it is worthwhile that he who pursues the sure truth of the spiritual understanding of Scripture, according to the distinction of those things which are recorded as done or said, should interpret the reported details in various ways, and distribute to them the spiritual sense fittingly according to the place or time. D
73. It is necessary to teach all who are in the whole world to live by reason alone and to conduct themselves accordingly, and to have as much care for their bodies as is necessary, so that with much solicitude and diligence—
A to cut off, and to give no material for fantasy to the soul at all; for once the gaze of the soul has been extinguished by the Word—that gaze which at the beginning had pushed aside the Word and, like a creeping thing, had received the irrationality of pleasure and sensation, against which death was justly decreed—the entrance that the devil provides to the soul may cease.
74. Sensation, while unitary in its genus, is quintupled in its species through the perceptive faculty of each individual sense, inducing the misguided soul to love that which is closely related to the senses rather than God. Therefore, he who wisely follows the Word as his guide votes for the death of the flesh B of his own accord before that violent and involuntary death, making a complete separation of his mind from sensation.
75. Taking the mind captive, sensation teaches a multi-deity, through each sense serving the bondage to the passions, worshiping as a god that which is closely related and sensible.
76. He who dwells only on the letter of Scripture has only that sensation which dominates nature—that sensation by which the soul's affection toward the flesh naturally appears. For the letter, if not understood spiritually, has only the sensation that circumscribes its utterance and does not allow the power of what is written to pass over to the mind. C Since, therefore, the letter has a relationship solely with sensation, anyone who receives the letter in a Jewish manner, based only on history, lives according to the flesh; by the living and vigorous sensation within him, he dies in his mind the death of sin daily, being unable by the Spirit to mortify the deeds of the body so as to live the blessed life in the Spirit. For if you live according to the flesh, says the divine Apostle, you shall die; but if by the Spirit you mortify the deeds of the body, you shall live.
77.
The lamp of the knowledge of God
Let us not, therefore, place the divine lamp—I mean the Word that illuminates knowledge—when we have kindled it through contemplation and action, under a bushel, lest we be judged as circumscribing the incomprehensible power of Wisdom with the letter; but rather let us place it upon the lampstand, by which I mean the holy Church, on the height of true contemplation, D signaling to all the light of the divine dogmas.78. He who bears the assaults of involuntary temptations like the blessed Job and the valiant martyrs with an unshaken mind is a powerful lamp, himself also keeping the light of salvation, preserved in the manner of endurance with manliness, as having the Lord for his strength and song. He who knows the stratagems of the evil one and is not ignorant of the entanglements of invisible wars—this man, too, illuminated by the light of knowledge, is a lamp.
A speaking appropriately to the great Apostle: For we are not ignorant of his devices.
79. The Holy Spirit grants purification to those worthy of the purity of the virtues, through fear, piety, and knowledge. He grants the illumination of knowledge regarding the reasons of existing things, according to which they exist, through fortitude, counsel, and understanding to those worthy of light. And He grants perfection to those worthy of deification, through the radiant, simple, and total wisdom, leading them up to the Cause of existing things without any intermediary in every way, as far as is possible for a human being—they being recognized by the divine properties of goodness alone, according to which, knowing themselves from God and God from themselves, with nothing intervening or obstructing (for there is no intermediary between wisdom and God), they possess an unchangeable immutability, all the intermediaries being entirely passed over, in which there once existed for them the danger of slipping in their knowledge. He calls "intermediaries" the essence of intelligible and sensible things, through which the human mind is naturally led up to God as the Cause of existing things. B
80. Fear, piety, and knowledge produce practical philosophy; fortitude, counsel, and understanding establish natural contemplation in the Spirit; and divine wisdom alone grants mystical theology.
81. Just as a lamp cannot be kept unextinguished without oil, so too it is impossible for the light of the gifts to be kept unextinguished without a disposition—feeding and nourishing the good things by means of appropriate words, ways, customs, thoughts, and reflections. For every spiritual gift requires a corresponding disposition, which incessantly pours into it the intelligible substance like oil, so that it may remain held fast according to the disposition of the one who has received it.
82. Just as it is impossible for true and genuine oil to be found anywhere in nature without the olive, or for it to be kept and contained without a vessel that receives the oil, and it is clearly established in the nature of things that the light of a lamp, not nourished by oil, is extinguished entirely: C so, without the divine Scriptures, there truly exists no divine power of intellect; nor, without the disposition that acts like a vessel to contain them, can any divine concept ever consist. And finally, unless the light of knowledge in the gifts is nourished by such divine perceptions and concepts, it will not remain unextinguished for those who are endowed with it.
83. I consider the Old Testament to signify the left, as it cares more for practical philosophy; but that from the right D signifies the New Testament, as a teacher of the new mystery and producer of the contemplative disposition in each of the faithful. For the former [produces] the modes of virtue, the
A truth provides reasons to those who philosophize on divine matters. And the one, snatching the mind away from the fog of visible things, leads it up to that which is akin to it, having become clean of all material imagination; but the other cleanses it of material affection, with the rigor of courage, like a hammer striking out the nails that bind the mind to the body according to that relationship.
84. The Old Testament, considered as the body, elevates B the soul through the mediation of the virtues, preventing the mind from being brought down to the body; but the New [Testament] elevates the mind to God, made winged by the fire of charity. And the former causes the body to be the same as the mind according to the position of its movement; but the latter makes the mind the same as God according to the habit of grace, having such likeness to God, that God is known through it—He who from Himself by nature is not at all known to anyone—just as the archetype is known from a certain image.
85. The Old Testament, being a symbol of action and virtue, causes the body to harmonize with the mind according to its movement; but the New, being a producer of contemplation and knowledge, brightens the mind that mystically clings to it with divine thoughts and tokens. And the Old provides the modes of the virtues to the one who is gnostic; but the New grants the reasons of true knowledge to the one who is practical.
86. God is called and becomes C Father by grace to those who have, by virtue, only that intentional birth in the Spirit; according to which, as with the face of the soul, having in their life the character of the begetting God made manifest in their virtues, they cause those who behold them to glorify God by the transformation of their way of life, offering their own lives as an excellent exemplar of virtue to them for imitation. For God is not naturally accustomed to be glorified by empty speech, but by works of justice, which proclaim the divine magnificence far more loudly than words.
87. The natural law is on the left, on account of the senses, bringing the modes of the virtues to reason and making knowledge energetic. But the spiritual law is on the right, on account of the mind; and it mixes the spiritual reasons [contained] in things with the senses, and makes action deliberate.
88. He who shows D that knowledge is embodied in action, and that action is ensouled by knowledge, has found the exact mode of true theurgy. He who...
A possesses either of these detached from the other has either rendered knowledge an insubstantial fantasy or made action a soulless idol. For knowledge without action is no different from fantasy, as it lacks the action to give it subsistence; and action without reason is like an idol, as it lacks the knowledge to give it life.
89. The mystery of our salvation makes life the exhibition of discourse and doctrine, and makes discourse the glory of life; it makes action an active contemplation, and contemplation a practical guidance toward mystery. To speak briefly, it shows that virtue is a manifestation of knowledge, and knowledge is a power that maintains virtue; and through both—I mean virtue and knowledge—it shows that one wisdom is established. By this we may know that the two Testaments are in harmony with each other in all things through grace, coming together for the completion of one mystery, just as soul and body come together by composition for the generation of one human being.
90. Just as soul and body produce a human being through composition, so action and contemplation, by coming together, accomplish one wise knowledge; and the Old and New Testament produce one mystery. For by nature only God is the Good, from whom, by participation, all things are illuminated and made good, being by nature capable of light and goodness.
91. He who reads the manifest world with his mind contemplates the intelligible world; for he shapes into the sensible realm those things that are understood, imagining them, and forms in the mind the reasons that have been contemplated. He transfers the structure of the intelligible world to the sensible level in manifold ways, and to the mind he transfers the much more complex composition of the C sensible world. He understands the sensible in the intelligible, by translating the sensible into the mind by means of reasons; and in the sensible, he understands the intelligible, by skillfully transforming the mind with the sensible through forms.
92. The prophet called the head of all virtue D [a word referring to the first] principle of divine power and operation, which was communicated to few, nor was it lacking in the Old Testament; but it is different in the way we are advanced toward deification, and the faculty for this is granted to all who have been reborn through Christ. This is the operation of the angels, through which they illuminate and perfect those who are lower, which Dionysius calls divine gifts. In the following chapter, Maximus explains clearly how wisdom proceeds from both, in which he establishes the mystery of our salvation, by which we are thus filled with divinity.
A The prophet called the head of all virtue, as it were, reason and speech, the principle and origin of all virtue; as it is written: "My head went into the clefts of the mountains." By the clefts of the mountains, he means the counsels and reasons of the most wicked spirits, by which our mind has been swallowed up through transgression; and by the lowest earth, a habit that is totally devoid of any sense of divine knowledge, or of life according to virtue, possessing no motion whatsoever. He called the abyss the ignorance incumbent upon the habit of vice, upon which it has stepped just as upon earth, or he called the earth the solid habit of vice; and the eternal bars, the passionate attachments of material things which corroborate the worst habit.
B 93. The patience of the saints consumes the wicked power that opposes it, as it persuades those who are its ministers to boast in the labors endured for the sake of the truth, and teaches them that they are to be expanded more by tribulations than by those delights in which a carnal life takes the greatest care to indulge itself; and it makes their natural weakness of the flesh in enduring evils an argument for an excellent spiritual virtue and fortitude. For see how the natural weakness of the saints is an argument of supremely divine power, by which the Lord showed the proud devil to be inferior.
94. The word of grace, through many temptations to the human race (namely the Church of the nations), just as Jonas through many afflictions having passed to Ninive, the great city, persuaded the law of nature, which was reigning, to arise from the throne—that is, from the former habit of sensing that follows after evil—and to take off its robe (I mean, to put away the pride of worldly glory in its ways), and to be clothed in sackcloth (that is, in mourning, and in the difficult and harsh discipline of hardship, befitting a life according to God), and to sit in ashes. But ashes represent the poverty of the spirit, on which every person sits who is instructed in the precepts of living piously, and who, falling, possesses the scourge of conscience for the things in which he has sinned, which lashes him.
C 95. See how he says that the king is the natural law; the throne is the passionate habit of sense; the robe, the projection of vain glory; the sackcloth, the mourning according to repentance; the ashes, humility; the men, those who are occupied with reason; the beasts, those who are occupied with desire; the oxen, those who are occupied with anger; the sheep, those who offend in the contemplation of visible things.
D 96. He who, because of the lawful virtue, forgets the passions of the flesh as if they were left-handed things, and who, because of faultless knowledge, is not caught by the disease of swelling arrogance on account of his achievements as if they were right-handed things, has become a man who does not know his right hand, as he does not desire glory which is dissolving, nor his left hand, as he is not incited by the passions of the flesh. Therefore, it seems that Scripture called the "right hand" the vain glory on account of the [false] achievements, and the "left hand," the [passion] regarding shameful...
[GREEK COLUMN] ...the passions, intemperance. For the reason of virtue does not know the sin of the flesh as something on the left; nor does the reason of knowledge know the wickedness of the soul as something on the right. 97. Truly the knowledge according to act of the cause of the virtues is naturally productive of total ignorance regarding the excess and deficiency which lie on either side of the mean of virtues, both on the right and on the left. For since nothing that is contrary to reason can by any means exist in the reason, he who has clearly been raised to the reason of the virtues will by no means recognize the mode of those things that are contrary to reason. For it is not possible to observe both opposites at the same time and in the same respect, or to know the one B while the other is simultaneously manifest. 98. If in faith there is no reason for unbelief, nor does light by nature exist as the cause of darkness, nor is it in the nature of the devil to be shown together with Christ, clearly neither does that which is contrary to reason coexist at all with reason. If, however, that which is contrary to reason cannot at all be joined to reason, he who has been raised to the reason of the virtues will by no means recognize the position of things contrary to reason, knowing virtue only as it is, and not as it is supposed to be; and for this reason he understands neither the right through excess, nor the left through deficiency. For the contrary to reason is clearly perceived in both cases. 99. By unbelief he means the denial of the commandments; by faith, the assent to them; by darkness, the ignorance of the good; by light, the knowledge of it. He has called Christ the essence and hypostasis of the good; and the devil, the worst disposition which is the generator of all evils. 100. If the definition and measure of existing things is the reason, then it is equal to irrationality, and on this account it is contrary to reason, to act beyond the definition and beyond the measure, or again to be moved above the definition and above the measure. For both of these D bring upon those who are moved in this way a falling away from that which strictly exists: the one, by persuading the movement of the course to be uncertain and indefinite, having not God as its goal—due to an intemperance of mind—as a pre-conceived end for them, while they imagine something "more right" than the right; the other, by persuading them—contrary to the goal—to make the movement of the course toward sense alone, due to a faintness of mind, thinking that which is described for them by sense is the pre-conceived end. These things are unknown to him who is not experiencing them, who is bound only to the reason of virtue, and who has defined the movement of all the power of his own mind by it, and for this reason is unable to think anything above the reason or contrary to the reason.
THE FIFTH CENTURY.
1. The reason according to nature, through the means of the virtues...
has diligence for practice, and it brings the mind and intellect readily forward; while the mind, through the cultivation of contemplation, leads the desire for knowledge toward wisdom. But the passion that is contrary to reason is the cause for one who neglects the commandments to fall headlong into the senses; the end of this passion is that the mind becomes fastened and fixed upon pleasure.
2. It calls that virtue a most passionless and stable habit concerning the good, which has nothing on either side, which bears the character of God, to which nothing is contrary. For God is the cause of the virtues; and the knowledge of Him according to activity is the changing of the spirit in habit of one who has truly recognized God.
3. If reason has defined the generation of each thing as it naturally is, no being has naturally either exceeded or fallen short of itself. Therefore, the boundary of beings is the knowledge of the Cause according to desire, and the measure is the imitation of the Cause B achievable by beings according to activity. But to be borne beyond the boundary and the measure of those things whose desire is in motion renders the course useless, since they do not arrive at God, in whom the motion of the desire of all things comes to a stand, receiving as its self-subsistent end the enjoyment of God. And to be borne aside from the boundary and measure of those things whose desire is in motion renders the course useless, for [the movers] arrive at the senses instead of God, in which the groundless enjoyment of the passions is voluptuously formed.
4. C The mind focused freely upon the Cause and Author of beings will altogether be ignorant, beholding no reason in God, who exists essentially according to every cause, being above every reason: condensed into Him from all things, it knows none of the reasons from which it has departed; it knows only that One to whom it has arrived through grace, beholding and considering Him in an inexplicable way. For the mind that has run forth into God by ecstasy lets go of the reasons of incorporeals (that is, of spirits) and of bodies. For it is not the case that any of those things which are secondary to God can be surveyed together with God.
5. D Pride is a truly grievous passion, and it consists of a composition of two evils; I mean boastfulness and vain-glory. Of these, pride denies the Author of virtue and of nature; while vain-glory adulterates both nature and virtue itself. For nothing is done by the proud man according to God, and nothing proceeds from the vain-glorious man according to nature.
6. It is a property of pride to deny God as the creator of virtue and nature; but it is a property of vain-glory to divide nature, for the sake of its diminution and suppression; of which pride (boastfulness and insolence) is wont to be the offspring; being a composite habit of malice, having this, that it spontaneously denies God, and is ignorant of the equal honor of things that are by nature.
A It has towards God contempt, by which it is apt to blasphemously attack providence; and towards nature, it possesses alienation, by which it treats all things of nature contrary to nature, destroying the beauty of nature by a way of misuse.
8. The spirit of the burning wind B signifies not only temptations, but also the forsaking of God, which is the withdrawn administration of divine gifts to the Jews. But the affinity of the soul through the spirit solves the affection of the mind towards the flesh, and binds it to God, having been attached by desire.
