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(95) Who, not having the divine Word dwelling in the depth of his heart, will be able to bow down the unseen snares of the demons' hypocrisy against us, and stand by himself alone, without any mingling, and build the temple of the Lord, like the great Zerubbabel and Jesus and the leaders of the fathers, who plainly said with a loud voice to the deceiving spirits of pride and vainglory and people-pleasing and hypocrisy: Not to us and to you be it to build the house of the Lord our God; for we alone will build to the Lord of Israel; knowing that their

mingling brings about the corruption and destruction of the whole building, and plunders the grace of the beauty of the divine offerings.

(96) No one is able, having any of the said demons accompanying him as a companion in virtue, to build this to the Lord; for he does not have God as the end of what is done, whom, beholding, he would accomplish it; but rather the passion which he establishes through it.

(77) Those who wage war by deficiency of virtue are demons, teaching fornication and drunkenness, love of money and envy; those who wage war by excess are those teaching presumption and vainglory and pride, and secretly piercing the left with the right. (78) Would that it might be granted to us always to say to the spirits of wickedness that invisibly assail us under the guise of spiritual friendship, and that secretly wish by means of good to work out the death of sin, and that say, "We will build the temple with you to your Lord": "It is not for us and for you to build the house to the Lord our God; for we alone will build to the Lord of Israel." Alone, indeed, because, having been set free from the spirits that wage war by deficiency of virtue, from which we have also departed, we do not wish, being puffed up through you by excesses, to be pierced again and to fall into a fall as much more grievous than the former as for the former there was an easy hope of return, since we were pardoned because of weakness; but for the latter, either there is none, or it will be difficult, since we are hated because of pride, and since we make something else more right than the right. And not alone again, because we have the holy angels as helpers in good things; or rather God Himself, manifesting Himself to us through the works of righteousness, and building us for Himself as a holy temple, and free from every passion. (79) The limit of virtue is the union, in knowledge, of human weakness with the divine power. He, therefore, who confines himself to the weakness of nature has not come to the limit of virtue.

And for this reason he goes wrong, not yet having received the power that strengthens weakness. But he who boldly sets his own weakness against divine power as though it were strength has transgressed the boundary of virtue; and for this reason, going wrong, he does not recognize it, since what lies beyond becomes superior in his own eyes; for he thinks the transgression is virtue. Therefore he who confines himself by natural weakness is more deserving of forgiveness, having suffered the fall from virtue rather than caused it through negligence, than he who boldly sets his own weakness against divine power as though it were strength for the doing of what is required, having caused the fall from virtue rather than suffered it through presumption. (80) Since it has been said, "The prayer of a righteous man is powerful in its working," I know that it is worked in two ways. In one way, when the one praying, together with the works according to the commandment, makes the offering of his petition to God, so that the petition does not lie idle and without substance, falling out in mere word and empty sound of the tongue, but is active and living, animated by the works of the commandments. For the substance of prayer and petition is clearly the fulfillment of the commandments through the virtues, according to which the righteous man has his petition strong and able to do all things, worked through the commandments. In another way, when the one who is in need of the prayer of the righteous man performs the works of prayer, correcting his former life and making the petition of the righteous man strong, being empowered by his own good conduct.

(104) There is no benefit in the petition of a righteous man for one who needs it but takes more pleasure in his sins than in the virtues. For even the great Samuel once grieved over Saul when he transgressed; but he could not propitiate God, since he did not receive as a fellow-worker of his grief the fitting correction of the one who transgressed. Therefore God, putting an end to the unprofitable grief of his servant, says to him, "How long will you grieve over Saul, when I have rejected him from reigning over Israel?"

(105) And again Jeremiah, the most compassionate, on behalf of the people of the Jews, who were raging in error under the demons, is not heard when he prays, since he does not have, for the power of prayer, the turning of the godless Jews from their error. Therefore God, leading him away also from praying in vain, says, "And do not pray for this people, and do not ask that they be shown mercy, and do not entreat, and do not come to me any more concerning them, for I will not hear you." (106) It is truly great foolishness—not to say madness—for one who in his disposition takes pleasure in destructive things to seek salvation through the prayer of righteous men, and to ask forgiveness for those things in which he boasts, being stained in his intention by his activity, when the one who needs the righteous man's petition ought not to let it remain idle and unmoved, if indeed he truly hates evil things, but ought to make it active and strong, winged by his own virtues, and reaching ahead to obtain the forgiveness of the one who is able to give it for his transgressions.

(84) The petition of the righteous man is very powerful, whether it is performed by the righteous man who makes it, or by the one who asks the righteous man to make it. For when it is performed by the righteous man, it gives him boldness before the one who is able to grant the requests of the righteous; but when it is performed by the one who asks the righteous man to make it, it removes him from his former wickedness, changing his disposition toward virtue. (85) Since the Apostle has said, "In which you rejoice a little now, if it is necessary that you be grieved in various temptations," how can one who is grieved in temptations rejoice in that in which he is grieved? (86) The word of truth knows a twofold grief: the one, consisting invisibly in the soul; the other, manifestly in the senses; and the one, encompassing the whole depth of the soul, tormented by the scourge of conscience; the other, circumscribing all the senses, contracted by the weight of pains from natural diffusion; and the one is the end of sensual pleasure; the other, of the soul's gladness; or rather, the one is the conclusion of sensual inclinations; the other, of the passions that are contrary to inclination in the soul itself. (87) Grief, so to speak in my view, is a disposition deprived of pleasures; and deprivation of pleasures is the bringing on of pains; and pain is clearly a lack or withdrawal of natural condition; and the lack of natural condition is a passion of the power that lies naturally beneath the condition. And the passion of the power that lies naturally beneath the condition is the mode of the misuse of natural activity.

Misuse of the mode of activity is the movement of the power toward that which is not naturally suited to it according to nature and subsistence.

(88) He says that the end of the soul's grief is sensory pleasure; for from this grief of the soul is constituted; just as, then, the end of the soul's pleasure is the flesh's grief; for the soul's gladness becomes the flesh's punishment.

(89) He says that grief is twofold: the one, concerned with sensation, consisting in the deprivation of bodily pleasures; the other, concerned with the mind, arising from the deprivation of the soul's goods. And he says that temptations too are twofold: the one, voluntary; the other, involuntary. And the voluntary ones are the fathers of sensory bodily pleasure, and the begetters of the soul's grief [pain]; for sin, when committed, grieves the soul alone. But the involuntary ones, which are shown in pains contrary to one's will, are the fathers of the soul's pleasure, and the begetters of sensory bodily grief. (90) Just as the account knows grief to be twofold, as I said, so too it understands the mode of temptations to be twofold: the one according to will, the other contrary to will; and the one a producer of voluntary pleasures, the other a bringer-on of involuntary pains. For the temptation according to will clearly constitutes the voluntary pleasures that accord with choice. But the one contrary to will manifestly brings on the involuntary pains that are contrary to choice; and the one is the cause of the soul's grief, the other of sensory grief.

(1) The temptation that comes by deliberate choice produces grief in the soul, while pleasure clearly creates the temptation that comes through the senses; but the temptation that comes against deliberate choice brings about pleasure of the soul and grief of the flesh. (2) I think our Lord and God, when teaching His own disciples how they ought to pray, said, to the end that they should pray against the form of temptations that comes by deliberate choice, And lead us not into temptation—that is, they should pray not to be abandoned to experience the pleasant, deliberate, and voluntary temptations; while James, said to be the brother of the Lord, teaching those who struggle for the truth not to be dismayed at the form of involuntary temptations, said, Count it all joy, my brothers, when you fall into various temptations—that is, the involuntary and against-choice temptations, and those that produce toils. And they make it clear: there the Lord adds, But deliver us from the evil one; and here the great James says, Knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (3) The Lord teaches us to pray against voluntary temptations, as being productive of pleasure for the flesh and of pain for the soul; while the great James exhorts us to rejoice in involuntary temptations, as those that take away pleasure from the flesh and pain from the soul.

(4) Perfect is the one who fights against voluntary temptations through self-control, and endures involuntary ones through patience; and whole is the one who completes both action with knowledge and contemplation not without action. (5) Since grief and pleasure are divided between soul and sense, the one who procures the pleasure of the soul, and accepts with patience the grief of the sense, becomes approved and perfect and whole: approved, through the experience of the opposites perceived by sense; perfect, as one who fights unyieldingly against the pleasure and grief of sense through self-control and patience; whole, as one who keeps undamaged, in the stability of the sameness according to the principle, the habits that are opposed to the mutually opposed dispositions perceived by sense; I mean action and contemplation, held together with each other, and neither of them separated from the other; but action showing forth the knowledge of contemplation through the manners, and contemplation no less armed with the virtue of action by the principle.

(6) The one who has experienced the trial of grief and the pleasure of the flesh may be called approved, as having been tested in the ease and difficulty of things pertaining to the flesh. And perfect is the one who has wrestled down the pleasure of the flesh and its pain by the power of reason; and whole is the one who has kept the states of action and contemplation unwavering through his intensity of divine longing. (7) Of grief according to the soul there is a twofold manner: the one consists in one's own faults, the other in those of others. And the cause of such grief is clearly the pleasure, according to perception, of the one who grieves, or of those for whose sake he grieves. For according to the exact account, there is almost no sin at all among men that does not have, as the beginning of its own generation, the soul's irrational attachment to perception for the sake of pleasure. And the cause of pleasure according to the soul is plainly the grief, according to perception, of the one who takes pleasure and rejoices in his own virtues or in those of others. For according to the exact account, there is almost no virtue among men that does not have, as the beginning of its own generation, the soul's reasoned rejection of perception.

(8) Without the soul's passionate relation to sensation, there is no complete sin among humans; but whenever grief is constituted in the soul, the pleasure of the flesh precedes it.

(9) The true origin of virtue is the soul's voluntary alienation from the flesh; and the one who subdues the flesh by voluntary labors gladdens the soul spiritually.

(10) When the soul has acquired a detachment from sensation on behalf of virtue, of necessity sensation will be in pains, having no power over the soul's inventive faculty for pleasures, which is joined to it according to the disposition of the will; but on the contrary, it bravely beats back the uprising of its natural pleasures through self-control, and remains wholly unrelenting toward the induction of pains contrary to nature and involuntary, through endurance, and does not depart from the God-befitting worth and glory according to virtue because of insubstantial pleasure, nor does it fall from the height of the virtues toward the reception of pains through sparing of the flesh because of the painful sensation. And the cause of grief according to sensation is the soul's complete neglect of things according to nature. And the pleasure according to sensation is manifestly established by the soul's activity contrary to nature, which cannot have any other principle of constitution than the soul's setting aside of things according to nature.

ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTH (1) He knows the noetic power of the soul to be inventive; when it is separated from the relation according to sensation, it leaves the flesh destitute of providence toward pleasure, in accordance with the relation in the will, not enduring even to comfort the pain of the flesh, because of the wholehearted leisure of the will in its relation to divine things.

(2) Intellect and sensation have their natural activity opposed to one another, because of the extreme difference and otherness of the subjects underlying them. For the one has as its subjects the intelligible and incorporeal essences, which it is naturally disposed to apprehend incorporeally; while the other has the sensible and corporeal natures, which it too naturally apprehends.

(3) The soul's setting aside of things according to nature is naturally disposed to become the beginning of pleasure according to sensation. For when the soul labors over the good things according to nature, the power that invents the mode of pleasure according to sensation is not present.

(4) Where reason presides over sensation in the contemplation of visible things, the flesh is deprived of every pleasure according to nature, not having sensation unfettered and released from rational bonds, for the service of the pleasures that are according to it. Hence also, of necessity, when the reason within us prevails, the flesh that has been enslaved to it for virtue is tormented.

(5) The mind, when it considers sensation to be a power proper to it by nature and becomes entangled in the appearances of sensible things, devises fleshly pleasures, being unable to pass beyond the nature of visible things, held fast by its passionate relation to sensation.

(6) If it is not possible for the mind to pass over to the noetic realities akin to it apart from the contemplation of the sensible things set before it as intermediaries, and this is altogether impossible without the sensation that is composed with it and naturally akin to sensible things, then reasonably, if the mind, having set these before it, becomes entangled in the appearances of visible things, supposing the sensation composed with it to be a natural activity, it has fallen away from the noetic realities that are according to nature, and with both hands, as the saying goes, it has laid hold of bodies that are contrary to nature. Being activated in them contrary to reason, because of the sensation that has prevailed within it, it becomes the begetter of grief according to the soul, being tormented by the frequent scourges of conscience, and it becomes the manifest maker of pleasure according to sensation, being anointed by the devices of the ways that procure the flesh. But if, cutting off at once the relation to sensation at the very impact of the things seen, it contemplates the spiritual and pure principles of beings apart from their shapes, it has wrought the pleasure of the soul, since it is held captive by none of the sensible things contemplated, and it has established the grief of sensation, since sensation is deprived of all sensible things according to nature.

(7) Since pleasure according to sensation produces the soul's grief, that is, its pain (for both are the same as each other), and the pleasure according to the soul naturally produces the grief of sensation, that is, its pain, reasonably the one who aspires to the life of God and our Savior Jesus Christ according to hope, the life through the resurrection of the dead into an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and unfading, kept in the heavens, has exultation according to the soul, joy inexpressible, continually rejoicing in the hope of the good things to come; but according to the flesh and sensation, he has the pains that come upon it from various temptations, and the distresses that follow them. For every virtue is accompanied by pleasure and pain: pain of the flesh, which is deprived of the pleasant and smoother sensation; and pleasure of the soul, which delights in all the pure spiritual meanings of things perceptible. (8) It is necessary that the mind in the present life (for this is what I understand by "now"), while it grieves according to the flesh because of the many pains of the temptations brought upon it for the sake of virtue, always rejoice according to the soul and be glad because of the hope of eternal good things, even if it has its sensation worn down by toil. For the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us, says the divine Apostle.

