Chapters of Our Holy Father Gregory of Sinai: Various Texts on the Commandments, Doctrines, Torments and Promises, and Also on Thoughts, Passions, Virtues, Stillness and Prayer

Chapters of our holy father Gregory of Sinai: various texts on the commandments, doctrines, torments and promises, and also on thoughts, passions, virtues, stillness and prayer

Chapters of our holy father Gregory of Sinai, arranged in the Greek text as an acrostic; most profitable various texts on the commandments, doctrines, torments and promises, and also on thoughts, passions, virtues, stillness and prayer.

1. It is impossible to be truly rational, or to become pure and incorruptible by nature as we were in the beginning. For purity is now ruled by irrational habits of the senses, and incorruption by the corruptibility of the flesh.

2. By nature rational are only those who have become holy through purity; a pure mind was possessed by none of those wise in words, who from the beginning corrupted rationality by their thoughts. The material and grandiloquent spirit of the wisdom of this world, drawing words to much-knowing and thoughts to what is still wilder, takes up its dwelling in men, depriving them of hypostatic wisdom and of the contemplation of the undivided and single Mind.

3. To know the truth one must have grace; but to understand all other things one must lean upon reasoning and confirmation by proofs.

4. Those who lose grace suffer this through unbelief and negligence; others, however, acquire it by faith and diligence. The latter, with faith and care, always press forward; the former, being opposed to them, turn back altogether.

5. To be insensible is the same as to be dead; to be blind in intellect is the same as not to see with the eyes of the body. For the first loses the life-giving powers, and the second the divine light which enables one to see and makes him visible.

6. Both power and wisdom are received from God by single individuals: these are divine goods. They are exceptional; to receive them and to give them is truly a divine gift and beyond man.

7. A heart pure from thoughts, governed by the Spirit, becomes a true sanctuary even before the life to come; for everything in it is accomplished and spoken spiritually. He who has not attained such a heart is, by reason of the other virtues, a stone needed for the building of the divine temple, but not a temple, and he does not perform the sacred service to the Spirit.

8. Incorruptible man was created without moisture and such shall he rise again. He is both changeable and at the same time unchangeable. Man had the power to decide by his own will whether to change or not to change; by one’s own will one cannot become unchangeable by nature — this is the reward of the future unchangeable deification.

9. Corruptibility is an offspring of the flesh; to eat and to cast out the surplus, and to be angry, and to sleep — these are natural properties of beasts and of domestic cattle. Through disobedience we too acquired these properties and thereby became like cattle; we fell away from the goods proper to us and given by God, and, being rational, became as animals, and, being divine, became as beasts.

10. Paradise is twofold — sensory and spiritual, that is, the one in Eden and the one of grace.

11. It is said that the transient, that is, the corruptible creation, was not such in the beginning; later it was corrupted and fell under corruption and vanity, not willingly but because of Him who subjected it, «in hope» (Rom 8:20) that corruptible Adam would be renewed. When someone has renewed him in himself and has sanctified him, then, though he still walks in a corruptible body through this temporal life, he has renewed creation, yet has not yet freed it from corruption. The freeing of creation from corruption some call a change for the better, and others a complete transformation of what is sensory. In Scripture it is the custom to communicate incomprehensible things simply and briefly.

12. Those who have received grace resemble those who have conceived and are pregnant with the Spirit; they either cast out the divine seed through a fall, or are widowed of God, being united with the enemy who lurks within them. Grace departs from them through the working of the passions, and through sinful acts it leaves them altogether. A soul that loves the passions and sin loses grace and falls away from it, and is widowed, and becomes a dwelling for the passions — not to say for the demons — both now and in the age to come.

13. Only courage and mercy can transform malice into quietness and gentleness. Courage strikes down the outward wiles of the enemies who wish to take the city of the soul by storm, and mercy strikes down the inward ones.

14. Many of those who keep the commandments think that they are pressing forward, yet, not having reached the city, they still remain outside. Having secretly received the vices that walk alongside the virtues, they have deviated from the royal and right way, and therefore their efforts are in vain. For the commandments require neither self-indulgence nor labour beyond one’s strength, but only an intention pleasing to God and the seeking of God’s will. When this is lacking, such labour is futile, for they do not — as Scripture says — make straight the paths of the Lord; and one must ask with what intention each labour is performed.

15. On your way seek the Lord, fulfilling the commandments in the heart. When you hear John the Baptist calling to prepare the way of the Lord and bidding us make straight the paths of the Lord (Mk 1:3), know that he is speaking of the commandments and of hearts and of deeds. It is impossible to walk the righteous way of the commandments and of deeds without sin unless the heart becomes righteous.

16. When you hear in Scripture the prophetic words about the rod and the staff (Ps 22:4), know that this is said of judgment and providence, and in the moral sense of psalmody and prayer. When the Lord judges us with the rod of punishment, He turns us back. When with the rod of courageous psalmody we punish those who rise against us, we are strengthened in prayer. Having, then, the rod and the staff in the hand of noetic activity, let us both punish and receive punishment, until, finding ourselves under Providence, we escape altogether the present and the coming judgment.

17. Those who fulfil the commandments should give most attention to the all-embracing commandment of the remembrance of God, which says: «Always remember the Lord your God» (Deut 8:18). Those who perished through it can also be preserved by it. For forgetfulness first destroyed the remembrance of God, darkened the commandments, and so stripped man bare of every good.

18. There are two further commandments by which ascetics come to their original dignity — obedience and fasting. When these are not kept, every sin enters the human race. Those who by obedience keep God’s commandments ascend to God more swiftly; those who do so by fasting and prayer, more slowly. To preserve by the commandments a guileless obedience to God is possible for only a few; it comes with difficulty even to the greatest ascetics.

19. «The law of the Spirit of life» (Rom 8:2), says the Apostle, acts and speaks in the heart, while the law of the letter acts in the flesh. The law of the Spirit frees the intellect from the law of sin and death, while the law of the letter imperceptibly makes a Pharisee, who fulfils the law and thinks in a fleshly way, and keeps the commandments for show.

20. The whole body of the commandments, composed and ordered by the Spirit, presents a man as perfect or imperfect, according to his spiritual growth. The commandments are as it were the body; the virtues, as a habit of the good, are the bones; and grace is the living soul, which directs and moves the body to fulfil the commandments. Negligence or the striving to grow in Christ shows whether a man is an infant or already mature — both now and in the age to come.

21. He who wishes to nourish the body of Christ’s commandments, let him seek the rational pure milk of maternal grace. By it everyone is nourished who seeks Christ and wishes to grow in Him. Milk, or wisdom, gives food for growth: from its breasts it gives warmth to infants in Christ, and to the perfect the nourishing honey of its gladness for cleansing. «Honey and milk are under your tongue» (Song 4:11), says Solomon. Milk has the power to nourish and to make grow, and honey has the power of the Spirit to cleanse, as Solomon says. And the great Apostle, distinguishing the power of nourishment, says: «I fed you with milk, not with solid food» (1 Cor 3:1-2).

22. He who seeks the words of the commandments without the commandments themselves and wishes to find them through instruction or reading is like one who imagines a shadow instead of the truth. The knowledge of truth is given to those who partake of the truth. He who does not partake of the truth and does not know it, when he seeks knowledge, finds it in an unwise wisdom; the Apostle called such men psychical (1 Cor 2:14), who do not have the Spirit, even though at times they pride themselves on the knowledge of truth.

23. As the bodily eye looks at the letters and understands the meaning of what is written, so the intellect, when it is purified and attains its original dignity, looks upon God and receives divine knowledge from Him; and then the Spirit is for it instead of a book, and the mind and the tongue instead of a reed pen: «My tongue», says the psalmist, «is the pen» (Ps 44:2) — and light instead of ink. Thus, plunging his thought into the light and filling it with light, he inscribes words in the pure hearts of those who listen. Then he will understand the saying that the faithful shall be taught by God, and that God, according to the prophet, teaches man understanding through the Spirit (Jn 6:45; Ps 93:10).

24. The law of the commandments is faith which acts directly in the heart. From it flows every commandment and enlightens souls; and the fruits of true faith acting in souls are these: self-control, and love, and finally the God-given humility — the beginning and the confirmation of love.

