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ALL THE WORKS OF MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR * Volume II: COMMON, DOGMATIC, AND POLEMICAL LETTERS TO ANASTASIUS THE MONK * Volume II: COMMON, DOGMATIC, AND POLEMICAL LETTERS * LETTER 1. AN EXHORTATORY DISCOURSE In the form of a letter 1. To the servant of God, the lord George, the all-praiseworthy prefect of Africa.

No one, I think, of those deprived in any way whatever of the light of the sun's ray longs to enjoy it as much as we, all we humble ones, who have been richly filled with your nobility and goodness, long to see you present again and to enjoy your beauty—marked, indeed, by the divine ways of the virtues that accompany you, in which we know you shone magnificently when you were present before as well; through which we were taught more clearly that virtue is a matter of disposition, not of rank, and that likeness to God is a matter of inner state, not of worthiness. For those in whom, blessed as you are, the power of love toward God has been genuinely rooted in the depth of the soul—to these has unquestionably accrued the same disposition toward the good; just as, assuredly, those who are excited by the love of material things have a propensity and readiness to fall into a multitude of passions. And very reasonably so. For he who cleaves in disposition by desire to the Divine, which is one and alone and impassible, and has nothing at all, differing in essence, contemplated alongside it or in addition to it from eternity—for none of the things that come from it attains it—he too is one and alone and impassible, by his unswerving inclination toward the One.

The work of Saint Maximus was divided into volumes, and the pages are recorded according to the order of "GREGORY PALAMAS" of the editions "TO BYZANTION," Thessaloniki 1992, PHILOKALIA OF THE NEPTIC AND ASCETIC FATHERS, so that the reader can easily consult the translation. The text comes from three sources: 1) from the electronic library of Greek texts, ( :// ), 2) texts not included in the [Patrologia] from the Patrologia of [Migne], volumes 90 and 91 (typed by the mother of Fr. Arsenios Meskos), and 3) the scholia on the works of Saint Dionysius the Areopagite from the BYZANTIO editions; the text was passed through a scanner, followed by optical character recognition and proofreading. Volume and page for the BYZANTIO editions are recorded in the following manner: , that is, the tenth page of volume B follows. There is also an indication of the page of the Patrologia when the text comes from there.

* The text comes from the Patrologia of [Migne], volume 91 (typed by the mother of Fr. Arsenios Meskos), in comparison with the text of the editions "TO BYZANTIO" of the series "GREGORY PALAMAS," Thessaloniki 1992, PHILOKALIA OF THE NEPTIC AND ASCETIC FATHERS, volume II.

becoming one and alone and unchanging. For if there is one and only one thing desired by him, and this is properly unchanging, as being by essence immovable because of its natural infinity; for the immovable infinite has nowhere to move; therefore he too, as being a lover of the One, has, as is likely, become one and alone and unchanging, having made his judgment wholly immovable from the One. But he who in ignorance of the better has bound the love of his soul to material things, which are by nature changeable and subject to alteration and are wholly unable to stand anywhere, is necessarily changeable and passionate and easily altered, having the disposition of his soul suffering along with things that are by nature moved and suffer.

Therefore, my blessed lord, let nothing that exists be able to remove you from this good and God-like state of yours, which has your judgment as a fellow-traveler toward God; let not time, changing the flux of material things in disorder for itself, alter the firmness of your judgment; let not the threat of men, offering fear, move the stability of your good disposition; let not the speech of flattering men, sweetening the hearing of the soul by its utterance, relax its tension; let not the desire for retaliation, from being able perhaps to do something to someone, corrupt altogether the gentleness of your character; let not the longing for the glory of ruling diminish the desire for the love of things Divine. For not to rule over men is certainly not a lack of glory with God or with men;

But rather it is an increase of glory, inasmuch as the soul stands free from all disturbance and care from outside, as my account holds; and everyone who piously perceives what is needful will agree, as I think. For every man who is truly virtuous and a lover of God is sufficient for himself for every blessedness, needing no covering of external things in order to procure it. For he who has established in his life the impressions of his own divine properties as marks has completely the fullness of all good things; through which the exact likeness to God naturally comes to be in men; compared with which, not even any of the things after God is comparable in any way. And to speak simply, neither sickness nor health, neither the wealth that is dragged below nor the poverty of corruptible things, neither blame nor praise, neither death nor life, neither the present nor the future, nor indeed any other of things that are or come to be, shall be able to corrupt this philosophy that nurtured you and brought you to this point, for glory with God and men. And how shall this come about? If we entrust to God all our own affairs; and we should not endure to seek at all any of the things which we have not been commanded to seek from God; but to seek with all zeal everything whatsoever we have been commanded to seek from God; and the things that are after God and under our own judgment and power, we should will in every way, and strive to shape them through the works themselves.

But these things, by all votes, since they do not need our opinion as to their coming to be and passing away, let us concede to God with thanksgiving and faith to lead whither he wills and desires, in no way at all disputing against the accounts of his providence and governance; by which the whole is carried, in a manner unknown, with secret wisdom, to its own end according to God's foreknowledge; even if he brings the outcome of such accounts otherwise and beyond our hope. For he is the most wise guardian and protector of our affairs, inasmuch as he did not acquire wisdom as something that came to be his, but is and is called wisdom in essence, properly. Let us will genuinely to keep one thing only, to love him, as he said, with all our heart and soul and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves; striving in every way to devise how to bring this divine ordinance to its end; and the whole divine goal has been most fully accomplished for us, so to speak, by definition, in whatever rank or order, life and condition we may be—whether rulers or ruled, rich and poor, healthy and sick, and however else we are disposed in body; and concerning other things, as many as altogether do not follow our will according to our disposition, let us not be anxious at all. For what is it to us, that which is not established by nature from necessity, or by judgment from our own willing? And perhaps wishing us to consider this, the account has not given us a command concerning it through divine precept; so that we, undertaking things not in our power contrary to nature, might not misuse the power of willing in a blameworthy way.

And let us show the one to be weak, since it does not possess the things that can in no way be under it; but let us not do violence to God, thinking that the administration of providence belongs to us—providence which wisely uses the things that are not in our power for the punishment of the evils that are in our power, and for the increase and well-ordered course of the good things that are in our power. Dividing, then, the things not in our power from the things in our power, let us believe that the former belong wholly to divine providence, but that the latter, together with divine providence, are also the achievement of our own judgment according to our will. It is in our power, then—to speak comprehensively, as if summing it up in a definition—everything that is contained under the principle of virtue, or conversely under the mode of vice, follows our judgment according to our will. It is not in our power—everything that does not have our own choice as the creator of its own existence; and everything that exists according to nature is free from virtue and vice, but by the use of those who possess it, it becomes or appears to be this or that—to speak more properly. All the good things that are in our power, therefore, as being works of our choice together with God and realities of our own judgment, let us will earnestly and make much of; and thus we shall be obedient and well-yoked colts of divine grace, receiving the Word as he mounts us and sets straight for us the ordered course of the virtues. But the things that are not in our power, since they are not in themselves by nature either vice or virtue, but instruments of choice, bringing the hidden impulse of the principle that is in our power into the open—let us not will them at all.

So that we do not corrupt through misuse the natural power of the will, which wishes to lay hold of things impossible and unable to be set right by it. But let us entrust these things to God, and receive with thanksgiving every change of times and circumstances, which comes to be for our benefit according to God's saving will—so that not only through the same things but also through things not the same in like manner, and through uneven things evenly, the good of virtue may be set right for us. For no one ever falls away from good hope who yields and entrusts to God the administration and providence over what is not in his power. And true is the one who somewhere said among his own words, the Wise Man: Look at the ancient generations, and see who trusted in the Lord and was put to shame; or who called upon him, and he overlooked him?

Since these things are so, just as the account, running with truth, has shown—and clearly set forth the distinctness of things willed and things not willed, distinguishing by definition the things that are not confused with one another—let us neither, when the principle is taken away from us, as though suffering the loss of something good, claim it back; for the principle does not altogether follow upon our willing, since the reason of what is in our power is far off; just as neither do wealth and health, nor all those things among the intermediate that are shaped by us toward virtue or vice; nor again, on the other hand, let us utterly reject it when given as though it were something bad, since it can perhaps be an instrument of virtue for those who love God; and let us offer all things to God with all zeal, in addition to all the things in our power, and the things not in our power that happen to them by economy, for those who have chosen this. This is reasonably so.

For without these things we cannot become, be, or remain good and virtuous. For we cannot desire or avoid what is naturally good or evil, whatever it may be, if it is not in our own power; and again, we cannot be evil and destitute of all virtue. The possession of these things is not absolutely necessary for us in any way, nor is the lack of them, with a view to the generation or preservation of any good or evil. For some, deprived of power, wealth, and health, have acquired many treasures of eternal goods; while others, on the contrary, having power, wealth, and health, have by their own choice fallen away from all divine goods. Both poor Lazarus and the rich man in his story bear witness: the one, deprived of all material power, health, and property, received the blessed rest in the bosom of Abraham; the other, possessing these material things to the utmost, was excluded from the holy places by the great chasm and condemned to have the punishing fire as his portion. And again, David and Job, the great champions of truth, were tested through both ways of life, which were diametrically opposed to each other and mutually hostile, and they preserved virtue, which increased through opposites. For virtue is not the work of wealth, health, and power; nor again is virtue the work of the lot opposed to these, so that it should undergo change toward opposites, being altered together with circumstances; but it is the work of a divine disposition and a will thoroughly fashioned toward the good, firmly fixed in God immovably, and preserving its own identity unaltered in the midst of opposites.

Let us then accept the beginning that is given, and receive it as an instrument of the assistance given to us by God for virtue. And again, when it is taken away, let us not seek it, as if setting down the weight of a great and fearful burden, and revealing the purpose of Providence that is in our power, which in a humane way manages what is beneficial for each. For do not seek, says the Wise One, to become a judge, lest you be unable to remove iniquity; lest at any time you fear the face of a powerful man, and place a stumbling block in your uprightness; and sin against a multitude of a city, and cast yourself down among the crowd, and bind up sin twice. Nevertheless, if you should wish to appear even from these things, blessed one, you have come no less than any of those who are according to you. For the eyes of the Lord, as the same Wise One said, looked upon you for good, and set you upright from your humiliation, and lifted up your head, and many marveled at you, and they tell of your virtues to peoples and nations. And what the Holy Spirit foretold concerning the apostles through the great David: Into all the earth went out the sound of your achievements, and to the ends of the inhabited world came the fragrant report of your virtues. For you did not eat your bread alone, but richly shared it with orphans, and from their youth you turned them aside as a father, and from their mother's womb you guided them to righteousness. You did not overlook the naked perishing, and did not clothe them; but all the weak blessed you; for you warmed their shoulders from the shearing of your lambs. You did not set your gold in your dust, that is, for the enjoyment of your flesh.

But you sent all your wealth ahead into heaven, for the preparation of the good things of the soul. You were not deceived by corruptible wealth, and you did not set your heart upon it as it flowed away. You did not dwell with mockers, whose life is shame and whose existence is filled with stains. Your foot did not hasten to deceit, nor did you rejoice at the fall of enemies and say in your heart, "Well done." The earth did not groan because of you, for you did not eat its strength alone without price, nor did you oppress the souls of its owners. You kept your hands back from unjust gifts; you saved the poor man from the hand of the powerful, and you wept over every helpless person; and seeing a man in distress, you groaned. You helped orphans who had no helper, and the mouths of widows blessed you. For you clothed yourself in righteousness, and you put on upright judgment as a double cloak. You became an eye to the blind, a foot to the lame, and a father to the helpless. You crushed the molars of the unjust, and from the midst of their teeth you snatched away the prey. And to sum it up, you feed the hungry and give drink to the thirsty, you clothe strangers and wrap the naked, you visit the sick and minister to those in prison; or rather, through all these things you please God; for whose sake you judged it more glorious than all things to supply all these things eagerly. Therefore God rightly guarded you, and His lamp shines over your head; that is, the law of the commandments shines brightly in you before all through the practice of the virtues; and by His light you walk in darkness.

that is, by the knowledge of the pious contemplation of things that exist, you pass through the deceit of this age and its ignorance unharmed, hastening toward the unshadowed light. For to you alone in truth, beyond all men, beloved one, did it belong not to corrupt virtue by the bulk of your office, nor to bend the law of Christ in any way to gold; but so to enslave authority to virtue that you are known from virtue and reason alone, as I say, and have become everywhere known to all through the fame of your righteousness.

But if, as is likely, we shun the suffering of the flesh and think that by authority we procure for ourselves the well-being of the flesh, let us understand that the well-being of the flesh was invented for life by the transgression of the divine commandment, and man, preferring things temporal to things eternal, introduced it; whereas the suffering of the flesh was shown and legislated by the keeping of the divine commandment, and by God who for this reason became man through himself; and that the one is the cause of men's estrangement from paradise and the good things there, while the other is the cause of the leading back into paradise and the ascent into the heavens, and—what is more wonderful than all—the procurer of intimacy with God. And for this reason let us by all means cling to the suffering of the flesh, since it is a divine instrument of grace, not changing with the times and circumstances; but let us utterly disregard the well-being of the flesh, as something to be spat out, and destined to be wholly dissolved and to submit to its own nature, not overstepping its own bounds, as Gregory, the divine mouth of Christ, said.

and as making all the soul's impressions, so that we may become wholly God's and His alone, through all the movements of soul and body alike, flashing forth the divine rays. And to speak simply, becoming capable of containing God entire, and becoming wholly gods through and through by grace, so much so that we are reckoned to be another himself through all things, apart from identity with him in essence; for this is perfection, bearing in ourselves no mark at all of this age, lest through that there come to be in us some deprivation of the divine state, and we be bitterly pained at the blemish of true soundness, and find no starting points for correction.

