制度與會談錄 第 2 章 第 13/15 段

This man, while he was dwelling in a coenobium, and necessity constrained him to hand over daily to the steward the appointed quota of work, lest he should be stretched beyond a greater measure of labor by the example of someone else laboring more diligently, or be put to shame—when he had seen some brother enter the coenobium who out of ardor of faith wished to assign himself somewhat more of work, and when he could by no means recall him from such a purpose by secret persuasions, would by wicked counsels and whisperings persuade him to migrate away from there; and, that he might the more easily carry him off, he would feign that he too now, long since offended for many reasons, wished to depart, if he could find the solace of a journey or of a companion.

And when by secret detractions he had enticed him to consent to leave the monastery, appointing him the hour at which he should go out from the monastery, and the place where he should await him going before—he himself, as though about to follow immediately, would remain there on the spot; and when the other, out of shame at his own departure, did not dare to be joined again to the monastery from which he had fled, the enticer of his flight would stay on in the coenobium. Let it suffice to have set down this one example concerning this kind of men for the caution of beginners, that it may appear the more evidently how great evils idleness, according to the sentence of Scripture, brings to birth in the mind of a monk, and how evil conversations corrupt good morals.

This vice of idleness even the most wise Solomon most clearly marks with many words, saying thus: 'He that follows idleness shall be filled with poverty'—whether visible, namely, or invisible, by which every idle man must needs be held entangled in divers vices, and be always a stranger to the contemplation of God and to spiritual riches, concerning which the blessed apostle says: 'For in all things you have been made rich in him, in all utterance and in all knowledge.' But of this poverty of the idle it is elsewhere also thus described: 'And every drowsy one shall be clothed with rags and tatters.' For without doubt he will not deserve to be adorned with that garment of incorruption, concerning which the apostle enjoined: 'Put on the Lord Jesus Christ,' and again:

'clothed with the breastplate of righteousness and of charity,' and concerning which also the Lord speaks to Jerusalem through the prophet: 'Arise, arise, Jerusalem, put on the garments of thy glory.' Whoever, overcome by the sleep of idleness or of sloth, has chosen to be covered not by the labor of his own industry but by the rags of laziness—cutting these off from the perfect fullness and body of the Scriptures—shall fit to himself not a garment of glory nor of comeliness, but an ignominious covering, an excuse for his own slothfulness. For those who are dissolved by this sluggishness, unwilling to be sustained by the labor of their hands—which the apostle unceasingly practiced and enjoined us to practice—are wont to use certain testimonies of the Scriptures, by which they may impose a certain covering upon their sloth, saying that it is written:

'Labor not for the food which perishes, but for that which endures unto life eternal,' and: 'My food is to do the will of my Father.' But these testimonies are certain rags torn from the solid fullness of the Gospel reading, and are patched on to this end: that they may cover rather the ignominy of our idleness and shame than that they should warm and adorn us with that precious garment and perfect vesture of the virtues—which in the Proverbs that wise woman, who is clothed with strength and comeliness, is described as having made either for herself or for her husband: concerning whom it is consequently added: 'She is clothed with strength and comeliness, and she has rejoiced in the latter days.' Concerning this disease of sloth again the same Solomon thus records:

'The ways of those who do nothing are strewn with thorns'—that is, with those and like vices which the apostle above declared to sprout from idleness; and again: 'Every idle man is in desires'—concerning which the apostle records, saying: 'And desire nothing of any man's'; and finally: 'For idleness has taught many evils.' These the apostle evidently enumerated in the things which we have expounded above, saying: 'doing nothing, but being busybodies'; and to this vice he added another: 'and that you strive to be quiet,' and then, 'that you do your own business,' and 'that you walk honestly toward those who are without,' and 'that you desire nothing of any man's.' Whom he also marks as disorderly and rebellious, enjoining that all the diligent be separated from them:

'that you withdraw yourselves,' he says, 'from every brother who walks disorderly and not according to the tradition which they received from us.'

Instructed therefore by these examples, the fathers throughout Egypt in no way suffer monks, and especially the young, to be idle, measuring the disposition of the heart and the progress of patience and humility by diligence in work; and they not only allow them to receive nothing from anyone for the use of their own sustenance, but even from their own labors they not only refresh brethren who arrive and pilgrims, but also throughout the regions of Libya, which labor under barrenness and famine, and likewise throughout the cities for those who waste away in the squalor of prisons, they gather and send an immense provision of nourishment and sustenance—believing that from the fruit of their hands they offer a reasonable and true sacrifice to the Lord by such an oblation.