25. Undeceiving glory for creatures is the true knowledge of the visible and the invisible world: of the visible, that is, the sensory, and of the invisible, that is, the noetic and rational, the intellectual and divine.

26. The summit of Orthodoxy consists in contemplating and knowing in purity the two doctrines of the faith, namely the Trinity and the Duality: in contemplating and knowing the Trinity in unity as unconfused and undivided, and the Duality of Christ’s natures in one hypostasis, that is, in confessing the one Son in two natures both before and after the Incarnation, and in knowing Him glorified without confusion in two wills, the divine and the human.

27. Begottenness, unbegottenness and procession are the three immovable and unchangeable marks of the All-Holy Trinity, which we piously confess. The Father is unbegotten and without beginning; the Son is begotten and co-unoriginate; and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and is given, as John of Damascus says, by the co-eternal Son.

28. For salvation the faith of grace alone would suffice, if we kept the commandments in the Spirit, and did not incline towards a dead and inactive faith and depart from the living and active faith in Christ. For the faithful man it is enough to live by the faith that acts in Christ. Nowadays ignorance has taught the pious a faith that is dead and insensible, and not the faith of grace.

29. The Trinity is a simple Unity, for it is undivided and unchangeable in one. For it is God tri-hypostatic, and each Hypostasis abides unconfusedly one in another.

30. God is known in all things as Trinity and everywhere is called Trinity, for He is uncircumscribable. He is the sustainer and provider of all through the Son in the Holy Spirit, and one does not speak of Him separately, apart from the other Persons; thus He is known and thus He is named.

31. In man there are intellect, and word, and spirit; moreover, the intellect is never without the word, nor the word without the spirit; each is in the other and in itself. The intellect speaks through the word, and the word is manifested by the spirit. Therefore one may say that man bears within himself an indistinct image of the ineffable and archetypal Trinity — and this too testifies briefly that man was created in Her image.

32. The intellect is the Father, the word is the Son, and the Holy Spirit is truly spirit; the God-bearing fathers teach in their doctrines about the supra-essential and supernatural Holy Trinity — one God in three Hypostases — giving us true faith and an anchor of hope. To know the one God is, according to Scripture, the root of immortality, and to grasp the dominion of the tri-hypostatic Unity is the greatest righteousness. Or the evangelical saying may be understood thus: «And this is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God» — that is, God in three Hypostases — «and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent» (Jn 17:3), in two natures and wills.

33. There are various torments for evil and various rewards for good. All torments are in hell, as Scripture says, «in a land dark and gloomy, in a country of eternal darkness» (Job 10:22), where sinners dwell even before the Judgment and to which by sentence they return again. For what do the words mean, «Let sinners return to hell» (Ps 9:18) and «Death shall be their shepherd» (cf. Ps 48:15), if not the answer at the Dread Judgment and the eternal sentence?

34. Every voluptuousness, and the universal darkness of madness, and love of pleasure, and trembling, and the foul stench of sin lead into fire and darkness, where the worms are, and into Tartarus. All this is the pledge and the beginning of the torments which, acting in the souls of sinners, become habitual to them.

35. The habit of the passions is a pledge of torments, and the working of the virtues is a pledge of the Kingdom of Heaven. One should know that the commandments are to be called actions, and the virtues habits, just as frequent manifestations of sin are called habits.

36. The reward is equal to the recompense, though many suppose that they are unequal. Divine justice repays some with eternal life and others with eternal torment. Both the one and the other passed through this present life well or badly, and according to their deeds they will have their reward. And what the reward will be depends on whether they have grown accustomed to the passions or to the virtues.

37. Voluptuous souls are lakes of fire; the stench of the passions is in them like a fetid mire. The unchaste incontinence of the flesh feeds the sleepless worm; it feeds also serpents and leeches, cunning lusts, defiled and poisonous thoughts, and demons. Such a state is a pledge of eternal torment.

38. The beginnings of torments lie hidden in sinful souls, and the pledges of blessings in the hearts of the righteous; and they act and are manifested through the Holy Spirit. The Kingdom of Heaven is a virtuous life, and torment is a passionate life.

39. «Night is coming», says the Lord, «when no one can work» (Jn 9:4). Or, in other words, the antichrist is night and darkness; such he is and so he is called. Or again, according to the moral teaching, daily negligence puts the soul to death, as darkness does by the sleep of insensibility. As night puts all to sleep and is an image of death which kills, so the night of the coming darkness makes sinners dead and insensible.

40. The judgment of this world is the unbelief of the ungodly, as the Gospel says: «He who does not believe is condemned already» (Jn 3:18); therefore providence accomplishes judgment concerning our return or conversion, or concerning our inclination to good or evil, according to the words: «Sinners are estranged from the womb» (Ps 57:4). The judgment of God judges concerning unbelief, punishment and deeds, punishing some, showing mercy to others, and awarding to still others crowns or eternal torment. The first are wholly ungodly; the second, though faithful, are negligent, and therefore God punishes them in His love for man. And those who are perfect in the virtues, and those who, having fallen, do not rise, will each receive their reward.

41. If our nature is not preserved undefiled or is not purified by the spirit, it will not be able to be one body and spirit with Christ, neither now nor in the communion to come. It is not proper to the sustaining and unifying power of the Spirit to sew a patch of the old passions onto the new garment of grace.

42. He will have equal honour with the image that is in Christ who has received as a gift and has preserved the renewal in the Holy Spirit and has experienced supernatural deification. He will not be one with Christ or a member of Christ who has not here become a partaker of grace and, in the Apostle’s words, does not have «the embodiment of knowledge and truth» (Rom 2:20).

43. The Kingdom of Heaven is like the tabernacle which God erected. Like that of Moses, it has two veils — the ordinance of the age to come. And into the first tabernacle will enter all who have been sanctified by grace, and into the second, as into the noetic one, those who ministered in a threefold way in the mysteries of theology perfectly, as consecrated ones; and, having in the Trinity Jesus as intercessor — the first Minister and High Priest — they will enter the tabernacle which He erected, and will shine brighter than the stars.

44. The Saviour called the many mansions (Jn 14:2) the various ascents and spiritual growths of the state there. The Kingdom is one, but within itself it has many differences. In it there are heavenly and earthly ones, who by virtue and knowledge have attained a certain measure of deification. «There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, another glory of the stars; and star differs from star in glory» (1 Cor 15:41), says the divine Apostle — though all of them shine in one divine firmament.

45. Man becomes almost a fellow-dweller with the angels and incorruptible like the bodiless ones when he purifies his intellect with tears and raises his soul by the Holy Spirit, subdues the flesh and subordinates it to reason, and transforms his human nature, created from clay, into a radiant and fiery divine beauty. For the incorruption of the body is the diminishing of its humours and grossness.

46. The incorruptible body, though it has no humours and is not gross and has become spiritual from being psychical, remains earthly; by the subtlety of the vision of God it will be both earthly and heavenly. As it was created in the beginning, so shall it rise again, so as to draw near to the image of the Son of God in the fullness of participation in deification.

47. The land of the gentle is the Kingdom of Heaven, or the divine-human life of the Son of God, into which we have entered or are entering and by which we have been renewed, having received by grace the sonship of birth and by the resurrection renewal. And again, deified nature is the holy land, or perhaps the land cleansed for the earthly according to their dignity. Or, according to another understanding, the land which the truly holy shall inherit is the divine peaceful stillness of the world which is beyond every intellect, in which the generation of the righteous shall dwell, and nothing of what exists there shall disturb them.

48. The promised land is dispassion, flowing with milk and honey, that is, with the joy of the spirit.

49. In the age to come the saints will secretly speak to one another the word which the Holy Spirit will give.

50. Unless we learn what God created us to be, we shall not know what sin has made us.

51. Those who have attained the fullness of perfection in Christ have attained the same spiritual age.

52. Those who labour also receive the reward. But the quantity or the quality, that is, the measure of the reward, depends on the rank and state of those rewarded.

53. Scripture says that spiritual men, that is, those equal to the angels, will be «sons of the resurrection» (Lk 20:36) of Christ, incorruptible and holy by deification.