(8) The flesh is of the soul, but the soul is not of the flesh; for, he says, the lesser belongs to the greater, but the greater does not belong to the lesser. Therefore, since by reason of the transgression the law of sin was breathed into the flesh—which is pleasure according to sensation, through which the death of the flesh was condemned to come by pains—death was devised for the removal of the law of the flesh. The one who recognizes that death entered because of sin for its own removal keeps his soul always rejoicing, as by various pains it contemplates the law of sin of its own flesh dying away, for the reception of the

blessed life to come in the Spirit, which it is otherwise impossible to obtain unless the law of sin has first been emptied out, as from some vessel, from the flesh in the present life, according to the disposition of the will toward it. (9) The one who is grieved in the flesh for virtue's sake because of its pains rejoices in that same virtue according to the soul, contemplating as present the beauty of things to come; for its sake, according to the great David, by the dying away of the flesh in will, he dies each day, being always renewed according to the soul's birth in the Spirit, inasmuch as he has both a saving pleasure and a profitable grief. For we call grief not the irrational grief of the many, which torments the soul at the deprivation of passions or material things—as when they make their impulses contrary to nature toward what they should not, and their avoidances from what they should not—but the reasoned grief, approved by those wise in divine things, which signifies the present evil;

For they say that the present evil is grief, constituted in the soul when sensory pleasure prevails over rational discernment; and subsisting in the senses when the soul's course in virtue proceeds unhindered; inflicting labors on the senses to the same degree that it produces pleasure and joy in the soul when it is brought near to God through the illumination akin to it in virtue and knowledge.

(11) He calls saving pleasure the joy of the soul in virtue; and beneficial grief the pain of the flesh for the sake of virtue. So then, the one who is attached to passions and to things toward which he does not ought to make his impulses; and the one who does not welcome the agreements productive of the deprivation of passions and of things, from which he does not ought to make his avoidances.

(12) Neither does divine grace effect illuminations of knowledge when there is no one receiving the illumination according to natural capacity; nor indeed does the receptive capacity, apart from the grace that supplies it, effect the illumination of knowledge. (13) Nor does the grace of the all-holy Spirit effect wisdom in the saints apart from the mind that receives it; nor knowledge apart from the receptive power of the word; nor faith without the full assurance, according to mind and reason, of things to come and for the present unknown to all; nor gifts of healings apart from natural love for humanity; nor any other of the remaining gifts apart from the receptive habit and power of each; nor indeed, in turn, will a man acquire one of the enumerated things according to natural capacity apart from the divine power that supplies them. And all the saints make this clear, after the revelations of divine things, seeking the principles of the things revealed.

(14) The one who asks without passion receives the grace of being able to accomplish the virtues in practice; and the one who seeks without passion finds, through natural contemplation, the truth that is in existing things; and the one who knocks without passion at the door of knowledge will enter without hindrance into the hidden grace of mystical theology. (15) The one who seeks divine things without passion will certainly receive what he seeks. But the one who seeks with some passion will fail to obtain what he seeks. For it says, You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly.

(16) The Holy Spirit seeks the knowledge of existing things in us, and searches it out; but it does not seek what is sought for itself, because it is God and beyond all knowledge; rather, it seeks it for us who need knowledge; just as, indeed, the Word also becomes flesh, not for itself, but for us, accomplishing through the flesh the mystery. For just as, without flesh rationally ensouled, the Word of the flesh did not accomplish the things according to nature in a God-befitting way, so too the Holy Spirit does not accomplish in the saints the knowledge of the mysteries without the power that by nature seeks and searches out knowledge.

(17) Just as it is impossible to perceive sensible things with the eye apart from the light of the sun, so the human mind will never receive spiritual contemplation without spiritual light. For sensible light naturally illuminates the senses for the apprehension of bodily things, while spiritual light illumines the mind for contemplation, for the understanding of things beyond sense. (18) Human nature has, by its very constitution, the powers that search out and investigate divine things implanted in it by the Creator at the very moment of its coming into being; but the revelations of divine things are brought about by the grace of the all-holy Spirit, which comes upon it with power. Since, however, in the beginning the evil one, through sin, fastened these powers of nature to the things that are seen, and there was none who understood or who sought after God—since all who had partaken of nature had their intellectual and rational power circumscribed by the surface of sensible things and possessed no conception of things beyond sense—for this reason the grace of the all-holy Spirit, rightly, loosed from material things those who had come under deception not by their own choice but in their disposition, and restored the power that had been fastened down. Receiving it pure through grace, they first sought and investigated, and so they sought out and investigated, evidently through the same grace of the Spirit.

(19) Salvation of souls, that is to say, is properly the end of faith. And the end of faith is the true revelation of what has been believed. And the true revelation of what has been believed is the ineffable interpenetration of the believed object, in proportion to the faith in each person. And the interpenetration of the believed object is the return of those who have believed to the beginning, in accordance with the end. And the return of those who have believed to their own beginning, in accordance with the end, is the fulfillment of desire. And the fulfillment of desire is the ceaselessly moving stability of those who desire, around the object of desire. And the ceaselessly moving stability of those who desire around the object of desire is the continuous and uninterrupted enjoyment of the object of desire. And the continuous and uninterrupted enjoyment of the object of desire is the participation in the divine things that are above nature. And the participation in the divine things that are above nature is the likeness of the participants to the object participated. And the likeness of the participants to the object participated is the identity, possible in activity through similarity, of the participants with the object participated itself. And the identity, possible in activity through similarity, of the participants is the deification, through similarity, of those deemed worthy of deification, toward the object participated. (20) The nature does not contain the principles of things above nature, just as it does not contain the laws of things contrary to nature. By "above nature" I mean the divine and inconceivable pleasure, which God is naturally disposed to produce when by grace he is united to those who are worthy; by "contrary to nature," the ineffable pain that consists in the privation of this, which God is accustomed to produce when, contrary to grace, he is united to those who are unworthy.

For in accordance with the quality of disposition that underlies each person, God, uniting himself to all as he himself knows, grants perception to each one, in the measure that each has been formed by himself, for the reception of him who will at the end of the ages be altogether united to all. (21) Those who seek in the Spirit the salvation of souls, and who search out the spiritual principles and modes of this salvation, the Holy Spirit guides to understanding, not allowing the power by which they are naturally disposed to seek divine things to remain unmoved and inactive in them. (22) First a person seeks by choice to put sin to death, and choice to sin; and thus he searches how and in what manner one must put these to death for one another. And again, after the perfect putting to death of these for one another, he seeks the life of choice according to virtue, and the life of virtue according to choice; and thus he searches how and in what manner one must bring about the life of these in one another. It is therefore possible to grasp, as it were, in a definition: seeking is the desire for something desired; and searching is the mode of desire that accomplishes the desired thing. (23) It is truly necessary for the one who is to be saved not only to put sin to death by choice, but also choice itself to sin; and not only to raise up choice by virtue, but also virtue itself by choice; so that, dead to a dead thing, wholly separated from the whole of sin, he may not perceive it, and living to a living thing, wholly perceptive of the whole of virtue, choice may be joined to it in an inseparable union. For he who has put choice to death to sin has become conformed to the likeness of the death of Christ;

And he who raised her up by righteousness has become planted together with his resurrection.

(24) Sin and free choice, when they are put to death, have a twofold insensibility toward each other. And righteousness and free choice, having life in each other, have a twofold perception. (25) Christ, being God by nature and man, is inherited by us as God beyond nature by grace, through the ineffable participation; and for our sake, in the form that is ours, as man he makes us his own, and inherits himself together with us through the incomprehensible condescension; him the saints, having mystically foreseen in the Spirit, were taught how they ought, for the sake of virtue, to take precedence in the present life over the sufferings that come upon him, in view of the glory that will be revealed in Christ in the future because of virtue. (26) The intellect, moved by desire alone, unknowingly, toward the cause of beings, seeks only; but the reason, traversing in various ways the true principles in beings, searches out the principles. (27) Seeking is the intellect's first and simple movement toward its own cause, with desire; and searching is the reason's first and simple discernment concerning its own cause, with some conception. And inquiry again is the intellect's cognitive movement toward its own cause, according to knowledge, with a certain fervent desire; and investigation is the reason's discernment concerning its own cause, according to the activity of the virtues, arising with some prudent and wise conception.

(28) The holy and divine prophets, having sought out and searched out concerning the salvation of souls, had a fiery and boiling movement of the mind toward God in desire, together with understanding and knowledge, and a prudent and wise discernment of reason in the activity of divine things. Those who imitate them seek out the salvation of souls with knowledge and understanding, and searching out with prudence and wisdom, they pursue discernment in divine works. (29) The word knows a twofold knowledge of divine things: the one, relational, as it lies in reason alone and in concepts, and does not have the perception of the known thing in activity through experience, by which we are governed in the present life; the other, properly true, rests on experience alone, in activity apart from reason and concepts, providing wholly the perception of the known thing by grace through participation, by which, in the future state, we receive the deification beyond nature, ceaselessly active. And they say that the relational knowledge, as it lies in reason and concepts, is motive of the desire for knowledge in activity through participation; while the knowledge in activity, providing through experience the perception of the known thing by participation, is the remover of the knowledge that lies in reason and concepts.

(30) He says that knowledge is twofold: the one lies in discourse and divine concepts, present in the form of the thing, but not having the perception of the things conceived; the other has only the form of activity, without discourse and true concepts, the enjoyment in the form of the thing. For since discourse naturally signifies the knowable through knowledge, it moves the desire of those moved by it toward the enjoyment of what has been signified.

(31) The wise say that it is impossible for the discourse about God to coexist with the experience of God, or for the understanding of God to coexist with the perception of God. By discourse about God I mean the analogy drawn from existing things of the cognitive contemplation concerning him; by perception, the experience in participation of the goods beyond nature; by understanding, the simple and unified knowledge concerning him drawn from existing things. And perhaps this is recognized in the case of every other thing as well: since the experience of this thing puts an end to the discourse about it, and the perception of this thing renders the understanding about it idle. By experience I mean the knowledge that is in activity itself, which arises after all discourse; by perception, the participation itself of the thing known, which appears after all understanding. And perhaps the great Apostle, teaching this mystically, says: Whether prophecies shall be done away, whether tongues shall cease, whether knowledge shall be done away — clearly speaking of the knowledge that lies in discourse and concepts.

(32) It was truly fitting that the Creator of the substance of beings according to nature should also become the author, according to grace, of the deification of things that have come to be, so that the Giver of being might also appear as the gracious Giver of eternal well-being. Since, then, none of the things that exist knows itself at all, nor knows another—what it is in substance—reasonably none of existing things has by nature foreknowledge of any of the things that will come to be, except God, who is above beings, who knows himself—what he is in substance—and all things made by him, and foreknew their existence before they came to be; and who is about to bestow in grace upon existing things the knowledge of themselves and of others—what they are in substance—and to make manifest the principles of their generation that pre-exist in him in a single form.

(33) The Word who created the nature of human beings did not co-create with it, according to sensation, either pleasure or pain; but he implanted in it a certain power in the intellect directed toward pleasure, by which it would be able to enjoy him ineffably. But this power—I mean the natural longing of the intellect toward God—the first human being, having given it over to sensation as soon as he came to be, experienced it, in its very first movement toward sensible things through the medium of sensation, operating contrary to nature as pleasure. To this, in his providence, the one who cares for our salvation set over against it, as it were, a certain punitive power, pain, by which the law of death was wisely rooted in the nature of the body, restricting the longing of the intellect, when it is moved contrary to nature toward sensible things, from its madness.

(34) Pleasure and pain were not created together with the nature of the flesh; but transgression devised the one for the corruption of the will, and condemned the other for the dissolution of nature—so that pleasure might work out the voluntary death of the soul, namely sin, and pain, through dissolution, might bring about the passing-away of the flesh in its specific form. For by providence, as a punishment for the pleasure that is according to the will, God has given to nature the pain that is contrary to the will, and the death that follows upon it. (35) Because of the pleasure that came upon nature contrary to reason, pain according to reason entered in, through many sufferings—in which and from which is death—effecting the removal of the pleasure that is contrary to nature; yet not indeed a complete abolition, and that grace of divine pleasure according to the mind which is naturally shown forth.

(36) The devising of voluntary labors and the infliction of involuntary ones remove pleasure, putting an end to its movement in actual operation; but they do not abolish the power implanted in nature like a law for its generation. For the philosophy according to virtue is naturally fitted to produce impassibility of the will, not of nature; and it is by this, clearly, that is, by the impassibility that pertains to the will, that the grace of divine pleasure according to the mind comes upon it.

(37) Every pain, having as its cause its own generation, with pleasure preceding it in actuality, is, that is to say, a debt naturally paid in accordance with that cause by all who have partaken of nature. For unnatural pleasure is in all cases naturally followed by pain, in all those whose generation the law of pleasure has causelessly led the way. I call that pleasure which comes from transgression "causeless," inasmuch as it evidently did not become the successor of a preceding pain. (38) It was altogether impossible that nature, having been subjected to pleasure according to choice and to pain contrary to choice, should be recalled again to its original life, unless the Creator had become man, receiving by choice the pain devised for the punishment of the pleasure of nature according to choice—a pain that did not have its generation from pleasure preceding it—in order that he might free nature from the generation that comes from condemnation, accepting a birth that does not have its beginning from pleasure.