9. The natural law, when it has not a sense prevailing over reason, of its own accord and without any teacher, leads all men to embrace those who are related and of the same race; nature herself, of course, teaching that help is to be given to those who are in need, and that all should wish for all men that which each one deems to be agreeable if it were done to himself by others. And teaching this, the Lord says: Whatever you wish that men should do to you, do you also likewise to them.
10. He says that the work of the natural law is to provide a harmonious affection and necessity of all towards all. For in those in whom nature is governed by reason, it is natural that there should be one state of mind. And if the disposition is the same, the manner of behavior and the course of life also are clearly of such a nature as to be one. And if the manner of behavior and the course of life of those whose manners are the same, is one, it is clear that the bond of necessity of their judgment regarding each other is also one and the same, leading all by one judgment towards the one reason of nature; in which there is absolutely none of that division of nature that now prevails through self-love. C The written law, holding back the disordered impulses of the more foolish by fear of punishments, teaches and accustoms them to look only to the distribution of equality, according to which the power of justice, strengthened by time, passes into nature; so that gradually and little by little, it makes fear a disposition, quietly and by degrees strengthened by the judgment regarding the good; and indeed, habit, being brought into the forgetting of former things, and bringing forth mutual love unto itself.
11. The written law, he says, by restraining injustice through fear, accustoms [man] to the just; but custom increased by time makes an affection of the mind that is a lover of justice, from which a firm habit towards the good arises, bringing about the forgetting of previous wickedness. D
12. The law of grace, however, teaches those who are led by it to imitate God immediately, who loved us—even though we were enemies because of sin—so much more than Himself, if it is right to say so, that even...
A He deigned to come to our essence and nature without change, He who is above all essence and nature, and to consent superessentially to become man and be called one of mankind, and not to refuse to make our condemnation His own; and He deigned to deify us by grace to the same extent that He Himself became man by dispensation. This is so that we might not only learn to support one another naturally and to love one another spiritually as ourselves, but also to care for others beyond ourselves in a divine manner, and that we might provide this proof of love for one another: namely, that by virtue, one would eagerly choose a voluntary death for the sake of others. For, He says, "There is no greater love than this, that someone should lay down his life for his friend." B
13. The law of nature, to state it briefly, is natural reason that has taken sense perception as its subject, for the sake of removing irrationality; by it, the division of those things that are naturally connected is effected. The written law is natural reason which, after the removal of irrationality from sense perception, has also taken on a spiritual desire, which is the cohesive force for the kinship that binds us together. The law of grace is reason that stands above nature, unchangeably transforming nature toward deification, and showing, as in an image and C portrait within human nature, in an incomprehensible way, the archetype which is above essence and nature, and providing the endurance of eternal well-being.
14. To have one’s neighbor as oneself is to care only for his life and his existence; this is what the natural law establishes. To love one’s neighbor as oneself, and to provide for the neighbor’s well-being according to virtue, is what the written law commands. But to love one’s neighbor more than oneself is the most peculiar gift of the law of grace.
15. One who is restrained from the opportunities for bodily pleasure learns the D reasons of Providence, which holds back the ignitable matter of the passions. But he who receives the lashes of bodily pain is taught the reasons of judgment, by which Providence purifies him with involuntary sufferings from the stains he has incurred.
16. If the Word of Scripture has shown us the prophet grieving over the booth and the gourd—by which I mean the flesh and the pleasure of the flesh—while God, on the contrary, was concerned for Nineveh, it is clear that what is precious and desirable to human beings is, to God, deemed dear and far more excellent and precious than all existing things; and certainly more so than those things which do not exist and which seem to exist only by an erroneous judgment of presumption, for which there is absolutely no reason in terms of existence. They are merely a fancy tricking the mind, providing an empty figure and appearance to non-existent things, but not providing any substance of true existence to the affect or passion.
A 47. Even the precise knowledge of the oracles of the Spirit is revealed only to those who are worthy of the Spirit; those who, through diligent cultivation of the virtues, have cleansed their mind of the soot of the passions and, like a pure and clear mirror, receive the knowledge of divine things the moment they present themselves, as if a face were impressed upon them and coming upon them. But for those whose life is pricked and contaminated by the stains of the passions, it is scarcely granted to attain by conjecture even a knowledge of divine things from certain probable indications, let alone to presume to understand it precisely and declare it in words.
48. He who has received the form of the mind, which is knowledge from the virtues, in the divine Spirit, is said to undergo divine things, because he has received this not by nature, by reason of his substance, but by grace through participation. But he who has not received the knowledge that is from grace, even if he says something of a gnostic nature, does not know by experience the power of what is being said. For bare learning does not bestow knowledge as a settled habit.
B 49. The mind, having attained to the summit through the virtues, is naturally taught the reasons of the virtues, making the knowledge divinely characterized by them its own proper face. For every mind stands in itself without form and without character, having an acquired form: either the knowledge subsisting from the virtues in the Spirit, or the ignorance that supervenes from the passions.
50. Everyone who has fallen away from divine love has the law of pleasure as king within his flesh, by means of licentiousness, and is neither able nor willing to keep any divine commandment. For, having preferred the pleasure-loving life to the life and kingdom that is conducted and ruled in the Spirit of God according to virtue, he has drawn upon himself ignorance in place of knowledge.
51. He who does not pass over in his mind to the divine beauty that is within the letter of the Law in the Spirit is accustomed to give birth, from the discipline of the Law, to a pleasure-loving disposition of the mind—that is, to worldly striving and love of the world—upon the bare utterance of the words.
C 52. Shame of mouth is the pleasure-loving meditation of thoughts, according to the mind, and love of the body. For in it the world is naturally born from the bodily formation appearing in the letter of the Law, according to an act of will; that is, the disposition that loves the world, and the pleasure-loving meditation of thoughts in the mind. For that to which we are relatively disposed, to that we also possess meditation in the mind.
A 23. Or again, it is the confusion of the mouth, which brings a form to the passions, and by way of pleasure fashions beauty for the senses, that is the movement of the mind. For without the mind's faculty of invention, passion is in no way led to the fashioning of its form. It is either an anathema—that is, the earthy, ugly, and unformed incitement of passions and affections—or it is the confusion of the mouth, which creates the passion into a form for the sense, and by its inventions provides the mind’s agitation, acting as the proper matter for that passion.
24. He who believes that God, for the sake of bodily pleasure and rest, ordained by law the sacrifices, festivals, Sabbaths, and new moons, will be entirely and altogether subject to the guilt of the operation of the passions and the confusion of the foulness of the shameful thoughts held regarding them; and he will be subject to the world that is passing away, and to the pleasure-loving meditation of thoughts; and subject to the matter and form of the passions, being able to hold nothing in esteem except those things which perish.
25. He who is persuaded that to indulge in bodily delights according to the law is a divine command, accepts gluttony as a gift from God for the purpose of a shared life with joy, from which he begets modes of behavior that pollute the operation of the senses through misuse.
B 26. Since the contemplative faculty of the soul embraces pleasure according to the letter of the law as divine, because of the commandment, for a life of common fellowship, it passes on to the unnatural use of the senses, allowing no natural use of their operation to appear at all. For it begets both the habit and the act of the passions, and invites gluttony in as if it were divine, for the sake of creating modes of behavior that pollute the senses through misuse, to the destruction of the natural reasons and seeds within the things that exist.
C 27. No one who pays attention only to the bodily worship of the law could possibly receive any natural principle or reflection, because such things are not inherently of the nature of the symbols. For he who remains fixated upon the symbols of the law cannot see the nature of things according to principle, nor can he possess the principles essentially placed by the Creator in the things that exist, due to the difference between the symbols and the nature of things themselves.
D 28. He who considers his belly as God, and glories in his shame as if it were for his own glory, knows only how to embrace—with zeal for the sake of the passions of ignominy—that which he regards as divine; and for this reason, he cares only for things that are temporal, that is, for matter and form, and the fivefold operation of the senses according to misuse. For the sense, being entangled with matter and form through mixing, produces passion, and is naturally inclined to kill and destroy the principles that accord with nature. For passion and nature, according to the principle of existence, in no way coexist with one another. For it is not in the nature of passion to...
A appear entirely as a rational principle of nature, just as it is not in the nature of passion to be born together with nature according to generation, nor is it in the nature of nature to have vice, stain, and passion as its origin.
29. He who does not believe that Scripture is spiritual does not feel his own poverty regarding knowledge, but is destroyed by famine. For famine, in truth, is the lack of the good things known by that very experience and taste, and the total deficiency and scarcity of those spiritual foods that sustain the soul. For how can anyone think it a famine or a loss, when he is deprived of things the knowledge of which he never possessed at all?
30. B Truly, the people—and the soul of every individual—who have known the truth are starving, when this soul has been let go from the spiritual contemplation in grace and has become subject to the figurative bondage in the letter, not feeding the mind on the greatness of the concepts, but filling the senses C with passionate imagination, through the bodily configurations of the Scriptural symbols.
31. Whoever does not admit the spiritual contemplation of holy Scripture, has rejected along with it both the natural law and the written law according to the Jews; and he has remained ignorant of the law in grace, by which deification is given to those who are led by it. Therefore, he who receives the written law corporally does not nourish the soul with virtues; and he who does not direct his mind to the inner principles of beings does not D refresh his mind lavishly with the manifold wisdom of God; and he who does not know the great mystery of the new grace does not rejoice in the hope of future deification. Consequently, the lack of contemplation according to the written law has as its companion a poverty, such that the manifold wisdom of God, which is understood through the natural law, is not understood; and this in turn, as is necessary, follows from an ignorance of the deification granted by grace according to the new mystery.
32. Every mind in Christ that is sharp-sighted and strong in vision, always desires and seeks the face of the Lord. For the face of the Lord is established as the true contemplation and knowledge of divine things—according to the degree one is prepared by virtue—and he who seeks this learns the cause of his own deficiency and poverty. For just as the face is the distinguishing mark of each individual, so also spiritual knowledge signally represents the Divine. He who seeks this is said to seek the face of the Lord. But he who is bogged down according to the letter of the law in bloody sacrifices has a desired ignorance, towards...
A the fleshly pleasure, accepting the commandment only according to sense, and grasping at the mere husk of the letter in a corporeal manner, as is fitting for that sense.
53. He who observes the legal cult corporally generates the act of sin as if it were matter, and as if it were form, he fashions the assent of the mind to the pleasures of the senses that are agreeable to it in a material way. But he who receives Scripture spiritually destroys the act as matter, and the consent to sin as form, together with the ways of abusing the sense for pleasure, through the natural reasonings at the height of contemplation.
B 54. Matter and form—as these involve the five modes of the five senses (namely, the lustful and unnatural connection of the senses with things perceived by sense, or with those things which are subject to time and perish)—once the corporeal cult of the law according to the letter of the law has been left behind and this ignorance overcome, are handed over by the spiritual law, or the mind, to be destroyed and put to death by the superior reasons and thoughts of natural contemplation; namely, that they might abolish and destroy the most universal connection in the symbols of things subjected to time and to the reason of sense and body, raised up to the sublime axis of the spiritual contemplation of the law.
55. Without natural contemplation, no one discerns the dissonance of legal symbols from divine truths. For unless one first carefully inspects the dissonance between the divine and intelligible [realities] in the symbols by the natural reason, and, having completely excluded the sense from the divine inmost sanctuaries—leaving it outside—strives in the mind to attain their spiritual and intelligible beauty, one cannot be altogether freed from the corporeal variety of the types. C Because of this reason, as long as one walks, adhering to the letter and obsessing over it, it happens deservedly that one is not comforted in the destitution by which one suffers from hunger, for one has condemned oneself, in the manner of the seducing serpent, to eat the earth of Scripture (that is, the body); and not, with Christian nobility, to eat the heaven of Scripture (that is, the spirit and the soul, namely the heavenly and angelic bread—I mean, taking as food the spiritual contemplation and knowledge of the Scriptures in Christ, which God D generously supplies to those who love Him, according to what is written: "He gave them the bread of heaven, man ate the bread of angels" [Ps. LXXVII, 24, 25]).
56. It is necessary to consider the reception of the body of Scripture according to sense as clearly the parent of passions and of the relative disposition towards transitory and flowing things—that is, as the lustful activity of the senses towards objects of sense—as the children and descendants of Saul, through
A the aid of natural contemplation, as if on a mountain (that is, in a higher and more remote understanding of the divine oracles), we eradicate those thoughts, if we desire to be satiated by divine grace.
37. Injury is done to the truth by the law A when it is understood according to the letter alone; as does the people of the Jews, and anyone who exists as a follower of theirs in their frame of mind—those who define the power of the Law by the letter alone, and do not accept, for the manifestation of the mystical knowledge hidden in the letter, natural contemplation, which is the mean between types and truth; which leads away those who are being led by the types, and leads them back to the truth. But [such a one] as it were denies this entirely, and excludes himself from the initiation into the more secret doctrines of divine things. Therefore, it is necessary for those who are diligent lovers of divine spectacles to slay this corporeal and temporary acceptance of the Law, as being subject to time and flux, as if on a mountain, at the height of knowledge, through natural contemplation. B
38. He utterly abolishes the corporeal understanding of Scripture who, through the cultivation of action via natural contemplation, destroys the libidinous and body-loving connection and affection towards unstable and flowing matter, which has grown into the soul from the written Law; slaying, as it were, the children and descendants of Saul—that is, the base understanding of the Law—by means of natural contemplation, as on a mountain at a high summit of knowledge, and making the earlier, more corporeal understanding of the Law manifest before the Lord, specifically through confession. For this, one may understand, is what is meant by "exposing to the sun before the Lord." And "they exposed them," it says, "to the sun before the Lord": C that is, bringing into the light (by means of knowledge) the erroneous opinion that occupies the rational sense of the letter and clings to it; which is to manifest the dead letter of the Law through knowledge in the spirit (in the sublimity of contemplation).
39. The letter, he says, kills; but the spirit gives life. Therefore, that which is by nature apt to kill must be killed by the life-giving spirit. For it is utterly impossible for that which is corporeal in the Law and that which is divine—namely, the letter and the spirit—to exist together in act at the same time: because they have no capacity to agree, since one provides life by nature, and the other has the power to take it away. D
40. The spirit is indeed the provider of life; the letter, however, is the taker-away of life. Therefore, it is not possible for the letter and the spirit to exercise and exert their power at the same time, just as that which is life-giving and that which is death-dealing cannot exist together.
⟩
41. Mystical circumcision is the complete and absolute amputation of the impassioned affection of the mind toward the adventitious origin of generation. For we know that when we naturally apply our mind to things, perfection does not consist in the removal of that integrity which is from God by nature. For nature, when mutilated by art, does not attain to perfection, nor through a subtle invention does it become truncated, destroying what is divinely inherent in it by the rationale of creation, lest we introduce an art stronger than God to confirm justice, and lest we treat as a supplement of justice a deficiency in nature created by the act of creation. But rather, by the location of the member which is circumcised, we learn that the impassioned affection of the mind must be circumcised by the judgment of the soul; by the amputation of which the mind is composed, so that it may be regulated to move in accordance with nature rather than in accordance with the law of the impassioned, adventitious generation, preferring to run as a companion to nature.
42. Whatever is natural is a work of divine creation, and very good, according to the voice which says: "And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good." B But the Law, in commanding that the foreskin be cut away as unclean by the rite of circumcision, introduces God as one who corrects His own work through art, which is most impious even to think. Therefore, he who, with the help of nature, applies his mind to the symbols of the Law, understands that God does not amend nature by the aid of art, but commands us to circumcise the passible faculty of the soul that is obedient to reason—which is typically signified by the corporal member—which knowledge, by the strength of courageous action, is naturally disposed to cast off from the soul. For the priest who circumcises signifies knowledge, which possesses, as it were, a sword against passion and vice or perturbation, furnished with the strong vigor of action. For the tradition of the corporal Law is abolished, for the reason that the spirit prevails over the letter.