Hence it is that in these regions we see no monasteries founded with so great a throng of brethren, because they are not upheld by the resources of their own labors, so as to be able to continue perpetually in them; and even if a sufficiency of sustenance could in any way be supplied to them by another's bounty, yet the pleasure of idleness and the wandering of the heart does not suffer them to persevere longer in one place. Whence there is among the Egyptians this holy sentence from the ancient fathers: that the working monk is assailed by one demon, but the idle one is laid waste by innumerable spirits.

Finally, Abba Paul, a most approved among the fathers, when, dwelling in a vaster desert called Porphyrio, he had from the fruits of the palms and a small garden a sufficient provision of nourishment and sustenance secure to him, and could not exercise any other work whereby he might be maintained—because his dwelling was separated from the towns or from habitable land by seven halting-places of that desert or even more, and more would have been demanded as the price of carriage than the value of the labored work could be worth—gathering palm-leaves, he perpetually exacted of himself a daily quota, as though he were to be sustained thereby.

And when his cave had been filled with the work of a whole year, that which he had toiled at with solicitude he would, each single year, setting fire beneath it, burn up—proving thereby that without the labor of the hands a monk can neither endure in his place nor ever ascend to the summit of perfection; so that, although the need of sustenance in no way required this to be done, he accomplished it for the sole purging of the heart and the steadfastness of the thoughts and for perseverance in the cell and for the very victory over and conquest of acedia. When, beginning to dwell in the desert, I had said to Abba Moses, the highest of all the saints, that I had been most grievously worn out the day before by the sickness of acedia, and could not otherwise have been freed from it save by running at once to Abba Paul, he replied:

'You have not freed yourself from it,' he said, 'but rather have offered yourself to it as a captive and subject. For the adversary will henceforth assail you more grievously as a deserter and a fugitive, whom he has seen straightway flee, overcome from the conflict—unless from now on, by joining battle rather than by desertion of your cell or the torpor of sleep, you shall choose to let his onrushing heats evaporate for an hour, but shall rather learn by endurance and conflict to triumph.' Whence it is proved by experience that the assault of acedia is not to be shunned by turning aside and fleeing, but is to be overcome by resisting. ______ ON THE SPIRIT OF VAINGLORY. CHAPTERS. I. That the seventh combat is against vainglory, and concerning its nature. II.

That vainglory assails the monk not only in the carnal part, but also in the spiritual. III. That vainglory is manifold and multiform. IIII. How vainglory attacks the monk on the right hand and on the left. V. By what comparison the nature of vainglory is shown. VI. That vainglory is not extinguished even by the benefit of solitude. VII. That vainglory, when cast down, rises again more sharply to the struggle. VIII. That vainglory grows cool neither by the desert nor by age. VIIII. That vainglory is more dangerous when mingled with virtues. X. The example of King Hezekiah, how he was cast down by the dart of vainglory. XI. The example of King Uzziah, overcome by the taint of the same disease. XII. Various testimonies against vainglory. XIII.

By what ways vainglory assails the monk. XIIII. How vainglory suggests that the degree of clergy be sought after. XV. How vainglory intoxicates the mind. XVI. Concerning him whom an old man, arriving, found in his cell deluded by the vanity of vainglory. XVII. That vices cannot otherwise be cured, unless their roots and causes have been made public. XVIII. That the monk ought to avoid women and bishops. XVIIII. The remedies by which we may overcome vainglory. Our seventh combat is against the spirit of kenodoxia, which we may call vainglory or empty glory—manifold, various, and subtle, so that by no eyes, however most sharp-sighted, can it—I will not say be guarded against—but be seen through and detected.

For it assails the monk not only, like the other vices, in the carnal part, but also in the spiritual, insinuating itself into the mind by a subtler wickedness, so that those who could not be deceived by carnal vices are more sharply wounded by their spiritual successes; and it is the more pernicious in the conflict as it is the more obscure to guard against. For of all the vices the encounter is more manifest and more open, and the instigator, in each one of them, being confuted by rigid contradiction, will depart made weaker, and the adversary, once cast down, will thereafter more feebly attempt his conqueror.

