Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter XXXVI. How our renunciation of the world is of no use if we are again entangled in those things which we have renounced.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XXXVI.
How our renunciation of the world is of no use if we are
again entangled in those things which we have renounced.
Beware therefore lest at
any time you take again any of those things which you renounced and
forsook, and, contrary to the Lord’s command, return from the
field of evangelical work, and be found to have clothed yourself again
in your coat which you had stripped off;802
neither sink back to the low and earthly lusts and desires of this
world, and in defiance of Christ’s word come down from the rod of
perfection and dare to take up again any of those things which you have
renounced and forsaken. Beware that you remember nothing of your
kinsfolk or of your former affections, and that you are not called back
to the cares and anxieties of this world, and (as our Lord says)
putting your hand to the plough and looking back be found unfit for the
kingdom of heaven.803
Beware lest at
any time, when you have begun to dip into the knowledge of the Psalms
and of this life, you be little by little puffed up and think of
reviving that pride which now at your beginning you have trampled under
foot in the ardour of faith and in fullest humility; and thus (as the
Apostle says) building again those things which you had destroyed, you
make yourself a backslider.804
But rather take
heed to continue even to the end in that state of nakedness of which
you made profession in the sight of God and of his angels. In this
humility too and patience, with which you persevered for ten days
before the doors and entreated with many tears to be admitted into the
monastery, you should not only continue but also increase and go
forward. For it is too bad that when you ought to be carried on from
the rudiments and beginnings, and go forward to perfection, you should
begin to fall back from these to worse things. For not he who begins
these things, but he who endures in them to the end, shall be
saved.805
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