(39) Since after the transgression all men had pleasure naturally leading the way to their own generation, and there was absolutely no one who was naturally free from impassioned generation according to pleasure, but all, as paying a natural debt, endured pains and the death that follows them; and the way of freedom was entirely impassable for those tyrannized by unjust pleasure and naturally held fast by just pains and by the most just death that follows them—

It was necessary, on the one hand, for the abolition of the most unjust pleasure and of the most just pains that came about because of it—by which man, suffering, was piteously torn apart, having the beginning of his generation from corruption in accordance with pleasure and ending the goal of life in corruption through death—and, on the other hand, for the restoration of the impassible nature, that a pain and a death be devised, at once unjust and without cause: without cause, in that they had no pleasure preceding them toward generation; unjust, in that they were in no way the successor of any passible life—so that, placed in the middle between unjust pleasure and the most just pain and death, a most unjust pain and death might wholly abolish the most unjust beginning from pleasure and the most just end of nature through death that came about because of it, and the race of men might again become free of pleasure and pain, nature recovering its original well-being, defiled by none of the marks that are implanted in things under generation and corruption. For this reason, the Word of God, being perfect God by nature, becomes a perfect man, composed of a rational soul and a body passible by nature, similar to us, constituted without sin alone; he did not at all possess the pleasure that came from disobedience, which precedes his generation from a woman in time; but the pain that came about because of it, which is the end of nature, he willingly accepted out of love for humanity, so that by suffering unjustly he might abolish the beginning of generation that tyrannized nature from unjust pleasure—the Lord's death not having, as a debt owed on its behalf, to be paid out like that of other men, but rather advanced against it.

and might make disappear the just end of nature that comes through death, since it did not have that which it had entered, and which was justly punished by it, as the cause of unlawful pleasure.

(40) It was truly necessary, necessary, for the Lord, who is wise and just and powerful by nature—as wise, not to be ignorant of the manner of healing; as just, not to bring about the salvation of the man who had been seized in his will by sin in a tyrannical way; and as one able to do all things, not to grow weak in the fulfillment of the healing.

(41) The wisdom of God is shown in his becoming man by nature in truth; the justice, in his having taken up the passible element of nature at his birth just as we have; the power, in his creating, through sufferings and death, eternal life and unchangeable impassibility for nature. (42) The Lord made the principle of wisdom evident in the manner of the healing, becoming man without turning and without any alteration whatsoever; and he showed the equality of justice in the greatness of his condescension, by submitting willingly to the condemnation of nature that lies in the passible element, and making that very thing a weapon for the destruction of sin and of the death that comes through it—that is, of pleasure and of the pain that comes through it—in which lay the power of sin and of death, and the tyranny of sin in the matter of pleasure, and the dominion of death in the matter of the pain that comes through it. For in the passible element of nature there plainly exist the power of pleasure and that of pain.

For somehow, when the penalty imposed by nature is increased beyond the pain, we eagerly seek to soothe it through pleasure; for wishing to escape the painful sensation of pain, we flee to pleasure, attempting to comfort nature as it is pressed by the torment of pain. But in our eagerness to dull the motions of pain through pleasure, we ratify all the more the handwriting against ourselves, being unable to have pleasure free from pain and toils.

(43) But He made clear the strength of His surpassing power by establishing, in the nature He assumed, a genesis immune to change, from things contrary to those He Himself suffered; for through suffering He gave impassibility, and through toils release, and through death eternal life to nature, and restored it again, renewing the dispositions of nature by His own privations, and through His own incarnation bestowing on nature the grace beyond nature—deification.

(44) God truly became man, and gave to nature another beginning of a second genesis, one that through toil is to arrive at the pleasure of the life to come. For just as Adam the first father, transgressing the divine commandment, introduced into nature, contrary to the first, another beginning of genesis—one constituted from pleasure but ending in death through toil—and devised, according to the counsel of the serpent, a pleasure that was not the successor of preceding toil but rather issued in toil, and justly held all who were born of him in the flesh, after his likeness, subject with him, because of the unjust beginning from pleasure, toward the end that comes through toil in death—

Thus also the Lord, having become man and having created in his nature another beginning of a second birth from the Holy Spirit, and having accepted the most just death of Adam that came through pain—that death which in him became, that is, most unjust, since it did not have as the beginning of its own generation the most unjust pleasure of the forefather that came from disobedience—he brought about the abolition of both extremes, I mean the beginning and the end of human generation according to Adam, inasmuch as these were not primarily from God, and he set free from the liability upon it all those who are mystically reborn from him. (45) The Lord, having taken away the pleasure that comes from the law of sin, which pleasure leads to the rejection of the fleshly generation of those who are born in him by grace through the Spirit, grants them to accept death, which formerly was for condemnation of nature, as now a condemnation of sin—since they no longer have the pleasure of generation that comes from Adam, but only the pain that comes through Adam working in them; not as a debt on account of sin, but by economy, because of the natural circumstance, death is directed against sin. And this death, whenever it does not have as its mother that pleasure which gives it birth—the pleasure whose avenger it is naturally meant to be—is plainly established as the father of eternal life. For just as Adam's life according to pleasure became the mother of death and corruption, so also the Lord's death, which exists on account of Adam and is free from the pleasure that comes from Adam, becomes the begetter of eternal life. (46) After the transgression, the nature of men had as the beginning of its own generation the conception according to pleasure from seed, and generation by flux.

and finally, the death through corruption that comes with pain; but the Lord, not having this beginning of generation according to the flesh, was not subject to capture by the end, that is, by death. (47) Sin, having first ensnared Adam with bait, persuaded him to come to transgression of the divine commandment; by which, having brought pleasure to bear and having nailed itself through pleasure in him at the very base of nature, it condemned the whole of nature to death, driving the nature of created things toward destruction through man in accordance with death. For this was what the sower of sin and evil father of wickedness, the devil, had contrived—he who had exiled himself from the divine glory through pride, and through envy, both toward us and toward God, had exiled Adam from paradise—to destroy the works of God and to dissolve the things that had been established for generation.

(48) The devil, envying both God and us, by deceit persuaded man that he was envied by God, and so prepared him to transgress the commandment. He did this against God, so that His all-praised power might not become manifest in action by deifying man; and plainly against man, so that he might not become a partaker of the divine glory in the form of virtue. For the most foul one envies not only us for the glory that comes from God on account of virtue, but also God for the all-praised power that is upon us on account of salvation.

(49) Just as in Adam death was the condemnation of nature, nature having as the beginning of its own generation pleasure, so in Christ death has become the condemnation of sin, nature in Christ having received back again its generation pure of pleasure.

(50) If we, who have been deemed worthy by grace to become the house of God through the Spirit, ought to display so great an endurance of sufferings for the sake of righteousness, unto the condemnation of sin, and, being good, to bear away eagerly the death that is heaped with insults, as evildoers do—what is the end of those who disobey the Gospel of God? That is, what will be the end, or rather the judgment, of those who have not only kept alive and active, in soul and body, by will and by nature, the generation of nature that in Adam prevailed through pleasure, right to the end with zeal, but who also did not receive God the Father when He exhorted through the incarnate Son; nor yet the Mediator and Son Himself, who intercedes on behalf of the Father and on behalf of our reconciliation to the Father, delivering Himself up by the will of the Father to death on our behalf according to His own will, so that through Himself He might glorify us as much as He Himself, for our sake, deigned to be dishonored by our sufferings. (51) Since God will be for all who are saved a place uncircumscribed and without interval and infinite, becoming all things to all according to the

according to the analogy of righteousness, or rather according to the measure of the sufferings endured here with knowledge on behalf of righteousness, giving himself to each one, just as the soul reveals itself as active in the members of the body according to the power underlying each member, and through itself holds the members together for existence, kept together for life—where will the impious and sinful man appear, deprived of this grace? For he who is unable to receive the presence of God actively operative according to the good of his being—where will he appear, having undergone the fall from the divine life that is beyond age and time and place?

(52) He who does not have God holding his life together for well-being—God who will become all things to all who are worthy—how will he be, not having God as his place according to the abiding and establishment of well-being in God? And if the righteous man is saved with great difficulty, what will become of, or what will befall, the man who has made no account of piety and virtue in the present life? (53) God, by one infinitely powerful will of his goodness, will hold together all things, both angels and men, both good and evil; but all these will not partake of God equally—God who has passed through all things without being contained—but proportionally to themselves.

(54) Those who by nature have kept the judgment equally balanced in all things, and have made it receptive in activity to the principles of nature, in the whole principle of well-being, because of the good disposition of their judgment toward the divine will, will partake of the whole of goodness, according to the divine life that shines upon them as among angels or as among humans. But those who by nature have made their judgment unequally balanced in all things, and have shown it to be dispersive in activity with respect to the principles of nature, in the whole principle of well-being, because of the antipathy of their judgment toward the divine will, will fall away from the whole of goodness, according to the affinity of their judgment that appears in them toward ill-being; according to which will be the separation of such persons from God, since they do not have, in the purpose of their judgment, the principle of well-being brought to life in the activities of good things, according to which the divine life is naturally made manifest. (55) The balance scale of each person's judgment in the judgment will be the principle of nature, proving its motion toward ill-being or well-being, according to which the participation or non-participation in the divine life naturally comes about. For according to being and always being, God, being present, will hold all together; but according to always being well, only the saints, angels and humans, in a manner proper to them; while the always being ill he leaves to those who are not such, as the fruit of their judgment, mingled in.

(56) The mystery of the divine incarnation does not bring with it the natural otherness of the elements of which it is composed, nor the difference according to hypostasis: the former, so that the mystery of the Trinity should not receive any addition; the latter, so that nothing should be naturally of the same kind and consubstantial with the Godhead. For the union of two natures came about with respect to a hypostasis, but not with respect to one nature; so that both the one according to hypostasis might be shown to be accomplished from the natures that ran together with each other in the union, and the difference of the things that came together might be believed, with respect to their natural property, unto the indivisible union, remaining outside all change and confusion.

(57) We do not speak of a difference of hypostases in Christ, because the Trinity has remained the Trinity, and when the Word was incarnate, no addition of a person was made to the Holy Trinity because of the incarnation; but we speak of a difference of natures, so that we may not hold the flesh to be consubstantial with the Word according to nature.

(58) He who does not speak of a difference of nature has no means of confirming the confession that the Word became flesh without change; not knowing that what was taken beforehand and what was taken up afterwards is preserved according to nature in the one hypostasis of the one Christ and God the Savior after the union. (59) If in Christ there is a difference of flesh and Godhead according to nature after the union—for Godhead and flesh are never the same in essence—then the union of the things that came together has in no way come about unto the generation of one nature, but unto one hypostasis, according to which we find no difference in Christ in any way whatever. For the Word is the same as his own flesh according to hypostasis.

Insofar as Christ has any difference, he cannot be one in every way; but insofar as he admits no difference whatsoever, the one is in every way and always piously predicated of him, both in being and in being spoken of. (60) Faith, through hope, establishes perfect love toward God; a good conscience brings about love toward neighbor through the keeping of the commandments. For a good conscience has no accusing commandment that has been transgressed. These things are naturally believed by the heart alone, of those who strive for true salvation. (61) Nothing is quicker than believing, and nothing is easier than confessing with the mouth the grace of what has been believed; for the one shows the believing soul's love toward its Maker, the other the God-loving disposition toward neighbor. But love and a genuine disposition—that is, faith and a good conscience—are plainly the work of the hidden movement of the heart, having no need at all of external matter for its generation.

(62) One who is sick with complete immobility toward the good is altogether easily moved toward evil. For it is impossible to be immobile in both respects. Hence Scripture also knows how to call "stones" the soul's slackness toward good things, as being insensible to virtues; and "wood," its eagerness toward evil things. But the movement according to sense, joined with the activity according to mind, produces virtue accompanied by knowledge.

(63) Scripture has called the law of nature, as I think, a "middle wall," and a "fence," the disposition in the law of the flesh toward the passions, that is, sin. For only the disposition toward the passions of dishonor becomes a fence to the law of nature—that is, to the passible part of nature—walling off the body from the soul and not permitting the passage of the principle of the virtues to the flesh, through the soul, in accordance with action. But the Word, having come and having wrestled down the law of nature—that is, the passibility of nature—abolished the disposition of the passions contrary to nature within it.

(64) When the evil one, by deceit and guile, plunders the natural knowledge of God that belongs to nature, he appropriates it to himself; he is a thief, attempting to transfer the reverence due to God to himself. He leads away, clearly, from the spiritual principles (logoi) within created things the soul's contemplation according to the intellect, and confines the intellectual power to the outward appearance of sensible things alone. But whenever, beginning from natural impulses, he sophistically drags the practical power down toward things contrary to nature, and through things reputed good persuasively fastens its desire upon worse things, he swears falsely in the name of the Lord, leading the obedient soul toward things other than what was promised. And he is a thief, in that he plunders for himself the knowledge of nature; and a perjurer, in that he persuades the practical faculty of the soul to labor in vain for things contrary to nature.

(65) Or again, he is a thief who, for the deception of his hearers, practices the supposedly divine words, whose power he has not come to know through works, making a trade of glory out of mere utterance, and hunting by means of the word of the tongue the praise of being considered righteous by those who listen. And to speak simply, the one whose life is discordant with his word, and whose disposition of soul is opposed to his judgment, is a thief, appearing improperly in the good things of others. To him the word will reasonably say, But to the sinner God said, Why do you recount my statutes, and take up my covenant with your mouth?

(65) Likewise, he is also a thief who, by outward manners and habits, conceals the unseen wickedness of his soul, covering over the inner disposition with a pretense of gentleness; and he steals, just as that one did by the utterance of words of knowledge, the understanding of those who hear—so too does this one, by the manner of his hypocrisy in morals, steal the perception of those who behold him. To him likewise it shall be said, "Be ashamed, you who are clothed in garments not your own"; and, "The Lord will uncover their form in that day." For every day, in the hidden workshop of the heart, I seem to hear God saying these things to me, as one who has been plainly condemned on both counts.