54. It is said that in the age to come the angels and the saints, having numerous gifts, will never cease to desire the good, and this desire will never weaken in them. In that age there is no diminishing of virtue nor its turning into sin.

55. Consider a perfect man to be one who has received the likeness of Christ’s stature as a pledge; in the age to come the perfect man will be manifested by the power of deification.

56. He who here has attained spiritual stature in virtue will in the age to come have the same dignity and deification as those like himself.

57. True glory is knowledge, or the godlike spiritual vision, or a sure understanding of the doctrines and the knowledge of the true faith.

58. Wonder is the complete raising of the powers of the soul to the divine glory which has been known. Or thus: wonder is a pure and complete striving towards the infinite power which abides in light. Rapture is the raising to the heavens not only of the powers of the soul but of the senses themselves. Great zeal is a spiritual inebriation which awakens desire for the good.

59. In the spirit there are truly two raptures: that of the heart and that of ascent. The first occurs in those who are still being enlightened, and the second in those perfect in love; and both, acting upon the intellect, drive the senses away from it. For divine rapture is the striving of the spirit towards things better than the natural faculties; and by this striving the perception of outward things disappears.

60. The cause and beginning of thoughts comes from the fact that the single and simple memory was divided in man through the transgression of sin. Therefore the remembrance of God was also lost, and the simple memory became composite and, though it had been homogeneous, became heterogeneous, and therefore perishes.

61. Healing is the return of the original memory from the cunning thoughts of destructive memory to its ancient simplicity. Disobedience — the instrument of sin — not only destroyed in the soul the simple memory of the good, but also damaged all its powers, darkening the natural desires for the virtues. But the remembrance of God, which is established by constant prayer, truly heals the memory of the soul and raises it from natural things to supernatural, uniting it with the Spirit.

62. The causes of the passions are sinful deeds; the causes of thoughts are the passions; of fantasy, thoughts; of reflections, memory; of memory, forgetfulness; and forgetfulness gives birth to ignorance; the cause of ignorance is sloth; and sloth gives birth to craving; craving is the mother of disordered movement; disordered movement is the consequence of action; and action is the irrational desire for evil and attachment to sensory things and to the senses.

63. In the rational part of the soul thoughts act; in the incensive, bestial passions; in the desiring, the memory of animal lust; in the intellect, fantastic imaginings; and in the mind, reflections act and give light.

64. The onset of cunning thoughts resembles the flow of a river. With them comes provocation; with provocation, consent to sin, which is stormy like a flood and drowns the heart.

65. Deep mire signifies humid sweetness, or unchaste impurity, or the burden of acquiring possessions. The intellect weighed down by these is plunged by the action of thoughts into the depth of despair.

66. Scripture often calls words thoughts (to designate things), and conversely, calls thoughts words. This is so because they are not in themselves things, but are made visible by things and take on a certain shape; thus provocation becomes manifest and comprehensible.

67. Thoughts are the words of the demons and forerunners of the passions, and words and thoughts are the forerunners of deeds; for it is impossible to do a good or an evil deed without first accepting the thoughts concerning it. For a thought is the movement of an invisible provocation concerning certain things.

68. Things of themselves give birth to righteous thoughts, and demonic provocation to evil ones. Natural words and thoughts will be distinguished from those that are unnatural and supernatural when they are compared.

69. Thoughts can change in an instant: the natural change into the unnatural, and the unnatural into the supernatural. Thoughts themselves cause some of them to change into others, that is, the natural into the demonic, and thoughts from provocation into the natural; divine thoughts give birth to natural and supernatural ones. Each thought changes into one akin to it, according to the four causes of the thought’s origin.

70. Know that causes precede thoughts, thoughts precede fantasies, fantasies the passions, and the passions the demons. They are linked with one another and form as it were a chain and an order among the cunning spirits who work disorder. Yet everything that is foreign and improper to men arises not of itself but by the action of the demons. Without hidden demonic power neither the provocations of thoughts arise, nor does fantasy make idols, nor does passion act. For Satan, though he has fallen and been crushed, is yet strengthened by our sloth and exalts himself over us.

71. The demons give birth in our intellect to images, or rather, they themselves take on a certain form according to which passions rule over us and act in us. We are accustomed to a passion, and therefore the demons give birth in our intellect to various imaginings. Imagination changes the appearance of the spirits in three variations, for there are three powers of the soul. The soul has the desiring, the incensive and the rational powers; therefore imagination depicts demons as birds, wild beasts and domestic animals. Against the three chief powers of the soul three chief passions always rise up, and to whichever passion the soul is more inclined, such is the form the demons take and in such do they come.

72. The demons of sweet pleasures often come as fire and as burning coals. For the pleasure-loving spirits inflame the desiring power, stir up the incensive power and, troubling the rational power, becloud the soul; the cause of the inflaming, the trouble and the beclouding is the passion of the love of pleasure.

73. The night of the passions is the darkness of ignorance. Or again: night is the time of the birth of the passions, the time of the rule of the prince of darkness.

74. When the passions act, first come certain thoughts, and after them others. First go the thoughts of fantasy, after them the passions; and the passions come before the demons, and the demons follow after the passions.

75. The beginning and cause of the passions is misuse; the cause of misuse is inclination; of inclination, habit; the testing of desire is provocation, and provocation is from the demons, whom Providence permits to show us our self-will.

76. The poison of the sting of sin, which leads to death, is the soul’s habituation to the passions. For he who has willingly inclined towards the passions has a disposition immovable and unchangeable.

77. The passions are various; they are divided into bodily and psychical. The bodily are divided into afflictive and sinful; the afflictive into painful and instructive; the psychical are divided into incensive, desiring and rational. The rational are divided into imaginative and intellectual. Some of them are voluntary through misuse, and some involuntary. And they are called unseemly passions, while the fathers call them companions and natural properties.

78. Bodily passions are of one kind and psychical of another; passions of desire of one kind and incensive of another; rational passions of one kind and those of the mind and thought of another; yet they are joined and act together with one another. The bodily passions act together with the passions of desire, and the psychical with the incensive. And again, the passions of thought with those of the intellect, and those of the intellect with those of thought and with the passions of memory.

79. The passions of the incensive power are these: anger, resentment, shouting, irritability, insolence, arrogance, contemptuousness and others. The passions of the desiring power: usury, impurity, licentiousness, incontinence, insatiability, love of pleasure, avarice, self-love — the fiercest of all passions. The passions of the fleshly power: unchastity, adultery, impurity, shameless acts, injustice, gluttony, listlessness, pride, love of adornment and others. The passions of thought are these: unbelief, cunning, blasphemy, guile, curiosity, duplicity, reproachfulness, slander, condemnation, belittling, profanities, hypocrisy, lying, evil-speaking, senseless talk, flattery, mockery, ostentation, men-pleasing, self-exaltation, breaking of oaths, idle talk and others. The passions of the intellect: high-mindedness, pomposity, self-praise, quarrels, self-indulgence, disputes, disobedience, fantasy, invention, boasting, love of glory, pride — the first and the last of all evils. And the passions of thinking are these: wandering, mockery, weariness, beclouding, blindness, falling away, provocations, consents, inclinations, transformations, turnings away. In a word, all unnatural evil has been joined with the three powers of the soul, in which at the same time the good abides by nature.

80. David cries out in wonder to God: «Thy knowledge is too wonderful for me» (Ps 138:6). I do not comprehend it, mighty and uncontainable as it is; it surpasses my feeble reason and my strength. And what shall we say of the knowledge of God, when man cannot understand even the structure of his own body?

