The Conferences 5.11–5.26

“And now, to discuss the kinds of each vice one by one: there are three kinds of gluttony. The first urges a monk to hurry to his meal before the fixed and lawful hour; the second delights in filling the belly and in devouring any kind of food; the third desires more refined and very delicate foods. These three strike a monk with no slight harm unless he strives with equal zeal and watchfulness to free himself from all of them. For just as breaking the fast before the canonical hour must by no means be presumed, so gluttony of the belly and costly, exquisite preparation of foods must likewise be cut off. For from these three causes various and very bad conditions of the soul are produced. From the first, hatred of the monastery is born, and from it grows a horror and intolerance of the same dwelling, which will undoubtedly soon be followed by departure and very swift flight. From the second the fiery goads of luxury and lust are roused. The third ties the inextricable snares of love of money round the necks of its captives and never allows a monk to be grounded in the perfect nakedness of Christ. We detect traces of this passion in ourselves also by this sign: when perhaps we are kept for a meal by one of the brothers and are not content to eat the food with the seasoning with which our host has prepared it, but ask with unseemly and unbridled freedom that something be poured over it or added. This ought by no means to be done, for three reasons. First, because the mind of a monk should always be engaged in the exercise of endurance and frugality, and, according to the apostle, learn to be content with what it has. For one who is offended by tasting a little unpleasantness and cannot check the delights of his palate even for a moment will by no means be able to restrain the hidden or greater desires of the body. Second, because it sometimes happens that the thing we ask for is not available at the moment, and we put our host to shame for his need or frugality, making public his poverty, which he preferred to be known to God alone. Third, because the flavor we ask to be added sometimes displeases others, and we are found to do injury to many while we wish to satisfy our own palate and desire. For this reason such freedom must by all means be chastened in us. There are three kinds of sexual immorality. The first is accomplished by the union of both sexes. The second is without touching a woman, for which Onan, son of the patriarch Judah, is read to have been struck by the Lord; this is called uncleanness in the holy Scriptures. Concerning it the apostle says: ‘But I say to the unmarried and to widows: it is good for them if they remain as I am. But if they do not contain themselves, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn.’ The third is conceived in mind and thought, of which the Lord says in the Gospel: ‘Whoever looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.’ The blessed apostle declares that these three kinds must be extinguished in the same way: ‘Mortify your members which are upon the earth: sexual immorality, uncleanness, lust,’ and the rest; and again, of two of them, to the Ephesians: ‘Let sexual immorality and uncleanness not even be named among you’; and again: ‘But know this, that no one who is sexually immoral or unclean or covetous, which is idolatry, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.’ That we may guard against these three with equal watchfulness, the same single exclusion from the kingdom of Christ deters us from them. There are three kinds of love of money. The first does not allow those who renounce to be stripped of their riches and possessions. The second persuades us to take back with greater greed what we have dispersed or distributed to the needy. The third compels us to desire or acquire what we did not possess even before. There are three kinds of anger. One burns within, which in Greek is called thymos. Another breaks out into word and deed and effect, which is called orgē; of these the apostle also says, ‘But now put away all these, anger and indignation.’ The third is not, like those, boiled off in an hour, but is kept for days and seasons, and is called mēnis. All these must be condemned by us with equal horror. There are two kinds of sadness. One arises when anger has ceased, or from some loss suffered, or from a desire hindered and frustrated; the other comes from unreasonable anxiety or despair of mind. There are two kinds of acedia. One drives those in its heat headlong into sleep; the other urges them to leave and flee the cell. Vainglory, though it is manifold and various and divided into different forms, has two kinds. The first is that by which we are puffed up over fleshly and visible things; the second, that by which we are inflamed with the desire for empty praise over spiritual and hidden things.”

