TRIALS ON THE WAY TO GOD
God does not grant a great gift without a great trial.
I/42 (209) = PR 39 (298)
I myself have had many experiences of these things, and what I have discovered is along the lines of what I have indicated here as a reminder, out of brotherly love, since many, I think, are benefitted by these experiences.
II/33,3
ISAAC THE SYRIAN, while best known for his descriptions of the high mystical states characteristic of ascetics who have reached spiritual perfection, does not overlook the negative aspects of christian life—the ordeals and sufferings through which an ascetic has to pass.
In this chapter we shall analyze Isaac’s teaching on the difficulties of the christian ascetic life and make an attempt to summarize the negative experiences described in the pages of his works. First, we shall speak of the various temptations which are endured by the ascetic who travels towards God, and, second, of abandonment by God, which is the highest form of suffering.
1. TEMPTATIONS
The syriac term nesyona, which corresponds to the greek peirasmos, can be translated as ‘temptation’, ‘trial’, ‘ordeal’, ‘examination’, or ‘test’; a related word nesyana means ‘experience’. Both are related to the hebrew root nsh, which means ‘to put on trial, to test’.
In the Bible, we find several types of temptations. Involved in them are three persons: God, a human being, and the devil. God ‘tempts’ Abraham in order to test his faith;1 God tests his chosen people in the ‘furnace of affliction’;2 He ‘tries the hearts and reins’ of people;3 He ‘searches all inward parts of the belly’.4 The devil, on the other hand, tempts Adam and Eve, urging them to eat from the tree of knowledge;5 he tempts Jesus in the desert.6 There is also a third type of temptation—when a human person tempts God: in their disbelief,7 the people of Israel tempted God; the Pharisees and Herodians tempted Jesus;8 Ananias and Sapphira tempted the Holy Spirit.9 Finally, in a fourth type of temptation, a human being is ‘tempted when he is driven away out of his own lust’.10
Normally, Isaac the Syrian speaks of the two first types of temptation—that coming from God and that coming from the devil. In the first case, it is a question of the experience which is necessary for attaining to knowledge of God; in the second, of what a Christian should fear and try to avoid. Isaac was asked how the words of Christ, ‘Pray that ye enter not into temptation,’11 fit in with Christ’s own constant admonitions to bear temptations and afflictions.12 Isaac answered:
Pray, he says, that you enter not into temptations of your faith. Pray that through your mind’s self-esteem you enter not into temptation with the demon of blasphemy and pride. Pray that you enter not by God’s permission into the manifest temptations of the senses, which the devil knows how to bring upon you when God permits it because of the foolish thoughts you entertain. … Pray that you enter not into temptations of soul through doubts and provocations by which the soul is violently drawn into great conflict. Even so, prepare yourself with all your soul to receive bodily temptations; voyage in them with all your members and fill your eyes with tears, so that the angel who guards you does not depart from you. For without trials God’s providence is not seen, and you cannot obtain boldness before God, nor learn the wisdom of the Spirit, nor can divine longing be established in you. Before temptations man prays to God as though he were a stranger; but when he enters into temptations for the sake of his love and does not permit himself to be deflected, then straightway he has, as it were, God as his debtor, and God reckons him as a true friend, since he had warred against his enemy and defeated him for the sake of his will. This is to ‘pray that you enter not into temptation’. And again, pray that you enter not into the fearsome temptation of the devil by reason of your arrogance, but because you love God, and you wish that his power might help you and through you vanquish his enemies. Pray that you enter not into such trials because of the folly of your thoughts and works, but rather in order that your love of God may be tested, and that his strength be glorified in your patience.13
Those trials which come from God are sent with the aim of healing the illnesses of the soul. Through bearing temptations a person is drawn near to God and his faith is strengthened:
By the experience of many interventions of divine assistance in temptations, a man also acquires firm faith. Thenceforward he has no fear, and he gains stout-heartedness in temptations from the training he acquired. Temptation is profitable for every one. … Ascetic strugglers are tried, that they may add to their riches; the slothful are tried, that they may thereby guard themselves from what is harmful to them; the sleepy are tried, that they may be armed with wakefulness; those who are far away are tried, that they may draw nearer to God; those who are God’s own are tried, that with boldness they may enter into his house. … There is no man who will not feel oppressed at the time of training. And there is no man who will not find bitter the time when he is given the virulent potion of trials to drink. Without temptations a man cannot acquire a strong constitution …14
Temptations are sent by God so that in the midst of them one might feel the closeness of God and his providence. When a person put his hope firmly in God, then God sends temptations in order to bring him closer:
As soon as divine grace has made his thinking secure, … so that he puts his confidence in God, she begins, little by little, to introduce him to temptations. She permits him to be sent temptations suited to his measure, that he may bear their force. But in these very temptations her aid palpably draws near him, that he may take courage until little by little he gains experience, acquires wisdom, and holds his enemies in contempt because of the confidence he has in God. For it is not possible without temptations for a man to grow wise in spiritual warfare, to know his Provider and perceive his God, and to be secretly confirmed in his faith, save by virtue of the experience which he has gained. … For God’s marvelous love of man is made known to him when he is in the midst of circumstances that cut off his hope; herein God shows his power by saving him.15
It is amidst temptations, afflictions, and struggles that one can find God, not in ease and slackness. Isaac speaks of bearing temptations as sailing in rough seas: when the voyage is over and a person reaches the promised haven, he thanks God for the tribulations he has had to endure.16 Isaac also compares an ascetic with a diver who searches for pearls at the bottom of the sea—a profession whose dangers were familiar to him since he came from Qatar on the Red Sea:17
If the diver found a pearl in every oyster, then everyone would quickly become rich! And if he brought one up the moment he dove, without waves beating against him, without any sharks encountering him, without having to hold his breath until he nearly expires, without being deprived of the clear air granted to everyone and having to descend to the abyss—if all this were the case, pearls would come thicker and faster than lightning flashes!18
The closer a person comes to God the higher the intensity of temptations rises: this is a law of the spiritual life.
As long as you are journeying in the way to the city of the kingdom [Isaac writes] and are drawing near the city of God, let this be for you a signpost: the strength of the temptations you encounter. The nearer you draw and progress, the more temptations multiply against you. Whenever you perceive in your soul diverse and intensified temptations in your path, therefore, know that at that time your soul has in fact secretly entered a new higher level, and that grace has been added to her in the state where she was found; for God leads the soul into the afflictions of trials in exact proportion to the magnificence of the grace which he bestows.19
Isaac emphasizes that God does not send us temptations which would exceed our ability to bear: he always adjusts the force and quantity of them to human strength. But if a person is unable to bear great temptations, he will also not be able to receive great gifts: this is another law of the spiritual life.
If a man’s soul has an infirmity and it does not have strength enough for great temptations, and it therefore asks not to enter into them, and God heeds this, then know for a certainty that insofar as the soul is insufficient for great trials, in the same measure it is insufficient for great gifts; and insofar as great temptations are prevented from entering upon the soul, to the same degree great gifts are withheld from it. For God does not grant a great gift without a great trial. In his wisdom, which is beyond the understanding of his creatures, God has ordained that gifts be bestowed in proportion to temptations.20
At the same time, Isaac claims, God will not send someone great trials unless He has prepared him by divine grace to bear them. In the combination of temptations and gifts of grace there is a certain dynamic:
Question: Does, then, the trial come first and afterward the gift, or the gift first and the trial follow behind it?
Answer: A trial does not come unless the soul has first secretly received both a portion greater than the measure which it had formerly received and the Spirit of grace. The Lord’s temptation and the trials of the apostles testify to the truth of this, for they were not permitted to enter into temptation until they had received the Comforter. It is fitting that those who partake of good should endure also their trials, because their affliction is mingled together with the good. … If it be so, therefore, that a gift is before trial, nevertheless it is certain that for the testing of a man’s freedom, his awareness of temptations precedes his awareness of a gift; for grace never enters a man before he has tasted temptations. Hence, in reality grace comes first, but in the awareness of the senses, it delays to manifest itself.21
What is the difference between trials coming from God and those due to the activity of the devil? The trials from God are sent to ‘the friends of God, that is to say, the humble’. The friends of God are placed in trials, not in punishment, but with a view to their spiritual progress. These trials are acts of divine pedagogy:
The trials inflicted by the paternal rod for the soul’s progress and growth, and those whereby it may be trained, are the following: sloth, oppressiveness of the body; enfeeblement of the limbs; despondency; confusion of mind; bodily pains; temporary loss of hope; darkening of thoughts; absence of human help; scarcity of bodily necessities, and the like. By these temptations a man’s soul feels herself lonely and defenseless, his heart is deadened and filled with humility, and he is trained thereby to come to yearn for his Creator. Yet divine providence proportions these trials to the strength and needs of those who suffer them. In them are mingled both consolation and griefs, light and darkness, wars and aid. … This is the sign of the increase of God’s help.22
