The Combat with Demons and the Hatred of Evil

The same word will be spoken regarding other matters, as one secretly exercises himself against this evil one.

Chapter 8. There is a demon, called the deceiver, who stands most especially before the brothers in the morning, who wanders the mind of the recluse from city to city, and from house to house, and from village to village, first making bare encounters, and happening upon certain known persons, and speaking at length, and corrupting the recluse's own state toward those meeting him, and becoming distant, taking little by little forgetfulness of the knowledge of God, and of virtue, and of the calling. Therefore, it is necessary for the one withdrawing to watch this one, from where he begins and where he arrives; for he does not work that long circle in vain or by chance, but desiring to corrupt the state of the recluse, he does these things, so that the mind, being consumed by these, and being immediately intoxicated by the many encounters, might fall into the demon of fornication, or of anger, or of sorrow, which ones most defile the brightness of his state. But we, if we have the aim to know clearly this one's cunning, let us not speak hastily to him, nor let us show the things that happen, and how he creates encounters through the intellect, and in what way he steals the mind little by little toward death, since he will flee from us; for seeing these things being done is not received; and we shall not enter into anything else of what we have striven to learn. But let us allow him even one more day, or even a second, to complete the deed, so that, having learned accurately his trickery, and having thereafter refuted him by word, we may drive him away.

Chapter 9. But since it happens according to the time of temptation, while the mind is being clouded, not to see clearly the things happening, let this happen after the withdrawal of the demon; having settled by yourself, remember the things that have happened to you: from where you began and where you traveled, and in what place you were seized by the spirit of fornication, or of anger, or of sorrow, and how all the things happening came to pass, and learn these things clearly, and hand them over to the memory so that you may have them to refute him when he approaches, and the place hidden by him.

Do not be discouraged, and you will no longer follow it. But if you wish at any time to provoke it even to madness, expose it immediately upon standing, and reveal the first place into which it entered, and the second, and the third, for it becomes very angry when it does not bear the shame; and this will be a proof of the timely moment to confront it, that the thought has fled from you; for it is impossible for it to remain standing when it is being clearly exposed. But having been defeated by this, the demon of delusion is succeeded by a very heavy sleep, and a death with much coldness of the eyelids, and countless yawning, and shoulders being weighed down, and falling into stupors, which the Holy Spirit will dissolve by concise prayer.

CHAPTER 3. The hatred toward the demons contributes entirely to our salvation, and is helpful toward the work of virtue; but we are unable to nourish this within ourselves, like a good offspring, because the love-seeking spirits are destroying it, and they are calling the soul back toward friendship and habit again; but the physician of souls treats this friendship, and rather this difficult anger, by abandonment; for he acknowledges that we suffer something fearful from them by night or during the day, and again the soul, being taught to turn back toward the archetypal hatred, says to the Lord, according to David, 'I have hated them with perfect hatred, they have become enemies to me' (Ps 118:158). For this one hates enemies with perfect hatred, he who sins neither in action nor in thought; which is, of the first, and the greatest, a proof of apatheia.

CHAPTER 4. And concerning the demon who makes the soul insensate, what is there to say? For I have become afraid even to write about him, how the soul of the one in one's own house is displaced from its state; for at the time of his visitation, it strips itself of the fear of God and of reverence, and it considers sin not to be sin, and it does not think lawlessness to be lawlessness, and it remembers the punishment and the eternal judgment only as a bare word, and it truly mocks the fiery earthquake, and it perhaps confesses God, but it does not know what He has commanded; you strike at the breasts, while it moves toward sin, and it does not even feel it. From