“In one matter, however, vainglory is usefully taken up by beginners, at least by those who are still assailed by fleshly vices. For example, if at the time when they are pressed by the spirit of sexual immorality they conceive in mind either the dignity of the priestly office or the opinion of everyone by which they are believed to be holy and spotless, and so, judging the unclean goads of desire shameful and unworthy of their reputation or of that order, they turn from them at least out of this consideration, blunting the greater evil by a lesser. For it is better for anyone to be assailed by the vice of vainglory than to fall into the fire of sexual immorality, from which, after a fall, one cannot recover, or can scarcely recover. One of the prophets expressed this meaning elegantly in the person of God: ‘For my own sake I will put my fury far off, and with my praise I will bridle you, lest you perish’; that is, so that while you are fettered by the praises of vainglory, you may not rush into the depths of hell and be sunk irrevocably by the completion of deadly sins. Nor is it surprising that this passion has such power that it can restrain someone rushing into the stain of sexual immorality, since it has very often been proved by the experience of many that it makes the one it has once corrupted with the plague of its poison so tireless that it makes him not even feel two-day or three-day fasts. Indeed, we have often known some in this desert confess that when they were in the coenobia of Syria they bore going without food for five days without difficulty, but that now they were so pressed by hunger even from the third hour that they could scarcely put off their daily fast until the ninth. On this matter Abba Macarius answered finely someone who asked why he was troubled by hunger from the third hour in the desert, when in the coenobium he had often refused food for whole weeks and had not felt hunger: ‘Because here there is no witness of your fast to feed and sustain you with his praises; but there the pointing of men's fingers and the food of vainglory fattened you.’ A figure of this, namely that the vice of sexual immorality is shut out when vainglory comes upon it, is expressed quite beautifully and pointedly in the book of Kingdoms, where Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Assyrians, coming up from the borders of Egypt, carried off to his own region the people of Israel, who had been taken captive by Necho, king of Egypt; not, of course, to restore them to their former freedom and their native land, but to lead them away to his own lands, to be carried farther away than they had been as captives in the land of Egypt. This figure also fits the present case suitably. For though it is more tolerable to serve the vice of vainglory than that of sexual immorality, it is harder to escape the dominion of vainglory. For in a way the captive led away a longer distance will return with more labor to his native soil and ancestral freedom; and that prophetic rebuke will rightly be addressed to him: ‘Why have you grown old in a foreign land?’ For he is rightly said to grow old in a foreign land who is not renewed from earthly vices. There are two kinds of pride: the first fleshly, the second spiritual, which is also more ruinous. For it especially attacks those whom it has found to have made progress in some virtues.”

“Though these eight vices assail the whole human race, they do not attack everyone in the same way. In one the spirit of sexual immorality holds the chief place; in another fury rides roughshod; in another vainglory claims the tyranny; in another pride holds the citadel. And although it is agreed that all are assailed by all, each of us struggles in a different way and order.”

“Therefore we must take up these battles in such a way that each one, finding out the vice by which he is most troubled, takes up his principal struggle against it: fixing all the care and concern of his mind on watching for its assault; directing against it the daily darts of fasting; hurling against it at every moment the sighs of his heart and the frequent weapons of groans; spending against it the labors of vigils and the meditations of his heart; pouring out also unceasing tears of prayer to God and asking him specially and constantly for the extinction of its assault. For it is impossible for anyone to win a triumph over any passion until he has understood that he cannot obtain the victory in the contest by his own effort or labor, though, in order to be cleansed, he must remain day and night in all care and concern. And when he feels himself freed from it, let him again search the hiding places of his heart with like attention, pick out the one he sees to be the most dreadful among the rest, and move all the weapons of the spirit especially against it. And so, always overcoming the stronger ones, he will have a quick and easy victory over the remaining ones, because the mind will be made stronger by the progress of its triumphs, and the fight with the weaker ones that follows will make the outcome of the battles readier for him. This is what those usually do who are accustomed to fight all kinds of beasts before the kings of this world for the sake of prizes, a kind of spectacle commonly called the pancarpus. These men, I say, take up the first contest against whatever beasts they see to be stronger in might or more dreadful in savage fury; and when these have been killed they lay low the rest, which are less terrible and less fierce, with an easier outcome. So too, with the stronger vices always overcome and the weaker following, perfect victory will be prepared for us without any danger. Yet it must not be thought that one who fights chiefly against one vice, and is less careful to watch for the weapons of the others, can more easily be wounded by an unexpected blow. This will by no means happen. For it is impossible that one who, anxious for the cleansing of his heart, has armed the intention of his mind against the assault of any vice should not have a general horror and similar guard against the other vices too. For how will one merit victory even over the passion from which he desires to be freed, if he makes himself unworthy of the reward of purification by the contagion of other vices? But when the principal intention of our heart has taken up a special fight against one passion, it will pray more attentively about it, supplicating with particular care and zeal that it may watch it more diligently and so merit a speedy victory. The lawgiver too teaches us that we must practise this order of battles and yet not trust in our own strength, in these words: ‘You shall not fear them, because the Lord your God is in the midst of you, a great and terrible God. He will consume these nations in your sight little by little and by parts. You will not be able to destroy them all at once, lest the beasts of the earth multiply against you. And the Lord your God will give them up in your sight, and will slay them until they are utterly destroyed.’”