By contrast, temptations that come from the devil are sent to ‘the enemies of God, that is to say, the proud’: these temptations ‘fall upon the men who are shameless’ and who in their pride abuse God’s goodness. Temptations of this sort may exceed the limit of human strength and lead to a spiritual fall. Isaac divides temptations from the devil into two categories: those afflicting the soul and the body. To the first he ascribes ‘the withdrawal of the forces of wisdom which men possess, the piercing sensation of the thought of fornication,… quick temper, the desire to have one’s own way, disputatiousness, vituperation, a scornful heart, an intellect completely gone astray, blasphemy against the name of God, absurd notions that are ridiculous, or rather lamentable’. To the temptations of the body belong
painful adversities, always prolonged, intricate, and difficult to resolve; constant encounters with wicked and godless men; falling into the hands of men who afflict us; the heart’s being suddenly, irrationally, seized by terror; many times stumbling severely on rocks, and having grave falls from high places, and similar mishaps which do the body great injury; and, finally, the heart’s being entirely destitute of reliance upon God’s care and of the confidence of its faith.23
Those Christians who truly love God prove their love by bearing temptations and are strengthened in love: they are tested, like gold in fire, and by this testing become friends of God. On the contrary, those who do not love God ‘fall away as dross, since giving way to the enemy they leave the field of battle laden with guilt, either because of the laxity of their mind or because of their pride. They were not worthy to receive the power that the saints had working with them …’24 In this way, temptations reveal who is a friend and who is an enemy of God, who is faithful and who is not. Temptations are therefore that ‘crisis’, a judgment before the Last Judgment, where the separation of the sheep from the goats takes place.25
A person who tempts God by his pride and laxity can be delivered into the hands of the devil for a trial or temptation. In this case God’s anger flames up against him:
You have not yet experienced the sternness of the Lord, when he changes from his right hand, full of kindness, to his left hand, exacting his due to those who abuse him—how angry he burns, and how filled he is with zeal at the time when this has been aroused. He will not turn back, even though you beg him at length, once he has been aroused to this; rather, he burns like a furnace in his anger.26
It is very rare for Isaac to speak of God’s anger—which does not mean a punishment or requital for sins. As we saw in Chapter I, the idea of divine requital was totally alien to Isaac: God is not angry at someone because he feels insulted or because he burns with the desire of vengeance. Rather he shows visible signs of anger, changing from his right hand to the left, so that a human person can experience the feeling of abandonment and may then be converted to God with a whole heart.
It is precisely for this purpose that one can be ‘delivered unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh’.27 The devil cannot tempt a person at all unless this is allowed by God. There is then a certain ‘accord’ between God and the devil concerning the limits within which the latter can act. The devil ‘asks’ God for people, as he ‘asked’ to put the righteous Job on trial,28 but it is entirely up to God’s power whether or not to deliver someone for trial. Therefore, both the temptations that come from God and those that come from the devil are allowed by God and so can serve one’s salvation and spiritual progress.
According to Isaac, the devil has four methods of warring against ascetics. First, at the very beginning when someone enters the way to God, the devil inflicts upon him grave and strong temptations, so that by means of them he may bring the aspiring ascetic to the abyss of despair and turn him from his chosen path. Second, the devil waits a while and when the ascetic’s initial zeal grows cold the devil approaches him. Third, the devil observes that an ascetic has made good progress in the spiritual life and then sows in his mind the thought that his success can be ascribed to himself and not to God. Fourth, the devil tempts an ascetic with something to which he is inclined by nature—stimulating in his intellect, for example, thoughts of fornication or various illusions. ‘The devil and tempter is allowed to make war upon the saints in all these ways of temptation, so that thereby their love of God may be proven…’29
Temptations from God and temptations from the devil can, therefore, both be useful to an ascetic and give him a chance of proving his love for God. Isaac invites every Christian to prepare himself to bear temptations. Without them, no one can make progress in virtues:
Whenever you wish to make a beginning in some good work, first prepare yourself for the temptations that will come upon you, and do not doubt the truth. For it is the enemy’s custom, whenever he sees a man beginning a good mode of life with fervent faith, to confront him with diverse and fearful temptations. … It is not that our adversary has such power—for then no one could ever do good—but that God concedes it to him, as we have learned with the righteous Job.30 Therefore prepare yourself manfully to encounter temptations …31
Isaac describes the ascetical life as a constant fluctuation between periods of ‘assistance’ and ‘feebleness’, presence and abandonment, spiritual ups and downs:
Thus in this way the variation between assistance and feebleness takes place for a person at all times and at all stages in the ascetic life: it may be in the battles waged against chastity, or in the varied states of joy and of gloom; for sometimes there are luminous and joyous stirrings, but then again all at once there is darkness and cloud. Likewise with the things revealed in certain mystical and divine insights concerning truth: the same variation is experienced by the person who serves God, with the apperception of the assistance of divine power which suddenly attaches itself to the intellect—or it may be the apperception of the opposite, where the intention is that he should receive awareness of the weakness of human nature, and realize what his own nature is, and how weak, feeble, stupid and childish it is …32
Periods of abandonment and spiritual decay are necessary for a person that he may perceive his helplessness and dependence upon God. Abandonment (meštabqanuta) is not God withdrawing from a person: it is a subjective sense of God’s absence; this person is not really forgotten by God but God leaves him alone with the reality that surrounds him. Antony the Great was left alone for many days to struggle against the demons; when he was completely exhausted, God appeared to him as a ray of light. ‘Where were you?’ Antony asked, ‘why didn’t you come in the beginning, to stop my sufferings?’ The voice of God answered him: ‘I was here, Antony, but I waited to see you struggle’.33 It is God’s will that, through the experience of abandonment, a person may gain his own victory and become worthy of God.
Since the fall of Adam, abandonment has been an experience common to the whole of humanity—both believers and unbelievers. For a believer, however, it is an experience of the temporary absence of God, and gives place to an intense feeling of presence; for an atheist it is an experience of constant and irreparable absence. An atheist considers the absence of God the norm; a believer endures the feeling of absence as very strong and intensely painful suffering. He cannot cope with the absence of God. Even though in his mind he knows that God has not forgotten him, his soul and heart thirst for conscious experience of God’s presence. The life in God is accompanied with the feeling of God’s presence, and when this feeling is lost, a believer cannot find calm until it returns.
Abandonment is the critical stage of one’s spiritual development wherein one’s attitude to God is tested in a very profound way. For any Christian, the experience of abandonment has only two possible outcomes—either growth of faith and drawing nearer to God, or a ‘shipwreck’ of faith34 and loss of God. Thus Isaac cautions against cursing God during periods of abandonment and against yielding to a temptation which may lead to a loss of faith. When someone is deprived of grace, Isaac says, trust in God and a right way of thinking about God’s providence are abandoned;35 the person can come to the ‘conclusion that God no longer exists for him’.36 Yet instead of being angry at God, a person should remind himself of God’s good providence and calm himself down:
Draw near a little to God in your trials, O fellow human being, by means of your mental disposition. Are you really aware against whom you are thundering away? You would immediately find relief if you have the wisdom to remember the hidden providence of this very same God.37
This feeling of abandonment occurs for various reasons.38 Sometimes the reason is a person’s own negligence and shortness of patience, as well as pride. In this case abandonment appears as faint-heartedness and despondency, which is a hell on earth:
When it is God’s pleasure to subject a man to even greater afflictions, he permits him to fall into the hands of faint-heartedness. This begets in him a mighty force of despondency, wherein he feels his soul being suffocated. This is a foretaste of gehenna. From this, there is unleashed upon him the spirit of aberration—from which ten thousand trials gush forth; confusion; wrath; blasphemy; protesting and bewailing one’s lot; perverted thoughts; wandering from place to place; and the like. And if you should ask what the cause of these things is, I answer that it is you yourself, for the reason that you have not taken pains to find the remedy for them. The remedy for them is … humility of heart.39
The feeling of abandonment may also overwhelm someone for reasons which do not depend on him at all. In particular, periods of abandonment, depression, darkening, and despair envelop ascetics who live in stillness. In this case the reason is the ineffable providence of God:
Let us not be troubled when we are found in darkness, especially if the cause of it is not in us. But reckon this as the work of God’s providence for a reason which he alone knows. At times our soul is suffocated and is, as it were, amid the waves; and whether a man reads the Scriptures, or performs his liturgy, or approaches anything whatever, he receives darkness upon darkness. He leaves off prayer and cannot even draw nigh to it. He is wholly unable to believe that a change will occur and that he will be at peace. This hour is full of despair and fear; hope in God and the consolation of faith are utterly effaced from his soul, and she is wholly and entirely filled with doubt and fear.40
However, Isaac continues, God does not leave the soul in this state for very long. After the period of despair, a change for the better should take place:
Those who are tried by the billows of this hour know from experience the change that follows upon its completion. God does not leave the soul in these things an entire day, for otherwise she would perish, being estranged from the Christian hope; but he speedily provides her with an escape.41
