ON THE EIGHT SPIRITS OF WICKEDNESS
A 5. If you wish to overcome the love of money, love poverty and lowliness. Ponder the condemnation of Judas, and how, through avarice, he betrayed the Lord to the lawless; and how every lover of money is called an idolater by the holy Scriptures; and how it draws us away from placing our hope in God; and how, finally, the enjoyment of money is temporary, while for the lovers of money there awaits an immortal punishment. Therefore, by pondering these things and seeking nothing more than what is sufficient, you will overcome this passion.
6. If, again, you are shaken and disturbed by worldly sorrow, you must pray unceasingly, and place all your hope in God, and practice the study of the holy Scriptures, and associate with pious monks who fear the Lord, and despise all present things as if they did not exist, and contemplate the joy that is in heaven, and the rewards of the righteous. And if you are struck by someone, or insulted, or persecuted, do not be grieved, but rather rejoice; and be grieved only when you have sinned against God. For thus, by the spirit, you will be able to be healed of this malady.
7. When, again, anger and boiling bile trouble you, put on meekness and offer yourself as a slave to your brothers. And if it is possible, wash their feet frequently with a sense of humility, and ask for forgiveness from every person, and visit the infirm frequently, and move your tongue to the singing of psalms, and you will most quickly be freed from the passion.
8. If you wish to overcome sloth, labor a little at some manual task, and read, and pray frequently with a firm hope in good things; ponder those who are at their last breath, and the violence and choking of sinners, how they are pitilessly punished and tormented, and thus you will have rest from the passion.
9. If you are terribly tyrannized by vainglory and the praise of men, you must do nothing for the display of men, but do all your work in secret, with no one else knowing except God alone; and do not love the praises or the honors of men, nor fine clothes, nor preference, nor the first seat; rather, prefer that men blame you, and accuse you, and insult you falsely; and hold yourself to be more sinful than any sinner.
10. If you see yourself being attacked by the demoniac passion of the worst vice, pride, you must not revile, or judge, or despise anyone at all; but rather account yourself the refuse of all men, and ponder unceasingly that if the Lord does not build C D
the house, they labor in vain [Ps. CXVII, 1]. A You must account yourself a debtor to all, and cast yourself down before God and all men. Do not be confident until you receive the verdict; behold him who, even after reclining at the marriage feast, was bound hand and foot and cast into the everlasting darkness. But even if you fast, and keep vigil, and sleep on the ground, and chant psalms, and persevere in duty, and perform many acts of repentance, or do any other good thing, do not say that it has come about from your own labor or from your own will, but that it happens through the help and assistance of God, and not from your own diligence. Strive always, brother, to be ever simple and blameless; and do not have one thing in your heart and another on your lips; for this is deceitful. B And pray unceasingly with tears. If you do this, you will escape the deadly and most vile offense and ruin.
Of passions, some are of the body, others of the soul. We call corporal [vices]: gluttony, fornication, drunkenness, and licentiousness. Those of the soul [are]: hatred toward one's neighbor, envy, strife, vainglory, and pride. These act upon our soul when charity and temperance are absent; but they are restrained by fasting and vigils. For then the mind recovers its own proper light, and beholds God without impediment.
