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AND so when we had enjoyed our morning sleep, when to our delight the
dawn of light again shone upon us, and we had begun to ask once more for
his promised talk, the blessed Moses thus began: As I see you inflamed with
such an eager desire, that I do not believe that that very short interval
of quiet which I wanted to subtract from our spiritual conference and
devote to bodily rest, has been of any use for the repose of your bodies,
on me too a greater anxiety presses when I take note of your zeal. For I
must give the greater care and devotion in paying my debt, in pro portion
as I see that you ask for it the more earnestly, according to that saying:
"When thou sittest to eat with a ruler consider diligently what is put
before thee, and put forth thine hand, knowing that thou oughtest to
prepare such things." Wherefore as we are going to speak of the
excellent quality of discretion and the virtue of it, on which subject our
discourse of last night had entered at the termination of our discussion,
we think it desirable first to establish its excellence by the opinions of
the fathers, that when it has been shown what our predecessors thought and
said about it, then we may bring forward some ancient and modern shipwrecks
and mischances of various people, who were destroyed and hopelessly ruined
because they paid but little attention to it, and then as well as we can we
must treat of its advantages and uses: after a discussion of which we shall
know better how we ought to seek after it and practise it, by the
consideration of the importance of its value and grace. For it is no
ordinary virtue nor one which can be freely gained by merely human efforts,
unless they are aided by the Divine blessing, for we read that this is also
reckoned among the noblest gifts of the Spirit by the Apostle: "To one is
given by the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge by
the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another the gift
of healing by the same Spirit," and shortly after, "to another the
discerning of spirits." Then after the complete catalogue of spiritual
gifts he subjoins: "But all these worketh one and the selfsame Spirit,
dividing to every man severally as He will." You see then that the gift
of discretion is no earthly thing and no slight matter, but the greatest
prize of divine grace. And unless a monk has pursued it with all zeal, and
secured a power of discerning with unerring judgment the spirits that rise
up in him, he is sure to go wrong, as if in the darkness of night and dense
blackness, and not merely to fall down dangerous pits and precipices, but
also to make frequent mistakes in matters that are plain and
straightforward.
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