What should an ascetic do during periods of abandonment and darkness? A normal piece of advice would be to pray until it passes: ‘During periods of these temptations, when someone is darkened, he ought to fall on his face in prayer, and not rise up until power come to him from heaven and a light which will support his heart in a faith that has no doubts’.42
Another recommendation is to remember one’s initial zeal and early years of the ascetical life:
At the time of your defeat … ponder in your heart on the former time of your diligence, and how you used to concern yourself even over the most minute matters, and the valiant struggle which you displayed, and how you were stirred up with zeal against those who would hinder you in your progress. … For thus, with such and so many recollections, your soul is wakened as if from deep sleep and is clad with the flame of zeal. … She rises up out of her sunken state as if from the dead, she is raised on high, and she returns to her ancient estate.43
Isaac also recommends occupying oneself with the reading of patristic writings:
Whenever it happens to you … that your soul is enshrouded by thick darkness from within and, as with the sun’s rays when they are hidden from the earth in the midst of clouds, for a brief time she is deprived of spiritual comfort and the light of grace on account of the cloud of passions that overshadows her; and further, when the joy-producing power in your soul is curtailed for a little, and your mind is overshadowed by an unwonted mist: then do not be troubled in your mind, do not give way to despondency. But be patient, be engaged in reading the books of the Doctors of the Church, compel yourself in prayer, and expect to receive help. Then straightway help will come unawares.44
‘Scriptural reading’ (qeryana—a syriac term referring to both the Bible and the Church Fathers)45 casts away despondency and darkness from the soul:
I myself have had many experiences of these things, and what I have discovered is along the lines of what I have indicated here as a reminder, out of brotherly love, since many, I think, are benefited by these experiences, and they make progress as they come to realize that in half the cases of a sense of heaviness during stillness, this is dissolved by some form of scriptural reading; in some cases, by means of the discernment they taste as a result of the illumination provided by the wisdom that lies in the words.46
The sense of abandonment and despondency may, however, be so severe that a person cannot find the strength in himself either to read the Scriptures or to pray. In these circumstances, Isaac offers the following recommendation:
If you do not have the strength to master yourself and to fall upon your face in prayer, then wrap your head in your cloak and sleep until this hour of darkness pass from you, but do not leave your dwelling. This trial befalls those especially who desire to pass their life in the discipline of the mind, and who throughout their journey seek the consolation of faith. For this reason their greatest pain and travail is the dark hour when their mind wavers with doubt. And blasphemy follows hard upon this. Sometimes the man is seized by doubts in the resurrection, and by other things whereof we have no need to speak. Many times we have experienced all these things, and we have written of this struggle for the comfort of many. … Blessed is he who patiently endures these things within the doors of his cell! Afterwards, as Fathers say, he will attain to a magnificent and powerful dwelling.47
At the same time, Isaac continues, it is impossible to liberate oneself completely from periods of darkening and abandonment, and to reach perfect rest in this earthly life. A variation of periods of darkness and light is characteristic of the life of the solitary until the very hour of his death: ‘Sometimes trial, sometimes consolation. A man continues in these things until his departure. In this life we should not expect to receive perfect freedom from this struggle, nor to receive perfect consolation’.48
These periods of darkness and abandonment Isaac compares to winter; natural life almost completely ceases, but the seeds lie deep in the earth, waiting for spring, when they put out new shoots. One should not fall into despair but rather wait patiently until the afflictions, despondency, and abandonment that one has endured bring their fruits:
How blessed is the person who, out of hope for God’s grace, has endured the dejectedness which is a hidden trial of the mind’s virtue and growth. It is like the gloom of winter, which nevertheless causes the hidden seed to grow as it disintegrates under the ground in the harsh changes of blustery weather. With the same expectation of fruit in the end, by placing this expectation over an extended period of time, a person will push dejectedness away from himself. … Thus he should await at a distance, not considering them to be close at hand. For when he has not received consolation at his labours in the short term, he may end up in despair, like the hired labourer who has been cheated of the wage for which he has worked.49
As suddenly and unexpectedly as it began, the winter cold ends and the spring of the soul burgeons:
God permits coldness and heaviness to come upon a man to train and test him. But if he zealously rouses himself and compels himself a little to shake off these things, then grace will immediately draw near him, as it did formerly, and a different power will come upon him, bearing hidden within it all that is good and every manner of succour.