43. The Sabbath is a rest from passions and from the movement of the mind concerning the nature of created things; it is the perfect inactivity of the passions, and the universal cessation of the mind's motion toward the things that have been made, and a perfect passing over into the divine. He who has arrived at this through virtue and knowledge, as far as is permitted, must take care not to conceive in his mind any matter at all, as if it were kindling wood C for passions and perturbations, nor by any means to collect the logoi of nature, lest, in the manner of the Greeks, we dogmatize that God is either delighted by passions or measured by the limits of nature; whom only perfect silence proclaims, and complete ignorance according to excellence represents. D
A
44. The crown of benignity is pure faith, adorned, like precious stones and gems, by the high proclamations of dogmas and by spiritual reasons and perceptions, as if with flowers, which, like a crown, binds and encircles the religious mind. Or rather, the crown of benignity is the Word of God Himself, who, by the variety of His ways in providence and judgment (involving, namely, the restraint of those passions which arise from the will, and patience under those evils which occur against our will), encircles the mind like a head, and by the communion of the grace of deification, makes the mind itself more elegant and beautiful.
45. B Here he says that temperance is a work of Providence, as it cleanses us from the voluntary passions of the soul; patience, however, he calls a task of judgment, as it stands against involuntary temptations, and is a symbol of that part of philosophy which strives for action, leading those subject to it—as if from the Egypt of sin—to virtue.
46. Not because God desired the days to be honored by men did He command the Sabbath, the new moons, and the feasts to be observed; for thus He would have taught them to serve the creature rather than the Creator, imagining that the days were venerable by nature and therefore to be worshipped; but He indicated that the honor is to be rendered symbolically to Himself through these days. For He Himself is the Sabbath, as the rest from the toils of the soul in the flesh and the cessation of the labors of justice; and the Pascha, as the deliverer of those held in the bitter slavery of sin; and Pentecost, as the beginning and end of all things, and the principle by which all things subsist by nature. Observe how the law destroys those who understand it corporally, persuading them to serve the creature more than the Creator, and to believe those things to be venerable by nature which were made for their sake, while ignoring the One for whose sake they themselves exist.
47. C The world is a finite place and a bounded state; time, however, is a circumscribed motion, whence also the motion of those things in it, which alters according to life, has been established. But when nature, having passed beyond place and time, both in energetic action and in subtle thought (that is to say, those things without which it cannot exist, namely, finite stay and motion), immediately attaches itself to Providence, it finds Providence to be a reason by nature simple and stable, lacking every manner of circumscription or limit, and therefore possessing absolutely no motion at all. D
48. While nature exists in the world according to time...
and the other manner of rotation, so that it changes from one quality to another, it has a motion which, because it affects the senses with varying qualities, they call alteration. But when it has moved into God, because of the natural unity of the one in whom it has come to be, it will hold an unmoving rest and a stable identity of motion, A existing eternally around the same, one, and only being, which the Word knows to be immediate around the first cause, a permanent foundation of those things which were made by Him.
49. The mystery of Pentecost is the immediate union of those who are provided for with the Providence; that is, the union of nature with reason according to the concept of Providence, according to which there exists no representation whatsoever of time or generation. Again, our trumpet is the Word, as it sounds for us the divine and ineffable insights; and it is propitiation, as it dissolves our sins by becoming what we are within itself, and, by the gift of grace in the Spirit, deifies the nature that had sinned. And it is the Feast of Tabernacles, as it is the action of our unchangeableness in good according to the God-imitating habit, and the binding bond of the transmutation toward immortality.
50. He who rejoices in raw, bloody sacrifices makes those who sacrifice B intent upon the passions, as he himself is subject to them. For he who truly worships loves to rejoice in those things in which the Being he worships rejoices. Hence the Word knows as sacrifices rather the slaughter of the passions and the offering of the natural powers; of which the ram is the type of the reason, the bull bears the symbol of the irascible power, and the goat exists as the manifestation of the concupiscible.
51. We know that spiritual sacrifices are not only the mortification of the passions, being slaughtered by the sword of the Spirit, C which is the word of God (Eph. vi, 17), and the pouring out—as if it were blood—of all life in the flesh according to the purpose of the soul, but also the offering of all habits according to philosophy, and of all natural powers, as things consecrated to God, and being burnt as a whole offering by the fire of the grace in the Spirit toward the divine inheritance. D
A
52. The earthy mind of the Scripture, ruling over the soul, casts away the natural reasons, destroying and slaying them through the misuse of the faculties according to nature. For this mind, while it lives—he who defines the law by the flesh alone—truly consumes and pursues and destroys the natural reasons and thoughts, honoring as divine the passions of shame; these, the reasons according to nature, having received license from the law of the Spirit, themselves slay and kill immediately.
53. As soon as one has logically passed through the philosophy of the virtues, he has also naturally transferred the understanding of the Scriptures toward the Spirit, serving God in the newness of the Spirit practically through lofty contemplations, and not in the oldness of the letter—through that lower reception of the law according to sense toward the body—becoming a shepherd of the passions after the manner of the Jews and a devotee of sin. B
54. As soon as one ceases to receive the Scripture according to sense toward the body, he also runs back through the intermediate nature toward the Spirit according to the mind, performing spiritually those things which the Jew, performing them bodily, finds God becoming angry.
55. Every mind according to God is lofty and elevated, and at the same time it slays and destroys both the activity of the passions and the indecent motion of the thoughts; and besides these, also the intemperate ways resulting from the misuse of the activities of the senses. For the passions are destroyed by the lofty reasons of nature, being triumphed over by lofty contemplation. C
56. The power of sin, that is to say the mind of the flesh, the grace of holy baptism has the power to blot out; and the obedience to the divine commandments by deed slays with the sword of the Spirit, that is, with the word of divine knowledge in the Spirit, crying out mystically against the passion of sin, as the great Samuel [cried] to Agag: "As your sword has bereaved women of their children, so shall your mother be bereaved of children among women."
57. The passion of gluttony, as with a sword, has bereaved the virtues of their children by means of a reasoning that is perfect in pleasure. For it kills the seeds of temperance through incontinence; it corrupts the equality D of justice through insatiable and immoderate greed for possession; and it severs the bond of humanity, which is by nature, through selfishness. And to speak briefly, there are no germs of virtue which the stain of gluttony does not readily destroy.
58. The passion of gluttony is naturally inclined to destroy all the divine offspring of the virtues; but it itself is readily put to death by the grace of faith, and by obedience to the divine commandments, through the word of knowledge.
A 59. Our Lord is truly the light of the nations, revealing to them through true knowledge the eyes of the mind that were closed by the darkness of ignorance. And again, having prepared Himself as a divine guide for the faithful peoples, He became a good example of virtue, an ornate face and standard of virtue for them, looking to whom—as the author of our salvation—we accomplish the virtues by imitation, as far as it is possible for us, through the practice of action.
B 60. Whoever, out of envy, hates and malevolently slanders the one who is superior to him in the struggles of the virtues and in the abundance of the word of spiritual knowledge, is a Saul stifled by an evil spirit, unable to bear the glory of the prosperity which the greater one possesses through virtue and knowledge. And because of this, he is enraged all the more, because he cannot manage to destroy his benefactor. Often he bitterly drives away even his dearest Jonathan—I mean the natural reason within the conscience, which censures the unjust middle course and truthfully recounts the noble deeds of the one being hated.
C 61. Let us also beseech the intellectual David to strike the harp of spiritual contemplation and knowledge, so that it may sound forth to our mind—which is seized by material things—and drive away the wicked spirit of the material vicissitude toward the senses, so that we may be able to understand the law spiritually, to find the mystical word hidden within it, and to acquire it as a lasting provision for the journey of eternal life.
62. Everyone who loves salvation attends either to action or to contemplation. For without virtue and knowledge, no one has ever been able to attain salvation; since it belongs to virtue to compose the movement of the body—which, as with a bridle, skilled right reason restrains from slipping into shameful things and excess—and to contemplation, to determine the choice of what has been well understood and prudently judged.
63. Since the intellectual is that which understands, and the intelligible is that which is understood, and that which is understood is the food and, as it were, the substance of that which understands; deservedly God, seeing that spirits are minds, is Himself the intellect and, insofar as they are able to attain to Him, becomes intelligible to them, illuminating them from within so that the mind may both understand and be nourished. D
64. That which is intelligible is one thing, and that which is intellectual is another. For the intelligible, as has been said, is food for the intellectual.
The intellectual is that which is prior to the one who understands, and which is effectively contemplated. They are called intellectual, whatever, because they are minds, understand the intelligible things that are above them; for that which is contemplated is intelligible, which is also food for the intellectual, that is, for the one who understands. A
65. It must be noted that these effects have, as they can, the images of their causes. For effects are all those things that have been produced and established in the nature of things; causes, however, are those that have produced these. But there is no likeness between them (namely, of causes and effects) that is entirely exact and accurate. B
66. Between effects and causes there is no absolute likeness; but the effects indeed have, as they may chance to have, the images of their causes: the causes, however, excel the effects, and by reason of their own principle, they obtain a place superior to them. For those things which are the effects are contained abundantly and essentially in them through pre-existence.
67. Effects are all things which have been produced and established in the nature of things, whether in heaven or upon the earth: the causes, however, are those that have produced them; namely, the three persons of the most holy Trinity. It is evident, therefore, that among these (causes, that is, and effects) there is no likeness that is accurate in every respect. C
68. It must be noted that our mind is endowed with a faculty by which it sees intelligible things; but it is also endowed with a power of union, which raises it higher than the nature of the mind, by which it is joined to things that are superior to itself. According to this, therefore, it is necessary that we should understand divine things, not in a human manner; but in such a way that we, being wholly outside ourselves, may become wholly of God. For it is better to be of God than to be of ourselves. For thus will divine things be given to those who shall remain with God. D
69. The mind, wishing to understand and to think, descends below itself, lowering itself to intellections or thoughts. For intellections are inferior to the one who understands, as they are understood and grasped, and they rightly become a dissipation and division of the unity of the mind itself. For the mind is simple and undivided; but intellections and the thoughts of the soul are altogether multiple and dissipated, and—
B it is precisely the rational [union] of the mind that he speaks of, as he explains more clearly in what follows, by which it extends itself toward those things that are beyond the intelligible—that is to say, it applies itself to the contemplation of God. This is to stand outside of all things sensible and intelligible, and further, even outside of one’s own motion; and in this way to receive the ray of divine knowledge.
70. If it moves according to its own nature intellectually, the intellectual [being] also entirely understands and thinks. But if it understands and thinks, it undoubtedly also loves what is understood and thought. And if it loves, it altogether suffers an ecstasy toward it, as toward an object of love. But if it suffers [this ecstasy], it is clear that it also hastens; and if it hastens, it altogether intensifies the vehemence of its motion. Now if it intensely intensifies its motion, it does not stop until it has become entirely in the entire object of its love, and has been voluntarily embraced by the whole, and has received the salutary circumscription according to its intention, so that it may be entirely made one with that which encompasses it, such that it no longer wishes to be known as that which is circumscribed apart from itself, but rather from that which encompasses it—just as air is entirely permeated by light, and iron is entirely ignited by fire, or whatever else of this kind there may be.
C 71. Great is the relationship between those who think and the objects of their thought, and between those who perceive and the objects of their perception. But man, consisting of soul and body, endowed with the power of perception, is circumscribed and also circumscribes through the natural relationship and property that he has in turn with each of the parts of creation: the former by substance, the latter by power. For he is circumscribed by things intelligible and sensible as one who is soul and body, and he is naturally capable of circumscribing these by power, as one who thinks and perceives. But God is simply and immensely above all things, both those that contain and those that are contained, being entirely absolute and unrelated to all.
D 72. Every pleasure in forbidden things is naturally produced by passion through the mediation of sense perception toward some sensible object. For pleasure is nothing other than a species and form of the faculty of perception, fashioned in the percipient by some sensible object, or a mode of sensory operation consisting in irrational desire. For desire, when added to perception, passes over into pleasure, bringing upon it a form; and perception, moved by desire and having taken hold of the sensible object, produces pleasure. The saints, therefore, knowing that the soul, while moving unnaturally toward material things through the mediation of the flesh, takes on an earthen form, thought it worthwhile that they, through the mediation of the soul itself moving naturally toward God, should also reconcile the flesh to God in a manner befitting Him, by adorning it as much as possible with divine images through the practice of the virtues.
73. Nobly do the saints, in accordance with the true and
stumbling block to the A way of movement according to nature, they have passed through the present age of the arena; having united sensation, simple through the medium of the Word, with the mind which holds the underlying reasons of all things; and having offered to God the mind, now purely liberated from all movement regarding existing things, and remaining at rest even from its own natural operation; by which, being gathered wholly toward God, they were deemed worthy to be blended, whole with the whole God, through the Spirit, bearing the entire image of the heavenly according to the strength given to men, and drawing to themselves as much of the divine manifestation—if it is permitted to say this—as they themselves, being drawn, were placed in God.
74. They say that God and man are B examples to one another, and that God becomes man through philanthropy as much as man, through love, has been able to deify himself unto God; and that man is snatched up by God according to the mind toward the Knowable as much as man has manifested the God who is by nature invisible through the virtues.
75. Whoever has mortified the members which are upon the earth, and has extinguished every sense of the flesh in himself, and has cast off entirely the affection by which he was held bound to it—through which the love owed to God alone is divided within us in parts—and has denied all the marks of the flesh and the world for the sake of divine grace, so as to be able to say with the blessed Apostle Paul, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" and the following; C such a one has become without father, without mother, and without genealogy, according to the great Melchizedek, not having anything by which he might be held by flesh and nature, because of the union which has happened to him with the Spirit.
76. I do not think it right to call the end of the present life death, but rather removal from death, and separation from corruption, and freedom from slavery, and a cessation of disturbance, and an abolition of wars, and a retreat of darkness, and a relief from toils, and a calm after the heat, and a concealment of confusion, and an escape from affects and perturbations; and, to express it all in a summary, the termination and limit of all evils, by which the saints, having strenuously fulfilled their voluntary mortification, showed themselves strangers and sojourners in this life. For as they fought bravely against the world and the body, and the things that D rise up from them, and choked out the deception that arises on both sides from the interaction and connection of the senses with sensible things, they preserved for themselves the dignity of the soul in inviolable freedom.
77. As no small proof that the knowledge of providence is engrafted in us by nature, nature itself implies, while...
A teaching us, that in sudden accidents it impels us to flee to God with prayers, and instructs us to seek salvation from thence. For, being suddenly seized by necessity, without any counsel of reason or prior deliberation, we invoke God; as though providence itself were drawing us to itself, without any reasonings, surpassing in us the speed of our intellectual power, and showing forth divinely-given help as more powerful than all things. And nature would not lead us, contrary to our choice, to become that which it does not have by nature; but everything that follows naturally, as is manifest to all, holds a strong and irrefragable power in the demonstration of the truth.
78. B Since, of existing things, some are good and others evil; and these are either present or future; that which is a future good it calls desire; but that which is present, pleasure. And again, a future evil it calls fear; but a present one, sorrow. So that it is both held and considered—concerning good things, whether they are truly existing or only thought to be so—to be pleasure and desire; but concerning evil things, sorrow and fear. For when desire attains its object, it produces pleasure; but when it fails, it produces sorrow.
79. They say that every sorrow is evil by its own nature. C For even if the man of virtue is sorrowful at the misfortunes of others, as one who is merciful, he is not so primarily by intention, but consequentially according to the circumstance; yet he who is advanced in contemplation remains impassible even in these things, having joined himself to God and alienated himself from all things here.
