Seven Spirits Worse Than the First

And with reference to these eight faults we also have this in the Gospel: “When the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he passes through dry places seeking rest, and finds none. Then he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came out.’ And when he comes he finds it empty, swept and put in order. Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they go in and live there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first.” See: just as in the earlier passages we read of seven nations besides that of the Egyptians, from which the children of Israel had come out, so here too seven unclean spirits are said to return besides the one we first hear of as going out of the man. And Solomon gives this account of the sevenfold incentive of sins in Proverbs: “If your enemy speaks loudly to you, do not agree with him, for there are seven evils in his heart.” [a]

That is, if the spirit of gluttony is overcome and begins to flatter you that you have humbled it, asking you in a way to relax something of the fervor with which you began, and to yield to it something beyond what the proper limits of abstinence and the measure of strict severity would allow, do not let yourself be overcome by its submission. Because you seem for a time to have become free of the desires of the flesh, do not go back, in fancied security from its assaults, to your former carelessness or your old liking for good things. For through this the spirit you have conquered is saying, “I will return to my house from which I came out.” And at once the seven spirits of sin that come from it will prove more harmful to you than the passion you overcame in the first place, and will soon drag you down into worse kinds of sin.