When the age of our deeds has passed away, nothing at all of present things remains as it now is, in shape and position. Nothing seen has anything trustworthy or unerring for those who possess it. Nothing stands durably for those who are vanquished, remaining unmoved by it: not glory, not wealth, not power, not health, not dishonor, not poverty, not slavery, not disease, not beauty, not youth, not distinction, not ugliness, not old age, not low birth; all things pass away, all things wither, all human things vanish like a shadow, and every bulk of human aggregation is more easily breathed away than a bubble. For all flesh is grass, it says, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass; the grass is dried up, and the flower has fallen off. For all human things truly have corruption joined to their generation as far as possible; and often, in some cases, corruption even precedes generation.

so that the middle term can be stolen away by the coming together of the extremes at the same point, and be seen through both; and this Providence wisely contrives, so that the account of things that change may become a training for the confirmation of eternal things. All things change into one another, and each is turned round into each; and through one another they ratify their own corruption rather than their generation. Let us not, then, bind the soul that is not corrupted to things of the moment; nor let us weigh down the mind by dragging it to the earth with care for material things, since by nature it is free of matter. Let us by reason naturally separate from one another the things that never coincide with one another in essence; and no toil remains for us in dragging after the attachment to corruptible things the soul that is uncompounded and able in no way to admit of dissolution. Let us flee Sodom—the error, I mean also the confusion, of the senses concerning sensible things—so that we may flee the conflagration; I mean the punishment that surely follows these things through fire. Let us be saved to the mountain, that is, to the height of the conduct that is according to God, so that we, who have not yet wholly emigrated from the senses, may not be taken along with them, even if we seem to be idle in respect of evil, like the blessed Lot, by not cooperating with the Sodomites in like things—that is, with the passions that come through the senses, in the things that suit the passions. Let us run past, with all our strength, the things that run past and can in no way be held by us, having as their very nature and substance the flux that passes by; and let there remain for us only the disposition of soul that is badly branded upon them, on account of which every torment is about to be brandished against the condemned.

Let us willingly let go of all things, or rather let us freely give them beforehand to God through those who need them, whose deprivation naturally and of necessity follows upon us. Let us let go by deliberate choice, according to our will, of the things that are naturally and of necessity both let go and being let go. Let us not make the soul, which naturally images its Maker, held fast to things that come into being and pass away by an irrational attachment—the soul that never receives an end after coming into being, and is commanded always to seek God through all things and to hasten toward him. Let us not wish to possess what we cannot hold; nor let us attach ourselves as to eternal things to those that altogether pass away. For the form of this age passes away, as the Saint said; and, Heaven and earth shall pass away, as the God of the Saint has said. And let us receive the divine declaration as true, and let us reach the power of the word by faith, and let us be assured by clear demonstration of the outcome of what is said. For whatever's parts are subject to corruptions and alterations, as one of our own wise men said, of that surely the whole also—even if the time in which these things shall befall the whole has not yet arrived in actual operation—since every man, from what he suffers each day, naturally knows that he will die, even if death is not yet present through the events themselves. Let us therefore become our own, and God's; or rather God's alone, and not wholly the flesh's and the world's. Let us be prepared to call upon our God, as it is written: Prepare yourself, Israel, to call upon your God.

that which it is, let us be cleansed of the stains and defilements of evils, casting off from ourselves, as far as is possible, even the bare fantasies of the passions. For thus is truly prepared everyone who wishes to be prepared well, so that through the virtues, as through certain divine colors, we may receive the exact likeness to God. For thus does he who does not ignore how one ought to call upon God call upon him fittingly; for preparation is, so to speak in my view, the alienation of the passions; and invocation is the genuine appropriation to God through the virtues. Or again, preparation is the brightness that arises in the worthy through the virtues; and invocation is the reception of the deifying grace through true knowledge. For thus shall we be able to have our garments always white, as it is written—that is, our ways bright through the virtues, and transparent, and having no trace of darkness. And our soul shall exult in God our Savior, rejoicing in the stripping off of the old man, who is corrupted according to the desires of deceit, and in the putting on of the temple built according to God in the Spirit. For our God will clothe us with a garment of salvation and a robe of gladness—that is, the habitual, ethical, philosophic practice through the virtues, and the faultless, spiritual, gnostic contemplation—so that we may also enjoy the principal goods of the future divine and undefiled bridal chamber. With all these things, carefully observing how we walk and what we deliberate concerning ourselves,

Knowing that many invisible witnesses stand present at what is done by us, not looking only at what is visible but peering into the very souls and convicting the hidden things of the heart.

For truly, many choirs of angelic Powers have surrounded us from every side, accurately writing down in heaven all that is done and said by us, and even what is thought, down to the bare intention, for our conviction on the fearful day of judgment; when all creation of visible things, shaken, is driven by indescribable haste toward its own consummation; and heaven and earth will pass away with a rushing sound; and the elements in between will be burned up and dissolved; and there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and the things that follow these. When thrones are set forth, and the Ancient of Days takes his seat, and books are opened, containing the records of our deeds and words and thoughts, faithful and unadulterated; and thousands of thousands of angels minister to him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stand before him; and a dreadful threat of blazing fire runs everywhere, encompassing all things around, and melting the mountains like wax. For a river of fire, it says, was drawing forth before him. When Tartarus, and a yawning and unimaginable pit, and outer darkness, and the undying worm are shown to be present; and upon these fear stood suspended through all, as they await the outcome; and angels of wrath, flashing punitive fire, seeing fire and breathing fire, stand ready for every vengeance of every transgression.

And besides all this, the whole creation, both earthly and heavenly—all that is among angels and the powers above angels, and all that is among humans—stands present with trembling, awaiting the fearful manifestation of the divine will. Before all these, the deeds of us all will be read aloud, and the uncovering of hidden things will take place, so that all will thus know one another's sins as each knows his own, reading without error the book of his own conscience. For, he says, I will convict you and set your sins before your face. And again: Their own counsels will encircle them.

And behold, man and his work, and an unerring judge, having present the fearful and magnificent power of the heavenly orders, sits on high, flashing forth all righteousness, and rendering to each by a true and just sentence what is according to worth: to those who have stood on the right because of their good deeds, gently giving the kingdom of the heavens prepared from the foundation of the world; but those who have obtained the position on the left because of the desolation of good works, he thrusts away with anger into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. Who could endure that fire raging? Who would not be terrified at the strange sight of that worm? Who will be able to bear that outer darkness, so swift and at the same time so heavy? Who will withstand Tartarus bellowing, and the abyss seething up together with it from its very bottom? Who of those appointed for this

Who, shaken with trembling, will not shrink before the sharp and grim glare of the angels and the downcast face? Who will not fear the most terrible of all evils, the turning away of the face of God, who is by nature gentle and loving toward humanity and merciful—the face from which all creation turns away together and with which it joins in loathing, justly indignant against those who by a contentious disposition have exposed themselves to so many evils, since they have forced God, who is by nature and alone loving toward humanity, to appear to them as such? Who will endure the boundless shame of conscience that is to come at the revelation of hidden things? Who will be able to measure the unceasing weeping, and that bitter and senseless tear, and the gnashing of teeth, and the wailings of those pressed in torments, or the pain from remorse lying upon the very middle of their heart and justly smoldering through the depths of their soul? Who is capable of describing the distress that arises in them from not hoping for any appointed time of change, nor an end of the punishment laid upon them, nor even the expectation of a change back to living well? For last and alone, that judgment seat is also fearful and truly just, and just more than it is fearful, and perhaps fearful for this very reason, that it is just; and by the righteous verdict of God it shuts up all the ages within itself.

Who, having brought to mind the wailings and the groanings uttered from the midst of their heart, which fasten upon the very marrow and bitterly bite the inward parts, will be able to be free of tears? Who will endure the lamentation and the wailing without pain and the dejection that follows it, and with what words of repentance they are uttered, both those of each of the punished to himself and those of all to all?

For then each one has become a true discerner of his own transgressions, when the matters appear naked by themselves and free of every covering of deceit. Your judgment is just, O God; for you were calling us, and we did not obey you; and you were offering us words, and we did not attend, but we were making your counsels void; and we did not attend to your words. Therefore justly destruction came upon us, and ruin, and tempest, and affliction, and siege; and now we call upon you, and you do not hear; we seek mercy from you, and we do not find it; for neither did we hear your words, nor did we show mercy to our neighbor. For we who hated wisdom and did not choose the fear of the Lord, nor wish to attend to the counsels of God, reap such fruits of our own seeds and are filled with our own folly. For the deceit of life blinded us, and we did not know the mysteries of God; nor did we hope that there is any reward of holiness at all. For this reason we were filled with the paths of lawlessness, and we passed through impassable deserts—that is, of divine visitation—and we did not know the way of the Lord.

And now what did arrogance profit us, and what did wealth together with boastfulness contribute to us? All those things passed by like a shadow, and like a message that runs past, and like a night passing over surging water; when it has passed, no trace of it can be found, nor a path of its keel in the waves; or like a bird that has flown through the air, no evidence of its course is found. All those things passed by, leaving us this fire as an inheritance, which endures for all ages. Your judgment is just, O God; for saying these same things we shall never again cease: we were called, and we did not obey; we were admonished, and we did not pay attention. Concerning these things we were taught every day of the terrors, and we despised what was said. At that time those words about these things did not grieve us even a little; since otherwise

they would not now grieve us so intensely in reality; what now holds our life together was considered nonsense by us, when it was frequently chanted then. O what laziness! O what deceit! O what evil counsels! O what wicked dealings! O what a wonder is God's just verdict concerning us in these matters! How for each kind of our sins He has given back to us a fitting torment. For because of the pitiable and abominable pleasure of the flesh, we were justly condemned to have this fearful Gehenna. We were condemned to dwell in this gloom and this dreadful darkness, since we loved all shameful things—sights and sounds and words; and of all the divine goods together, we preferred horses and theaters and hunting grounds, in which crowds of demons danced, and all divine oversight and knowledge through angels was absent;

There the dignity of chastity was insulted in many ways, and the evil and abominable thing of licentiousness was openly honored. Justly we have now been deprived of the light, because we did not look upon creation for the glory of God who made it during our brief life; but we defiled our eyes and ears and tongue; or rather, through these we corrupted the soul made in the image of God with all the sights and sounds and words hated by God, and with the envies we held against one another. And we were cast down into Tartarus, grievously worn away at once by frost and by depth; since we preferred arrogance to the lofty humility that is the patron of lofty and divine things, and we thrust away the firm and intense strength of virtue because of the excessive softness and effeminacy of the flesh. Where now is our arrogance, and the boastful disposition toward all that comes from it, and the sluggish and effeminate softness of the flesh? O our thoughtlessness! Instead of unrestrained laughter and the licentious noise of the cheeks, this heavy gnashing of our teeth is ours. Unwilling to practice the learning of divine and saving words, but preferring the excess of drunkenness to the divine praise that comes through reason, we are now grievously punished, our tongue burning with a fearful thirst. And worthy also of the hatred toward our brothers, of envy and deceit and hypocrisy, from which and through which murder, and of abuse and slander, and of grudges and lies and perjury we reap the fruit—this unceasing worm, eating insatiably at the depth of our soul.

Because we distorted the straightness of love and made our heart crooked, and corrupted the passionlessness of truth and made it bent, we created for ourselves an involuntary worm through willful hatred, and dug out a more wicked crookedness through falsehood, by which we were not united to God, who is straight and upright. For he said through the holy David the prophet, A crooked heart did not cleave to me.

Therefore we receive what is worthy of what we have done—or rather, we are repaid the wages worthy of our own disposition according to our purpose: for the fire of pleasure, the fire of Gehenna; and for the darkness of ignorance and temporary deceit, eternal darkness; and for the punishing and unsleeping worm, the worm of him who made the heart crooked and bent through hatred and falsehood; and for the shameless noise and boiling of cheeks, noise and gnashing of teeth; and for the height of vain pride and dissipation, a fall and a yawning depth, and the gloom of terror. And to speak simply, for each of our voluntary evils we justly receive in return the involuntary punishment appropriate to each. O our wretchedness! Why did we miserable ones not extinguish the fire of the flesh through fasting and vigil, and through the meditation of divine words—these being good and easy extinguishers of the fire—and so not be fried in this fire now? Why did we not see and hear and speak according to nature, we who

We accustomed our eyes and ears and tongue to it, so that we would not now have this gloom and the heaviest silence; but we too, with the saints, would have enjoyed the light and the Word and the wisdom of God, as those who had become beholders and hearers and singers of the divine glory. If through love we had put to death the voluntary worm of hatred, and through truth had made falsehood disappear, we would now have been set free from this burning worm, and from the rest of the evils that now hold our life together. The judgment of God is just. We do not find what we did not seek. The door of the kingdom of heaven is not opened to us, because we did not knock at the door of the virtues through action; we do not receive the enjoyment of eternal goods, because we did not ask through prayer for the grace of knowledge. For we had no love for any of the divine things, but having bound our mind to earthly things, we corrupted our whole life together with them. And all those things passed away, vanishing like smoke, but the account of the judgment upon them remains forever, not to be passed by. And these things, then, they—learning the power of divine justice from what they suffer, so to speak in outline—will perhaps say to one another; but who am I, the wretched one? On what deeds relying shall I hope to be delivered from the fearful condemnation, being destitute of every virtue and knowledge? I fear lest, bound hand and foot, I be cast into the gloomy and dark earth, into the earth of eternal darkness, where there is no light, nor to see the life of mortals.

Since he voluntarily bound the practical powers of the soul with the passions, and hindered the steps of the soul from the divine course of the evangelical conduct. Woe to me for the fearful shame, which has never an end, unless I change and become free from my many evils; woe to me for the weeping, and the bitter tears, and the gnashing of teeth, unless I sober up and at last shake off the deep sleep of sloth, and strip off the filthy garment of sin. Instead of light, darkness; instead of joy, grief; instead of ease, punishment and distress will wholly receive me. And what is more pitiable than all, or, to speak more truly, more grievous, which even in the saying alone I am pained—how much more in the suffering (be merciful, O Christ, and save us from this pain)—the separation from God and from his holy powers; and the kinship with the devil and the evil demons remaining forever; and the freedom from these evils having no expectation. For with those whom in this age through our evil practices we chose willingly by disposition to be with, with these we shall reasonably of necessity in the age to come be condemned, even unwilling. And it is more punishing and more terrible than every punishment, to be forever with those who hate and are hated, and apart from tortures, not to mention with them; but to be separated from the one who loves and is loved. For God is hated when he judges righteously by those who are judged, though he is by nature love and is called so; nor does he hate those who are judged; for he is entirely free from passion by nature.