A fragment of a few thoughts from the sermons of the most holy Father John of Damascus, which Bilibaldus Pircheymerus of Nuremberg rendered into Latin from the Greek for his sister Clara, a nun at St. Clara in Nuremberg
There are eight passions, by which men are especially (those being spiritual) attacked: namely gluttony, base concupiscence, avarice, anger, adversity, acedia, vainglory, and pride. These vices, therefore, must be discerned and known with the utmost diligence, so that when a man is tempted by any of them, he may always have weapons prepared with which he can fortify himself. C If you are attacked by gluttony, coerce the belly: let food and drink be taken by number and measure; let the separation of the soul from the body, the judgment to come, and the horrid flame of Gehenna, as well as the desire for the heavenly kingdom, be constantly set before your eyes: and thus the pleasure of the belly will be repressed. If base and carnal concupiscence vexes you sorely, expel it by vigils, labor, prayers, and fasting; the meditation on death, the punishment of deadly pleasure, and the avoidance of the other sex will be profitable. Avarice is conquered by liberality and the contempt of pecuniary matters, and equally by that thought: that for the sake of avarice Judas betrayed the Lord and Master, and that every avaricious person is called an idolater by Holy Scripture; and [it is conquered by the meditation] that money is granted for only a short time to enjoy, and bitter death follows the bitter life of the miser: wherefore, if nothing more than what suffices is sought, this passion is avoided. D If you are disturbed by any adversity, pray and direct all your hope to God, and contemplate the passion of Christ and the imbecility of our own nature; despise all present and vain things; weigh well the celestial grace and the coming enjoyment of the just. If you do this, no injury or insult will sadden you: but only the offense against God will disturb you. If anger stirs you up, put on meekness and take refuge in the chanting of the Psalms; overcome evil with good, yield to the greater, endure the equal, spare the lesser, and exercise prudent concord with all men, mindful how the meek, innocent lamb was led to the slaughter. If you are infested with acedia, rouse yourself by working, meditating, praying, and reading: let a firm hope urge you, so that you may be able to consider how much difference there is between cold sloth and warm fervor, of which the one separates from the glory to come, while the other makes you an heir of the heavenly kingdom.
OF OUR HOLY FATHER JOHN OF DAMASCUS, ON VIRTUE AND VICE, OF SOUL AND BODY
A It must be understood, then, that man is twofold, consisting of soul and body; he has, therefore, twofold senses and twofold faculties corresponding to these. There are five senses of the soul, and five of the body. The senses of the soul—which the philosophers call faculties—are these: mind, reason, opinion, imagination, and perception. The senses of the body are: sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. Thus, the virtues corresponding to these are twofold, and the vices are likewise twofold. Therefore, it is necessary for every man to know clearly how many are the passions of the soul, and which are the passions of the body. C We say that the primary and most general virtues of the soul are these four: fortitude, prudence, temperance, and justice. And from these are born the virtues of the soul: faith, hope, charity, prayer, humility, meekness, long-suffering, lack of rancor, kindness, freedom from anger, divine knowledge, courage, simplicity, tranquility, sincerity, modesty, lack of arrogance, freedom from envy, artlessness, lack of love for money, compassion, mercy, generosity, fearlessness, freedom from sorrow, the gift of tears, bashfulness, reverence, the desire for future goods, the longing for the kingdom of God, and the desire for adoption as sons.
The virtues of the body—or rather, the instruments of virtue—are those which are performed in knowledge and according to God, far removed from all hypocrisy and desire to please men, leading the man toward the progress of humility and dispassion: abstinence, fasting, thirst, vigils, D [[alt-version omitted]]
A all-night standing, frequent bending of the knees, abstinence from baths, being content with only a single tunic, using dry foods, eating late and sparingly, drinking water, sleeping on the ground, poverty, want, austerity, neglect of bodily grooming, contempt for oneself, a solitary and quiet life, remaining at home, penury, frugality, silence, working with one’s own hands, and whatever else involves the endurance of hardships and bodily discipline. All these things, if the body is healthy and well, and is troubled by the perturbations of the flesh, are most necessary and beneficial; if, however, it is in poor health, and by the help of God is superior to these perturbations, they are not so necessary as holy humility and prayer, which fulfills all things, along with a holy self-abasement and thanksgiving.
