Going Forward or Going Back

It must be one or the other. Either a person must, as the apostle says, “be renewed in the spirit of the mind” and advance every day by “pressing forward to the things that lie ahead,” or, if he neglects to do this, the sure result will be that he goes back and grows worse and worse. So the mind cannot possibly remain in one and the same state. It is like a man trying to force a boat upstream against a strong current by pulling hard on the oars. He must either beat back the rush of the torrent by the strength of his arms and so climb to the higher water, or let his hands slacken and be swept headlong downstream. So it will be clear proof of our failure if we find that we have gained nothing more. Whenever we find that we have not advanced upward, we should not doubt that we have gone back altogether. For, as I said, the human mind cannot possibly remain in the same condition, and as long as they are in the flesh none of the saints will ever reach the height of all the virtues in such a way that they remain unchangeable. [a]

For something must always be either added to them or taken away from them, and in no creature can there be a perfection so complete that it is not subject to the feeling of change. As we read in the book of Job: “What is man, that he should be without spot, and he who is born of a woman, that he should appear righteous? See, among his saints none is unchangeable, and the heavens are not pure in his sight.” For we confess that God alone is unchangeable. He alone is addressed in this way in the prayer of the holy prophet, “But you are the same,” and he says of himself, “I am God, and I do not change.” For he alone is by nature always good, always full and perfect, the one to whom nothing can ever be added and from whom nothing can be taken away. And so we ought always, with unceasing care and anxiety, to give ourselves to gaining virtue and to keep ourselves constantly busy in practicing it, for fear that if we stop going forward, the immediate result will be going back. For, as we said, the mind cannot remain in one and the same condition, by which I mean without its good qualities growing or shrinking. To fail to gain new ones is to lose them, because where the desire to make progress stops, the danger of going back is at hand.