81. The laws of nature are the marks of the bonds which act among the members. The differences among them are named by words, for they are the many manifestations of our properties. Or again: the natural law is the active power of each kind and member. As God governs all creatures, so the soul governs the members of the body and moves each of them according to its purpose. Here one should also ask why the God-bearing men call the incensive power and desire now bodily powers, now psychical. The answer is this: he who understands the words of the saints well sees that there is no contradiction among them. In both cases the saints speak the truth, and according to need they call these powers now one thing, now another, because of their twofold existence, or rather, their coexistence. For the soul is perfect already here, while the body is imperfect, since it is nourished and grows. The soul, from its very creation, since it was created rational and spiritual, has the power of desire and the incensive power which awakens courageous zeal. But irrational fury and mindless craving were not created together with it, and the flesh too was free of them. The body was created incorruptible, without humours, from which craving and bestial fury come. But after the transgression man fell into corruptibility and the hardness of the irrational animals, and therefore fury and desire arose in him. Therefore man resists the desires of the soul, because in him rule the incensive power and fleshly craving. But when what is dead submits to what is rational, then man will begin, according to the desires of the soul, to do good. When the properties of the flesh are mingled and united with the soul, then man becomes like an animal, submits to the law of sin, and through natural need the rational being becomes as an animal, and man as a beast.

82. God breathed upon the soul and created it rational, and, having breathed life into it, made it spiritual. God did not create together with the soul fury and animal lust, but the power of desire and with it the capacity to love. In creating the body, God did not place in it fury and irrational lust; only afterwards, through disobedience, did it acquire mortality and corruption and become like an animal. The body, as the theologians say, was created incorruptible and such shall it rise again, though now it is corruptible. Both became corruptible, that is, the soul and the body; and since by the natural law they are contained one in the other and act one upon the other, their marks were mingled. The soul, yielding to the passions and especially to the demons, and the body, becoming like the irrational animals in its state and its subjection to corruption, move towards one and the same thing, and therefore they have become in fury and lust like an irrational and mindless animal. And as Scripture says: «Man was compared to the senseless cattle and became like them» (Ps 48:13) in everything.

83. The beginning and source of the virtues is a good intention, that is, the desire for the good. God is the cause and source of every good; the beginning of good is faith, and Christ is the rock of faith; He is also the beginning and foundation of all the virtues; on Him we stand and build every good deed. He is the cornerstone which binds us to one another, and the pearl of great price, in seeking which the monk who enters the depth of stillness sells all his desires, fulfilling the commandments, so as thereby to acquire Him.

84. The virtues are equal among themselves, and all are united into one and form one order and kind of virtue. For there are virtues, and virtues of all virtues, which sustain and unite many virtues, and perhaps even all. Such virtues are divine love, humility and divine patience. Of the latter the Lord says: «By your patience you will gain your souls» (cf. Lk 21:19) — and He does not say «by your fasting» or «by your vigils». I speak of the patience that is according to God as the beginning of the virtues, the foundation of courage. Patience is peace in battles, stillness in the storm, and for those who have acquired it an unshakable support. He who has acquired it will be harmed neither by weapons, nor by bows, nor by spears, nor by the advance of an army, nor by demonic assaults, nor by the dark regiments of the enemy.

85. The virtues, though they give birth to one another, draw their being not only from the divine power but also from the three powers of the soul. The cause and beginning of the four foremost among the natural and divine virtues, by which and upon which all the others are built — that is, of wisdom and courage, purity and righteousness — is the divine wisdom, led by the Holy Spirit and reflected in the intellect in four ways. It calls forth not all the virtues at once, but each separately in its own time, when it wills. One virtue it manifests as light, another as a sharp power and constant inspiration, another as the consoling dew of purity that cools the heat of the passions. To each it grants the virtue that belongs to him; to the perfect, what is perfect, according to their stature.

86. Struggles in the virtues do not give the soul the strength of perfection unless, by the action of grace, they become habitual. Each virtue has its own gift and its own action, and therefore by habit and by the nature of the good it can draw to itself even those who do not strive for a virtuous life. And when this gift is once given to us, it is preserved in us firmly and unchangeably. That we may struggle in the virtues, the grace of the Spirit is given us, which acts in our members as a living soul. All the virtues are dead without it. And those who suppose that they have it in fullness often turn out to have only shadows and outlines of the good, and not reflections of the truth.

87. There are four chief virtues: courage, wisdom, purity and righteousness. According to their increase or decrease there are eight vices corresponding to them; we call them vices, but in the world they are called virtues; virtues they are called and as such they are received. To courage correspond insolence and fear; to wisdom, cunning and folly; to chastity, incontinence and callousness; to righteousness, extortion and injustice, or greed. Among them there are virtues not only chief and natural and beyond all increase and decrease, but also active ones. And some virtues attain a good accord, and others transformation and imagining. Of those virtues which stand in the middle the proverb testifies in these words: «Then you will understand every good path.» And all the virtues abide, and are born, and grow in the three powers of the soul; and the foundation of their growth is the four chief virtues, and besides these four, Christ. Let the natural virtues be purified by the active ones, and let the divine and supernatural ones be granted by the goodness of the Spirit.

88. Some virtues are active, others natural, and still others divine and spiritual. The active come from consent, the natural from the inner state, and the divine from grace.

89. In the soul both virtues and passions are born. But the virtues are born according to nature, and the passions contrary to nature. The cause of the birth of good or evil in the soul is the inclination of desire: as the reed comes close to what is written, or as the scales tip when something is placed upon them, so the soul inclines towards good or evil, and receives it, and carries it out. It is subject to both, for it contains both within itself. The good is from birth, and evil through the inclination of free will.

90. Scripture calls the virtues maidens (cf. Song 1:2), for they are closely bound to the soul and are perceived as one spirit and body with it. The face of the maiden is the mark of love, and her appearance is the witness of purity and consecration. Divine grace usually creates and transforms the virtues according to their properties.

91. There are eight chief passions: three great ones — gluttony, avarice and vainglory; after them come five more — unchastity and anger, dejection and listlessness, and pride. Therefore there are three opposing virtues which restrain them: non-possession, self-control and humility. After them come purity and gentleness, joy and courage, obedience and all the other virtues. The power, the action and the fragrance proper to each virtue or passion can be discerned and learned not by him who merely wishes it, but by him who labours and struggles in word and deed and receives from the Holy Spirit the gift of knowledge and discernment.

92. The virtues either act of themselves, or we compel them to act. When they come to us, they act when they will, as much as they will and how they will. But we compel them to act according to our desire and our moral state. Yet they exist in themselves, and in us they are only reflected, for everything we do is an imprint of the archetype. Few perceive what is spiritual before the unchanging delight of the age to come arrives. Here we perform and perceive labours and images, and not the virtues themselves.

93. The apostle Paul says that he ministers the Gospel who himself partakes of Christ’s illumination and can transmit it to others. He sows the divine word as seed in the fields of his hearers’ souls. «Let your speech», says Scripture, «always be gracious, seasoned with the salt» of divine goodness (Col 4:6), that it «may impart grace to those who hear» (Eph 4:29). Calling the teachers ploughmen and the disciples tilled land, the Apostle wisely indicates the first as husbandmen and sowers of the divine word, and the second as the fruitful and fertile soil of the virtues, which bears abundant ears. For sacred ministry, as is known, is not only the fulfilment of divine works, but also the partaking of blessings and the giving of them to others.

94. Words of instruction are of different kinds, and they are drawn from four different sources. One may come from teaching, another from reading, another from action, and yet another from grace. And as water, being the same by nature, changes its taste according to the soil and is now bitter, now sweet, and sometimes salty and fetid, so, according to the moral habits of each, a word is transformed into action, is known in deed, and brings profit.

95. The word is given to every rational being as a delight, and the soul, receiving the word, tastes it as it tastes different foods. A persuasive word is for it like a tutor who polishes its character. A word that is read is as though it gave the water of repose. An active word is like rich pasture. And a word of grace is like a cup that gives drink and gladdens. The ineffable joy of the word of grace is like oil that anoints the face and makes it bright.

96. The soul truly contains all this within itself, not only as life, but, when it hears others teaching about it, it feels it, if both it and the teacher are governed by love and faith. The soul, then, listens with faith, and the teacher teaches with love, giving words about the virtues without pride and vainglory. The word of teaching the soul receives as a tutor; the word of reading as a nourisher; the active word as a pledge, as the sweet adorner of the betrothed; and the illumination that comes from the Holy Spirit as the word of the Bridegroom, which unites and gladdens. For every word that comes from the mouth of God is either a word which the saints speak with the co-working of the Holy Spirit, or the sweet inspiration of the Holy Spirit, which is only in the saints. And since rational beings delight in the word, very few here are those who rejoice in the Holy Spirit. Most men remember and receive only the images of spiritual words and do not know the taste of the true bread of the age to come, for they do not perceive God the Word. In the age to come only this bread is given for the full delight of the worthy; it never comes to an end and is never wholly consumed.

