Testing Thoughts Like a Good Money-Changer

We ought, then, to pay careful attention to this threefold order. With wise discernment we should examine the thoughts that arise in our hearts, tracking down first of all their origin, their cause, and their author, so that we can consider how far we ought to yield to them, according to the worth of those who suggest them. In this way we may become good money-changers, as the Lord’s command bids us. Their highest skill and training lies in testing what is perfectly pure gold, what is commonly called refined, and what has not been purified enough in the fire. With unerring skill they are not taken in by a common brass denarius, when it has been colored with bright gold and made to look like some coin of great value. They shrewdly recognize coins stamped with the heads of usurpers, and with still shrewder skill they detect those that bear the image of the rightful king but were not properly made. Last of all, they take care to check by the test of the scales that the coins are not underweight. [a]

The saying in the Gospel that uses this figure shows us that we ought to observe all these things in a spiritual way as well. First, whatever has found its way into our hearts, and whatever teaching we have received, should be examined with the greatest care, to see whether it has been purified by the divine and heavenly fire of the Holy Spirit, or whether it belongs to Jewish superstition, or whether it comes from the pride of a worldly philosophy and only makes an outward show of religion. We can do this if we follow the apostle’s advice: “Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are from God.” This is the way those men too are deceived who, after being professed as monks, are drawn in by elegance of style and by certain teachings of the philosophers. At first sight, because of some pious meanings not out of keeping with religion, these teachings deceive their hearers like the glitter of gold. They attract them on the surface, but leave them poor and wretched forever, like men cheated with false money made of copper. Either they bring them back to the bustle of this world, or they lure them into the errors of heretics and into puffed-up conceits. We read of this happening to Achan in the book of Joshua the son of Nun, when he coveted a weight of gold from the camp of the Philistines and stole it, and was struck with a curse and condemned to eternal death.

In the second place, we should take care that no wrong interpretation fastened onto the pure gold of Scripture deceives us about the value of the metal. In this way the devil in his craftiness tried to impose on our Lord and Savior, as though he were a mere man. By his malicious interpretation he twisted what ought to be understood of all good people in general, and tried to fasten it on him in particular, who had no need of the angels’ care. He said: “For he will give his angels charge concerning you, to keep you in all your ways, and in their hands they will bear you up, lest at any time you dash your foot against a stone.” By a crafty application of his own he gave a turn to the precious sayings of Scripture and bent them into a dangerous sense, the very opposite of their true meaning. So he offers us the image and face of a usurper under cover of a gold color that can deceive us.

Or else he tries to cheat us with counterfeits. For instance, he urges us to take up some work of piety that does not come from the true mind of the fathers and so, under the form of virtue, leads to vice. He deceives us with fasts that are immoderate or impossible, or with vigils that are too long, or prayers without measure, or unsuitable reading, and so brings us to a bad end. Or he persuades us to give ourselves to mixing in the affairs of others and to pious visits, so that he may drive us out of the spiritual enclosure of the monastery and the seclusion of its friendly peace. He suggests that we take on our shoulders the anxieties and cares of religious women who are in need, so that once a monk is hopelessly entangled in snares of this sort, he may distract him with most harmful occupations and cares. Or else he stirs a man up to desire the holy office of the clergy, under the pretext of building up many people and of love for spiritual gain, in order to draw us away from the humility and strictness of our life.

All these things are opposed to our salvation and to our profession as monks. Yet when they are covered with a kind of veil of compassion and religion, they easily deceive those who lack skill and care. They imitate the coins of the true king, because at first they seem full of piety. But they were not stamped by those who have the right to coin, that is, the approved catholic fathers, nor do they come from the chief public mint. They were made in secret, by the fraud of the devil, and passed off on the unskilled and ignorant, not without serious harm. Even though they seem useful and necessary at first, if afterward they begin to interfere with the soundness of our profession and, as it were, to weaken in some way the whole body of our purpose, it is good to cut them off and throw them away from us, like a limb that may be necessary but still causes us to stumble, and that seems to do the work of the right hand or foot. For it is better to go without one limb of a command, that is, its working out or result, and to remain safe and sound in the other parts, entering the kingdom of heaven as a weak man, than to keep the whole mass of commands and fall into some error. Such an error, by an evil habit, separates us from our strict rule and from the way of life we purposed and entered on. It leads to so great a loss that whatever it gains will never outweigh the harm that follows, and it will cause all our past fruits and the whole body of our work to be burned in the fire of hell. Of illusions of this kind it is well said in Proverbs: “There are ways that seem right to a man, but their end will come into the depths of hell.” And again: “An evil man does harm when he attaches himself to a good man,” that is, the devil deceives when he is covered with an appearance of holiness, “but he hates the sound of the watchman,” that is, the power of discernment that comes from the words and warnings of the fathers.