80. All the saints, having genuinely taken hold of the divine and unerring Word, have passed through this age, leaving no trace of the soul upon any of the things that delight in it. For, having very reasonably opened up their mind towards the highest discourses about God which are accessible to men—I mean those of goodness and love—they were instructed by these as to why God, having been moved, deigned to give to those things that exist both their being and their well-being; if indeed it is right to use the word "motion" in regard to God, who alone is D immovable, and not rather "will," which moves all things and brings them forth into being and holds them together, while Itself, however, admits no motion at all, ever.
81. The soul, being an intellectual and rational substance, both understands and reasons; having the mind as its power, intellection as its motion, and the concept as its energy. For this is the limit of the knowledge of both the one who understands and that which is understood, as it exists as a limit of the relation of the extremes to one another. Understanding...
A the perceiving soul, after the intellection of the thing understood, brings an end to its intellection. For that which has been properly and truly understood once does not further incite the power of the soul to understand; and thus, in every concept, it finds rest from such an intellection in the concept of the understood thing.
82. Just as ignorance is divisive for those who have gone astray, so the presence of intelligible light is a gathering and unifying thing for those who are illuminated, and it is a perfecting and converting thing, turning them from the many opinions to that which truly exists, and gathering the varied visions—or, to speak more truly, the imaginations of the informing soul—into one true, pure, and uniform knowledge, and filling them with the one and unifying light.
83. The beautiful and the good are the same, because all things long for the beautiful and good by every cause, and there is nothing among existing things that does not partake of the beautiful and good. For to all, what is beautiful and good is truly admirable, desirable, lovable, pleasing, choiceworthy, and most dear. Observe, moreover, how divine love, preexisting in the Good, has generated in us a good love, by which we desire the beautiful and good, according to him who says: "I became a lover of her beauty" B. And, "Love her, and she will guard you; surround yourself with her, and she will exalt you."
84. The theologians sometimes call the Divine "love" (eros), sometimes "charity" (agape), and sometimes "the lovable" (eraston) and "the beloved" (agapēton). Therefore, insofar as it is love and charity, it is moved; but insofar as it is the lovable and the beloved, it draws to itself all things capable of love and charity. And to speak more clearly again, it is moved insofar as it produces an internal affection C of love and charity in those who are capable of them; but it moves insofar as it has by nature the power of drawing the desire of those who are moved toward it. And again, it moves and is moved, as one who thirsts to be thirsted for, and who loves to be loved, and who cherishes to be cherished.
85. Divine love is also ecstatic, not allowing those who love to be their own, but rather to be of those they love. This is demonstrated by the higher things, when they become the providers for the lower; D and by the things of the same order, by their mutual coherence; and finally, by the lower things, through a divinier conversion to those things which are first. Therefore, also the great Paul, having been seized by divine love and having become a participant in its power which causes ecstasy, says with a divine mouth: "I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me"; as
a true lover, and one who has gone out of himself
to God, as he himself says, no longer living his own life, but the life of the beloved, as one most dear.86. One must also dare to say this on behalf of the truth:
A that even the Author of all things himself, through the love of the good and beautiful of all things, because of the excess of his erotic goodness, goes out of himself in his providences for all existing things, and is, as it were, charmed by goodness and affection and love; and from that which is above all things and set apart from all, he descends to what is in all things according to an ecstatic, superessential power, remaining unchanged in himself. B Therefore, those skilled in divine things call him a "zealot," as one who is great in love toward existing things, and as one who stirs up the desire of his own erotic longing, and as one who shows himself to be a zealot, to whom even the things desired are things to be sought with zeal, and as one who is a zealot for the things that are cared for by him.
87. They say that he, meaning God, is the producer and parent of love and desire. For he brought forth into the outside, that is, toward created things, these things which were in him. And according to this it is said, "God is love." And again, "Sweetness and desire," which is love; but the beloved and truly lovable object is he himself. C Therefore, because the love that loves [the affection of love] flows forth from him, he himself is said to be moved, as its parent. But because he himself is the true lovable, beloved, desirable, and choiceworthy object, he moves those that look toward him; and those in whom there is the power of desiring, [he moves] in proportion to their reason and capacity.
88. Consider God, then, for me as being productive and kinetic toward erotic union in the Spirit—that is, as the mediator of this and the one who fits and composes [the soul] for it, so that he might be loved and cherished by his own creatures. He says "kinetic," as one who moves each thing according to its own rationale, so that they return to him. The name "procession," even if among the outsiders it signifies an impure thing, here denotes the mediation which brings about the union D that is in God.
89. The erotic motion of the Good, pre-existing in the Good, being simple and motionless—and proceeding from the Good, it returns again to the same, being endless and without beginning; which signifies our ever-moving desire toward the divine and union
with it.
A For the loving union with God is raised above and surpasses every [other] union. 90. Whether we call it divine, or angelic, or intellectual, or psychic, or natural love, let us understand it as a power of union and, as it were, of mixture that moves higher things to provide for the lower; that binds those of the same order into a mutual fellowship; and, finally, that moves the lower things to turn back toward those that are higher and superior.
91. Since it is in the nature of knowledge and understanding to unite those who know with the things that are known, while ignorance is always the parent of change and, for the one who does not know, the cause of division, nothing will move the one who has believed according to the holy Scripture from the firmness and constancy of the faith; in which, remaining immobile B and immutable, he will possess the perpetuity of identity. For he who adheres to the truth knows well that he is in the right, even if the crowd rebukes him as one who is deranged and has lost his senses. It escapes them, as is natural, that he has passed from error to the truth of the faith which truly exists; and he knows—not that he is carried away by madness and frenzy, as they say—but that he has gained freedom from the inconstant and mutable agitation regarding the all-encompassing variety of error, through the simple truth that always remains the same and in the same way.
92. The saints have shone forth C remarkably in goodness, humanity, mercy, and clemency; and from this they have appeared endowed with a single affection of love toward the entire human race. By the gift of this love, they have possessed throughout their whole life that which is the most excellent kind of good—I mean humility—the guardian of goods and the destroyer of their opposites. Because of this, they were not able to be conquered by any trouble of temptations at all; neither those that arise from the will and the judgment of reason, nor those that are brought upon us unwillingly by some external agent. For the former were crushed and extinguished through self-control; while the assaults of the latter were repelled and moved aside through patience.
93. Sincere fear of God produces the perfect action of virtue; steady hope and pure understanding of the mind produce the natural speculation of truth through ascent; D while perfect love and the mind, which is utterly blind according to excellence to all things [that are beneath God], produce the deification that comes through assumption.
94. They say that the work of philosophy which cultivates action is to render the mind pure from every lustful thought; that of natural speculation, to instruct it in the true knowledge of all things according to the cause by which they exist; and that of theological initiation, to render the mind like and equal to God, as far as is granted to man, by grace according to habit; he already—as far as concerns things that are secondary to God—
is devoid of all sense and knowledge, by reason of his eminence.
A 45. What the ether, or fiery element, is in the perceptible world, this is prudence in the world of the mind, as an illuminating habit and one receptive of the spiritual reasons existing peculiarly in each of the beings, manifesting through them the Cause that is in all things without error, and alluring the soul toward desire for the Divine. And what the air is in the perceptible world, this is fortitude in the world of the mind, as a habit that is motive and both sustaining and effective of the innate life according to the Spirit, and one that invigorates the soul’s ceaseless motion toward the Divine. And what water is in the perceptible world, this is temperance in the world of the mind, being a habit that is productive of vital fecundity in the Spirit, and generative of the irresistible amorous charm toward the Divine in its desire. And what earth is in the perceptible world, this is justice in the world of the mind; namely, a habit that is generative according to form of all the reasons in existing things, and a distributer of vital distribution in the Spirit equally to each, and an immovable foundation B of its own position in the Good.
46. Just as, when the flesh is in good health and grows fat, the soul is tormented and darkened by the passions, as the habit of the virtues and the illumination of knowledge withdraw; so too, when the soul is guarded and brightened by the Divine beauty of the virtues and the illumination of knowledge, the outer man is corrupted, the flesh losing its natural good health through the arrival of the Word.
47. It was not possible for the man who was born to be shown to be a son of God and God C by the deification of grace, without having first been born in the Spirit by a disposition of the will, because of the power inborn in him by nature that is self-moving and subject to no master. Leaving aside this deifying and divine and other birth, because he preferred the delight of the senses and what is manifest to the goods that are understood by the mind and are as yet unseen, the first man is condemned to have a birth from bodies that is of necessity non-voluntary, material, and perishable. D
A Movement of the human mind occurs either concerning the passions that are irrational through deception on account of love of pleasure; or concerning the rules of the arts through circumstance, on account of necessity; or concerning the rational principles of nature through the law of nature, on account of instruction. None of these, however, was drawing man by necessity at the beginning, for he was rightly created superior to all things. For thus it was fitting that he who was from the beginning should be, so that he would be distracted by nothing at all of those things that were secondary to him, or near him, or that otherwise looked toward him; and that he should have need of only one thing for his perfection: namely, to strive toward God, who is superior to him, with the entire free and unhindered power of his loving motion.
99. The first man had nothing placed between God and himself for knowledge, which would act as an impediment to the motion of the soul toward God, which is free through love. For since by divine gift he was subject to no passions, he did not admit the seduction of lascivious thoughts through the enticement of pleasure; and since he was in need of nothing, he was free from the cultivation of the arts, by which the necessities of life are wont to be provided. Finally, since he was shining with wisdom, through which knowledge radiates, he was superior to natural contemplation.
100. God, who established every nature with wisdom, and who secretly implanted the knowledge of Himself into the power of each of the rational essences according to its measure and capacity, has also given to us men, as a most magnificent Master, a natural desire and love for Himself, naturally implicating within it the power of reason, by which it may be easy to attain to the ways by which to fulfill that desire, and to take care that we do not fall away through error from that which we strive to attain. Urged on, therefore, by this desire, we are led to seek those things which pertain to the truth, and to the wisdom and governance that shine forth in all things in a composite order; striving through these to attain Him, for the sake of whom we received the desire and the love. B C
The end of the divine chapters of Maximus.
(s) "Through circumstance." Maximus calls "circumstance" the necessity arising from the very conditions of mortal life and its various accidents—which human ingenuity strives to alleviate by the rules of art. This is, indeed, the very indigence which he excludes from the happiness of the first state. Where Picus errs—and where "through circumstance" is poorly edited as "when he was in need"—this logic is not that which absolves one from the care of the arts, but rather that which adds to it. Other matters formerly pointed out to me in other, not very good interpreters of Maximus, by the elision of a single letter or syllable, by the prone fall of a hastening scribe's hand, dissolve what is openly contrary to Scripture, and the contrary of which is seriously noted by Maximus.
NOTICE
Concerning the two hundred and forty-three chapters of Maximus, from the Roman Vatican codex
These chapters are entirely close to the four hundred [chapters] on charity, if not indeed twin or even superior to them. Their character is the same as those, much praised by Photius: perspicuity, brevity of sentence, no allegories. Everything is of such a kind that it redolences the highest erudition with equal piety, and truly reveals the greatest master of morals and the highest guide and preceptor of all Christian life and of perfection in it; which the antiquarian hints at by the iambic work prefixed to it. Straightway at the first word it must be amended, for it is written thus, and it must be replaced: for Maximus does not speak of a matter that is merely permitted, but of that which is incumbent and a matter of duty, that so you ought to be solicitous when you are a believer.
MAXIMUS THE MONK TO THEOPEMPTUS THE SCHOLASTIC AConcerning the one who had asked about the judge of iniquity; and concerning the word, "If anyone shall strike you on the right cheek"; and concerning the word, "Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father."
To those for whom the Word is that which is worshipped, to them also is life the manifestor of the Word, which is that which is fulfilled; so that, having taken the seal of true knowledge from the execution of the act, they might learn from those things which they have suffered, as is fitting, how much greater to become is than to know; and more so, that [this continues] ever and always, until their unhesitating assimilation to the Cause is brought to completion, circumscribing movement with rest and investigation with the immutability of the will; to whom also, as a reward for such a life and deiform moral conduct, the divinization that follows grace is given back. At these things, you yourself very wisely directing your life, O God-preserved master, hasten to seek that which is proposed to all by reason of goodness, and which escapes all by reason of its infinity; the one, in order that it may draw [the soul] to itself, pricking the desire with the impossibility of its beauty; the other, in order that it may temper, with the awe of the infinite and divine excellence, the arrogance—that father of insolence and offspring of distraction—of those who do not foresee the flaming sword placed and turning with the Cherubim, which turns to no others but those who turn to virtue without fear; hence, by the magnitude of the progress toward the good, it extends the moderate man, by which you have also caused the advance to grow with safety. B You have deigned to recognize me, who was unknown and humble, through that which provided a manner of behavior to those who were in that state; I mean, by the letter. The word is the connector of those absent, and the manifestor of those unseen; it transmits and joins the [one] not yet known to sense as much in understanding as it is itself impressed and thickened and embodied through this [the letter]; by which you have even led my nothingness into a desire for your own [person] more than you have stirred your own vision immaterially; having shown that he possesses an equality with respect to the word in both of these, or rather, [that you possess] the superiorities of the word beyond others for your sake; by which things [you are] adorned through life. C And you have deigned—... D
A in some way to urge my dim-sightedness toward contemplation, and that of sacred words, the transition to which is greater than human, [for one] who has not yet completely transcended the nature and generation of unstable and divisible things; and much less for me, who am willingly wallowing in the refuse of these and, like a worm, am rolling and delighting in the decay of impure passions. Nevertheless, for the sake of obedience, and in honor of your love, I shall speak beyond my worth of those things concerning which you have commanded me; [I shall speak] conjecturally, however, and not as if I myself were issuing a formal judgment.
I believe that the judge of iniquity in the Gospel, in the figurative manner of speaking and by way of parable, signifies and is called our own mind, which from the beginning, through transgression, made an B unjust judgment; for it did not accept the commandment of the Creator, but chose the counsel of the corrupter; from which it preferred being earthly—to being, and to becoming divine—by a great deal. And I understand its city to be the senses, or the visible world, in which, resting with demented counsel out of lust, it has changed its habitation and fixed dwelling; fearing neither God, nor indeed revering the same whom [He] became man for our sake; the former, out of dementia and pride; the latter, however, out of contempt; of which—the [dementia] that is, and pride—it does not foresee the magnitude of the judgments; while this one (that is, contempt) [does not foresee] how far the kindness, waiting for a change, holds back and does not avert the severity and punishment; into which it has rashly and impudently inserted itself, having misused the honor given by the Author for the fulfillment of duties—contrary to all right and beyond the scope of duty—in the appearance of free will, having judged that which is apparent to the eye of the mind and truly is [good] to be more desirable C than that which is held by the mind to be the [true] good, a thing which is not permitted.
I understand the widow who is importuning to be the rational soul, since she is destitute of the word that naturally sows good things, for the production of holy and divine fruits. She is held only by this total and full love and disposition toward Him; yet she does not wait for [Him] because of the tasting, and her self-willed inclination toward things here below.
I accept her adversary—that is, of the soul—to be the earthly movement and the sense and the worldly wisdom of the wretched flesh, through which the impure demons strive to pollute the beauty of the divine image in us and its dignity, and to darken its brightness, D whenever, through lust, they fall upon us and cruelly inject into us the shames and passions of dishonor; on account of which also death was condemned upon nature, not having willed from the beginning to enjoy the life that truly is.
