Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Ser. II, Vol. XI:
The Works of John Cassian.: Chapter XIX. Of the three origins of our thoughts.

Chapter XIX.

Of the three origins of our thoughts.

Above all we ought at least to know that there are three origins of our thoughts, i.e., from God, from the devil, and from ourselves. They come from God when He vouchsafes to visit us with the illumination of the Holy Ghost, lifting us up to a higher state of progress, and where we have made but little progress, or through acting slothfully have been overcome, He chastens us with most salutary compunction, or when He discloses to us heavenly mysteries, or turns our purpose and will to better actions, as in the case where the king Ahasuerus, being chastened by the Lord, was prompted to ask for the books of the annals, by which he was reminded of the good deeds of Mordecai, and promoted him to a position of the highest honour and at once recalled his most cruel sentence concerning the slaughter of the Jews. 1132 Or when the prophet says: “I will hearken what the Lord God will say in me.” 1133 Another too tells us “And an angel spoke, and said in me,” 1134 or when the Son of God promised that He would come with His Father, and make His abode in us, 1135 and “It is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.” 1136 And the chosen vessel: “Ye seek a proof of Christ that speaketh in me.” 1137 But a whole range of thoughts springs from the devil, when he endeavours to destroy us either by the pleasures of sin or by secret attacks, in his crafty wiles deceitfully showing us evil as good, and transforming himself into an angel of light to us: 1138 as when the evangelist tells us: “And when supper was ended, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray” 1139 the Lord: and again also “after the sop,” he says, “Satan entered into him.” 1140 Peter also says to Ananias: “Why hath Satan tempted thine heart, to lie to the Holy Ghost?” 1141 And that which we read in the gospel much earlier as predicted by Ecclesiastes: “If the spirit of the ruler rise up against thee, leave not thy place.” 1142 That too which is said to God against Ahab in the third book of Kings, in the character of an unclean spirit: “I will go forth and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.” 1143 But they arise from ourselves, when in the course of nature we recollect what we are doing or have done or have heard. Of which the blessed David speaks: “I thought upon the ancient days, and had in mind the years from of old, and I meditated, by night I exercised myself with my heart, and searched out my spirit.” 1144 And again: “the Lord knoweth the thoughts of man, that they are vain:” 1145 and “the thoughts of the righteous are judgments.” 1146 In the gospel too the Lord says to the Pharisees: “why do ye think evil in your hearts?” 1147

Footnotes

Cf. Esth. vi. 1 sq.

Psa. 85.9.

Zech. i. 14.

Cf. S. John xiv. 23.

S. Matt. x. 20.

2 Cor. xiii. 3.

Cf. 2 Cor. xi. 4.

S. John xiii. 2.

John 13.27.

Acts v. 3.

Eccl. x. 4.

1 Kings xxii. 22.

Ps. 77:6, 7. Scobebam(which Petschenig edits from the mss.) = scopebam, which is found in the Gallican Psalter as in the old Latin in this passage. It is merely a Latinized form of σκοπεῖν.

Psa. 94.11.

Prov. xii. 5.

S. Matt. ix. 4.