Believing, beloved, that these things will truly and without falsehood come to pass, let us not neglect ourselves; but with all eagerness, with our whole strength, while we have time, let us flee the deceitful world and the ruler of this world. For it passes away, and all things in it wither. For truly there will be, there will be a time when some fearful trumpet will sound, uttering a strange voice, and this whole universe will be dissolved, collapsing as the order now seen in it falls apart. And the visible world will pass away, receiving its own consummation; but the world of intelligible things, now hidden, will appear, bringing mysteries wholly strange to eyes and ears and minds. And the trumpet, crying out at the divine command, will set loose the boundless

and will suddenly raise up the countless myriads of human bodies, as if from some sleep of death, leading them to examination; and God will render to each the recompense worthy of what he did through the body, whether good or evil, giving to all things a great and fearful and final confinement. But may it come to pass that all of us keep before our eyes, without interval, both the saving fear of Gehenna and the precious longing for the kingdom of the heavens [and it is possible to speak the same thing properly of both, since God becomes and is called all things to all, inasmuch as each has a quality of vice or virtue]—the fear, producing in us a complete abstention and inactivity from evils; and the longing, cheerfully urging us on, by its abundance, even to the doing of good things.

Let these things from me, the little and poor one, blessed one, be tokens of the love I bear toward you, for the guarding and safety of the good things that are present with you—which I consider you to need, even though you are exceedingly adorned in all things with virtues. For I have no other way to be able justly to requite you for your many good deeds toward me than by disposing myself in this manner. And with me, all the honored Fathers who dwell in this land because of you greet you sincerely and with one accord, beseeching God night and day unceasingly with tears to restore to us in health our George, truly sweet both in appearance and in name, so that with him we may pass through the present life unharmed and enjoy the grace to come of the man-loving God and giver of good things, with our all-holy, glorious Lady, the Theotokos and ever-virgin Mary, interceding for us and propitiating God on our behalf, together with all the saints. Amen.

SCHOLIA 1. See concerning human rule.

2. What one should seek and desire; and what one should leave to God. 3. That to rule and to be ruled, and to be rich and to be poor, is neither of nature nor of choice, but of the Providence that guides all things. 4. The boundary of what is in our power, that is, of free will. 5. The boundary of what is not in our power, that is, of things not subject to free will. 6. He calls generation and corruption the extremes, and the middle between generation and corruption is the generated thing; in its case corruption often anticipates generation, shaking the thing coming to be together with its generation, and destroying its constitution before it comes to be.

7. Those who have their soul nailed fast to the attachment of the senses are not saved, he says, even if they are idle from the passions that delight the senses, unless they completely remove the soul from its attachment to the senses; just as not even the blessed Lot, unless he had gone out from Sodom, even though he did not do the things of the Sodomites, would not have escaped the descent of the fire.

Letter 2. To John the Cubicularius, On Love 2. By the same, to John the Cubicularius, on love. Having already learned, both when present and no less when absent—if not indeed more than when present—that you, O God-protected ones, hold fast to the holy love toward God by grace and toward neighbor, and that you cultivate it in the fitting ways, and that you suffer all that is proper to divine love and is

It is said, so that you may have this also as something divine—the unbounded and undefined nature of virtue—that we should not only do good to those present but also desire it for those absent, and for those far removed by great distance in place; and learning each time of its increase in extent through those who come here, and indeed also through your honored letters, as through a mirror beholding the form of divine grace that is resplendent in you, I rightly rejoice and am glad; and giving thanks on your behalf to God, the giver of good things, and with the holy Apostle I do not cease crying out: Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed you with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places; being especially persuaded and knowing that your holy soul is bound inseparably in spirit to my wretched one through love, having as a friendly bond the law of grace, according to which, joining me to yourselves invisibly, you rejoice together with me, making my shame from sin disappear by the setting beside it of your own good things. For truly nothing is more God-like than divine love, nor more mysterious, nor higher for humans toward deification; because having conceived all good things in itself it holds them, as many as the word of truth sets forth in the form of virtue; and it is utterly removed from all things that are comprehended in the form of evil, as the fulfillment of the law and the prophets; which the mystery of love succeeds, the mystery that makes us gods from humans, and that cuts short the particular commandments toward the universal word of the commandments, by which all things are contained in a single form according to good pleasure, and from which they are distributed in many ways according to providence.

For what form of good things does love not possess? Does it not possess faith, the first foundation of the things pertaining to piety, which assures the one who has it that God exists and that divine things are true—and more than the eye, when it strikes against the appearances of sensible things, provides to those who see the opinion concerning them? Does it not possess hope, which substantiates for itself the truly subsistent good, and holds it more than the hand holds the thickest part of matter that falls under touch? Does it not give the enjoyment of the things believed and hoped for, having the future things as present through itself by disposition? Does it not possess humility, the first step of the virtues, by which we are able to become cognizant of ourselves and to cast down the vain swelling of pride? Does it not possess gentleness, through which we strike back at both reproaches and praises, and repel the disturbance of the evils that are diametrically opposed—I mean both glory and disgrace? Does it not possess equanimity, by which even when suffering we remain unchanged toward those who do evil, in no way disposed with hostility? Does it not possess mercy, by which, willing it, we make the misfortunes of others our own, and are not permitted to ignore what is kindred and of the same nature? Does it not possess self-control and endurance, and long-suffering, and kindness, and peace and joy, through which we easily calm anger and desire, and their burning seething and inflammation? And, to speak concisely and sum up, love is the end of all good things, as leading and bringing those who walk in it toward God, the highest of good things and the cause of every good, as being faithful, and unfailing, and abiding.

For faith is the foundation of the things that come after it—I mean hope and love—firmly establishing the truth. And hope is the strength of the extremes—I mean love and faith—revealing through itself what is faithful and lovely to both, and teaching that the course is to be made through itself toward that very end. And love is the completion of these, embracing wholly with its whole self the final object of desire, and providing to these a rest from movement toward it, substituting through itself the enjoyment of the present for believing that it is and hoping that it will be present. This alone, properly speaking, presents man as being according to the image of the Creator, wisely subjecting what is in our power to the reason, yet not subordinating the reason to it, and persuading the will to walk according to nature, in no way rebelling against the law of nature—according to which we can all have, as one nature, so also one will and one desire, both toward God and toward one another, having no division toward God and one another, whenever we choose as our element the law of grace, through which we renew the law of nature by an act of will. For it is impossible for those who have not first been united to God in concord to be able to agree with one another in will.

For since in the beginning the devil who deceived man, having craftily deceived him by a cunningly contrived guile through self-love, through the assault of pleasure, separated us from God and from one another in our will, and having distorted what is upright and divided nature in this manner, cut it into many opinions and imaginations, and by time established as law the method and invention of each evil, making use of our powers for this purpose, and implanted in all a wicked support for the persistence of evil—the incompatibility of will; from which he persuaded man once for all to turn aside from the movement according to nature, and to move his desire toward what is forbidden from what is permitted, and to bring upon himself the three greatest and most ancient evils, and, simply to speak, the generative principles of all wickedness: I mean ignorance, self-love, and tyranny, which depend on one another and are established through one another. For from ignorance concerning God comes self-love. And from this comes tyranny toward one's kindred; and no argument will contradict this—by the misuse of our own powers, reason, desire, and anger, which brought these things into being. For it was necessary that by reason, instead of ignorance, one be moved toward God alone through knowledge in seeking; and that by desire, cleansed of the passion of self-love, one be driven by longing toward God alone; and that by anger, separated from tyranny, one strive to attain God alone; and that from these, and for the sake of which these exist, one produce divine and blessed love, which unites to God and reveals the lover of God as a god.

Since these things happened to man badly by man's own will but by the deceit of the devil, God, who made nature and wisely heals it when it is sick from evil, out of his love for us emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, unchangeably uniting this to himself by hypostasis, becoming wholly as we are from us for us, so much a man as he was thought by the unbelievers not to be God; and yet being so much God as the ineffable and true word of piety suggests to the faithful, in order that he might destroy the works of the devil, and having restored to nature its powers undefiled, might renew again the power of love—the adversary of self-love—for union with himself and of men with one another; love being and being known as the mother of the first sin and the first offspring of the devil and of the passions that follow it. Having by love destroyed this, he who presented himself as worthy of God destroyed together with it also the whole crowd of evil, which has no other basis or cause of existing after it. For such a man no longer knows pride, the mark of the anti-god presumption, the composite and strange evil. He is ignorant of vainglory that falls and casts down those who are puffed up by it. He withers envy, which first withers those who possess it justly, by making his kin his own through willing goodwill; and anger and murder and wrath and guile and hypocrisy and dissimulation and spite and greed, and all things by which the one man has been divided, he has stripped away together.

For self-love, as I said, being the beginning and mother of evils, when it is cut off, all things that come from it and after it are accustomed to be cut off together with it; since, when this is not present, no form or trace of evil at all can subsist. But all the forms of virtue are introduced in its place, which fill up the power of love, which gathers the divided and again creates man toward one reason and one manner, and makes equal and level all the inequality and difference in purpose among all things, and duly leads them up into the praiseworthy inequality—each one, clearly, drawing his neighbor to himself in purpose, and preferring himself, to the same extent as before he was eager to thrust him away and to have precedence; and voluntarily releasing himself for its sake, by the separation of the reasons and peculiarities that are conceived in him individually according to purpose; and being gathered into one simplicity and identity, according to which no one is in any way separated from the common good, but each is for each, and all for all, and all are established in God rather than in one another, having the one reason of being shining forth through themselves, most single both by nature and by purpose—and God who is conceived in this; to whom the reason of the being of beings is naturally contemplated together and led up as to cause and maker, being kept by us pure and undefiled with all attention, and cleansed by prudent zeal through virtues and the labors that follow them, from the passions that war against him.

This, then, is what that great Abraham happened to have achieved, restoring himself to the principle of his nature's being, or restoring the principle to himself, and through this being given back to God and receiving God—let both be said, since in both the truth is contemplated—so that he was deemed worthy to see God as a man and to receive him, with the perfect principle according to nature dwelling together with him through love for humanity; to whom he was led up, having let go of the particularity of things divided and divisible, no longer considering any other man as different from himself, but knowing all as the one, and the one as all—not, clearly, the principle of the will, in which lies the faction and the division, as long as it remains irreconcilable with nature, but contemplating the single principle of nature, in which the invariable stands firm, which we know is always manifested together with God, and through which he is shown to be good, appropriating his own creatures; since creation cannot know God from itself as he is. For it was not possible, in accordance with the likeness, for one who had not become the same as himself and simple to be gathered to the simple and the same, but was still divided in will from nature into many parts, unless first through love for humanity he had joined the will to nature, and shown one principle over both, peaceful and free from faction, moved primarily toward nothing else at all among the things after God; according to which the nature remains uncut and undivided in those who have received this gift, not being cut apart together with the willful differences of the many.

For no longer, becoming now this one and now that one, do different people divide the nature, but the same people remain toward the same, not looking at what is peculiar to each according to his disposition, insofar as the divided things are divided, but at what is common and undivided in all according to nature, insofar as the divided things are gathered together—none of the divisible things carrying anything along with itself, and through which God is made manifest to those who possess it, being formed in accordance with the particularity of each one's virtue out of love for humanity, and consenting to be named from it. For it is the most perfect work of love, and the limit of the activity that accords with it, through a relational exchange of the things joined to one another in accordance with it, to prepare the peculiar characteristics to shine forth, and the callings; and to make man God, and to cause God to be called and to appear man, because of the one and unvarying will and motion of both according to the will, as we find in the case of Abraham and the rest of the saints. And this, perhaps, is what was said from the person of God: I was likened in the hands of the prophets—the formation by God, out of the virtue present in each one's practice, for each one, out of great love for humanity. For the hand of every righteous man is his practice according to virtue, in which and through which God receives the likeness to human beings.

Great, then, is the good of love, and the first and preeminent good of goods, since through itself it joins God and humans to one another, and prepares man to appear as the maker of humans, because of the assimilation, as far as is attainable for man, of the deified one to God in the good. I understand this to be active in the loving of the Lord God with all one's heart and soul and strength, and one's neighbor as oneself. This is, to put it in a summary definition, the inward disposition of the whole person toward the first good, together with the whole providence of the whole race according to nature; after which there is nothing higher to which the God-loving man can ascend, since all the ways of piety have been traversed by him. This love we both know and name, not assigning one love to God and another to neighbor in a divided way, but one and the same whole love—owed to God, and joining humans to one another. For the genuine disposition toward one's neighbor through willing goodwill is the energy and clear proof of perfect love toward God. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, says the divine apostle John, cannot love God whom he has not seen. This is the way of truth, which the Word of God named himself, and it presents those who walk in it to God and the Father, made pure from all passions. This is the door through which the one who enters becomes a holy of holies, and is made worthy to become a beholder of the unapproachable beauty of the holy and royal Trinity.

This is the true vine, in which the one who has firmly rooted himself is deemed worthy to become a partaker of the divine quality. For its sake every legal, prophetic, and evangelical teaching both exists and has been handed down, so that, having received a desire for the ineffable goods, we might confirm our longing by our manner of life—honoring the creature because of the beloved Fashioner as much as is fitting for the Fashioner and as the principle of nature demands, legislating equality of honor and cutting off from nature every apparent inequality among individuals that arises from preconception, and enclosing all within himself by the single power of identity. For its sake, the very Maker of nature—a thing and report truly awesome!—puts on our nature, uniting it to himself without change by hypostasis, in order to halt its being carried away and to gather it to himself, though it was divided in its own judgment, and to make manifest the all-glorious way of love—truly divine and deifying, and leading to God; and let it be said that it is also God's, since it exists, which the thorns of self-love covered at the beginning—and having prefigured in himself the sufferings endured for our sake, he grants it to all pure of hindrances, having cast away the stones in it through his own disciples, as he himself foretold in the prophets, saying, "And cast the stones out of the way"; and he will rightly persuade us to cleave to himself and to one another as much as he himself, having gone before, demonstrated through himself, enduring to suffer for our sake.