But this one, when for carnal elation it has assailed the mind and has been repelled by the shield of a rejoinder, again—as a certain multiform wickedness, its former garb and person changed—attempts under the appearance of virtues to pierce through and to cut the throat of its conqueror. For the other vices or disturbances are known to be uniform and simple, but this one is manifold and multiform and various, meeting the warrior on every side and from every part the victor. For it tries to wound the soldier of Christ both in dress and in form, in gait, in voice, in work, in vigils, in fastings, in prayer, in seclusion, in reading.

in knowledge, in silence, in obedience, in humility, in longsuffering—it endeavors to wound the soldier of Christ, and like some most pernicious rock covered by swelling waves, it brings unforeseen and pitiable shipwreck upon those sailing with a favorable wind, while it is not guarded against nor foreseen. And so, for him who wishes to go by the royal way through the arms of righteousness which are on the right hand and on the left, it behooves, by apostolic discipline, to pass through glory and dishonor, through evil report and good report, and with such caution to direct the way of virtue amid the swelling waves of temptations, discretion governing and the Spirit of the Lord breathing upon us, that if we should turn aside a little to the right or the left, we may know that we are soon to be dashed upon pernicious rocks.

And therefore we are warned by the most wise Solomon: 'Turn not aside to the right nor to the left'—that is, do not flatter yourself concerning your virtues, and be not lifted up by prosperous successes and spiritual ones, nor, turning aside to the left path of vices, seek for yourself glory from them, according to the apostle, unto your own confusion. For upon him in whom, under the appearance of a girded and shining garment, it could not beget vainglory, it tries to insert it on account of a squalid, uncultivated, and meaner one; whom it could not cast down by honor, it supplants by humility; whom it could not exalt by the ornament of knowledge and eloquence, it dashes down by the gravity of silence. If a man fasts openly, he is assailed by the glory of vanity;

if he has concealed it for the sake of despising glory, he is beaten by the same vice of elation. Lest he be stained by the contagion of vainglory, he avoids celebrating his prayers at greater length in the sight of the brethren; and because he practices them secretly and has no one privy to the deed, he does not escape the stings of vanity. Beautifully do the elders describe the nature of this disease after the manner of an onion and of bulbs, which, stripped of one coat, are found again clothed with another, and are found covered as many times as they have been despoiled. In solitude too it does not cease to pursue him who flees the fellowship of all mortals for glory's sake, and the more anyone has shunned the whole world, the more sharply it hounds him.

It tries to exalt one man because he is most patient of works and labor, another because he is most ready to obey, another because he outweighs the rest in humility; one is tempted by knowledge, another by reading, another by the length of his vigils. Nor does this disease strive to wound anyone save by his own virtues, stretching stumbling-blocks of destruction in those very things in which the wages of life are gathered. For to those wishing to go the way of piety and perfection, the enemies lying in wait hide the snares of deception nowhere else than in the very way in which they walk, according to that sentence of blessed David:

'In this way, in which I walked, they hid a snare for me'—that is, in this very way of virtues in which we walk, striving toward the prize of the heavenly calling, we, lifted up by our successes, may fall, and, the feet of our soul being entangled, we may sink down, fettered and shackled by the snares of vainglory. And so it happens that we who could not be overcome in the conflict of the adversary are conquered by the loftiness of our own triumph; or else—which is yet another kind of deception—that, exceeding the measure of continence or of our own capacity, we lose the perseverance of our course, the infirmity of the body intervening.

All vices, once overcome, wither, and being vanquished are rendered weaker day by day, and are diminished and grow cool either by place or by time; or at any rate, being at variance with the contrary virtues, they are either more easily guarded against or shunned. But this one, when cast down, rises up more sharply to the struggle, and, when it is thought to be extinguished, by its very death revives the more vigorously. The other kinds of vices are wont to assail only those whom they have overcome in the contest; but this one hounds its conquerors the more sharply, and the more forcibly it has been struck down, the more vehemently it engages them by the elation of that very victory. And this is the subtle craft of the enemy: to make the soldier of Christ fall by his own weapons, whom he could not overcome by hostile arms.

Other vices at times, as we have said, subside even by the benefit of places, and, the matter of sin or its opportunity and occasion being withdrawn, they are wont to slacken and diminish; but this one penetrates with him who flees into the desert, and knows not to be shut out by place, nor to wither when the matter is withdrawn from without. For it is animated by nothing other than the successes in virtue of him whom it attacks. Certain vices also, in the process of time, as we have said before, are sometimes softened and vanish; but to this one, length of days—unless it be founded on skillful industry and prudent discretion—not only does no harm, but even knows how to heap up greater fuel of vanity.

