V. CONFERENCE OF ABBOT SERAPION, ON THE EIGHT PRINCIPAL FAULTS



Index

CHAPTER I: Our arrival at Abbot Serapion's cell, and inquiry on the different kinds of faults and the way to overcome them.

CHAPTER II: Abbot Serapion's enumeration of eight principal faults.

CHAPTER III: Of the two classes of faults and their fourfold manner of acting on us.

CHAPTER IV: A review of the passions of gluttony and fornication and their remedies.

CHAPTER V: How our Lord alone was tempted without sin.

CHAPTER VI: Of the manner of the temptation in which our Lord was attacked by the devil.

CHAPTER VII: How vainglory and pride can be consummated without any assistance from the body.

CHAPTER VIII: Of covetousness, which is something outside our nature, and of the difference between it and those faults which are natural to us.

CHAPTER IX: How dejection and accidie generally arise without any external provocation, as in the case of other faults.

CHAPTER X: How six of these faults are related, and the two which differ from them are akin to one another.

CHAPTER XI: Of the origin and character of each of these faults.

CHAPTER XII: How vainglory may be useful to us.

CHAPTER XIII: Of the different ways in which all these faults assault us.

CHAPTER XIV: Of the struggle into which we must enter against our faults, when they attack us.

CHAPTER XV: How we can do nothing against our faults without the help of God, and how we should not be puffed up by victories over them.

CHAPTER XVI: Of the meaning of the seven nations of whose lands Israel took possession, and the reason why they are sometimes spoken of as "seven," and sometimes as "many."

CHAPTER XVII: A question with regard to the comparison of seven nations with eight faults.

CHAPTER XVIII: The answer how the number of eight nations is made up in accordance with the eight faults.

CHAPTER XIX: The reason why one nation is to be forsaken, while seven are commanded to be destroyed.

CHAPTER XX: Of the nature of gluttony, which may be illustrated by the simile of the eagle.

CHAPTER XXI: Of the lasting character of gluttony as described to some philosophers.

CHAPTER XXII: How it was that God foretold to Abraham that Israel would have to drive out ten nations.

CHAPTER XXIII: How it is useful for us to take possession of their lands.

CHAPTER XXIV: How the lands from which the Canaanites were expelled, had been assigned to the seed of Shem.

CHAPTER XXV: Different passages of Scripture on the meaning of the eight faults.

CHAPTER XXVI: How when we have got the better of the passion of gluttony we must take pains to gain all the other virtues.

CHAPTER XXVII: That our battles are not fought with our faults in the same order as that in which they stand in the list.