For this sake all the saints, to the very end, stood against sin, making no account of the present life, and endured the manifold forms of death, so that they might be gathered together with themselves away from the world and with God, and might unite in themselves the ruptures of nature. This is the true and blameless wisdom of God of the faithful, whose end is the good and the truth—since indeed the good is what is loving toward humanity, and the true is what is loving toward God according to faith—the marks of love, joining human beings to God and to one another, and for this reason keeping the perseverance of good things without falling. Becoming the most genuine lovers of this divine and blessed way, you also, blessed ones, having struggled the good struggle, come to the end, firmly holding to those things by which the passage to its end is accomplished—I mean love of humanity, love of brethren, love of strangers, love of the poor, compassion, mercy, humility, gentleness, meekness, patience, freedom from anger, long-suffering, endurance, kindness, forbearance, goodwill, peace toward all—from which or through which the grace of love is wrought, leading the human being who has been made divine to God who created him. For love, says the divine Apostle—or rather Christ who spoke these things through him—is long-suffering, is kind, does not envy, does not boast, is not puffed up, does not behave unseemly, does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not reckon the evil, does not rejoice in injustice but rejoices with the truth; it bears all things. Love never falls, since it has God, the only one who does not fall and does not change.

and making the man who lives according to it such as this, so that having received you also he might say through Jeremiah the prophet: I say to you, This is the way of my commandments, and the law which exists forever. Let us all who hold fast to it attain to life; but those who abandon it shall die. Take hold of it, my child, and journey toward the brightness over against its light. Give not your glory to another, nor the things that are profitable to you, to a foreign nation. Blessed are you, because the things pleasing to God are known to you, and you have learned where prudence is, where strength is, where long life and life are. Where the light of the eyes and peace are, and you have set foot upon the way, and I appeared to you from afar. For this reason with an everlasting love I will love you, and I will have mercy on you in compassion, and I will build you, and you shall be built; and you shall go forth with the assembly of those who rejoice, because you stood in the ways; and you considered, and you inquired after the eternal paths of the Lord; and you saw where the good way is, and you walked in it, and you found sanctification for your soul. And again through Isaiah: I am the Lord your God; I have shown you how to find the way of righteousness, in which you shall walk, and you have heard my commandments. For this reason your peace has become like a river, and your righteousness like a wave of the sea. And I, who exult in your good things, will dare to speak with God, having received it from the great Jeremiah: Blessed are you, because you have put off the garment of mourning of your affliction—I mean the old man, who is corrupted according to the desires of deceit.

And you have put on the splendor of the glory that comes from God forever—I mean the new man, who is created in the Spirit according to Christ, according to the image of the One who created him; and you have clothed yourself with the double garment of the righteousness that comes from God; and you have placed on your head the miter of eternal glory, adorned both by the royal manner of the virtues and by the unerring word of wisdom. For this reason God will show your brightness to all under heaven, and he will call your name Peace of righteousness, and Glory of godliness. Of these words I possess nothing more for the demonstration of the disposition hidden in my soul; for I have nothing of your good things worthy to offer to God and to you, except to marvel at you according to my ability, and to welcome you as you succeed, and to rejoice with you as you propitiate God through good works; and through you to praise virtue; and through virtue to hymn God, the virtue that unites you to God. So that it seems to me to be the same and equal—to praise both you and virtue, and to hymn God, who has granted you the brightness of virtue, which by grace makes you divine toward God, through the reception, as far as is attainable for a human being, of the divine attributes.

SCHOLIA

1. That love is given in place of the law and the prophets; and that from it all the words of the commandments are issued, and by it they are contained in a single form.

2. Observe the motion according to reason and nature, from which man was turned aside from the beginning by the counsel of the evil one.

3. The works of love of the blessed one unite into one, around the one who possesses them, God and all mortals, by an ineffable word.

THIRD LETTER. TO THE SAME. By the same to the same.

Having received the precious letters of your longing in the Lord, together with the blessing sent to the most reverent monks of the holy and glorious martyr George's venerable monastery, I gave thanks to God for such zeal of yours toward the good: because by your earnestness you have loosed the bonds of those held fast by poverty, and have freed yourselves from the bonds of sin; and having purposed to feed bodies, you have nourished your own soul with divine grace, and have given me an occasion to pluck the fruit of true contemplation. For I learned, having come to myself, for what reason God simply legislated that all men should show mercy and should be shown mercy by one another: that, desiring to unite you to one another both in nature and in disposition, and truly impelling all that is human toward this, he humanely traced out for us the saving commandments. But the self-love and understanding of men, either having thrust away one another and the law, or having made a sophistry of it, cut the one nature into many parts; and having introduced the insensibility of it that now prevails, it armed nature itself against itself through disposition.

For this reason, everyone who by sober reasoning and nobility of understanding has been able to dissolve this disorder of nature has shown mercy to himself before others, having fashioned his disposition according to nature, and having drawn near to God in disposition because of nature, and having shown in himself what is the manner of the word according to the image, and how God in the beginning, as was fitting, created and established our nature as a like image of his own goodness—the same in every respect to itself: unwarring, peaceful, unconflicted, bound to God and to itself through love, by which we cling to God as desirable and to one another with compassion. He has also shown mercy to those who ought to receive mercy, not only providing for them but also teaching how God, though hidden, is revealed through the worthy, so that they too may thereafter, reverencing the love for humanity shown toward them by their neighbor, easily claim this grace as God's. But if anyone, being able to do this from having the means, overlooks people in need, he will reasonably be shown to have cut them off from himself and himself from God, as one who has ignored nature because of disposition—or rather, because of disposition has corrupted the goods that belong to nature in himself. These things apply to those who by disposition have preferred the harsh over the humane, and who judge the kinship and common nature of the obols less honorable, and who by their desire for gold have walled off God's entrances toward them, themselves pitifully suffering the fall from the better things by their own doing.

But those who earnestly strive wisely to unite the breaches of nature, in a manner of mutual love, and to cooperate with God by grace through love, [strive after] the identity of disposition with other men, as far as lies in their power, despising all things on earth, as true advocates of God through their deeds. This you have been shown to do, both now and before, beloved: in every word and manner, and by the right-hand scattering of your possessions, eagerly distributing yourselves both in soul and body to all, and showing that the disposition in you is the same as nature—being surpassed by nature in one respect alone, that from it nature has received the seeds of things that have come to be; or rather from God, from whom the powers of good things have been laid down beforehand for nature. Therefore, abundantly watered from God with many streams of graces, you have generously poured out mercy with all, and to the aforementioned most reverent men, of your love for mankind; supporting the weakness of nature already shaken by want, and healing, as far as possible, the ill-disposition that had been worn away in them by poverty. Do not cease, then, doing good to the needy, so that through your emptying you may have fullness undiminished. And in gladness of soul, confirming your faith and hope and love toward God: "Endure the bond and the ordination and the word of murmuring," as somewhere the divine oracle says; which concerns the need to give, and not to deliberate. To which regret altogether follows; a thing heavier than doing nothing at all.

For we all know that no one has ever yet learned with precision whom one ought to blame for the unworthiness of doing or suffering—whether those able to do good or those in need of receiving good—but that this belongs to the time that is to come, at which it will be made known what and how great your affairs are and in what condition they happen to be. So wisely has God willed in the present that the abyss of his judgments be hidden. And knowing this, the wise author of Proverbs urged that bread be cast unreflectingly upon the water, as not to be swept away or destroyed, but to meet one later with greater increase, for those who have acquired the giving of it for the sake of the good in simplicity of heart, from God and our Savior Christ, who receives to himself all things done by us to one another, whatever they happen to be. For if he deigned as a lover of humanity to suffer for us, what would he not willingly do for those who imitate his love for humanity toward us? LETTER 4. TO THE SAME, CONCERNING GODLY SORROW 4. By the same, to the same, concerning godly sorrow. I rejoice and am glad, finding through every letter my blessed master sorrowing with the praiseworthy sorrow; knowing that godly sorrow works repentance not to be regretted, unto salvation, for those who are strengthened by divine fear with their whole power; not permitting the soul that has turned away from the divine judgments to be disposed toward things that are corrupted by nature.

Through these things, for those who make the course of the present life carelessly, the evil confusion of the passions, taking up residence within, prepares the wretched mind to be caught in the snares of the devil, and reasonably establishes it as a teacher of every wickedness, inasmuch as it has yoked the natural activity to the disordered impulses of anger and desire contrary to nature. For the soul that once, through deceit, has bound its intellectual power to material things is most resourceful and swift-running around the mere discovery of base things. Therefore night and day I pray unceasingly, though weighed down by many sins, that this saving grief may be preserved for my blessed Master—this grief that is truly the stern mistress of the passions and the venerable and glorious mother of the virtues—so that, guarded by it, I may drive off the evil sting of sin. For no one, truly, who has enclosed this grief in the depth of his heart is ever caught by the arrows of the devil. No one who tends it invisibly in his soul fears the manifold assaults of the demons. No one who has chosen its companionship ever attaches himself to things visible. No one who has it characterizing his life is defiled by the filth of corruptible things. No one who has bound it unbreakably to his thoughts allows his senses to be borne disorderly toward what he should not. No one whose soul has been formed by it can consider himself greater than another in any way; on the contrary, he would rather believe that he is and is considered less than all. No one who has girded it about himself in his mind slips away from the understanding of divine things.

No one who has wholly attuned this to himself will be ignorant of the tokens of the devout way of life. The Holy Spirit creates it, visiting the hearts of the worthy. I know that this alone is generative of the joy in the kingdom of heaven. For godly sorrow is clearly a divine seed, providing as its ripe fruit the gladness of eternal goods.

The precise recollection of things lived, in the mind, renews it. The book of our transgressions, in the conscience, read with diligence, nurtures it. The remembrance of death, and the sharpest pain that comes upon the soul at the departure, always anticipated, procures it. The fearful and abrupt scrutiny of the spirits of wickedness, marshaled against the soul in the air, constantly formed in the mind, preserves it altogether unquenchable. For who, beloved, stained with the filth of sins like mine, does not fear the visitation of the holy angels? By whom, receiving the end of the present life according to the divine verdict, he is driven out of the body by force, with wrath, even against his will. Who, carrying with him a conscience defiled, does not dread the most savage and barbarous assault of the wicked demons, each one in this air after the departure tearing the wretched soul fiercely to himself through the intervening passion, and shaming it by the conviction of the things done by it, and implanting in it despair of every hope in the good things to come?

This sorrow is nourished unto salvation by the accurate representation of the condition of souls in Hades, which comes after the discernment, in the air, of the spiritual hosts of wickedness—how they pass their time in deep darkness and the heaviest silence, having as their food the sharpest groanings and tears, and the dejection that follows upon these, expecting continually nothing else but only the just condemnation upon the divine verdict. This sorrow is sustained by the hope of the resurrection, by the majesty of the fearful and all-glorious coming of Christ, by the most dreadful day of judgment, continually meditated upon in the mind—on which heaven and earth and the whole ordered array of things visible shall pass away with a rushing sound, the elements burning up and being dissolved by the boundless fire, which first purifies the creation defiled by us for the entrance of the pure one; in which thrones are set forth, and the Ancient of Days takes his seat, and the countless ranks of the holy angels and archangels stand by in liturgical service with fear and trembling; and the whole nature of human beings is brought to examination; and books are opened of our deeds and words and thoughts, containing the records with all exactness. Through these there comes the exposure of all that we have done before the whole creation, so that all know one another's sins as much as each knows his own, reading without error the book of his own conscience; according to which those who stand on the right of the Judge will receive the promises of the ineffable good things; while those on the left

having received a standing, the eternal fire, and the outer darkness, and the undying worm, and the gnashing of teeth, and the ceaseless tear, and the boundless shame, by which every condemned person will be pained more than by all the other forms of punishment together with the endless torment from the ages. The one who has sorrow according to God never truly forgets these fearful things and names; but as one who always sees the Judge and is seen by him, he will be disposed, and he will pass through the present life piously and justly, neither doing nor saying nor thinking anything that is alien to the divine grace and calling. The offspring of this praiseworthy sorrow is the good that is preeminent among men, humility; through which the pious and God-loving person will consider himself in truth the least of all, even if he is a king in dignity, making the natural weakness the limit of his own self-knowledge; by which all who have partaken of the same nature fulfill their course equally; in no way, because of dignity, does he let his reasoning be carried past the principle of nature. The projection of this is meekness, being a disposition that drives away the movements of anger and desire that are contrary to nature; through which man receives likeness to the angels, among whom there is no raging anger, improperly barking at what is akin, nor indeed desire dissolving the intellectual tensions and dragging the impulse down toward matter; but reason alone, having dominion over matter, and leading with fiery zeal in the mind toward the Logos who is beyond cause and nature.

Its fruit is love, by which, being united to God and to one another, we willingly care for one another as much as is attainable, to the same extent that God, in his compassion, upholds all things. Its end is the kingdom of heaven and the enjoyment of the divine good things there. For godly sorrow leads those who cherish and keep it to this goal. The marks of this sorrow are: to accustom the eyes to look upon creation only for the glory of the Creator; and to observe the affairs of neighbors without envy or malice; to have the ears open readily for the reception of the words of God alone and of the supplication of those who entreat us; but to be diligently stopped against every abuse and the foulness of shameful words; to have the tongue sanctified by the praises of others, never defiled by insults and abuses against others. And, to speak briefly and sum it up, let us reshape all the members of both body and soul toward what seems good to the Spirit; and let our whole aim in godliness be set right.