Finally, the other disturbances, being at variance with the virtues contrary to them, and warring openly as in clear daylight, are both more easily overcome and guarded against; but this one, being inserted among the virtues and mingled in the battle-line, as one fighting in the blind night, more atrociously deceives the unwary and the incautious. For thus we read that Hezekiah, king of Judah, a man of consummate righteousness in all things and approved by the testimony of the Holy Scriptures, after countless proclamations of virtues, was cast down by a single dart of elation; and he who, by one prayer, was able to obtain the slaughter of a hundred and eighty-five thousand of the army of the Assyrians, an angel laying them waste in the night, is overcome by the boasting of vanity:

of whom—to pass over so long a catalogue of virtues, which it were far too long to recount—I will say this one thing: he who, after the appointed term of life and the day of death predefined by the Lord's sentence, merited by a single prayer to exceed the bounds of his life by fifteen years, the sun returning through the ten degrees which, tending toward its setting, it had already illumined—which sun, putting to flight by its return the lines that the following shadow had occupied at its withdrawal, presented to the whole world a doubled day, against the fixed laws of nature, by an unheard-of miracle. After such and so incredible signs, after such immense proofs of virtues, hear the Scripture relating how he was dashed down by his own successes:

'In those days,' it says, 'Hezekiah was sick unto death, and he prayed to the Lord; and he heard him, and gave him a sign'—namely that which we read was given concerning the returning of the sun through Isaiah the prophet, in the fourth book of Kingdoms. 'But he did not,' it says, 'render again according to the benefits which he had received, because his heart was lifted up; and there was made wrath against him, and against Judah and Jerusalem; and he was humbled afterward, because his heart had been exalted, both he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and therefore the wrath of the Lord did not come upon them in the days of Hezekiah.' How pernicious, how grievous is the disease of elation!

Such great righteousness, such great virtues, such great faith and devotion, which merited to change nature itself and the laws of the whole world, perish by a single elation—so that, all his virtues being consigned to oblivion as though they had never been, he would forthwith have incurred the wrath of the Lord, had he not appeased it by resuming humility; so that he who, by elation impelling him, had fallen from so lofty a height of merits, could not ascend to the lost summit again save by those same steps of humility. Do you wish to receive yet another example of a like ruin?

Uzziah, the forefather of this king whom we have mentioned, himself also commended in all things by the testimony of Scripture, after the mighty proclamations of his virtues, after innumerable triumphs which he wrought by the merit of his devotion and faith—learn how he too was cast down by the elation of vainglory: 'And the name of Uzziah went forth,' it says, 'because the Lord helped him and had strengthened him. And when he was strengthened, his heart was lifted up unto his own destruction, and he neglected the Lord his God.'

You discern another example of a most grievous ruin, and you behold two men so righteous and so perfect—how pernicious the successes of prosperity are wont to be, so that those who could not be broken by adversities are, if they be incautious, more sharply dashed down by prosperities, and those who in the conflict and the battle-line escaped the perils of death, succumb to their own trophies and triumphs. Therefore the apostle warns: 'Do not become desirous of vainglory'; and the Lord, chastising the Pharisees, says: 'How can you believe, who receive glory one from another, and seek not the glory which is from God alone?' Concerning these, blessed David too says with a threat: 'For God has scattered the bones of those who please men.'

It is wont also to exalt the minds of beginners, and of those who have as yet advanced but little either in virtue of soul or in knowledge—either on account of the sound of the voice, namely that they chant more tunefully, or that they are either leaner in flesh or more comely in body, or that they have rich and noble parents, or that they have despised military service and honors. Sometimes too it persuades someone that he could very easily have attained dignities and wealth—which perhaps he could never at any time even have grasped—if he had persevered in the world, inflating him with an empty hope even about uncertain things and about things which he never possessed, exalting him with the glory of vanity as one who had despised them. Sometimes indeed it instills the degree of clergy and the desire of the presbyterate or of the diaconate.

which, if he should have obtained it even unwillingly, it depicts him as about to fulfill with such holiness and rigor that he could furnish examples of sanctity to the other priests also, and then win over many not only by the pattern of his conduct, but also by his teaching and discourse. It also makes him, while dwelling in solitude or in his cell, go round in mind and soul through the houses and monasteries of divers people, and acquire the conversions of very many under the incitement of an imaginary exhortation.

And so the unhappy soul is driven by such vanity, deluded as by a most profound slumber, so that for the most part, enticed by the sweetness of thoughts of this kind and filled with these phantasms, it cannot contemplate even the present acts or the brethren, while it delights to cling, as though they were true, to those things which, waking, it dreamed by the wandering of its thoughts. I remember a certain old man, when I was dwelling in the desert of Scete, who, when, coming for the sake of a visit to the cell of a certain brother, he had drawn near to the door and had heard him murmuring something within, stood still a little while, wishing to learn what he might be reading of the Scriptures, or, as is the custom, might be reciting from memory as he worked.

