anchors 271–280

18. Complete unawareness of the loss of the virtues marks the downward path to godlessness. For the person who habitually disobeys God, through indulging in the pleasures of the flesh, will deny God Himself when the occasion arises. In preferring the life of the flesh to God, he places a higher value on sensual pleasures than on the divine will.. [00272] 19. When we think that our intellect has experienced something we must surely believe that its powers of ascetic practice and of contemplation have also shared in this experience in accordance [00273] Third Century with their natural principles, for a subject cannot experience something without the things within the subject also sharing in the experience. I call the intellect a subject because it is capable of receiving virtue and spiritual knowledge. By the phrase ‘within the subject’ I refer to the life of ascetic practice and the contemplative life, which in relation to the intellect are accidents or attributes. Hence they share completely in the experience of the intellect, because it is the intellect’s mobility that produces in them any modification which they undergo. [00274] 20. Suppose the demons invisibly attack the intellect of a virtuous, God-loving man who, like Hezekiah, has girded himself spiritually with power against them, and who through prayer has received an angel sent to him from God (cf. 2 Chr. 32:21), that is to say, has received one of the higher principles of wisdom, and so scatters and destroys the whole army of the devil; and suppose this man ascribes this victory and deliverance not to God but entirely to himself, then he has failed to ‘give thanks to God for the gifts He has given’ (2 Chr. 32:25). His gratitude does not match the greatness of his deliverance, nor does his inner attitude measure up to the bounty of his deliverer. [00275] 21. Let us illumine our intellect with intellections of the divine world and make our body refulgent with the quality of the spiritual principles we have perceived, so that through the rejection of the passions it becomes a workshop of virtue, controlled by the intelligence. If the natural passions of the body are governed by the intelligence there is no reason to censure them. But when their activity is not controlled by the intelligence, they do deserve censure. This is why it is said that such passions must be rejected, for although their activity is natural, they may often be used, when not governed by the intelligence, in a way that is contrary to nature. [00276] 22. Anyone whose heart exults because of the divine gifts he has received, and who preens himself as though those gifts were his own and had not been received (cf. 1 Cor. 4:7), justly calls down wrath on himself. God permits the devil to entangle his intellect, to undermine the virtuous quality of his conduct, and to obscure the luminous principles of spiritual knowledge during his contemplation. This is to make him realize his own weakness and recognize the one power capable of defeating the passions in us. If this happens, he may repent and be brought to a state of humility, discarding his load of conceit [00277] Third Century and being reconciled with God. Then he will avert the wrath that falls on those who do not repent, that takes away the grace which guards their souls, and leaves their ungrateful minds destitute. [00278] 23. When wrath takes the form of God allowing the demons to attack an arrogant intellect through the passions, it is a means of deliverance. For through suffering these shameful attacks the person that boasts of his virtues is enabled to learn who is the giver of these virtues. Otherwise he will be stripped of those things that are not in fact his, though he regarded them. as such, forgetting that he had received them as a gift.: [00279] 24. Truly blessed is the intellect that dies to all created beings: [00280] to sensible beings by quelling the activity of the senses, and to intelligible beings by ceasing from noetic activity. Through such a death of the intellect the will dies to all things. The intellect is then able to receive the life of divine grace and to apprehend, in a manner that transcends its noetic power, not simply created beings, but their Creator.