Examining ourselves, blessed one, with all exactness: if we find that we have these things, let us carefully preserve them; but if we possess none of them, let us earnestly strive to acquire them—being humble toward all people for God's sake and because of our common human nature, as befits human beings; remaining gentle and mild toward whatever happens contrary to our own will; generous in giving to the poor, and hospitable to strangers; ready, as far as possible, to come to the aid of those who need protection; of one soul and one mind with our friends; courteous to all with our acquaintances; approachable to those of lower station; compassionate and humane to the weak; long-suffering toward those who provoke us; forgiving to those who stumble; becoming a comfort to those who grieve. And to speak simply, let us become all things to all people, both for the fear of God and for the expected threat of the judgments to come. For without these things that have been enumerated, there is no hope of salvation at all for anyone.

My longing for you compels me to say these things and more than these. For I cannot find how to measure it, since it makes me form your image constantly and, as it were, converse with you in spirit as though you were present, and when you are absent it forces me to meet you through letters. But let us not receive the power of what is said carelessly; since, along with other words, we shall certainly have such words either as advocates or as accusers—both I who speak and those who hear—on the fearful day of judgment, according to how we are disposed toward them. May it come to pass that all of us—both those who speak anything of what is fitting and those who hear—be shown to be doers of all divine words, and not merely hearers or speakers; by the grace of Christ our God and Savior, who has called us to his own glory and kingdom. LETTER 5. TO CONSTANTINE 5. By the same, to Constantine.

If, as though meeting with me when present, my blessed master truly rejoices through letters, as he has written, it is clear that in accepting my words he rejoices altogether. And the acceptance of words is the disposition of the one who accepts the words in accordance with the words. And the precise proof of this disposition is the deed of the power contained in the words. Therefore, let my master grant me the most faithful pledge of his encouragement regarding speaking—namely, his own eagerness to do what is said; and, as it is written, I will never restrain my lips from speaking to him what can profit him, me, and others.

Insofar as I am able to receive the grace of God who gives to all simply and does not reproach, [I am able] to understand intelligently and to speak piously the things understood.

Let us therefore, beloved, be eager doers of the works according to the commandment; and let us flee the error of this age, and let us not bind our soul to any of the pleasures reckoned to be in it. For the world passes away, and all things in it wither, being by nature expenditures of corruption. This eagerness for divine things on the part of those who strive for salvation is evidenced not only by hatred of sin and a life free from busyness, but also by estrangement from wicked men and the soul's disaffection toward all corruptible things; and by contempt of the flesh for the sake of virtue, and by firm and unyielding self-control toward all things that through the senses deceitfully tickle the soul; through which we wither all licentious desires and calm the disordered movements of anger, not permitting the reason, once enslaved, to be carried away along with them, and, as it were, a charioteer snatched away by hard-mouthed horses, to be borne down into the pits—since there is nothing to set in order and able to check the irrational impulse of the yoked beasts. But also [it is evidenced] by patience and endurance toward all involuntary temptations, through which, even when we suffer bodily, we remain passionless in soul and unconquered, not cast down by any of the things that shake us.

Through both of these—I mean self-control over the passions that are in our power, and endurance of those that are not in our power—having been tested, like some most divine seed of the commandments, we bring forth as ripe and comely fruits the virtues. For example, a knowing prudence, against ignorance and superstition; courage, against cowardice and reckless audacity; chastity, against licentiousness and folly; justice against injustice—I mean against greed and the disadvantage of others; arming humility against pride; offering condescension against arrogance; moderation against conceit; long-suffering against faintheartedness; and again, holding fast to gentleness toward all, and meekness, and the cheerful sharing with those in need; diligently caring for hospitality, love of brethren, and love of humanity; pursuing peace and love, in which, as in a kind of foundation of good things, all the good things given to men from God are gathered together and preserved.

These things, my blessed master, everyone who longs for the kingdom of heaven and hastens to flee the experience of the eternal punishments threatened to sinners strives by all means, according to his power, both to do and to keep; having as a helper for the keeping of such things the unforgotten remembrance of death and of the uncertainty concerning it; and the thought of the desolation after the soul's departure, which carries nothing else along with itself except the conscience branded with the evils it has wickedly committed; and the conception of the fearful examination by the evil spirits that will take place against it in this air; the recollection of the bitter and lightless confinement of souls now in Hades; the expectation of shame before the righteous Judge and the heavenly Powers at the revelation of hidden things—the expectation of shame heavier than all the punishments threatened to sinners. These things, and more than these, I have already written as far as I could, and in writing I shall not cease, as far as I am able, having as my desire my beloved master, to carry out such words.

But let us be sober and keep watch over our own guard, blessed one, lest we be condemned the more, as speaking and hearing the divine words idly and in vain. For we shall give an account to God even for these words on the day of judgment—both I who speak them and those who hear them—if we leave them wholly idle and unfruitful. But may it rather come to pass that all of us rejoice in all the words of God and be shown to be doers of the divine and saving wills within them, through the prayers and intercessions of our all-glorious and all-holy Lady, the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, and of all the saints. Amen.

Letter 1. To the... Archbishop John... That the soul is incorporeal, 6. By the same, to the most holy and most blessed Archbishop John, concerning the fact that the soul is incorporeal. Having received the honored letter of your perfection in virtue, adorned with all the beauty of a noble-minded modesty, I both admired and was astonished—how, being of the same mind in both respects, you have remained consistent with yourself, neither unapproachable in your loftiness nor despised in your lowliness. For, wisely blending for yourself one form of virtue from both, you make each to be wondrously seen in the other: in the lowly, the lofty; and in the lofty, conversely, humility. Therefore, servant of God, I accept your command as not to be refused, which bids me to demonstrate, by natural reasoning rather than by scriptural and patristic testimony, whether the soul is an incorporeal creature. Trusting again in the drops of your teaching, with which you have variously bedewed me when I was parched by ignorance.

Who are these who maintain that there is no incorporeal creature? And against whom do they set themselves, opposing the non-existent fictions of your doctrines to the truths of the words? And how is it that these men, who are more contentious than is fitting, were not put to shame by our undertaking, which is so far removed from every sort of fallacious argument? And so that my account concerning this may proceed more directly on its way, I will make your own wise and invincible argument, as a champion of the truth, the starting point of what follows, exulting as I do in your methods of attack. 1. If the body is by its own nature immovable—and the soul is also a body, even if, as they say, it is the most finely divided, insofar as it is a body—then it will not be moved. And if this is so, whence comes our motion? And this goes on to infinity, until we come to an incorporeal creature. But if they say that we are moved by God according to the first principle, then, since I know that most of our motions are absurd and shameful, they will of necessity declare the divine to be the cause of these as well.

2. Another. And again, if every bodily existence, however it may be, according to the true account, being distinguished by quantity and quality, in bulk and form, and surface and shape, bounds its own contemplation, as being distinguished by necessary limits—for one who investigates it could not imagine anything outside of these—and the soul is a body, either consisting of these, or being these, or being certain things, or one of these, or being encompassed by these, or by certain things, or by one of these, it is altogether circumscribed. But it is neither of these, nor these, nor certain things, nor one of these, nor encompassed by these, nor by certain things, nor by one of these. Therefore the soul is not a body.

3. Another. If, then, they do not doubt that the soul exists; but existing, it is none of the things which the concept grasps, from which or which bodies are—not color, not shape, not resistance, not weight, not magnitude, not the extension into three dimensions; and simply, in general, being none of the things comprehended concerning bodily nature—the soul, being none of these, as the argument has shown, will be altogether incorporeal, if indeed it exists.

4. Another. Further, if all contraction and expansion and division belong to bodies; but that which is free from all contraction and expansion and any division whatsoever is altogether incorporeal, then the soul is incorporeal, as being completely incapable of receiving all these things.

5. Another. If all bodily substance is divided into the ensouled and the soulless, and the soul is also a body, then it will be either ensouled or soulless in every case. But if it is ensouled, it will be ensouled by something that ensouls, whether a substance, a power, or an accident. But to say that the soul is ensouled, just as light is illuminated or fire is heated, is utterly ridiculous. And if we say that the soul is an ensouling substance, we will again call it either body or incorporeal. And if body, the argument that came before this one will receive the same absurd assaults of reason upon reason, until it is agreed that the soul is incorporeal. But if we say that the soul is a power, or a quality, that ensouls, being life-giving and motive of substance, it will be involuntary and without subsistence. In addition, the difference between ruling and being ruled will be reversed and contrary to nature, if indeed the soul was created by nature to rule the body as an incorporeal substance, but according to them, as a body, it will be ruled by that which is not a substance—I mean the power according to quality—though it is a substance and subsists according to substance, and this contrary to the common preconception of all. But if we call the body soulless, it will be without sensation and without imagination, irrational and without thought. But all these things are around the soul and in the soul, and both exist and are seen; therefore the soul is not a body. For that it has a body of a different substance, we do not refuse to say, knowing it well; but to declare that it is a body, as most rash and most uneducated, we utterly avoid, not being ignorant that to be differs greatly from to have.

But if, because they say the Godhead is incorporeal, they refuse to allow the soul to be called incorporeal—fearing a fear that does not exist—lest they bring it into equality with God, then let them also cut off the rest of our terms, so that the contest of their folly may be complete: all the things that we are called from God as participants—or God from us, as one who works and gives, or imparts—or God was named by us. What then do I mean by these things? To be, to live, to be enlightened, to be made good, to reason, to understand: some by reason of substance, others by reason of movement, that is, inclination and disposition. For we are said to be beings, and living, and lights, and good, and intelligent, and rational. And we name God likewise: being, and living, and light, and good, and mind and reason—whether as being and being called these things from a cause, or as being acted upon, naming the Godhead from our own terms. What then is their argument, that the soul is and is called all these things along with many others, but is no longer incorporeal, as the Godhead is? As though either we ought not to be called these things because the Godhead is, or God ought not to be named these things, which we also are. But indeed we are these things and are named so—not as being the same as God because of these things, but as an effect toward a cause, or a participant toward what is participated, or existence toward a cause. Nor is it by way of comparison or synonymy, as in the case of things of the same essence, but homonymously, and so to speak by participation—since things are infinitely separated from one another in nature, unless one says, as is truly dear, that the Godhead is both beyond nature and a thing.

Where, then, according to them, if it is granted that the soul is a body, will the principle of the image in us be preserved, unless we say that the soul possesses in every respect the likeness to the archetype? For just as we call the image of the intellectual soul intellectual, and of the immortal, incorruptible, and invisible soul we name the image that is known in these things, so too we call it incorporeal as being the image of the incorporeal, since it escapes every mass and likewise every dimensional measurement; and again we say that it is something other than that, according to the propriety of its nature. For then it would no longer be an image, but an unvarying identity. And in those things in which that [archetype] is beheld in the uncreated, unchanging, and beginningless nature, in the same things the created rational nature is shown—not in the same way, however, but as in the last echoes of a voice, a declaration of the word—this we believe is clearly demonstrated. And just as the most philosophical mind, transferring the powers of its thoughts to what is pure and immaterial through the things accomplished among beings in the ordering of the whole, distinguishes the mover from the things moved, and grasping it as one and only and simple, existing from itself, and likewise having a productive causality in its own stability of sameness, knows it to be by nature inaccessible to others—unchanging, because immovable; for there is nothing toward which that which makes and fills beings, and is beyond all beings, would be moved; and comprehensive, as creator, and knowing all things before their generation by the infinity of its power. In the same manner of contemplation, also through the varied and artful motion of the members and parts of the little world—

I mean, then, of man: when he considers the motive cause, he knows it to be something other in essence than the organic existence of the body, and not as a body within a body—which is what seems right to the new philosophers and to the dogmatists of undemonstrated doctrines—but he contemplates it as simple and unitary in things dispersed and in things concentrated, indefinite; changing, as being moved, and moved, as having that toward which it will be moved; and the cause of the change in accordance with motion he knows to be not nature but judgment, whenever this happens to be mistaken.

The change, then, does not pertain, as I think, to the essence of the soul itself; for otherwise it would have changed countless times and would not have remained the same in essence; but it pertains to the motion that is from us, being carried along by the self-sovereign will. Therefore, to say and to declare that those who contradict have a power of change, and that very ceaseless motion of the soul toward the Divine, does not seem to be the mark of those who speak the truth, but of those who seek the cleverness of the argument in a pompous manner, and not the precision of the argument with reverence.

For who that partakes of reason and is not devoid of the friendship of virtue does not know that the ever-moving activity of the soul toward the beautiful is nothing other than a natural energy, accomplished for the sake of its cause and through it? But turning is a motion contrary to nature, introducing the failure of this cause. For turning, to speak in my own terms, is nothing other than weakness and a falling away from natural energies. Therefore do not deign to say any longer to the babblers, you who dared to compare God and creation. Since the Divine, to speak properly, is neither body nor incorporeal, neither substance nor any of the things conceived or spoken, so that I may not enumerate all things in order; but even when conceived it remains incomprehensible, and when spoken it remains ineffable.

Let these things, then, be said by us by way of inquiry, not by way of doctrine; and if they are sufficient for the subject, as is possible in a brief letter, and not much is lacking to your great understanding—thanks be to God, and to you who advance us. But if you wish, should the opponents not be persuaded, to wrestle with them more strenuously, we are ready, by the grace of God, to let loose upon them the surrounding cloud of the divine witnesses and testimonies; so that, laying aside the bulk of all the laborious investigation concerning this, and the easily circumvented word-battling of the contentious, we may hold without disturbance the true knowledge concerning God and his creatures. But if these things have been brought forward inadequately—which it is necessary for everyone to suffer—and not successfully, as from an unlearned mind and a weak instrument—

Forgive me, beloved, for having dared to say these things for the sake of obedience alone, as God, who searches the hearts, knows; and correct gently the one who does not wish to be ignorant of anything beneficial, and lead by the hand with sympathy the one who desires to walk rightly.

LETTER 7.... CONCERNING THE SOUL'S POSSESSION OF INTELLECTUAL ACTIVITY EVEN AFTER DEATH...