I consider the blows to be the lashings of conscience with a certain silent, admonishing cry; which, proceeding from the soul and growing ever-increasingly within it, the austerity of the mind is accustomed by degrees to be softened in some way, and against things good, because of the longer-lasting habit, unyielding, not...
being able to endure the torment that lies hidden within and lashes and persists, A so long, that is, as the affections and lusts, which ruin the soul, are not destroyed by self-control and the voluntarily assumed mortification of the bodily members. And from there, he may proceed to the kinship of the Word himself through piety and more perfect diligence regarding those things which are better; to which, as they are naturally performed, the Lord our God Jesus Christ, who is above essence and nature, compared his own proper and paternal works. "And shall God," he says, "not do justice for you?"—by me, forsooth, who became incarnate, and who perform the destruction of the destroyer of nature.
Thus, then, I have briefly gone through these matters, B as far as the measure of my mind has sufficed, even though others have understood this passage differently, and some have interpreted part of it regarding Christ, and part of it, conversely, regarding Antichrist. But I am fearful and deterred from either understanding or saying both: the former, because it rejects all comparison; for the vengeance is not less in the Son and greater in the Father, or through another, and of a completely different sort from that of the Son. But in what way, when it is the same, does he say, *And shall God not do justice for you*, as if by way of comparison? For it has no place, nor will it be shown to be completely different, and endowed with a nature unable to perform the same; and therefore, it is not placed in the same order, but only C as if representing an eminent image, and representing that which excels. The latter, however, must in no way be admitted, nor does the matter allow it, that the author and inventor and teacher of malice be thought to perform good: *For an evil tree*, he says, *cannot bring forth good fruit*; but vengeance is a good thing, and a just function, to relieve and ward off the annoyance of one who approaches. Or perhaps, that we should assert (which is blasphemy) that the Father is like the Antichrist, through the Son, and that he is the only-begotten, and equal in nature and goodness, the author of all virtue and life. For it is not naturally comparable that good and honest things should be marked by the type of those things which are evil; just as neither light through darkness, nor life through death, nor what is through that which is not at all. And I do not say these things to reject their teaching—for I hold and cling to life more than to the teaching of those who say these things—but I am guarding my own mediocrity out of extreme fear. D However, to regulate the reading of *hypopiazein* is not befitting for me, on account of my ignorance in these things, or for those who are learned and have chosen to set their mind on education; for they say that it ought to be regulated with a circumflex accent rather than an acute, because they say that none of the words have a circumflex, unless it came to be from a contracted barytone, as in *noō*, and *poiō*, and *chrysō*, and all such things, preserving the accent on the same syllable even with a preposition. They say that no word is circumflexed, except what is created by contraction from a barytone; with a preposition they preserve the accent on the same.
639 By the right cheek, I mean the right action, and whatever brings success, and, in short, the entire life given to us by God, supported by the observance of the commandments, [struck by the evil one...]
who uses the opinion [of good and honest work ] to strike [the soul]; and hence the wound of pride arising through vainglory [inflates ] against those who possess no virtue, or perhaps an inferior one; [it raises them up ] as if with inflammation. To counter this evil, it is worth our while to turn to another remedy: namely, the life that previously defiled us through the error of this world, so that we may be struck by the constant memory of it, and so be humbled and modest as sinners, rather than puffed up as saints – and collapse through pride, lacking the holy foundation of humility. Let us also honor [those things that are grasped by contemplation]; or rather, even before these, for the sake of holy preparation and prior purification, let us perform these things bodily, for the sake of the Lord who commanded them. From this, He bestows upon those who succeed the habit of gentleness B and the refutation of the unbelief of the one striking; for by the ready and prompt constancy of the one receiving the blow, the eagerness of the one striking is blunted, who perhaps respects, if nothing else, the excess of the submission; and he does not resist at all, being one who has the power to do this, but acts out of the command.
"Touch me not," spoken to Mary Magdalene
The saying, *Touch me not*, was spoken by the Lord to Mary Magdalene, when she supposed him to be the gardener; this mystery signifies and indicates that every rational soul, not yet having transcended the composite tabernacle and therefore supposing the Word, the Creator, to be among those things which come into being and perish C (which differ in no way from garden herbs—for in both is the same flow and reflux, and the definition and period of time) on account of his progression and condescension towards these things and unto these, is not worthy to touch him in spirit, and that while she seeks him among those things which fall under sight, and recognizes the flesh that came to be for our sake, but does not duly recognize him also as God born of God the Father. For this is what the saying, *I have not yet ascended to my Father*, suggests, as a likely thought: that the soul D so disposed has not been elevated either by supreme theology or by faith, by which the nature of visible things is circumscribed, but still is in need, as if under a pedagogue leading it to a more perfect comprehension of him (namely, the habit of the revelation of divine things), of ascending as if to Galilee through contemplation; and with the words pre-typed and set forth by him, to comprehend the whole as far as is lawful, and to become such as he was, who became what we are, as much as this was shown to have come to be, apart from sin alone; just as we too, with him, apart from nature alone, when we might attain the gift; which [soul], now awaiting it through the grace of hope, and adorning it worthily with the proper works of the commandments, may enjoy as much as you have believed, and delight, as much as you have labored; or rather, even more and countless times, inasmuch as the Giver of this gift surpasses both the mode of nature and the movement of the senses, and the comprehension of every age in His superessential excellence.
OTHER CHAPTERS OF OUR HOLY FATHER MAXIMUS
OTHER CHAPTERS OF OUR HOLY FATHER MAXIMUS
AVERSES The flowing fountain of moral dews of discourse, You shall find here, if you read with a sincere heart, The labors of Maximus the Confessor, O friend. Embrace them, and you shall learn their profit.
1. Anyone who rightly believes in God ought not to be free from care, but always to be expecting and awaiting temptation; so that when it comes, he may not be taken by surprise or troubled, but, poured out in thanksgiving, may patiently bear the vexation and labor of affliction, and thoughtfully consider what he says while chanting with the Prophet: "Prove me, O Lord, and try me" (Ps. xxv, 2). And he did not say, "Thy discipline has destroyed me," but, "It has set me straight unto the end" (Ps. xvii, 36). B
2. The beginning of what is good is the fear of God: the end, however, is His love. The beginning of every good thing is a word supported by action, and an action instructed by a word. Wherefore, neither is an action good without a word, nor a word itself—that which proceeds forth—without an action. C
3. Action is, for the body, fasting and vigils; for the mouth, psalmody; but better than psalmody is prayer; and silence is more precious than a word. Also the action of the hands is that which is performed by them without murmuring. Of the feet, it is that which is done by them immediately upon the first command. The action of the soul is continence with simplicity, and simplicity rendered effective by continence. The action of the mind, finally, which is in contemplation, is prayer; and that which is in prayer, is the contemplation of God.
4. Going before all virtues are mercy and truth, the offspring of which is humility, and the discernment which comes from this according to the Fathers. If this be lacking, neither of the others will be able to see its own end. D
5. Action, spurning the yoke of the word and of reason, hither...
and thither wanders, like a heifer roaming about, and is found; but the word, having cast off the precious garment of action, does not shine with a suitable adornment, even if in appearance it seems to prefer such a thing. B 6. A brave soul, like a woman throughout her whole life, having two lamps burning—that is of action and of contemplation—performs its duties; but, on the contrary, he who is soft and remiss by pleasures [does the opposite]. 7. It does not suffice for the soul toward a perfect departure from evil, that suffering be voluntarily assumed, unless it be also refined through that which occurs involuntarily, like fire in a furnace, so that it may not dissolve. 8. Like a sword is the soul toward a perfect departure from evil; unless it passes through fire and water—that is, voluntary and involuntary labors—it will not be preserved inviolable against the crashing blows of things that happen. 9. Just as of voluntary temptations there exist three more universal causes: health, wealth, and glory or fame; so also of those that befall the unwilling and are caused by an exterior agent, there are likewise three causes: the loss of goods or damages, infirmities, and reproach or abuse. These things, however, befall some unto edification, but others unto destruction. 10. There spring up, as it were, certain offshoots: in the soul, namely, desire and sadness; but in the body, pleasure and pain. The cause, however, of pain is truly pleasure. For while we wish to avoid the burdensome sensation of pain, we flee toward pleasure: the cause of sadness or gloom, however, is desire or sickness. C 11. The virtuous man possesses the good as something internal, stored deep in his soul; but he who labors for vain glory has it merely thought of. The virtuous man, however, possesses evil only as if on the surface; but the lover of pleasure and the one devoted to it has it fixed deep in his breast. 12. He who hates evil is found to be engaged in it only rarely and not diligently; but he who is still affected by its causes is engaged in it more frequently and more attentively. 13. To those for whom repentance is not according to a settled purpose, sinning is also continuous; but to those for whom sinning is against their purpose, repentance is fully assured, and the cause of this is not frequent. D 14. Let sense and conscience be companions to the spoken word—that is, to the divine word, who said that He would be in their midst—so that he who has spoken may not blush on account of the impudence...
or the lack of measure in what is said or done.
15. He who does not wrong his soul by his deeds has not necessarily kept it undefiled by his words. Nor has he who keeps his tongue guarded necessarily not defiled his thoughts; for sin happens in this threefold manner.
16. You will not be able to see the face of virtue while you still take pleasure in contemplating vice. The latter will appear hateful only when you desire the taste of the former, and have estranged your sight from such a form.
17. It is by thoughts, and not principally by material things, that the demons war against the soul. For material things in themselves are necessary things; and of material things, the cause is hearing and sight, but of thoughts, the cause is habit and the demons. B
18. The part of the soul that can sin is threefold, being found in deeds, words, and thoughts. But the good of non-sinning is sixfold. For it is necessary to keep the five senses and the spoken word blameless. "In which he who does not stumble," it says, "is a perfect man, able also to bridle the body's members." (Jas. III, 2).
19. The irrational part of the soul is divided into six: into the five senses and the spoken word, which is divided together with the one suffering, remaining itself without passion; yet it takes on its vice when it is found to be subject to passion. C
20. Neither can the body be purified without fasting and vigils, nor the soul without mercy and truth; nor even the mind without contemplation and the conversation of God. For these are the most eminent pairings in these.
21. The soul, by circulating through the aforementioned virtues, makes its fortress impregnable from temptations; this is patience. For the Word says: "In your patience, possess your souls" (Luke XXI, 19). But if it were otherwise, like an unwalled city, it would be accustomed to being shaken violently by the bars of fear, even by outcries from far away. D
22. Not all who are prudent in matters of the word are also prudent in matters of the mind; but all who are prudent in matters of the mind will also be found prudent in matters of exterior perception. For even if perception has all things as tributaries, it does not receive the same tributes from them. For most, out of simplicity, do not know how to cultivate it as it itself desires.
23. While prudence is indivisible by nature, it is cut into different divisions. For to one is given a greater portion, and to another a lesser portion of it, until, once the active virtue has grown, and it has obtained the general virtues that converge with it, it fulfills what is possible for each...
A [24.] In those things which are according to nature, few are found to be prudent; but in those things that are contrary to nature, many. For, because of the fear that exists regarding them, having emptied out their entire natural prudence, they have but little prudence there, and the greatest part is occupied with superfluous things, which are not praiseworthy by nature.
[25.] Of reasonable silence, opportunity and measure are the fellow-feasters; and the banquet of this is truth, through which the father of lies, coming to a soul that is journeying abroad, finds nothing of the things he was seeking.
[26.] He is truly merciful who does not voluntarily provide superfluous things, but who grants necessary things to those who rob him.
[27.] Some, by means of earthly riches, acquire spiritual riches after the manner of almsgiving; others, by means of spiritual riches, renounce earthly ones, having perceived the taste of those that are incorruptible.
[28.] It is dear to everyone to be wealthy in good things; but it is painful to him who has been enriched by God, if he is not permitted to enjoy and delight in them for a long time.
[29.] Outwardly, the soul appears to be in health; but inwardly, at the very depth of its feeling, its infirmity lies hidden. If, therefore, it is entirely the case that it is so constituted that it proceeds outwardly through the cleansing of reproofs, and inwardly through the renewal of the mind, he is a fool who rejects reproofs, and who is not ashamed to lie forever in the hospital of insensibility B.
[30.] Do not be angry against him who unwillingly treats you with reproof; but rather, turning your eyes to the unpleasantness that has been purged away, lament yourself, and magnify God as the author of this dispensation and care for you.
[31.] Do not despond in your heart at the gravity of your infirmity; but through the diligent preparation and effort of more effective remedies, keep far from it, you who concern yourself with the health of the soul.
[32.] Do not shrink from him who strikes you at the proper time; but approach him, and he will show you where the evil that is scraping at your feeling lies hidden, and you shall consume the sweet food that comes from health, after the discardable stuff of bitterness has been consumed.
[33.] As much as you feel the pains, so much accept him who points them out to you as if with a finger through his reproofs. For he becomes for you the cause of perfect purification.
A without, the mind cannot exist in a pure place of prayer.
34. When one is being reproved, he must be silent; or, he should mildly excuse himself to the one who is telling him—not so that the one being reproved may establish his own position, but so that he may raise up the one who perhaps offends by reproving out of ignorance.
35. He who is well-disposed towards the one who unjustly causes him pain, before he is called upon by him, has suffered no loss of duty. But he who does so after the invitation loses half of the profit. However, he who is never found to be excluded from the communion of love due to grief gains all that was previously sown; and he who casts the fault upon himself in all things adds a reward to himself. B
36. Neither does the proud man know what his own defects are, nor does the humble man know his own good qualities. For, in the one case, foul ignorance hides them; in the other, they are hidden because they are acceptable to God.
37. The proud man does not wish to be measured against his equals in good things; but in contrary and evil things, he considers his own fault—when compared with those who excel—to be absolutely tolerable.
38. Blame is firm, but praise makes the soul dissolute and more sluggish toward good things.
39. The substance of wealth is gold; that of virtue is humility. As, therefore, he who lacks gold is poor, even if it is not apparent to those on the outside, so without humility, C the one who strives will not be virtuous.
40. Just as a merchant is not a merchant without gold, even if he is highly suited for trade, so without humility, the one who is in training will not be found in possession of the pleasures of virtue, even if he trusts entirely in his own shrewdness.
41. He who ascends through humility becomes lower in his own mind; but he who is without it becomes higher, and is unwilling to be measured even with the least among men. And because of this, he reveals his inward grief/distress in positions of honor.
42. It is good for the ascetic to think of himself as less than his own works, but to do things greater than his own fear and cowardice. For thus he will be found venerable to men D and an unashamed worker before God.
43. Either one must be perfected in all the commands of God, or—
he must diligently apply himself to humility, fearing lest he be found a stranger to those reclining at the wedding feast. B
44. Mix temperance with simplicity and join truth to humility, and having appeared, you shall be the dinner companion of righteousness, at whose table every other virtue loves to gather.
45. Truth is blind without humility. For this reason it uses contradiction as a pedagogue, speaking to it when it labors over something and finds nothing but the stronghold of resentment.
46. Good character testifies to the beauty of virtue, while the firm composure of the limbs testifies to a peaceful soul.
47. The first good is to fail in no part of one’s duty. The next is not to cover up one’s error out of shame, nor yet to grow brazen in it, but rather to be humbled, and when accused, to accuse oneself likewise, and to accept the penalty gladly. If this is not done, everything offered to God is invalid.
48. Along with voluntary suffering, one must also accept the involuntary—I mean that which comes from slanders, the loss of property, and illnesses. For he who does not accept these, but bears them indignantly, is like one who wishes to eat his bread not with salt, but with honey alone; he who does not always possess pleasure as a companion, but always has satiety as a neighbor.
49. Being a master, he appears wearing the form of a servant, C he who washes the torn garment of his neighbor with divine words or mends it with the bestowing of alms. Let him who does this take heed, lest, because he performs this as a servant, he lose—along with the reward that also belongs to him—the dignity of power due to the vice of vainglory.
50. Just as faith is the substance of things hoped for, so—in the soul, prudence; in virtue, humility. And it is a marvel how those things which are perfect in themselves remain imperfect if the incidental qualities are lacking.