“He likewise warns that we ought not to be puffed up by our victory over them: ‘Lest, when you have eaten and are full, and have built fine houses and lived in them, and have herds and flocks of sheep, silver and gold, and plenty of all things, your heart be lifted up and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, and was your leader in the great and terrible wilderness.’ Solomon too in Proverbs: ‘If your enemy falls, do not rejoice; and do not be lifted up at his overthrow, lest the Lord see it and it displease him, and he turn away his wrath from him’; that is, lest, seeing the pride of your heart, he stop attacking him, and you, forsaken by him, begin again to be troubled by the passion which by God's grace you had earlier overcome. For the prophet would not have prayed, ‘Do not deliver to the beasts, O Lord, the soul that confesses you,’ unless he had known that some, because of the swelling of their hearts, are handed over again to the same vices they had conquered, so that they may be humbled. Therefore, taught both by the experience of things and by countless testimonies of Scripture, we must be certain that we cannot overcome such great enemies by our own strength unless we are supported by the help of God alone, and that we ought every day to refer the whole of our victory to him, as the Lord warns us on this point too through Moses: ‘Do not say in your heart, when the Lord your God has destroyed them in your sight: Because of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to possess this land, when these nations have been destroyed because of their wickedness. For it is not because of your righteousness and the uprightness of your heart that you go in to possess their lands; but because they have acted wickedly they have been destroyed as you enter.’ I ask, what could be said more plainly against our ruinous opinion and presumption, by which we want to credit everything we do either to free will or to our own effort? ‘Do not say in your heart,’ he says, ‘when the Lord your God has destroyed them in your sight: Because of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to possess this land.’ Has he not plainly told those who have the eyes of the soul opened and ears to hear: When your wars against the fleshly vices have gone well for you, and you see yourself freed from their filth and from the way of life of this world, do not, puffed up by the outcome of battle and victory, ascribe it to your own strength and wisdom, believing that you have won the victory over the spiritual wickednesses or the fleshly vices because of your labors, your zeal, and the freedom of your will? Over these you could certainly not have prevailed at all unless the Lord's help had fortified and protected you.”