97. Without noetic perception it is impossible to feel the divine delight. He whose physical senses have been dulled perceives nothing sensory: he does not see, does not hear, does not smell; he is relaxed and as it were half dead. So too in him whose natural powers of soul have been put to death by the passions, they are insensible to the action of the Holy Spirit and cannot partake of His mysteries. He who does not see, and does not hear, and does not perceive spiritually is dead. Christ does not live in him, and he himself does not move and act in Christ.

98. The senses act almost in the same way — not to say identically — as the powers of the soul, especially when they are healthy. Thanks to the powers of the soul the senses live and act, and to both belongs the presence of the life-giving Spirit. A man is truly sick when he bears within himself absolutely all the passions and always lies in the hospital of sloth. The senses see sensory things clearly, and the powers of the soul see noetic things, especially when there is in them no satanic host opposing the law of reason and of the spirit. And when the Holy Spirit unites them into one and they become single in form, then they will see divine and human affairs directly and in all their fullness as they truly are, and will understand their meaning, and, as far as possible, will purely behold the one cause of all — the Trinity.

99. He who practises stillness must first of all have these five virtues as a foundation and build his actions upon them: silence, self-control, vigilance, humility and patience; and he must also have three works pleasing to God: psalmody, prayer and reading, and, when he is ill, also handiwork. The named virtues not only embrace all the others, but each also enters into the composition of the others. From early morning one should abide in the remembrance of God, in prayer and in stillness of heart, and at the first hour pray patiently, at the second read, at the third sing, at the fourth pray, at the fifth read, at the sixth sing, at the seventh pray, at the eighth read, at the ninth sing, at the tenth eat, at the eleventh sleep if there is need, at the twelfth sing vespers. And so, living the day well, to be pleasing to God.

100. It behoves us to gather what is most profitable from all the virtues, as the bee gathers honey. He who takes a little from each of them accumulates great works of the virtues, from which comes the honey of wisdom, bringing great joy to the soul.

101. If you wish to know how to pass the night more easily, remember that there are three rules of night vigil: for beginners, for the intermediate and for the perfect. The first rule is this: to sleep half the night and keep vigil half the night, that is, either from evening until midnight, or from midnight until morning. And here is the second rule: to keep vigil in the evening for an hour or two, then to sleep about four hours and, rising for matins, to sing and pray about six hours until morning. Then to sing the first hour and to sit in stillness, as has already been said, or to fulfil one’s tasks in order, or to keep frequent, that is, unceasing prayer. By it we are trained in the ordering of our life. And the third rule prescribes an all-night vigil and wakefulness.

102. Let us speak also of food: for everyone who practises stillness one litra ¹ of bread will suffice, and two cups of unmixed wine, and three cups of water, and to eat such food as there is — not as much as the body desires, but to consume it with self-control, as providence provides. And the best and shortest rule for those who wish to live in sobriety is to keep three virtues which contain all the others, that is, fasting, vigil and prayer; and upon these all the other virtues are built.

103. For stillness what is most needed is faith and patience, love and hope with the whole heart, and firmness and strength. He who believes may here perhaps not receive what he desires, through negligence or for some other reason; but when the soul goes out of the body, then he will surely learn the fruit of faith and of struggle and will behold freedom, that is, Jesus Christ, the Redeemer and Saviour of souls, the God-man Word. He who does not believe in Him, when the soul goes out of the body, «will be condemned» (Mk 16:16), and indeed even now he is condemned. He who serves pleasures and seeks glory from men and not from God (Jn 5:44) is unfaithful, as the Apostle says. Though in words he seems faithful, in reality he deceives himself. Therefore he will hear: «Since you did not receive Me but cast Me away from yourself, I too will cast you away.» Let the faithful man have good hope and believe God’s Scriptures; let him confess his weakness, lest he receive a double and inescapable condemnation.

104. Nothing so breaks the heart and humbles the soul as reasonable solitude and complete silence. And nothing else so destroys the order of stillness and takes away its divine power as these six chief passions: insolence, gluttony, much speaking, vanity, pride and the mistress of the passions — the love of authority. He who has grown accustomed to them is as it were beclouded by them when they multiply, and becomes insensible. And when he rises against them and makes a beginning with faith and diligence, then, humbling himself and seeking, he will find what he desires. But if even one of the said passions comes to reign in him through negligence, then the assembly of all evils and destructive unbelief, rising against him, will drive the virtues out of his soul and fill it with passions, and will make it a new Babylon, laid waste by demonic vanity and turmoil; and then its last state will be worse than the first. Such a man will be for the hesychast like a fierce enemy and slanderer, and will aim his tongue at him like an arrow and a two-edged sword.

105. The sea of the passions, by which the turbid and stormy sea of stillness floods the soul, cannot be crossed otherwise than in the light and empty ship of poverty and self-control. Through incontinence and love of possessions the torrents of the passions flood the land of the heart and, bringing in every impurity and the objects of thoughts, cause anxiety in the intellect, unrest in the mind, heaviness in the body, and in the soul and the heart sloth and darkness and insensibility, and destroy the habits and perceptions that are natural to us.

106. Nothing makes the soul of an ascetic so weak, negligent and senseless as self-love — for this is truly the nurse of the passions. When it counts rest for the body better than labours in the virtues, ascribing this to prudent reason so as not to labour willingly, fulfilling the commandments with a little effort and sweat, it makes the soul weak in pursuing the struggle of stillness, and impotence firm and invincible in deeds.

107. The best and first physician for those who are weak in fulfilling the commandments and who wish easily to be rid of turbid beclouding is nothing other than unquestioning obedience with faith in all things. This is a life-giving medicine of many ingredients from the virtues for those who drink it; it is a knife which with one cut removes the scars of wounds. He who, above all other virtues, gives preference with faith and simplicity to obedience cuts off all the passions at one stroke. And he attains not only stillness but accomplishes it by obedience, finds Christ and becomes, and is called, His follower and servant.

108. Without weeping and an ordered life it is impossible to endure the heat of stillness. He who weeps and ponders the calamities before and after death, before they come, will have both patience and humility — the two pillars of stillness. He who keeps stillness without these pillars will always have as the companion of his negligence high-mindedness. From these two things captivity and wandering are multiplied, which push us into weakness. And then incontinence — the source of sloth — makes the body weak and feeble, and the intellect beclouded and hard. Then Jesus too withdraws from the crowd of reflections and thoughts in our mind.

109. Not everyone can feel the present or the future torments of conscience. This is given only to those who here lack glory or love. Conscience torments the guilty like some fierce tormentor, and always comes with zeal or with reproof, as with a bared sharp sword. Conscience acts in three directions: upon the adversaries, upon the nature of the body and upon the soul; therefore it is called zeal, while others call it natural anger, which we ought to raise against the enemies like a sharp sword. If it, having conquered, subjects our duality to the One, then its courage is directed towards God. But if the soul submits to these two, that is, to sin and the flesh, then its end there will be merciless torment, since through its self-will it has submitted to the adversaries. Since it did here unseemly deeds and destroyed the virtuous order, it falls away, having withdrawn from God.

110. Of all the passions there are two that are truly cruel and most grievous — unchastity and listlessness. Taking hold of the wretched soul, they weaken it. They are bound to one another and have much in common, and therefore it is not easy for us to overcome them, to subdue them and to conquer them completely. The first of them is multiplied in lust and embraces those two which are inseparable by nature, that is, the soul and the body, pouring its sweetness through all the members. And the second, ruling over the governing intellect, wrapping soul and body like ivy, embracing them on all sides, makes the whole nature of man sluggish and powerless and slack. They can be driven away, but not completely conquered, until blessed dispassion comes — when the soul, having received in prayer the power of the Holy Spirit, which brings it consolation and strength and deep peace, rejoices in the heart in stillness. This sweetness is the beginning and the queen and the mistress of all other sweetnesses, and contains them within itself; and its companion is sloth, which brings Pharaoh’s horsemen out on an invincible chariot. Through them the causes of the passions have entered into our wretched life.