And when the most devout observer, laying his ear close and listening the more curiously, perceived that the man had been so enticed by the assault of this spirit that he imagined himself to be delivering in church an exhortatory sermon to the people, and when the old man, standing there, had heard him finish his discourse and, changing his role again, begin to celebrate—as a deacon—the dismissal of the catechumens, then at last he knocked at the door. The brother came out, and running to meet the old man with his customary reverence, brought him in; but stung by the conscience of his own thoughts, he asked how long ago the old man had come, lest by standing at the door too long he had suffered some affront. Jestingly and graciously the old man replied: 'I came just now, when you were celebrating the dismissal of the catechumens.'

I have judged it necessary to insert these things in this little work, so that, instructed concerning the force of these assaults and the order of the vices by which the wretched soul is torn, not only by reasoning but also by examples, we may be the more cautious in avoiding the snares and manifold traps of the enemy.

For these matters are brought forward openly by the Egyptian fathers without reserve, in such a way that in their own narration they disclose and lay bare—as though they themselves still endured them—the struggles of all the vices, whether those which the younger monks now suffer or those which they are yet to suffer; so that, while the elders expound to them the illusions of all the passions, whatever belong to beginners or to those seething in spirit, the young may come to know the hidden secrets of their own conflicts, and, contemplating these as in a mirror, may be taught both the causes of the vices by which they are assailed and their remedies; and being thus schooled beforehand for the encounters of future battles even before these come upon them, may be instructed how they ought to take precaution against them, to meet them, and to do combat with them.

As the most skilled of physicians are wont not only to heal present diseases but also, with keen foresight, to forestall those to come, and to prevent them by wholesome precepts or draughts, so these truest physicians of souls likewise, by spiritual discourse—as by a kind of heavenly antidote—kill in advance the maladies of the heart that are about to arise, and do not suffer them to grow up in the minds of the young, opening to them both the causes of impending passions and the remedies for their cure. Wherefore this is the judgment handed down from of old among the fathers, and abiding even to this day, which I cannot bring forward without my own confusion—for I could neither avoid my own sister nor escape the hands of a bishop—that a monk must by all means flee women and bishops.

For neither of these permits the man whom he has once bound to his intimacy either to devote himself henceforth to the quiet of his cell, or to cleave with purest eyes to divine contemplation through the beholding of holy things. Therefore let the athlete of Christ, who longs to contend lawfully in the true and spiritual combat, hasten by every means to overcome this many-shaped and manifold beast. Assailing us as it does on every side, like a manifold wickedness, we shall be able to escape it by such a remedy as this: that, calling to mind that saying of David, 'The Lord hath scattered the bones of them that please men,' we should in the first place permit ourselves to do nothing for the sake of vanity or of gaining empty glory;

then let us strive to guard, with like watchfulness, those things which we have done with a good beginning, lest the disease of vainglory, creeping in afterwards, empty out all the fruit of our labors. Whatever, moreover, in the manner of life among the brethren the common practice does not receive or exercise, let us with all zeal shun as given over to ostentation; and let us avoid those things which can make us conspicuous among the rest, and, as though we alone did them, must have praise sought for us among men. For by these signs above all it will be shown that the deadly contagion of vainglory clings to us.

This we shall most easily escape if we consider that we shall not only utterly lose the fruits of whatever labors we have performed with an aim toward vainglory, but shall also, having become guilty of a great crime, pay eternal punishments as though sacrilegious—inasmuch as we, to the injury of God, chose to perform for men's favor the work which we ought to have done under His regard—being convicted by Him who is the knower of secret things of having preferred men to God and the glory of the world to the glory of the Lord. ON THE SPIRIT OF PRIDE. CHAPTERS. I. That the eighth combat is against the spirit of pride, and concerning its nature. II. That there are two kinds of pride. III. That pride carries off all the virtues alike. IIII.

That through pride that Lucifer was made a devil out of an archangel. V. That the kindling-stuff of all the vices sprang up out of pride. VI. That the vice of pride, although it is last in the order of the struggle, is nevertheless first in time and origin. VII. That so great is the evil of pride that it deserves to have God Himself as its adversary. VIII. In what manner God extinguished the pride of the devil by the virtue of humility, and various testimonies upon this. VIIII. In what manner we too can overcome pride. X. That no one can obtain the perfection of the virtues or the promised blessedness by his own powers alone. XI. The example of the thief, or of David, or of our calling, to demonstrate the grace of God. XII.