7. By the same, to John the Elder, concerning the soul's possession of intellectual activity even after death, and its not being deprived of any natural power. On the second day of the present month of August of the present first indiction, our common friend delivered to me the honored letters of your paternal holiness; on reading them, I was reasonably comforted concerning you, my masters, and after God the causes of all good things to me, who are living in health. For so completely has the Holy Spirit of God been united to you that, beholding you even in absence with the eyes of the mind alone, I am ordered in accordance with the power that is in me, both in life and in speech; as seeing and reverencing God made manifest through you in my remembrance. But I was grieved not a little at the doctrine concerning the soul that is being proclaimed there fearlessly by certain persons, as you have written, considering how great strength and boldness such an evil has even here. But what fills me with dejection here more, and casts a weight like a cloud upon my mind, is the novel doctrine concerning the resurrection now advocated by almost all, and especially by the so-called eminent monks; so that no longer even by conjecture does one suppose the advent of the Antichrist to be a mere prelude;

They believe and confidently affirm that they are present, and that anyone who shares in reasoning to any degree at all has this very thing bearing witness to such an evil, possessing the absurdity of what is said.

For those who boldly sharpen their tongue against everything, and consider nothing of the things impiously done or said to be fearful, say that bodies will be held together at the resurrection again by phlegm and blood, and by yellow and black bile, and by the drawing in of air, and by perceptible food for the purpose of living, with nothing at all appearing beyond the present life through the resurrection, except the inability to die again—I know not how, having voluntarily stopped their ears against all the things in Holy Scripture concerning the soul and the resurrection of the dead, spoken through prophets and apostles and by God the Word himself who conversed with us in the flesh, and especially the things peculiarly declared to the Corinthians by the divine Paul concerning the resurrection, and having closed the eye of the soul to understanding, though these things are so clear and audible and need no interpreter to be known; and having nature itself, which instructs no less than the things divinely revealed—or which also knows how to lead even barbarians to the knowledge of the truth, setting forth itself as a manifest proof of the things sought—they are not ashamed.

For who, unless he is wholly deprived of the grace that accords with reason, does not know that every nature is essentially distinguished by its own proper attributes, and thereby shows both the mode of its own existence and the difference by which it is unmixedly separated from other natures; and that whenever it departs from the attributes that constitute its essence, it will either not exist at all, or will have become what it was not—if indeed one could altogether allow oneself to say that it exists in a comprehensive sense by the removal of its attributes. For every subject naturally perishes together with the natural attributes that are corrupted. For what, or where, will an ox be, and a horse, and a lion, and such things, when the attributes that constitute each one's nature are not present? Or who, being free from madness—not merely bordering on it—would dare to say that these things are what they are without those attributes? If, then, it is true that nothing among existing things can either exist or be known without the things that naturally and properly characterize it, those who remove from the soul what is implanted in it according to its essence—that is, the rational and intellectual, insofar as it always exists and operates by understanding and reasoning—clearly, even if they do not say so, remove along with it its very existence; and according to them it is corruptible and mortal, not having its existence after the death of the body. What could be more absurd than this?

If they suppose that it lives, even if only in word and not in fact, avoiding the refutation that comes from all sides, then it certainly also moves. For every life of created things is shown to be in motion. And if it moves, it also certainly acts; for every motion is made manifest through activity. And if it acts, it will act by being moved naturally and not by convention or by accident. For it will not act in a circular or transitional manner—or, to sum it up, in a bodily manner—but in a noetic and rational manner.

But if it lives and moves and acts in a noetic and rational manner, it certainly also reasons and understands and knows. And if it does not know and reason, it neither acts nor moves nor lives. For it is not possible for there to be life without innate motion, nor for natural motion to be manifested without an activity that is inherent by nature. Besides, the soul is rational and noetic either for its own sake or for the sake of the body. And if for its own sake, then it is rational and noetic by its own essence, and self-subsistent, and it certainly exists. But if it is self-subsistent for its own sake, by nature and in itself, it will also act with the body, understanding and reasoning according to nature, and never ceasing from the noetic powers that naturally belong to it. For the things that naturally belong to anything that exists in any way whatever are irremovable as long as it exists and subsists. The soul, therefore, always existing from the time it came to be, and subsisting because of God who created it in this way, always both understands and reasons and knows, both by itself and with the body, for its own sake and by its own nature. No account, then, will be found that [deprives] the soul of the things that naturally belong to it and are not due to the body, after that of the body

being able to alienate the solution. But if the soul is rational and intelligent because of the body, then first, the body is more honorable than the soul that came to be because of it. Then, it will also have its intelligence and rationality from it, since it came to be because of it. For if the soul is in no way able to think or reason without the body, then the ability to think and reason will certainly belong to it from the body. But if the soul has acquired thinking and reasoning from the body, as being unable to have these without it according to those who say so, then it will certainly not be self-subsistent either. For how could that which does not have its distinguishing characteristic by itself without a body? And if it is not self-subsistent, it is evidently not a substance either. And not being a self-subsistent substance, it is an accident, existing naturally only in the body that subsists; and after its dissolution, it can in no way be anything at all; and it will no longer exist for those who are so foolish, who have stripped away the immortality of the soul, [falling into] the vain labor of Epicurus and Aristotle, to whom, as is likely, these noble fellows also take pride in aligning themselves. And before this, these things. But concerning what is said by them about the resurrection, who that cares for virtue and piety, hearing it, will not procure for himself freedom from passion through passion—I mean the indignation against them?

For if, as they say, the body will rise in the image of the present life, qualitatively unchanged, composed of the conflicting humors, and will be nourished in the fearful presence of God after the consummation of this world, I do not think they intend anything else by these claims—to put it concisely, having cut short the many things that could be said—than to preach death as everlasting and corruption as without end. For if death is the corruption of bodies constituted in this way, and a body constituted by the influx of foods is always being corrupted, dissipated by the flow because of the natural antipathy of the humors within it, from which it has also been constituted—then always, by the very means by which they suppose the body is to be constituted after the resurrection, being preserved perpetually, they proclaim death unceasing. One ought to believe that the body itself rises in essence and form, but incorruptible and immortal, and—to speak in the manner of the apostle—spiritual instead of soulish, since it bears nothing of its alterable constitutive particularity in corruption, as God knows who will transform it toward impassibility and honor; and one ought not to busy oneself with anything more. Seeing the many rejoicing and taking pleasure in these things, I was deafened, and I was humbled, and I was silent from good things, judging silence to be more profitable than speech for every sensible person; and mourning and with a gloomy countenance I go about by myself, considering how many such words, being neglected, darting everywhere like sparks, will work the death of souls; and there is no one able to come to the defense of the word, though willing to do so when it is in danger, because of the wickedness of the time that prevails.

Therefore I grieve all the more at my separation from you, since I do not have the all-powerful fatherly oversight of your holiness, which guards me from close at hand and rescues me from harmful things, and which more frequently by its word props up my many slips. LETTER 8. To the Same, 8. By the same to the same.

Desire according to the flesh is naturally dulled by time, since it is dissolved together with those who are separated locally, for those who have their connection with one another according to it. For it has its constitution around sense perception, which is in no way able to apprehend things that are not present. But desire according to the spirit always has those united according to it as present with one another in a noetic way, even if they are separated from one another bodily, since it does not admit the limitation according to time or place. For it has its

existence around the mind, not in any way being divided or enclosed together with bodies that are divided from one another locally. Having been deemed worthy to have this desire from the beginning toward you, most holy ones, I seem always to see you present and to perceive you conversing; and there is no time or place that can separate me from your remembrance, since it shows you forth as present spiritually at all times, and drives away all the foul-smelling thoughts within me, which cannot bear the great fragrance of the divine grace that is in you. And I am persuaded that I do not merely imagine the remembrance of you, most holy ones, but truly perceive you as present, making what happens a precise assurance of your presence. For the active power in you, according to the grace of God, at the very moment of remembrance drives away the demons that trouble me, and provides the clearest demonstration of your presence.

And it is no wonder if the God of signs and wonders makes those who are absent in body to be present in spirit, as he himself knows, and those who by his power perform such things in a manner befitting God—and more than the bodies of those present with one another in place. And if, when only remembered, you honored Fathers, provide so great a reproof to my dishonorable thoughts, visiting invisibly in spirit, how much more when present before the eyes, sanctifying my hearing through a living voice with divine words, and clearly teaching virtue by your own ways? For this reason I go about grieving and with a gloomy face, longing for and seeking you, the good shepherd and teacher, who know how to settle me, the wandering sheep, in a place of green pasture—I mean the habit of virtue that drives away the scorching heat of the passions through practice—and who are able to nourish me beside the water of rest—I mean the grace of knowledge that waters the mind through contemplation—who turn my soul from evil to virtue by divine words and examples, and guide me in the paths of righteousness, pointing out the ways of salvation according to piety, and wisely encouraging with rod and staff, that is, by the remembrance of eternal punishments, leading away the one being brought in from evil as if with a rod, and by the exhortation of the good things to come, supporting the one advancing in virtue through hope like a staff; which the Lord and Savior, as I think, also hinted at symbolically, pouring wine and oil upon the wounds of the one who fell among robbers.

For by fear of the eternal fire of Gehenna, mingled with longing for the kingdom of heaven, it preserves the soul unharmed, tightening it toward love of the Creator, having been scoured clean of every passionate thought by its astringency. But now, honored Father, fill also this reed of teaching with the divine Spirit, and call in a shepherdly and humane way the one who wanders unherded upon the mountains of ignorance and the hills of wickedness; and place him under your right hand, and bind up with compassion the one torn by the many wicked bites of the wolves of Arabia—that is, of the West; for, as they say, when interpreted in the Greek tongue, the name of Arabia signifies the West. And I understand, and perhaps not incorrectly, according to the principles of spiritual interpretation, that by Arabia is meant this flesh, which tyrannically opposes the laws of the Spirit in matters concerning me, which nurtures many truly shameless and savage wolves, which is truly the West and has become so because of sin, and is truly so called; upon which the good and humane Shepherd has stepped, the God who shepherds Israel, and the Word of God, who sits upon the Cherubim, having clearly paid heed and beheld our danger; and for this reason he manifested himself, and roused his own dominion, and came in the flesh to save the lost, and to kill the wicked beasts that feed upon it; and

to make it a region of peace and a pasture of rational sheep, led up to God through practice; whose law I have not yet safely passed by through spiritual contemplation, as Israel passed Mount Seir; nor have I passed through its desires impassibly through gnostic practice, as their brothers the sons of Esau, who dwell in Arabia, passed through by Moses—those who trace their lineage from Jacob—but I still dwell in Arabia like the sons of Esau, I mean the west, that is, the flesh, expecting no other life after the present one because of the pleasures of the flesh. Which [Arabia] every true Israelite and seer of God refuses even to sojourn in, hastening to depart from the flesh through the virtues and longing to be at home with the Lord through knowledge—the land truly promised, mystically both being and named [a land] of ineffable good things, flowing with milk and honey. For the Lord is nourishing to those who are infants in relation to him, and gladdening to those who are men in relation to him, feeding those who fear him with virtues through practice, as with milk, and sweetening those who love him with mystical knowledge, as with honey, through spiritual contemplation.

Therefore, do not cease, venerable Father, to shepherd me compassionately with the words of truth—me, the one captured by beasts—and do not stop ransoming me from the passions in the flesh, together with the spirits of wickedness that stir them up, which devour and consume the inner man in me; and call me to yourself, and settle me under your wings. If indeed every fear of perceptible barbarians is truly absent—for whose sake, as one who loves life, I came across such great stretches of sea—concerning this I especially beseech your most holy selves, after the longed-for sign of your all-radiant health according to God, to make known to me more precisely, and to show me through letters the whole situation that presently prevails there, as it is. For being weak in reasoning and altogether unsound, and scarcely able even in peace to be sober in small part, and to gather the mind that is scattered amid many things out of cowardice, I wish to make the voyage with safety; as one imperfect in understanding, and unable to tread the words of the providence that wisely directs all things; lest perhaps, having grown slack in reasoning amid what happens through ignorance, and having given way in the struggles of endurance out of weakness, I be deprived of the crowns that come from them, having become a deserter in the trial of what is needful.

By the letter, as though present, I greet you, most holy, and all who are with you, asking through your holy and acceptable prayers that I be presented to Christ God and Savior of all.

Letter 9. To Thalassius the Presbyter and Hegumen. Of the same, to Thalassius the Presbyter and Hegumen. Three things, as they rightly say, are those that lead a man—or rather, toward which a man is moved by will and judgment according to choice: God, and nature, and the world. And each of these, drawing him, displaces the other two, changing the one led toward itself, and making him by position that which it is known to be by nature—except, however, nature. For that preserves the man as what he is. If, then, it is God who leads the man, by the grace of the Word he is naturally disposed to make him a god by position, granting divinization, as one good, beyond nature to the one led; and he cuts him off cleanly from the two—I mean the world and nature. But if it is nature that leads the man, being by himself, it shows the man to be by nature, since it is intermediate between God and the world, so that he partakes according to judgment of neither of these. But if

The world is what carries; the beast labors—that is, the flesh alone—on the man who is led, fashioning in him the passion of deceit, by which, setting him far from God and from nature, it teaches him to do all things contrary to nature. The extremes, then—I mean God and the world—and the mean, I mean nature, are accustomed to lead a man away from one another. But the mean, being the boundary between them, if it takes the man as one who looks to it alone, it sets him apart, moved equally away from the extremes, neither permitting him to run back to God nor allowing him, out of shame, to fall away to the world. Therefore, as soon as a man is moved in his disposition toward any of these, at that same moment he has exchanged both his activity and his appellation, being called fleshly, or psychic, or spiritual. And the work and mark of the fleshly man is to know only how to do evil. Of the psychic man, it is neither to wish ever to do evil nor to suffer evil. Of the spiritual man, it is to wish only to do good, and, if it happens that he suffers for virtue, gladly to accept it. If, then, you desire, blessed one, to be led by the Spirit of God—as indeed you do desire—strip from yourself the world and your own nature; or rather, cut yourself off from these, and do not refuse to be wronged; do not shrink from bearing mockeries and insults; and, to speak concisely, never cease, while suffering evil, to do good to those who do evil, and to forgive all that is done, for the sake of God and virtue, according to him who said: If anyone wishes to judge you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak also.

And again, according to the blessed Apostle who says: Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we endure; being blasphemed, we entreat.

