7. Of Six Kinds of Men Who Do Not Apply Themselves to Receiving the Glfts of the Holy Spirit : and Especially of the First Kind

THERE are six kinds of men who do not accommodate themselves according to their powers, as natural decency demands, to the perception of those supernatural and divine gifts. There are men of the first kind who live in open mortal sin, and having forsaken God, turn themselves to the pleasures and delights of the body, to arrogance and pride of mind, to the desiring and amassing of earthly things and riches contrary to the command and the honour of God. But there is a threefold kind of those who spend a life subject to open mortal sins. The first kind is of those who seek and run after honours, dignities, high degrees and certain privileges beyond others on earth, and envy 29 others and try to crush them. The second kind is of those who suffer from the disease of avarice or greed, and who usurp and claim for their own private use those things which God made for all men in common, and if they are able they desire to possess them alone. And these indeed do God no small wrong, when they do not serve Him for these powers of theirs, and they even do harm to themselves when they render their whole life unquiet for themselves and full of business ; finally also to their neighbours they are harmful, when they do not benevolently share with them that which has been divinely createdxfor the use of both. Then there is the third kind of those whom slothfulness and petulance, and in the same way gluttony and extravagance hold entangled, who after the manner of beasts follow after their pleasures, and so are stupid and barbarous and least illumined with Divine Light. These three things clearly indicate this to all who have their eyes opened, that all those who form a habit in these matters, and persist in them, are far removed from divine charity, and are most of all like aliens. The

Ethnics indeed, or those Gentiles who obey not natural law nor right reason, but follow their own bestial powers and give way to the affections of their nature and their pleasure, will receive greater punishment, and are greater strangers to God, and differ from Him with a greater difference than other Ethnics, who lead their life in accordance with the dictate of natural reason. The Jews also, on whom the decalogue was laid, prophecy bestowed, and many other marvels and immense gifts conferred, and who followed the examples of their Fathers who preceded them by sight or by hearing, both account as nothing all these things, and lead a bestial life and one contrary to their own law, are certainly in far worse case than the Ethnics and the rest of the lews

'VMWMMUBMpM^MiqMMffVHHCP'* who obey the divine law ; but yet men of the Christian religion, for whose sake Christ died, and whom He redeemed by His death, to whom He left His Sacraments and manifold gifts, and even promised that they should enjoy Him for ever, and those who in Baptism promised faith or fidelity, innocence and constant service, yet never-

3? SIX KINDS OF MEN theless are turned away from Him, and serve the world, the devil and their owiii bestial pleasures, — these indeed exceed in wickedness both Pagans and Jews, when they have divinely followed many things, and have bound themselves to greater matters, yet nevertheless esteem them all as naught. But if they are willing to regain wisdom and to be converted,they return more readily into the grace of God, because they indeed are His sons, whilst the others are strangers and aliens. And this is the first kind of evil men, of those most unlike God, and farthest away from God.