(66) He is also a perjurer—that is, one who swears falsely by the name of the Lord—who promises to God a life according to virtue, yet pursues things alien to the promise of his own profession, and transgresses the covenant of his confession of a venerable life through his neglect of the commandments. And to speak briefly, he who has chosen to live according to God, yet is not wholly dead to the present life, is a liar and a perjurer—having sworn to God, that is, having promised the blameless course in the divine contests, and not having fulfilled it, and for this reason in no way praised. For everyone who swears in him shall be praised—that is, everyone who has promised to God the life that is divine, and through the truth of the works of righteousness fulfills the oaths of his good profession.

(66) He who by the mere utterance of words in speech feigns knowledge steals the mind of his hearers for his own glory; and he who by his manners feigns virtue steals the sight of those who behold him for his own glory; and both, stealing by deceit, lead astray—the one the mind of the soul of his hearers, the other the perception of the body of those who behold him. (69) If the one who fulfills his own promises has praise altogether, as swearing in God and speaking truth, it is clear that the one who becomes a transgressor of his own agreements will have blame and dishonor, as having sworn in God and lied. (70) Not every man who comes into this world is altogether enlightened by the Word; for many remain unenlightened and have no share in the light that is according to knowledge; but it is clear that every man who comes into the true world of the virtues is so according to his own disposition. For everyone who in truth comes into this world through self-chosen birth is altogether enlightened by the Word, receiving an unchangeable habit of virtue and an unerring knowledge of true understanding. (71) Nor are all things that have the same utterance to be understood in one and the same way altogether; but each of the things said must be understood according to the power that underlies it in the manner of Holy Scripture, if we are to rightly hit the mark of the purpose of what is written. (72) None of the persons, or places, or times, or other things—animate and inanimate, perceptible and

Of things intelligible, moving always in the same manner, the history or the contemplation has its fitting application entirely to itself. Therefore it is necessary that he who pursues faultlessly the divine knowledge of Scripture should receive each of the things enumerated in different ways according to the differences of things done or said, and should assign to it the contemplation that is fitting to it, according to place or time, as is proper. (73) It is necessary to teach all throughout the whole world to live by reason alone as their way of life, and to have such concern for bodies as, by much care, to cut off the soul's attachment to them, and to give no imagination of matter at all to the soul; since there has already been extinguished by reason the sensation that existed at the beginning, which pushed aside reason and received the irrationality of pleasure like a creeping serpent, and against which death was justly ordained, so that it might cease providing the devil an entrance to the soul. (74) Sensation, being one in kind, is fivefold in its forms, through the perceptive activity in each form, persuading the erring soul to love the congenial sensible object instead of God. Therefore he who wisely follows the Word, before the forced and involuntary death, voluntarily condemns the flesh to death, making a complete separation of the will from sensation.

(65) When perception has taken the intellect as its subordinate, it teaches polytheism, serving through each sense, in its slavery to the passions, the attached sensible object as if it were divine.

(66) He who sits at the mere letter of Scripture has only the perception that dominates nature, according to which the soul's relation to the flesh alone is naturally made to appear. For the letter, not understood spiritually, has only the perception that circumscribes its utterance, and does not permit one to pass over to the intellect the power of what is written. But if the letter has its affinity only with perception, then everyone who receives the letter in a Jewish manner according to history alone lives according to the flesh, dying the death by deliberate choice each day because of the living perception, unable to put to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit, so as to live the blessed life in the Spirit. For if you live according to the flesh, you are about to die, says the divine Apostle; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. (67) Let us not, then, having kindled the divine lamp—that is, the illuminating word of knowledge—through contemplation and practice, place it under the bushel, lest we be condemned as circumscribing by the letter the incomprehensible power of wisdom; but let us place it on the lampstand—I mean the holy Church—in the height of true contemplation, illumining for all the light of the divine doctrines.

(68) He who bears the assaults of involuntary temptations, after the example of blessed Job and the noble martyrs, with an unshaken mind, is a strong lamp, himself keeping the unquenchable light of salvation, guarded in the manner of endurance in courage, since he has the Lord as his strength and his song. And he who knows the devices of the evil one, and is not ignorant of the entanglements of unseen wars, and is himself illumined by the light of knowledge, has appeared as another lamp, speaking as befits the great Apostle, For we are not ignorant of his designs.

(69) The Holy Spirit effects purification for those worthy of the purity of the virtues, through fear and piety and knowledge; and the illumination of the knowledge of the principles according to which existing things subsist, he grants through strength and counsel and understanding to those worthy of light; and perfection, through

the all-radiant and simple and complete wisdom, he bestows on those worthy of deification, leading them directly to the cause of existing things, in every way, as is possible for man, being known from the divine attributes of goodness alone, according to which, knowing themselves from God and knowing God from themselves, there being no middle wall standing in between—for there is no middle thing between wisdom and God—they will possess unchangeable immutability, all the intermediate things having been wholly passed through, in which there once existed the risk of erring in knowledge. He calls "intermediate things" the substance of things intelligible and things sensible, through which the human intellect is naturally led up to God as the cause of existing things.

(70) Practical philosophy is worked by fear, piety, and knowledge; natural contemplation in the Spirit is set right by strength, counsel, and understanding; but mystical theology is bestowed by divine wisdom alone. (71) Just as it is impossible for a lamp to be kept unquenchable without oil, so without a habit that nourishes noble things with fitting words and manners and customs, and likewise with fitting thoughts and reasonings, it is impossible for the light of the gifts to be kept unquenchable. For every spiritual gift needs a congenial habit, unceasingly pouring into it, as it were oil, the intelligible material, so that it may remain, held fast according to the habit of the one who receives it.

(72) Just as without an olive it is in no way possible to find by nature a genuine oil in truth, and it is not possible for it to be held without a vessel that receives the oil, and the lamp's light is utterly extinguished if not fed with oil, so without the holy Scriptures there is not, in truth, a God-befitting power of thoughts; and without a habit, as of a vessel receptive of thoughts, a divine thought would in no way be established; and the light of the knowledge that is in the gifts is not kept unquenchable in those who have it if it is not fed with divine thoughts. (73) I take the Old Testament to signify the olive on the left, as providing rather for practical philosophy; and the olive on the right to be the New Testament, as teacher of a new mystery and productive of the contemplative habit in each of the faithful. For the one provides the modes of virtue, the other the principles of knowledge, to those who philosophize about divine things.

And the one, snatching the mind away from the mist of things seen, leads it up to what is akin to it, having become pure of all material fantasy; but the other cleanses it of material attachment, by the tension of courage, as though striking out with a hammer the nails of the disposition that fasten it to the body.

(84) The Old brings the body, reckoned as toward the soul, up through the midst of the virtues, preventing the mind from being dragged down to the body; but the New brings the mind up to God, winged by the fire of love. And the one works the body to be the same as the mind in position and movement; but the other makes the mind the same as God in the habit of grace, having so great a likeness toward God that God is known through it—he who by nature from himself is in no way at all known to anyone—as an archetype through some image. (85) The Old Testament, being a symbol of practice and virtue, prepares the body to be in harmony with the mind in movement; but the New, being productive of contemplation and knowledge, illumines with divine thoughts and marks the mind that mystically cleaves to it; and the Old supplies to the contemplative the modes of the virtues; but the New grants to the practical the reasons of true knowledge. (86) Of those men God is said to be, and becomes by grace, Father, who have only the spiritual birth in virtue of their disposition; according to which, as it were the face of the soul, the character of God who begot them in virtues

Having it visible in their life, they prepare those who observe them to glorify God by the change of their ways, offering their own life to them as an excellent example of virtue for imitation. For God is not by nature glorified by mere word, but by works of righteousness that cry out the divine magnificence far more than words. (87) The natural law is left, because of sense perception; but it brings the ways of the virtues to the word, and makes knowledge active. The spiritual law is right, because of the mind; it mingles the spiritual principles in beings with sense perception, and makes practice reasoned. (88) He who shows knowledge embodied by practice, and practice ensouled by knowledge, has found the precise way of true deification. But he who has either of these separated from the other has either made knowledge an insubstantial fantasy, or has established practice as a soulless idol. For knowledge without practice differs nothing from fantasy, since it does not have the practice that gives it substance; and practice without reason is the same as an idol, since it does not have the knowledge that ensouls it.

(89) The mystery of our salvation makes the life an exhibition of the word, and the word the glory of the life; and it makes practice a contemplation in action, and contemplation a practice mystically guided. And to speak briefly, it makes virtue a manifestation of knowledge, and knowledge a power that preserves virtue; and through both—I mean virtue and knowledge—it demonstrates one wisdom constituted, so that we may know that the two Testaments agree with each other in all things through grace, concurring for the completion of one mystery more than soul and body concur for the generation of one man by their composition. (90) Just as soul and body by composition make a man, so practice and contemplation by their union produce one wisdom that is knowing; and the Old and New Testaments accomplish one mystery. But the good is by nature of God alone, from whom, by participation, all things are enlightened and made good—those things which are by nature receptive of light and goodness.

(1) He who understands the visible world contemplates the intelligible world; for he impresses the intelligible realities upon sense perception by forming images of them, and he shapes in the mind the principles he has beheld; and he transfers, in relation to sense perception in many forms, the manifold composition of the sensible world; and he understands, in the intelligible world, the sensible world, having transferred sense perception to the mind by means of the principles, and in the sensible world, the intelligible world, having knowingly transformed the mind toward sense perception by means of the types. (2) The first principle concerning the monad, which the prophet called the head as the beginning of every virtue—as in the verse, My head sank into the clefts of the mountains; and the thoughts of the spirits of wickedness he called clefts of the mountains, by which our mind was swallowed up through transgression; and the lowest earth, the habit possessing no motion whatsoever of divine knowledge, or of the life according to virtue; and the abyss, the ignorance lying upon the habit of evil, upon which, as upon earth, the seas of evil rest—or he called earth the fixed habit of evil; and the eternal bars, the passionate attachments to material things that hold together the worst habit. (3) The endurance of the saints consumes the evil power that assails them; for it persuades its servants to take pride in labors for the sake of truth, and teaches them to be the more enlarged in sufferings than in relaxations—those who care exceedingly for the life in the flesh, making for them an occasion of superabundant power according to the spirit, the natural weakness of the flesh in suffering. For observe how it is an occasion of superabundant divine power, the

(3) The weakness of the saints according to nature, than which the Lord showed the proud devil to be weaker.

(4) The word of grace, passing through many temptations to the nature of men—that is, to the Church of the Gentiles—as Jonah passed through many afflictions to Nineveh, the great city, persuaded the kingly law of nature to rise from its throne—that is, from its former habit inclined to evil through the senses—and to put off its robe, I mean to lay aside the pride of worldly glory in its manners, and to clothe itself in sackcloth, that is, the mourning and the harsh and rough conduct of hardship, and the manner of life fitting for a life according to God; and to sit upon ashes. Ashes are the poverty of spirit, upon which sits everyone who is taught to live piously, and who has the scourge of conscience for his transgressions, lashing him. (5) See how he calls the natural law a king; the throne, the passionate habit according to sense; the robe, the display of empty glory; the sackcloth, the mourning of repentance; the ashes, humility of mind; the men, those concerned with reason; the cattle, those concerned with desire; the oxen, those concerned with anger; the sheep, those who stumble in the contemplation of things visible.

(6) The man who, for the sake of the virtue that is according to the law, makes himself forgetful of the passions in the flesh as of things on the left, and who, for the sake of faultless knowledge, is not caught by the disease of vaunting conceit over his successes as by things on the right—such a man has become one who does not know his right hand, as not desiring glory that is dissolved, nor his left hand, as not being provoked by the passions of the flesh. Right hand, then, as it seems, the word has called the vainglory over so-called successes; and left hand, the licentiousness in shameful passions. For the word of virtue does not know the sin of the flesh as its left hand; and the word of knowledge does not know the vice of the soul as its right hand. (7) The knowledge of the virtues according to reason—that is, the true recognition, in actual practice, of the cause of the virtues—is by nature such as to produce complete ignorance, since right and left, that is, excess and deficiency, lie on either side of the mean of the virtues. For if nothing that is contrary to reason is by nature entirely present in reason, then he who has been led up to the reason of the virtues will in no way recognize the position of things contrary to reason. For it is not possible to contemplate both opposites at the same time in the same respect, and at the same time to know the one as co-indicated with the other. (8) If there is no word of unbelief in faith, nor is light by nature a cause of darkness, nor is the devil by nature such as to be indicated together with Christ, it is clear that neither does the contrary to reason coexist at all with reason. But if the contrary to reason cannot coexist at all with reason, then he who has been led up to the reason of the virtues will in no way recognize the position of things contrary to reason, knowing virtue as it is, and not as it is supposed to be.

And for this reason he knows neither the right through excess nor the left through deficiency. For in both the absurdity is clearly seen. (9) He calls unbelief the denial of the commandments, and faith the assent to them; darkness, the ignorance of the good; and light, the discernment of it. And he has called Christ the essence and subsistence of the good; and the devil the worst disposition that generates all evils. (10) If the logos is the boundary and measure of beings, then it is equal to irrationality, and for this reason absurd, to move contrary to the boundary and contrary to the measure, or again beyond the boundary and beyond the measure. For both equally bring upon those who move in this way the fall from that which truly is: the one, by persuading them to make the movement of their course unclear and undefined, not having God as the goal pre-conceived as their end because of the mind's lack of measure—while they fashion for themselves something more right than the right; the other, contrary to the goal, by persuading them to make the movement of their course toward perception alone, through the mind's weakness, thinking the end pre-conceived to be what is circumscribed for them by perception. These things he does not know, who does not suffer them, being joined to the logos of virtue alone, and having circumscribed for himself every movement of his own power according to the mind, and for this reason being unable to think anything beyond the logos or contrary to the logos.

