Conferences

Different passages of Scripture on the meaning of the eight faults.

And in reference to these eight faults we also have the following in the gospel: “But when the unclean spirit is gone out from a man, he walks through dry places seeking rest and finds none. Then he says, I will return to my house from whence I came out: and coming he finds it empty, swept, and garnished: then he goes and takes seven other spirits worse than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is made worse than the first.” Lo, just as in the former passages we read of seven nations besides that of the Egyptians from which the children of Israel had gone forth, so here too seven unclean spirits are said to return beside that one which we first hear of as going forth from the man. And of this sevenfold incentive of sins Solomon gives the following account in Proverbs: “If your enemy speaks loud to you, do not agree to him because there are seven mischiefs in his heart;” i.e., if the spirit of gluttony is overcome and begins to flatter you with having humiliated it, asking in a sort of way that you would relax something of the fervour with which you began, and yield to it something beyond what the due limits of abstinence, and measure of strict severity would allow, do not you be overcome by its submission, nor return in fancied security from its assaults, as you seem to have become for a time freed from carnal desires, to your previous state of carelessness or former liking for good things. For through this the spirit whom you have vanquished is saying “I will return to my house from whence I came out,” and immediately the seven spirits of sins which proceed from it will prove to you more injurious than that passion which in the first instance you overcame, and will presently drag you down to worse kinds of sins.