B We must therefore speak also of the vices of the soul and body, that is to say, their diseases. The diseases of the soul are these: forgetfulness, laziness, and ignorance. From these three the eye of the soul, or the mind, is darkened, and it becomes subject to all the passions, which are as follows: impiety, perverse opinion—that is to say, every heresy—blasphemy, wrath, anger, bitterness, irascibility, misanthropy, resentment, slandering, judging others, irrational sorrow, fear, cowardice, contention, rivalry, envy, vainglory, pride, hypocrisy, falsehood, unbelief, greed, love of pleasure, emotional attachment, affection for earthly things, acedia, faint-heartedness, ingratitude, grumbling, conceit, vanity, haughtiness, arrogance, the desire to dominate, the study of pleasing men, guile, imprudence, foolishness, flattery, affected behavior, pretension, duplicity, the approval of sins according to that part which is subject to the passions, the continuous meditation upon them, error of thoughts, self-love—which is the mother of evils and the root of all evils, together with avarice, depravity, and malice.
The vices of the body, however, are gluttony, voracity, luxury, C drunkenness, eating in secret, various pleasures, fornication, adultery, incontinence, impurity, incest, pimping, copulation with beasts, evil desires, and whatever else is against nature and shameful, as well as evil passions: theft, sacrilege, robbery, murder, whatever constitutes bodily relaxation and the use of the pleasures of the flesh, and—most especially if the body is healthy—divinations, incantations, auguries, sorceries, desire for adornment, superfluities, effeminacy, excessive study of elegance, rubbing of the face, damnable idleness, ambitions, games of chance, excessive abuse of the world’s delights, and a life devoted to the body, which, by fattening the mind, makes it earthly and beast-like, and never allows it to return to God and to the working of virtues.
The roots of all vices, and, as one might say, D
A of these things, are rashness, love of pleasure, love of glory, and love of money, from which every evil is born. A man does not commit any sin unless those powerful giants first—as the most wise among ascetics, Mark, says—arrive and overcome him: namely, forgetfulness, sloth, and ignorance. Pleasure and ease, the love of human glory, and distraction give birth to these. The primary cause of all these, and as it were a most wicked mother, as was said before, is self-love, that is, an irrational love of the body and a passionate attachment. For the diffusion and dissolution of the mind, along with buffoonery and obscene speech, are generators of many evils and falls, as are outspokenness and laughter.
Beyond all these, one must know that passionate love of pleasure is a variable and multi-faceted thing, and many are the pleasures that deceive the soul when, not being watchful toward God, it is not upheld by divine fear and love for Christ, and grows negligent in the practice of virtues. For B innumerable pleasures are carried about, drawing to themselves the eyes of the soul: pleasures of the body, of money, of luxury, of glory, of sloth, of anger, of power, of greed, and of avarice. They appear deceptive, bearing a splendid and desirable face, and are sufficient to entice those who are excited by such things and who are not truly in love with virtue and capable of enduring its hardness. For every earthly relationship and every attachment to material things produces pleasure and delight for the one thus attached, yet it is useless and harmful. It shows the passionate part of the soul to be in this state, in that, for this reason, one who is overcome is subjected to fury and anger, grief and resentment, by the deprivation of what is desired. If, moreover, along with the attachment, a small habit prevails, it makes one—to speak as if insensibly and incurably—remain until the end stuck to the irrational C attachment, through the pleasure hidden therein. For the pleasure of desire is multi-faceted, as was said before, and it is not satisfied by fornication and other bodily enjoyment alone, but also by the remaining passions. For temperance is not only this, that one abstains from fornication and the pleasures of the belly, but also that one is free from the rest of the pleasures. Hence, he who is a lover of wealth, and of avarice, and of greed, is licentious; for just as the former is mad for the body, so the latter is for money. Indeed, the latter is more licentious, in that he does not even have such D compulsion from nature.
A For that man would truly and most especially be considered an unlearned charioteer, not the one who knows not how to drive or restrain a wild and unmanageable horse, but the one who cannot subdue an even-tempered and more gentle one. And it is evident from every side that the desire for money is superfluous and not according to nature, since it does not have its force from nature, but from a perverse inclination of the will. Therefore, he who is willingly and knowingly overcome by this sins without hope of pardon. Wherefore, it is clearly incumbent upon us to learn that pleasure is not situated and restricted to luxury and the use of the body alone, but in any beloved affection whatsoever. But in order that the affections may be distinguished according to the threefold division of the soul, we have judged it fitting to add these things also as briefly as possible for the sake of consistency.