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-FIRST (1) The principle according to nature is naturally fitted to lead the one who attends to practice, through the virtues that lie in the middle, up to the intellect; and the intellect, through contemplation, brings the one who strives for knowledge into wisdom. But irrational passion persuades the one who neglects the commandments to be carried down to sensation, whose end is that the intellect be nailed fast to pleasure.

(2) He calls virtue the most passionless and firm habit concerning the good, on either side of which nothing stands, since it bears the imprint of God, to whom nothing is contrary. And the cause of the virtues is God; and the knowledge of him according to activity is the alteration, in respect of habit, of the one who has truly known God toward the Spirit. (3) If the principle has defined how the generation of each thing naturally is, then nothing among existing things has naturally either overstepped itself or fallen below itself. Therefore the limit of existing things is the recognition of the cause according to desire; and the measure is the imitation of the cause according to activity that is attainable by existing things. But to be carried beyond the limit and the measure of things moved by desire makes the course unprofitable, since they do not arrive at God, in whom the motion of all things according to desire stands still, receiving as its self-subsistent end the enjoyment of God. But to be carried beside the limit and the measure of things moved by desire makes the course unprofitable, since instead of God they arrive at sensation, in which the substanceless enjoyment of the passions has been fixed in pleasure. (4) He who refers his intellect to the cause of existing things without relation will be utterly ignorant, contemplating no principle at all, in God who according to every cause is beyond every principle and is in essence God.

Toward whom, having been drawn together from all existing things, he knows none of the principles of those things from which he has departed, but only the one toward whom he has come by grace, beholding him ineffably. For the intellect that has run back up to God in ecstasy lets go both the principles of incorporeal things and those of bodies. For it is not in the nature of any of the things after God to be contemplated together with God.

(5) Truly accursed is the passion of blindness, and it is composed of two evils combined: I mean arrogance and vainglory. Of these, arrogance denies the cause of virtue and of nature; vainglory makes both nature and virtue itself counterfeit. For nothing is done according to God by the arrogant man, and nothing proceeds according to nature by the vainglorious man.

(6) It is proper to arrogance to deny that God is the begetter of virtue and of nature; and to vainglory, to divide nature toward what is base; blindness is by nature their offspring, being a composite habit of vice, having a voluntary denial of God and ignorance of the natural equality of honor.

(7) Vainglory is a mixture of pride and empty conceit; for it has contempt toward God, whereby it is naturally inclined blasphemously to slander providence, and it possesses alienation from nature, whereby it handles all things of nature contrary to nature, corrupting the beauty of nature by its mode of misuse.

(8) The spirit of the scorching heat signifies not only temptations but also the abandonment by God, which removed from the Jews the supply of divine gifts. But the kinship through the spirit in the soul loosens the bond of the flesh's choice and binds it to God, fastened to him in longing.

(9) The natural law, when it does not have the senses prevailing over reason, persuades all without teaching to embrace what is kindred and of the same race, having nature itself as the teacher of succor for those in need, and to will for all that very thing which each one seems to desire for himself from others. And teaching this, the Lord says, "Whatever you wish that men should do to you, do likewise to them."

(10) He says that it is the work of the natural law to have the harmonious relation of all toward all in disposition. For those whose nature is governed by reason, their disposition is naturally one. And those whose disposition is the same, their manner of character and course of life are plainly one. And those whose manner of character and course of life is the same, evidently the bond of their relation toward one another in disposition is also one and the same, leading all by one disposition toward the one principle of nature.

In which there is altogether no longer the division of nature that now prevails through self-love. But the written law, restraining by fear of penalties the disorderly impulses of the more foolish, accustoms them by teaching to look to the equal distribution alone, by which the dominion of justice, confirmed by time, passes over into nature, making fear a disposition, gently and little by little strengthened with the mind directed toward the good; and making habit a settled state, purged by forgetfulness of former things, and bringing forth with itself love of one another.

(11) The written law, he says, hindering injustice by fear, accustoms one to what is just; and in time habit produces a justice-loving disposition, from which a firm settled state toward the good arises, bringing forgetfulness of former wickedness. (12) But the law of grace teaches those who are led directly to imitate God, who loved us so much beyond himself—if it is lawful to say so—even though we were enemies because of sin, that he even came into our own essence without change, though he is beyond all essence; and he deigned to receive nature in a manner beyond essence and to become man, and willed to be called one of men, and did not refuse to make our condemnation his own; and he deified us by grace as much as he himself became man by dispensation; so that we might learn not only to hold fast to one another naturally and to love one another spiritually as ourselves, but also to care for one another divinely beyond ourselves, and to make this the proof of love toward one another: to choose willingly and eagerly the voluntary death for one another's sake according to virtue.

For there is no greater love than this, he says, that one lay down his own soul for his friend.

(13) The law of nature is, to put it concisely, the natural principle which, having taken sensation as its handmaid, aims at the removal of unreason—the unreason through which the division of things naturally united comes about. The written law is the natural principle, after the removal of unreason in accordance with sensation, which has also received a spiritual longing that holds together the mutual cohesion of kindred things. The law of grace is a principle above nature, changing nature without turning it aside toward deification, and showing in an image, incomprehensibly, to the nature of human beings the archetype that is beyond essence and nature, and providing the permanence of always being well. (14) To regard one's neighbor as oneself belongs to caring only for the life that pertains to being—which is a matter of the natural law. To love one's neighbor as oneself, and to provide for one's neighbor's well-being in accordance with virtue—this is what the written law enjoins. But to love one's neighbor beyond oneself is most proper to the law of grace.

(15) He who is hindered from the bodily impulses that lead to pleasure learns the principles of Providence, which restrains the attractive material of the passions; but he who receives the scourges of the body that lead to pain is taught the principles of judgment, which purifies him by involuntary pains after defilements have come first.

(16) If the word of Scripture sets before us the prophet grieving over the gourd and the booth—I mean the flesh and the pleasure of the flesh—but clinging to God rather than to Nineveh, it is clear that this thing which appeared dear to God is far better and more honorable than all the things that are honored and desired by men—let alone the things that are not, and that seem to exist only by preconception and by an erroneous judgment, of which there is no principle of existence at all; but only imagination deceiving the mind, and an empty shape given to things that are not, but not a substance, to the passion.

(17) The exact knowledge of the oracles of the Spirit is naturally revealed only to those who are worthy of the Spirit; these, having purified their mind from the soot of the passions through great diligence in the virtues, like a clean and translucent mirror, receive the knowledge of divine things impressed and falling upon them, as it were a face, at the very moment of contact. But for those whose life is spotted with the stains of the passions, it is possible, if barely, to infer the knowledge of divine things from certain probable conjectures, but not to insist on understanding and expressing it with precision.

(18) He who has received in the Holy Spirit the form of the mind that comes from the virtues, the knowledge, is said to have suffered divine things, because he received this knowledge not by nature in respect of his existence, but by grace in respect of participation. But he who has not received the knowledge that comes from grace, even if he says something gnostic, does not know by experience the power of what is said. For mere learning does not give the knowledge that is according to habit.

(19) The mind that has been purified to the utmost through the virtues naturally, as is reasonable, is taught the principles of the virtues, making its own the knowledge that has been divinely stamped by them, as a familiar person. For every mind in itself is formless and unstamped, having a form acquired, either the knowledge that has subsisted in the Spirit from the virtues, or the ignorance that arises from the passions. (20) Everyone who has fallen away from divine love has the law in the flesh reigning through pleasure, which is able or willing to keep no divine commandment. For when the life and kingdom in the Spirit of God is conducted according to virtue, he who has preferred the pleasure-loving life has drawn ignorance upon himself instead of knowledge.

(21) He who does not pass in mind to the inner divine beauty of the legal letter in the Spirit—that beauty which by nature gives birth to the pleasure-loving disposition of the will, that is, to worldly attachment and love of the world—[does not pass] from the mere utterance that comes from learning the law in word alone. (22) The shame of the mouth is the world-loving and body-loving meditation of thoughts in the mind. For in it the world, from the bodily formation appearing in the letter of the law, is by nature born according to the disposition of the will—that is, the disposition that loves the world, and the pleasure-loving meditation of thoughts in the mind. For toward that to which we are disposed, toward that we also possess meditation in the mind.

(23) Or again, the shame of the mouth is the movement of the mind that imposes form upon the passions and molds the beauty that is according to pleasure for the senses. For without the inventive power of the mind, passion is in no way led toward the formation of a shape. Or it is a votive offering—the material and uncomely and unformed movement of the passions; but the shame of the mouth is the movement of the mind that gives form to the passion for the senses, and by its conceptions supplies matter suited to the passion. (24) He who believes that God ordained the sacrifices and feasts, the Sabbaths and new moons, according to the law for the sake of bodily luxury and rest, will altogether and in every way come under the guilt of the working of the passions, and under the shame of the filth of the base thoughts that accompany them; and he will be under the corruptible world, and under the body-loving meditation in his thoughts; and he will be able to hold as precious the matter of corruptible things.

(25) He who has been persuaded that it is a divine ordinance to live luxuriously in a bodily manner according to the law receives gluttony as a gift of God for living together with joy, from which he begets the ways that defile the activity of the senses by misuse.

(26) Whenever the contemplative faculty of the soul welcomes the luxury according to the written law as divine because of the commandment, for the sake of living together, it pursues the use of the senses contrary to nature, allowing no use of activity according to nature to shine forth. For it begets both the habit of the passions and their activity, and it installs gluttony within itself as something divine, for the generation of the ways that defile the senses by misuse, to the destruction of the natural principles and seeds in created things.

(27) No one who devotes himself to the bodily worship of the law alone could altogether receive a natural principle or thought, since symbols are by nature not the same as the reality. For he who remains in the symbols of the law cannot see the nature of created things according to reason, nor preserve the principles that were essentially established in created things by the Creator, because of the difference between the symbols and the nature of created things.

(28) He who regards God as his belly, and adorns himself with shame as though it were glory, knows only how to cling with zeal to the passions of dishonor as though they were divine; and for this reason he cultivates only temporal things—that is, matter and form, and the fivefold activity of the senses in misuse. For the senses, entwined with matter and form in mixture, are naturally disposed to produce passion and to extinguish and destroy the principles according to nature. For passion and nature, in respect of the principle of being, in no way coexist with each other. For the principle of nature is in no way naturally disposed to be manifested in passion, just as passion is not naturally disposed to be begotten together with nature in generation.

(29) He who does not believe that the Scripture is spiritual does not perceive his own poverty in respect of knowledge, but is destroyed by hunger. For hunger is truly the eclipse of the goods known by experience in it, and a complete lack and scarcity of the spiritual foods that sustain the soul. For how will anyone regard as hunger or loss the removal of things that were in no way known to him at all?

(29) The people of the faithful who have known the truth hunger for the truth, and the soul of each person, having abandoned the spiritual contemplation that is in grace and having become a slave to the typical servitude in the letter, does not feed the mind on the noble grandeur of the meanings but fills the senses with passionate imagination through the bodily representations of the symbols of the Scriptures.

(30) Everyone who does not accept the spiritual contemplation of Holy Scripture has joined together with it both the natural law and the written law according to the Jews, and has ignored the law that is in grace, according to which deification is given to those who are led by it. Therefore, he who takes the written law bodily does not feed his soul with virtues; and he who does not apply himself to the principles of beings does not generously feast his mind on the varied wisdom of God; and he who does not know the great mystery of the new grace does not exult in the hope of the coming deification. Consequently, the lack of contemplation according to the written law has following upon it the deficiency of the varied wisdom of God that is understood according to the natural law, and this in turn has altogether the ignorance of the deification that will be given by grace according to the new mystery. (31) Every mind that is clear-sighted in Christ and strong in vision always desires and seeks the face of the Lord. And the face of the Lord is the true contemplation and knowledge of divine things according to virtue, which, as he seeks it, he is taught the cause of his own deficiency and perplexity. For just as the face is characteristic of each individual, so too spiritual knowledge distinctively marks out the divine.

He who seeks it is said to seek the face of the Lord. But he who lives according to the flesh, according to the letter of the law, in bloody sacrifices, has ignorance as his object of desire, receiving the commandment only for the pleasure of the flesh, and clinging bodily, by sense perception alone, to the mere matter of the letter.

(33) He who serves the law bodily begets, as it were, matter—sin in its activity—and as a form he molds, materially, the mind's consent to it through the pleasurable sensations proper to the senses. But he who receives the Scripture spiritually puts to death both the activity as matter and the consent as the form of sin, together with the modes of misuse directed toward the pleasure of sense, through natural thoughts in the height of contemplation. (34) The matter and the form, and the five modes of misuse concerning matter and form belonging to the five senses—I mean the passionate and contrary-to-nature entanglement of the senses with sensible things, that is, the things subject to time and flux—after the passing away of the bodily service according to the letter in the law, and the crossing over of ignorance, the spiritual law, or the mind, hands over to be put to death by the higher principles and thoughts of natural contemplation, so as to abolish and put to death, by those who come to be in the height of the law of spiritual contemplation, the most universal relation to sense and body that exists in symbols among things subject to time.