51. The Lord will keep your coming in and your going out, it says; that is, of foods and of words, through temperance. For he who conducts himself temperately and soberly regarding the coming in and going out of foods and words avoids the desire of the eyes and calms the anger born of madness and insolence of soul; D this is that for which the one struggling must, before all else, by every means strive to take care. For in these things, the practical side is strengthened and the contemplative side is established.
52. But some take great care regarding the coming in of foods, while regarding the going out of words, they conduct themselves carelessly. Such men do not know, according to the opinion expressed in Ecclesiastes, that anger comes from the heart, while desire...
A from the flesh; by which the pure heart 11 is accustomed to be created by the Spirit, who makes all things new 12.
13. The lack of excess in food items will be found in the quality that is inferior to luxury; but the blamelessness of words will be found in the quantity that is superior to silence.
54. Scorch your reins with an abstinence from food, and test your heart with an abstinence from speech, and you will have your faculty of desire and your faculty of anger as servants B to the ministry of virtue.
55. The pleasure of the belly drops away among those who are undergoing training, as the body begins to wane; however, the irritants of the gullet still remain for one who has not yet punished it with the due vengeance. You must, therefore, endeavor by means of the cause to wipe away the reproach of the effect, so that you may not be found a stranger to the virtue of abstinence or continence in that place, and be put to shame.
56. It is necessary for the ascetic to know when and with which foods he ought to nourish his body as an enemy, and when to invite it as a friend, and C again to comfort it as an invalid; so that he may not inadvertently set before the friend what belongs to the invalid, and before the enemy what belongs to the friend, and as one who has scandalized both, find them both warring against him in a time of temptation.
17. When one who is being fed prefers food to luxury, then the grace of tears, having arrived, begins to comfort him and to cause him to forget all other sweetness, as these have now been swallowed up by an incomparable sweetness.
58. For the one who is expanding, the tears have contracted, but they have gushed forth for the one who has loved the narrow way.
59. There is no one without sorrow, neither a sinner nor a righteous man; but the one because he has not D completely abandoned evil, and the other because he has not yet attained the truly good.
60. Among the things in our power are virtues, prayer, and silence; among those not in our power, but which for the most part depend on the constitution of the body, are fasting and vigils. Therefore, that which is more readily available to the athlete, that he must practice and exercise.
61. The house of prayer is patience; for of it...
A substance and essence is humility, as it is nurtured by it.
62. You will not be honored with praises if you do not endure words; but by watching for the pain before the pleasure, you will avoid the annoyance of it.
63. Do not be bound to the lesser, and you will not serve the greater; for it is not in the nature of things that the greater evil should be formed before the lesser.
64. You who look toward greater things will be fearful to the lesser; but you will be seen as contemptible to them, if you have despaired of those greater things.
65. You will not be able to attain to the greater virtues if you have not first attained the pinnacle of those that are within your power.
66. In those things in which mercy and truth prevail, there also is everything that is pleasing to God. For the one judges no one without mercy as its companion; the other shows human kindness in nothing outside of truth. B
67. If you have tempered continence with simplicity, you will be in possession of the blessedness that comes from there.
68. You will never cut down all the passions that attack you unless you first leave the earth, from which they are nurtured, uncultivated.
69. Some strive to cleanse only the matter of the body; others, that of the soul as well. For some have received strength only against sin that is committed in deed; others, even against the affect and the vice or perturbation of the soul; but those who [strive] against desire are very few indeed.
70. Wicked matter is, for the body, carnal passion; for the soul, voluptuous affection; for the mind, however, a forward-leaning and prone affection. And as for these: touch pertains to the former; the remaining senses to the second; and against the last, the opposing disposition of the mind.
71. The one who is voluptuous is not far from the one who is possessed by passion; and one who is prone to affection is not far from the voluptuous. But far from both is the one who is free from affect—that is, C of an imperturbable mind.
72. He is possessed by passion who has the sinfulness of the intellect in a more violent way, even if for the time being he does not sin outwardly. He is voluptuous who has the act of sin weaker than the impulse of the intellect, even if he suffers it within. He is prone to affection who clings to freedom—or rather, to the servitude—of intermediaries. But he would be free from passion who is ignorant of the difference between all these things.
73. Passion is destroyed from the soul through fasting and prayer; voluptuousness through vigils and silence; and prone affection through stillness and attention. Freedom from passion is established through the remembrance of God.
74. From the tranquility of an imperturbable D soul... [index: entries preserved]
the words of eternal life distill. Who, then, would be found worthy to touch those lips with his own, and to lodge between her breasts, and to exchange the scent of his own garments for the sweet fragrance of hers? That is to say, to be sweetened by the laws of the virtues, which are said to be above all the spices of sensible perception. A 75. Every soul shall be stripped of the body that is seen; but of the body of sin, only those few who have enjoyed the pleasures of this present life shall be stripped. 76. All shall be seen as dead who were once living; but only those who have hated sin from the heart shall be dead to that sin. 77. Who can see himself stripped of sin before the common death of the body? And who is he that has known himself and his own nature, what it is before the future stripping?
Of the same.
A soul wounded by bridal love, Prayer knows how to unite thus to the Bridegroom. B78. The rational soul, situated on the boundary of sensible and intelligible light, is permitted through the former to see and do the things of the body, and through the latter, the things of the Spirit. Yet, because that light [of the intellect] has been darkened for it, while this [sensible light] has been made clear—due to the habit from the beginning—unless it wholly becomes one with the intelligible in prayer, it cannot gaze fully upon divine things. It is necessary for it to be on the boundary between darkness and light, moving according to its relationship with the one, and according to the imagination of the other. C 79. Let prayer remain with the mind like a ray of the sun; in the absence of which, anxieties related to the senses, like certain waterless clouds hovering about, keep the mind from its own brightness. 80. Inside the narrow gate of prayer, a passionate mind cannot enter before abandoning the anxiety that attaches it to things; but it will suffer, being forever occupied around the tents of that gateway. D 81. The power of prayer is voluntary hunger for food; and of that hunger, [the fruit is] to see and hear nothing, unless there is an absolute necessity, of any of the things of this world. He who does not take care for these things has neither firmly built the edifice of fasting, nor caused the edifice of prayer to be built within himself. 82. Unless the mind becomes free from all things that fall under sense, it cannot be borne upward and acknowledge its own dignity. 83. Prayer casts out from the soul all thoughts that fight against it, being empowered...
by the law of playfulness; if the one who exiles [them] has also made the cause of all evils, the license of speech, an exile as well.
A 84. Fasting is a symbol of day, because it is practiced openly and externally; prayer, [by contrast], is a symbol of night, because of its obscured and secret nature. Therefore, he who justly practices each of these in the other shall arrive at the city of the watchers B, in which pain, grief, and sighing have fled away in Christ.
85. Spiritual work is of such a nature that it can exist apart from bodily labor. Blessed, then, is the man who deems the immaterial work more precious than the material work. For by it, he has filled the lack in his work, living the hidden life of prayer, manifest to God. C
86. The Apostle exhorts us to persevere in faith, to rejoice in hope, and to be constant in prayer, so that the good of joy may remain with us. If this is so, then he who does not persevere is not faithful, and he who does not rejoice possesses no good hope; for he has cast away prayer, the cause of joy, by not being constant in it.
87. If the mind, having been occupied from the beginning with worldly thoughts, has acquired such D friendship with them, how much intimacy would it not possess in constant prayer? For it is said that in whatever things one lingers, in those one is accustomed to grow broad.
88. Just as the mind, having long been divided from its own dwelling, has forgotten its former brilliance, so it is necessary that, having attained oblivion of the affairs of this world, it should run back to that brilliance through prayer.
89. Just as an infant will be found [pressing] towards the breasts of its mother, so the mind will be found in relation to prayer, which it cannot soothe, but to that which otherwise...
B lulls it to sleep in her arms.
90. There, he says (in the mournful bed, clearly, of the studious life, let prayer speak to its lover just as the Bride in the Canticle [says]), "I will give you my breasts" 18; if only you entrust yourself to me wholly and completely.
91. One cannot acquire friendship with prayer who has not renounced all material things, except for food and clothing 19. Separate yourself from other things when you pray, if you wish to be alone with your mind.
92. The proof of a God-loving [soul] is monolithic prayer [c]; a word that is timely, of a prudent reasoning; and a uniform taste of the free perception. In these three, therefore, it is said that the health of the soul consists.
93. The nature of one who prays must be well smoothed and softened, like that of children, so that according to their disposition, it may easily and without resistance receive the development imparted by prayer. Therefore, do not be negligent, you who wish to be joined to it.
94. Not all have the same goal in prayer; one has one, and another has another. For there is one who prays so that, if it be possible, his mind may always be in prayer, and may, as it were, pass beyond its boundaries; and there is another who prays that he may not be interrupted by thoughts during it. All, however, pray either to be preserved in good things, or not to be led astray by the consent to evil.
95. If one prays from prayer, no one is lacking in humility; for he who prays in humility is crushed; therefore, one who is outwardly insolent does not pray in humility.
96. When praying D to any judge who is like the unjust judge 20, pay attention to your mind, and take care not to lose heart, even if you are slow to obtain the good things of prayer.
97. Prayer will not linger with one who is entangled in inward cogitations and outward conversation; yet it will be seen returning to him who, for its sake, cuts away the greater part of these.
98. Unless the words of prayer enter into the depths of the soul, the tears will not be permitted to flood the cheeks of the face.
99. Tears spring up for the farmer when he sees the seeds thrown onto the earth, not because of their appearance; but for the monk, they gush forth not without labor, as he traverses the words of prayer.
100. Prayer is the key to the kingdom of heaven. This [key] he who...
A holds and uses as he ought, sees the goods laid up for her friends. But he who does not have boldness in her, looks only at the present.
101. The mind cannot say to God with boldness while praying: "You have broken my bonds; I will offer you a sacrifice of praise," unless it has broken the soul away from laziness, sloth, sleepiness, and gluttony—from which arise transgressions—through the desire for higher things.
B 102. He who is distracted in mind during prayer stands outside the veil; he who prays with singular thoughts (that is, with a mind not wandering) enters within. But he alone looks into the Holy of Holies who, with the peace of natural thoughts, considers also those things which are above every thought of the mind regarding the Essence, and is thereby deemed worthy of a certain divine illumination from thence.
103. When the soul has found leisure from external things, then does prayer—like a flame wrapping around it—render it entirely as iron that has been once for all made fiery by the fire; it remains the same soul, but is no longer "tangible," just as iron glowing with fire cannot be touched from the outside.
104. Blessed is he who in this life has been deemed worthy to be thus perceived, and to behold his own naturally earthen statue made fiery by grace.
105. To those who are beginners, the law of prayer lies upon them like a master; but to those who have made progress, it is as a love that drives the hungry person toward a sumptuous feast.
106. To those who well pursue the practical life, C prayer is sometimes like a cloud that overshadows them and wards off burning thoughts; at other times, by sprinkling upon them drops as of tears, it demonstrates spiritual visions.
107. Song is indeed but the seasoning of a lyre struck by someone from without; but the soul, if there does not assist it in prayer the mystical address in the Spirit, is not naturally wont to be pierced with contrition. For that passage: "For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought," and what follows, leads the person praying to this.
By the same. The mind is illuminated by spiritual contemplation, When lifted to the heights, it meets these words.
108. It is necessary for the gnostic to know when his mind is in the realm of thoughts (conceptions), when it is in the realm of reasonings (images), and when it is in the realm of the senses. And in this realm, again, whether it is found in things that are timely or rather in things that are untimely. D
109. When the mind is not in the senses and conceptions, it is altogether in reasonings; and when it is in reasonings, it is not in conceptions. But when it has come into the sense, it is with all things.
A 110. Through the conception, the mind passes to intelligible things; through reasoning, the word passes to rational things; and through imagination, sense passes to the practical life.
111. When the mind is gathered into itself, it considers nothing of those things that are known by reasoning; but it contemplates naked minds and divine radiances, gushing forth peace and grace.
112. The mind of a thing is one thing, and its word is another; and that which is brought under the senses is yet another. The former is substance; the second, an accident; the third, the difference of the subject.
B 113. Cutting for itself many paths, the mind shows itself insatiable. But when it is gathered into the one path of prayer, before it has attained perfection, it appears to be constricted, entreating him who is a partaker to be dismissed to the things from which it had gone out.
114. Being led from on high, the mind will not return thither, unless it makes a perfect scorn of things below, through its leisure in seeking divine things.
115. If you are unable to make your soul dwell with only the thoughts that concern it, then force even your body to be solitary, constantly contemplating the misery that attaches to it; for thus, in the process of time, by the mercy of God, you will be able to return to the first dignity of your nobility.
C 116. The practical man can easily subject the mind to prayer, but the contemplative man subjects prayer to the mind. The one withdraws sense from the forms of appearances; the other transfers the soul to the reasons hidden in words. And the one persuades the mind to think of the reasons of bodies; the other, to understand the reasons of incorporeal things. For the reasons of bodies—their properties and their substances—are themselves incorporeal.
117. When you have freed your mind from the pleasure of bodies, foods, and riches, then whatever you do will be reckoned as a pure gift to God; and there shall be given to you, in return, the opening of...
[alt-version omitted]
D Maximus, not endowed with reason itself, but those things which are thus perceived by reason; and we are compelled to say "rational things," the same as the Greek terms, because they are not distinct terms, as they are—even if the authors are not sufficiently accurate in them, nor are they rarely confusing their meanings, but receiving what sounds passively, actively, and interchangeably.
(r) *Pleading with the partaker.* It pleased him better that it should be "the possessor." Beseeching him who is a spiritual man, full of the Spirit and advanced in prayer, and having attained its perfection; and who so quietly enjoys himself in it; out of impatience, forsooth, at the labor, so that he may not allow himself to linger in other things (that is, things addicted to action): and most especially, because that word also sometimes admits an active meaning. For thus he, detaining the spiritual Father in the exercise of prayer, asks that he might be dismissed from them, as if overcome by the labor of the movement.
A your heart’s eyes, and clearly meditate upon the laws of God hidden within it, which shall seem to your spiritual palate sweeter than honey and the honeycomb, by reason of the sweetness that pours forth from them.
118. You will not be able to make your mind superior to the desire for bodies, wealth, and necessary foods, unless you introduce it into the pure land of the righteous; in which the memory of death and of God, springing up again, shall erase from the earthly heart every growth of desire.
119. There is nothing more fearsome than the thought of death, nor more wonderful than the memory of God. For the one is the provider of salutary grief, while the other is the bestower of joy. For the Prophet says: "I remembered God, and I was glad." And the Wise Man: "Remember your last things, and you shall not sin." It is impossible for anyone to possess the second unless they have first tasted the bitterness of the first.
120. Until the mind has seen the glory of God with an unveiled face, the soul cannot say in its awareness: "But I will rejoice in the Lord, I will exult in my God my Savior." For the veil of self-love lies upon its heart, so that the foundations of the world (that is, the reasons of created things) are not revealed to it; nor shall it be taken away from it without labors voluntarily assumed and those brought upon it by external agency.
121. It is not after the flight from Egypt (which is sin committed by act), nor after the crossing of the sea (the servitude of passion overcome); but after the sojourn in the desert—the interval between the deeds and the movements of malice—that the leader of the people of Israel is permitted to explore the promised land (the state of the most tranquil and untroubled mind), by sending into it his own power of looking and inspecting from afar. B
122. Those who sit in the desert, that is, in the inaction of evils, have perceived the goods of that blessed land by hearing alone. But those who were also explorers, by usurping the things themselves with their eyes, understood them more subtly in their mind. Yet those who have been deemed worthy to enter into it were filled, with the whole of their perception, by the reasons flowing therefrom like milk and honey—these being, I say, the first and second contemplations.