Concerning the threefold part of the soul.
The soul is divided into three parts: that which is led by reason, that which is lead by anger, and that which is nourished by pleasure. The sins of that which is led by reason are these: infidelity, heresy, folly, blasphemy, ingratitude, and the assent to carnal sins that arise from that part which is subject to perturbations. The healing and B medicine for these evils shall be, without any hesitation, faith in God, true, firm, and correct dogmas of piety, assiduous meditation on the utterances of the Spirit, pure and unceasing prayer, and thanksgiving toward God.
Concerning the irascible faculty.
The sins of that which is led by anger are these: cruelty, hatred, lack of mercy, remembrance of injuries, envy, and continuous meditation on such things. The healing and medicine for these is humanity, love, placidity, charity toward brothers, commiseration, tolerance of injuries, and kindness.
Concerning the concupiscible faculty.
The sins of that which is nourished by pleasure are these: gluttony, voracity, drunkenness, fornication, adultery, impurity, intemperance, avarice, the ambition for vainglory, and also the desire for gold and silver and bodily pleasures. Their healing and medicine, however, is fasting, abstinence, labor, poverty, the distribution of money to the poor, C the desire for immortal future goods, the longing for the kingdom of God, and the desire to be adopted as sons.
Furthermore, the knowledge of the thoughts subject to perturbations, through which all sins are committed, must be handed down. The thoughts which include malice are eight. The first is gluttony, the second is fornication, the third is avarice, the fourth is anger, the fifth is sadness, the sixth is acedia, the seventh is vainglory, and the eighth is pride.
A Whether these eight thoughts cause disturbance or not is not in our power; but to let them remain, or to move or not move a passion, is in our power. It is one thing to have an assault, another to have hesitation, another to struggle, another to have an affection, another to assent, which is close to the deed and resembles it, and another to have the activity, and another to be taken captive.
An assault is the suggestion that simply occurs from the enemy; for example, "Do this or that." As in the case of our Lord and God: "Command that these stones become bread" — this, as has been said, is not in our power.
Hesitation is the reception of the thought suggested by the enemy, and a kind of meditation or pleasurable dialogue with it, coming from our own volition. An affection is the state arising from the hesitation, as a passion is suggested by the enemy, and it is a sort of continuous meditation and imagination.
The struggle is the resistance of the mind, which is for the eradication of the passion in the thought, or of the passionate thought, or for the assent to it, as the Apostle says: "For the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another." B Captivity is the violent and involuntary abduction of the heart, tyrannized by preconception and long habit. Assent is the inclination of the mind toward the passion. Activity is the performance itself of the passionate thought held in assent. Therefore, whoever calmly considers these things from the beginning, and by contradiction and gravity immediately sends away the first impulse—that is, the assault—cuts off all the consequences in one stroke.
Gluttony is removed by temperance; fornication by divine desire and the yearning for future blessings; avarice by compassion for the poor; anger by goodness and love for all; worldly sadness by spiritual joy; acedia C by patience and endurance and thanksgiving to God; vainglory by the hidden practice of virtues and continuous prayer with a contrite heart; and pride is removed by not judging or despising anyone, as the boastful Pharisee did, but by considering oneself the lowest of all.
Thus, the mind, liberated from the aforementioned passions and uplifted to God, already lives the blessed life here, receiving the earnest of the Holy Spirit; and when it departs from here, with dispassion and true knowledge, it stands before the light of the Holy Trinity, D and illuminated by the divine angels, it is glorified unto endless ages.