“These are the seven nations whose lands the Lord promises to give to the children of Israel after they came out of Egypt. Since all these things happened to them in figure, according to the apostle, we ought to take them as written for our admonition. For it is said: ‘When the Lord your God has brought you into the land which you are going in to possess, and has destroyed many nations before you, the Hittite and the Girgashite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, seven nations far more numerous than you and stronger than you, and the Lord has delivered them to you, you shall strike them down to utter destruction.’ The reason why they are said to be far more numerous is that the vices are more than the virtues. And so in the list seven nations are counted, but in their conquest they are set down without a number; for it says, ‘and has destroyed many nations before you.’ For the people of the fleshly passions, which comes from this sevenfold tinder and root of vices, is more numerous than Israel. From there sprout murders, strifes, heresies, thefts, false witness, blasphemies, revellings, drunkenness, slanders, jesting, foul talk, lies, perjuries, foolish talk, buffoonery, restlessness, rapacity, bitterness, clamor, indignation, contempt, murmuring, temptation, despair, and many others which it would take very long to mention. Since we judge these light, let us hear what the apostle thought of them and what sentence he passed on them. ‘Neither murmur,’ he says, ‘as some of them murmured and were destroyed by the destroyer’; and of temptation: ‘Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them tempted and perished by serpents’; of slander: ‘Do not love to slander, lest you be rooted out’; and of despair: ‘Who, despairing, have given themselves up to lewdness, to the working of all error, to uncleanness.’ That clamor, like anger, indignation, and blasphemy, is condemned, we are most plainly taught by the words of the same apostle, who commands: ‘Let all bitterness and anger and indignation and clamor and blasphemy be put away from you, with all malice’; and many other things like these. Though these are far more numerous than the virtues, yet when those eight principal vices, from whose nature it is certain that they flow, have been conquered, they all subside at once and are destroyed with them in everlasting destruction. For from gluttony are born revellings and drunkenness; from sexual immorality, foul talk, buffoonery, jesting, and foolish talk; from love of money, lying, fraud, theft, perjury, the desire of shameful gain, false witness, violence, inhumanity, and rapacity; from anger, murders, clamor, and indignation; from sadness, rancor, faintheartedness, bitterness, despair; from acedia, idleness, sleepiness, importunity, restlessness, wandering about, instability of mind and body, talkativeness, curiosity; from vainglory, strifes, heresies, boasting, and the presumption of novelties; from pride, contempt, envy, disobedience, blasphemy, murmuring, slander. That these plagues are also stronger we feel plainly from the assault of nature itself. For the delight of the fleshly passions wars more strongly in our members than the pursuit of the virtues, which are acquired only by the greatest contrition of heart and body. And if you contemplate with spiritual eyes those countless troops of enemies which the blessed apostle lists, saying, ‘Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places,’ and what is said of the righteous man in the ninetieth psalm, ‘A thousand shall fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand,’ you will see clearly that they are far more numerous and stronger than we, who are fleshly and earthly, since a spiritual and airy substance has been granted them.”

Germanus: “How, then, are there eight vices that attack us, when seven nations opposing the people of Israel are counted by Moses? Or how is it fitting for us to possess the lands of the vices?”

Serapion: “It is the settled opinion of all that there are eight principal vices which attack the monk. They are named figuratively under the word ‘nations,’ and they are not all given here because Moses, or the Lord through him, was speaking in Deuteronomy to those who had already come out of Egypt and been set free from one very strong nation, that is, the Egyptians. This figure is found to stand most rightly in our case too: freed from the snares of the world, we are known to be free of gluttony, that is, the vice of the belly or palate. And we now have a similar conflict against these remaining seven nations, the first, which has already been conquered, not being counted. Its land is not given to Israel as a possession; rather it is ordained by the Lord's command that they should leave it for ever and go out from it. And therefore fasts must be so moderated that we are not compelled, through immoderate self-control, contracted through the failing or weakness of the flesh, to return again to the land of Egypt, that is, to the former desire of the palate and the flesh which we cast off when we renounced this world. This is what those suffered in figure who, having gone out into the wilderness of the virtues, longed again for the pots of flesh over which they sat in Egypt.”

