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| Chapter XIX. The answer on the devil's illusion, because he promises us the peace of a vaster solitude.
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Chapter XIX.
The answer on the devil’s illusion, because he
promises us the peace of a vaster solitude.
Abraham: Never to be resorted
to by men at all is a sign of an unreasonable and ill-considered
strictness, or rather of the greatest coldness. For if a man walks in
this way, on which he has entered, with too slow steps, and lives
according to the former man, it is right that none—I say not of
the saints—but of any men should visit him. But you, if you are
inflamed with true and perfect love of our Lord, and follow God, who
indeed is love, with entire fervour of spirit, are sure to be
resorted to by men, to
whatever inaccessible spot you may flee, and, in proportion as the
ardour of divine love brings you nearer to God, so will a larger
concourse of saintly brethren flock to you. For, as the Lord says,
“A city set on an hill cannot be hid,”2321
because “them that love Me,”
saith the Lord, “will I honour, and they that despise Me shall be
contemned.”2322
But you ought
to know that this is the subtlest device of the devil, this is his best
concealed pitfall, into which he precipitates some wretched and
heedless persons, so that, while he is promising them greater things,
he takes away the requisite advantages of their daily profit, by
persuading them that more remote and raster deserts should be sought,
and by portraying them in their heart as if they were sown with
marvellous delights. And further some unknown and non-existent spots,
he feigns to be well-known and suitable and already given over to our
power and able to be secured without any difficulty. The men also of
that country he feigns to be docile and followers of the way of
salvation, that, while he is promising richer fruits for the soul
there, he may craftily destroy our present profits. For when owing to
this vain hope each one separates himself from living together with the
Elders and has been deprived of all those things that he idly imagined
in his heart, he rises as it were from a most profound slumber, and
when awake will find nothing of those things of which he had dreamed.
And so as he is hampered by larger requirements for this life and
inextricable snares, the devil will not even allow him to aspire to
those things which he had once promised himself, and as he is liable no
longer to those rare and spiritual visits of the brethren which he had
formerly avoided, but to daily interruptions from worldly folk, he will
never suffer him to return even to the moderate quiet and system of the
anchorite’s life.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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