111. The beginning of noetic prayer is the action or purifying power of the Spirit and the mystical sacred rite of the intellect, just as the beginning of stillness is freedom from cares. The middle is the power of illumination and contemplation. And the end is rapture and the raising of the intellect to God.

112. The spiritual sanctuary is the noetic activity of the intellect, which secretly ministers and communicates at the altar of the Lamb in the soul in betrothal with God, even before the coming delight of the intellect. And to eat the Lamb on the noetic altar of the soul means not only to become aware of Him and to receive Him, but also to become as the Lamb, according to His image, in the age to come. Here there are only words; the mystical deeds we hope to behold there.

113. The prayer of beginners comes forth from the heart like a fire of gladness, and in the perfect like a fragrant light which shines in the heart. Or again: prayer is the preaching of the apostles, the working of faith, or rather faith itself, the steadfastness of those who hope, active love, the movement of the angels, the power of the bodiless ones, their work and their gladness, the good tidings of God, the announcement of the heart, the hope of salvation, the sign of sanctification, the dwelling of holiness, the knowledge of God, the manifestation of baptism, the font of cleansing, the betrothal with the Holy Spirit, the joy of Jesus, the gladness of the soul, the mercy of God, the sign of reconciliation, the seal of Christ, the ray of the noetic sun, the morning star of hearts, the confirmation of Christianity, the manifestation of reconciliation with God, the grace of God, the wisdom of God, even the beginning of wisdom itself, the rule of hesychasts, the cause of stillness, the sign of the angelic life. And what more is there to say here? Prayer is God, who works all things in all, that the working of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit may be one in him who does all things in Christ Jesus.

114. If Moses had not received from God the rod of power, God would not have struck through him either Pharaoh or all Egypt. So too the intellect, if it does not have in its hand the power of prayer, will not crush sin and the power of the adversaries.

115. Those who speak or do anything without humility are like a man who builds a house in winter or builds without clay. Few can find and know humility by reason and by experience. Those who tell of it in words are like those who measure the depth of the abyss. But we, being blind, guessing something about this great light, say: truly, humility has neither humble words, nor a humble appearance, nor does it force itself to think humbly, nor does it reproach itself while humbling itself — though humility often does manifest itself in just this way; yet this is grace and a gift from on high. The holy fathers say that there are two kinds of humility: the first is to consider oneself lesser than all; the second is to ascribe one’s successes to God. The first is the beginning and the second the end. Those who seek humility should keep in mind these three things: that they are more sinful than all other men, more shameless than all creatures, since they live in a state contrary to nature, and more wretched than the demons, since they are servants of the demons. They should speak thus of themselves: «Do I know anything certain about human sins — what they are and how many? Do they exceed my transgressions, or are they equal to them? And through ignorance, O soul, we are lesser than all men; we are as earth and ashes under their feet. How, then, should I not consider myself lower than all creatures, which have preserved the nature they had from the beginning, while I through my immeasurable transgressions have found myself outside it? Truly both wild and domestic animals are purer than I, a sinner, and therefore I am lesser than all and lie as though cast down alive into hell.» Who does not perceive that through his sins he is worse than the demons, since he has become their slave, obeys them and is therefore imprisoned with them in the abyss of darkness? Truly he is worse than the demons over whom they rule; and therefore, O soul, you, wretched one, have inherited the abyss together with them. Living in the earth, and in hell, and in the abyss even before death, and calling yourself righteous, you deceive yourself, for through evil deeds you have become sinful, defiled and demonic. O woe to you for your straying, O evil-tempered dog, unclean and all-defiled, for which you will be sent into fire and darkness.

116. The theologians hold that the wisdom given by the Holy Spirit is the power of noetic, pure and angelic prayer; and the sign of it is that when a man prays, there are no images in the intellect, and he sees neither himself nor anything else, and often there are no sensations at all, for the light acts in the intellect. The intellect then withdraws from everything sensory and becomes radiant, and cleaves to God as one spirit with Him.

117. There are seven different ways which lead to God-given humility and bring one into it. They compose one another and give birth to one another. They are: silence, humility of mind, humble speech, humble action, self-reproach, contrition, and taking the last place (that is, counting oneself the very last). And silence in the mind gives birth to humility of mind, and from humility of mind are born three ways of humility: to speak humbly, to dress humbly and poorly, and always to reproach oneself. These three ways give birth to contrition, which comes from the permitting of temptations — and this is called instruction by providence and humbling by the demons. And contrition in deed makes the soul lesser than all and the very last of all, as though all ruled over it. These two ways bring the complete God-given humility, whose power is called the perfection of all the virtues; it ascribes all its good deeds to God. The first and the foundation of all is silence, and from it comes humility of mind, which gives birth to the three ways of humility, and these three give birth to the one way of contrition; and the way of contrition gives birth to the seventh way of the first humility — being lesser than all, which is called providential humility. Providential humility brings the God-given, and perfect, and unrepeatable, and true humility. And the first of them is this: when a man is abandoned, and overcome, and subject, having submitted to every passion and thought, and conquered by the spirit, and, finding no help either from deeds, or from God, or from anyone else, though he does not fall into despair, yet, pressed on all sides, cannot but be contrite and see himself as lesser than all and the very last and the servant of all, worse than the demons, since they torment and overcome him. This is providential humility, by which God gives the second and lofty one, namely the divine power which acts and works in him, seeing in him His own instrument, and by it accomplishes God’s wonders.

118. The hypostatic spiritual contemplation of light, the intellect free of fantasy and pride, the true working of prayer which flows from the heart itself, the divine awe and through all this the ascent into the heavenly, and the complete tearing away of thought from the senses in the Holy Spirit, the rapture of the intellect away from its own powers, the God-moved angelic movement of the soul directed to the infinite and the lofty — these are impossible to find in our generation, for we are ruled by tormenting passions through numerous temptations. For the intellect grows accustomed to dream of these things prematurely, and therefore loses the small order given it by God and becomes dead. Therefore it behoves us with great discernment not to seek prematurely what is beyond our time, not to reject what is already in our hands and dream of something else. For the intellect by its nature loves to dream of the said lofty things and imagines itself in what it has not attained. Therefore there is no small danger that it will lose even what it has and will destroy the meaning, since it has been carried away and become a dreamer and not a hesychast.

119. Grace is not only faith, but also active prayer. It acts by love in the Spirit and has true faith, reflecting the life of Jesus. He who does not have such faith acting in him has a faith that is contrary, dead and lifeless, and is not truly called faithful; he believes only in words, not confirming his faith by the fulfilment of the commandments or by the Spirit. It behoves us to manifest faith by doing good deeds, which act in the light and shine, according to the words of the divine Apostle: «Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith» (Jas 2:18). By these words the Apostle says that the works of the commandments show grace and faith, and that the active commandments shine with the faith that is in grace. Faith is the root of the commandments, or the spring which helps the commandments to grow. It is divided into confession and grace, though faith is indivisible by nature.

120. The small, and great, and abbreviated Ladder of those who submit has five rungs, which lead to perfection: the first is renunciation, the second submission, the third obedience, the fourth humility, the fifth divine love, which is God Himself. Renunciation raises the one lying in hell and frees the one enslaved from nature; submission finds Christ and serves Him, as He Himself says: «Where I am, there shall My servant be also» (Jn 12:26). And where is Christ? He sits in the heavens at the right hand of the Father. There too should the servant be, where He is whom he serves. Let him who is about to set his foot on the first rung take care of this; and some, without even standing on these rungs, are raised together with Christ and grow. Obedience, when it acts according to the commandments, builds a ladder of various virtues and sets these virtues in the soul as rungs of ascent; through obedience is born the exalting humility, which embraces the obedient one and, raising him up to the heavens, hands him over to love — the queen of the virtues — and, bringing him to Christ, sets him before Him. Thus the true obedient one easily ascends to heaven by the abbreviated Ladder.

