Seven Deadly Sins

[4.] For envy is a fearful, a fearful thing, and persuades men to despise their own salvation. In this way did both Cain destroy himself, and again, before his time, the devil who was the destroyer of

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Our arrival at Abbot Serapion’s cell, and inquiry on the different kinds of faults and the way to overcome them. In that assembly of Ancients and Elders was a man named Serapion, Serapion when young

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Of these eight faults then, although they are different in their origin and in their way of affecting us, yet the six former; viz., gluttony, fornication, covetousness, anger, dejection, accidie, have

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Serapion: Everybody is perfectly agreed that there are eight principal faults which affect a monk. And all of them are not included in the figure of the nations for this reason, because in Deuteronomy

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Wherefore, I beseech you, let us all be earnest to be far removed from this affection, that we may not fall into his condemnation, that we may not subject ourselves to the same punishment, that we may

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The transition from the Institutes of the monks to the struggle against the eight principal faults. This fifth book of ours is now by the help of God to be produced. For after the four books which ha

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When then this vice has got hold of the slack and lukewarm soul of some monk, it begins by tempting him in regard of a small sum of money, giving him excellent and almost reasonable excuses why he oug

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And so he is driven about, and more and more inflamed with the love of his money, which when it is acquired, never allows a monk either to remain in a monastery or to live under the discipline of a ru

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Would you like to know how dangerously and harmfully that incitement, unless it has been carefully eradicated, will shoot up for the destruction of its owner, and put forth all sorts of branches of di

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How our fourth conflict is against the sin of anger, and how many evils this passion produces. In our fourth combat the deadly poison of anger has to be utterly rooted out from the inmost comers of o

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And at any rate (this is the case), when we are agitated against this very anger, because it has stolen on us against our brother, and when in wrath we expel its deadly incitements, nor suffer it to h

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How our seventh combat is against the spirit of vainglory, and what its nature. Our seventh combat is against the spirit of κενοδοξία, which we may term vain or idle glory: a spirit that takes many s

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For so we read that Hezekiah, King of Judah, a man of most perfect righteousness in all things, and one approved by the witness of Holy Scripture, after unnumbered commendations for his virtues, was o

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Thus much let it suffice to have spoken, as far as, by God’s help, our slender ability was able, concerning spiritual pride of which we have said that it attacks advanced Christians. And this kind of

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And to draw together briefly what has been said of this kind of pride, by collecting, as well as we can, some of its signs that we may somehow convey to those who are thirsting for instruction in perf

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Οὐ τῇ θέ& 139· δὲ μόνον οὐδὲ τῇ ὄψει τέρπει (Sav. τέρποιτο ἄν) τότε ὁ τοιοῦτος, ἀλλὰ καὶ (ἐν B. C ) τῷ σώματι αὐτῷ τοῦ πρὸς τὸν λειμῶνα ὁρῶντος, (τοῦ π. τ. λ. ὁ. om. Sav. with full stop at αὐτῷ., ἐκει

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When the poison of vainglory gets into the Church you have no idea what havoc it can cause. You may argue about knowledge, art, money, countries, and the like without doing particular harm. But you ca

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Let us flee it, then, beloved, and neither envy others, nor fail to pray for our enviers and do all we can to extinguish their passion: neither let us feel as the unthinking do who being minded to exa

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Chapter XI. Evagrius the monk, the intimate disciple of the above mentioned Macarius, educated inLives of the fathers mentions as a most continent and erudite man, wrote many things of use to monks a

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Chapter V.—As God is the Author of Patience So the Devil is of Impatience. Nevertheless, the proceedinggood, the subject requires us to review also the contrary of that good. For you will throw more

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