A Since the soul is tripartite, as has been shown before—for its parts, as it is said, are the rational, the irascible, and the concupiscible—if toward that which pertains to the irascible there is love and philanthropy, and toward that which pertains to the concupiscible there is purity and self-control, then the intellect is illuminated. But if there is misanthropy in the irascible and licentiousness in the concupiscible, the intellect is darkened. The intellect, therefore, is at that time healthy, sober, and illuminated when it has the passions subjected to it, and when it contemplates the reasons of created things in a pure way, and is raised up to the blessed and holy Trinity. The irascible part, in turn, moves according to nature when it loves all men and harbors neither grief nor malice toward any of them. And the concupiscible part, when it has mortified the passions through humility, continence, and poverty—that is, the pleasure of the flesh, and the craving for money and passing glory—turns toward divine and immortal love. For indeed the concupiscible has its movement toward three things: either toward the pleasure of the flesh, or toward empty glory, or toward the deceit of money. And because of this irrational craving, it scorns God and His divine commandments, forgets its divine nobility, becomes bestial toward its neighbor, darkens the intellect, and is unable to look up toward the truth. Whoever has attained a higher state of mind in these matters, as has been said before, becomes a partaker of the kingdom of heaven before he departs from this life, and lives a blessed life in the expectation of the beatitude stored up for those who love God: of which may we also be found worthy through the grace of Christ. Amen.
C But we have set forth these things as we were able, in a simple and clear treatise on the virtues and vices, so that anyone may easily distinguish and discern their division and difference by means of this exposition of the individual parts. For this very reason, we have set forth their various species and each individual detail, so that no type of virtue or vice might, if possible, be unknown; and so that we may eagerly draw to ourselves the virtues—those of the soul, in particular, by which we draw near to God—and decline and flee from the vices with all our might. For truly blessed is he who seeks virtue, and aspires to it, and diligently pursues it, as one who through it becomes near to God and is united with Him in mind. For this is properly prudence, fortitude, wisdom, and infallible knowledge, and wealth which cannot be stolen: to be led through active virtue to the speculation of the Creator. For virtue (ἀρετή) is so called because it is chosen (αἱρετή); for it is chosen and voluntary, because we perform the good through our own choice and will, not involuntarily or under compulsion; and it is called prudence (φρόνησις) because it brings useful things to the mind (παρὰ τὸ νῷ φέρειν).
φέρειν).
A If you wish, let us append to this simple discourse, as a golden seal, a brief word concerning the "image and likeness," regarding the most precious of all God’s creatures: humanity—that intellectual and rational animal which, alone of all things, is according to the image and likeness of God. Every human is said to be according to the image based on the dignity of the mind and soul—that is, the incomprehensible, the invisible, the immortal, the self-determining; and indeed, the sovereign, the procreative, and the constructive faculty. But the "according to likeness" refers to the principle of virtue and these god-named and God-imitating actions—that is, to be disposed toward one’s own kind with love for humanity: to pity, to show mercy, to love one’s fellow servant, and to demonstrate every compassion and sympathy. “For be,” says Christ our God, “merciful, as your Father in heaven is merciful.” And indeed, every human possesses the "according to the image," for the gifts of God are without repentance; but the "according to B likeness" is possessed by few, namely, only the virtuous and holy, who, to the extent capable for humans, imitate the goodness of God. May we ourselves be deemed worthy of such superabundant, benevolent love by having pleased Him through good works, and by becoming imitators of those who have pleased Christ from ages past. For to Him belongs mercy, and to Him is due all glory, honor, and worship, together with the beginningless Father, and His all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now and always, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
ADMONITION CONCERNING THE ELEMENTARY INSTITUTION AND THE THREE DISSERTATIONS THAT FOLLOW
This elementary introduction John Damascene dictated by word of mouth, intended as a preparation for understanding whatever he discussed concerning the dogmas of the faith in the three orations that immediately follow, directed against the Acephali (that is, the Monophysites), the Monothelites, and the Nestorians. For he had not yet written his dialectical work, nor consequently his book *On the Orthodox Faith*, in which he later gathered together in a more concise and summary manner all the things that he had set forth more diffusely and explicitly in these three C dissertations. In the Cologne and Basel editions,