121. To the heavenly mansions there is no shorter way by the small ladder of the virtues than the putting to death of the five passions which contradict obedience: disobedience and contradiction, self-indulgence and self-justification, and destructive high-mindedness. For these are the members and parts of the disobedient demon, who devours adulterous disciples and sends them to the serpent in the abyss. Disobedience is the maw of hell; contradiction its tongue, sharp as a sword; self-indulgence its sharpened teeth; and the vapours of its all-devouring belly are high-mindedness, which escorts one to hell. He who conquers the first passion by obedience cuts off at one stroke all the others as well and by one rung swiftly comes out into the heavens. This is truly an ineffable and uncontainable wonder which our Lord, the Lover of mankind, has wrought: that without delay, by one virtue, or rather one commandment, we may ascend to the heavens, just as by disobedience alone we came down from the heavens and descended into hell.

122. Man is as it were a certain twofold world, and the divine Apostle calls him new: «Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation» (2 Cor 5:17). For by his virtue man is and is called both heaven and earth and all that is in the world. «Of him every word is spoken and for him every mystery is accomplished», as the Theologian says. «For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the heavenly places» (Eph 6:12), says the divine Apostle. Therefore, in the nature of our powers of soul, as in another world, must be those who war against us. Against the three powers of the ascetic’s soul three princes rise up and prepare their warriors. And in whatever an ascetic labours and presses forward, with that they war against him. The serpent, prince of the abyss, warring against those who watch over their heart, fights with them, having his strength in the lust of the loins and the navel, and with the sweet giant of forgetfulness he shoots fiery arrows into them. Lust is for him like a sea and an abyss, and he enters into it, and foams, and inflames, and kindles to intermingling, and floods it with torrents of sweetnesses, and does not satisfy it, since it is insatiable. The prince of this world opposes those who exercise themselves in active virtue and, warring in the incensive part with the giant of sloth, with all the wiles of the passions, as in another world or on an arena and a field, cunningly conducts the battle and either always overcomes those who fight courageously with him, or is himself overcome and becomes for the ascetics a cause of crowns or of shame before the angels; and, always arming regiments against them, he wages war with them. The prince of the air attacks those who raise their thought to contemplation; he brings fantasy upon the intellect, drawing near to the rational and noetic part with the airy spirits of wickedness and the giant of madness; he troubles the thought that rises upwards as though into another rational heaven; he calls up in the imagination turbid images of spirits and deceptive imaginings; he brings on fear as with thunder and lightning, storm and noises. Thus each of the three princes attacks one of the three powers of the soul, and whichever power he overcomes, over that he rules.

123. The demons were once intellects, but fell away from perceptiveness and subtlety and acquired hardness, according to that order and rank proper to bodies, by which they acquired their properties. Since the demons, like man, have lost the angelic sweetness and are deprived of divine delight, they find their delight in dust, as we do. Having become to a certain degree sensory, they have grown accustomed to sensory passions. And there is nothing surprising in this, for our soul too, created in the image of God as rational and spiritual, when it did not come to know God, became insensible like an animal and almost mindless through delight in sensory things: habit transforms nature and changes its working according to the will. Other demons, light and subtle as airy spirits, tear the soul away from contemplation with violent winds and, sending in fantasies, are sometimes transformed into angels, tempt the soul, call up in the memory familiar images and distort every spiritual vision, especially in those who struggle, before they receive purity and spiritual discernment. They can be transformed into any spiritual thing. They arm us against order and the measure of progress, and bring into the soul deception instead of truth and fantasies instead of contemplation.

124. The strengthening of the passions and the fleshly warfare that rises against the soul comes to us in five ways. Sometimes the flesh misuses what exists; sometimes it reaches out to things contrary to nature as though they belonged to its nature; sometimes, urged by the demons, as though fellowship with them were sweet to it, it rises against the soul; and sometimes the soul itself behaves disorderly, being carried away by sweetnesses and marking itself with passion. And then there is battle through demonic envy, which is permitted to the demons for the sake of our humility, when they fail to overcome us by all the means already mentioned.

125. There are three chief causes of the warfare which arises in us from everything and everyone: the misuse of what exists, envy, and the warfare of the demons which occurs by permission. The rising up and encroachment of the soul upon the flesh, and of the flesh upon the soul, has the same appearance as the struggle of the flesh against the soul and of the soul against the flesh. And the adversary himself sometimes, shamelessly, unexpectedly and without cause, dares to rise against us. Therefore do not allow, O friend, the leech that relishes blood to suck the blood from your veins and to spew it out. Do not permit the serpent and the dragon to feed on dust, and you will easily trample down the pride of the lion and the serpent. Sigh until, casting off the earthly garment, you clothe yourself in the heavenly manner of life and are transformed according to the image of Jesus Christ, who created you.

126. Truly flesh are those who, urged on by self-love, always serve passion and vainglory; in them envy too has taken root. They wither from sorrow and suffer when their neighbour prospers; they slander the good as evil and as an offspring of deception; they do not accept and do not believe what is from the Spirit, and because of their little faith they can neither know nor see God. Such men, through their blindness and little faith, will truly hear there: «I do not know you» (Mt 25:12). But let the faithful man who asks either, listening, believe what he does not know, or study what he does not believe, or teach whomever he may and without envy multiply the talent in those who receive with faith. But if he does not believe what he does not know, and belittles what he does not see, and teaches what he has not learned, slandering those who teach from experience, his portion will be with those who receive the bitterness of gall and punishment.

127. According to those who are truly wise, eloquent is he who briefly, in general concepts, embraces the essence of things. He now separates them, now joins them as one body, showing that they are the same for perception in one sense or another; and he is fittingly called one who knows how to persuade. Or again: the beauty of speech belongs to the truly spiritual man, who divides and unites the separated general properties of all things — which were united by the Word when He became man — with a capacious word uttered with a strong voice; as an eloquent speaker he not only embraces everything with a single word of demonstration, showing others the phenomenon from without, but can also enlighten others by the visions granted him in the Spirit. Indeed, whoever knows the Creator of all that exists through all that exists, or knows all that exists through the Creator, by the union of his intellect with the Creator and by his direct faith, that man is all-wise, for he is not only accustomed to divine things but also receives them. Or again: a truly wise man is he who has both an active and a contemplative intellect. A truly wise intellect is one that has grasped moral, natural and theological philosophy, and still more the love of God, and has learned from God the practice of moral wisdom, the words of natural vision and the correctness of theological doctrines. Or again: among the divine eloquent men the most divine is he who distinguishes true being from being or from its bearer, and by the properties of the one shows the properties of the others, and by divine inspiration sees the properties of some through the properties of others. And of the noetic world he speaks of the invisible on the basis of the sensory and visible, and of the sensory he speaks on the basis of the invisible and noetic; he speaks of the visible as the image of the invisible, and of the invisible as the archetype of the visible. «There have been given to us», says the eloquent one, «images of unimaginable things, apparently invisible, so that what is unimaginable may be revealed spiritually through the imagined, and conversely, so that one may clearly see one world in the other and speak of what is known with words of truth, and not with hints or in a figurative sense.» The understanding of truth is as it were clear-sighted, but knowledge and spiritual power should be expounded, showing in words the truth of both worlds: that one of them is our nourisher, and the second the divine house prepared for us. A divine philosopher is he who through action and contemplation has become His friend, because he has loved the first creative and true Wisdom above all friendship, wisdom and knowledge. He is a lover of words and not a true philosopher — although fame has given him the name of philosopher — who, as the great Gregory says, studies the wisdom of God’s creation; but he who studies this philosophy not for the sake of fame and human praise will love not nature but God’s Wisdom, which by its nature is the Word. A scribe is one who has learned what pertains to the Kingdom of God — everyone who exercises himself in action so as to attain the contemplation of God, and remains silent, bringing forth from the treasury of his heart things new and old, that is, evangelical and prophetic, or Old Testament and New Testament learning, or instructive and practical, or legal and apostolic. Or these are the new and old mysteries which the active scribe takes from his heart, having learned a life pleasing to God. So then, a scribe is an active man who practises bodily activity. And the divinely eloquent man is he who usually stands between the knowledge and the properties of all that exists and demonstrates everything with the spiritual and dividing power of the word. And a true philosopher is he who directly in himself has a supernatural union with God.

