Demons and passions assault; put on the armor; Egypt’s taskmasters

yet, I think, than every number is the multitude of demons that provoke toward sin, and besides an not ignoble wildness of the innate pleasures, and love of money and boastings, and the envies neighboring murder set upon us, hate and slanders, and what not of like evils. But those easy toward leading-away, not even so much as to say touching with fingertip’s tip the need to bear such things nobly, carelessly assigning the winning to the enemies, a half-boiled beet, according to the prophet’s voice, as it were somehow thrown onto earth, and without a fight somehow brought under the feet of baseness. But those loving virtue and good, and reaching for the glory from above, and yearning to share in the life unto an age, most nobly and most boldly meet the assaults of their own passions, putting the flesh to death, and standing up against the motions in it and from it. Thus also most skillfully thrusting aside every form of baseness and sin, they succeed at the holy and blameless life, to whom also the divine Paul calls out, saying: ‘Stand therefore having girded your loin in truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod the feet in readiness of the Gospel of peace; upon all things having taken up the shield of faith, in which you will be able to quench all the evil one’s flaming arrows.’ For the spiritual full armor is most fitting for the saints, which we must reach for, even if in another manner, yet the Savior himself also orders: ‘For let your loins,’ he says, ‘be girded, and the sandals on your feet, and the lamps burning’; the being well-girt and as it were somehow drawn together signaling unto the need to endure hardship for the good, and for love toward God, of having been girded round; and the readiness and eagerness, unto the standing from the world, of having shod the feet, as about to walk at once wherever the divine law would wish us to go; and the lamps’ burning, of some not putting up with living as in darkness and ignorance, but rather making the journey unto every admired thing in the light through Christ. To Jews not putting up with doing this from mind-harm Christ was addressing: ‘While you have the light walk in the light, so that darkness may not overtake you.’ Therefore readiness unto virtue and courage yoked with prudence would show the lover of piety bright and conspicuous.

Palladius: You speak well.

Cyril: For we will not find the good fame in loving to be let loose; but if someone should choose to sweat, then barely will he be bright and most approved. And indeed while the sons of Israel were still making their sojourns in Egypt, the profane Pharaoh sets over them terrible and bitter overseers of the works; and they, making the hard training unwanted by them, and as cast upon them from necessity, a practice toward endurance of hardship,