(35) Without natural contemplation, no one recognizes the incongruity of the legal symbols in relation to divine things. For unless a person has first contemplated in a natural way the incongruity of the divine and intelligible things contained in the symbols, and then desires to come to them in mind, setting sense entirely outside the divine sanctuaries, he cannot be wholly released from the bodily variety of the types, toward the comeliness of the intelligible things. While he remains in that variety, clinging to the letter, he does not, as is reasonable, find relief from the perplexity that comes from hunger for knowledge, having condemned himself, like the deceitful serpent, to eat the earth of Scripture, that is, the body. But not so according to Christ, the heaven, that is, the spirit and the soul of Scripture—that is, the heavenly and angelic bread. I mean, he is fed on the spiritual contemplation and knowledge of the Scriptures in Christ, which God gives in abundance, richly supplied to those who love him, as it is written: He gave them bread from heaven; man ate the bread of angels.

(36) One must destroy the literal, sense-based interpretation of Scripture that pertains to the body, since it is plainly productive of passions and of the relative disposition toward things temporal and fleeting—that is, of the passionate activity of the senses toward sensible things—as Saul destroyed the children and offspring, through natural contemplation on the mountain, by the ascent of the divine oracles, if indeed we desire to be filled with divine grace. (37) Both the law understood according to the letter alone and the people of the Jews do wrong to the truth, and so does anyone who is their imitator in thought, confining the power of the law to the letter alone and not accepting, for the manifestation of the mystical knowledge hidden in the letter, natural contemplation, which stands midway between types and truth—leading those who are led away from the former and toward the latter that leads back up; but rather, as it were, denying it altogether and placing it outside the mystical initiation into divine things. This bodily and temporary interpretation of the law, then, as being under time and fleeting, one must put to death through natural contemplation, as on the mountain—in the height of knowledge—the guardians of divine visions.

(38) The one who, through practice, by means of natural contemplation puts to death the pleasure-loving and body-loving disposition toward unstable and flowing matter that was born from the written law—slaying it as the children and offspring of Saul—completely destroys the bodily sense of Scripture, cutting down the earthly-minded meaning of the law through the midst of natural contemplation, as on a mountain in the height of knowledge, and making manifest before the Lord—that is, through confession—the former understanding of the law according to the body. For this, "to expose," can be understood by those who love learning as "before the Lord." And "they exposed them," it says, "on the mountain before the Lord," bringing into the light, that is through knowledge, the erroneous preconception according to the letter; which means to make manifest, at the height of contemplation, that the letter of the law is dead through the knowledge in the Spirit.

(39) "The letter," it says, "kills; but the Spirit gives life." Therefore it is necessary that what is by nature killing be killed by the life-giving Spirit. For it is altogether impossible for the bodily element of the law and the divine—that is, the letter and the Spirit—to coexist in activity at the same time and in the same respect; since it is not in its nature to be in harmony with what provides life according to nature, namely that which is able to take it away. (40) The Spirit is a bestower of life; but the letter is a taker of life. Therefore the letter cannot act at the same time and in the same respect as the Spirit, just as the life-giving cannot coexist with the corrupting. (41) There is a mystical circumcision: the complete removal of the passible disposition of the mind concerning the introduced generation.

For when we apply ourselves to things in a natural way, we know that perfection is not the removal of the natural integrity that comes from God. For nature does not produce perfection when it is curtailed by art and, by cleverness, sets aside what belongs to it from God according to the principle of creation—lest we introduce art as stronger than God for the confirmation of righteousness, and make the cleverly devised deficiency of nature a supplement for the deficiency in righteousness according to creation. But from the local position of the member that is circumcised, we are taught to perform the circumcision of the passionate disposition in the soul by deliberate choice, in accordance with which the judgment is rather regulated to concur with nature, correcting the passionate law of acquired generation. (42) The foreskin is natural. But everything natural is the work of divine creation, and exceedingly good, according to the voice that says: "And God saw all things that he had made, and behold, they were exceedingly good." But the law, commanding the foreskin to be removed as unclean through circumcision, introduces God as correcting his own work by art—which it is most impious even to conceive. Therefore the one who applies himself to the symbols of the law in a natural way knows that God does not correct nature by art, but the obedient

He commands that the passible element of the soul be cut away by reason, which is typified by the bodily member, namely the knowledge that is naturally disposed to be set aside through courage in action, by the disposition of the will. For the priest who circumcises signifies knowledge, which has, as it were, iron against the passion—the courage of reason in action. For the tradition of the law disappears, since the letter prevails over the spirit. (43) The Sabbath is the rest of the soul from passions and from the mind's movement concerning the nature of beings; or it is the complete cessation of passions, and the universal pause of the mind's movement concerning created things, and the perfect passage to the Divine; in which, when one has arrived by virtue and knowledge in accordance with what is lawful, one must not think of any material whatsoever that kindles passions, as it were wood, nor indeed gather up the principles of nature at all, lest, taking pleasure in passions or being measured by the boundaries of nature, we dogmatize about God in the manner of the Greeks—God whom only perfect silence has proclaimed, and whom complete ignorance by way of transcendence presents. (44) A crown of goodness is pure faith, adorned like precious stones with the lofty utterances of doctrines and with spiritual words and thoughts, binding together, as it were, the God-loving mind. Or rather, the crown of goodness is the Word of God himself, who by the variety of his ways in providence and judgment—that is, by self-control over voluntary passions and endurance of involuntary ones—encircles the mind as a head, and by participation in the grace of deification makes the mind itself more beautiful than itself.

(45) Here he says that self-control is a work of Providence, as being purifying of the passions that arise from choice; but endurance, he says, is a right accomplishment of judgment, as being set in opposition to involuntary temptations, and being a symbol of the practical philosophy, conveying those held fast by it across to virtue, as from Egypt, that is, from sin.

(46) God, not wishing the days to be honored by men, commanded that the Sabbath be honored, and the new moons, and the feasts; for in this way he gave as a doctrine, by a legal commandment, that they should serve the creature rather than the Creator, supposing that the days are by nature venerable, and for this reason worthy of worship; but he indicated figuratively that he himself is to be honored through the days. For he himself is the Sabbath, as being the rest of the soul from its labors in the flesh, and the cessation of its toils according to righteousness. And the Passover, as being the liberator of those held fast by the bitter slavery of sin; and Pentecost, as being the firstfruits and the end of things that exist, and the Logos by whom all things by nature consist. But observe how the law destroys those who understand it in a bodily way, persuading them to serve the creature rather than the Creator, and to regard as by nature venerable the things that came to be for their sake, having ignored him through whom they themselves came to be. (47) The world is a bounded place, and a circumscribed standing; but time is a movement that is circumscribed, whence also the movement according to life in it is subject to change.

(45) But when nature, having passed through place and time, in both activity and thought—that is, the things without which it cannot be, namely its limited rest and motion—is directly joined to Providence, it finds Providence to be a principle, simple and stable according to nature, possessing no circumscription whatsoever, and for this reason neither motion at all. (46) Existing in the world temporally, nature has motion subject to change, because of the world's limited rest and the flux of time in its alteration; but when it comes to be in God, because of the natural stability of the unity in which it has come to be, it will possess motionless rest and a stable self-motion, revolving eternally around the same, the one and only, which the principle knows to be directly around the first cause—the abiding establishment of the things made by him.

(49) The mystery of Pentecost is the direct union of the things providentially cared for with Providence; that is, the union of nature with the principle according to the conception of Providence, in which there is no indication at all of time or generation. And the principle is again a trumpet for us, as sounding in us the divine and ineffable knowledges; and a propitiation, as dissolving our accusations in itself, having become according to us; and by the gift of grace in the Spirit, deifying the nature that sinned; and a tabernacle-feast, as the practice of our unswervingness toward the good according to the God-imitating state, and the bond that holds together the transformation to immortality. (50) He who delights in mere bloody sacrifices prepares those who sacrifice to be zealous about the passions, as being himself passionate.

For what is genuinely reverent loves to rejoice in the things in which the object of worship rejoices. Hence the word knows sacrifices to be rather the slaughter of the passions and the offering up of natural powers; of which, on the one hand, the ram is a type of reason; on the other, the bull bears the symbol of spiritedness; and the goat is the representation of desire.

(51) We also know spiritual sacrifices, not only the mortification of the passions, slain by the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, and of the whole life in the flesh—its motion according to purpose being as blood—but also the offering up of the ethical dispositions according to philosophy, and of all the natural powers, consecrated to God and wholly burnt by the fire of the grace in the Spirit unto the divine portion.

(52) The earthly mind of Scripture, holding sway over the soul, rejects the natural principles, obliterating them by the misuse of the natural powers. For this mind, while it lives, in truth accomplishes and pursues and destroys, circumscribing the law by the flesh alone—I mean the natural principles and thoughts—honoring as divine the passions of dishonor, which the natural thoughts, receiving license from the law of the Spirit, kill and put to death at the same time. (53) As soon as one pursues the rational philosophy of the virtues, at once he has also transferred the interpretation of the Scriptures to the Spirit in a natural manner, in newness of the letter, through the more lowly reception of the law according to sense in relation to the body, becoming a nurturer of passions after the manner of the Jews, and a healer of sin.

(54) As soon as a person ceases to interpret the Scripture according to sense in relation to the body, at that same moment he also runs back to the spirit in the mind, passing through nature in between, doing spiritually those things which the Jew performed bodily, and he has God propitiated.

(55) Every mind that is lofty and elevated according to God, in the same act, slays both the activity of the passions and the shameful motion of the thoughts; and besides these, also the dissolute habits that come from the misuse of the activity of the senses. For the passions are destroyed by the lofty thoughts of nature, being triumphed over in the lofty contemplation.

(56) The power of sin, that is, the mind of the flesh, the grace of holy baptism is by nature able to make disappear; and the obedience in action of the divine commandments is able to kill with the sword of the spirit, that is, with the word of the divine knowledge in the spirit, crying out mystically to the passion of sin, as the great Samuel did to Agag: Because your sword has made women childless, today your mother shall be made childless among women.

(57) The passion of gluttony has, as if with a sword, through the perfect reasoning of pleasure, made many virtues childless. For through intemperance it kills the seeds of self-control; through greed it corrupts the fairness of justice; through self-love it cuts through the natural continuity of love for humanity. And to speak briefly, the passion of gluttony is destructive of all the offspring that belong to virtue. (58) The passion of gluttony is by nature such as to kill all the divine offspring of the virtues; but it is itself put to death by the grace of faith and by obedience to the divine commandments, through the principle that accords with knowledge. (59) Our Lord is truly a light for the nations, revealing to them through true knowledge the eyes of the mind that had been closed fast in the darkness of ignorance, and again preparing himself for the faithful peoples as a guide of divine conduct, a good example of virtue, becoming for them a pattern and model of the person who lives according to virtue, looking to whom as the author of our salvation, we accomplish the virtues by imitation, as far as is possible for us, through action.

(60) Everyone who hates because of envy and slanders maliciously, who by his accusations is stronger in the contests of the virtues and in the abundance of the word of spiritual knowledge, is a Saul choked by an evil spirit, unable to bear the glory of the blessedness in virtue and knowledge of the better man; and for this reason he rages all the more, because he cannot lay hands on his benefactor. And often he also bitterly sends away the dearest Jonathan himself—I mean the reasoning implanted in the conscience—which convicts the unjust hatred and truthfully recounts the achievements of the one who is hated.

(61) Let us also entreat the noetic David to sound upon the lyre of spiritual contemplation and knowledge, striking our mind which is afflicted by material things, and to drive away the evil spirit of material entanglement with sense perception, so that we may be able to understand the law spiritually, and to find the mystical reason hidden within it, and to make it a lasting possession as provision for eternal life.

(62) Everyone who loves salvation devotes himself entirely either to practice or to contemplation. For without virtue and knowledge, no one has ever been able to attain salvation—since virtue consists in ordering the movement of the body, as it were with a bridle, by the right reason knowledgeably reining in the rush toward what is improper; and contemplation consists in choosing and deciding upon what has been rightly understood and judiciously judged. (63) Since that which understands is intellectual, and that which is understood is intelligible, and the intelligible is food and, as it were, the constitution of the one who understands—reasonably God, since the incorporeal beings are those who understand, being himself understood and becoming intelligible to them insofar as they can attain, shines upon them from within, while the intellect understands and is nourished. (64) The intelligible is one thing, and the intellectual another. For the intelligible is, as it were, a kind of food for the intellectual, as has been said—since that which is understood, which is the intelligible, is greater and conceived before the one who understands, which is the intellectual. For those things are called intellectual which, because they are intellects, understand the intelligible things that lie above them; for the intelligible is that which is understood, which is also food for the intellectual, that is, for the one who understands. (65) One must know how things caused stand in relation to the images of their causes which they contain. For all things brought into creation are things caused; and causes are those that brought them forth; and there is no resemblance of these to one another—I mean of causes and things caused. (66) There is no exact resemblance in things caused to their causes; but things caused contain the images of their causes which they are capable of receiving; while the causes themselves are exempt from things caused and are established above them according to the principle of their own origin.

For the things of the caused pre-exist excessively and substantially in the causes. (67) Caused things are all that have been brought into creation, whether in heaven or on earth; causes are those that brought them forth, that is, the three hypostases of the Holy Trinity.

It is evident, then, that there is no likeness of these to one another—I mean of causes and caused things.

(68) One must know that our mind has a power for understanding, through which it sees intelligible things; and a union surpassing the nature of the mind, through which it is joined to things beyond itself. By this union, then, divine things must be understood, not according to ourselves, but by wholly standing outside ourselves and becoming wholly God's. For it is better to be God's and not our own. For thus will divine things be given to those who become with God.