123. He is not yet crucified with Christ who still has the natural movements of the flesh; nor is he buried with Him who is dragged along by the soul’s desires and cupidities; how then shall he rise with Him? C
A Qui ergo fiat, ut hic talis cum eo resurgat, ut in novitate vitæ ambulet?
124. B Since there are three more comprehensive virtues of the soul—fasting, prayer, and silence—it is necessary that he who is about to be released from prayer should rest in contemplation; he who is released from silence, in moral discourse; and he who is fasting, in secondary and permitted food.
125. As long as the mind remains in its own proper state, it preserves the likeness [to God], being found good and compassionate. But when it has become involved in sensible things, if it descends easily and [not] properly, giving and receiving an experience, though it might be vigorous and strong in those matters, should it return to itself when the occasion and need arise, it will be found like an imprudent general who has cut off much of his own strength in fighting. Yet not all will be found immune to this harm, as many, to be sure, as were unable to keep themselves within the enclosure.
126. The sensible sun does not cast its own rays out of a closed house; but the intelligible sun will not withhold its radiance from the soul that does not have its senses closed to the objects of sight.
127. He is a ‘Gnostic’ who manages his own descents magnificently, but orders the ascents of the soul with a sense of humility. C
128. A bee, roaming around a meadow, gathers the materials for honey from there; so the soul, looking out over the ages, injects a varied sweetness into its intellect from them.
129. The deer, having eaten snakes, runs to the fountains of water to quench [the poison]; so the soul, wounded by divine arrows, draws incessantly upon the Love that wounded it.
130. Simple thoughts grow upon the solitary life; secondary thoughts upon the life of two; while upon the multidimensional life, [those which are manifold...]. D
and late-lingering persist. But for the soul that is divided by many things, while thoughts withdraw, minds alone—stripped of bodies—approach it, revealing the reasons regarding Providence and judgment, like certain foundations of the earth. A
131. Thoughts belong neither to the irrational part of the soul—for there is no thought (that is, reasoning) in brutes—nor to the intellectual part—since there is none in angels. But being the offspring of the rational faculty, utilizing the imagination as a ladder, they ascend to the mind from the senses, reporting the things of the latter to it, and they descend to the former from the mind, suggesting to it the things of the mind. B
132. Just as some, emerging from the depths and attempting to take hold of someone for help, will find evil thoughts, like a raft, when vice is endangered by a deluge of tears.
133. According to the underlying quality of the soul, thoughts gather around it, either as pirates to sink it, or as rowers to lend help to it in its peril at sea; some dragging the mind into the deep of base thoughts, while others, skirting along the shore, steer the mind toward tranquil havens. C
134. Of the seventh thought, that of vainglory, which the soul, desiring to cast off as a final tunic, cannot—if it has not stripped itself of those before it—put on an eighth [thought] after them, which the divine Apostle knew to call a heavenly dwelling, and to put on through groaning those who for its sake have been stripped of earthly things. D
135. Thoughts that are angelic are accustomed to associate with perfect prayer; spiritual thoughts with intermediate prayer; and natural thoughts with introductory prayer.
136. Just as the nobility of the grain is accustomed to be manifested through the ear of corn, so too is the sincerity of contemplation through prayer. And the ear, as if armed, has certain pikes around the beards, which ward off birds gathering seeds; and prayer [has] those thoughts that philosophize during temptations, for the destruction of those [temptations].
137. The things of the soul that are visible, because of its action, are like wings of a dove, silvered...
OTHER VATICAN CHAPTERS
A But those things which are understood by the mind (namely the back-parts, or the reverse) are established by the office of contemplation in the pallor of gold; for the soul that has not been made beautiful in this way is unable to fly and rest, where there is the habitation of all who rejoice.
A meadow here, teeming with fruits, Of spiritual action and contemplation.
138. Of old it was ordained for the ancients that they should offer the first-fruits of the threshing-floor and the winepress B in the temple. But now it behooves us to offer to God Himself the first-fruits of action—namely, continence and truth—and of that virtue which shines through contemplation, charity and prayer: by the former, cutting off the impulses of irrational desire and anger; by the latter, [dashing] empty notions and the deceits and frauds that spring from them.
139. The beginning of the practical life is continence, humility, truth, temperance, and chastity; its end is the peace of the reason and the sanctification of the body.
140. Action is not merely to be able to do good things well, but also to do them as it behooves, [the agent] bringing with him, to the things that are to be done, the occasion and the due measure.
141. Contemplation is not only to consider how bodies are by nature, C but also to consider the reasons of their existence, and to what they look.
142. There is no sure action without contemplation, nor true contemplation without action. For action must be learned and imbued with reason, and contemplation must cling to action; so that, on the one hand, wickedness may be found weak, and on the other, virtue may be powerful for performing the mildest duties that one may choose.
143. The end of practical matters is the mortification of the passions; the end of the gnostic [life] is the contemplation of virtues.
144. As matter is to form, so is action to contemplation; and as the eye is to the face, so shall contemplation be seen in relation to action.
145. In the stadium of practical virtue, D many run, but one receives the prize, he who desires to reach its end by the shortcuts of contemplation.
146. The practical man drinks the drink of compunction in prayer; but he who is contemplative is inebriated by the best cup, [he] who strives...
to philosophize upon the things that are by nature, while the other, in prayer, does not even know himself. A
147. The man of action is not permitted to remain for long in spiritual contemplation. For he is found like one who has been received by someone as a guest, and who quickly departs from that person’s house.
148. The practical men enter by the gates of the commandments of God in prayer; but the contemplative ones [enter] into the courts of the virtues in hymns; the former giving thanks that they have been released from their chains, the latter, because they have also taken as captives those who were warring against them. B
149. One must stand according to the strength of one’s practice and one’s contemplation, so that one does not, like a ship not equipped with suitable and proper sails, either incur danger during the violence of the winds because of the excessive size of those [sails], or suffer the loss of the gales because of their smallness in proportion to the ship.
150. Consider the pious thoughts to be the oarsmen of the rational ship; and the vital faculties of the soul—that is, irascibility, desire, intention, and foresight—to be the oars. The man of action has need of these always; but he who practices contemplation does not always need them. For at the time of prayer, having bid farewell to all these, he stations himself at the helm of discernment, having passed the whole night awake in contemplation, offering praises to the sustainer of all things. And sometimes, having taken up some erotic melody, he sings it to his own soul, observing the surges of the rest of the sea, and, as if at the trembling movements, he is struck with wonder at the divine words and commandments. C
151. He who holds a middle position regarding practice and contemplation does not make the voyage entirely by means of oars according to the rowers, nor entirely by means of intellectual sails, but he fulfills the use of a fortunate navigation by means of both; cheerfully bearing the labors of practice, because of the moderate light of contemplation, and [bearing] the reasons of an incomplete contemplation, because of the help afforded by practice.
152. The contemplative man, having nature as a follower in accord with his will, like a secondary natural current, makes the voyage without labor; but the cultivator of action, finding the disposition opposing his choice, is shaken more harshly by the storm of colliding thoughts, and it is a small thing that he does not lose heart because of the weariness of the labor. D
153. Just as land that has not been well tilled is not accustomed to return a rich and pure harvest to the sower, so neither does he who pursues the practical life, unless he pursues it painstakingly and without all boasting, see the abundant and pure fruit that comes from prayer.
A 154. In material things, the mind has reasoning as an assistant; but in spiritual matters, and those which are outside of matter, unless it has cast this aside, it will have it like a stinging thorn. 155. The one who applies himself to action has a veil placed over his heart in prayer, being unable to have revealed to him the knowledge of those things which fall under the senses, because he is devoted to them by [passionate] affection; but he who applies himself to contemplation, because he is rich and free, can see the glory of God in part with an unveiled face. 156. Prayer accompanied by spiritual contemplation is the land of promise, in which knowledge of the reasons of God's providence and judgment flows like honey and milk. That which is accompanied by a certain natural [speculation] is Egypt, through which the memory of the crasser desires creeps into those who are praying. But simple prayer is the manna in the desert, which, because it was uniform, closed off the good things of the promises to those who could not endure the stain of desire; but for those who would constantly feed on that narrow food, it provided a superior and lasting taste. 157. Action supported by contemplation is as a body with a guiding spirit; but without contemplation, it shall be reckoned as flesh with a spirit of free will. 158. Of the rational soul, the [outer] courtyard is the sense; the temple is the mind; the high priest is the intellect. Thus, the intellect is occupied in the courtyard if it is cut off by untimely thoughts; it is in the temple if by timely ones; but he who has been deemed worthy to enter into the divine sanctuary is in neither of these. 159. Lamentation and a song and woe are found in the house of the practical soul because of the toil; but the voice of exultation and confession is heard because of the knowledge of the contemplative one. 160. The practical person desires to depart B because of the toils, and to be with Christ; but the contemplative one prefers rather to remain in the flesh, both because of the joy which he receives from prayer, and because of the benefit to his neighbor in those things which are earthly. 161. In those who are more learned and endowed with wisdom, contemplation precedes action; but in the more unrefined, action precedes contemplation; yet both end in one good goal. But this will be seen more quickly in those for whom contemplation precedes action.
A 162. Contemplation is the paradise of intelligible things. The gnostic enters therein as though into his own house and into prayer; but the practitioner will be seen as a wayfarer, desiring indeed to look within, but not being permitted to do so, because the wall of his spiritual stature rises somewhat above him.
163. Corporeal passions are like beasts; but the affections of the soul are like birds. The man of action can indeed fence off those of the first kind from the rational vineyard as though by a hedge; yet he cannot [fend off] the birds, unless he has attained to spiritual contemplation, however diligent a care he may have taken in guarding the things of the soul.
164. The practitioner cannot surpass moral propriety unless he himself also goes out, like the patriarch Abraham, out of his home, out of the natural law, and out of relationship, from the life that is coeval with him and that which clings to desire. For in this way he too will receive a seal, by which the general pleasure and desire are to be taken away; by means of which the veil that has been wrapped around us from birth does not allow us to be gifted with full freedom.
B 165. Neither can a colt in spring remain inside a manger and endure to eat its fodder, nor can a mind [(e)] that is newly initiated long endure the narrowness of prayer, and be assiduous in it; rather, in the manner of the colt, it delights to go out more toward the breadth of natural contemplation, which is found during the chanting of psalms and the reading of lessons.
166. Active life has fasting and continence as though its loins were girded, [protecting] its vital faculties; C but contemplative life has the virtues of silence and prayer—which are wise and learned—as burning lamps, standing over them; the one setting the reason over those [vital faculties] as a tutor; the other [setting] the indwelling Word over these [contemplative virtues], as a master of ceremonies for a wedding.
167. An imperfect mind is not permitted to enter into the fruitful vineyard of prayer; but only, and with difficulty, like a poor man [glimmering after] the grape-gleanings, [it reaches] the bare sounds of the psalms.
168. Just as not all who enter into the presence of a king are able to feast with him, so neither do all who come to the encounter of prayer become partakers of the contemplation contained therein.
D 169. For anger, the bridle is timely silence; for irrational desire, a temperate manner of eating. But for a mind that is difficult to restrain and wanders trouble-somely, the [remedy is] constant, single-minded prayer.
170. Whoever wishes to descend into the deep below, and whoever wishes to ascend into the deep above—the one for the sensible pearl, the other for the intelligible pearl—in order that he may draw it up,
unless both are stripped, one of his garment and the other of sensation, neither shall be master of that for which he labors in his search.
[1441/1442] A 171. The mind that has gathered itself within during prayer will be found like a bridegroom conversing with his bride in the bridal chamber. But he who is not permitted to enter, standing outside, cries out in lamentation: "Who will lead me into a fortified city? Or who will be my guide until I no longer look toward vanities and false madness while praying?"
172. As food thought to be without salt is to the throat, such will prayer be considered for the mind practicing it if compunction does not accompany it.
173. The soul still pursuing prayer is like her who is in labor; but she who has attained it is like the one who has brought forth, and becomes full of joy because of the birth.
174. In times past, the Amorite dwelling in the mountain would strike out and wound those who were forcing their way across. B Now, however, an evil forgetfulness pursues those who, not yet having attained purity, attempt to ascend to the higher, simple prayer.
175. Demons are by nature in great enmity with pure prayer. They are struck with terror by it, not by a multitude of good things, as a body of troops strikes external enemies, but by the concord of the three: the mind with the reason, and the reason with the sensation.
176. Simple prayer shall appear as bread, strengthening those who are beginning; that which contains some contemplation, as oil, making [one] fat; C and that which is devoid of form, as a fragrant wine, from which those who are filled beyond measure are transported and, as it were, rave.
177. The wild ass is said to mock the crowded city; and the unicorn cannot be tethered by anyone. Thus the mind, having acquired dominion over nature and the accounts pertaining to nature, mocks hollow thoughts while praying; nor can it be brought under the power of any of those things that fall under sensation.
178. The one struggling must confine his sensation D to a single form of sustenance, and force his mind to the monological-prayer. For, having thus become detached from the passions, he will attain, in praying, to being caught up to the Lord.
A 179. Canes ferociously attack those who intend to hold a staff against them; such also do demons attack, who strive to discharge their prayer in purity.
180. Voluptuous and lustful men, because they are earthbound, have thoughts that distract them like frogs; but as for those whose affections have been brought to moderation, they possess contemplations that delight them like nightingales, moving from one branch to another—that is, among various notions. Finally, for those who, having become free from the passions, have ascended to the citadel of tranquility, there is a vast silence and rest from thoughts and reasonings and concepts during prayer.
181. Long ago, Mary the sister of Moses, having seen the slaughter of the enemies, took up the timbrel and led the choir of women in songs of victory. But now, in praise of the soul that has proven itself victor over the vices and passions, Charity, holding the primacy among the virtues and having been awakened, takes into her hands the cithara with its song—as if it were a certain contemplation, long ago labored over for the abundance of its beauty—and she does not cease, rejoicing with those who accompany her, to praise God.
182. When, through the constancy of prayer, the oracles of the Psalms have become fixed in the heart of the one praying, then he himself, like good soil, begins spontaneously to bring forth—as if they were roses, the contemplation of incorporeal things; as if they were lilies, the luminous reasons and concepts of bodies; and as if they were violets, the varied and not easily grasped consideration of the divine judgments.
183. Flame, when bound to matter, becomes light-bearing; but the soul, when released from matter, is found to be God-bearing. For the former is naturally inclined to rise only until its fuel is spent; but the latter, up to the conclusion and consummation of divine love. B
184. The soul that has perfectly denied itself and has wholly devoted itself to prayer does not come down to earth when it pleases, for it exists above creation; rather, it does so when it shall seem just and right to Him who arranges and governs all human affairs by weight and measure.
185. When sloth has been driven from the soul, and iniquity and perversity have been shaken from the mind, then the intellect, becoming naked in its simplicity, and in an unadorned life—without any covering of shame and without the garment of vain glory—itself sings a new song to God; and striking up a melody in exultation, it gives thanks, because it anticipates with joy the dedication of the future life.
186. When the praying soul begins to experience certain more divine energies, and begins to be moved by them, then it also, like the Bride in the Song of Songs, sings in return to those of similar character: "My brother put his hand through the opening, and my belly trembled for him." C
187. When a soldier returns from battle, he lays aside the weight of his arms; and the practitioner, having laid aside the thoughts, makes his way into the...
contemplation. For neither does the former, except in war, have need of arms, nor the latter of thoughts. A
188. The practitioners look upon bodies as they have their position; but the contemplative look upon them according to their nature and character; yet it is the Gnostics (that is, the wise and spiritual) alone who see the reasons of both.
189. In the reasons of bodies, the incorporeal things are known; but in the incorporeal, there is the superessential Word, toward whom every diligent soul hastens to escape.
