BOOK V. OF THE SPIRIT OF GLUTTONY.



Index

CHAPTER I: The transition from the Institutes of the monks to the struggle against the eight principal faults.

CHAPTER II: How the occasions of these faults, being found in everybody, are ignored by everybody; and how we need the Lord's help to make them plain.

CHAPTER III: How our first struggle must be against the spirit of gluttony, i.e. the pleasures of the palate.

CHAPTER IV: The testimony of Abbot Antony in which he teaches that each virtue ought to be sought for from him who professes it in a special degree.

CHAPTER V: That one and the same rule of fasting cannot be observed by everybody.

CHAPTER VI: That the mind is not intoxicated by wine alone.

CHAPTER VII: How bodily weakness need not interfere with purity of heart.

CHAPTER VIII: How food should be taken with regard to the aim at perfect continence.

CHAPTER IX: Of the, measure of the chastisement to be undertaken, and the remedy of fasting.

CHAPTER X: That abstinence from food is not of itself sufficient for preservation of bodily and mental purity.

CHAPTER XI: That bodily lusts are not extinguished except by the entire rooting out of vice.

CHAPTER XII: That in our spiritual contest we ought to draw an example from the carnal contests.

CHAPTER XIII: That we cannot enter the battle of the inner man unless we have been set free from the vice of gluttony.

CHAPTER XIV: How gluttonous desires can be overcome.

CHAPTER XV: How a monk must always be eager to preserve his purity of heart.

CHAPTER XVI: How, after the fashion of the Olympic games, a monk should not attempt spiritual conflicts unless he has won battles over the flesh.

CHAPTER XVII: That the foundation and basis of the spiritual combat must be laid in the struggle against gluttony.

CHAPTER XVIII: Of the number of different conflicts and victories through which the blessed Apostle ascended to the crown of the highest

CHAPTER XIX: That the athlete of Christ, so long as he is in the body, is never without a battle.

CHAPTER XX: How a monk should not overstep the proper hours for taking food, if he wants to proceed to the struggle of interior conflicts.

CHAPTER XXI: Of the inward peace of a monk, and of spiritual abstinence;

CHAPTER XXII: That we should for this reason practise bodily abstinence that we may by it attain to a spiritual fast.

CHAPTER XXIII: What should be the character of the monk's food.

CHAPTER XXIV: How in Egypt we saw that the daily fast was broken without scruple on our arrival.

CHAPTER XXV: Of the abstinence of one old man who took food six times so sparingly that he was still hungry.

CHAPTER XXVI: Of another old man, who never partook of food alone in his cell.

CHAPTER XXVII: What the two Abbots Paesius and John said of the fruits of their zeal.

CHAPTER XXVIII: The lesson and example which Abbot John when dying left to his disciples.

CHAPTER XXIX: Of Abbot Machetes, who never slept during the spiritual conferences, but always went to sleep during earthly tales.

CHAPTER XXX: A saying of the same old man about not judging any one.

CHAPTER XXXI: The same old man's rebuke when he saw how the brethren went to sleep during the spiritual conferences, and woke up when some idle story was told.

CHAPTER XXXII: Of the letters which were burnt without being read.

CHAPTER XXXIII: Of the solution of a question which Abbot Theodore obtained by prayer.

CHAPTER XXXIV: Of the saying of the same old man, through which he taught by what efforts a monk can acquire a knowledge of the Scriptures.

CHAPTER. XXXV: A rebuke of the same old man, when he had come to my cell in the middle of the night.

CHAPTER XXXVI: A description of the desert in Diolcos, where the anchorites live.

CHAPTER XXXVII: Of the cells which Abbot Archebius gave up to us with their furniture.

CHAPTER XXXVIII: The same Archebius paid a debt of his mother's by the labour of his own hands.

CHAPTER XXXIX: Of the device of a certain old man by which some work was found for Abbot Simeon when be had nothing to do.

CHAPTER XL: Of the boys who when bringing to a sick man some figs, died in the desert from hunger, without having tasted them.

CHAPTER XLI: The saying of Abbot Macarius of the behaviour of a monk as one who was to live for a long while, and as one who was daily at the point of death.