(69) The mind, wishing to understand, descends from itself, going down into its thoughts. For thoughts are lower than the one who understands, since they are understood and comprehended, and are reasonably a scattering and division of the mind's own unity. For the mind is simple and indivisible, but thoughts are manifold and scattered, and as it were forms of the mind. Therefore intellectual things, that is, those that understand, are less than intelligible things, that is, things understood. He calls it a union of the mind, as he says more clearly in what follows, through which it stretches out toward things beyond itself, that is, it applies itself to the contemplation of God—namely, to stand outside all sensible and intelligible things, and further even its own movement, and then thus to receive the ray of divine knowledge.

(70) If it is moved in a manner analogous to itself, in an intellectual way, toward the intellectual, it also certainly understands; and if it understands, it certainly also loves the object of its understanding; and if it loves, it certainly also undergoes the ecstasy toward it as beloved; and if it undergoes this, it is clear that it also presses on; and if it presses on, it certainly also intensifies the vehemence of its movement. And if it intensely intensifies its movement, it does not stop until it has become whole in the whole beloved, and has been encompassed willingly by the whole, receiving wholly by choice its saving circumscription, so that it may be made wholly one with the whole that circumscribes it, so that it no longer wishes at all, of itself, that it be able to be known wholly—that very thing which is circumscribed—but rather from the circumscriber, as air wholly illuminated by light, and iron wholly heated through by fire, or whatever else of this kind there is. (71) Great is the relation of those who understand to the things understood, and of those who perceive to the things perceived. But man, being from soul and perceptive body, through his natural relation and affinity, by interweaving, to each of the two divisions of creation, is both circumscribed and circumscribes: the one by essence, the other by power. For as being soul and body, he is naturally both circumscribed by things intelligible and sensible, and circumscribes them according to his power, as understanding and perceiving. But God is simply and indefinitely beyond all things that are, both the containing and the contained, as being altogether unrelated to all things. (72) Every pleasure of forbidden things naturally comes to be from passion, through the mediation of sense, toward some sensible object.

For pleasure is nothing other than a form of sensation, shaped in the sensitive faculty by some sensible object; or a mode of sensitive activity, constituted by irrational desire. For desire added to sensation falls into pleasure, bringing a form upon it; and sensation moved by desire produces pleasure, having received the sensible object. The saints, therefore, knowing that the soul, when moved contrary to nature through the medium of the flesh toward matter, puts on the earthly form, rather, being moved according to nature through the medium of the soul toward God, they purposed to make the flesh properly akin to God, adorning it, as far as possible, with divine impressions through the practice of virtues. (73) Magnanimously, in accordance with the true and unerring manner of movement according to nature, the saints passed through this present age of snares: uniting sensation, simple through the mediation of reason, to the intellect, which holds the principles of beings; and bringing to God the intellect, purely released from all movement concerning beings and at rest even from its own natural activity; according to which, wholly gathered to God, they were deemed worthy to be wholly mingled with the whole God through the Spirit, bearing the whole image of the heavenly, as far as is possible for humans, and drawing so much of the divine impression, if it is permitted to say this, that, being drawn, they were themselves placed in God. (74) They say that God and man are examples of one another, and that God is humanized for man through love of humanity to the same extent that man, having been able through love, deified himself to God.

And to such an extent is man caught up by God in mind toward the knowable, as man has made manifest by his virtues the God who is by nature invisible. (75) Everyone who has put to death his members that are upon the earth, and has wholly quenched the whole mindset of his flesh, and has shaken off entirely his attachment to it, through which the love owed by us to God alone is divided, and has renounced all the marks of the flesh and the world for the sake of divine grace—so as even to be able to say with the blessed Paul the apostle, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" and what follows—such a one has become fatherless and motherless and without genealogy, like the great Melchizedek, having no way to be held fast by flesh and nature, because of the union that has come about with the spirit. (76) The end of the present life I do not think it right to call death, but a release from death, and a separation from corruption, and a freedom from slavery, and a cessation of turmoil, and an abolition of wars, and a retreat of darkness, and a relief from labors, and a calm from tossing, and a covering of shame, and an escape from passions, and—to sum it all up in a word—a circumscription of all evils. These things the saints, having accomplished through voluntary death, have shown themselves strangers and sojourners to this life. For nobly fighting against the world and the body and the assaults that come from them, and having stifled the deception that arises from both through the entanglement of the senses with sensible things, they have kept for themselves the dignity of the soul unenslaved.

(77) Nature herself provides no small proof that the knowledge of providence has been sown in us by nature: whenever, as if pushing us untaught toward God through prayers in sudden crises, she prepares us to seek salvation from there. For when we are suddenly seized by necessity, before we have considered anything, we involuntarily call upon God—as though providence itself were drawing us to itself without reasoning, and the swiftness of the noetic power within us were conquering, and showing the divine help to be stronger than all things. But nature would not lead us involuntarily toward what does not have nature to become; and everything that follows anything whatsoever by nature, as is clear to all, has a strong and invincible power for the demonstration of truth.

(78) Since of existing things some are good and some are base, and these are either present or future: an expected good is called desire; a present good, pleasure; and again, an expected evil, fear; a present evil, grief. So that pleasure and desire are both to be and are observed in relation to noble things—whether things truly existing or things thought to be—and grief and fear in relation to base things. For desire, when it succeeds, produces pleasure; when it fails, grief. (79) They say that all grief is by its own nature evil. For even if the earnest man grieves over others' evils, as being compassionate, yet not primarily by intention, but consequently by circumstance. And the contemplative man, even in these things, remains impassible, having united himself to God and become alien to all things here.

(80) All the saints who have genuinely laid hold of the divine and unerring Word passed through this age without fixing the trace of their soul on any of its delights. For they opened their mind—quite reasonably—to the highest of the words about God attainable by humans, I mean those concerning goodness and love; and they were taught that God, moved by these, granted both being to things that exist and well-being as a gift—if indeed it is lawful to speak of "movement" in God, the only one who is unmoved, rather than of "will," which moves all things and brings them into being and sustains them, yet is itself never moved in any way. (81) The soul, being a noetic and rational substance, both understands and reasons: it has intellect as its capacity, intellection as its movement, and the thought as its activity. For this is the limit of the intellection of the one who understands and of the thing understood, since it bounds the relation of the extremes to one another. For when the soul understands, it comes to rest from understanding that thing once it has been understood, after its intellection of it. For what has been properly understood once no longer summons the soul's power to be understood again; and in the case of each thought, the soul thus receives a resting of the particular intellection concerning the thing understood.

(82) Just as ignorance is divisive of those who have gone astray, so the presence of the intelligible light is gathering and unifying of those who are illumined, and perfecting and converting—turning them back from the many opinions toward the truly existing, and gathering the various appearances, or more properly speaking, phantasies, into one true and pure and uniform knowledge, and filling them with the one and unifying light.

(83) The beautiful is the same as the good, because all things desire the beautiful and good by every cause, and there is nothing among existing things that does not partake of the beautiful and good. For the beautiful and good is for all things, as truly worthy of wonder, desirable and lovely and pleasing and choiceworthy and beloved. Note also how the divine love, pre-existing in the good, gave birth to the good love within us, through which we desire the beautiful and good, according to him who said, "I became a lover of her beauty." And, "Desire her, and she will keep you; fence her about, and she will exalt you." (84) The theologians call the divine sometimes love (erōs), sometimes charity (agapē), sometimes beloved and lovely. Hence, as being love and charity, it is moved; as being beloved and lovely, it moves all things capable of love and charity toward itself. And to speak more clearly again: it is moved as producing an inward disposition of love and charity in those capable of them; and it moves, as being by nature attractive, the desire of those who are moved toward it. And again it moves and is moved, as thirsting to be thirsted for, and loving to be loved, and loving to be loved in return. (85) And the divine love is also ecstatic, not permitting the lovers to be their own, but rather of the beloved.

And they make clear: the higher things, by their providence for the lower; the things of equal rank, by their mutual cohesion; and the subordinate things, by their more divine turning back toward the first. Therefore Paul the Great, having come to be in the possession of divine love and having partaken of its ecstatic power, says with a God-inspired mouth, "I live, yet no longer I, but Christ lives in me"—as a true lover and, as he himself says, one who has stood outside himself for God, and who lives not his own life but the life of the lover, as exceedingly beloved.

(86) This too must be said boldly on behalf of truth: that the very Cause of all things, by the love of the beautiful and good of all things, through the excess of his erotic goodness, comes to be outside himself in his providences toward all existing things, and is, as it were, charmed by goodness and loving-kindness and love; and from being above all things and exempt from all things, he is brought down to be in all things by an ecstatic, super-essential power, without departing from himself. Therefore those skilled in divine things call him "Zealous," as having great good love toward existing things, and as awakening zeal for his own longing—the erotic longing—and as showing himself zealous, to whom the things longed for are also zealous, and as having the things provided for as zealous to him. (87) They say that he—God himself, clearly—is the producer of love and eros, and indeed their begetter. For he, having these in himself, brought them forth into things outside, that is, to the things around creation; and in this sense it is said, "God is love"; and again, "Sweetness and desire," which is eros; and the beloved and truly lovable one is himself.

By the very fact that the love of affection pours forth from him, he who is its begetter is said to be moved; but by the fact that he is the true object of love and affection and longing and choice, he moves those who look toward him, and those in whom is the power of longing, in proportion to themselves.

(88) Understand that God is leading and moving toward loving union in the Spirit—that is, the mediator of this union and the one who joins us to it—so that he may be loved and cherished by his own creatures. He calls him moving, as moving each thing according to its own principle to turn back toward him. The name of leading, even if among those outside it signifies a thing that is not wholesome, here means the mediation that brings about union in God.

(89) The loving movement of the good, pre-existing in the good, being simple and unmoved, and proceeding from the good, turns back again to the same, being endless and without beginning; which shows our ceaseless motion toward the divine and union. For the loving union with God is exempt from and transcends every union.

Whether we call love divine or angelic, or noetic or psychic, or natural, let us understand it as a certain unifying and conjoining power: moving the higher beings to providence for the lower; and again the beings of the same rank to a communal interconnection with one another; and finally the subordinate to a turning back toward the better and superior. If knowledge is the unification of those who know and the things known, while ignorance is always the cause of change and of division from him for the one who is ignorant, then he who has believed in truth according to the sacred Word will not be moved at all from the hearth of true faith, on which he will possess the stability of an unmoved and unchanging identity. For he who has been united to the truth knows well that he is well, even if the many admonish him as one who has gone out of his mind. For it escapes them, as is likely, that it is from error that he has gone out of his mind to the truth of true faith, but he truly knows himself—not as those men say, a madman, but as one freed by the simple truth, which always remains the same and in the same state, from the unstable and changeable motion amid the manifold variety of error. The saints have become good and lovers of mankind, compassionate and merciful, having shown toward the whole race a single disposition of love; by this they held fast through their whole life the most excellent form of all goods—I mean humility—sure and firm, which preserves goods and destroys their opposites, and they became altogether uncapturable by any of the temptations that trouble us, whether those that are voluntary and within our own power, or those that are involuntary and not within our own power.

by means of these: on the one hand, to wither away the uprisings through self-control; on the other, to shake off the assaults through endurance.

(3) Right faith and undefiled fear toward God produce the perfect practice of virtue; a firm hope and unblemished understanding produce the faultless natural contemplation that pertains to ascent; and perfect love, together with a mind that has wholly and willingly blinded itself to beings by way of transcendence, produce the deification that pertains to assumption.

(4) They say that the work of practical philosophy is to render the mind pure of every passionate fantasy; that the work of natural contemplation is to show it to be knowledgeable of the true knowledge of all things in beings, according to the cause by which they exist; and that the work of theological mystagogy is to make it like and equal to God, as far as is attainable, by grace, in its state, while it is still wholly mindful of none of the things after God, because of the transcendence.

(5) What the aether, that is, the fiery element, is in the sensible world, that prudence is in the world of thought, as an illuminating state and receptive of the spiritual principles proper to each of beings, revealing through them the cause in all things without error, and drawing the soul's longing toward the divine; and what the air is in the sensible world, that courage is in the world of thought, as a moving state, both cohesive and active of the innate life according to the spirit, and strengthening the soul's ceaseless motion toward the divine.

And what water is in the sensible world, this temperance is in the world of the mind, being a habit productive of the life-giving fruitfulness in the spirit, and generative of the ever-flowing erotic delight toward the divine in desire; and what earth is in the sensible world, this righteousness is in the world of the mind, being a habit generative according to species of all the principles in beings, and distributing the life-giving impartation in the spirit equally to each; and it is the unchangeable establishment of its own foundation in the good according to position.

(6) Just as, when the flesh is in good condition and fattened, the soul is tormented and darkened by the passions, the habit of the virtues and the illumination of knowledge withdrawing; so also, when the soul is guarded and made radiant by the divine beauty of the virtues and by the illumination of knowledge, the outer man is corrupted, the flesh, because of the coming of the word, casting off its natural good condition.

(7) It was not possible for the one who became man to be shown to be a son of God and God by the deification of grace in any other way, unless he had first been born by the Spirit in his free choice, on account of the self-moving and unmastered power that naturally resides in him. This power is a deifying, divine, and immaterial birth, which the first man passed over because he preferred the pleasant and visible according to sense over the good things that are understood and, for a time, unseen; and so he is justly condemned to the involuntary, material, and perishable birth that comes from bodies. (8) Man is now moved either by irrational fantasies of the passions arising from deception through love of pleasure, or by the principles of the arts arising from circumstance through need, or by natural principles arising from the law of nature through learning. None of these drew man by necessity in the beginning, and rightly so, since he had come to be above them all. For thus it was fitting for the one from the beginning to be, not being drawn aside at all by any of the things that come after him, or around him, or according to him, and needing only one thing for perfection: the unrestrained movement toward the One who is above him—I mean God—with the whole of his loving power.