He will marvel with great astonishment, bringing to mind both the former heaviness and the lightness and strength which has now overtaken him and considering both the difference between them and his present state, and how such a great change has so suddenly found him. Thenceforth he will be wise, and if again such heaviness should come upon him, he will know about it by his former experience.50
Isaac describes in bright colours the state of spiritual enlightenment and exultation which follows the period of darkness:
There are times when a person sits in a stillness … and there is no entry or exit for him. But after much converse with the Scriptures, continuous supplication and thanksgiving at his feeble state, with his gaze extended unceasingly towards God’s grace after great dejection in the stillness, and little by little from that starting point some spaciousness of heart is born, and a germination takes place which gives birth to joy from within, even though that joy has no origin within that person himself, by some kind of initiating process of thought. He is aware that his heart is rejoicing, but he does not know the reason why. For a kind of exultation takes hold of the soul; in its enjoyment everything that exists and is seen is disregarded, and the mind sees, through its power, whence comes the foundation of that rapture of thought—but why it occurs he does not comprehend. He sees that the mind is raised up from its association with everything else, is lifted up and finds itself above the world in its upsurge … but does not discern any extension of intellect at this leaping of the heart or at the drawing out of the mind during its vexation.51
In this way an ascetic acquires experience from enduring temptations and ascends from one step to another on the ladder leading to God. Trials and temptations, according to Isaac, are necessary for everyone on the way to God. Of these trials the most painful is that of abandonment, the experience of ‘tasting gehenna’. One falls into darkness and despondency, loses hope and the consolation of faith. One should not despair but rather think of the providence of God, who ‘will, with the temptation, also make a way to escape’,52 as well as remain humble and pray as zealously as is possible. Temptation will assuredly be replaced by a period of closeness of God, and the feeling of abandonment will change to a sense of God’s presence.
______________
1. Cf Gen 22:1.
2. Cf Is 48:10.
3. Cf Ps 7:9.
4. Cf Prov 20:27.
5. Cf Gen 3:1–6.
6. Cf Mt 4:1–11.
7. Cf Ex 17:2.
8. Cf Mt 22:18; 35.
9. Cf Ac 5:9.
10. Cf Jas 1:14.
11. Cf Mt 26:41.
12. Cf Mt 10:28; 39 et al.
13. I/3 (25–26) = PR 3 (36–37).
14. I/61 (296) = PR 61 (429).
15. I/72 (355) = PR 77 (531).
16. I/6 (61) = PR 6 (96).
17. See Brock, Note 2 to II/34, 4.
18. II/34,4. According to the scientific views of Isaac’s time, a pearl is born in the oyster as a result of lightning penetrating the oyster when its folds are open.
19. I/42 (208) = PR 39 (298).
20. I/42 (209) = PR 39 (298).
21. I/42 (209) = PR 39 (299).
22. I/42 (209–210) = PR 39 (299–300).
23. I/42 (210) = PR 39 (300–301).
24. I/39 (195) = PR 36 (279).
25. Cf Mt 25:32–33.
26. II/31, 10. Cf Mal.3:19.
27. Cf 1 Cor 5:5.
28. Cf Job 1:6–11; 2:1–5.
29. I/39 (189–194) = PR 36 (369–278).
30. This reference to Job is absent from the east syriac recension.
31. I/5 (42) = PR 5 (61–62).
32. II/9,11.
33. Athanasius of Alexandria, The Life of St Antony 10.
34. Cf 1 Tim 1:19.
35. I/1 (4) = PR 1 (3).
36. II/26,6.
37. II/26,7.
38. Cf Evagrius, The Gnostic Chapters 28 (five reasons for abandonment).
39. I/42 (211) = PR 39 (302).
40. I/50 (241) = PR 48 (339).
41. I/50 (241) = PR 48 (339).
42. II/9,5.
43. I/2 (10–11) = PR 2 (11–12).
44. I/13 (81) = PR 13 (124).
45. Cf Miller, ‘Introduction’, CXI-CXII.
46. II/33,3.
47. I/50 (241–242) = PR 48 (339–340).
48. I/50 (242) = PR 48 (341).
49. II/34,3.
50. I/20 (103) = PR 17 (138).
51. II/34,2.
52. 1 Cor 10:13.