“The reason why the nation among which the children of Israel were born is not commanded to be utterly destroyed, but only its land to be left, while these seven are ordered to be destroyed to the last, is this: however much we are inflamed with ardor of spirit and have entered the desert of the virtues, we can by no means do without the neighborhood and service of gluttony and a kind of daily commerce with it. For the desire for food and eating will always live in us as something inborn and natural, even though we hasten to cut off its superfluous appetites and desires. As these cannot be wholly destroyed, so they must be avoided by a kind of turning aside. For of this it is said: ‘And make no provision for the flesh in its desires.’ So while we keep the disposition of this care, which we are commanded not to cut off entirely but to exercise without desires, we plainly do not destroy the Egyptian nation, but separate ourselves from it with a certain discernment, not thinking about superfluous or more lavish feasts, but, according to the apostle, content with daily food and clothing. This is commanded figuratively in the law as well: ‘You shall not abhor the Egyptian, because you were a sojourner in his land.’ For necessary food is not denied to the body without either harm to it or crime against the soul. But the movements of those seven disturbances, as wholly harmful, must be completely exterminated from the recesses of our soul. For of these it is said: ‘Let all bitterness and anger and indignation and clamor and blasphemy be put away from you, with all malice’; and again: ‘But let sexual immorality and all uncleanness and avarice not even be named among you, nor filthiness, nor foolish talk, nor buffoonery.’ We can, then, cut off the roots of these vices, which have been added to nature; but we shall by no means be able to cut off the use of gluttony. For however far we have advanced, we cannot not be what we were born. That this is so is shown by the life and conduct both of us who are small and of all the perfect. Even when they have cut off the goads of the other passions and seek the desert with all fervor of mind and nakedness of body, they cannot be freed from providing daily food and preparing the year's bread.”

“A figure of this passion, by which even the most spiritual and highest monk must be constrained, is quite properly signified by the likeness of the eagle. When it has been raised in its loftiest flight above the heights of the clouds and has hidden itself from the eyes of all mortals and the face of the whole earth, it is compelled by the necessity of its belly to come down again to the depths of the valleys, descend to the earth, and busy itself with dead carcasses. By this it is most plainly proved that the spirit of gluttony can by no means be cut off like the other vices, or be wholly extinguished in the same way, but only that its goads and superfluous appetites can be blunted and held in check by strength of mind.”

“One of the elders, disputing with philosophers who thought they could weary him as a rustic because of his Christian simplicity, expressed the nature of this vice elegantly under the guise of a riddle. ‘My father,’ he said, ‘left me bound to many creditors. I paid all the others in full and was freed from all the trouble of their demands; one I cannot satisfy though I pay him every day.’ When they, not knowing the force of the question put to them, begged him to give its solution, he said: ‘I was bound by my natural condition to many vices. But when the Lord inspired in me the desire of freedom, I renounced this world together with all of them, as with most troublesome creditors, and cast away from me all the property that had come to me by my father's succession; so I satisfied them and was wholly freed from them. But I have in no way been able to be free of the goads of gluttony. For though I have reduced it to a small measure and a very cheap quantity, I do not escape the force of its daily demand; I must be pressed by its perpetual claims, pay a kind of endless settlement by constant payment, and bring an insatiable tax to its levies.’ Then they declared that this man, whom they had earlier despised as ignorant and rustic, had thoroughly grasped the first part of philosophy, that is, ethics, and they wondered greatly that he could attain by nature what no worldly learning had given him, when they themselves, with much sweat and long study, had not been able to reach it. Let this suffice to have been said specially about gluttony. Now let us return to the discussion we had begun to set out about the general kinship of the vices.”

“When the Lord spoke to Abraham about the future (a point you did not ask about), we read that he counted not seven nations but ten, whose land is promised to be given to his seed. This number is clearly completed by adding idolatry and blasphemy, to which, before the knowledge of God and the grace of baptism, either the impious multitude of the Gentiles or the blaspheming multitude of the Jews is subject, as long as it lives in the spiritual Egypt. But if anyone, renouncing and going out from there by God's grace, has conquered gluttony too and reached the spiritual desert, he is freed from the assault of three nations and will take up war only against the seven which are counted by Moses.”