(9) The first man had nothing interposed between God and himself for knowledge, nothing to hinder the kinship that was to be born through love by his self-chosen movement toward God. For being impassible by grace, he did not admit the deception of the imagination through pleasure; and being without need, he was free from the circumstantial necessity of crafts because of want; and being wise, he stood above the contemplation of nature because of his knowledge. (10) God, who established all nature with wisdom and secretly implanted his knowledge in each rational essence according to its capacity, has also given to us human beings, as a greatly generous Master, the longing and love for him according to nature, having naturally woven together with it the power of reason, so that by it we might be able with ease to know the ways of the fulfillment of that longing, and, not going astray, fail to miss what we strive to attain. Moved, then, by this longing, we are led to inquire about the truth itself and about the wisdom and governance that is orderly manifest in all things, longing to attain through these that for the sake of which we received the longing.

The end of Maximus's Divine Chapters.

OTHER CHAPTERS * VERSES A spring that gushes forth the dew of ethical words, here you will find, if you pursue them sincerely, the labors of Maximus the Confessor, friend.

Greet them, and you will learn the profit.

(1) It is incumbent on every Christian who rightly believes in God not to be free from care, but always to expect and await temptation, so that when it comes he may not be taken by surprise or thrown into confusion, but may endure the toil of affliction with thanksgiving, and consider what he says when he sings with the Prophet: "Test me, O Lord, and try me." And he did not say, "For your discipline has overthrown me," but "has set me upright to the end." (2) The beginning of what is good is the fear of God; its end is the longing for him. The beginning of every good is a word put into practice, and reasoned action. Therefore neither is action without reason good, nor is the word that proceeds without action. (3) Action, for the body, is fasting and vigil; for the mouth, psalmody; and better than psalmody is prayer; and silence is more honorable than speech. And the action of the hands is what is done by them without grumbling. And of the feet, what is accomplished by them from the first impulse. And the action of the soul is self-control with simplicity, and simplicity worked out with self-control. And of the mind, prayer in contemplation, and in prayer the contemplation of God.

(4) Mercy and truth precede all the virtues, and humility is their offspring, and the discernment that comes from it, according to the Fathers. Without it, no other virtue can see its own end. (5) Practice that dishonors the yoke of the word is found wandering here and there around useless things, like a heifer; but the word, rejecting the honorable garments of the practical life, is unseemly, even if it somehow puts on the appearance of being such.

The text comes from the Patrologia, volume 91 (typed by the mother of Fr. Arsenios Meskos), in comparison with the text of the "TO BYZANTION" editions of the "GREGORY PALAMAS" series, Thessaloniki.

1992, PHILOKALIA OF THE NEPTIC AND ASCETIC FATHERS, volume 4.

(6) The courageous soul, like a woman, throughout her whole life holding two lamps burning, the practical and the contemplative, does what is required; and the opposite is true of the soul that is slackened by pleasures. (7) Voluntary hardship is not enough for the soul for a complete deliverance from evil, unless, being purified through involuntary hardship as well, it is not dissolved. (8) Like a sword, the soul is not preserved unbroken by the resistances of what happens, for a complete deliverance from evil, unless it passes through fire and water, that is, through voluntary and involuntary labors. (9) Just as there are three more general causes of voluntary temptations—health, wealth, and good repute—so too there are three of involuntary ones: losses, illnesses, and insults. And these things happen to some for building up, and to others for tearing down.

(10) Desire and grief attend the soul, while pleasure and pain attend the body. The cause of pain is pleasure; for wishing to escape the toilsome sensation of pain, we take refuge in pleasure. The cause of grief is desire or weakness.

(11) The virtuous man possesses the good as an inward disposition; the vainglorious man as something revolved in his mind. The serious man has evil on the surface; the pleasure-lover has it in the depths.

(12) He who hates evil is found to be inclined to it rarely and without diligence; but he who still clings to its causes, more often and more attentively. (13) For those whose repentance is not according to purpose, transgression also is continual; but for those whose sinning is contrary to purpose, repentance is fully assured, and its cause is not frequent.

(14) Let perception and conscience come together with the spoken word, so that the divine Word who has spoken may not be put to shame by being found in their midst, through the rashness or excess of what is said or done. (15) Not only he who does not wrong his soul by deeds, but this man has also kept it undefiled by words. But he who guards these has not thereby already kept his thoughts unstained. For he who sins does this in three ways. (16) You will not be able to behold the face of virtue while you still take pleasure in contemplating that of vice. The latter will then appear hateful when you have desired the taste of the former, and have estranged yourself from the sight of so great a form. (17) The demons war against the soul primarily through thoughts, not through things. For things in themselves are necessary. And of things, hearing and sight are the cause.

Of thoughts, the cause is habit and the demons.

(18) The sinful part of the soul is threefold, being found in deeds, words, and thoughts. The Exodus-like part is the beauty of sinlessness. For one must keep the five senses and the uttered word free from stumbling. In these things, he says, the man who does not stumble is perfect, able to bridle also the members of the body. (19) The irrational part of the soul is divided in six ways: into the five senses, and into the word according to utterance, which is divided together indivisibly with the one who suffers, being itself impassible; but it is stained with his vice when it is found in a passive state. (20) Neither can the body be purified without fasting and vigils, nor the soul without mercy and truth, nor indeed the mind without contemplation and converse with God. For these pairings are most distinctly marked in these things. (21) The soul, being circled about by the virtues just mentioned, makes its fortress from temptations unassailable; which is patience. For, the Word says, in your patience possess your souls. But if they are held otherwise, such as

Who is a city without walls, and is accustomed to be shaken by the bars of cowardice at noises from afar?

(22) Not all who are prudent in matters according to reason are also prudent in matters according to thought; but those who are prudent in matters according to thought will be found so also in matters according to sense from without. For even if sense has all things subject to tribute, they do not pay the same tribute to it. For from simplicity, the many do not know how to honor it in matters according to it as it demands. (23) Prudence, being by nature indivisible, is divided into various divisions. For to one a greater part of it is given, to another a lesser part; until practical virtue, having grown, and having the general virtues running together with it, fulfills the good possible for each. For the many, because of the deficiency of their active life, have also obtained a share of prudence.

(24) In matters according to nature, few will be found prudent; but in matters contrary to nature, many. For having emptied out all their natural prudence in fear concerning these things, they have little prudence there, but the most in superfluous things, and things not praiseworthy by nature.

(25) The season and the measure of reasonable silence are its fellow-guests; and the banquet of it is truth; through which the father of falsehood, coming upon a soul that has departed, finds nothing of the things sought for. (26) The truly merciful man is not the one who willingly gives of his superfluities, but the one who forgives the necessities to those who snatch them away.

(27) Some acquire immaterial wealth by means of material wealth, according to the laws of almsgiving; others acquire material wealth by means of immaterial wealth, having come to the perception of the inexhaustible. (28) To be rich in good things is a friend to everyone; but it is painful, for one who has been divinely enriched, not to be permitted for the most part to rejoice in it. (29) Outwardly, the health of the soul seems to be; but inwardly, in the depth of the senses, its sickness is naturally hidden. But if it must by all means outwardly come to be through the reaping of reproofs, and inwardly through the renewal of the mind; foolish is the one who shakes off reproofs, and is not ashamed to lie always in the hospital of insensibility. (30) Do not be embittered against the one who has operated on you unwillingly; but looking toward the emptied unpleasantness, pity yourself; and bless God, who has become for you the cause of this dispensation. (31) Do not despair at the dread of your sickness; but through the more effective medicines of diligence, be far from it, you who take care for the health of the soul.

(32) Do not shrink from one who strikes you at the right moment; draw near to him, and he will show you how great is the evil that tickles your senses, and you will eat the sweet relish that comes from health, after the bitter refuse has been consumed. (33) To the extent that you feel the pains, to that extent welcome the one who points them out to you through reproofs. For he becomes for you the cause of perfect purification; without which the mind cannot come to be in the pure place of prayer. (34) When being reproved, one must either be silent or answer gently the one who is enumerating one's faults—not so that the one reproved may establish his own case, but so that he may raise up the one who perhaps has stumbled, namely the one reproving in ignorance. (35) He who is well-disposed toward the one who has grieved him unjustly before being summoned by him has lost nothing of what pertains to him. But he who is well-disposed after the summons has half of the fruitfulness. But he gains the whole of what was deposited beforehand, who is never found excommunicated because of grief; and he adds reward to himself, who casts the fault upon himself in everything.

(33) Neither does the high-minded man recognize what his own defects are, nor does the humble-minded man recognize his own good qualities. For the one is covered by a base ignorance, the other by a God-pleasing one.

(34) The proud man does not wish to be measured against his equals in good things; but in adverse circumstances, compared with those who surpass him, he considers his own defect endurable.

(35) Reproof makes the soul firm; praise makes it slack and more sluggish toward good things.

(36) The substance of wealth is gold; of virtue, humility. Therefore, just as the poor man who lacks gold is poor, even if it does not appear so from external things, so without humility the struggling man will not be virtuous.

(37) Just as without gold a merchant is not by nature a merchant, even if he is very well suited for trade, so too without humility-mindedness the ascetic will not be found in the possession of the pleasures of virtue, even if he trusts entirely in his own prudence.

(38) He who ascends by humility-mindedness becomes lower than his own opinion of himself; but he who is without it becomes higher—the one who does not willingly endure to be measured even against the least, and for this reason displays his grievousness in the chief seats.

(39) It is good for the contender to think himself less than his own labor, and to do better than his own cowardice. For thus he will be found both reverend among men and an unashamed worker for God.

(40) Either one must succeed in all the commandments of God, or one must lay claim to the single virtue of humility-mindedness—for the one who fears lest he be seen as a stranger to those who are reclining in the bridal chamber.

(44) Mix self-control with simplicity, and join truth to humility, and you will be seen to be a table-companion of righteousness; and at her table, as it were, every other virtue loves to gather together.

(45) Truth without humility is blind. Therefore it uses contradiction as a pedagogue, striving to establish itself on something, but finding nothing except the stronghold of resentment.

(46) A good character bears witness to the beauty of virtue; and the steadiness of the members, to a peaceful soul.

(47) First, it is good to stumble in no part. Second, not to cover one's own fault with shame, nor yet to be shameless in it, but rather to be humbled, and when accused to accuse oneself along with it, and to accept the penalty gladly. But if this does not happen, everything that is offered to God is without strength. (48) In addition to voluntary hardship, one must also accept involuntary hardship—I mean that which comes from slanders, losses, and illnesses. For the one who does not accept these but chafes at them is like a man who wants to eat his bread not with salt but with honey alone; such a man does not always have pleasure as his companion, but always has satiety as his neighbor.

(49) Though he is a master, he is seen to put on the form of a slave, washing the garment of his neighbor that has been torn, by divine words, or stitching it up by sharing them. But let the one who does this consider, lest perhaps because he accomplishes this as a slave, he lose along with his reward also the dignity of authority that belongs to him, through vainglory.

(50) Just as faith is by nature the substance of things hoped for, so prudence is the substance of the soul, and humility the substance of virtue. And it is a wonder how things that are complete in themselves become incomplete without the things that accompany them.

(51) The Lord, it says, will guard your entrance and your exit—clearly, by self-control, your entrance and exit of foods and of words. For the one who keeps self-control in the entrance and exit of foods and words escapes the desire that comes from the eyes, and calms the anger that comes from folly; and the one who strives must make it his care before all things to attend to these. For in these things, the practical faculty is strengthened, and the contemplative faculty is made firm. (52) But some take great care concerning the entrance of foods, yet are carelessly disposed concerning the exit of words. Such people do not know how to put away anger from the heart and desire from the flesh, according to Ecclesiastes; through these things the pure heart is accustomed to be built by the Spirit who makes all things new.

(53) The simplicity of foods will be found to concern the inferior quality of luxury; but the blamelessness of words will be found to concern the superior measure of silence.

(54) Set your kidneys on fire by abstinence from foods, and test your heart by self-control in words, and you will have the desiring and the irascible parts ready for the service of good things.

(55) The pleasure of the belly's parts falls away in those who practice asceticism, when the body has passed its prime; but it still remains in the throat, for one who has not rightly punished it beforehand. One must therefore be eager, through the cause, to wipe away the reproach of the effect, so that you may not be put to shame, having been found there a stranger to the virtue of self-control.

(56) The ascetic must know when and with what foods he ought to feed his body as an enemy; and when again to encourage it as a friend and to comfort it as weak; lest he unwittingly assign the things of the weak to the friend, and the things of the friend to the enemy, and, having scandalized both, find them fighting against him in a time of trial.

(47) When the one who is nourished makes food preferable to luxury, then the grace of tears, having come upon him, begins to console him and to make him forget every other sweetness, as these have already been swallowed up by an incomparable sweetness.

(58) To the one who is enlarged, tears have been contracted; but they have gushed forth for the one who has loved the narrow way.

(59) Neither the sinner nor the righteous man is without grief; but the one, because he has not entirely abandoned evil; the other, because he has not yet attained the truly good. (60) The virtues that are in our power according to our strength are prayer and silence; but those that are not in our power, but for the most part depend on the constitution of the body, are fasting and vigil. Therefore the contestant must pursue whatever is more easily grasped by him. (61) The house of prayer is endurance; for he is held fast in it; and its possession is humility; for he is nourished by it. (62) Not enduring words, you will not be honored with praises; but looking ahead to the pain before the pleasure, you will escape its distress. (63) Do not be bound by the small thing, and you will not be enslaved to the greater; for the greater evil is not naturally formed before the small. (64) Looking toward the greater things, you will be fearsome to the lesser; but you will be seen as contemptible by these, having failed with regard to those.