Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/191

vn] WESTERN MONASTICISM 173 he should judge himself guilty of his sins, saying in his heart with the publican in the gospel, Lord, I a sinner am unworthy to lift my eyes to the heavens. The monk who rises by all these stairs of humility will quickly reach that perfect love of God which sends away fear, whereby all those things which formerly he kept to, not without trembling, he will begin to guard without any labor, naturally from habit, not now from fear of Hell, but from love of Christ and delight in the virtues.* The precepts of Benedict's rule are strikingly posi- tive, prescribing rather than forbidding. The great abbot knew that vices are best eradicated by cultiva- tion of the opposite positive virtues. So his great 1 With Benedict's chapter on humility compare Cassian, Inst., IV, 32-43, especially Chap. 33, which contains a like arrangement of the humilities. These chapters of Cassian purport to contain the discourse of an Egyptian abbot to a young monk. The sum- mary at the end of Chap. 43 is interesting in form: "Audi ergo paucis ordinem, per quem scandere ad perfectionem summam sine uUo labore ac difficultate praevaleas. Principium nostrae salutis ac sapientiae secundum scripturas timor domini est. De timore domini nascltur compunctio salutaris. De conpunctione cordis pro- cedit abrenuntiatio, id est nuditas et contcmptus omnium faculta- tum. De nuditate humilitas procreatur. Do humilitate generatur mortificatio voluntatum. Mortificatione voluntatum exstirpantur atquo marcescunt universa vitia. Expulsione vitiorum vlrtutes fruticant atqne saccrescunt. Pullulatione virtutum puritas cordis arlquiritur. Poritate cordis apostolicae caritatis perfectio posside- tur." The form of this summary recalls to mind Gotama's Chain of Causation ; see Taylor, Ancient IdeaU, I, p. 87. Doubtless, the symbolical number twelve — <trc/t'e stairs of humility — contributed to the obsenrance of the seventh chapter of Benedict's regula, Just as the fact that Chap. 4 contained seventy-two " instrumenta artis spiritualis" impressed that chapter on medisoYal minds, who were so fond of certain significant numbers.