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| Chapter XIX. The reason why one nation is to be forsaken, while seven are commanded to be destroyed.
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Chapter XIX.
The reason why one nation is to be forsaken, while seven
are commanded to be destroyed.
But the reason why that
nation in which the children of Israel were born, was bidden not to be
utterly destroyed but only to have its land forsaken, while it was
commanded that these seven nations were to be completely destroyed, is
this: because however great may be the ardour of spirit, inspired by
which we have entered on the desert of virtues, yet we cannot possibly
free ourselves entirely from the neighbourhood of gluttony or from its
service and, so to speak, from daily intercourse with it. For the
liking for delicacies and dainties will live on as something natural
and innate in us, even though we take pains to cut off all superfluous
appetites and desires, which, as they cannot be altogether destroyed,
ought to be shunned and avoided. For of these we read “Take no
care for the flesh with its desires.”1352
While then we still retain the feeling for this care, which we are
bidden not altogether to cut off, but to keep without its desires, it
is clear that we do not destroy the Egyptian nation but separate
ourselves in a sort of way from it, not thinking anything about
luxuries and delicate feasts, but, as the Apostle says, being
“content with our daily food and clothing.”1353
And this is commanded in a figure in the
law, in this way: “Thou shalt not abhor the Egyptian, because
thou wast a stranger in his land.”1354
For necessary food is not refused to the body without danger to it and
sinfulness in the soul. But of those seven troublesome faults we must
in every possible way root out the affections from the inmost recesses
of our souls. For of them we read: “Let all bitterness and anger
and indignation and clamour and blasphemy be put away from you with all
malice:” and again: “But fornication and all uncleanness
and covetousness let it not so much as be named among you, or obscenity
or foolish talking or scurrility.”1355
We can then cut out the roots of these faults which are grafted into
our nature from without while we cannot possibly cut off occasions of
gluttony. For however far we have advanced, we cannot help being what
we were born. And that this is so we can show not only from the lives
of little people like ourselves but from the lives and customs of all
who have attained perfection, who even when they have
got rid of incentives to all other
passions, and are retiring to the desert with perfect fervour of spirit
and bodily abnegation, yet still cannot do without thought for their
daily meal and the preparation of their food from year to
year.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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