128. Those who write and speak without the Spirit and wish to build up the Church are psychical men, who, in the words of the divine Apostle, «do not have the Spirit» (Jude 1:19). Such men fall under the curse, according to the Lord’s word: «Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and prudent in their own sight!» (Is 5:21). They speak from themselves, and it is not the Spirit of God that speaks in them. They speak from their own thoughts, not having yet acquired purity, tempted by the spirit of pride. Of this it is said in the book of Proverbs: «Do you see a man who considers himself wise? There is more hope for a fool than for him» (Prov 26:12). And again: «Do not be haughty in mind» (Rom 12:16). So Wisdom commands us. And the divine Apostle himself, filled with the Spirit, says: «Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God» (2 Cor 3:5). And again: «We speak before God, in Christ» (2 Cor 12:19). The words of such as write and speak without the Spirit are unsweet and unenlightened; they speak, not having received from the living source of the Holy Spirit, but from their own heart, as from a silted swamp which nourishes leeches, and serpents, and frogs of lust and pomposity and incontinence. The water of their knowledge is fetid, turbid and lukewarm; he who drinks it becomes ill and, feeling disgust and nausea, turns away from it.

129. The divine Apostle says that we are the Body of Christ and «individually members of it» (1 Cor 12:27). And again: «There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in the one hope of your calling» (Eph 4:4). «As the body without the spirit is dead» (Jas 2:26) and insensible, so too he who has been put to death by the passions, since he has not kept the commandments, becomes after baptism estranged and unenlightened by the Holy Spirit and by the grace of Christ. Through faith and second birth he has the Spirit, but the Spirit does not act and move in him because of the deadness of his soul. The soul is one in the body, and the members of the body are many, and all of them the soul holds together, and quickens, and moves those which are able to receive life. But when the members wither through some illness and become dead and immobile, the soul, though it carries them, they are lifeless and insensible. So too in all Christ’s members the Spirit of Christ abides unconfusedly, setting in motion and quickening those who are able to partake of life; and those who cannot partake, the weak ones, He sustains in His love for man as His own. Therefore every faithful man becomes through faith a partaker of spiritual sonship, but he becomes inactive and unenlightened through the deadness of the passions, and negligence, and unbelief, losing light and life in Christ. For every faithful man is a member of Christ and has the Spirit of Christ. But a powerless and immobile member is incapable of partaking of grace.

130. Let us say that there are eight chief things which should be contemplated: the first is God, formless, without beginning and uncreated, and the cause of all, One in Trinity and supra-essential in Godhead; the second, the rank and order of the noetic powers; the third, the order of all that exists; the fourth, the providential descent of the Word; the fifth, the general resurrection; the sixth, the dread second coming of Christ; the seventh, the eternal torments; the eighth, the Kingdom of Heaven. Four of them have already taken place and exist, and four have not yet appeared and will come one day. Those four which have already appeared can be contemplated by him who has attained purity of intellect by grace. But he who approaches them unenlightened, let him know that what he has is not contemplation but imagination, and that the spirit of fantasy has taken hold of him.

131. It is necessary, as far as possible, to speak also of delusion, since it is common to many; for through its many wiles and cunning devices it is not easily recognised and can scarcely be understood. It is said that delusion is of two kinds, or comes and arrives through fantasy and through action, for its beginning and cause lie solely in pride. The first kind of delusion is the beginning of the second, and the second the beginning of the third, that is, of frenzy. The beginning of chimerical fantasy is the notion that the Godhead can be seen in some form. From such a notion comes the deception which leads to delusion, and through it arises blasphemy, together with which delusion gives birth to the fear of unseemly fantasies both in sleep and in waking, which is called the trembling and confusion of the soul. After pride comes delusion; after delusion, blasphemy; after blasphemy, fear; after fear, trembling; after trembling, an unnatural frenzy. This is the first kind of delusion, which comes from fantasy. And here is the second, which comes from activity: it takes its beginning from voluptuousness, born of natural lust. Sweetness gives birth to an unrestrained flood of unspeakable impurities; it heats the whole nature and, having beclouded the governing intellect by union with imaginings, brings it to frenzy, and, intoxicating it with its inflammation, to madness — and compels it to utter false prophecies, as though certain saints had appeared to him and spoken through him. Being drunk with the beclouding of passion, his character too changes and becomes like that of one possessed. In the world such people are called holy fools, who have been deceived by the cunning of delusion. They loiter and abide near the shrines of the saints and announce something to the people, for they are possessed by demons who act in them and torment them. They should be called possessed, deluded and mastered by delusion, and not prophets and foretellers of the present and the future. The demon of unchastity himself, having befuddled their reason with the fire of passion, brings them to frenzy, showing them in their imagination certain saints, conversations and visions. And at times the demons themselves appear, in order to confound them with fear. Having laid upon them the yoke of Belial, the demon of unchastity urges them to sin and holds them as slaves given over to him until death, whom he will then send to torment.

132. One should know that there are three chief causes of delusion, through which it comes upon men: through pride, through demonic envy, and from a punitive permission. And their causes are these: of pride, frivolity; of envy, success; of punitive permission, a sinful life. Delusion from envy and arrogance is easily healed if a man humbles himself. But when a man is handed over to Satan for punishment, God sometimes permits this until his death. And sometimes even the innocent are permitted to be tormented for their salvation. One should know that at times the demon of high-mindedness himself prophesies in those who do not watch well over their heart.

133. All pious priests and kings are anointed with truth in the new grace, whereas the anointing of the ancients was a prefiguration. These were prefigurations of our Truth, and not only some of them, but all of them were prefigurations of all of us. There is no community and no likeness between the ancient kingdom and priesthood and ours, though the images are the same. Among us, nature does not delimit the anointing or the grace and the call to anointing, but we have one and the same anointing, and call, and faith, and image. And by the words of Truth it is known also that everything pure and dispassionate, both now and in the age to come, is wholly consecrated to God.

134. Only then does wisdom speak with the lips and the mind teach the heart, when there shines clearly through them the hypostatic wisdom of God the Word and Father, and when the mind sees in things the imprint of the archetype, and, with the co-working of the living Word, the lips utter wisdom from wisdom, and the heart is enlightened by the renewing power of knowledge, taught by the Spirit. Through this knowledge he can enlighten his hearers and awaken faith in them.

135. The great adversary of truth, which now draws men to destruction, is delusion, through which slothful ignorance takes up its dwelling in slothful souls and estranges them from God. And they become as though they did not know God, who begot us and enlightened us; or they believe in Him and know Him only in words and not in deeds, and suppose that He appeared only to the ancients. The testimonies about God in Scripture they ascribe to other authors and not to those who wrote them, and, as Scripture says, they «despise dominion» (2 Pet 2:10). They reject all knowledge of piety and read or explain Scripture only in a sensory way, not to say in a Judaic way. Denying the renewal of the soul through resurrection, they senselessly wish to dwell for ever in tombs. From them come three passions: unbelief, cunning and slackness. They give birth to and sustain one another. Unbelief is the teacher of cunning, and cunning the companion of slackness, whose mark is complete sloth. Or again: slackness is the father of cunning, as the Lord says: «Wicked and slothful servant!» (Mt 25:26). And cunning is the father of unbelief; every cunning man is unbelieving. And he who is unbelieving does not fear God either; and from the absence of the fear of God is born slackness — the mother of negligence, through which every good is neglected and every evil is done.

136. True glory in God and a true understanding of what exists constitute the complete Orthodoxy of the doctrines. Therefore let everyone glorify thus: «Glory to Thee, O Christ our God, glory to Thee, who for our sake didst become man, O supra-essential God the Word. Therefore great is the mystery of Thy providence, O our Saviour; glory to Thee!»

137. The great Maximus says that there are three needs, blameless and not worthy of condemnation, for which texts are written down. The first is to remember oneself; the second, for the profit of others; the third, for the sake of obedience — thanks to which numerous works have been composed for those who seek words of truth. But he who writes for the sake of human praise and glory and to display his virtues loses his reward, having no profit here and no reward in the age to come, and will be condemned as a men-pleaser and a flatterer who scorns the word of God.

Note 1: One litra — 0.326 kg, the basic unit of weight in Byzantium.