“That we are commanded to possess the regions of these ruinous nations, to our salvation, is understood thus. Each vice has its own station in our heart, which it claims for itself in the recess of our soul, driving out Israel, that is, the contemplation of the highest and holiest things, and never ceasing to oppose them. For virtues cannot dwell together with vices: ‘For what partnership has righteousness with iniquity? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?’ But when the vices have been overcome by the people of Israel, that is, by the virtues fighting against them, the place which the spirit of desire or sexual immorality held in our heart, chastity will henceforth occupy; the place which fury had taken, patience will claim; the place which the sadness that works death had seized, a wholesome sadness full of joy will possess; the place which acedia laid waste, fortitude will begin to cultivate; the place which pride trampled, humility will honor. And so, when each vice has been driven out, the contrary virtues will possess their places, that is, their dispositions; and these are rightly called the children of Israel, that is, of the soul that sees God. When they have driven out all the passions of the heart, they must be believed not so much to have invaded others' possessions as to have recovered their own.”

“For, as the ancient tradition teaches, these same lands of the Canaanites, into which the children of Israel are brought, had once been allotted to the sons of Shem in the division of the world, and afterwards the posterity of Ham took possession of them by force and power through the injustice of invasion. In this God's most righteous judgment is proved: he both drove the latter out of the foreign places they had wrongfully occupied, and restored to the former the ancient possession of their fathers, which had been assigned to their line in the division of the world. This figure is known by the surest reasoning to stand in our case too. For the Lord's will naturally assigned the possession of our heart not to the vices but to the virtues. These, driven out of their own region after Adam's transgression by the vices, that is, by the Canaanite peoples, growing insolent, when they have been restored to it again by God's grace through our diligence and labor, must be believed not so much to have occupied foreign lands as to have recovered their own.”

“These eight vices are also signified in the Gospel thus: ‘When the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he walks through dry places seeking rest, and finds none. Then he says, I will return to my house from which I came out; and coming he finds it empty, swept, and adorned. Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first.’ See, as there we read of seven nations besides that of the Egyptians from which the children of Israel had gone out, so here seven unclean spirits are said to return, besides the one that is first described as having gone out of the man. Solomon too describes this sevenfold tinder of vices in Proverbs: ‘If your enemy entreats you with a loud voice, do not consent to him; for there are seven wickednesses in his soul.’ That is, if the spirit of gluttony, having been overcome, begins to flatter you with its humiliation, asking you, as it were, to relax something of your first fervor and grant it what exceeds the measure of self-control and the limit of just strictness, do not be softened by its submission, nor, through the smiling security from assault by which you seem to have become a little quieter from fleshly incitements, return to your former slackness or to past desires of the palate. For through this that spirit you had conquered says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came out’; and at once the seven spirits of the vices that proceed from it will be fiercer to you than that passion which had been overcome at the beginning, and they will soon drag you to worse kinds of sins.”

“Therefore, while we apply ourselves to fasts and self-control, we must hasten, once the passion of the palate has been overcome, not to leave our soul empty of the necessary virtues, but to fill all the recesses of our heart with them more zealously, lest the spirit of desire, returning, find us empty and void of them, and, no longer content to prepare an entrance for itself alone, bring into our soul with it this sevenfold tinder of vices and make our last state worse than the first. For the soul that boasts that it has renounced this world while eight vices rule over it will afterwards be more shameful and unclean, and will be punished with a heavier penalty, than it was once when it was placed in the world, when it had professed neither the discipline nor the name of a monk. These seven spirits are said to be more wicked than the first which had gone out for this reason: that the desire of the palate, that is, gluttony, would not be harmful in itself if it did not bring in other, graver passions, namely sexual immorality, love of money, anger, sadness, or pride, which are without doubt harmful and deadly to the soul in themselves. And therefore no one will ever be able to obtain the purity of perfection who hopes to acquire it from this self-control alone, that is, bodily fasting, unless he knows that he must practise it so that, with the flesh humbled by fasts, he may more easily enter the contest against the other vices, the flesh not growing insolent through the gluttony of satiety.”