If, then, you wish to be persuaded by me, blessed servant of God, bestow a great favor upon those who afflict you; and if it is necessary, do not shrink from being counted as loss to them in all things; and rather, bless when reviled, endure when persecuted, and entreat when blasphemed, so that you may not be fleshly, as one who both knows and wills only to do wrong; nor soulish, as one who does not endure being wronged; but rather spiritual, willingly and knowingly practicing only to do good; and knowing how to suffer evil readily at the hands of those who wish it, for the sake of virtue; looking to Jesus, the author of our salvation, who in exchange for all the good things that no one has yet been able to comprehend by knowledge, patiently endured all the terrible things that no one has endured from sinners and for sinners. For the goal of the giver of the commandments is to set man free from the world and from nature. And for this reason, the one who does not obey is condemned; and in vain do fathers according to the world put forward their offspring as a pretext, and the leaders of the communities of those practicing the monastic life, to the effect that the commandments must reasonably be idle for them. But if we accept this as true, the Lord will be shown to have written a law of salvation for no one at all. And the soulish man, as I think, the word of Scripture would have called the natural man; since, as those skilled in such matters say, the property of nature is naturally contemplated only in things that are ensouled, and simply in things subject to generation and corruption.

I have written these things to you, master, because I found you greatly distressed by what has happened, through your own reader. But pray with power, as one who is powerful to the powerful one who forgives sins, for Maximus your servant and disciple, honored Father.

LETTER 10. TO JOHN THE CUBICULARIUS. Of the same, to John the Cubiculiarius.

Since God judged right that man be ruled by men, the nature of all being one and the same, and since that simple principle according to nature declares all who partake of it to be of equal honor, you commanded that it be written to you, and I will speak according to my ability, concealing nothing of what I received from wise and blessed men, cutting short most of what could be said about this on account of brevity. A true account, as they say, mystically suggests that man, who by grace received from God who made him the lot of ruling over the whole visible world, by turning the movements of the innate powers of the noetic essence within him to things contrary to nature through a mode of misuse, brought upon himself and upon this whole world the alteration and corruption that now prevails over them, by the just judgment of God; so that the power of his soul, moving toward things contrary to nature, might not be preserved immortal and without end for him—which is not only the utmost of wickedness and a manifest fall from the true being of man himself, but also a clear denial of divine goodness.

For this reason this much-toiling and much-groaning life of men, through the great irrationality and disorder of the matter that nurses it, bearing one thing and being borne by another in different ways—and to speak more precisely, in being borne it bears all men and makes them all partakers of the evils within it, and it leaves no one wholly free from its turmoil. And this was ordained according to the fitting word of the wisdom of God, so that this present life, which is loved by us irrationally by disposition—even if late, when we have learned by experience how much friendship toward it harms us, by suffering badly from it in circumstances—we might know that separation from union with it is far more useful to us, and that we should justly ratify hatred toward it according to reason; and fleeing the confusion and turmoil of things seen, we might soberly transfer our longing to the stable sameness of things understood. But since, even when scourged and suffering countless terrible things, we do not endure to loose the bond of friendship toward it, God, as wise and good, by his providence framed for men the law of kingship, checking from afar the great madness of evil that was foreknown to arise because of the ease of life, so that men might not become like the fish of the sea, devouring one another, with no one presiding and preventing the unjust impulse of the stronger against the weaker. For this reason, as is likely, in my opinion, kingship was necessarily introduced to the race of men, receiving wisdom from God and dominion.

And the nature of equal honor was permitted to be divided into ruling and being ruled, so that by the one it might order those who lawfully obey the ordinances of nature, and by the other it might justly punish those who, through the self-will of their judgment, are unwilling to submit to these; and so that from this it might bestow righteousness upon all, awarded by desire and fear, through which the unevenness of each one's judgment having been removed, the equality of nature in all things, calm and gentle, is brightly displayed. And this would never have come to be, had fear not punished the foolish impulse of the many toward what is out of place, and by force, through threat, led them to calmness by the wise. For what reason is naturally fitted to persuade the wise to embrace willingly, fear is accustomed to compel the foolish to accept unwillingly.

For this cause I have learned that the kingdom was permitted to enter into the life of men, and I accept the account as true, and as a teacher of the cause. But if some other account is also established as the cause according to the divine Scripture, I consider this to be graspable only by those who are pure in mind. Nevertheless, not even this is wholly discordant with the aim of the divine Scripture. And that

For he recounts that God, in his forbearance, permitted men who had rejected the kingdom of God to be ruled even by themselves, so that the disorder of anarchy might not produce a multiplicity of rulers and from this bring about destructive faction among the whole human race, since no one was entrusted with their care by divine decree; and that by reason he orders those who are trained by reason toward gentleness, and by the fear of power he punishes those who contrive wickedness, and those who by their own choice corrupt the innate good of knowledge through ways contrary to nature.

Whoever, then, among kings has earnestly guarded this law of kingship has truly appeared as a second God on earth, having become the most faithful servant of the divine counsel, and having justly received the lot of being ruled by God and ruling men. But whoever has thrust aside this ordinance and has altogether resolved to rule for himself and not for God will reasonably do the opposite of these things: tyrannically shaking off from himself the good and putting far from him all counsel and authority, and seditiously drawing the wicked to himself and making them masters of all his own power—which is the last abyss of perdition for both rulers and ruled. But may God grant us to be willingly ruled by him through the fulfillment of his life-giving commandments, and worthily to honor those who rule on earth according to him, as guardians of his divine ordinances.

Letter 11. About an ascetic woman who left the monastery... 11. By the same, to an abbess, about an ascetic woman who left the monastery and repented.

Those who became heralds of the truth and ministers of divine grace—all who from the beginning until our own time, each in his own day, made clear to us the saving will of God—say that nothing is so dear and beloved to God as the return of men to him through true repentance. Wishing to show this above all else as more divine than the rest—or rather as the first and only mark of his infinite goodness—the God-originating Word of God and the Father, by some ineffable manner of condescension, deigned to converse with us through the flesh, doing and suffering and saying those things by which we, who were enemies and foes, had to be reconciled to God the Father, and having been estranged from the blessed life, be led back to it again. For not only did he heal our diseases by his wonders, and take up our infirmities through his sufferings, and by death pay our debt as one liable though he was without sin, freeing us from our many and fearful charges; but also, teaching in many ways, he willed that those who wish it become equal to himself in their philanthropic disposition and in perfect love toward one another. For this reason he cried out, I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. And, Those who are strong have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. And, He came to seek and to save the lost. And, He was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

He hinted figuratively through the parable of the drachma that the royal image was to be recovered, having come to be under the most foul-smelling dung of the passions. And, "Amen I say to you that joy comes to be in heaven and on earth over one sinner who repents." For this reason, the man who fell among robbers and was stripped of every covering and left half-dead by his wounds, he restored with wine and oil and bandages; and having set him on his own beast, he entrusts him to the innkeeper; and having given what was sufficient for his care, he promised also to give whatever was spent in addition when he returned. For this reason he says that the all-good father inclined toward the return of the prodigal son, and having embraced him as he ran back through repentance, he adorned him again with the beauty of the fatherly glory, reproaching him not at all for his former deeds. For this reason, having found the sheep of the divine hundred that had strayed upon the mountains and the hills, he brought it back to the fold of the sheep, not driving it nor wearing it out with toil; but having placed it upon his own shoulders, he compassionately saved it together with the flock. For this reason he cried out, "Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened in heart, and I will give you rest." And, "Take my yoke upon you"; calling his commandments a yoke—that is, the life directed rightly according to the Gospel—and a burden, that which seems toilsome in repentance; for "My yoke," he says, "is kind and my burden is light." And again, teaching divine righteousness and goodness, he exhorts, saying: "Be holy"; and "Be perfect"; and "Be merciful.

Be merciful, as your heavenly Father. And, Forgive, and it will be forgiven you. And, Whatever you wish that men should do to you, do likewise also to them. And such things. And simply, so that I may not prolong the letter by speaking of each one, for this reason he justifies prostitutes who repent, receives tax collectors who turn back, and establishes them as heralds of the Gospel. For this reason he brings along with himself robbers who confess, and who purchase salvation by death, because of fear, and brings them with himself into paradise, confirming the promises of the good things to come. For this reason he brings to their senses raging persecutors, because of zeal, and having ordained apostles of the nations in his own place, he sets them forth; so that we may learn love for humanity and gentleness; and may neither easily despair of ourselves when we sin, nor remain unsympathetic and unfeeling toward those who sin; having God as an example of what comes to be.

Since therefore we have been taught that these things are so in the truth itself, and that it is the will of God that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth; and we remember that the beginning and sole basis of his wonderful coming to us in the flesh is our salvation; trusting, I beseech your holiness, setting before you as a supplication the very life-giving sufferings of God and our Savior Christ, by which we were redeemed from the power of darkness. For I believe that you, being a genuine disciple of the Son of God, through the whole conduct of your life, bear the teacher living and active within yourself, inasmuch as from childhood you have wholly attached yourself to him.

so that through me also, your humble and sinful intermediary, who has nothing worthy of your virtue, you may honor his loving self-emptying on your behalf, and receive this sister who has repented and melted away in tears. For great and inexpressible is the contrition of her heart and the humbling of her spirit, both over the sin she has committed and over her separation from you, which she mourns. Do not, then, O blessed servant of God, despise a heart that is contrite and humbled, which God has not despised; but becoming merciful and compassionate, tender-hearted and sympathetic, imitate him who for our sake willingly deigned to die out of love for humanity; and deem her worthy to be received and embraced, and endure to confirm love toward her. And strengthen her by words and deeds of loving-kindness and gentleness, and snatch her from the hands of the tyrant, and compassionately bind up the fractures that have come upon her, so that she, weighed down too much by grief, may not fall upon the stake of despair, and we be required to answer for the blood of a soul that has been corrupted—or, to speak more truly, betrayed to the

to the enemy of our life, so as to keep him under subjection to whatever he wishes; whom it was necessary to live through our long-suffering and gentleness; and let us be justly accused, as having neglected both the divine wills and the divine sufferings. For likewise, even if the word is harsh, yet it is true, they dishonor the good will of God, and they nullify, as far as lies in them, his loving self-emptying on our behalf—both those who are unwilling to repent and those who do not receive those who repent; because, owing to one another to make their own misfortunes, for the equality of honor of nature; nor having reverenced even the goodness of God toward us; unless we have imitated something else concerning our own kind, we have been shown forth.

Therefore, as one who knows, blessed servant of God, that the divine justice is fittingly applied to the dispositions of our souls, becoming such to us as we have made ourselves toward one another; and establishing God to us as such as we, having first disposed ourselves toward those of like passions, have made him; do not delay to receive with open hands your suppliant and servant; but without delay, in imitation of God, with all zeal place the sheep upon your shoulders, and gather it to the safe fold, and keep it henceforth inviolate by the wolves; so that she also may obtain such a merciful God and Savior Christ and judge of all, at his fearful and most glorious appearing, who will repay you the eternal fruits of what you have sown. May we also obtain him propitious by his grace and loving-kindness; through the prayers and intercessions of our Lady, the all-glorious Mother of God, and of all his saints. Amen.

LETTER 12.... ON THE CORRECT DOGMAS OF THE CHURCH OF GOD...

12. By the same, to John the cubicularius, On the correct dogmas of the Church of God; and against Severus the heretic. Having reckoned it good, O God-guarded ones, to shrink from reporting to you nothing of what comes to me concerning you yourselves—for this our law and lawgiver of true love, Christ, who is love itself, commands, teaching us to make one another our own through ourselves—I have made the present letter, declaring that in the month of November of the present fifteenth indiction, a certain Theodore by name, a cancellarius, arrived here: truly well-born, and not devoid of freedom of manners, as far as I at least can conjecture from what is seen, carrying a letter from our common mistress, the God-guarded Patrikia, as he said, inscribed to the blessed servant of God, the all-praiseworthy eparch here, for the sake of releasing the nuns dwelling here, both of the convent of Amma Ioannia, who is from Alexandria, and of the convent called of the Sakerdos, who belong to the heresy of Severus—who employed such great madness and abundance of falsehood against the truth as even to this day to suffice for troubling the holy Church of God. But to no one else, from no other of the rulers appointed there to serve the God-guarded Patrikia, did he convey anything at all, not even to a bare syllable. Whence I too, with many others, marveled, questioning within myself, what the reason is according to which my God-guarded master deigned to make nothing known to me through him.

And, as is likely, as is accustomed to happen in such matters, as you know, master, this letter caused great murmuring among the faithful peoples; and it nearly diminished the reverence toward the all-praiseworthy Patrikia, the mistress, in the catholic Church of God; and it shook all those who dwell in this land of Africa, who had already been preoccupied with good preconceptions about her, unless the said all-praiseworthy prefect, using a method befitting his intelligence, had everywhere spread the report that the letter was false and spurious; and he pretended to be indignant against the chancellor, and he duly dealt with those of the heretics who were stirred up on the pretext of such a letter, both from Alexandria and from Syria, punishing some with imprisonment and others with blows, saying, "Do not insult the preconceptions of our mistress Patrikia." For they were shamelessly insisting, leaning—as I said—on the letter, that she rejoiced in their doctrines; and they did not refrain from lyingly telling everyone that Thomas, so-called their bishop, was one of those who came to her with freedom and were greatly honored by her; which, more than anything, disturbed and scandalized everyone. So that I too, being then summoned of necessity, went, and rebuked face to face those who dared to say this, and persuaded those who heard that in no way, by the grace of the Savior Christ, had either she or the one who became her consort in the saints inclined at all toward the heretics.

Likewise also many other most devout monks sojourning here, and especially the blessed servants of God and our fathers, those surnamed Eukratades, saying the same things, caused the many to be outside such false suspicion. And to speak simply, in every way the aforementioned all-praiseworthy man has come, intending to demonstrate her to be pure of every blemish and to reveal to all that she is faithful to God and honorable.

