John Cassian

“ Third, so that our inner human, all that tickling of desire having been in every way and thoroughly put to death, we may offer ourselves to God as if the living from the dead, and so through this achievement arriving at the uninterrupted peace of our body, we may offer even our members as instruments now not of desire but of righteousness to God. ”

“ But if that most vile enemy, in order to withdraw from us the medicine of heavenly cure, has violated the safekeeping of our sleeping mind, provided only that it has been contaminated by no blameable sensual desire, no assent to delight, but merely some voiding produced by natural necessity, or at least drawn out by the attack of the devil without any pleasurable sense to create an obstacle to our sanctification, we can and should confidently approach the grace of the life-giving food. ”

“ The third cause occurs when indeed by contrition of heart and body we desire to achieve the perpetual purity of chastity through the regulated and careful discipline of continence. As we have surpassing regard for the benefit of body and spirit, however, the envy of the most deceitful enemy attacks us. He tries to destroy the assurance of our conscience and to humiliate us by some offense, particularly on those days in which, through greater merit of integrity, we seek to please the divine sight. ”

“ If therefore in that time, in which it is proper to approach the holy mysteries, we sense ourselves to have been polluted by an emission during our sleep, should we dare undertake that sacred reception of saving food, or avoid it? ”

“ By the fault of which error and indolence it consequently happens not only that the diverse wanderings of the thoughts shamelessly and impudently burst in upon the solitude of the mind, but also that the seeds of all original passions persist within it. ”

“ For which reason, if we wish to be freed from the enticement of these illusions, we must struggle with all our virtue. First, that the passion of virtue be conquered, as the blessed Apostle says, let not sin reign in your mortal body, so that you obey its desires. ”

“ Indeed, the purveyor of spiritual riches gathers a double profit, since not only in the progress of the hearer, but also in making their own argument do they receive a great benefit, no less kindling in themselves a desire for perfection while they instruct the listener. ”

“ But it is one kind of merit to arrive at the peace of idle good fortune, another to achieve the triumph of glorious virtue. For the power of the latter is the conqueror of all vices and worthy of marvel, whereas the former, whom innate good has kept safe in their idleness, is I might say more worthy of pity than praise. ”

“ For whoever eats and drinks the bread and cup of the Lord unworthily, eats and drinks judgment on themselves, not discerning the body, [1] that is to say, in no way severing that celestial meal from the utility of common food, nor judging it to be such, that only the pure in mind and flesh ought to presume to. ”

“ Of the Monk’s Girdle.
As we are going to speak of the customs and rules of the monasteries, how by God’s grace can we better begin than with the actual dress of the monks, for we shall then be able to expound in due course their interior life when we have set their outward man before your eyes. A monk, then, as a soldier of Christ ever ready for battle, ought always to walk with his loins girded. ”

“ Having been established in this purity of chastity, sin will not longer control us. [4] For we are not under the law, which while it commends the permitted rights of marriage, even that by the help of which the drive for illicit fornication is assuaged, nevertheless feeds and preserves the fire deep within us ”

“ Which done, the pantomime of diabolical operation was so completely exposed, that soon by the protecting virtue of the Lord's body the previous pattern of illusion ceased. In which the deceit of the enemy was clearly revealed and exposed, and equally the belief of the elders was confirmed, which teaches that often this impure emission is the fault neither of the body nor of the soul, but is impelled by deceits of the scheming adversary. ”

“ So amongst you many are sick and weak, and many sleep, [2] that is, saying that spiritual illness and death is principally generated by this presumption. For many people, who presume to this by a forbidden usurpation, are infirm in faith and weak in mind, that is to say entangled in the sluggishness of the passions, and sleeping the sleep of sin, are never aroused from this lethal slumber by saving disquiet. ”

“ Moreover, in certain of those who are starting out and whose bodies have not yet been worn down by the extended correction of fasting, we may believe that diabolical action causes this deceit for the following reason. When he knows these people to be zealous in strict fasts, he seeks to undermine all of their attempts by this trick. Then they feel themselves not only to have made no progress towards bodily purity by stricter fasting, but even to have been more grievously assaulted. ”

“ For when food and drink is served to us late or too little or poorly prepared, if we are weighed down by the domination of gluttony, it will follow that we will also be provoked by the goads of anger. ”

“ And of these the first-mentioned, who even in the Old Testament displayed the flowers of a virgin life and an example of chastity and continence, when he had been sent by the Lord to rebuke the messengers of Ahaziah, the wicked king of Israel, because when confined by sickness he had intended to consult Beelzebub, the god of Ekron, on the state of his health, and thereupon the said prophet had met them and said that he should not come down from the bed on which he lay,—this man was made known to the bed-ridden king by the description of the character of his clothing. ”

“ And finding the fault to be neither one of the soul nor of the flesh, they most confidently judged that he ought to take part in the sacred feasts, lest that is in persisting in this determination, he should be bound by the clever snares of the enemy, and unable to participate in sanctification and the body of Christ, and so through this deceit be forever defrauded of the medicine of saving remedy. ”

“ The second cause of this impure discharge is if a mind empty of all spiritual endeavour and exercise, and not fixed by the discipline of the inner human, draws to itself a certain rust of slothfulness by the habit of continual inactivity, or when by not bewaring the trifles of unclean thoughts it becomes sluggish in pursuing sublime purity of heart, so that it comes to believe that the whole sum of perfection and chastity lies in the correction of the outward human. ”

“ Everyone who is clean shall eat meat, but any soul in which there is uncleanness that shall eat from the meat of the saving sacrifice which is of the Lord, he will be destroyed before the face of the Lord. ”

“ But so that it might be more clearly demonstrated, that this inpurity can be elicited even by the action of the enemy: we know a brother, who though he constantly possessed chastity of heart, acquired by the greatest circumspection and humility, and was never tempted by nocturnal illusions, yet whenever he was preparing to receive the Lord's communion, he was polluted with an emission while sleeping. ”

“ Albeit we must confess that sometimes without any effort of mind, either through the nature of their bodies or through maturity of age, certain men are rarely contaminated, or at least are not soiled by the voiding of this flow. ”

“ Superfluity of which necessarily makes fluids of this sort more prone to be generated, and since their condensation can not but be discharged and by the very law of nature be driven out, they come out under the favourable moment of some itching or illusion. ”

“ Which, inasmuch as they hide themselves away in the mind's inner sanctuary, then with howsoever strict fasts the body is corrected, nevertheless they disturb the sleeper with alluring fantasies, by which before the proper course of time, not yet from the necessity of nature, but rather from wicked deceit, unclean fluids are enticed out. ”

“ In Deuteronomy also, the unclean person is similarly segregated in a mystical way from the spiritual camp: If there is anyone among you, who is polluted by a nocturnal dream, let them leave the camp, and not return before they have washed in water in the evening ”

“ And so it may happen that as with the discharge of them, so even the illusions disturb the sleepers more rarely or less strongly, because not only does the emptying derive from the imagination, but also the imagination derives from the excess of the emptying. ”

“ But avarice, vainglory, pride, and the multitude of all the vices are joined in inseparable association, and so whichever vice, if it has begun to grow strong in us, will sponsor the importation of the others. ”

“ Which, not so much by emptiness of the flesh than by circumspection of the mind and by virtue, if they cannot be entirely prevented, at least they are led to that simple quality of an emptying, the grace of God assisting. ”