against passions and devils, and who are lacking at the present time purity of heart, and fruits of the spirit, and visions of our Lord, and they are not spoken of men who are perfect as he was. The word ‘sea’ he applieth to the sea of the mind whereon the monk saileth with works of spiritual excellence, wherefrom he entereth the haven of impassibility, even as the blessed Macarius saith, ‘He who wisheth to cleave the sea of the mind, maketh himself longsuffering.’ And he calleth temptations ‘storms,’ and the passions ‘waves,’ and the ‘thieves’ are devils, and his ‘parents’ are the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, One God, in Whose image and likeness we are made, even as our Creator said, ‘Come, let us make man in our image and likeness,’ and also as our Lord said, ‘Be ye like unto your Father, Who is in heaven.’ And He calleth the spiritual excellences, which contain likenesses of the similitude of our Father, Who is in heaven, and which make us heirs of God, and sons of the inheritance of Jesus Christ, by the name of ‘riches and possessions of his parents,’ and these are faith, and hope, and the love of God and man, and joy, and rest, and peace, and graciousness, and pleasantness, and lowliness, and humility, and longsuffering, and patient endurance, and integrity, and simplicity, and purity, and mercy, and cleanness of heart, and the holy light of the mind, and pure prayer, and the divine light which riseth on the heart at the hour of prayer, and spiritual prayer, and Divine knowledge, and the visions and revelations of our Lord. These are the possessions of the soul, some of which it acquireth naturally, and some by Divine Grace; now those which it acquireth naturally are they which the Creator sowed in its nature at the beginning of its creation, and those which it acquireth by Divine Grace are they which are bestowed upon it by the baptism in Christ. And these possessions are lost to a man through pleasures, and honours, and lusts, and benefits, but they are found and acquired, and the soul waxeth rich in them, through tribulations, and revilings, and oppression, and hardships. Now although Abbâ Bessarion, and men who were as perfect as he was, possessed these things, other men lack them and are strangers unto them. [And as regards the words] ‘He once came to a certain monastery, and sat down outside the door like a wandering beggar,’ [they mean that] he saw clearly with the secret eye of the mind that the greater number of the monks were destitute of this spiritual possession, and of the spiritual excellences and gifts which have been already mentioned. And being incited there, to by the law of affection and of brotherly love, he cried out