But I have not yet become free from doubt on this matter, I who most of all make your affairs my own, the small and worthy of nothing, who have been deemed worthy of great things and of divine grace; still grieving about this, and not having what I should judge and vote. For knowing that our common mistress, the all-praiseworthy Patrikia, has stood upon the unbreakable rock of the faith from her ancestors and has been taught to breathe almost nothing else than the right faith in God, which is proclaimed according to the catholic Church of God, I cannot believe that the letter is hers. And again, seeing the chancellor confirmed by fearful oaths, and assuring that for this very reason and for this alone he was sent here by her, I consider it a fearful thing not to believe; and I stand in the middle, a boundary between two thoughts, not able to find the one that conquers and can draw the soul's assent to itself. Nevertheless, my blessed master, that I may speak the truth, I will also declare everything that I have been able to judge; and receive me, who from much labor of soul boldly speak freely because of my love for you.

If in truth it was by the will and judgment of your God-guarded selves that the letter concerning the aforementioned heretical women was issued by her—which I marvel at—I do not accept it, inferring that you are not outside blame. For I hear the divine Scripture teaching that Jehoshaphat, that pious and faithful king of Judah, when he allied himself with Ahab king of Israel, who was defiled with many pollutions of idolatry, when he once stirred up war against Syria, was angered and reproached by God, who spoke to him thus through the prophet: "Do you help a man hated by me, and one who is hostile to the Lord God?" But if perhaps she was persuaded by others who suggested this and did it, not even so do I assent to what was done, recalling that Rehoboam, the son of the great Solomon, who by choosing the counsel of the younger men over that of the elders cut off the greater part of his own kingdom; and at the same time, knowing it is forbidden to undertake canonical matters that are not lawful, and especially for women, to whom the divine word declared that silence is more fitting than breathing.

It is not right, therefore, to assist heretics in any way whatsoever, as heretics, even if it had been permitted to all to pursue all things without fear; both for the reasons already stated, lest we unwittingly offend God, and because it is not good to give them license to parade their own falsehood and to stir up trouble against piety; lest, having been made manifest through us, like a serpent they be able to shake some of the simpler folk from the secure foundation of the faith by the bite of deceit, and we too be found, unwillingly, sharing in the judgment hanging over them on this account. For thus at the beginning the all-praiseworthy prefect, having exercised his customary sympathy toward them—so much so that he even bestowed on them wine worth much gold for their sustenance, along with the rest of a generous supply of necessities—when he found that they had been blinded by the conceit of pride, he was turned away from it. For immediately, as if by command, they began to gather and to subvert daughters of the faithful, and to hide and to deny their parents, who sought them for a considerable time; and they dared to perform purifications and rebaptisms; and having come to them often with much entreaty and learned these things, and having exhorted them at length to cease from such practices and to be united to the holy Church of God, and having accomplished nothing—

Finally, when he saw that the evil had become great and already unchecked, and that the congregations of the faithful were murmuring about what was happening, he feared lest something disorderly should proceed against them—since the faithful multitude of the Romans had boiled with rage against them and would not endure even the bare mention of the heretics' name—and he considered it fitting and lawful that a royal counsel and decision be made concerning this matter. And so he referred everything by report, together with the most holy archbishop and the most glorious leading men here, to our most pious emperor and to the most holy patriarchs, both of Rome and of Constantinople. And indeed, having received a calm and sacred letter from our most faithful emperor and from the most blessed patriarchs, commanding that all heretics be driven from the country—those persisting in their own false opinion—but that the said women, if they wished to come to the holy, immaculate, and life-giving Church of the catholic Church, should keep their own communities unmolested; but those who refused the truth and would not obey the royal decree, should be separated one by one perpetually in the monasteries of the orthodox, and their property, according to the law—especially those things in which they trusted and abundantly supported those who led them astray—should pass to the public treasury; he did all things earnestly as he was commanded. By the grace of Christ he persuaded all the heretics from Syria, Egypt, Alexandria, and Libya to come to the holy Church of God.

Of the aforementioned women, those from the monastery of the Sacerdos, who had been carried away foolishly at the command of the pious master because of their ingrained arrogance, he distributed among the holy houses of the orthodox, for the fulfillment of what had been piously commanded, some by persuasion and others by submission, and becoming all things to all for God's sake; and when at last they had learned what was needful, he persuaded them to be united to the catholic Church of God, together with many other cenobia. But those of the amma Ioannia, who had come with all joy, very sensibly and quite reasonably, because of the truth of the ecclesiastical doctrines that shone forth beforehand, he restored to their own monasteries, to all men and women alike; having found a reward worthy of his magnanimity in divine things—namely, to be adorned with apostolic graces and to be reckoned a genuine mouth of the Lord, according to the divine saying that declares, If you bring forth the precious from the worthless, you shall be as my mouth. Or rather, receiving this great and wonderful work as a prelude of the divine recompense that awaits him and a most faithful pledge of the glory with Christ.

It is not because I wish heretics to be afflicted, nor because I rejoice in their maltreatment, that I write these things—may it not be so—but rather because I rejoice and exult together in their conversion. For what is more delightful to the faithful than to behold the children of God who were scattered being gathered into one? Nor do I counsel you to prefer the harshness of the lover of mankind to his gentleness—may I never be so mad—but rather, with carefulness and testing, to do and to work what is good toward all men, and to become all things to all, as each one of you has need, I exhort; but as for lending any manner of assistance to heretics toward the establishment of their insane opinion, I both desire and pray that you be altogether hard and implacable. For I for my part define misanthropy, and separation from divine love, as the attempt to give strength to error for the greater destruction of those already taken captive by it.

EXPOSITION OF THE RIGHT CONFESSION. An exposition of the right confession.

But before all things and above all things, [I exhort you] to be sober and watchful and to keep guard against the approaches of thieves, lest, being despoiled by them, we fail to notice it; and rather let us guard the great and first medicine of our salvation—I mean the good inheritance of the faith—confessing it with soul and mouth with boldness, as our Fathers taught us.

Those who follow the eyewitnesses and servants of the Word from the beginning, [confess] the one Son of God, God the Word, of the holy and consubstantial, undefiled and blessed Trinity, the radiance of glory and the express image of the Father's person, the creator of all visible and invisible creation, the infinite, the unbounded, the invisible, the incomprehensible, the unsearchable, who by a single inclination of his will made and sustains all things; who by his goodness is immeasurable—they declared that he became man for our sake, and was made flesh from the holy, all-glorious, ever-virgin Mary, who is properly and truly the God-bearer; uniting to himself in hypostasis flesh from her, consubstantial with us, animated by a rational and intelligent soul, which did not exist as a hypostasis even for the twinkling of an eye, but received both its being and its hypostasis in God the Word himself; and that he, being perfect God, became perfect man; neither setting aside being God because he became man, which he was not, nor prevented from becoming what he was not—man—because he remained what he was and is, God; but being that, he also became this, truly being each, and being attested as both divine and human by divine wonders and human sufferings; and according to his own nature and essence in relation to the Father, uncreated, invisible, uncircumscribed, unchangeable, immutable, impassible, incorruptible, immortal, creator of all things; but according to the nature of his flesh, which is also yours, the same one is created, passible, circumscribed, contained, mortal; the same one, but not in the same respect, because of the things from which and in which he has his being.

...the same one consubstantial with God the Father in his divinity, and the same one consubstantial with us in his humanity; double in nature, that is, in substance; because he is the mediator between God and humans, he must properly preserve the natural kinship with those for whom he mediates, by being both; so that in truth itself, in himself and through himself, having joined earthly things to heavenly things, and having brought to God the Father the material nature of humans, which had been at war because of sin, saved, loved, and deified—not by identity of substance, but by the ineffable power of the incarnation—so that he might make us also partakers of the divine nature, through his holy flesh taken from us, as a firstfruits. Therefore the same one is known to be both God and human, in reality and not in name only; but not double in hypostasis, that is, in person; because one and the same existed before the flesh and remained after the flesh; no addition or subtraction being made to the holy Trinity from the incarnation of the Word; the same one suffered in the flesh for us, and the same one by his divinity is and remains impassible throughout; so that our salvation is in the death of the only-begotten Son of God—O the paradoxical and inexpressible mystery!—and the divine glory and identity of his substance with the Father remains continually undiminished. ON THE DIFFERENCE, AND HOW ONE MUST PIOUSLY CONFESS TWO NATURES IN CHRIST AFTER THE UNION. On the difference, and how one must piously confess two natures in Christ after the union.

Since these things have been wisely declared in accordance with sound understanding by the holy teachers of the Church, it is altogether pious that we too, following them, confess that there are two natures dissimilar in substance which came together for the ineffable union, and that we glorify them as having remained without confusion even after the union. To say that they have remained without confusion introduces no division of any kind—may this never be!—but signifies that the difference remains unchangeable. For difference and division are not the same thing. Difference is the principle by which the subjects differ from one another, and it is declarative of how each is; that is, that the flesh is by nature and substance what it is, and again that God the Word is by nature and substance what he is. Division, however, is a cutting through and through, that is, one that cuts the subjects entirely through, and sets them as existing individually, separately, and by themselves, and as separated from one another. If, then, such a principle is preserved even after the union—showing that the Word has not been turned into flesh, and that the flesh has not departed from its natural definition, but confirming that each has remained according to its nature in substance, even though a union has taken place—how is it not altogether right to confess that the difference of the natures that came together is preserved even after the union? And if this is not in doubt, since it has truth itself as a faithful witness, it is clear to all and evident that the things that came together remain without confusion, neither the divinity having been turned into flesh, nor the flesh having been changed into the nature of divinity.

What reason, then, is left, if we all wish to be led by the fear of God and everywhere to hold the truth itself of the divine doctrines as our canon, and not rather our own fallible opinion—what reason is left that can show that it is not reasonable to confess that the things that have come together are preserved? IN ANOTHER WAY CONCERNING THE SAME THINGS. In another way concerning the same things.

In addition to all these things, the Fathers teach that the accounts of the things that have come together are always preserved; and that these very things that have come together both contribute to one person of the Son and one hypostasis. But if this is so, how is it not necessary again, in accordance with the Fathers, through knowing that the accounts are preserved, to speak of the difference, and that after the union each of the things that have come together is preserved in its natural propriety; and through confessing that both contribute to one person of the Son and one hypostasis, to know precisely that these things are by nature indivisible. And that the difference of the things that have come together, and that these very things that have come together are preserved after the union, beyond all change and confusion, the most holy luminary of the Church, Cyril, to whom those who fight in vain against the holy Church of God pretend to have attached themselves excessively, will suffice to testify, in the second tome against the blasphemies of Nestorius, writing as follows: "When the mystery concerning Christ has been brought into our midst, the account of the union does not ignore the difference, but it removes the division; not confusing or mingling the natures—

But because the Word of God, having partaken of flesh and blood, is again conceived and named as one and the same Son. And in the Apology to Andrew, who found fault with the third of the chapters, he says thus: "It would be free from all blame, perhaps, to know that the flesh is one thing, and has its own nature, apart from the Word who sprang from God the Father; and the Only-begotten is another, according to the principle of his own nature. But to know these things is not to divide the natures after the union." Behold, "after the union" is clearly set down by the great Cyril, piously understood and spoken by the faithful according to him. For the fact that the principle of the being of the united things has in no way been harmed by the union makes it clear, and also that the one has not been confused with the other, because there is one in both according to the hypostasis; but rather that they are preserved and remain, inasmuch as each is by nature in its own essence. For the wise Cyril, knowing this, says plainly: "Neither have the natures been confused with one another, by their contributing to one hypostasis of the Son; nor have they been separated from one another, by being and remaining and being conceived as one and another [according to essence, clearly] after the union;" and each with its natural property and difference; according to which the Word is God by nature, and not flesh, even if he made the flesh his own by economy; and the flesh is flesh by nature, not God, even if it has become the Word of God's own through the union. How then is it not necessary, pious and fitting, according to the teaching of the Fathers, when we say that the difference is preserved after the union—

And that the two natures both exist and are preserved in the one Christ, from which he also is, and that after the union I glorify them, whose difference; knowing so many things and that the things that came together to the inseparable union did not in any way receive change into one another or alteration? For every difference is in some way necessarily of certain things that differ; and where it is possible to conceive that there is a difference, there the things that differ must certainly also exist. For such things are, in a certain way, mutually introductory; just as causes and effects, being understood as relative to something in the same essence. For if the different essence of the things from which he is composed is, as a cause, productive of the difference in Christ, then the difference is certainly also declarative, as an effect, of the natural otherness of the things united, as of its own cause. For, as has been said, such things are naturally introduced together with one another; and when one is spoken of, it is entirely necessary to confess the other as well; and again, when one is removed, it follows that not even the other is to be said to be. It is necessary, then, both to speak of two, so that we do not introduce a bare difference; and for this reason alone to have used the number, to show that the difference of the things that came together has remained, as being preserved after the union and not divided; besides the fact that it is also easier for the truth to be shown from the more significant utterance of the things themselves, than for the things to be confirmed as different from the voice alone.

That number neither divides nor is divided; nor does it introduce division, according to its own principle, into the whole to which it is applied.

But if some, preferring opinion to the truth, say that number is divisive or divisible, or introduces division—and fearing this fear that is no fear—they decline to say that the two natures that came together in Christ are preserved after the union, lest division and partition be smuggled into the mystery of the incarnation, I do not see what account they can give of their understanding in this matter. For either they show themselves wiser in this than the holy Fathers who used such a term, and who suspected no division in themselves—deceived in thinking that they can penetrate the divine things more spiritually than they—or, examining the principles of beings by themselves and puffed up by the conceit of opinion, they have not recognized the truth that escaped them. For who among those in any way versed in the divine teachings of the Fathers does not know that every number, according to the great and God-bearing Gregory, is declarative of the quantity of the underlying subjects, but not of the division of things, as these men suppose? For how, I would gladly ask them, can that which does not subsist according to essence be able to divide? For it belongs to a subsisting essence to be naturally able to do something in relation to another. And how can that which cannot suffer according to its own principle be divided? For it is the property of an accident, that is, of a quality, to be this, as those skilled in such matters have declared, of things said to be in a subject.