190. The reasons of bodies are as bones hidden by the things of the senses, which no one sees unless he has departed from the passion and affection for such things. B
191. Then the soldier, having left behind the war, lays down his arms; and the contemplative, having resolved himself toward the Lord, lays down his thoughts.
192. And the general, when he misses the spoils in war, is saddened; and the practitioner, in prayer, is the same if he does not have the spiritual contemplation.
193. The deer runs to the springs of the waters of bodies, being bitten by a wild beast; but the soul, wounded by the sweetest dart of prayer, reaches out toward the splendors of the incorporeal. C
194. Neither can the bodily eye see the grain of wheat, nor the practitioner's mind see its own nature, unless it be stripped—the former of its husk, the latter of the relationship that covers it.
195. The stars are hidden at the rising of the sun; but the thoughts fail when the mind returns to its own kingdom.
196. After the end of the practical life, the spiritual contemplations, poured around the mind like certain rays of the sun peeping over the horizon, seem to strike it from the outside, D though they are its own, and because of its purity, they embrace it as if they were kin to it.
197. Such things, too, the contemplative mind can utter when it has descended from above, from heaven, inclined by the necessities of nature; such as he who said: "What is more wonderful than divine beauty? And what concept is more gracious than that of God’s magnificence? And what love is so sharp and unbearable as that which is brought about by God in a soul cleansed of every vice, and which, from its disposition, says: 'I am wounded by love'?"
198. It is for that soul to say: "My heart grew hot within me, and in my meditation the fire will kindle," which
A does not faint in labor by following God through prayer, nor does it desire to see the day of man.
199. Let the soul that is a cultivator of action, after casting off the burden of evils, also say, like the Spouse in the Canticle, when evil demons and thoughts are again bringing force to bear upon it, so that it might look upon vanities and false madnesses: "I have put off my tunic, how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet, how shall I defile them?"
200. O religious and pious soul, which dares to say to God: "Tell me, O good Shepherd, where you pasture your sheep, B where you make your lambs to lie down at midday, that by following these I may not become as one wandering among the flocks of companions."
201. The practical soul, seeking to grasp the discourse of prayer and not being able, cries out, even itself, according to that in the Canticles: "Upon my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loved: I sought him, and I did not find him. I called him, and he did not hear me." I will arise, therefore, through more laborious prayer, and I will go about in the city, through the streets and the squares, and I will seek him whom my soul loved. Perhaps he will be found by me, who is in all this and outside of all; C I shall be satisfied when his glory appears to me.
202. When the soul has begun to be all tears from the joy concerning prayer, then it also, assuming confidence as if toward its own Bridegroom, cries out: "Let my kinsman descend into his garden, and let him eat of my fruits, the consolation earned through labor."
665 203. When the soul that is a cultivator of action begins, from the greatness and beauty of created things, to admire the Creator himself, and to delight largely in the pleasure that is from them, it also, being fulfilled with this, cries out in stupefaction: "How beautiful you have become, O Bridegroom, D and how fair!"
A Your bridal chamber is flowered, O Spouse, paradise of your Father. The flower of the field, and your cedars are as the cedars of Lebanon. Under his shadow I desired and sat, and his fruit was sweet in my throat.
B 204. If he who receives a king into his chamber is found to be so illustrious and glorious, and full of all other joy, what occurs to the soul which, by being purified, has received the King of kings, according to His own truthful promise? And what will it not expel, throwing out of doors that which does not seem to lead to His rest; and what will it not bring in, admitting with eagerness that which is pleasing to Him?
205. He who expects to be called by a king on the morrow, what other cares will revolve in his mind, than that he should himself carefully think upon and meditate on the words by which he is to gain his favor? Whoever shall observe this, will not appear unprepared for the future judgment.
C 206. Blessed is the soul which, because it expects its Lord to come today, considers the labor of the whole day as nothing; nor even the labor of the night, because He is about to manifest His presence to it early in the morning.
207. God indeed sees all; but they see God, who behold nothing while they are at prayer. And as many as see God are also heard by Him; but those who are not heard, do not see Him. Blessed, however, is he who believes that he is seen by God; for his foot shall not be moved, for the sake of His good pleasure.
D 208. The good things of the kingdom which is within us, the worldly eye has not seen; the ambitious ear has not heard, nor has it ascended into a heart void of the Holy Spirit. Truly, they are earnest-monies of those good things which shall be given to the righteous in the future kingdom of Christ. And he who does not take delight in these (which are the fruits of the Spirit), cannot attain to the enjoyment of those others.
209. The reasonings of the practical are like the deer. For just as they are sometimes above on the mountains for fear of the hunters, and sometimes below in the valleys because of the desire for the things in them; so also are these: they can neither always be in spiritual contemplation, because of their own frailty; nor always in the natural, because they do not always seek that rest and quiet. But the contemplatives of the soul easily despise humble thoughts.
210. Drops of dew [/D]
and the affections of the soul in prayer are tears of compunction drawn from the heart.
211. A Of the Godhead understood in the Trinity, no one shall be seen in contemplation, if he has not from above seen the material duality and the neighboring monad ; nor shall he become higher than this, if he has not made his own mind of a single kind in the things that are understood.
212. It will not be found as difficult to obstruct the path of a river so that it is not borne downward, as it is to curb the impulse of the mind so that it is not dissipated among visible things (that is to say, earthly ones), but is gathered toward those things that are aloft and akin to it, whenever the one praying wishes; even though the former is in accordance with nature, while the latter is contrary to nature.
213. Those who, while purifying themselves, cast their mind within B (beyond) the things perceived by sight, are filled with such amazement and filled with such joy that they can contain nothing else of earthly things, not even if all the things to be desired were to flow toward them.
214. The stated laws of nature alone are sufficient for triggering the greatest admiration; but when they are contemplated, they are found to be wide, flowery meadows which, like heavenly nectar, profusely pour forth the delights of a more refined spiritual banquet with immortal flowers.
215. Bees settle around the queen of the swarm amidst the dewy flowers of the meadows; so, too, do the intelligent powers, C as if encircling the soul that is incessantly in a state of compunction, desire its spiritual treasures with united prayers, since they are from its own heart.
216. In the visible world, man is seen as a kind of other world; but in the intelligible world, it is the reason. For the latter is a messenger of heaven and of the things that are contained within the vault of heaven to the former; while the reason is an interpreter of the mind and of the senses and of the things pertaining to them, without which both worlds would be mute.
217. A captive transformed by time does not go forth as the mind, liberated from material attachments, goes toward heavenly things as toward its own possessions with a rejoicing step.
218. D To him who prays without attention, but with a scattered mind, the psalm will be considered barbaric, and he himself in turn will be considered barbaric by the psalm; and both, as if they were madmen, will be so in the judgment of demons. 1 Cor. xiv, 11.
OTHER CHAPTERS FROM THE VATICAN MANUSCRIPT
219. A It is not the same thing to those for whom the world has been crucified, and to those who have been crucified to the world. For to the former, the nails are fasting and vigilance; but to the latter, it is the renunciation of possessions and contempt for self. Moreover, without the latter, the labors of the former are of no fruit.
220. He cannot pray with a pure mind who is held captive by passion for elegance [(j)] and for glory. For toward these things, the attachments and the thoughts of vanity have their intimacy; they become like ropes binding him, pulling him down like a little bird trying to fly away at the time of prayer.
221. It is impossible for the mind to become peaceful in prayer if it has not acquired temperance and loving affection. For the former strives to dissolve the feud that exists against the soul from the body, and the latter, the one that exists against one's neighbor for the sake of God. B And from this, the peace that surpasses all understanding, arriving to dwell there, has promised to make its abode in him who has thus made peace with himself and his own affairs [Galat. iv, 7; Phil. iv, 7; Joan. xiv, 23].
222. It is necessary for him who is striving to enter into the kingdom of God to abound in good works of justice; namely, in almsgiving, by providing from that which he lacks [Matth. v, 20; Marc. xii, 44; Luc. xxi, 4]; and regarding labors, for the sake of peace, by that deprivation [(k)] of endurance in the Lord.
223. Neither he who is deficient in virtue through negligence, nor he who is excessive in it through pride, will be found within the harbor of dispassion. C For neither has become a participant in the goods of justice, as a mediator is found for them—that of deficiency and excess.
224. Neither will the earth, unless it grants the laborer a much greater yield, make him prosperous and lacking nothing by merely providing the seed or even some small addition; nor can the work that is being done by one who is active be able to render him just before God, if his zeal is not found to be greater than his intention and purpose.
225. Neither can all those who do not love their neighbor hate him, nor can those who do not hate him love him; and it is one thing to begrudge someone his virtue, and another not to be an obstacle to him in his progress. D Yet that will be found to be the ultimate wickedness, which…
A not only bites at his virtues, but also slanders his good deeds, as though they were not what they are.
226. Some are affections of the body, others of the soul; some are according to nature, others contrary to nature. Whoever, therefore, pushes away some but takes no concern for others, is like a man who builds a high and canopy-covered fence to keep out wild beasts, yet gladly allows the birds to eat the conspicuous grapes of his rational vineyard.
227. First, the soul enters into the fantasy of evil; then it moves into desire; then into pleasure or sorrow; then in this way it enters into perception; then, after that, into touch—the obvious and intangible one. In all these, the inward reasonings and thoughts accompany it, except in the very first movement. If this is not admitted, everything that follows it as evil will be found to be inoperative.
228. Those who approach dispassion are not shaken B by fantasies; the temperate are not shaken by desires; those who are pleasure-prone are held by attachments. Those who are in the "perception" of evil are those who use the necessities of life, yet do so with sorrow; those in "touch" are those who engage with it without sorrow, and without any resistance.
229. Pleasure is firmly established in all the limbs of the body, yet it does not appear to hinder everyone in the same way; but in some it exerts its strength more in the concupiscible part of the soul, in others in the irascible part, and in others still in its rational part, through gluttony, irascibility, and wickedness—the parent and author of all unholy passions.
230. So, therefore, it is necessary to open the senses like the gates of a city. But one must be careful, lest while we open them for necessities, we at the same time allow those things to enter that favor the enemy and become the cause of battle and discord.
231. The activity of pleasure is desire; of anger, it is irascibility; of envy, it is wickedness. One does not have peace with the extremes who does not struggle C against their leaders; nor can one enter the harbor of D moderation who performs the commandments by force, and as it were, under compulsion.
[232.] Those who repel the suggestions do not allow thoughts like wild beasts to enter within the rational vineyard, nor do they allow them to establish themselves in its meadow. But those who join hands with them, while they allow them to enter, do so only on the condition that they touch nothing of what is therein. Those also who gladly converse with the passions through thoughts, yet do not arrive at consent, are like those who have allowed the wild boar to enter within the fence, but have not permitted him to be satisfied with the grapes of the vineyard; afterwards they have found him stronger than their own power, being often discovered giving consent to the passions.
[233.] He has not yet reached simplicity who still needs the care of a fence, which is continence. For he who is perfect, he says, is not continent. He is indeed like one possessing a vineyard or a field, not in the midst of many other vineyards and places, but in some corner; and he therefore has need of much watchfulness and sobriety. For to him who has reached simplicity, the vineyard becomes untouchable from every side, as though it belonged to a king or some other formidable potentate, causing thieves and passers-by to shudder at the attempt merely upon hearing of it.
[234.] Many ascend the cross of affliction; but few accept its nails: many are servants of voluntary obedience, but only those who have destroyed the passion of an ambitious spirit are servants of involuntary confusion and shame.
[235.] Many have put off all garments of skin; but as the final one, that of vainglory, [they...]
have abominated its mother, self-complacency. A
256. He who approves of the praise of men and bodily comfort, but does not accept them, has become stripped of the final tunic of vainglory; and he has been deemed worthy to be clothed, even from here, with the brightness of that heavenly dwelling-place which we seek out with much straining of our sighs.
257. Energy is one thing, and a product of energy another. The former is a sign of a completed sin; the latter, of pleasure alone, actively working within the soul but not outwardly produced. Just as those who are not exiled from their own land, yet pay tribute in those things which are desired by their oppressors, according to the will of their masters. B
258. When taste holds sway in pleasures, it is impossible that all the senses not be drawn to follow along with it, even if in those who are colder, the belly’s parts seem to be held in peace, such as the aged, who do not feel the burning of the fire. Yet, a sterile woman who commits adultery will not be judged chaste in her reproductive parts. I would call anyone chaste who does not commit fornication, nor finds pleasure in unchaste sights.
259. In foods, forms, and sounds, the desiring power of the soul is tested, that is, in the appetites for willing and refusing in taste, sight, and hearing; whether one uses them as one should, or abuses them, or is found to be in a middle state between the two. C
260. In those where fear does not lead, the thoughts will be found in confusion, like sheep not having a shepherd. But in good order, and followed within the fold by the rule of proper conduct, or led by it, they are kept safe.
261. Fear is the son of faith; but fear is the shepherd of the commandments. And he who has not obtained its mother will not be deemed worthy to be seen as a sheep of the Lord’s pasture. D
262. Some possess only the beginnings of virtues; others, also their middle states; and others, also their ends. Without these, each person will be found to be a mere foot-soldier or an honorary officer, not at all gifted with a bounty or rightful provisions. And for this reason, the one perhaps only preserves his own house, and that with difficulty, from the injury of those attempting to violate it; the other is not found in the honor appropriate to the places where he might happen to be present.
263. Those who invite us to indulge in pleasures, because we are perfect, act just like those who command us to dig up or cut open wounds that are already healed and covered with a scar, to scratch the itch for the sake of the pleasure of it, or to eat those things which light up a fever, or... [(p)] ...further discipline is not needed; and this, the incautious (led by the spirit) draw toward bodily laxity, and in those things that can be indifferent, truly profane heretics draw it toward base and nefarious lusts. Maximus takes excellent care against these, concluding his golden, truly ascetic chapters—which, according to the norm of Christ, strengthen one for every virtue—with such a holy ending.
to kindle a fever; or to obstruct the vineyard with a wall and a fence, and to allow the prudence of the flesh, like a wild boar, to enter in and graze upon the grapes, just as A with good thoughts. We must be on our guard not to yield to these things, nor to be swayed by the untimely flatteries of men and of passions; but rather to fortify the enclosure through temperance, until the beasts (namely, carnal passions) cease to roar, and the vain thoughts, like birds, cease to descend to lay waste to the soul, which, like a vine, is enriched and made fruitful by contemplations in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
OF SAINT MAXIMUS
From the LXIII Dubia, to the most divine king of Achrida
For the Holy Spirit, just as He is by nature essentially of God and the Father, so too does He exist essentially by nature of the Son, as one who proceeds substantially from the Father, through the Son (who was born in a manner that no words can explain). Therefore, there is no way that any section or division C is to be understood, as if one could conceive of the Father without the Son, or the Son without the Spirit; but there is in them a union and a distinction that is unspeakable and beyond understanding; so that neither does the distinction of the persons break apart the connection of their natures, nor does the union according to essence confuse the property of those things which signify and, as it were, distinguish them. And there is in them... a distinction joined, and a joined distinction.
Indeed, to help gain knowledge of this matter, an obscure example, or rather a shadow of the truth, may be set before our eyes: the rainbow, which shines in the sky with its manifold colors. D For all the radiances of the colors in it appear to be distinct, because they gleam brightly from afar, and yet they seem to be joined, because the boundaries of the mixtures—those which differentiate the diversities of the colors—elude the keenness of our eyes; so that it is in no way possible to discover where the fiery glow, or the emerald, or the greenish-hue ends in its own redness, and where it begins. This is, I believe, so that the discourse may instruct us through creation, that we might not be troubled by unfamiliar feelings in discussions concerning dogmas, when, having stumbled upon what is difficult to contemplate, we become dizzy in seeking assent to what is said. For just as with things visible to the eyes, experience is superior to speech, so also with those dogmas which transcend: let faith be superior to that which is grasped by the calculations of our minds.